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Leon Gautier, last member of French D-Day military commando, dies at 100

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

PARIS (AP) — Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of an elite French unit that joined U.S. and other Allied forces in the 1944 D-Day invasion to wrest Normandy from Nazi control, has died. He was 100.The death was announced Monday by Romain Bail, the mayor of Ouistreham, an English Channel coastal community where Allies landed on June 6, 1944, and where Gautier lived out his last years. Details were not released. A special tribute ceremony is expected.Gautier was a nationally known figure and met with President Emmanuel Macron as part of commemorations for the 79th anniversary of D-Day last month.He and his comrades in the Kieffer Commando unit were among the first waves of Allied troops to storm the heavily defended beaches of Nazi-occupied northern France, beginning the liberation of western Europe.The commandos spent 78 days straight on the front lines, in ever-dwindling numbers.Of the 177 who waded ashore on the morning of June 6, 1944, just two dozen escaped death or injury,...

The Democratic Party promised to overhaul its primaries. Doing that has been anything but simple

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — New Hampshire is in open rebellion. Georgia is all but out. South Carolina and Nevada are on board but face stiff Republican pushback. Michigan’s compliance may mean having to cut the state legislative session short, despite Democrats controlling both chambers and the governor’s mansion. Then there’s Iowa, which is looking for ways to still go first without violating party rules. Months after the Democratic Party approved President Joe Biden’s plan to overhaul its primary order to better reflect a deeply diverse voter base, implementing the revamped order has proven anything but simple. Party officials now expect the process to continue through the end of the year — even as the 2024 presidential race heats up all around it.“Despite the fact that it looked like relatively smooth sailing for the president when he proposed it … the kind of backlash you’re hearing, the reactions, are exactly what we would have expected,” said David R...

This Ohio museum shows that TV is older than you might think

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

The history of television began long before millions of people gathered in front of their black-and-white sets and fiddled with the antenna and horizontal hold to watch Lucy, Uncle Miltie and Howdy Doodie.“Everybody thinks TV started in the ‘50s or the late ’40s. Almost nobody knows it existed before World War II and even goes back to the ’20s,” said Steve McVoy, 80, the founder and president of the Early Television Museum in Hilliard, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus.The museum holds a large collection of televisions from the 1920s and 1930s, and scores of the much-improved, post-World War II, black-and-white sets that changed the entertainment landscape. There are also several of the first-generation color sets developed in the early 1950s.“The original idea for the museum was to deal with the earliest television technology,” McVoy said. “The sets got pretty boring after 1960, just these big things in plastic cabinets.”The collection is one of the world’s largest, rivaled in North...

Germany alleges Poland hasn’t stopped pollution that led to fish die-off in Oder River

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s government accused Poland on Monday of failing to stop the dumping of pollutants that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of tons of fish in the Oder River, which runs along the border between the two countries.The mass fish die-off last summer caused friction between Warsaw and Berlin, which both blamed chemical discharges on the Polish stretch of the river for promoting the growth of deadly golden algae. The environmental group Greenpeace said wastewater from Poland’s coal mines was most likely responsible.“We see increasing signs that salts continue to be discharged (into the Oder),” German Environment Ministry spokesperson Christopher Stolzenberg said. “There has been no reaction by the Polish side to limit the salt discharge.”He said a similar die-off could happen again this summer but noted that water levels and high temperatures were factors in producing golden algae. “We need to see what’s going to happen in the next weeks and months,” S...

