Neuqua Valley senior Michayla Stone had a lot of emotions going through her head during pregame ceremonies on senior night.

The 6-foot-1 center was feted alongside senior guard Nalia Clifford, senior guard Taylor Dobry, senior forward Alexis May and senior center Lorraine Wieshuber before the Wildcats played visiting Geneva on Tuesday.

“It was super bittersweet,” Stone said. “It was crazy that tonight is my senior night and not just a random game on the schedule.

“The speeches that both (juniors) Quinn (Sigal) and Nya (Vazifdar) gave to me were both super sweet, and I love that. It’s really incredible to be on this team for four years, and this is my one and only senior night.”

This has been a season unlike any other for Stone, a four-year varsity player and three-year starter who is averaging 8.0 points and 7.0 rebounds for the Wildcats (8-14). For the first time, the North Central College commit has been playing pain-free.

Stone played her first two seasons as an understudy behind stars Tia Poulakidas and Kylee Norkus. Then she played her entire junior season with a torn labrum in her right shoulder.

“In seventh grade, I fully dislocated my shoulder, so I had to do a lot of PT and rehab,” Stone said. “As I grew up, it wasn’t healing, and it kept dislocating.

“Sometimes it popped out when I was sleeping. I remember one morning in September (2024), I dislocated it twice in a matter of 10 minutes.”

An MRI revealed the tear. Stone was told she needed surgery, but she put it off until April 2025 so she could play with a brace. The surgery was a success, but rehab took more than six months. Stone said that was worth it, though.

“It’s 1000% pain-free,” Stone said. “My orthopedic surgeon was incredible. My anesthesiologist is actually my neighbor, and she was really incredible. My PT staff, they were all super supportive.”

Neuqua Valley’s Michayla Stone (34) takes the court during introductions before a nonconference game against Geneva in Naperville on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (Sean King / Naperville Sun)

Stone didn’t return to the court until shortly before this season began. She was busy trying to get healthy.

“It’s a difficult surgery to come back from,” Stone said. “I made sure to do my PT every single day and also get into the gym.

“Right when I could start the bike, I did 30 minutes every day. When I could start running again, I would try to run every single day and do interval training so I could be back in shape and ready for the senior season. It’s your last season.”

Clifford said Stone’s determination has inspired and excited the Wildcats.

“Even if she couldn’t do everything, I would still watch her before and after practice and over our fall league,” Clifford said. “She’d be out there practicing getting her touch down, left hand and right hand and moves by the basket.

“Michayla just wants to be on the court. She just loves basketball and loves to compete, so to see her do everything that she can and work that hard for us so she could play, it makes us work just as hard for her.”

Neuqua Valley’s Michayla Stone (34) attempts a 3-point shot as Geneva’s Emma Peterson (15) defends during a nonconference game in Naperville on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (Sean King / Naperville Sun)

Stone demonstrated that work ethic against Geneva, posting 12 points and seven rebounds during the Wildcats’ 50-42 loss. As the Vikings ran out the clock, Clifford stole the ball, raced down the court and passed the ball to Stone, who sank a 3-pointer from the left corner as time expired.

“Michayla never complains, and she always works hard,” Neuqua Valley coach Mike Williams said. “She’s grown into a pretty steady player. She always took her time and learned from the other kids, and now she’s doing a great job.”

Stone’s leadership has arguably been even more important as the Wildcats deal with inconsistency.

“I’m proud of her on and off the court,” Williams said. “She’s taken a lot of players under her wing and been a great mentor. She was great in the summer camps with the little kids. She’s just an all-around good person.”

Williams said Stone will further develop her game in college, where she will add to her family’s athletic history. Stone’s father, Tom, played football at Drake, and her sister, Maya, played soccer and ran track at Carthage.

“I had a dream ever since I was a little kid to go play college basketball,” Stone said. “It’s amazing.”

Matt Le Cren is a freelance reporter.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/21/basketball-neuqua-valley-michayla-stone/ 

ZURICH, Switzerland — President Donald Trump has landed in Switzerland following hours of delay after a minor electrical issue aboard Air Force forced a return to Washington to switch aircraft.

