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Airfares on average are among their lowest in years, but as airline losses mount, how long can the discounts last?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

For air travelers, fare wars are a good thing. But as discounting continues to sweep the industry, airlines are getting a little edgy as many are reporting losses for the third quarter of this year.For September, fares declined nationally by 13% when compared with September 2022, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They were down 6.5% from September 2019, which was months before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.While consumers whipsawed by sharply higher prices are happy to be cut a break, airline managements have started to adjust their strategies for the coming year amid slippages in demand and persistently high fuel costs.Financially, the year is becoming a turbulent one for the airlines, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which reported an industrywide net loss among 26 scheduled airlines of $1.2 billion in the first quarter and a net profit of $5.5 billion in the second quarter. But as the third quarter reporting period unfolds,...

Zach Penrod thriving after years in baseball wilderness

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

Zach Penrod was nearing the end of his rope.The 26-year-old left-hander had spent his entire career toiling in the baseball wilderness. The 6-foot-2 Idaho native went undrafted after playing NAIA and Division 2 college ball and saw his early opportunities derailed by Tommy John surgery and the pandemic. He then spent two years playing for independent Pioneer League clubs based out of Idaho and Montana, and coming into 2023 he decided that if nothing changed this season would be his last.“I’d already kind of come to grips with that, that it was going to be over, so it left me with the option of enjoying what was left of the year and seeing where that took me,” Penrod said. “And it brought me here.”With the finish line almost in sight, Penrod’s career took on new life as the Red Sox came calling and signed the lefty to a minor league deal in mid-August. Since then Penrod has emerged as one of the organization’s most intriguing prospects, leadi...

Bill Belichick wants better ‘consistency’ from Patriots cornerbacks after apparent benchings

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was pressed further Monday morning on the playing time of cornerbacks J.C. Jackson and Jack Jones in Sunday’s loss to the Commanders.Belichick said Sunday that Jackson and Jones were not benched to start the game, but that’s certainly what it looked like from the outside. Cornerback Shaun Wade played the Patriots’ first two series’ then received just one snap for the rest of the game while Jackson and Jones sat. Jackson entered the game on the third defensive series while Jones stayed off of the field through the first quarter.Neither player spoke to reporters after the game.Related ArticlesNew England Patriots | Patriots’ Bill Belichick answers whether he believes he’s coaching for his job New England Patriots | Patriots WR JuJu Smith-Schuster takes blame for game-sealing INT in latest loss New England Patriots | Callahan: The Patriots lost to a tanking team, so what do...

Chicago Cubs are hiring Craig Counsell to replace manager David Ross, who was under contract through 2024

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

In a shocking twist, the Chicago Cubs are hiring Craig Counsell as their manager.The Cubs are bringing in the former Milwaukee Brewers manager, whose contract expired at the end of this past season, and moving on from David Ross, who was under contract through next season with a club option for 2025, according to multiple reports.Counsell will get a five-year contract worth more than $40 million that would make him the major leagues’ highest-paid manager, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported.It’s an abrupt ending to Ross’ tenure in Chicago that saw the Cubs go 262-284 (a .480 winning percentage) under his direction the last four years. They were poised to reach the postseason this year for the first time since 2020, Ross’ debut season as manager, before they collapsed during the final three weeks to squander their wild-card position.Despite the painful ending, Ross received public support from Chairman Tom Ricketts and president of baseball operations ...

Column: Should movie theaters provide intermissions, even if filmmakers don’t?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

Michael Phillips | (TNS) Chicago Tribune“Killers of the Flower Moon” is not short, nor should it be. At 3 hours, 26 minutes, it casts a spell, dark and mournful but alive.It may look like a certain kind of movie epic, especially as the trailers market it. But director/co-screenwriter Martin Scorsese’s cinematic lament for the Osage Nation during the oil boom in Oklahoma a century ago — when dozens of wealthy Osage were being murdered before the newly created FBI took an interest — relies on quiet, tense exchanges behind closed doors. This isn’t a triumphal story. It’s a story of greed, racism and harsh 20th-century history.Would the movie work better, and attract bigger audiences, especially in the 50-year-old bladder demographic, with an intermission?A handful of U.S. movie theater exhibitors recently went rogue and put in their own intermission — and then retracted it on orders from the “Killer of the Flower Moon” backers Apple Original Films in collaboration with Paramount. (Appl...