Florida police chief says an officer fatally shot a man who made a quick move during a traffic stop

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A man was fatally shot by police after he disobeyed the commands of officers who saw drugs in his car in downtown Orlando early Monday, the police chief said. “The officers were doing a drug investigation, and basically the person— the suspect — made a quick movement to, as to retrieve a firearm, and the shooting happened,” Orlando Police Chief Eric Smith said during a news conference. “I know drugs were seen and that’s why officers stopped and checked out the person.”No firearm was found, he said. The man was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Smith said he has reviewed video from a body camera the officer was wearing during the 2 a.m. encounter. The video will be made public within 30 days, police said.The officer was placed on paid administrative leave while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigates.The Associated Press

Boy, 16, fatally stabbed by family member at gathering: Hamilton police

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

Hamilton police are searching for a suspect after a 16-year-old boy was killed in East Mountain area.Investigators were called to a home on Cadham Boulevard just after 10 p.m. after a 22-year-old family member allegedly stabbed the victim at a family gathering.The victim was transported to hospital where he died of his injuries.Police are continuing to search for the suspect and are encouraging him to turn himself in.The names of the victim and the suspect have not been released.

Firework explodes on suburban man's face; critical condition

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

LAKE COUNTY, Ill. — A man is in critical condition after a firework exploded on his face Sunday night in unincorporated Cary.At around 9:15 p.m., authorities responded to a residence in the 24400 block of Hickory Nut Grove Road on the report of a person seriously injured by a firework.Officers arrived and found a 58-year-old man in and out of consciousness.Police believe the man was detonating numerous commercial-rated fireworks for a party.At some point, a firework did not discharge as expected after it was lit. Police said the man looked into the tube and the firework discharged, striking and exploding on contact with his face.The man sustained major injuries to the head and became unconscious. He was transported to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville in critical condition. Clydesdales circle Wrigley Field for ‘Folds of Honor’ Criminal charges are possible, police said.

Nearly 9 inches of rain reported: Skilling details Sunday's record breaking deluge

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

Chicago's weekend deluge was a record-breaker!Widespread rains centered on central Cook County ranged from 3 to 8 inches.Nothing like the drenching rain of this past weekend has happened in more than three years at our official Chicago observation site at O'Hare. There, the total weekend rainfall came to 3.82". Nothing close to that amount has taken place on a single day there for more than three years, report my NWS Chicago colleagues.At Midway Airport, 4.01" fell Sunday which, reports veteran Chicago NWS observer Frank Wachowski, sets a new July 2nd record at the South Side site, eclipsing the previous July 2nd of 2.50" set back in May 2020.Full forecast details and more at the WGN Weather Center blog Other sections of the Chicago area were swamped by rains totaling 4 to nearly 9 inches--in particular a site one mile north/northeast of Berwyn---where an astounding 8.96" of rain fell, most of coming down Sunday. That's an amount of rain twice that which falls in the full month of M...

Hungry ticks use a static trick to land on you and your pets

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Hungry ticks have some slick tricks. They can zoom through the air using static electricity to latch onto people, pets and other animals, new research shows.Humans and animals naturally pick up static charges as they go about their days. And those charges are enough to give ticks a boost to their next blood meal, according to a study published Friday in the journal Current Biology.While the distance is tiny, “it’s the equivalent of us jumping three or four flights of stairs in one go,” said study author Sam England, an ecologist now at Berlin’s Natural History Museum.Ticks are “ambush predators,” explained Stephen Rich, a public health entomologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Charles Barkley rewriting his will to make Auburn ‘more diverse’ in wake of affirmative action ruling They can't jump or fly onto their hosts, he said. Instead, they hang out on a branch or a blade of grass with their legs outstretched — a behavior known as “questing” — an...

'Outlaw' stars Adam Devine and Nina Dobrev on working with a James Bond

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:17:30 GMT

Pierce Brosnan heads the A-list cast of the new Netflix film “Outlaws."All the crazy flight problems last week kept him from interviews, but we caught up with two of his costars, Adam Devine and Nina Dobrev.The talked about what it was like to work with the former James Bond.And you may remember Devine from the Pitch Perfect movies and Modern Family. He said this movie is not groundbreaking and that's o-k.Get Dean's reviews and A-List interviews delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for Dean's Downloads weekly newsletter. You'll also get his Dean Cooks recipes too! 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.