DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike killed 27 people in central Gaza, mostly women and children, and fighting with Hamas raged across the north on Sunday as Israel’s leaders aired divisions over who should govern Gaza after the war, now in its eighth month.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces criticism from the two other members of his War Cabinet, with his main political rival, Benny Gantz, threatening to leave the government if a plan is not created by June 8 that includes an international administration for postwar Gaza.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was meeting with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders on Sunday to discuss an ambitious U.S. plan for Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel and help the Palestinian Authority govern Gaza in exchange for a path to eventual statehood.
Netanyahu opposes Palestinian statehood and has rejected those proposals, saying Israel will maintain open-ended security control over Gaza and partner with local Palestinians unaffiliated with Hamas or the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.
Gantz’s ultimatum expressed support for normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, but he also said, “we will not allow any outside power, friendly or hostile, to impose a Palestinian state on us.”
Gantz’s withdrawal would not bring down Netanyahu’s coalition government but would leave him more reliant on far-right allies who support the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza, full military occupation and the rebuilding of Jewish settlements there.
Even as discussions about the future take on new weight, the war rages. In recent weeks, Hamas militants have regrouped in parts of northern Gaza that were heavily bombed in the war’s early days and where Israeli ground troops operated.
The airstrike in Nuseirat, a built-up Palestinian refugee camp in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, killed 27 people, including 10 women and seven children, according to records at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah, which received the bodies.
A separate strike on a Nuseirat street killed five people, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service. In Deir al-Balah, a strike killed Zahed al-Houli, a senior officer in the Hamas-run police, and another man, according to the hospital.
Palestinians reported more airstrikes and heavy fighting in northern Gaza, which has been largely isolated by Israeli troops for months and where the World Food Program says a famine is underway.
The Civil Defense said strikes hit several homes near Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, killing at least 10 people. Rescuers’ footage showed them trying to pull the body of a woman from the rubble as explosions echoed in the background.
In the urban Jabaliya refugee camp nearby, residents reported a heavy wave of artillery and airstrikes. Abdel-Kareem Radwan, 48, said the whole eastern side has become a battle zone where the Israeli fighter jets “strike anything that moves.”
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense, said rescuers had recovered at least 150 bodies, more than half of them women and children, since Israel launched the operation in Jabaliya last week.
Israel launched its offensive after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting some 250. Mourners gathered Sunday for the funeral of one of four hostages killed in the attack whose bodies were recently found by Israeli troops in Gaza.
The war has killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. Around 80% of the population of 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced within the territory, often multiple times.
“We need a decent life to live,” said Reem Al-Bayed, who left Gaza City and is sheltering with thousands in the gritty coastal Muwasi camp in the south without basic facilities like wells. “All countries live a decent life except us.”
She gave herself a quick mouthful of bread before tearing the rest into pieces for half a dozen children, then poured them a can of beans.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames the high death toll on Hamas, which it says operates in dense residential areas.
Netanyahu’s critics, including thousands of Israeli protesters, accuse him of prolonging the war and rejecting a cease-fire deal so he can avoid a reckoning over security failures that led to the attack.
Polls show that Gantz, a political centrist, would likely succeed Netanyahu if early elections are held. That would expose Netanyahu to prosecution on longstanding corruption allegations.
Netanyahu denies any political motives and says the offensive must continue until Hamas is dismantled and the estimated 100 hostages held in Gaza, and the remains of more than 30 others are returned. He has said it’s pointless to discuss postwar arrangements while Hamas is still fighting because the militants have threatened anyone who cooperates with Israel.
Netanyahu also faces pressure from Israel’s closest ally, the United States, which has provided crucial military aid and diplomatic cover for the offensive while expressing growing frustration with Israel’s conduct of the war and the humanitarian crisis.
President Joe Biden’s administration recently held up a shipment of 3,500 bombs and said the U.S. would not provide offensive weapons for a full-scale invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, citing fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.
But last week, after Israel launched what it called a limited operation in Rafah, the Biden administration told legislators it would move forward with the sale of $1 billion worth of arms, according to congressional aides.
The Palestinian Crossings Authority in a statement said humanitarian aid has not entered through the vital Rafah border crossing with Egypt since the military operation began almost two weeks ago.