Trump on Wednesday is set to address the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps, where his ambitions to wrest control of Greenland from NATO ally Denmark could tear relations with European allies and overshadow his original plan to use his appearance at the gathering of global elites to address affordability issues back home.

Trump comes to the international forum at Davos on the heels of threatening tariffs on Denmark and seven other allies unless they negotiate a transfer of the semi-autonomous territory — a concession the European leaders indicated they are not willing to make. Trump said the tariffs would start at 10% next month and climb to 25% in June, rates that would be high enough to increase costs and slow growth, potentially hurting Trump’s efforts to tamp down the high cost of living.

The president in a text message that circulated among European officials this week also linked his aggressive stance on Greenland to last year’s decision not to award him the Nobel Peace Prize. In the message, he told Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, that he no longer felt “an obligation to think purely of Peace.”

In the midst of an unusual stretch of testing the United States’ relations with longtime allies, it seems uncertain what might transpire during Trump’s two days in Switzerland.

On Tuesday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a Davos panel he and Trump, a Republican, planned to deliver a stark message: “Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America. It’s a failed policy,” he said.

“This will be an interesting trip,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Tuesday evening for his flight to Davos. “I have no idea what’s going to happen, but you are well represented.”

In fact, his trip to Davos got off to a difficult start. There was a small electrical problem on Air Force One, leading the crew to turn around the plane about 30 minutes into the flight out of an abundance of caution. That pushed the president’s arrival in Switzerland back hours.

Wall Street wobbled on Tuesday as investors weighed Trump’s new tariff threats and escalating tensions with European allies. The S&P 500 fell 2.1%, its biggest drop since October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8%. The Nasdaq composite slumped 2.4%.

“It’s clear that we are reaching a time of instability, of imbalances, both from the security and defense point of view, and economic point of view,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in his address to the forum. Macron made no direct mention of Trump but urged fellow leaders to reject acceptance of “the law of the strongest.”

Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned that should Trump move forward with the tariffts, the bloc’s response “will be unflinching, united and proportional.” She pointedly suggested that Trump’s new tariff threat could also undercut a U.S.-EU trade framework reached this summer that the Trump administration worked hard to to seal.

“The European Union and the United States have agreed to a trade deal last July,” von der Leyen said in Davos. “And in politics as in business — a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something.”

Why Trump is talking about housing in Davos

Trump, ahead of the address, said he planned on using his Davos appearance to talk about making housing more attainable and other affordability issues that are top priorities for Americans.

But Trump’s Greenland tariff threat could disrupt the U.S. economy if it blows up the trade truce reached last year between the U.S. and the EU, said Scott Lincicome, a tariff critic and vice president on economic issues at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

“Significantly undermining investors’ confidence in the U.S. economy in the longer term would likely increase interest rates and thus make homes less affordable,” Lincicome said.

Trump also on Tuesday warned Europe against retaliatory action for the coming new tariffs.

“Anything they do with us, I’ll just meet it,” Trump said on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight.” “All I have to do is meet it, and it’s going to go ricocheting backward.”

Davos — a forum known for its appeal to the global elite — is an odd backdrop for a speech on affordability. But White House officials have promoted it as a moment for Trump to try to rekindle populist support back in the U.S., where many voters who backed him in 2024 view affordability as a major problem. About six in 10 U.S. adults now say that Trump has hurt the cost of living, according to the latest survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

U.S. home sales are at a 30-year low with rising prices and elevated mortgage rates keeping many prospective buyers out of the market. So far, Trump has announced plans to buy $200 billion in mortgage securities to help lower interest rates on home loans, and has called for a ban on large financial companies buying houses.

Trump will promote his ‘Board of Peace’

The White House has said Trump plans to meet with leaders on the sidelines of the forum, after he gives his keynote address. There are more than 60 other heads of state attending.

