The Lake Shore Drive Bridge over the Chicago River | Google Maps
CDOT spokesman Michael Claffey said the bridge will be raised between 10 p.m. Thursday and 5 a.m. Friday for “testing and maintenance ahead of boat run season” and says the closure is not related to the video release.
The Chicago Department of Transportation announced Wednesday the Lake Shore Drive Bridge over the Chicago River is set to be raised Thursday night for “testing and maintenance” the same day the city released video of 13-year-old Adam Toledo’s fatal shooting by police in Little Village.
CDOT spokesman Michael Claffey said the bridge will be raised between 10 p.m. Thursday and 5 a.m. Friday for “testing and maintenance ahead of boat run season” and says the closure is not related to the video release.
A spokesperson for Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office declined to comment.
Northbound traffic will be detoured via Monroe Street, Columbus Drive and Illinois Street, while southbound drivers will exit Lake Shore Drive at Grand Avenue and return via Columbus Drive and Monroe Street, Claffey said.
The bridge raising is a yearly practice in which every bridge over the river is lifted sequentially before boats leave mainland shelters to dock in Lake Michigan for the summer, according to Claffey.
The city released video Thursday of Adam Toledo being killed by police March 29 in the 2300 block of South Sawyer Avenue. Adam’s family, which asked the Civilian Office of Police Accountability to delay the video release, viewed the footage Tuesday evening.
The city came under fire last summer for raising bridges into downtown during protests after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The decision, along with the mayor’s call to stop CTA trains from entering the Loop, made it difficult for protesters to leave downtown, according to a scathing inspector general report on how the Chicago Police Department handled the protests.
The NCAA has approved new rules that will allow athletes to transfer without sitting out a season. | Keith Srakocic/AP
The so-called one-time exception that has been available to athletes in most college sports for years will now also be available to football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey and baseball players who transfer from one Division I school to another.
As spring practice winds down, Arkansas coach Sam Pittman sees some potential holes in his roster.
Arkansas didn’t use the maximum 25 scholarships this year on its incoming recruits so it has a few left over to hit the transfer market, where there is no longer any question about whether athletes who switch schools will be immediately eligible to compete.
“We might take a tight end,” Pittman said. “The bottom line is whomever we took would have to be a D-lineman or someone with the ball in his hands. I don’t think we’d take an offensive lineman in the portal right now.”
The NCAA made it official Thursday, announcing the Division I Council had voted to approve a plan that will allow all college athletes to transfer one time as an undergraduate without having to sit out a season.
The so-called one-time exception that has been available to athletes in most college sports for years will now also be available to football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey and baseball players who transfer from one Division I school to another.
It’s a big change, a long time coming and it has some in college sports, especially football, worried about the potential for unintended consequences: Fewer scholarships available to high school recruits. Power programs poaching players from small schools. Rosters turning over quicker than coaches can keep up.
While those are all real concerns, it has been apparent for several years this was coming and coaches have already been operating in this new reality of increased player freedom.
“I don’t think anything’s changed,” Penn State football coach James Franklin said. “Let’s be honest, over the last two years everybody knew all the transfer policies and the requirement to get immediate eligibility and everybody was saying whatever they had to say to become eligible.”
Franklin was referring to a tweak to the NCAA’s waiver policy made a few years back that seemed to make it easier for transferring athletes to gain immediate eligibility. It wasn’t quite so simple and plenty of athletes had their requests denied, but it did create an expectation of immediate eligibility for all.
Starting next September, there will be no more gray area. The first transfer is free, no questions asked.
Among the notable transferring football players who will now be eligible next season at their new schools are former five-star running back Demarkcus Bowman, who left Clemson for Florida, and receiver Wan’Dale Robinson, who switched from Nebraska to Kentucky.
There appears to be an uptick this year in athletes putting their names in the NCAA transfer portal, a database created in 2017 to provide more transparency in the process.
“There’s over 2,000 kids that went into the football transfer portal,” North Carolina coach Mack Brown said. “The last update that I got was that only 37% had a place to go.”
Combine the number of transfers with the NCAA’s decision to give athletes in all sports a free year of eligibility because of the pandemic and there is little doubt that there will be more scholarship-worthy major college football players than available scholarships over the next few seasons.
Coaches have already begun lobbying for relief in the form of increasing either the yearly cap of 25 signees or the overall roster cap of 85 scholarship players. Brown is among those who have mentioned allowing programs to add a transfer if they lose a transfer.
The concern, especially in football, is that a wave of departures after spring practice could lead to a depleted roster and no means to fill it.
The NCAA’s new transfer rules will require players in fall and winter sports to notify their current schools they intend to leave by May 1; spring sport athletes must do so by July 1, starting in 2022.
