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‘It’s hard to open up … you don’t know how people are going to react.’ Chicago White Sox speak out about mental health awareness.

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

Jake Burger wanted to get down everything that helped in his battle with depression and anxiety. So early in 2020, the Chicago White Sox infielder wrote. And wrote. And wrote.“It was like a three-page paper with how much I wrote,” Burger told the Tribune.He sent it to his wife, Ashlyn, who came up with “Burger BOMBS” — an acronym playing off the nickname for some of his tape-measure home runs.The ”B” stands for “Be open.” The ”O” is for “Open a book.” The “M” is for “Meditate.” The other “B” is for “Break a sweat.” And ”S” is for “Set a routine.”“We ran with it,” Burger said. “Over the last couple of years, it’s really come into mainstream that it’s OK to talk about your feelings and it’s OK to talk about what you’re struggling with.“It’s really cool to see a lot of people start to ...

The Jets’ 2023 schedule shouldn’t matter, it’s time for the team to win

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

When the NFL released the schedule for all 32 teams last Thursday, many saw that the Jets were dealt a terrible hand.Gang Green will play three playoff teams in the first weeks of the season, with all of them at least making it to the divisional round last year.Tough luck. Now get over it.It’s time to put up and shut up for the Jets, as the schedule is the schedule. The Jets will play nine games against teams that made the playoffs in 2022. Gang Green has the sixth-toughest schedule in the NFL, as its opponents combined for a .545 winning percentage in 2022.The Jets made a seismic move this offseason after acquiring Aaron Rodgers in a trade with the Packers. Teams only make that move if they feel they’re close to winning a championship or becoming a contender. After last season, it is understandable why the Jets feel like they are close to doing something unique within the organization.During the 2022 season full of rollercoasters, the Jets somehow finished 7-10 behind i...

Turkish presidential election going to runoff with Erdogan narrowly missing outright victory

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

By SUZAN FRASER and ZEYNEP BILGINSOY (Associated Press)ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Conservative Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a runoff with his main rival in two weeks that will decide who leads a country struggling with sky-high inflation and hosting Syrian refugees as it plays a key role in the Middle East and in NATO expansion.Election officials said Monday that the May 28 second round will allow Turks to decide if their nation remains under the increasingly authoritarian president’s firm grip for a third decade, or if it can embark on the more democratic course promised by Kemal Kilicdaroglu.The vote shows how Turkey has become extremely polarized, some voters commented. “I am not happy at all,” voter Suzan Devletsah said. “I worry about the future of Turkey.” Erdogan faced electoral headwinds due to a cost-of-living crisis and criticism over the government’s response to a devastating February earthquake.The nationalist’s ...

Book Review: A brilliant new story collection by Jolene McIlwain awaits in ‘Sidle Creek’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

“Sidle Creek,” by Jolene McIlwain (Melville House)Lately, the news out of rural Appalachia has not been good: a train derailment, toxic chemicals, the opioid epidemic, deaths of despair. In contrast to all of that, Jolene McIlwain has written a stunning new collection of short fiction that presents a region known for hunting, fishing, fracking and Rolling Rock beer in all of its tender and terrifying complexity.In the title story, a father places warm stones from Sidle Creek on his daughter’s belly to relieve the debilitating cramps of endometriosis. A retired math professor in “The Fractal Geometry of Grief” builds a glass shelter on his wooded property to protect a doe he fell in love with after his wife’s death. In “Loosed” a man small “in position, stature and intelligence” earns money staging cockfights, then dogfights, and then, in a horrifying twist, fights between his four young sons because those are the most exciting of all to the rich, powerful men who bet on them.A strik...

IMF: Sri Lanka’s crisis-hit economy likely to resume growth in 2024 after contracting 3% this year

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s crisis-hit economy is expected to resume growing in 2024 after contracting 3% this year, an International Monetary Fund official said Monday.Krishna Srinivasan, the IMF’s director for Asia and Pacific, said expected economic growth of 1.5% next year hinges critically on the economic reform program Sri Lanka has agreed to undertake, including challenging reforms in five identified areas.“It is now essential to continue the reform momentum under strong ownership by the authorities and the Sri Lankan people, more broadly,” he said.Sri Lanka nearly exhausted its foreign currency holdings last year and the island nation announced that it was suspending repayment of foreign loans. The crisis resulted in severe shortages of essentials such as medicines, fuel, cooking gas and food, leading to angry protests that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.The IMF approved a nearly $3 billion rescue program in March whic...