On Thursday, Trump plans to have an event to talk about the “Board of Peace,” a new body meant to oversee the end of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and possibly take on a broader mandate, potentially rivaling the United Nations.

Fewer than 10 leaders have accepted invitations to join the group so far, including a handful of leaders considered to be anti-democratic authoritarians. Several of America’s main European partners have declined or been noncommittal, including Britain, France and Germany.

Trump on Tuesday told reporters that his peace board “might” eventually make the U.N. obsolete but insisted he wants to see the international body stick around.

“I believe you got to let the U.N. continue, because the potential is so great,” Trump said.

Weissert and Madhani reported from Washington. Michelle L. Price contributed from Washington.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/21/donald-trump-world-economic-forum-greenland/ 

OMAHA, Neb. — Warren Buffett’s successor appears to be considering his first significant move after taking over as CEO this month.

Kraft Heinz warned investors Tuesday that Berkshire Hathaway may be interested in selling its 325 million shares in the name brand food giant that Buffett helped create back in 2015. The news came in a filing with stock market regulators.

Kraft Heinz names former Kellogg CEO to helm Chicago packaged food giant ahead of planned split next year

Buffett and the Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital orchestrated the merger of Kraft and Heinz back then because they already owned Heinz and believed in the power of their brands. Now Greg Abel may be plotting a different course.

Over the years since Buffett had come to realize that the company’s competitive moat around its brands wasn’t as strong as he thought as consumers have increasingly been willing to switch to store brands and move away from processed foods. Berkshire took a $3.76 billion writedown on its Kraft-Heinz stake last summer. Buffett said last fall that he was disappointed in Kraft Heinz’ plan to split the company in two, and Berkshire’s two representatives resigned from the Kraft board last spring.

But still it was rare for Buffett to unload an acquisition during his six decades leading Berkshire even when he soured on a business’ prospects. Berkshire didn’t respond to questions Tuesday about the filing where Kraft Heinz disclosed that its largest shareholder “may offer to sell, from time to time, 325,442,152 shares.” Kraft Heinz shares fell nearly 4% to $22.85 after the announcement.

There’s no sign Berkshire has started selling yet, but CFRA Research analyst Cathy Seifert wonders if this could be just the beginning of a comprehensive review of Berkshire’s varied holdings. In addition to its massive stock portfolio worth over $300 billion, Berkshire owns an assortment of insurers including Geico, several utilities, BNSF railroad and an eclectic mix of manufacturing and retail companies.

“My sense is that Greg Abel’s leadership style may be a departure from Buffett’s, and this sale, if completed, would represent a shift in corporate mindset,” Seifert said. “Berkshire under Buffett typically only made acquisitions- not divestitures. It’s not inconceivable, in our view, that Abel may likely assess every Berkshire subsidiary and decide to jettison those that do not meet his internal hurdles.“

Of course Abel already knows many of Berkshire’s companies well because he has been managing all of the non-insurance companies since 2018. But he only became CEO on Jan. 1. Buffett remains chairman, but investors are watching closely for any changes Abel might make at the venerable conglomerate.

Investor Chris Ballard, who is managing director at Check Capital, said “selling Kraft is probably the most low-hanging fruit for Greg. We personally wouldn’t be sad to see the holding go.”

But of course it would be bard for Berkshire to unload all of its shares on the public market because it is such a large stake, so Ballard said he wonders if there could be a large prospective buyer in the wings.

But Buffett said last fall that Berkshire wouldn’t accept a block bid for its shares unless the same offer was made to all Kraft Heinz shareholders.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/21/warren-buffett-successor-berkshire-hathaway-kraft-heinz/ 

Por TERESA MEDRANO

MADRID (AP) — Con una manta sobre los hombros y varios apósitos en la cara, Ana García lanzó un llamado desesperado: necesitaba ayuda para encontrar a su perro, Boro.