Magdy reported from Cairo and Krauss from Jerusalem.
DENPASAR, Indonesia — Elon Musk traveled to Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on Sunday to launch Starlink satellite internet service in the world’s largest archipelago nation.
Wearing a green Batik shirt, Musk was greeted with a garland of flower petals at a community health clinic in Denpasar, the provincial capital of Bali, where he launched the Starlink service alongside Indonesian ministers.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago of 17,000 islands sprawled across three time zones with a population of more than 270 million, has been trying for years to secure deals with Musk’s Tesla on battery investment and for Musk’s SpaceX to provide fast internet for the country’s remote regions.
During the ceremony, Musk took a speed test of the Starlink internet service with several health workers in Indonesia’s remote regions, including in Aru, one of Indonesia’s unserved and outermost islands in Maluku province.
“This can make it really a lifesaver for remote medical clinics, and I think it could be a possibility for education as well,” Musk told reporters.
“If you can access the internet and then you can learn anything and you can also sell your business services worldwide. So, I think it’s going to be incredibly beneficial,” he said.
He also signed an agreement on enhancing connectivity in the country’s health and education sectors. Details about the agreement between the Indonesian government and Musk’s SpaceX, the aerospace company that operates Starlink services, were not provided.
Launching the service at a health clinic aligns with Starlink’s broader mission of providing affordable access to high-speed internet services, particularly in underserved and remote regions, said Coordinating Minister of Maritime and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.
“Our remote regions need Starlink to expand high-speed internet services, especially to help with problems in the health, education and maritime sectors,” Pandjaitan, a close ally of Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, told reporters. He held separate talks with Musk on Sunday.
Communication and Informatics Minister Budi Arie Setiadi said earlier that local internet providers, which rely on base transceiver stations to transmit signals, are unable to reach outer islands because they have limited coverage. Starlink’s satellites, which remain in low orbit, will help them deliver faster internet with nationwide coverage.
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said of the more than 10,000 clinics across the country, there are still around 2,700 without internet access.
“The internet can open up better access to health services as communication between regions is said to be easier, so that reporting from health service facilities can be done in real time or up to date,” he said.
During his first in-person visit to Bali, Musk is also scheduled to participate in the 10th World Water Forum, which seeks to address global water and sanitation challenges.
Musk spoke in 2022 at the B-20 business forum ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies that took place in Bali. He joined the conference by video link weeks after completing his heavily scrutinized takeover of Twitter.
Musk’s visit comes just weeks after Apple CEO Tim Cook met Widodo on April 17 and said the company would “look at” manufacturing in Indonesia. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella visited on April 30 and said the company would invest $1.7 billion over the next four years in new cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Indonesia.
Indonesia under Widodo has promoted development of the digital technology and information sectors, aiming to achieve the government’s Golden Indonesia 2045 Vision. The country hopes to become one of the world’s top five economies with a GDP of up to $9 trillion, exactly a century after it won independence from Dutch colonizers.
When the heavily-used presses at the Freedom Center geared up over the weekend to print the Sunday Chicago Tribune, it gave new meaning to the term final edition. After 43 years of spewing out countless millions of newspapers, the production run was the last for the Chicago Tribune at the massive plant along the Chicago River.
The largest newspaper printing plant in North America is coming down. Chicago’s first casino will go up in its place.
Downsizing to a suburban facility, the Tribune will print on. But the imminent demise of the Freedom Center marks the end of an era, as newspaper circulation declines turn once-bustling printing plants into the buggy whip factories of the digital age.
Freedom Center is being demolished to make way for a planned Bally’s Chicago Casino complex. Tribune Publishing is moving its printing operations to the northwest suburban Daily Herald plant, a smaller but newer facility it purchased in May 2023
for an undisclosed price.
The Monday edition of the Chicago Tribune will be the first in the newspaper’s storied 177-year history not printed in Chicago, bearing instead a made-in-Schaumburg imprimatur.
“It’s kind of bittersweet,” said Scott LaBadie, 55, of South Holland, a 32-year Freedom Center veteran press operator working the night shift Saturday. “I have the ironic duty of doing the last edition here at the Freedom Center, and tomorrow, I have the pleasure of doing the first edition in Schaumburg.”
