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Column: MLB’s playoff format is penalizing top seeds with all that time off

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

The Baltimore Orioles won an AL-leading 101 games during the regular season. The Los Angeles Dodgers also reached triple digits in victories. Those impressive accomplishments earned both teams a bye in the opening round of the playoffs.Clearly, the time off did them no good.Tossing in the 104-win Atlanta Braves and the defending World Series champion Houston Astros, baseball’s four top seeds went a combined 2-6 on their home fields to start the best-of-five division round.Which begs the question: Is it time to say goodbye to the bye?The Orioles lost their first two games at home to the Texas Rangers, who finished off the sweep with a 7-1 win at home Tuesday night. The Dodgers were on the verge of elimination after dropping two straight to the Arizona Diamondbacks.The Astros split their first two games in Houston with the Twins before pulling ahead in the series with a 9-1 rout at Minnesota. The power-hitting Braves needed an improbable comeback to even their series with the Ph...

Keir Starmer ‘bomb-proofing’ Labour pledges as he tries to unseat the Tories

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

Labour leader Keir Starmer said he’s “bomb-proofing” the party’s pre-election promises to the public, as he defended a lack of new policies in his big address to the U.K. opposition party’s annual conference.Starmer — who current polls suggest is on course to become Britain’s next prime minister — delivered a more personal address than usual to the party faithful on Tuesday.He touched on his background, aimed to tap into anxiety about the cost of living, and pitched Labour as offering hope after 13 years of Conservative government.But he faced criticism in some quarters for not offering more policy meat. Starmer promised a major shake-up of Britain’s planning system to spur housebuilding, but his speech was absent the traditional “rabbit out of the hat” policy moment party leaders sometimes use to add drama to a conference speech. The left-wing Momentum campaign group said Starmer had been relying on “vague promises of refo...

Howie Carr: The moment is too big for Biden

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

What is the Biden administration’s latest “existential” threat to humanity today?Is it the weather?Or is it tradesmen in F-150 pickup trucks wearing red MAGA hats?Is it gas stoves, or the genocidal decision by the Supreme Court to force deadbeat hippies to start repaying their student loans?Or is it “traditional” Catholics going to a Latin Mass? Or the refusal of some Americans to follow CDC orders to wear a mask out in public?Or is the greatest crisis facing the planet this news cycle angry parents complaining to their local school committees about transgender recruiting of kindergarten kids in the public schools?These are some of the non-issues that the Democrats have been trying to gin up their shiftless base with since January 2021, while simultaneously funneling billions of dollars in armaments and cash to Muslim terrorist states since ousting Donald J. Trump from the White House.Elections have consequences, and stolen elections….The audacity of this mob of appeasers and fellow...

A Chinese Australian journalist detained for 3 years in China returns to Australia

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A Chinese Australian journalist who was convicted on murky espionage charges and detained in China for three years has returned to Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday.Cheng Lei, 48, worked for the international department of China’s state broadcaster CCTV. She has reunited with her two children in Melbourne, Albanese said.Albanese said Australia had traded nothing with China for Cheng’s release.“Her release follows the completion of judicial processes in China,” he said.China’s Ministry of State Security said that Cheng had been approached by a foreign organization in May 2020 and provided them with state secrets she had obtained on the job in violation of a confidentiality clause signed with her employer. A police statement did not name the organization or say what the secrets were.A court in Beijing convicted her of illegally providing state secrets abroad and she was sentenced to two years and 11 months, the statement s...

Malaysia’s wildlife department defends its use of puppies as live bait to trap black panthers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s Wildlife Department defended its use of puppies as live bait to capture black panthers spotted at a Malaysian village after animal rights groups protested the method and appealed to the government to use other means.The department resorted to using puppies after earlier attempts to lure the panthers with a goat failed. It’s standard procedure to use live animals, Wildlife Department Director General Abdul Kadir Abu Hashim said in remarks published Tuesday, noting that the puppies were not physically harmed in the process.“In this particular case, there was indication that the panther had attacked dogs (before), so we used the puppies for their barking and scent to attract the panther,” he told the Free Malaysia Today online news portal. Farmers in a village in southern Negeri Sembilan state were terrified after spotting a panther near their home in September. Villagers lodged a complaint with the Wildlife Department after a panthe...

