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US

Investigating Trump a big early move for Atlanta’s new DA

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ATLANTA (AP) — The district attorney investigating whether former President Donald Trump should face charges for attempting to pressure Georgia’s elections chief into changing the results of the presidential race in his favor has a reputation as a tough courtroom veteran, not only as a prosecutor but also as a defense lawyer and judge.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was sworn in last month after winning a resounding 2020 election victory over her former boss, entered the national spotlight Wednesday when letters to top state officials revealed her office is investigating whether illegal attempts were made to influence the state’s 2020 elections. That includes the Jan. 2 phone call in which Trump was recorded asking Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn his defeat.

Prosecuting Trump would likely prove a career-defining move for Willis — and one fraught with risk, said Atlanta attorney Robert James, a former district attorney in neighboring DeKalb County. Constituents in heavily Democratic Atlanta would demand an aggressive prosecution. The Republican ex-president would likely unleash an army of lawyers to defend him. And news coverage would scrutinize every step, or misstep.

“Nobody should be confused about the fact that you’re going into a whirlwind,” James said. “If this is what she chooses to do based on the facts and the evidence, from what I know about her as a prosecutor, she’s smart enough and tough enough to handle it.”

In her first weeks on the job, Willis has already faced criticism for trying to hand off two high-profile cases against police officers, including a fatal shooting. But fellow lawyers who have faced her in court say she’s a skilled litigator who isn’t afraid of tough cases.

“She is a hard-charging, tough trial lawyer,” Atlanta defense attorney Page Pate said. “I would never question her ethics. I would never question her diligence or her intelligence. She is a bulldog when she thinks she’s on the right side.”

Willis worked 17 years as an assistant district attorney under Paul Howard, who was Georgia’s first Black DA when he took office in 1997. Before challenging Howard for his job in 2020, Willis spent short stints as a criminal defense lawyer and a municipal court judge.

Running an aggressive campaign in which she accused Howard of mismanagement, Willis trounced him in an August runoff election for the Democratic nomination, winning nearly 72% of the vote. With no Republican on the ballot, Willis cruised to victory in November.

In her most high-profile case under Howard, Willis served as the lead prosecutor bringing charges against nearly three dozen Atlanta public school educators accused in a cheating scandal. In April 2015, after an unwieldy trial that spanned months, a jury convicted 11 former educators of racketeering for their role in a scheme to inflate students’ scores on standardized exams.

Pate, who defended one of the accused educators, said Howard bungled the case and should have lost. But Willis and her co-counsel, he said, “pieced that thing together, worked day and night to make it what it was.”

The new district attorney has come under fire for seeking to offload a pair of cases against Atlanta police. One involves officers charged with dragging two Black college students from a car during May protests over racial injustice. The other deals with two officers charged in the July 12 shooting death of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man killed as he tried to flee arrest for drunken driving.

Willis last month asked Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr to reassign the cases to an outside prosecutor, arguing that her predecessor had acted improperly in the cases, including politicizing them during his reelection campaign. Carr declined to transfer the cases.

Though some attorneys said Willis had good reason for seeking to recuse her office, her attempt outraged members of Brooks’ family.

“Not only did you hurt me, but you hurt everyone out here who was counting on you to do the right thing,” Tomika Miller, Brooks’ widow, said at a news conference last week. “You say that you don’t run from hard cases. But, baby, you ran from this one.”

Shean Williams, an Atlanta civil rights attorney who represents the family of a man killed in a different police shooting being prosecuted by Willis’ office, said he understands the desire to have such cases prosecuted by the local district attorney. He applauded Willis for investigating Trump’s phone call, saying it makes him hopeful she will hold police officers and others in power accountable.

It’s uncertain whether Willis will seek charges against Trump or anyone else in relation to the election.

Senior Trump adviser Jason Miller has already decried the investigation, saying it’s a continuation of a “witch hunt” by Democrats against the former president.

Though Willis’ letters to state officials don’t name Trump as a target, the prosecutor’s spokesman, Jeff DiSantis, confirmed that, among other things, investigators are looking into the phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, can be heard on the call rejecting Trump’s repeated calls for him to change the state’s certified results of the presidential election, which President Joe Biden won by about 12,000 votes.