LaBadie was one of about a dozen press operators on duty for the emotional final run of the Chicago Tribune at the Freedom Center. Many were wearing old school pressman’s hats made out of newspapers and custom T-shirts featuring the grim reaper marking the end of the printing plant itself.
They were scheduled to print 160,000 copies of the Sunday Chicago Tribune and 49,000 copies of the Sunday Chicago-Sun-Times, both of which would be moving over to the Schaumburg plant for the Monday edition.
Terry Ford, a day shift press supervisor, gives a tour of the Chicago Tribune Freedom Center to his daughter, Nicole Ford, and his wife, Anne Ford, before the last Freedom Center press run of the Chicago Tribune on May 18, 2024. He started as a part-timer at Freedom Center in 1983. (Vincent Alban/Chicago Tribune)
In addition, the crew was printing 25,000 copies of the New York Times, which is scheduled to run for two more weeks at the Freedom Center before shifting to Schaumburg.
If all went well, they would be wrapping it up at midnight, but multiple mechanical problems threatened to make it a long night. After starting the Tribune at 9 p.m., one of two presses dedicated to the run flashed an oil warning light and had to be shut down. The press handling the Sun-Times, which was scheduled to begin its run at 11 p.m., developed electrical problems and was in danger of being delayed. The New York Times press also experienced some glitches.
“We run until it’s done,” LaBadie said.
Eventually, all the balky presses got going, and the Chicago Tribune completed its final Freedom Center run at 12:38 a.m. on Sunday.
The dingy swan song was a long way from the glory days at Freedom Center, when all the presses would be humming, tended by dozens of operators, printing more than a million copies of the Sunday Chicago Tribune alone.
“For more than four decades, the Freedom Center has played a pivotal role for the Chicago Tribune,” said Par Ridder, the newspaper’s general manager. “However, it was built in and for a different time. Now, we look forward to moving to a modern production facility in Schaumburg, which is a better fit for our current and future needs.”
Like the Tribune Tower before it, the newspaper’s century-old neo-Gothic landmark which was sold in 2016
and converted to condos, the Freedom Center is another monument to print journalism falling by the wayside in the digital media age.
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Freedom Center was built in 1981, a brawny edifice staking turf on 30 acres of industrial land in River West.
Night press operator Nick Ricci stands in the newsprint during the last Freedom Center press run of the Chicago Tribune on May 18, 2024. The facility printed its final edition of the Chicago Tribune before facing a demolition deadline and planned redevelopment into a casino. Tribune Publishing is shifting printing operations to the northwest suburban Daily Herald plant in Schaumburg. (Vincent Alban/Chicago Tribune)
The 700,000-square-foot plant featured 10 new Goss Metroliner offset presses, each of which cost upward of $10 million and could print 75,000 144-page newspapers an hour. It was a huge step up from the cramped basement operation at Tribune Tower, which ceded all printing to Freedom Center in September 1982.
“The Freedom Center was a physical manifestation of the muscularity and influence of the Tribune at the time,” said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.
A former Tribune reporter and editor who started at the newspaper in 1982, Franklin remembered the pride that swept across the newsroom as the Freedom Center launched full production, a facility unrivaled in the industry.
Named in a contest by former Tribune reporter Casey Bukro, the Freedom Center became the whirring engine of Chicago journalism, where upward of a million newspapers would be printed and distributed each day, landing on driveways, doorways and retail shelves before dawn across a waking city.
While the state-of-the-art Freedom Center was a breath of fresh air compared with the dank subterranean printing operation at Tribune Tower, the tenure at the standalone River West plant was not without labor strife.
In 1985, 1,000 union production workers went on strike as their positions changed amid the new printing technology. Many never returned during the multiyear walkout after the Tribune hired replacements for the striking workers.
At the dawn of the new millennium, Chicago Tribune weekday print circulation averaged about 600,000 and topped 1 million on Sunday. Geographically zoned editions made the voluminous runs even more complex, keeping all 10 presses and scores of operators busy 24/7.
In 2002, Freedom Center expanded to 940,000 square feet, even as digital competition began to grow, increasing capacity for the still robust Tribune circulation, and enabling the plant to continue to build its commercial business.
