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A US Navy vet got unexpected help while jailed in Iran. Once released, he repaid the favor

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael White had only recently arrived in a grim Iranian jail when a curious fellow prisoner, an English-speaking Iranian, approached him in the courtyard for a conversation.The American did not reveal much at first, but it was the beginning of an unlikely friendship between White, a Navy veteran imprisoned on spying charges he says were unfounded, and Mahdi Vatankhah, a young Iranian political activist whose positions on social issues had drawn his government's ire.As the men connected behind bars over a shared interest in politics and human rights, they developed a bond that proved vital for both.Vatankhah, while in custody and after his release, helped White by providing White's mother with crucial, firsthand accounts about her son's status in prison and by passing along letters White had written while he was locked up. Once freed, White did not forget. He pushed successfully this year for Vatankhah’s admission to the United States, allowing the men t...

'Maryment' CEO joins Weekend Morning News to share more on wedding budgeting

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

It is still wedding season and we know the cost of saying 'I Do' adds up. Laura Panozzo, CEO of 'Maryment' shares more on how it doesn't have to be that way.Love the WGN Morning News? We love you, too. And you can have all the hijinks delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign up and subscribe to our WGN Morning News newsletter.

Sunday brunch: Bread pudding pancakes with Southport Grocery and Cafe

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

Check out this morning's Sunday Brunch with Southport Grocery and Cafe where we make bread pudding pancakes.Love the WGN Morning News? We love you, too. And you can have all the hijinks delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign up and subscribe to our WGN Morning News newsletter.

Author of 'The Owners Manual to Life' on worrying less

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

Author of 'The Owner's Manual to Life' and therapist Michael Zajaczkowsi joins WGN Weekend Morning News to share tips on how to worry less and live a better life.Love the WGN Morning News? We love you, too. And you can have all the hijinks delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign up and subscribe to our WGN Morning News newsletter.

The northern lights were heating up: Why haven't we seen them lately?

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

(NEXSTAR) - Earlier this year, those living as far south as Alabama were treated to a special celestial treat: not aliens, but the aurora borealis. Since then, most in the U.S. haven’t had the chance to see the northern lights, despite hopes that they would dance to the south amid an active space weather period. So where are the northern lights? “It’s a little bit of a crapshoot,” Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the SWPC and seasoned space weather forecaster, tells Nexstar. “We’ve had just as many eruptions occur since [spring], but we just haven’t been lucky - or unlucky, whichever way you look at it.”Certain conditions have to be met for any part of the Lower 48 to see the northern lights. Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, play a major role in that. CMEs are explosions of plasma and magnetic material from the sun, NOAA explains. While CMEs and solar flares (which can occur simultaneously) can impact navigation, communication and radio signals here on Earth, CME...

Kyle Police locate missing teen

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

KYLE, Texas (KXAN) — On Sunday, the Kyle Police Department said it found a 14-year-old boy who was reported missing.KPD said the teenager was found and is safe.

Emma Varvaloucas: Gen Z is dropping the college dream. It’s time for America to catch up

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

For years, we have lamented the spike in college costs and accompanying student debt bloat while we teach high schoolers to covet admittance to a tiny sliver of prestigious universities — ones that refuse to enlarge incoming class sizes despite endowments the size of some small countries’ gross domestic product.President Joe Biden’s first plan to relieve student debt is dead in the water, and the second is off to a slow start. Meanwhile, Americans’ confidence in higher education is eroding, and college graduates are surprised to find themselves still in the working class.Colleges are finally lying in the beds they made for themselves. According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, undergraduate enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022 and doesn’t show signs of recovering post-pandemic. “The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record,” The Associated Press reported this spring, going on to paint those numb...

Brown, Rottman: Claiming a ‘computer crime’ shouldn’t give police a free pass to raid newspapers

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

Last month, police officers in Marion, Kansas, crashed into the newsroom of the Marion County Record, a weekly newspaper, and the home of its publisher to seize computers, cellphones and documents. After several days of public outcry, the county attorney ordered the material returned.Newsroom searches are rare today because a 1980 federal law makes them almost always illegal.But the outcry goes back to colonial days, when British-loyalist redcoats raided revolutionary American pamphleteers.Such searches were seen as the ultimate attack on the free press. In the infamous 1971 search of the Stanford Daily, for example, Palo Alto, Calif., police were seeking photographs to tie Vietnam War protesters to a violent clash on campus. After the Supreme Court refused to offer protection from such raids, Congress passed the 1980 statute, making newsroom searches far less of a threat.Vague, sweeping “computer crime” lawsInstead, the Marion case highlights a separate, systemic threat...

David Brooks: The American Renaissance is already at hand

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

Two megatrends have shaped American life since the 1980s: The rise of China and the hollowing out of U.S. industry.China’s economic boom prompted a thousand predictions — that it will soon surpass us as an economic power; that the 21st century is going to be a Chinese century; that America is an aging, decadent nation destined for second place.The hollowing out of U.S. industry fed the sense that capitalism is betraying the middle class. America has a parasitic financial sector, but we don’t make things anymore. Manufacturing jobs got outsourced to China and Mexico, and wages stagnated.These two trends contributed to the sense that America is in decline — to the angry, gloomy pall that has settled over political life.But it’s beginning to look as if those two megatrends are reversing.The ossifying consequences of central controlChina does not look like a growing dynamic power, but a troubled, stagnating one. Growth rates are falling. The unemployment rate for those ages 16 to 24 in ...

Real World Economics: The cost of war? Well, let me tell you

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:59:49 GMT

Edward LottermanRobert E. Lee supposedly once remarked, although he may have been quoting someone else, that “It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”And therein lies a terrible paradox. Everyone knows that wars can be terrible in their carnage. They generally are huge wastes of economic resources.Yet nations, including ours, still take actions likely to lead to war. It seems that we are, indeed, “fond of it.” But why? What benefits exist that motivate nations to wage war? Can they possibly outweigh the costs, human and otherwise? Or is either side of the equation overstated?Let me explain why these questions are in my mind. Some 18 months of news from Ukraine plus discussion of China’s threats to seize Taiwan have merged in my mind with seasonal ruminations about my own experience in Vietnam 53 year ago. The result is rueful musing about human cultures and innate human nature. Will rational thought or action ever change anything?Let me st...