“In most cases, you would have sort of a he-said, she-said case where one person is contending another party said something,” said Cathy Cox, dean of the law school at Mercer University and a former Georgia secretary of state. “But you have a tape of Trump’s actual words. There is no dispute of what he said.”

Regardless, in cases against celebrities and public officials like Trump, even obtaining a grand jury’s indictment that allows a case to proceed to a trial court can be difficult, said James, the former DeKalb County prosecutor. That’s because citizens empaneled to hear such cases often find it difficult to be impartial about famous defendants, he said.

“Ultimately, as a prosecutor, your job is to prosecute cases without fear, favor or affection,” James said. “You look at the law, you look at the facts, and you compare the two.”

___

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press writer Sudhin Thanawala contributed from Atlanta.

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Sports

Kyle Lowry’s potential trade destinations if/when Raptors decide it’s ‘time to move on’

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Image: Getty Images

Lowry, the Philadelphia native, the Villanova alum, returns home.

The Sixers are currently first in the Eastern Conference with a 17-7 record in the Doc Rivers and Daryl Morey era, but no one NBA team has a stranglehold on this oddity of a season thus far. Joel Embiid has looked like an MVP frontrunner, Tobias Harris should command All-Star consideration at the absolute minimum, and Ben Simmons, for better or worse, still looks like the same guy he was as a rookie. While the team’s playmaking could improve, Simmons is averaging his usual 8.0 assists per game, but as great as Embiid has been, working with Lowry would decrease his offensive workload, give the Sixers someone who could create a shot in the game’s final two minutes, and give the roster a leader it needs.

What people forget about the Embiid and Simmons pairing is that they were at their best in 2018-19 when Jimmy Butler was present to carry the load. You could see the semifinal stats against the Raptors that season for yourselves. Lowry could have a similar impact, and it appears that Embiid may be ready to shoulder the responsibility, but a true point guard (who is willing to shoot from the outside) would help. It will matter come playoff time, and Lowry is a proven champion.

Regarding an actual deal, the Sixers have several expirings, most notably Danny Green’s $15.4 million. They have several young pieces, led by Matisse Thybulle, Tyrese Maxey, and Shake Milton, who are all making less than $3 million each this season, and they have most of their first-round picks going forward, which were discussed in the Harden deal before he went to Brooklyn.

They also have Ben Simmons at nearly $30 million, and he’s maxed out through 2025. Again, just saying.

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Science

Watch a Billion Years of Shifting Tectonic Plates in 40 Mesmerising Seconds

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The tectonic plates that cover Earth like a jigsaw puzzle move about as fast as our fingernails grow, but over the course of a billion years that’s enough to travel across the entire planet – as a fascinating new video shows.

 

In one of the most complete models of tectonic plate movements ever put together, scientists have condensed a billion years of movement into a 40-second video clip, so we can see how these giant slabs of rock have interacted over time.

As they move, the plates affect climate, tidal patterns, animal movements and their evolution, volcanic activity, the production of metals and more: they’re more than just a covering for the planet, they’re a life support system that affects everything that lives on the surface.

“For the first time a complete model of tectonics has been built, including all the boundaries,” geoscientist Michael Tetley, who completed his PhD at the University of Sydney, told Euronews.

“On a human timescale, things move in centimetres per year, but as we can see from the animation, the continents have been everywhere in time. A place like Antarctica that we see as a cold, icy inhospitable place today, actually was once quite a nice holiday destination at the equator.”

The moving and sliding of the plates is quite a sight if you check out the video – land masses that are near neighbours become distant cousins and vice versa, and you might be surprised at just how recently it was that the countries and continents settled into the positions that we know today.

 

Understanding these movements and patterns is crucial if scientists want to predict how habitable our planet will be in the future, and where we’re going to find the metal resources we need to ensure a clean energy future.

Plate movement is estimated through the study of the geological record – the magnetism that provides data on substrates’ historic positions in respect to Earth’s spin axis and the types of material locked in rock samples that help match the pieces of past geological plate puzzles together.

