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Five questions facing the Orioles as spring training winds down and roster speculation heats up

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

Orioles spring training ends in six days.Unlike during the rebuild, the expectations are higher this spring, as the club came off a surprise 2022 season and executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias has declared the goal is to make the playoffs.However, the organization has several important decisions to make in the coming days, with opening day March 30 at the Boston Red Sox fast approaching.Here are five questions facing the Orioles during the final week of spring training.Who will be the opening day starter and what will the order of the rotation be?The first half of this question is an easier guess than the second.Kyle Gibson, the 35-year-old veteran the team signed for $10 million this offseason, is the clear front-runner to get the opening nod. That contract was the largest Elias has handed out to a free agent since he took over the Orioles’ front office in November 2018.While manager Brandon Hyde isn’t announcing the team’s opening day starter ...

Reborn Ringling Bros. circus to leap on tour – minus animals

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus has been reimagined and reborn without animals as a high-octane family event with highwire tricks, soaring trapeze artists and bicycles leaping on trampolines.Feld Entertainment, which owns the “Greatest Show on Earth,” revealed to The Associated Press what audiences can expect during the show’s upcoming 2023 North American tour kicking off this fall.The 75 performers from 18 countries will include performers on a triangular high wire 25 feet off the ground, crisscrossing flying trapeze artists, a spinning double wheel powered by acrobats and BMX trail bikes, unicycle riders and skateboarders doing flips and tricks.The tour kicks off in Bossier City, Louisiana, from Sept 29-Oct. 1 and then goes to Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Maryland, Michigan, Indiana and ends the year in Oklahoma. It restarts in 2024 in Florida, home to Feld Entertainment.The show is a complete rethink of a modern ...

Canada’s annual inflation rate cooled in February

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

OTTAWA — The annual pace of inflation cooled in February as it posted its largest deceleration since April 2020.Statistics Canada said Tuesday its consumer price index in February was up 5.2 per cent compared with a year earlier.The reading compared with an annual inflation rate of 5.9 per cent in January and was the lowest annual inflation rate since January 2022 when it was 5.1 per cent.Statistics Canada noted that the decline was due to a steep monthly increase in prices in February 2022 when the global economy was significantly affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Despite the overall cooling, grocery prices remained elevated and outpaced overall inflation.Prices for food purchased from stores in February were up 10.6 per cent compared with a year ago, the seventh consecutive month of double-digit increases.Meanwhile, energy prices were down 0.6 per cent year over year as gasoline prices fell 4.7 per cent compared with a year ago when prices began to rise due to the Russia...

Journalist freed in Mali welcomed in France by Macron

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

PARIS (AP) — French journalist Olivier Dubois, who was held hostage by Islamic extremists for nearly two years in Mali, was welcomed home by French President Emmanuel Macron Tuesday, one day after he was released. Dubois was kidnapped in April 2021 from northern Mali, a region of the country wracked by jihadi violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.Leaving the plane at the Villacoublay military airport, southwest of Paris, with a big smile on his face, Dubois was applauded by the group of people waiting for his arrival. He was greeted with great joy by his sister and father, and then hugged Macron. The conditions of Dubois’ release, including whether it involved a ransom, have not been disclosed.Reporters Without Borders, also known by its French acronym RSF, thanked French authorities on Monday for “having implemented the necessary means to obtain his release,” without elaborating.Dubois’ release took place on the same day that an American aid worker was freed in Ma...