Even the rival Chicago Sun-Times decided to stop its own presses in 2011, shuttering its 12-year-old printing plant on South Ashland Avenue and outsourcing the work to Tribune’s Freedom Center.
But in recent years, the rise of digital media precipitated a rapid erosion in print circulation, slowing production at Freedom Center and permanently retiring four of its 10 aging presses as demand for daily newspapers waned.
By 2023, Tribune print circulation had fallen to 73,000 on weekdays and 172,000 on Sunday, a 75% decline over the past decade, according to the latest data from the Alliance for Audited Media.
Excess capacity made the Freedom Center expendable for Tribune Publishing, which also lost its lease on an increasingly valuable piece of real estate under a succession of owners.
Tribune Media, the former broadcast parent of Tribune Publishing, kept all the real estate — including Tribune Tower and Freedom Center — when the newspaper company spun off on its own in 2014. Nexstar Media Group acquired Freedom Center as part of its $4.1 billion purchase of Tribune Media in 2019. Bally’s became Tribune Publishing’s landlord in November 2022 when it bought the Freedom Center site
from Nexstar Media for $200 million.
Last year, Bally’s agreed to pay Tribune Publishing $150 million to vacate the Freedom Center by July 5 to break ground on the casino complex, which is slated to open in September 2026.
In recent years, newspapers across the country have closed, consolidated and outsourced production amid dramatically declining print circulation. The Los Angeles Times, a former sister paper to the Chicago Tribune, shuttered its sprawling 34-year-old downtown printing plant in March, farming out the work to the Southern California News Group in Riverside, nearly 60 miles away.
“There was this time when Freedom Center was part of a trend of building these off site, ginormous standalone printing and distribution facilities,” Franklin said. “But most of those facilities have now been shut down around the country. And it’s much more efficient and much less expensive to produce news on pixels than it is on paper.”
The Freedom Center will wrap up all production June 2 with the final editions of The Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
But Tribune is staying in the newspaper printing business, trading the Freedom Center for the 21-year-old Daily Herald plant on 21 acres by the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway. The Schaumburg plant has two German-made Manroland presses, which have been resized to match the current Tribune print format.
A handful of press operators have already moved over to the Schaumburg plant, which has been printing the Life & Travel, Arts & Entertainment, Comics and Real Estate sections in the Sunday Chicago Tribune for several weeks.
Most of the Tribune’s commercial clients will also migrate to Schaumburg including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Sun-Times, with the Daily Herald added to the roster as part of the plant purchase.
Commercial printing remains a profit center for the company, Ridder said.
“The commercial print and delivery business has been a solid business for Chicago Tribune for a long time, and I expect it to continue to be,” Ridder said.
Rick Ramirez, a night shift press operator wearing a newspaper hat, attaches plates to a press cylinder during the last Freedom Center print run of the Chicago Tribune on May 18, 2024. The hats were originally worn by press operators to protect their hair from ink. (Vincent Alban/Chicago Tribune)
A significant number of Freedom Center production employees, however, will not be going to Schaumburg.
While Tribune declined to say how many production employees remain at Freedom Center, the company laid off nearly 200 packaging workers
in April, outsourcing weekly advertising inserts to a facility in Milwaukee ahead of the move to the smaller Schaumburg site.
For the remaining long-tenured press operators, many of whom have toiled for decades in the windowless bowels of the factory to print the daily first draft of history, it is also the end of the production line.
Of the roughly 40 press operators working this spring at Freedom Center, about a dozen have committed to move to Schaumburg, according to Terry Ford, 64, of River Grove, a 41-year plant veteran who serves as crew supervisor.
Ford is among those retiring in June — nearly three years earlier than planned — mostly to avoid the commute to the northwest suburbs.
“You’ve got to understand,” said Ford. “You’ve got tolls going out there now, the raises haven’t been forthcoming and you’ve got an aging workforce.”
Rick Ramirez, 61, of Hammond, a journeyman press operator who just completed his 25th year at Freedom Center, said it will be his last year as a Tribune employee after opting out of the move to Schaumburg.
Instead, Ramirez, who works the overnight shift, is planning a cross-country Route 66 road trip with his wife and then will try to find another path in an unexpected late-career detour.
