How hockey helped make J.J. McCarthy one of NFL Draft’s most intriguing prospects
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Sports

How hockey helped make J.J. McCarthy one of NFL Draft’s most intriguing prospects

Dan Capuano’s funeral at St. Rita of Cascia High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side was standing-room only. Hundreds of firefighters from Chicago and around the country attended. Members of the St. Jude Knights youth hockey club were there, too, wearing their jerseys.Capuano’s sons, Andrew and Nick, played for the Knights, a Northern Illinois Hockey League program that feeds many of Chicago’s powerhouse Catholic schools. Nick was on the 2012-13 team that won the Squirt A state championship.Dan had devoted much of his time to the Knights before he died in the line of duty while fighting a warehouse fire on the South Side on Dec. 14, 2015.That title-winning Knights team wanted to get back together to honor Capuano and his family, so in March 2016, a new team was formed. “Team Capuano” would ...
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‘Thunder Run’: Behind Lawmakers’ Secretive Push to Pass the TikTok Bill
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Technology

‘Thunder Run’: Behind Lawmakers’ Secretive Push to Pass the TikTok Bill

Just over a year ago, lawmakers displayed a rare show of bipartisanship when they grilled Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, about the video app’s ties to China. Their harsh questioning suggested that Washington was gearing up to force the company to sever ties with its Chinese owner — or even ban the app.Then came mostly silence. Little emerged from the House committee that held the hearing, and a proposal to enable the administration to force a sale or ban TikTok fizzled in the Senate.But behind the scenes, a tiny group of lawmakers began plotting a secretive effort that culminated on Tuesday, when the Senate passed a bill that forces TikTok to be sold by its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or risk getting banned. The measure upends the future of an app that claims 170 million users in the U...
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Starbucks and Union Set to Restart Contract Talks After Bitter Standoff
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Economy

Starbucks and Union Set to Restart Contract Talks After Bitter Standoff

Starbucks and the union that represents over 10,000 of its workers are set to return to the bargaining table on Wednesday for the first time in nearly a year, a pivotal moment in the yearslong battle between the coffee giant and its organized workers.Company representatives and 150 representatives from the union, Workers United, are set to meet at an undisclosed location in Atlanta to begin negotiating a framework for union contracts for each of the over 400 unionized stores.The last time the two sides sat down was May 23, and they have spent months blaming each other for the impasse. During that time, workers have staged several strikes and tried to win seats on Starbucks’s board, and the company has sued the union over its use of the Starbucks logo.The feuding eased in February when the ...
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Horses Run Loose Through Central London in Surreal Spectacle
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News

Horses Run Loose Through Central London in Surreal Spectacle

Several runaway military horses galloped through the streets of London on Wednesday morning, alarming pedestrians, sideswiping cars and buses, and turning an ordinary rush hour into a frightening, almost surreal spectacle.Four people were treated for injuries, including a soldier who was thrown from one of the horses, according to the London Ambulance Service. The horses, which belong to the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, a unit that parades in royal pageants, are normally well-trained symbols of London’s regal past.On Wednesday, however, they broke into a panicked stampede that had more in common with the Wild West. Galloping past some of London’s most famous sites — from Buckingham Palace to Tower Bridge — they left a trail of damaged vehicles and shocked pedestrians, some of whom h...
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Bird Flu Outbreak in Cattle May Have Begun Months Earlier Than Thought
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Health

Bird Flu Outbreak in Cattle May Have Begun Months Earlier Than Thought

The bird flu outbreak in American dairy cattle may have begun in January, or even as early as December, a new analysis of genetic data suggests.The Department of Agriculture announced in late March that dairy cattle in Texas and Kansas had tested positive for the virus, called H5N1. It has since reported cases in dozens of herds in eight states.On Tuesday, federal health officials said they had discovered fragments of H5N1 in milk samples obtained at various sites across the nation. The fragments pose no threat to consumers, the officials said.It is unclear exactly how the cows became infected, but the most likely source is feces or other secretions from a wild bird infected with the virus.Scientists in the United States and elsewhere have criticized federal agencies for withholding key in...
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NFL Draft 2024 ‘The Beast’ Guide: Dane Brugler’s scouting reports and player rankings
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Sports