Here’s a list February inflation rates for Canadian provinces

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

OTTAWA — Canada’s national annual inflation rate was 5.2 per cent in February, Statistics Canada says. Here’s what happened in the provinces (previous month in brackets):— Newfoundland and Labrador: 5.4 per cent (5.5)— Prince Edward Island: 6.7 per cent (7.0)— Nova Scotia: 6.5 per cent (6.9)— New Brunswick: 5.9 per cent (6.5)— Quebec: 5.6 per cent (6.2)— Ontario: 5.1 per cent (5.6)— Manitoba: 6.4 per cent (6.9)— Saskatchewan: 5.7 per cent (6.0)— Alberta: 3.6 per cent (5.0)— British Columbia: 6.2 per cent (6.2)This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 21, 2023.The Canadian Press

Boris Johnson says ‘partygate’ untruths were honest mistake

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged Tuesday that he misled Parliament about rule-breaking government parties during the coronavirus pandemic — but insisted he never intentionally lied. Britain’s boisterous former leader is set to be grilled by lawmakers on Wednesday over whether he lied when he denied there had been parties in his Downing Street offices in violation of COVID-19 lockdown rules. If found to have lied deliberately, he could be suspended or even lose his seat in Parliament.In a dossier of written evidence to the House of Commons Committee of Privileges, Johnson acknowledged that “my statements to Parliament that the Rules and Guidance had been followed at all times did not turn out to be correct.”But he said his statements “were made in good faith and on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time. I did not intentionally or recklessly mislead the House.”The committee will quiz Johnson in person on Wednesday afternoon about...

Japan, China push opposing visions in top-level visits

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Asia’s stake in Europe’s war was made crystal clear Tuesday when the leaders of the region’s two richest countries sat in the capitals of Russia and Ukraine in strong shows of support for the opposing sides.With the world’s eyes were on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first talks in Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida paid a surprise visit to Kyiv on the other side of the front lines. The visits came as tension has been growing between the two regional rivals and top economic powers. China is seeking to expand its influence, and Japan has responded by increasing its defense spending and deepening ties with the United States and its allies. While Xi’s trip is meant to send a message to the West that its efforts to isolate Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine have fallen short, the contemporaneous visit to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Kishida, whose country holds the Group of Seven presidency of...

Russia targets Nobel Peace Prize rights group with raids

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Russian authorities on Tuesday raided the homes and offices of multiple human rights advocates and historians with the prominent rights group Memorial that won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. The wave of searches, after which police took Memorial activists in for questioning, is part of a steady and sweeping crackdown that the Kremlin has unleashed against dissent in recent years. It has intensified after Moscow invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.The group says the raids and the interrogations are connected to a criminal case that Russia’s Investigative Committee launched against the activists earlier this month. The investigation was opened on the charges of rehabilitating Nazism, punishable by up to five years in prison. Memorial runs a database of victims of political repressions, and among the names are three people who were convicted in Soviet times over collaboration with Nazi Germany. The group said that authorities are using those names on th...

Tensions over CUSMA ahead of Biden’s Ottawa visit: In The News for March 21

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what’s on the radar of our editors for the morning of March 21 …What we are watching in Canada …It’s been less than three years since the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement replaced NAFTA as the law of the land in continental trade, and there are already hints of the existential anxiety that preceded it.That’s because of the so-called “sunset provision,” a clause that reflects the lingering working-class distrust of globalization in the U.S. that helped Donald Trump get elected president back in 2016. Article 34.7 of the agreement, the “review and term extension” clause, establishes a 16-year life cycle that requires all three countries to sit down every six years to ensure everyone is still satisfied. That clock began ticking in the summer of 2020. If it runs out in 2026, it triggers a self-destruct mechanism of sorts, ensuring the agre...

Wall Street trends higher as regional banks bounce back

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:30 GMT

BEIJING — Wall Street is poised to open higher Tuesday ahead of a decision by the Federal Reserve this week on whether to raise interest rates again despite heightened anxiety over the stability of the global banking system.Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and futures for the S&P 500 each rose 0.8%.Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index rose 0.9% on Monday after U.S., European and Japanese central banks announced measures to ease strains on the financial system, including lending more dollars if necessary.Mid-sized banks, rattled by the collapse of two tech-focused banks, are bouncing back. Silicon Valley Bank, based in Santa Clara, California, failed on March 10 after depositors rushed to withdraw money amid anxiety over the bank’s health. It was the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history. Regulators convened over the following weekend and announced that New York’s Signature Bank also had failed. U.S. regulators said that all depositors at both ...