Administrators who have the final say on NCAA rules are in no rush to make changes.
“Our position as a football oversight committee was: Let’s let this thing play out a little and not rush to judgment,” West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons said. “If we start seeing a complete trend, then we can go back and revisit it.”
Lyons acknowledged that about 30% of football players in the portal would likely be left without a landing spot, but he believes that could lead to a market correction in coming years.
“Does that slow it down, when you tell a young person, ‘Hey, you can enter the portal but it doesn’t mean you’re going to definitely get a home out of this?’” said Lyons, who is chairman of the NCAA football oversight committee.
Brown worries college programs will increasingly use scholarships on transfers rather than high school players.
“A lot of people might take one of our second team players at the FCS level or a Group Five (school) that would have recruited one of those (class of) ‘22 kids, and now he’d rather have a transfer that’s older and proven than a high school kid,” Brown said.
Michigan State coach Mel Tucker is one of many coaches who has already designed his program’s recruiting operation similar to the way pro teams have college scouting for the draft and pro scouting for free agency.
“We have someone that monitors the portal, sits there and presses refresh every 30 minutes,” Tucker said. The Spartans have had more than a dozen players transfer out this offseason and more than a dozen transfer in.
NCAA rules already prohibit recruiting players who are not yet in the portal, but skirting tampering violations by making indirect contact with athletes through high school coaches or personal trainers is already a fact of life.
That’s especially problematic in basketball, where the up-transfer — a quality mid-major player leaving for a school in a traditional power conference —- has become common.
“When it doesn’t feel good is when it feels like, in essence, a kid is being recruited off your roster by somebody else, which typically means it’s not legal or ethical. There’s no integrity in that scenario,” South Dakota State athletic director Justin Sell said.
The players flow both ways, though. Plenty of athletes who were highly sought after in high school are finding more playing time after transferring out of the Power Five.
Count Pittman among those who don’t seem too worried about the new normal — for now.
“I think it’s headed in the right direction,” Pittman said. “I think the one-time transfer is the key there, though. I don’t think it’s let’s transfer once a year. At some point you’ve got to stick and make it happen and make it work for you.”
White Sox starting pitcher Lance Lynn throws during the first inning of Thursday’s loss to the Indians. | Nam Y. Huh/AP
Lance Lynn strikes out 10 and allows two runs over six innings in oss.
Right-hander Lance Lynn made his third solid start Thursday afternoon, following Carlos Rodon’s no-hitter with two hitless innings to start the game and allowing two runs over six innings, but the White Sox offense was quiet against Aaron Civale and three relievers in a 4-2 Indians victory at Guaranteed Rate Field.
The result gave the Indians (7-5) a split of their four-game series with the Sox (6-7).
Jose Ramirez’ two-run homer with two out and two strikes in the sixth produced the first earned runs scored against Lynn (0.97 ERA) and erased a 1-0 Sox lead. The Sox managed five hits after the first innings, two in the infield and one a pop fly by Yermin Mercedes that fell for a double.
Lynn recorded 10 strikeouts and allowed no walks. Civale improved to 3-0.
Benches clear in first
Both dugouts and bullpens emptied after Adam Eaton shoved Indians shortstop Andres Gimenez after getting called out trying to stretch a single into a double in the first inning. Eaton felt he was pushed off the base, and the out ruined a second-and-third with no outs opportunity.
Yoan Moncada’s two-out single scored Anderson, who hit Aaron Civale’s first pitch for a single.
No ejections resulted from the dustup.
Cease passes tests
Right-hander Dylan Cease passed precautionary tests for the coronavirus after going on the IL with symptoms Wednesday and was cleared to travel with the team to Boston. Cease’s turn to pitch is Friday and he is expected to make the start.
Anderson returns
Shortstop Tim Anderson was activated off the the 10-day injured list, and outfielder Nick Williams was designated for assignment to make room on the 26-man roster.
Williams was 0-for-10 with two walks in four games. The Sox have a week to trade Williams or attempt to pass him through outright waivers.
42
Major League Baseball celebrate Jackie Robinson Day, with all players and uniformed personnel wearing No. 42 to commemorate the 74th anniversary of the Hall-of-Famer breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947.
This and that
Jose Abreu (.184) struck out three times and made two errors on the same play.
Chicago’s most important news of the day, delivered every weekday afternoon. Plus, a bonus issue on Saturdays that dives into the city’s storied history.
This afternoon will be mostly cloudy with a high near 53 degrees. Tonight will remain cloudy with temperatures dipping to a low around 37 degrees. Tomorrow will be similar to today with lots of clouds and a high near 54 degrees.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot joined community leaders at a news conference this afternoon and called for calm, just hours before the video showing police fatally shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo is expected to be released.