NFL Draft 2024 ‘The Beast’ Guide: Dane Brugler’s scouting reports and player rankings

Finally! It’s here. I’m thrilled to share this year’s draft guide with everyone. I don’t remember who first referred to it as “The Beast,” but I use that moniker as motivation to make sure this annual primer lives up to the nickname — and I don’t think I’ve let you down this year.Every NFL prospect is a puzzle. And it is a scout’s job to find the puzzle pieces to create as clear a picture of each player as possible. Those puzzle pieces include everything from the player’s physical traits to his mental makeup to the details of his upbringing — and everything in between.That’s precisely how I attack this draft guide. Over the last 18 months, I’ve collected as many puzzle pieces as I could dig up, through countless hours of tape study and conversations with prospects, scouts and other sources...
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Nina Jankowicz Forms New Group to Defend Disinformation Research
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Technology

Nina Jankowicz Forms New Group to Defend Disinformation Research

Two years ago, Nina Jankowicz briefly led an agency at the Department of Homeland Security created to fight disinformation — the establishment of which provoked a political and legal battle over the government’s role in policing lies and other harmful content online that continues to reverberate.Now she has re-entered the fray with a new nonprofit organization intended to fight what she and others have described as a coordinated campaign by conservatives and others to undermine researchers, like her, who study the sources of disinformation.Already a lightning rod for critics of her work on the subject, Ms. Jankowicz inaugurated the organization with a letter accusing three Republican committee chairmen in the House of Representatives of abusing their subpoena powers to silence think tanks ...
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Could the Union Victory at VW Set Off a Wave?
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Economy

Could the Union Victory at VW Set Off a Wave?

“If workers in Chattanooga get a great contract, a big raise, better health benefits, and then the same thing at Mercedes, there will be a lot more good opportunities to win good contracts in short order,” said Madeline Janis, co-executive director of Jobs to Move America, a group that seeks to create good jobs in clean technology industries.Ms. Janis, whose group is involved in unionizing factory workers in the South, said the momentum could travel beyond the auto industry to other manufacturers because employees at different companies in the region often know one another and discuss these issues. “Their brothers and sisters and spouses are working at other plants,” she said. “It will be all over social media.”And some experts said that a rise in unionization at factories could spread to ...
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Ecuador Voters Back Daniel Noboa’s New Security Measures
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News

Ecuador Voters Back Daniel Noboa’s New Security Measures

Ecuadoreans voted on Sunday to give their new president more powers to combat the country’s plague of drug-related gang violence, officials said, supporting his hard-line stance on security and offering an early glimpse of how he might fare in his bid for re-election next year.President Daniel Noboa, the 36-year-old heir to a banana empire, took office in November after an election season focused on the violence, which has surged to levels not seen in decades. In January, he declared an “internal armed conflict” and ordered the military to “neutralize” the country’s gangs. The move allowed soldiers to patrol the streets and Ecuador’s prisons, many of which have come under gang control.In a referendum on Sunday, Ecuadoreans voted to enshrine the increased military presence into law and to l...
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Lori and George Schappell, Long-Surviving Conjoined Twins, Die at 62
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Health

Lori and George Schappell, Long-Surviving Conjoined Twins, Die at 62

Lori and George Schappell, conjoined twins whose skulls were partly fused but who managed to lead independent lives, died on April 7 in Philadelphia. They were 62.Their death, at a hospital, was announced by a funeral home, which did not cite a cause.Dr. Christopher Moir, a professor of surgery at the Mayo Clinic, who has been on teams that separated six sets of conjoined twins — although none of them were joined at the head — said that when one of the Schappells died, the other would have almost certainly followed quickly.“Conjoined twins share circulation,” he said, “so unless you somehow emergently divide their connection, it’s absolutely a fatal, nonviable process.”The Schappells lived much longer than had been expected when they were born as craniopagus twins, joined at the head, whic...
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