Israel strikes neighborhood after neighborhood in sealed-off Gaza as war appears set to escalate

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians in the sealed-off Gaza Strip scrambled to find safety Wednesday, as Israel hammered neighborhood after neighborhood in the tiny coastal enclave in retaliation for the deadly mass incursion by Hamas militants and vowed an even more punishing escalation. Airstrikes smashed entire city blocks to rubble, leaving unknown numbers of bodies beneath mounds of debris, and continued even as Hamas militants hold dozens of captives seized during their shocking attack into Israel over the weekend.Israel has vowed an unprecedented offensive against the Islamic militant group ruling Gaza after its fighters broke through the border fence and stormed into the country’s south, gunning down hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival. They dragged an estimated 150 people – soldiers, men, women, children and the elderly – into captivity in Gaza.As Palestinians crowded into U.N. schools and a shrinking number of safe neighborhoods, h...

In the news today: Health ministers in Charlottetown and key convoy trial decision

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today…Health ministers to meet in CharlottetownFederal Health Minister Mark Holland is set to sit down with his provincial and territorial counterparts in Charlottetown on Wednesday to discuss how they’re going to grow the health workforce. Holland, who was shuffled into the health portfolio this summer during what many advocates have called a crisis in health care, as health workers struggle to keep the provincial and territorial systems afloat. Bringing new workers into the industry and retaining those who are already there is the priority, Holland said.“We have to look at our foreign credentials, we have to look at pan-Canadian licensure,” he said at a press conference in British Columbia on Tuesday.The ministers will also talk about improving the integration of health data from one province to the next, which is a condition of the health accord ...

Judge to decide if Ottawa locals can testify in ‘Freedom Convoy’ organizers’ trial

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

OTTAWA — The criminal trial of two prominent “Freedom Convoy” organizers is expected to resume today with a ruling on whether the court will hear testimony from local Ottawa residents. Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are facing charges related to their role in organizing the protest that brought thousands of big-rig trucks to Ottawa, where demonstrators remained for three weeks.Lich’s lawyer Lawrence Greenspon asked the judge not to let the locals testify, arguing their testimony would be irrelevant.Lich and Barber have already signed admissions that the actions of certain individuals who participated in the protest interfered with public transit and the lawful use and enjoyment of property and businesses.The Crown has maintained that it prefers to call its case as it sees fit, and wants local witnesses to tell the court how disruption, intimidation and obstructions caused by the protest manifested on the streets.The first 13 days of the trial took place in September ...

Health ministers converge in P.E.I. as governments negotiate final deals

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

OTTAWA — Federal Health Minister Mark Holland is set to sit down with his provincial and territorial counterparts in Charlottetown on Wednesday to discuss how they’re going to grow the health workforce. Holland, who was shuffled into the health portfolio this summer during what many advocates have called a crisis in health care, as health workers struggle to keep the provincial and territorial systems afloat. Bringing new workers into the industry and retaining those who are already there is the priority, Holland said.“We have to look at our foreign credentials, we have to look at pan-Canadian licensure,” he said at a press conference in British Columbia on Tuesday.The ministers will also talk about improving the integration of health data from one province to the next, which is a condition of the health accord the prime minister offered premiers in February.  The meeting in Prince Edward Island comes a day after British Columbia signed the first bilateral funding ...

War crimes inquiry research sheds fresh light on Canadian screening, policies

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:41 GMT

OTTAWA — When an individual suspected of taking part in the Second World War murder of Jews in western Ukraine applied for admission to Canada in 1951, immigration officials did not follow up with potential witnesses who might have provided crucial details.In another case, a Slovak leader hoping to unite émigrés under his leadership was allowed to visit Canada repeatedly in the 1950s and ’60s, despite a record of war crimes.In 1962, the RCMP learned that a Soviet trial of concentration camp guards in what is now called Belarus had named two people living in Canada as active participants in the execution of civilians during the war.These are among several unsettling vignettes in the latest, more revealing version of a September 1986 study prepared for a landmark federal commission of inquiry on war crimes.Even though the cases are labelled with letters of the alphabet, not names of suspects, they were excised from the original version of researcher Alti Rodal’s study, ini...