“I actually thought this was going to be my last job ever,” said Ramirez. “But unfortunately, I’m going to have to start another chapter in my life.”
As printing operations shift to Schaumburg, the Chicago Tribune is also closing its Freedom Center newsroom May 31. The company has leased 3,700 square feet in the historic Brooks Building at 223 W. Jackson Blvd. in the Loop, with plans to move editorial operations there by July 1, according to Ridder.
Booted from its namesake tower in 2018, this will be the fourth location in six years for the peripatetic Tribune newsroom.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Tribune will hold an online auction for everything from printing equipment, dump trucks and forklifts to historical newspapers and press plates in a Freedom Center final liquidation.
The 10 printing presses, once the beating heart of Freedom Center, will essentially be sold for parts and scrapped, Ridder said.
“There just isn’t a market for that stuff,” Ridder said.
Freedom Center will give way to an entertainment complex including an exhibition hall, hotel, theater, restaurants and perhaps fittingly, a massive windowless casino building with 4,000 gaming positions at the center.
While the printing center will soon be relegated to the history books, a very small version of the Freedom Center will live on.
Horace Nowell, 27, who used to bike to Freedom Center as a child to watch freight trains deliver huge rolls of paper to the plant, spent five years building a scale model layout of the industrial site.
The painstakingly realistic model includes everything from the detailed plant emblazoned with the Chicago Tribune logo to authentic graffiti-laden boxcars navigating the grounds.
Completed as a 21-year-old Loyola University student in 2018, the model was on display in the printing plant’s lobby for 18 months. Nowell now keeps it in his Lakeview apartment.
“It was definitely a full circle moment to have it on display in the actual building,” Nowell said.
Rick Ramirez, a night shift press operator, sits in his car after helping print the last Freedom Center press run of the Chicago Tribune in the early morning hours of May 19, 2024. (Vincent Alban/Chicago Tribune)
With the Freedom Center about to fall to the wrecking ball, Nowell would like to see his model back on display at a museum, or perhaps inside the successor casino.
Meanwhile, at the Freedom Center finale, a gaggle of Tribune reporters and editors crashed the proceedings Saturday night bearing congratulatory signs to bid the press operators farewell, and to thank them for putting their words on paper every day on deadline.
Former Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich, a Pulitzer Prize winner whose latest story graced the front page of the final Tribune printed at the Freedom Center, felt moved to be among them.
“It’s historic to me, the idea that this huge building that represented so much about Chicago and about newspapering, is about to vanish,” said Schmich, one of 40 journalists to accept a buyout three years ago upon hedge fund Alden Global Capital’s acquisition of Tribune Publishing.
For the print operators themselves, it was an emotional night at work, at times celebratory, at times teary-eyed.
Cris Afante, 65, who started at the Freedom Center in 1985, was press crew supervisor on the final run of the Chicago Tribune at the plant. He will be heading to Schaumburg on June 2, but most of his crew will not be there.
“It’s just sad, because for a lot of these people, this is their other family,” said Afante. “We grew old together here. You can’t help but get attached to these guys after all those years.”
Patrick Ohaver, coordinator of Methodist Hospitals Sports Medicine Program, has been recognized by the Secondary School Committee of the
National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA), according to a release.
Ohaver was recently named Athletic Trainer of the Year for NATA District 4, which covers several states in the Great Lakes region, which puts him in the running for the title of National Secondary School Athletic Trainer of the Year, the release said.
The National Athletic Trainers Association’s (NATA) annual conference is in June in New Orleans.
PNW announces winners of 2024 Big Sell
Three innovators were awarded investment capital for their startup pitches after earning judges’ top picks April 27 in the 13th annual The PNW Big Sell pitch competition, according to a release. The PNW Big Sell is hosted by PNW’s Office of Commercialization and Research and sponsored by PNW’s College of Business, Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) and Centier Bank.
Jonathan Rose earned first place and $10,000 for the pitch for ModMath. The application is intended to assist students with dyslexia and dysgraphia complete math exercises with a digital interface instead of a physical writing utensil and paper, the release said.