The planned video release comes one day after a private meeting between the city’s top attorney and lawyers for the 13-year-old’s family.
“We live in a city that is traumatized by a long history of police violence and misconduct,” Lightfoot said.
“It is certainly understandable why so many of our residents are feeling that all-too-familiar surge of outrage and pain. And it’s even clearer that trust between our communities and law enforcement is far from healed and remains badly broken,” she added.
“This lack of trust makes it even for more difficult for many of us to wait and hear all the facts before making up our minds . . . I urge each resident who cares, and loves this city, let’s wait until we hear all the facts.”
Lightfoot recalled that as president of the Police Board, “it was my job for many years to investigate police-involved shootings. These videos and these moments are never easy to bear witness to, regardless of the circumstances. And what I’ve learned is, you need to brace yourself beforehand. Let yourself feel the pain and anguish and the shock of these traumatic events to avoid becoming numb as you watch.”
Federal prosecutors told a judge today they “will be starting” the process of moving R. Kelly from Chicago’s downtown lockup to custody in Brooklyn, where the R&B singer appears likely to stand trial for racketeering later this year. Jon Seidel reports the latest on Kelly’s cases.
Before former McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson and wife Elizabeth launched their vision of supporting food and beverage entrepreneurs through their successful venture capital firm, they’d dreamed of helping youth access the education that had propelled a couple from Cabrini-Green to the pinnacles of success.
Cleveland Avenue, LLC, launched upon Thompson’s retirement in 2015 — to focus on new food, beverage and restaurant concepts — is widely known for its incubator, Taste 222, and its backing of the uber successful, plant-based meat substitute firm, Beyond Meat.
Former McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson and wife Elizabeth launched The Cleveland Avenue Foundation for Education to support diversity in teaching, and economic mobility in the Black community. Provided
On April 28, The CAFE will unveil “The 1954 Project,” launched in 2019 to support goals of investing in innovative and culturally affirming approaches to teaching and learning, expanding educator and leadership diversity, and increasing economic mobility in the Black community.
The CAFE will dole out $1 million to each of five organizations achieving those goals nationwide at a virtual event headlined by folks like Chicago hip-hop artist Common, basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson and wife Cookie, actor/philanthropist Jay Ellis, and others: “The 1954 Project Presents: The 2021 Luminary Awards.”
Michael Jordan will be the presenter for Kobe Bryant’s induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame next month. Jordan also spoke at Bryant’s funeral last year.
Your daily question ?
If you live with roommates, how has the pandemic affected your relationship with them?
Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might include your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
Yesterday, we asked you: How concerned are you about the Cubs/White Sox two weeks into the season? Here’s what some of you said…
“Sox have had many questionable lineup decisions in recent days but it is very early in the season. Plenty of time to hammer out the details and make a push for the pennant. Go Sox!” — Angel A. Alicea
“Cubs need to rebuild. Sox will get better as the season goes on.” — Pascual Madrigal Jr.
“Cubs: wait till next year. Sox: currently underperforming, but have some talent.” — Scott Barliant
“Sox will be fine. The Cubs will be lucky to finish .500 and I’m a Cubs fan.” — Ken Olenek
“Both teams hired the wrong manager. Joe Maddon is looking good in the Theo [Epstein] vs. Joe argument. Cubs’ offense is a pathetic repeat of 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.” — Dennis Nowak
“Cubs need to get somebody that can hit the ball! Every batter thinks he’s a home run hitter and that will put them in last place at the end of the year.” — Jeffery Bryant
Thanks for reading the Chicago Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.
A police watchdog agency Thursday released a video showing a Chicago police officer making a split-second decision to shoot Adam Toledo after seeing what appeared to be a gun in the hand of the 13-year-old boy — whose arms were raised when he was shot and killed.
Police have said they found a gun at the scene of the shooting and that it was the weapon Adam was holding. The bodycam video doesn’t show Adam throwing away the weapon before he was shot.
When his hands were raised, he didn’t appear to be holding a weapon. Another video shows Adam apparently throwing something through a gap on the other side of the fence, and police video shows officers’ discovering a gun at that spot.
The officer’s body camera shows the officer chasing Adam down an alley in Little Village at about 2:38 a.m. on March 29.
The officer yells “police, stop” and then orders him to show his hands. The video shows Adam standing in a large gap in a wooden fence with his side to his officer and what appears to be a gun behind his back.
In less than 0.85 seconds from that moment, the officer shot Adam, whose hands are raised almost to his shoulders. He crumples to the ground and another officer immediately calls for an ambulance.
The Chicago Police Department gave reporters an advance look at the video before the Civilian Office of Police Accountability released it to the public. One version of the video was played in slow motion.
