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NFL Notes: Casting some doubt on Bill Belichick’s strategy with in-house free agents

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

Over the years, Bill Belichick has had an interesting approach to dealing with the Patriots’ best in-house free agents.In short, it’s called rolling the dice.Instead of working out a deal before they officially hit the market, Belichick typically tells them to find their best offer, and come back before signing on the dotted line elsewhere. If the player returns, Belichick decides if he’ll increase his offer to either match or come close, and then it’s take-it-or-leave-it time for the player.“Their M.O. is always the same,” one agent told the Herald recently. “They’ll let a guy get close to free agency, and see what the market is. A lot of teams don’t like doing that. But the Patriots have never minded going that route.”In the past, Belichick’s strategy most notably worked with Devin McCourty, Dont’a Hightower, Julian Edelman, Matthew Slater and David Andrews, to name a few.In McCourty’s case, it came down to the wire in 2015. It was nail-biting time. The Eagles, Giants ...

Howie Carr: Former Congressman Brian Donnelly, not a bad guy and worth remembering

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

I don’t know how many people will even read this column, because I’m not sure if more than a handful of people even remember Brian Donnelly anymore.He was a former congressman and state rep from Dorchester who died last week, just a few days short of his 77th birthday.I hadn’t seen Donnelly in more than 30 years, and I’m not the only one who’d lost track of him. He left the US House in 1993 and served as an ambassador under Bill Clinton. In 1998 he came back to Massachusetts to run for governor and finished third in the Democrat primary with only 17 percent of the vote.It was the first time he’d ever lost an election, and it was his last. At the age of 52 Brian vanished, more or less, at least from public life. He’d been living in East Dennis, on the Brewster line.Like everyone who knew him, I liked Brian Donnelly, even though I didn’t know him very well. You couldn’t not like the guy. He was affable, unaffected, totally normal.They’re not making Democrats like Brian Donnelly anymor...

California sustainability group told people to stop eating lobster, so Massachusetts lobstermen file suit

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

Standing on a dock in his hometown of Gloucester, lobsterman Arthur Sawyer looked out at the peaceful, calm waters off of Cape Ann.Sawyer and fellow lobstermen are barred from taking to Massachusetts waters until May 15, a measure the state Division of Marine Fisheries has implemented over the years to better protect North Atlantic right whales.When the waters do open, lobstermen use what they say are “weak ropes,” equipped with breakaway links built in, meaning it’s likely to part if a North Atlantic right whale encounters it.Those conservation efforts are not enough for some of the world’s top sustainability groups.Sawyer, president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, and three other Bay State lobster fishers filed a class action lawsuit earlier this month against Monterey Bay Aquarium and the international Marine Stewardship Council, groups that consider lobstering a major risk to North Atlantic right whales and, hence, people shouldn’t buy lobsters a...

Russian advance stalls in Ukraine’s Bakhmut, think tank says

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s advance seems to have stalled in Moscow’s campaign to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, a leading think tank said in an assessment of the longest ground battle of the war.The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said there were no confirmed advances by Russian forces in Bakhmut. Russian forces and units from the Kremlin-controlled paramilitary Wagner Group continued to launch ground attacks in the city, but there was no evidence that they were able to make any progress, ISW said late Saturday.The report cited the spokesperson of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Eastern Group, Serhii Cherevaty, who said that fighting in the Bakhmut area had been more intense this week than the previous one. According to Cherevaty, there were 23 clashes in the city over the previous 24 hours.The ISW’s report comes following claims of Russian progress earlier this week. The U.K. Defense Ministry said Saturday that paramilitary units from the Kremli...

AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

Oil giant Saudi Aramco has profits of $161B in 2022DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Oil giant Saudi Aramco reported Sunday its profits surged to $161 billion last year off higher crude prices, a record result for an energy firm crucial to the kingdom’s economy.The firm, known formally as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., said in its annual report that the profit represented “its highest annual profits as a listed company.” That came off the back of energy prices rising after Russia launched its war on Ukraine in February 2022, with sanctions limiting the sale of Moscow’s oil and natural gas in Western markets. Aramco also hopes to increase its production to take advantage of market demand, raising the billions needed to pay for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plans to develop futuristic cityscapes to pivot Saudi Arabia away from oil. However, those plans come despite growing international concerns over the burning of fossil fuels accelerating climate change.“Gi...