Horas antes, García, de 26 años, y su hermana embarazada viajaban con Boro en un tren de alta velocidad desde Málaga, su ciudad natal en el sur de España, hacia la capital, Madrid. Los últimos vagones de su tren se salieron de las vías por razones que aún no están claras, y recibieron el impacto de un tren que circulaba en sentido contrario —de Madrid a Huelva— y cuyos vagones delanteros cayeron por un talud próximo.

Al menos 42 personas murieron en el accidente y más de 150 resultaron heridas, incluyendo algunas que viajaban con García. Los equipos de rescate ayudaron a las dos hermanas a salir de su vagón, que había quedado ligeramente inclinado.

Ya en el exterior, García vio brevemente a Boro, que se escapó.

Tras recibir atención médica, García, que caminaba con una ligera cojera, contó a los reporteros que quería encontrarlo.

“Por favor, si pueden ayudar, busquen a los animales”, dijo emocionada y conteniendo las lágrimas. “Veníamos de un fin de semana familiar con el perrito, que es familia también”.

Tras uno de los peores desastres ferroviarios en la historia reciente de España, las redes sociales se volcaron para tratar de dar con Boro y los principales medios de comunicación del país han reportado la búsqueda de la mascota desaparecida.

Miles amplificaron el llamado de García, compartiendo el video de su entrevista. Las fotos de Boro, un perro negro mestizo de tamaño mediano, con las cejas blancas y un mechón del mismo color en el pecho, se volvieron virales junto con los teléfono contacto de García y su familia. The Associated Press no pudo contactar con nadie a través de estos números.

Una grabación del lugar del siniestro emitida en la televisora estatal TVE el lunes por la tarde ofreció un rayo de esperanza: durante unos segundos, se pudo ver a un perro que se parecía a Boro corriendo por un campo cercano a la zona vallada donde los investigadores y rescatistas continúan la búsqueda de víctimas y evidencias. Pero nadie logró localizar al escurridizo cachorro.

El partido animalista Pacma recibió el martes la autorización del Ministerio del Interior para enviar una patrulla de rescate animal dentro del perímetro, una operación que comenzará el miércoles, señaló su presidente, Javier Luna, en un video publicado en X.

“Quiero mandar un mensaje a la familia, que lo está pasando muy mal (…) os doy esperanza porque estoy seguro de que lo vamos a encontrar”, afirmó Luna.

___

Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/21/redes-sociales-se-mueven-para-dar-con-boro-el-perro-que-sobrevivi-a-accidente-de-tren-en-espaa/ 

World Cup Lift: Goldman Forecasts Retailers’ Potential Bounce From The ‘Beautiful Game’

Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/21/2026 – 06:55

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/mapping-sporting-goods-retailers-around-world-cup-stadiums 

When you think of high school, what fills your mind?

The older we get, it seems to me, those four years can become a comfort. Fading are the insecurities and fears. Brighter every year are the good memories. It’s all the more vivid for those who played or watched sports in high school, for those memories are not only more plentiful and vivid than classroom recollections but they are also inflated, untrustworthy, yes, but pleasing.

The ordinary becomes triumphant. Four points in that basketball game is now 26, including the winning shot at the buzzer. I have come to feel that such thinking is a defensive mechanism of sorts against sagging skin, gray or vanishing hair, bones that have begun to creak. The mirror tells one story. The past a kinder one.

Vincent Johnson is 51 years old and still going to high school — or many high schools as he works as a successful freelance photographer, shooting for the Tribune and other publications the games that teenagers play.

He takes photos of other things and events too, and lives in Bronzeville and has two sons: 16-year-old William, a student at Mount Carmel High School, and Alexander, at 12 still a couple of years away from his next academic stop. You can see their photos on the pages of their father’s spectacular book, “Illustrious: The Best High School Basketball Gyms in Illinois.”

Johnson grew up in Joliet and was a student at Joliet Catholic High School as it was transitioning from all-boys to coed with the 1990 merger with all-girls St. Francis Academy. He attended Joliet Junior College and studied psychology before transferring to Columbia College, determined to become a radio disc jockey. But having had his first camera in high school, he wound up taking photo classes and being inspired by such teachers as former Tribune shooter Charles Osgood and John White, the Sun-Times’ Pulitzer Prize winner.