John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the officer was justified. “He was 100% right,” Catanzara said. “The offender still turned with a gun in his hand. This occurred in eight-tenths of a second.”
But the video likely will raise additional questions, because Adam’s hands were in the air at the moment he was shot, and he no longer appears to have a gun.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which reviews police shootings to determine if they comply with police policy and state law, hasn’t issued any findings in Adam’s death.
Adam’s mother, Elizabeth Toledo, had viewed the video Monday at the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. She asked the agency to withhold the video from the public, but the agency said it was legally obligated to release it.
Toledo didn’t comment to reporters after she saw the video, but a lawyer for the family said the experience was “difficult and heartbreaking” and called for calm ahead of expected demonstrations following the release of the video. The family says it’s conducting its own investigation.
The officer, 34, who shot Adam had joined the force in 2015, according to police sources.
The Invisible Institute, a website that tracks police discipline, doesn’t show any complaints against the officer. He’s a recipient of the superintendent’s award of valor and has a military background, according to the site. The Sun-Times isn’t naming him because he isn’t officially accused of wrongdoing.
Adam was killed after officers responded to a ShotSpotter gunshot detector alert and saw two people in an alley in the 2300 block of South Sawyer Avenue, authorities say.
Police have said only that Adam was in an “armed confrontation” with an officer. They also released a photo of a handgun they say he was carrying.
In a court hearing Saturday, a Cook County prosecutor provided more details about the shooting, saying an officer confronted Adam at an opening in a wooden fence. The officer asked Adam to show his hands and the teenager, who stood with his left side to the officer, lowered his right hand.
When the officer ordered Adam to “drop it,” he turned to the officer with the gun in his right hand and the officer shot him, the prosecutor said.
The officer tried to save Adam, using chest compressions, but he died there.
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office didn’t mention that Adam’s hands were raised when he was shot.
In the weeks since Adam was killed, the Chicago Police Department has been on alert for possible retaliation by the Latin Kings street gang against police officers, according to department documents and sources. The area where Adam was shot is considered to be a Latin Kings stronghold.
According to prosecutors, Adam was hanging out with a 21-year-old who was on probation for a gun offense. That man, Ruben Roman, is now charged with child endangerment, reckless discharge of a firearm and illegal gun possession in the incident.
At a court hearing for Roman on Saturday, a prosecutor said officers were responding to a gunshot detector that went off because Roman was shooting at a passing car. During a foot chase, Roman dropped red gloves, and tests determined they were covered with gunshot residue, the prosecutor said. Adam had gunshot residue on his right hand, the prosecutor said.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s decision to release body-camera videos, police radio transmissions and other evidence in the case represents a change from when the controversial video of the 2014 fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald was released in 2015. In the McDonald case, a judge had ordered the release of the video.
Public outcry over the video led to a federal court order requiring sweeping reforms in the Chicago Police Department, which is continuing to put them in place slowly under the eye of a court-appointed monitor.
Jason Van Dyke, the officer who shot 17-year-old McDonald 16 times as he wielded a knife, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to more than six years in prison.
WASHINGTON — A much-awaited economic boom coming off the pandemic recession appeared to edge closer to reality Thursday with fresh data showing the pace of layoffs dwindling, consumers spending freely and manufacturing rebounding.
The latest barometers point to a U.S. economy that’s steadily regaining its health as vaccinations accelerate, business curbs are lifted in many states and more people are willing to travel, shop, eat out and otherwise resume their spending habits. Though many Americans who have lost jobs or income are still suffering, hopes are rising that the benefits of the recovery will spread further in the coming months to groups of people who have yet to benefit.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits tumbled last week to 576,000, the Labor Department said Thursday, a post-COVID low and a sign that layoffs are easing.
And sales at retail stores and restaurants jumped 9.8% in March, the biggest gain since last May, when the economy first started to rebound from the virus’ initial blow. With U.S. household savings high, economists are optimistic that the faster spending is sustainable.
“We are really kicking into that next gear now,” said Adam Kamins, senior regional economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Things are moving more decisively in the right direction than at any time in the past year.”
The pace of weekly applications for unemployment aid is now down significantly from a peak of 900,000 in early January and has dropped below the 700,000-plus level where it had been stuck for months.
A total of 16.9 million people are continuing to collect unemployment benefits, down from 18.2 million in the previous week. That decline suggests that some of the unemployed are being called back to jobs. But the large number of ongoing recipients also points to the harsh impact of the pandemic on tens of millions of households.
Trillions of dollars of government stimulus, including $1,400 checks that have gone to most adults, as well as higher savings that many households have managed to build, have fueled more spending. Auto sales soared 15% in March, according to the government’s retail sales report. Purchases at electronics and appliance stores jumped more than 10%. Sales at clothing stores soared 18%.