Nature group wants Canada to strengthen reviews of genetically engineered animals

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

OTTAWA — A national biodiversity group says Canada needs to keep genetically engineered animals out of the wild, after the federal government recently rejected several attempts to strengthen its existing laws.Canada hasn’t had any accidents with the technology, but Nature Canada senior adviser Mark Butler said we need to prevent wild animals from being exposed to engineered cousins that could breed with them, prey on them or compete with them for food.“Now is the time to act,” he said.The federal government is in the midst of updating the Canadian Environmental Protection Act for the first time in 22 years. The act, usually known as CEPA, governs the management of toxic chemicals and new genetically modified or engineered organisms.An update that was introduced in legislation last year is almost entirely focused on toxic chemicals. The Senate tried to change the bill to include mandatory public consultations on genetically modified organisms, and ensure the risk to...

Sunday's Weather Report and Outlook

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

Southeast winds Sunday morning will become southwest in the afternoon behind the cold front.  Scattered snow showers, with some rain, will remain possible in Chicago Sunday evening.  A few isolated snow showers are possible overnight as temperatures fall into the upper 20s.Chillier weather for start of work week. Extended outlook calls for a return to chillier weather in Chicago for the start of the work week. Mostly cloudy on Monday with a high of 34 is about ten degrees below normal. The chill in the mid 30s continues on Tuesday with a bit more sunshine. Mostly sunny on Wednesday and highs getting back towards the normal of mid 40s. Thursday looks like the mildest day of the week with highs near 50 and a chance of rain. St. Patrick's Day next Friday looks like a rain/snow mix is possible and high in the lower 40s. 

Grow Downtown seeds St. Paul with 10 new retailers through free six-month leases

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

In downtown St. Paul, Alexandra “AJ” Johnson wants her ground-level Wabasha Street storefront, Jack and the Pack, to become a go-to resource for all things joring. For the uninitiated, she explains that joring — the Norwegian word for “pulling” — describes ropes and harnesses for biking dogs, sled dogs, ski dogs, scooter dogs, running dogs or virtually “anything with a dog, and they are pulling you.”Johnson, a residential property manager and former school teacher who lives in St. Paul, had long wanted to evolve Jack and the Pack from an online storefront and event-driven pop-up shop to a brick-and-mortar location. Then a friend showed her a newspaper article about the Grow Downtown program, an effort of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance to connect commercial landlords with new tenants through six-month, rent-free leases.Shop owners, many of them first-time business owners, may be expected to pay utilities, insurance and other incidentals. Otherwise,...

After more than a year of war, Ukrainians in Minnesota watch and wait

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

When a fireball erupted at 4:30 a.m. in Maryna Kyrylkova’s quiet suburb outside Kyiv, her 12-year-old son remarked on the flame and ash falling with misleading grace in the distance.“My kid said, ‘Are those butterflies?'” said Kyrylkova, a school teacher, who found herself bathed in the unnaturally bright and devastating light.Ukrainian refugee Maryna Kyrylkova talks about her family’s ordeal at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine during an interview at the International Institute of Minnesota in St. Paul on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)Then came another explosion. And another. And more the next day, which is when the family hurriedly packed what they could — Kyrylkova threw the family’s belongings in trash bags until her husband convinced her they had just enough time for suitcases — and drove, fleeing toward Romania, logjammed next to hundreds, if not thousands, of other families with the same idea.Changing course, they...

Skywatch: The world-famous Orion’s belt

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:12 GMT

If you’ve been kind enough to have read my column for some time, you know how much I love the constellation Orion the Hunter. It’s the absolute king of the winter skies and one of my best non-human friends. I look for Orion as soon as I head outside on clear winter nights. I know I’m not the only Orion lover. Like the Big Dipper, Orion is one of the most recognizable constellations in the night sky. Except that the Big Dipper isn’t actually one of the 88 official constellations seen from Earth. The Big Dipper is an asterism, or a pattern of stars, that makes up the rear end and tail of the constellation Ursa Major, the Big Bear. So, Orion is the most recognizable constellation as far as I’m concerned. Its calling card is the three stars neatly lined up in a row that make up the celestial hunter’s belt. There’s no other line of stars as bright anywhere else in the celestial dome.Over the years, cultures worldwide have come up with nicknames for Orion’s belt that have nothing to do wi...