A photo showing a person entering a locker room at Sterling High School’s Musgrove Fieldhouse on Jan. 15, 2022, is included in the new book “Illustrious: The Best High School Basketball Gyms In Illinois,” by photojournalist Vincent David Johnson. (Vincent D. Johnson)
A photo showing the student section above the court at Lindblom Math & Science Academy in Chicago during an Illinois varsity high school boys basketball game on Dec. 1, 2022, is included in the new book “Illustrious: The Best High School Basketball Gyms In Illinois,” by photojournalist Vincent David Johnson. (Vincent D. Johnson)

Amid what was then an increasingly deflating print publishing realm, there were few full-time jobs, and so he began working in the software business but “never gave up my dream of becoming a working photographer.”

Freelance opportunities began to come his way and high school sports began to dominate that work over the last decade.

The concept for this book was seeded then and in some years he had a publishing deal with a large university press. As is often the case in the book business, the deal fell apart due to “creative differences” but, as Johnson says, “no hard feelings at all.” Spurred by the free time that was a result of the pandemic, he personally bankrolled the publishing of the book, fashioning it after his own aesthetic visions, starting with a printing of 2,000 copies (soon to be gone).

The book’s “Foreward” (misspelling intentional, get it?) is by the Sun-Times’ high school sports editor Michael O’Brien, in which he writes, “The best gyms, the most memorable, and the ones in this book are so much more (than utilitarian). They were built as basketball theaters, designed to put the game on a stage.”

Johnson writes in his very frank (and frankly inspiring) introduction in the book, that he was an underachiever in high school, “a child of divorced parents, who was a troublemaker at worst and acting out frustrations at best.”

And so. Off you’ll go on a surprisingly satisfying journey. There are 126 photos of 120 gymnasiums (Steinmetz College Prep on the Northwest Side, of all places, has three). Some will be familiar to those spread across the Tribune subscriber area —Hinsdale Central, St. Ignatius, Oak Park-River Forest, Marshall, DuSable, Lane Tech, Evanston Township — or who closely follow high school sports. But others will introduce you to locations that are as remote as Mars, many of them charming.

One such is in Brussels. Know where that is?

Of course you don’t because, as Johnson writes on some of the four pages devoted to its high school gym, “You’d have to be a completely kind of lost to end up in Brussels,” Johnson writes. “It’s the last town, on the last stretch of land of a peninsula carved out of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. … A statistical anomaly, this town of 116 is in Illinois’ third least-populated county.” In order for him and his cameras to get to the gym, north of St. Louis and named The Pit, “the best gym nobody has ever heard of,” they had to take a ferry boat.

A photo showing the original wood-stadium seats and floor during an IHSA Class 2A Regional Final game at Frankfort High School’s Max Morris Gym on Feb. 25, 2022, is included in the new book “Illustrious: The Best High School Basketball Gyms In Illinois,” by photojournalist Vincent David Johnson. (Vincent D. Johnson)

Some of the other gyms have names too: Crater (Central High School in Clifton, Illinois), The Nest (Brown County High School), Pioneer Dome (St. Francis de Sales), Panther Pit (Quincy Notre Dame High School).

Some photos have people in them, some don’t. Each is accompanied by “Gym Shorts,” a list of quick facts such as year built, capacity, notable alums and such information as, in the case of Regina Dominican in Wilmette, “One of a handful of all-girls high schools left in the area” or, with Harrisburg, “Coolest press box in the state.”

Over the last couple of weeks, Johnson has been burning up miles across the state covering games and selling books. He tells me, “Some of the gyms are really inspiring. No, I don’t know how many miles I’ve driven. I’m not counting. But Illinois is a big state and I can see and feel that these gyms are places of pride in most communities and neighborhoods.”