Here the team went to great lengths to choose and combine the most suitable models currently available, looking at both the movements of the continents and the interactions along plate boundaries.

“Planet Earth is incredibly dynamic, with the surface composed of plates that constantly jostle each other in a way unique among the known rocky planets,” says geoscientist Sabin Zahirovic, from the University of Sydney.

“These plates move at the speed fingernails grow, but when a billion years is condensed into 40 seconds a mesmerising dance is revealed. Oceans open and close, continents disperse and periodically recombine to form immense supercontinents.”

 

The further scientists go into the past, the more difficult it becomes to estimate how plates have moved, and in this case the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian (1,000 to 520 million years ago) eras in particular were carefully charted and brought in line to match the more modern records that we have.

Questions remain about how these plates first formed and when this formation happened, but every new data point helps us to understand the ancient history of Earth – even accounting for missing plates in some models.

The scientists admit that their work lacks some finer detail – stretched as it is across the entire planet and a billion years – but they’re hoping that it can act as a useful resource and foundation for the future study of these movements and the impact they have on everything else on the planet.

“Our team has created an entirely new model of Earth evolution over the last billion years,” says geoscientist Dietmar Müller, from the University of Sydney.

“Our planet is unique in the way that it hosts life. But this is only possible because geological processes, like plate tectonics, provide a planetary life-support system.”

The research has been published in Earth-Science Reviews.

 

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US

House Democrats move swiftly to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of committee assignments

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House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, is planning to deliver an ultimatum to House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy on Greene this week, a source familiar tells CNN. Hoyer is expected to tell McCarthy that Republicans have 72 hours to strip Greene of her committee assignments, or Democrats will bring the issue to the House floor.

CNN has reached out to Hoyer’s office to ask for more details. Politico first reported the ultimatum from the House majority leader.

The move by Democrats could set a risky precedent as they go after a sitting member of Congress over views expressed before serving as an elected official — and one that has the potential to someday be used against the party by Republicans.

The House Rules Committee is slated to meet Wednesday to approve a rule for a resolution to kick Greene off the House Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committee.

The rule would govern the procedures for floor debate ahead of the full House’s consideration of the resolution to strip Greene of her committee assignments. It marks the first official step by House Democrats to oust Greene from her assignments.

One senior Democratic aide told CNN Monday that one of the concerns heading into a potential vote is the precedent it sets.

Even though members agree that Greene’s embrace of conspiracy theories, her past comments and actions and current lack of remorse are all reason for McCarthy to strip her of her committee assignments, some worry bringing it to the floor for a vote could potentially cause Republicans to deploy the same recourse against Democratic members if they control the House in the future.

Greene herself warned Monday that the precedent could be used against Democrats in the future. “If Democrats remove me from my committees, I can assure them that the precedent they are setting will be used extensively against members on their side once we regain the majority after the 2022 elections,” she tweeted.

It’s still possible McCarthy could ultimately make the call and save the House from having to hold the vote. But despite the ultimatum, he is not yet tipping his hand on how he will handle Greene, and an aide told CNN that he needs to speak with the congresswoman first.

“They need to have a person-to-person conversation,” a McCarthy spokesman said. The two are expected talk this week, but it’s still not clear when.

According to sources familiar with the matter, the House is voting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and Greene and McCarthy are likely to meet around the time of votes, though the exact timing is uncertain.

Last week, a spokesman for the House Republican leader called comments from Greene “deeply disturbing” after CNN’s KFile reported that Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress. But most House Republicans have remained silent over the comments, even as Democrats have expressed growing outrage.

The move from Hoyer to deliver an ultimatum suggests that Democratic leadership wants to give McCarthy time to act on Greene independently before pursuing a resolution on the House floor.

“It is my hope and expectation that Republicans will do the right thing and hold Rep. Greene accountable, and we will not need to consider this resolution. But we are prepared to do so if necessary,” Hoyer said in a statement Monday.

In the past, stripping members of their committees was a call leadership of the same party made. House Speaker John Boehner had kicked Rep. Tim Huelskamp off of the House Agriculture Committee after he repeatedly voted against the farm bill, and McCarthy had pulled Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, from his committees, after King made inflammatory comments.