Pacific Island leaders urge world to put aside differences in combating impact of climate change

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Pacific Island leaders criticized rich countries on Monday for not doing enough to control climate change despite being responsible for much of the problem, and for making money off of loans provided to vulnerable nations to mitigate the effects.Leaders and representatives from Pacific Island nations demanded at a U.N. climate change conference in Bangkok that the world make more effort to put aside differences in combating the environmental impact, especially as their countries emerge from the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.Prime Minister Mark Brown of the Cook Islands said the finance model for combatting climate change — giving out loans to reduce the impact — is “not the way to go” for countries in his region with such small populations that produce “inconsequential amounts of carbon emissions” but suffer the most from the effects.He encouraged a shift toward grants or interest-free loans to help ease the financial burden on poorer countries.“All we...

European human rights summit to step up aid for Ukraine to counter Russian invasion

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

BRUSSELS (AP) — At the conclusion of their previous Council of Europe summit, the 46 member states solemnly declared they “bear witness to unprecedented pan-European unity.”Fast-forward 18 years, to the day, on Tuesday, and the same institution, Europe’s pre-eminent human rights organization, faces a massive war on its continent, forcing it to gather as many of its leaders as possible in Reykjavik, Iceland, to deal with the epochal crisis in Ukraine, one of its member states. Perhaps more heed should have been paid to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s ominous warning at the 2005 summit in Warsaw that “Russia was, is and will be a major European nation.” Neither Lavrov, nor any Russian government official, will be flying to Europe’s far-flung island nation, since the Council expelled Russia over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The two-day summit will seek to reinforce a sense of common purpose and the defense of Ukraine stands out like a beacon. ...

K’atl’oodeeche First Nation, Hay River, N.W.T., order evacuations as wildfire spreads

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

HAY RIVER, N.W.T. — A First Nation reserve and nearby town in the southern Northwest Territories have been evacuated as a wildfire spreads in the area. K’atl’odeeche First Nation issued an evacuation order Sunday afternoon advising residents to register at the evacuation centre in nearby Hay River.The Town of Hay River then issued an evacuation order at 11 p.m. Sunday, directing residents to travel to Yellowknife, roughly 480 kilometres away.In an update early today, N.W.T. Fire said it was highly likely the wildfire had breached the K’atl’odeeche First Nation Reserve and jumped the river to the western part of the Town of Hay River.It said this was likely caused by winds carrying embers from the fire.Roughly 3,500 residents from Hay River and the K’atl’odeeche First Nation were ordered to leave last May as the area experienced its worst flooding on record.In October, the Northwest Territories government said it estimated flooding caused more than...

Elon Musk must still have his tweets approved by Tesla lawyer, federal appeals court rules

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk cannot back out of a settlement with securities regulators that was reached after his 2018 tweets claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private caused the electric vehicle maker’s share price to jump and led to a temporary halt in trading, an appeals court ruled Monday.The summary order by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan was released just days after a three-judge panel heard lawyers’ arguments in the case.Musk had challenged a lower court judge’s ruling last year requiring him to abide by the deal on the grounds that circumstances have changed and because the decree contains a “prior restraint” that Musk contends violates the First Amendment.The settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission required that his tweets be approved first by a Tesla attorney. It also called for Musk and Tesla to pay civil fines over the tweets in which Musk said he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share.The fu...

April’s national home sales up 11.3% from March, supply at 20-year low: CREA

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:30 GMT

National home sales jumped by 11.3 per cent between March and April as the real estate market picked up again, but supply remained at a 20 year-low, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Monday.Seasonally-adjusted sales for the month totalled 38,164 compared with 34,277 in March.The actual number of homes sold last month amounted to 44,059, down 19.5 per cent from a year prior. The year-over-year sales decline was markedly smaller than the drops reported in recent months, the association said, attributing the return of sales to home prices, which many feel have bottomed out in recent months as interest rates climbed eight times over the last year.“It wasn’t all that surprising to see buyers jumping off the sidelines and back into the market in April,” Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist said in a press release. “Supply, on the other hand, has been sluggish, hence the price gains from March to April seen all over the country.”The seasonally-adjusted number of new ...