Warm weather in March, after ice storms in some states had held back consumers in February, likely drove more retail spending. Restaurants and bars reported a 13% increase in sales, the most since last June. Most states have allowed more indoor dining, and outdoor dining likely picked up as well.
Among the consumers who are stepping up their spending is Teresa Golden of Renton, Washington state, who said she used her first two federal stimulus checks to catch up on rent and bill payments. With the most recent check, she said she spent $500 on Levi’s jeans, Old Navy clothing and shoes from Finish Line. An additional $500 went to restocking her pantry with items that will last a while — ketchup, sugar, spices and Clorox wipes, among other things.
“I finally caught up on my bills and could go on a bit of a spending spree,” said Golden, 49, who works in accounts receivable at a school system.
At the same time, factories are humming again. In March, the Federal Reserve said Thursday, manufacturing output increased 2.7%. Many economists expected a larger gain after output had fallen in the midst of February’s unseasonably cold weather. But shortages of raw materials and parts, from lumber to semiconductor chips, probably slowed factory production.
Still, manufacturing in the New York and mid-Atlantic regions is recovering strongly, according to separate surveys by the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Philadelphia, with both reports showing more hiring, growing shipments and rising orders.
Thursday’s encouraging news follows a report earlier this month that employers added a healthy 916,000 jobs, the most since August, during March. The unemployment rate fell to 6%, less than half the pandemic peak of 14.8% in April of last year.
Kamins, the Moody’s economist, noted that data from Google’s mobility tracking service shows that Americans are increasingly venturing out to shop, visit restaurants and go to movie theaters and other entertainment venues.
Even so, travel to worksites hasn’t picked up as much, a sign that many people — mostly in white-collar professions — are still working from home. A result is that lower-income workers in large cities are likely still struggling, because many downtown restaurants and coffee shops haven’t yet reopened or, if they have, are seeing far fewer customers.
Most analysts have grown bullish about the economy’s prospects for the coming months. They include Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who expressed his belief in an appearance last Sunday on “60 Minutes” that the economy is at “an inflection point” and appears poised for a boom.
“We feel like we’re at a place where the economy’s about to start growing much more quickly and job creation coming in much more quickly,” Powell said. “This growth that we’re expecting in the second half of this year is going to be very strong. And job creation, I would expect to be very strong.”
Many economists, in fact, are concerned more about a potential burst of inflation stemming from the unleashing of pent-up consumer demand. Prices for lumber, copper, oil and other raw materials have already risen as demand for gas, homes and electronic equipment has jumped.
Consumer prices rose 0.6% in March, the most since 2012, the government reported Tuesday, and are up 2.6% in the past year. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, though, prices rose by a more benign 1.6% year over year.
Powell has said that while inflation will likely pick up in the coming months, the price increases will probably ease as the pandemic-induced disruptions in many industries’ supply chains are worked out.
R.J. Griffith, an acclaimed Chicago singer, songwriter and audio engineer, wants to give his uncle, R&B singer Thomas Williams, his flowers before it’s too late.
He came up with an idea to ensure that his uncle’s legacy stands the test of time by covering “You Turn Me On,” a 1970 song by The Fabulous Turks, Williams’ group.
In many cases, Black creatives from bygone eras die two deaths: the physical one and the second when their legacies fall by the wayside.
“I think I had to be about 25 or 26 when [Williams] played the music for me, but when he played ‘You Turn Me On,’ I said, ‘Wait, I need to hear this one again,’ ” said Griffith. “My uncle gave me a CD with the music on there, and then come to find out my mom had a 45 [vinyl record] in the basement of the song, so I went home and started using her record player and was listening to the song.
“As technology advanced, I found it on YouTube. I just ripped it off of YouTube and kept listening to it over and over again. I went to my uncle and said, ‘I want to remake the song.’ “
Chicago singer R.J. Griffith.Aaron Reese Boseman
Griffith, 31, a Seton Academy alumnus, says singing is in his genes, and he can pinpoint when he knew music was what he wanted to do with his life.
His career started in 2016 with “Prey,” an EP that received favorable views from multiple media outlets. Griffith’s music has appeared in films such as “The Assumptions” and “Canal Street,” starring Bryshere Y. Gray (“Empire”), Mekhi Phifer (“E.R.”), and Harry Lennix (“The Five Heartbeats”).
“I used to go to church and see my uncle Thomas singing all the time,” Griffith said, “and I was like: ‘Man, I wish I can be like that’ — he was a very smooth singer. In my teenage years, I started imitating Jamie Foxx. That’s how I developed my voice, by singing for girls in high school and seeing if it worked, and if it did, I knew I was onto something. And if not, I just kept working.”