But, voting on the floor — while it is allowed under House rules– is a significant step.

Greene has also faced backlash over recently resurfaced comments about the Parkland school shooting.
Students who survived the Parkland, Florida, shooting and families of the victims have called for Greene’s resignation after comments surfaced that showed her agreeing with people who said the 2018 shooting was a “false flag” operation.

Greene appears to now be attempting to walk back some of those views.

During an interview with One America News on Monday, Greene said that she does not think such shootings are fake.

“These are not red flag incidents; they are not fake. And it’s terrible the loss that these families go through and their friends as well. And it should never happen. And it doesn’t have to happen if we would protect our children properly,” she said.

At least 50 House Democrats have also called for Greene to be removed from Congress, with others demanding she be censured or face punishment after a number of her inflammatory comments came to light.

This story has been updated with additional developments Monday.

CNN’s Lauren Fox contributed to this report.



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World

Human activity forces animals to move further to survive, study finds | Wildlife

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Human activity is fundamentally altering the distances the world’s animals need to move to live, hunt and forage, according to a study that examined the impact on more than 160 species across six continents.

All activities changed the behaviour of animals, but the study found destructive activities such as urbanisation and logging affected the movement of animals less than sporadic endeavours such as using aircraft, hunting and recreation.

As well as having a profound impact on the animals – like reducing their ability to feed and breed – the changes “point to a global restructuring of animal movement” that could have profound knock-on effects, says the study published today in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal.

Dr Tim Doherty, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Sydney, said it was already well known that humans affected the movement of animals, with thousands of studies tending to focus on single species or activities, but the information was disparate and hadn’t been synthesised.

Doherty personally read the summaries of 12,000 research articles extracted from academic journals around the world, before joining colleagues to pull out 208 relevant studies with enough useful data on how human activity had altered the distances that 167 different species moved.

When human activities forced animals to move further, such as when animals fled hunters or had to negotiate roads or avoid skiers or campers, they moved an average of 70% further in response.

“In Australia, an average person’s commute is about 16km, so 70% is like travelling an extra 11 km,” Doherty said.

“If animals aren’t moving around in a natural way, then there’s potential for broader impacts.”

The animals and impacts examined included:

  • Madagascan lemurs extending their home range by more than half in response to logging

  • Brushtailed possums in Victoria, Australia, moved 57% further in areas broken up with roads compared with large forests

  • Moose in Sweden moved 33 times faster in the hour after being disturbed by cross-country skiers

  • Texas tortoises covered less distances in areas with livestock grazing

  • Mountain lions in the US moved more slowly if they heard human voices, which in turn increased the distances moved by rodents in the same area

  • Flightless rail birds in New Zealand that help disperse seeds covered about a third less distance in areas near campgrounds

  • Reindeer in Canada move faster in response to noise from petroleum exploration.

The research says: “Even a small change in movement can have big impacts on an individual, and when these costs accumulate across an entire population, reproductive rates and population viability may be compromised.”

Tracking changes in movement was important, because that showed how animals’ behaviour was being altered as they fled humans, predators or travelled to find food, shelter or mates.

Some activities tended to shorten the distances travelled for animals, such as urbanisation, which makes food easier to find for some animals.

Doherty, who started the research while at Deakin University, told the Guardian: “We found about a third of the data we uncovered reported a change in movement of 50% or more.

“That tells us that we as humans have a pretty wide impact on animals, but these are going unaddressed.”

Birds moved an average 27% further in response to human disturbances, with mammals going 19% further and bugs 38%.

For mammals, roads, agriculture and aircraft had the greatest affect on distances travelled, with grazing and hunting tending to extend the home range of species.

“Most of the earth’s surface has been disturbed by humans, but there are some places that haven’t and they should be protected,” said Doherty. “We need some places on earth where animals can be left to do their thing.”

Last year a study found wilderness places were disappearing on a massive scale, with an area the size of Mexico being converted in just 13 years from virtually intact landscapes to areas heavily modified by humans.