In a sense he is capturing and has captured what might be snapshots of a vanishing America, as high school enrollments plummet across the land, small towns evaporate. In that sense, this is an essential document, though Johnson is not proselytizing. He’s on the high school beat, time enough later to get all serious.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/21/high-school-gym-photos/ 

Warwick Price and Dove Thiselton want you to know, before we go any further with this, that they don’t wish anyone dead. They want you to know there is a big difference between guessing someone could die soon and actually wanting a person to die. That’s important to understand if we’re going to talk about their Ghoul Pool, now in its eighth year. See, they didn’t invent the idea of a Ghoul Pool, but they may be among its most meticulous practitioners. The Ghoul Pool, which they run from their horror shop Ghoulish Mortals in St. Charles, is, as they put it, “a celebrity death prediction game.”

The other night, 24 hours before entries were due for the 2026 edition of the Ghoul Pool, Dove called over to her husband, curious about the ballots they already received:

“Warwick, so far, do you know the No. 1 person people want dead this year?”

Warwick, who had just arrived at Ghoulish Mortals from his day job as an IT guy for a food distributor, said, “Wait, I can tell you in a short amount of time,” and slid behind the front counter and punched up the Ghoulish Mortals database that he had built himself.

He nodded at the results. On a dark monitor, in tiny data type, the results showed that, as of Jan. 13, 6:44 p.m., Bruce Willis and Donald Trump were tied with 37 predictions each. The Ghoul Pool had already received 62 ballots but anticipated many more before the deadline.

The game is thus: Each contestant predicts 13 people — movie stars, musicians, athletes, politicians, influencers, CEOs, anyone with a Wikipedia page (to verify their death) — then waits until 11:59 p.m. Dec. 31, 2026, to see how many passings they guessed correctly. Unlike a Super Bowl or March Madness office pool, cash is not involved. The Ghoul Pool is free to enter, but winners only receive gift cards to Ghoulish Mortals, which sells stuff like artist prints of the “Stranger Things” cast and Bigfoot tchotchkes and “Friday the 13th” magnets.

Several names on the Ghoul Pool, the annual contest that the St. Charles store Ghoulish Mortals has hosted for the last eight years, speculating on famous people who might die in the coming year. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

“Not just any store could pull off something like this,” Dove said while cutting out felt flames for a Valentine’s Day display featuring a devilish Elmo named Hellmo. “I mean, I doubt I could do this if I were the manager of a neighborhood savings and loan. Of course, I also don’t get to participate in the pool myself. But I do have my own list of predictions, and I’ve had Dick Van Dyke every year — I’ve thinking 2026 will be my year.”

Dick Van Dyke, who is 100 years old, is the fourth most predicted death for 2026; he received 24 predictions. Actor Eric Dane, who played Dr. Sloan on “Grey’s Anatomy” and Captain Tom on “The Last Ship,” is the third, behind Trump and Willis, probably because Dane announced last spring that he has ALS, and subsequent reports have noted that he requires round-the-clock medical care.

The Ghoul Pool, as it says right in the name, gets kinda ghoulish.

“But the point is to have fun with something that happens to everyone,” Warwick said. “It is sort of twisted, and also a part of everyone’s life — people who do well in the Ghoul Pool tend to be those who do a fair amount of research and think hard about who they believe could die in the next 12 months, not who they want to see die by December 31.”

When annual results are compiled each January, winners tend to be amateur grim reapers who predicted a mix of shocking young deaths and the passings of anyone over 90. That’s why Dane, who is only 53, received more predictions than a centenarian like Van Dyke. It’s also why, alarmingly, Ariana Grande, 32, has as many predictions (8) as someone like David Attenborough, 99. Every correct prediction is awarded a different number of points, calculated by subtracting the age of the deceased from 105. Dane, therefore, is worth 52 points, while Van Dyke is only worth 4. Youth is a trophy in Ghoul Pool. Warwick used to decide how much a death was worth by starting with a baseline of 104 points, on the assumption that the absolute oldest celebrity death would be 103. They wanted to make sure contestants received at least one point for a correct prediction. But after Kirk Douglas died at 103 in 2020, they were spooked and decided to move the goal posts a bit, so now Ghoul Pool calculations begin with 105.