The Turks opened up for James Brown and Isaac Hayes at the first Black Expo started by Operation PUSH in 1972.
Jerome Davis, a retired postal service employee, not only remembers hearing “You Turn Me On” for the first time on WVON, he also was a manager of a record store where customers came in specifically to purchase it.
“It was different, and if you stretched out your imagination a bit, it may have fit into a doo-wop style, but [The Turks] were mainly an R&B group,” said Davis, who says “You Turn Me On” was a local hit. “I vividly recall that song. As a salesman, I remember recommending it to customers.”
Williams says he was receptive to hearing that his nephew was looking into his music.
“I was very honored,” said Williams, who lives in Romeoville. “A young man would look back at something that was done way before he was born, and see something in it.”
The Fabulous Turks.Thomas Williams
Griffith’s next step was to find Willie Weems, the man who wrote “You Turn Me On.”
It turns out Weems had a specific woman in mind when he wrote “You Turn Me On.”
“Her name was June Wright,” said Weems. “When you see a woman you admire, it’s a natural feeling. … At the time I was doing sets, and we were making music, and she would show up to watch us play. There were issues that kept us from going forward; we were friends but never lovers. She inspired me to come up with the lyrics.”
Did Williams give his nephew a stamp of approval?
“I love what [Griffith] did because he brought it up to date. I was really impressed,” said Williams.
Fabulous Turks member Thomas Williams.Aaron Reese Boseman
And that level of affirmation means everything to Griffith since learning the backstory of the song’s lyrics.
“When I first heard it, I thought about me as a teenager with the hormones going through your body. You’re looking at the girl but you don’t know how to express yourself,” said Griffith, who says he has some shows lined up in the near future. “Most men don’t express themselves anymore, so it’s bringing back that vibe of R&B and love songs.”
Forward Lauri Markkanen looks like he already signed elsewhere.
Patrick Williams seems to have gone head first into the rookie wall.
Then factor in two embarrassing losses in less than a week to last-place Minnesota and a tanking Orlando team, and well, there’s seemingly no way it could have gotten worse.
Then Thursday hit.
Scheduled to practice at noon, that was quickly cancelled when the Sun-Times confirmed an ESPN report that guard Zach LaVine had gone into the NBA’s health and safety protocol with a positive coronavirus test, according to a source.
What that means immediately for one of the elite offensive players in the game, is optimistically the hope is LaVine is out for a handful of days, but with the Bulls scheduled to play five games in the next seven days and only 18 games left in the regular season, that could be the difference between holding onto the final play-in spot or sitting in a lottery position and praying for lottery luck.
The Bulls traded their first-round pick to the Magic in the Nikola Vucevic deal, but it is protected Nos. 1 through 4.
Anything higher than the fourth overall pick, it goes Orlando’s way, leaving the Bulls in the worst-possible scenario – no meaningful games to play, no meaningful draft asset coming in.
And if going without LaVine’s 27.5 points and 5.1 assists per game wasn’t bad enough, the positive test also took away a key practice day for coach Billy Donovan to continue trying to repair this sinking ship on the fly.
With back-to-backs Friday and Saturday, it’s unlikely Sunday will be a practice opportunity, and then on Monday the Bulls play in Boston.
That leaves a possible Tuesday practice in Cleveland, another back-to-back, and a rest day on Friday.
What’s been refreshing about Donovan, however, is he won’t let the excuses become bigger than the results. He made that very clear Wednesday night after a lethargic first three quarters in the Magic loss, before the team made a push the final nine minutes of the game before coming up short.
“We were getting stops and we were flying around and we were covering for each other, and like where was that for the first three quarters?” Donovan said Wednesday. “I don’t think we can make excuses for Covid, four [games] in five nights, we’ve been on the road … it’s the NBA. All we have to do is worry about basketball.”
Now they have more to worry about.
It’s almost like Donovan is running out of fingers to plug up all the holes in the leaking dam.
“We know we’re a better team, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much talent you have,” LaVine said of the latest loss. “It’s how you go out there and compete. Obviously, we’re trying to battle through some comfortability things, some injury things. Other teams don’t care.”
LaVine does, which makes the timing of him being sidelined so unfortunate. As the face of this franchise, he knows it was also partially on him for being in this position, and he would have welcomed the opportunity to get them out of it.
That no longer is an immediate option, with some players missing multiple weeks in the wake of dealing with the virus.
“Frustration has to turn into something on the court,” LaVine said. “You have to put it together sooner or later. You don’t look forward in the calendar, but obviously these games are against us. We’re talking big game. We’ve got to go out there and walk it too.”
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday announced the U.S. is expelling 10 Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions against dozens of companies and people, holding the Kremlin accountable for interference in last year’s presidential election and the cyber hacking of federal agencies.