Prof Corey Bradshaw, director of the Global Ecology Lab at Flinders University in South Australia, and who was not involved in the latest research, said the study confirmed much of what was known, but it formed a “useful synopsis”.

“That most species increase movement in response to disturbance gives an interesting hint regarding the mechanism of anthropogenic pressures beyond the obvious, such as invasive predators, habitat loss or direct exploitation.”

Bradshaw said the study also illustrated how hard it was to predict how an animal’s home range could change once human activities started.

He said one revealing aspect of the study was a finding that disturbance from recreation and hunting made species move more than habitat loss or fragmentation.

“It suggests then that even so-called ‘non-invasive’ human presence can be potentially detrimental.”

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US

New York City state of emergency due to snowstorm, schools move to all-remote learning

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NEW YORK CITY (WABC) — New York City Mayor de Blasio has declared a state of emergency, including restricting all non-essential travel, as of 6 a.m. Monday.

The following categories are exempt from these restrictions:
Public transit workers
First responders
Healthcare and homecare workers
Police officers
Peace officers
Any other workers engaged in vital City services
Delivery of food, medical supplies, or fuel
News media
Hotel workers
Homeless shelter and outreach workers
Utility workers performing emergency repairs
Persons employed by pharmacies, grocery stores (including all food and beverage stores), convenience stores, bodegas, gas stations, laundromats, hotels, restaurants/bars, and hardware stores
Individuals seeking medical treatment or medical supplies
For-hire vehicles, used to transport persons employed to perform any of these services to and from their places of employment

The mayor warned New Yorkers to refrain from travel as the storm’s intensity worsens.

715 salt spreaders, 2000 plows are at the ready to clear roadways with an additional 120 plows to join the fleet from other city agencies.

Starting on Saturday, over 500 miles of roadway were brined & pretreated by city sanitation.

All New York City students will move to remote learning on Monday because of the winter storm. As for Tuesday, de Blasio says no decision has been made yet.

Food distribution will be canceled at schools as well as the learning bridges childcare program for Monday.

All Catholic Elementary Schools in the Archdiocese of New York, will be closed Monday, February 1, due to the expected major snow storm. Monday will be a “traditional snow day” with no remote instruction. All Catholic schools have snow days built into their calendars with contingencies for making up instruction time.

Archdiocese High Schools operate independently, so high school families need to follow instructions from their individual schools.

Monday’s COVID vaccine appointments will be rescheduled because of the impending snow storm.

“Last thing we want to do is to urge our seniors to come out in the middle of a storm like this,” de Blasio said at a Sunday morning press conference. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Alternate side parking for Monday and Tuesday have been canceled. The mayor says the open restaurants/open streets program on Monday night is also canceled.

A hazardous travel advisory will go into effect for Monday and Tuesday.

DSNY has been split into 2- 12-hour shifts to work around the clock. The city has over 270,000 tons of salt and 320,000 gallons of calcium chloride on hand.

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World

SOME PARENTS protest School District of York’s decision to move to hybrid learning

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Some parents protest School District of York’s decision to move to hybrid learning



GOOD MORNING. ANNE: GOOD MORNING. THOSE PARENTS PLAN TO GATHER HERE IN FRONT OF THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING LATER ON TODAY. THEY SAY THEY WANT TO HAVE THEIR VOICES HEARD. SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL YEAR, STUDENTS AT THE SCHOOL DISTRICT HERE IN YORK CITY HAVE BEEN LEARNING VIRTUALLY BECAUSE OF THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC. AT THE MOST RECENT SCHOOL BOARD MEETING, THE BOARD VOTED TO MAKE A CHANGE AND MOVE TO A HYBRID MODEL, WITH SOME IN-PERSON LEARNING AND SOME ONLINE LEARNING, BEGINNING FEBRUARY 8TH. A NUMBER OF PARENTS SPOKE OUT AGAINST AT THE PLANS, SAYING THEY ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE SCHOOLS PLANS TO KEEP SCHOOL BUILDINGS CLEAN AND DISINFECTED AND TO KEEP CHILDREN SAFE AND HEALTHY. MANY ARE ALSO SAYING THE NEW PLAN REALLY ADDS UP TO LESS INTERACTION WITH TEACHERS AND PEERS. THEY SAY IT IS IMPERATIVE FOR THOSE STUDENTS TO HAVE THOSE INTERACTIONS. THE GROUP HAS SET UP AN ONLINE PETITION, ASKING THE BOARD NOT TO MAKE THE CHANGE TO HYBRID. SO FAR, THERE ARE 150 SIGNATURES. IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THE SCHOOL DISTRICT DOES OFF