Emily Edwards earned second place and $3,000 for the pitch for Paradise Spreads and Danielle Cruz-Lopez received third place and $1,000 for Sepsis Slayers, the release said. For more information about The PNW Big Sell, visit pnw.edu/thepnwbigsell.
Business owner to receive Champion Medal
The inaugural Methodist Hospitals Champion Medal will be presented to Mamon Powers Jr. at Methodist Hospitals Foundation’s gala on June 1,
according to a release.
The award is designed to honor the profound influence of individuals whose unwavering dedication and service to Methodist Hospitals have shaped its existence and propelled its mission to deliver exceptional healthcare to all in need, the release said. Tickets for the event may be purchased online at Methodisthospitals.org or by calling the Foundation office at 219-886-4468.
Powers has served Methodist Hospitals in many governance capacities, including as Chairperson of the Methodist Hospitals Board of Directors, Committee Chairperson of its Finance Committee, Board Member of the Methodist Hospitals Foundation, and most recently, as a Life Advisory Member of the hospital’s board, the release said.
IUN sets economic development academy
Indiana University Northwest’s School of Business and Economics (SOBE) will host the inaugural Economic Development Academy (EDA), a
seven-week, in-person and virtual training program focused on regional economic development, according to a release.
The program, which runs May 21 through July 2, will connect economic development approaches with practice, using current research, case studies, guest speakers and lively discussions, the release said.
Regional economic development professionals will serve as program leaders, including Anthony Sindone and Micah Pollak, IUN, economists
specializing in regional economic development; Rick Calinski, NIPSCO, Director of Public Affairs and Economic Development; Heather Ennis,
Northwest Indiana Forum, President and CEO; and Seth Spencer, Sera Group, CEO.
The Economic Development Academy takes place over seven weeks, with in-person sessions at IU Northwest every other Tuesday from 9 a.m. to
noon, starting May 21, the release said. Registration is $395 per participant, with discounts for multiple registrations. For information, contact Pollak at mpollak@iu.edu or 219-980-6913.
Around the Clock CEO accepted into program
Around the Clock Ambulance CEO Alex Dunlap III, has accepted the invitation to join the 2024 cohort of the Inner City Capital Connections (ICCC) program, according to a release.
The ICCC tuition-free training program is designed to help small business owners in under-resourced communities build capacity and resiliency for long-term sustainable growth, the release said.
The 2024 program will feature more in-person programming and peer-to-peer connections, and entrepreneurs will receive the tools and resources to scale, grow, and sustain their businesses, the release said.
Woodland Child Development Center to Host Annual Fundraiser May 25th
Woodland Child Development Center’s annual fundraiser, “An Enchanted Evening,” will be held at 6 p.m. May 25 at the Gary (Miller Beach)
Aquatorium, 6918 Oak Ave., Gary.
Food, music, dancing and a live auction are planned, according to a release. Award-winning actress, author and model Altovise Ferguson will be the featured soloist, the release said. Actress Lisa Beasley (“Corporate Erin”), will also entertain while serving as the program host for the evening.
Single sales tickets are $100, and $150 per couple. Sponsorship opportunities are also available. Located in Hammond, Woodland services more that 250 children through early learning enrichment programs. For more information, visit www. woodlandcdc.com.
Hanover Central student wins credit union scholarship
Madison Paige Paulauski, a student at Hanover Central High School, is the 2024 recipient of the Advance Financial Federal Credit Union
Scholarship, according to a release.
The annual $2,000 college scholarship is earmarked to a graduating high school senior who exemplifies academic excellence and a commitment to their future goals, the release said.
Paulauski, a resident of Cedar Lake, graduated with high honors, placing within the top 10% of her class. She is expected to attend Grand Valley State University’s Frederik Meijer Honors College, where she is accepted as a Dance Major, the release said.
A police officer in the northwest suburbs was stabbed Saturday evening while taking a suspect to a police station, officials said.
A 37-year-old man in custody for battery charges was being taken from a hospital to the Norridge Police Station when he stabbed the officer inside a squad car. The incident happened just before 6 p.m. on Canfield and Winnemac avenues, according to police.
Police say officers pulled over to check on the man, who stabbed himself and the officer with the knife. The officer was taken to the hospital for treatment but is in good condition.
The man remains in police custody, authorities said.