The sweeping measures are meant to punish Russia for actions that U.S. officials say cut to the core of American democracy and to deter future acts by imposing economic costs on Moscow, including by targeting its ability to borrow money. The sanctions are certain to exacerbate tensions with Russia, which promised a retaliatory response.
Sanctions against six Russian companies that support the country’s cyber efforts represent the first retaliatory measures against the Kremlin for the hack familiarly known as the SolarWinds breach, with the U.S. explicitly linking the intrusion to the SVR, a Russian intelligence agency. Though such intelligence-gathering missions are not uncommon, officials said they were determined to act because of the operation’s broad scope and the high cost of the intrusion on private companies.
The U.S. also announced sanctions on 32 individuals and entities accused of attempting to interfere in last year’s presidential election, including by spreading disinformation. U.S. intelligence officials alleged in a declassified report last month that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations to help Donald Trump in his unsuccessful bid for reelection as president, though there’s no evidence Russia or anyone else changed votes or manipulated the outcome.
The actions, foreshadowed by the administration for weeks, signal a harder line against Putin, whom Trump was reluctant to criticize even as his administration pursued sanctions against Moscow. They are the administration’s second major foreign policy move in two days, following the announcement of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. Until now, President Joe Biden has focused on the coronavirus pandemic and economy in his first months in office.
The 10 diplomats being expelled include representatives of Russian intelligence services, the Biden administration said. They were selected on the basis “that they were acting in a manner inconsistent with their status in the United States,” a senior official said.
Other measures are expected as well, though the administration is not likely to announce them. Officials have been advising that their response to Russia would be in ways both seen and unseen.
The sanctions announced Thursday are the latest in a series of actions that successive presidential administrations have taken to counter Russian behavior seen as antagonistic. Both Trump and Barack Obama expelled individual diplomats during their presidencies.
Some experts suggest this latest round might have more resonance because of its financial impact: The order makes it more difficult for Russia to borrow money by barring U.S. banks from buying Russian bonds directly from the Russian Central Bank, Russian National Wealth Fund and Finance Ministry.
The White House did not impose sanctions related to separate reports that Russia encouraged the Taliban to attack U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, saying instead that Biden was using diplomatic, military and intelligence channels to respond.
Reports of alleged “bounties” surfaced last year, with the Trump administration coming under fire for not raising the issue directly with Russia. Administration officials said Thursday they had low to moderate confidence in that intelligence.
Among the individual companies sanctioned were websites that U.S. officials say operate as fronts for Russian intelligence agencies and spread disinformation, including articles alleging widespread voter fraud in 2020. The individuals who were targeted include Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant who worked with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and who was indicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The U.S. said on Thursday that Kilimnik had provided campaign polling data and strategy to Russian intelligence services. Mueller’s office said it had been unable to determine what Kilimnik had done with the information after getting it from the Trump campaign.
Also on the list of those sanctioned was the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, Alexei Gromov, several individuals linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to Russia’s president, nicknamed “Putin’s chef” for serving Kremlin functions, and a number of front companies that U.S. Treasury says help Prigozhin evade sanctions imposed earlier.
After the sanctions were announced, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that “such aggressive behavior will undoubtedly trigger a resolute retaliation.”
“Washington should realize that it will have to pay a price for the degradation of the bilateral ties,” Zakharova said, adding that “the responsibility for that will fully lie with the United States.”
She said the ministry has summoned the U.S. ambassador for a “hard conversation,” but wouldn’t immediately say what action Russia will take.
President Biden informed Putin that the sanctions were coming earlier this week. Biden administration officials have made clear in their contacts with the Russia side that they are hoping to avoid a “downward spiral” in the relationship, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity following the sanctions announcement.
The two leaders had a second tense call this week in which Biden told Putin to “de-escalate tensions” following a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border, and said the U.S. would “act firmly in defense of its national interests” regarding Russian intrusions and election interference.
In a television interview last month, Biden replied “I do” when asked if he thought Putin was a “killer.” He said the days of the U.S. “rolling over” to Putin were done. Putin later recalled his ambassador to the U.S. and pointed at the U.S. history of slavery and slaughtering Native Americans and the atomic bombing of Japan in World War II.
It is unclear whether the new U.S. actions will result in changed behavior, especially since past measures by the U.S. have failed to bring an end to Russian hacking. The Obama administration expelled diplomats in 2016 in response to interference in that year’s presidential election. And though Trump was often reluctant to criticize Putin, his administration also expelled diplomats in 2018 for Russia’s alleged poisoning of an ex-intelligence officer in Britain.