Some parents protest School District of York’s decision to move to hybrid learning

Some parents in the School District of York are protesting a plan that would allow for some students to return to the classroom. Watch Anne Shannon’s report in the video player above.

YORK COUNTY, Pa. —

Some parents in the School District of York are protesting a plan that would allow for some students to return to the classroom. Watch Anne Shannon’s report in the video player above.

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Business

Illinois COVID Update Today: IL reports 3,667 new cases, 87 deaths; Regions 8,9 move into Tier 1 mitigations

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CHICAGO (WLS) — Illinois health officials reported 3,667 new COVID-19 cases and 87 deaths Tuesday.

This comes as Illinois officials announced that Region 8 (DuPage and Kane counties) and Region 9 (Lake and McHenry counties) have moved into Tier 1 mitigations, which allows for indoor dining to resume.

All Illinois regions are now in either Tier 1 mitigations or in Phase 4 of reopening except for Region 4 near St. Louis.

The total number of cases in Illinois now stands at 1,108,430, with a total of 18,883 deaths, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 69,285 specimens for a total of 15,553,319.

As of Monday night, 3,001 patients in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 608 patients were in the ICU and 320 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.

RELATED: Illinois COVID vaccine map shows how many residents vaccinated by county

The preliminary seven-day statewide test positivity from Jan. 19-25 is 5.7%.

The test positivity rate is a metric the state began providing in late October. It is calculated by using the total number of positive tests over the total number of tests. This is the metric being used to by state health officials to make decisions about mitigations.

Find out how many people may get a COVID-19 vaccine before you

A total of 1,227,625 doses of vaccine have been delivered to providers in Illinois, including Chicago, with an additional 537,050 doses allocated to federal government partners for long-term care facilities, bringing the total number delivered in Illinois to 1,764,675.

RELATED: Illinois coronavirus testing: Where to get tested for COVID-19 in Illinois, Chicago area

IDPH reports that a total of 719,995 vaccine doses have been administered, including 110,403 at long-term facilities. The seven-day rolling average of vaccines administered is 30,180 .

Illinois is now reporting eight more cases of the new, potentially more contagious COVID-19 variant first identified in the United Kingdom. Before now, there was just one case confirmed here. All nine of these cases are within Cook County.

The IDPH says that vaccine distribution numbers are reported in real-time and vaccine administration numbers lag by as much as 72 hours.

With Illinois now in Phase 1B, people over 65 and many essential workers are now eligible to get the vaccine. That includes approximately an additional 3.2 million people.

The Illinois National Guard will be assisting with vaccinations at Cook County Health Centers in half a dozen suburbs. There are more deployments planned throughout the state.
Officials said that beginning Monday, those guard-supported sites will take 1B appointments as will pharmacies at hundreds of Walgreens, CVS and Jewel locations.

Walgreens is providing vaccines at 92 sites across the state and appointments can be made on their website while Jewel-Osco will begin vaccinating eligible residents Tuesday, with appointments available on their website.

Governor JB Pritzker said there are plans to launch walk-in locations once the supple of vaccine increases.

On Monday, Governor Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle toured the Tinley Park Convention Center, which is preparing to become a mass vaccination site.

Governor Pritzker announced the creation of a new portal, coronavirus.illinois.gov, to provide the latest information on vaccines.