The winner of the 2025 Ghoul Pool, a man from Indiana, got six of his 13 predictions correct — which is a decent showing. “The most anyone has ever gotten right was eight out of 13 picks,” Dove said. “Which is like the finger of death right there.”

Ghoul Pools, or death pools, or dead pools, organized or casual, have been around for centuries, long before the water-cooler pool itself. They are, you could argue, a way of gamifying the dark thoughts everyone lets slip out from time to time, a stab at justifying two of our most immortal, uneasy fascinations: famous people and dead famous people.

Italians were betting on the expiration dates of popes as early as the 1400s, a practice popular enough for Pope Gregory XIV, 170 years later, to outlaw widespread gambling on clerical deaths. French writer Guy de Maupassant included a death pool in his 1885 novel “Bel-Ami.” Two decades earlier, Mark Twain had a husband considering the odds of a wife’s recovery in one of his best short stories, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” There are newspaper accounts of Ghoul Pools in 1930s America. By 1988, the last Dirty Harry movie, “The Dead Pool,” used the titular game as a plot device. (“Sounds pretty sick to me,” Clint Eastwood’s detective sneered.) Even Deadpool himself, super anti-hero, who debuted in 1990, got his name from a dead pool in the Marvel Universe.

The couple themselves got the idea for a Ghoul Pool from a radio show in Los Angeles, where they lived before Warwick’s job relocated him to the western suburbs of Chicago.

Dove said it was always a dream to create a Ghoul Pool, though she admits: “Now that we have one, my own annual lists are more of a wish-list than anything strategic.” Also, once they began, they did not want to simply award points for each death, so like other death pools — such as the annual celebrity death pool that’s gone on for years at the Straight Dope Message Board, named after the longtime Chicago Reader column — contestants now receive bonuses based on the manner of a celebrity death. There’s the “Be Still My Heart” bonus (10 points) if a celebrity dies of a heart attack, and the “Dead of Night” bonus (10 points) if they die in their sleep. To be honest, it gets queasy: hangings receive 30 extra points, drownings 20 points.

A movie star who dies while making a movie — “essentially the Tom Cruise Award, if he had died doing a stunt,” Warwick said — is worth 25 additional points. Celebrities who die in a particularly unusual way (“The Final Destination Award”) are worth a $50 gift card. “Since we have a ‘Last Person to Die’ award, Betty White threw everything into disarray by dying on December 31 (2021),” Warwick said. There was also a time someone picked a Hamas leader: the United States military reported the man was killed, but Hamas insisted he was not; after Wikipedia changed his status to alive, points were adjusted.

Every year brings surprises.

As we picked over entries for 2026, I noticed someone put Marion Ross — who played Mrs. Cunningham on “Happy Days” — on their list. I thought she had died years ago. “You know, I did too!” Warwick said. (In fact, Ross is a mere 97.) He noted Gene Simmons got only two votes this year; he’s gotten more in previous years. Woody Allen and William Shatner, too. Keith Richards — who has looked good (relatively speaking) in his recent online posts, and perhaps graduated from collective death watch to eternal shaman — received a mere four votes, three fewer votes than Billy Joel and Phil Collins.

“Oh,” Warwick said, “Vladimir Putin has the same number of votes as Billy Ray Cyrus!”

For the record, judging by the number of votes received, several people are not expecting Chevy Chase to be long for this world. Same for Jesse Jackson. And Mel Brooks. And Sean Combs. But what do we make of more people betting Britney Spears (age 44) will die before Steven Tyler (77)? Or that Buzz Aldrin (age 96) has a better chance of seeing 2027 than King Charles III (77)? Warwick shrugged and pecked at his laptop.

“It’s just people dying,” he said.

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/21/ghoul-pool-celebrity-deaths/ 

Despite Mass Protests, UK Approves Controversial Chinese Mega-Embassy In London

Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/21/2026 – 06:30

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/uk-approves-controversial-chinese-mega-embassy-london