U.S. officials are still grappling with the aftereffects of the SolarWinds intrusion, which affected agencies including the Treasury, Justice, Energy and Homeland Security departments, and are still assessing what information may have been stolen. The breach exposed vulnerabilities in the private supply chain as well as weaknesses in the federal government’s own cyber defenses.
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Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington, Vladimir Isachenkov and Daria Litvinova in Moscow and AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Kabul contributed.
Len Kasper might be the highest-profile person with a new job in the city, moving from the Cubs’ TV booth to the White Sox’ radio booth. So when we talked this week about how it’s going, the first question was obvious:
How’s the commute?
“I added 9 miles to my commute, but it’s all basically the Kennedy and the Ryan [expressways],” said Kasper, a Glencoe resident. “My trip to Wrigley was shorter, but once you get off on Irving Park or Addison, it can be tricky. So it’s been fine. I throw on an audio book or a podcast.”
It’s just a small part of Kasper’s seamless transition on the South Side. A first-time listener wouldn’t think for a second that Kasper has been on the Sox’ mic for just two regular-season weeks. And Kasper feels like he has been with the team for years, thanks to the warm welcome he has received.
“Roger Bossard came up to me [Tuesday] and gave me a big hug,” Kasper said of the Sox’ head groundskeeper.
Nothing against his last job on the North Side, where Kasper worked for 16 years, but he feels reinvigorated in his new gig. It’s a combination of a fresh start, a dream job and fans in the stands. After calling games in an empty ballpark last season, Kasper said having even just 8,000 fans is wonderful.
He felt that energy in the first inning of the Sox’ home opener last week. With two outs, Jose Abreu doubled and Yoan Moncada and Yermin Mercedes hit back-to-back home runs, sending the crowd into a frenzy. “I’ve got goosebumps,” Kasper said with a laugh on the ESPN 1000 broadcast.
“That was magical. That was one of those moments that I will never forget,” Kasper said Wednesday before calling another memorable moment, Carlos Rodon’s no-hitter. “When I think of career highlights and broadcast moments, it was hard to describe just how cool that felt.”
With the Cubs, Kasper said it took a year or two for his personality to come out because he knew viewers didn’t know anything about him. His goal was to nail the basics and let his personality appear with time. But having been in town for so long, it’s all coming naturally to him with the Sox.
Analyst Darrin Jackson feels that, too. He was comfortable with Len from the start, having shared conversations over the years in spring training and during the season when the Cubs and Sox met. Jackson has been most impressed with how Kasper has immersed himself in all things White Sox.
“His preparation since joining the organization is unmatched,” said Jackson, who’s in his 22nd season as a Sox broadcaster. “The guy has informed himself so well about the personnel, the organization, this side of town, you name it. He has become part of the White Sox culture as quickly as anybody ever can.
“But the big thing is, it was his choice. He chose to make a change and go where he wanted to be. It’s real easy to acclimate to a new environment because that’s what you wanted. He feels at home.”
To some, it might sound odd to hear the former Cubs voice calling Sox games. And for those of a certain age, it might have been downright bizarre to see Kasper join Sox TV analyst – and former longtime Cubs analyst – Steve Stone on NBC SportsChicago on Monday, when Jason Benetti had an ESPN commitment.
“That was fun,” Kasper said. “The only conversation we had, I said, ‘I do the lineups, you do the pitcher and defense.’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ There was no strategy discussed. We just do it. And that’s how I always want to do it. I hate overthinking and overplanning when it comes to chemistry on the air. That has to be as natural as possible.
“But I’m so close to it that I have to take a step back and understand that a lot of people on the outside are experiencing this through a different lens. So when they hear two familiar voices together that have never been together, I can understand how that might feel jarring.”
Kasper will have another new partner Saturday, when he moonlights for Fox Sports 1. He’ll join another former Cub, Eric Karros, for the White Sox-Red Sox game in Boston. Kasper will call the action from the Big Ten Network’s studios in Chicago; Karros will be in Los Angeles.
Kasper also is scheduled to call FS1 broadcasts of White Sox games April 24 against the Rangers and May 1 against the Indians. He’ll be joined by former Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski. ESPN 1000 pre- and postgame show host Connor McKnight fills in for Kasper on those occasions.
In the next few weeks, Kasper hopes to debut a podcast with Benetti. It’s still being planned and needs a name. The two also will call a couple games together in mid-May on NBCSCH.
“That’ll be old-school with two play-by-play announcers,” Kasper said.
Kasper certainly has gone old-school, not only calling games on the radio but listening to a lot of radio broadcasts, as well. The self-proclaimed audiophile is reacquainting himself with the medium where his broadcast career started and his baseball fandom was kindled.
“I feel like I’m 12 again,” he said. “It just feels right. That’s the best way I can put it.”
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