“Today, as we launch the newest phase of our Vaccine Administration Plan for frontline essential workers and those 65 and over, I’m proud to announce our statewide vaccination site locator, searchable by zip code and city, at coronavirus.illinois.gov,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “This site will serve as a hub of all vaccine-related information, directing residents to the appointment booking homepages of our 97 local health departments and our pharmacy partners, which will total hundreds of locations statewide. That also includes information on our first Illinois National Guard mass vaccination site, opening tomorrow at Tinley Park Convention Center, and will be updated as more state-run sites and hundreds of additional local options come online. As federal supply is currently limited and every state in the nation is facing a shortage, I urge all eligible Illinoisans to check back regularly for available appointments – and in the meantime, mask up, keep our distance, wash our hands, and remember we’ll stay healthy and safe if we look out for each other.”

The deaths reported Tuesday include:
– Adams County: 2 males 70s
– Alexander County: 1 female 60s
– Bond County: 1 female 80s
– Brown County: 1 male 70s
– Calhoun County: 1 female 80s
– Champaign County: 1 male 70s
– Clay County: 1 male 70s
– Cook County: 2 males 40s, 1 female 50s, 1 male 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s, 2 males 80s, 1 female 90s, 1 male 90s
– Crawford County: 1 male 70s
– DeWitt County: 1 male 70s
– DuPage County: 2 males 70s, 3 males 80s, 1 female 90s
– Edgar County: 1 female 60s
– Effingham County: 1 male 50s, 1 male 70s
– Franklin County: 1 male 60s
– Hancock County: 1 female 90s
– Hardin County: 1 male 70s
– Jefferson County: 1 female 60s
– Jersey County: 1 female 70s
– Kane County: 1 female 50s, 1 female 70s, 1 female 80s
– Kankakee County: 1 female 60s
– Kendall County: 1 male 50s, 1 male 80s

– Lake County: 3 males 70s, 2 females 80s, 1 male 80s, 1 male 90s
– Lawrence County: 1 female 70s
– Livingston County: 1 female 80s
– Logan County: 1 female 70s
– Macon County: 1 female 90s
– Madison County: 1 female 60s, 1 male 60s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s
– McLean County: 1 male 90s
– Mercer County: 1 female 60s
– Montgomery County: 1 female 50s, 1 female 70s, 1 male 80s
– Ogle County: 1 male 80s
– Peoria County: 1 female 40s, 1 male 50s, 1 female 70s, 1 female 90s
– Perry County: 1 female 90s
– Putnam County: 1 female 70s
– Randolph County: 1 male 70s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s
– Rock Island County: 1 female 70s
– Saline County: 1 female 90s
– St. Clair County: 1 female 70s, 1 male 70s, 1 female 90s, 1 male 90s
– Tazewell County: 1 male 60s
– Vermilion County: 1 male 80s
– Warren County: 1 male 70s
– Will County: 1 male 60s, 1 female 80s, 1 male 80s
– Winnebago County: 1 female 60s, 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s, 1 male 80s

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Sports

Yankees trade Adam Ottavino to Red Sox in cash-saving move

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Adam Ottavino’s disappointing tenure with the Yankees is over — and he’s heading to the Red Sox.

The right-hander was dealt to Boston on Monday, a source confirmed, with the Red Sox picking up most of the $9 million owed to Ottavino, who is entering the final year of his three-year, $27 million deal.

The Yankees had been looking to move Ottavino, 35, to free up payroll as they look to stay under the $210 million luxury tax threshold this season.

The loss of Ottavino leaves the Yankees with Aroldis Chapman, Zack Britton and Chad Green at the backend of the bullpen. It also leaves them with another open spot on the 40-man roster after adding Jameson Taillon, Corey Kluber and DJ LeMahieu in the last week. 

Ottavino was effective in his first season with the Yankees, when he finished with a 1.90 ERA. But he struggled in September of that season and was dreadful against the Astros in the ALCS.

And Ottavino had a rough 2020 season, when he had a 5.89 ERA in 24 appearances and was a non-factor in the playoffs, pitching just once and allowing a run in ⅔ of an inning in the Yankees’ Game 2 loss to the Rays in the ALDS.

Adam Ottavino on Sept. 18, 2019
Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post

“I want to stay on the team. I want to prove my worth. I want to pitch well,” Ottavino told The Post’s Ken Davidoff in December.

“I want to finish what we tried to start these last few years and win that title and all that. It’s not up to me. So I don’t pay attention to any of that, really.”

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