After Massachusetts field hockey player is injured by boy’s shot, team captain tells the MIAA that ‘boys do not belong in girls’ sports’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

A high school field hockey captain is telling the MIAA that the state athletic association “needs to do better” and should create a league for just boys after her teammate was seriously injured by a boy’s shot during a playoff game last week.The Swampscott High School boy player’s shot struck a Dighton-Rehoboth High School player in the face, sending her to the hospital with significant facial and dental injuries, according to officials. The “traumatic” incident led to shrieks and tears all over the field hockey pitch.The viral shot from the male player is now leading to calls for gender rule changes for high school sports, especially when it comes to girls’ field hockey.In Massachusetts, a boy can play on a girls’ team if that sport is not offered in the school for the boy.“I understand that the MIAA is adhering to the Massachusetts Equal Rights Amendment, but continuously using the law as a scapegoat for criticism and issues re...

Inside Katie Porter's home, 4 a.m. economics lessons and her daughter's own whiteboard

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

Katie Porter has been campaigning across California as part of her effort to be elected U.S. Senator, but she says life as a single mother to her three children keeps her just as busy. In late October, Porter rushed home to Orange County for a local campaign rally as well as to do some fall decorating at her home with her kids. What the crowd of over 200 at the rally may not have known is that Porter arrived home late from Washington, D.C. the night before and then went on to stay up late helping her son.“My teenage son needed help with his AP Macroeconomics homework, so I spent about 2 to 4 a.m. refreshing my memory about the aggregate demand and aggregate supply curve and I could only hope the homework was mostly just for credit and not for correctness because I was struggling, as that was 6 a.m. East Coast time by the time I got to bed.” Barbara Lee hits California Senate opponents Schiff, Porter on Santos expulsion vote She says she likely only got about four hours o...

CRTC allows smaller internet companies to sell service over telecoms’ fibre networks

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

TORONTO — Canada’s national telecommunications regulator says it will allow independent competitors to sell internet services over the large telephone companies’ fibre networks in Ontario and Quebec. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced the decision Monday at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto amid an ongoing review of third-party access to fibre networks in the hope of boosting competition and lowering prices for customers.In March, the CRTC announced it would lower some wholesale internet rates by 10 per cent as it launched its review into the rates that smaller competitors pay the major telecom companies for access to their networks. It included an expedited probe of whether big carriers should provide smaller competitors with access to their fibre-to-the-home networks.The CRTC says its review found there has been a significant competitive decline in Ontario and Quebec, where independent internet providers currently serve 47 pe...

Chile says Cuban athletes who reportedly deserted at Pan American Games haven’t requested asylum

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chile’s government said Monday that it has received no requests for asylum from six Cuban athletes who reportedly abandoned their visiting national team after participating in the Pan American Games that ended over the weekend.Camila Vallejo, a Chilean government spokesperson, said “so far, none of these athletes have made any kind of request” to authorities. Deputy Interior Minister Manuel Monsalve cautioned against calling the situation a defection, saying that the athletes are lawfully in the country for up to three months.The alleged desertion involves five members of Cuba’s female field hockey team and one male track-and-field athlete, and was first reported by Cuban journalist Francys Romero. Romero wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday that the five hockey team players “left the accommodations around noon” after losing 3-0 against Uruguay. The sixth athlete who left was said to be a man who won a bronze medal in the 400-meter hurdles....

Iowa to pay $10 million to siblings of adopted teen girl who died of starvation in 2017

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:09 GMT

Iowa will pay $10 million to the siblings of an adopted 16-year-old girl who weighed just 56 pounds (25 kilograms) when she died of starvation in 2017, according to a state board that approved the settlement Monday. Sabrina Ray was severely malnourished when authorities found her body at her home in Perry, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Des Moines. She lived with three other adoptive siblings as well as foster siblings. Her adoptive parents, Misty Jo Bousman Ray and Marc Ray, were convicted of kidnapping and child endangerment in her death and received lengthy prison sentences.Two of Sabrina Ray’s siblings, former foster care children who were also adopted by the Rays, sued the state, claiming authorities failed to protect them from severe physical abuse, torture and neglect. The siblings — identified only by initials in their lawsuit — had pushed for $50 million each but settled for $5 million apiece after mediation. “In short, the amount of abuse committed by th...