Columbus Blue Jackets fire coach Dean Evason, hire Rick Bowness to replace him

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Columbus Blue Jackets fired coach Dean Evason and named hockey-lifer Rick Bowness as his replacement on Monday.

Evason is the first NHL coach fired this season. General manager Don Waddell announced the abrupt change with his team sitting in last place in the Eastern Conference 45 games into the season with a record of 19-19-7.

“This season has been a frustrating one for all of us and the bottom line is we are not performing at a level that meets our expectations,” Waddell said. “We all share in that responsibility, me included, and while this was not a decision that was made lightly, it is one that needed to be made at this time. Dean did a tremendous job last year under extremely difficult circumstances, and I thank him for that.”

Assistant Steve McCarthy, who had been with the organization for nearly a decade, was also fired.

Bowness is back in the league after he retired in the spring of 2024, ending a stint with the Winnipeg Jets. Bowness, who coached Dallas to the Stanley Cup Final in the 2020 pandemic bubble, turns 71 on Jan. 25, and at 70 becomes the oldest head coach in the NHL.

“Rick Bowness is a tremendous coach with invaluable experience and knowledge, and he will bring a steadiness to our team at an important juncture in our season,” Waddell said. “He is a good communicator whose teams play with structure, are sound defensively and we believe he is the right person to bring out the best in our group.”

Bowness during his lengthy career has been head coach for seven different teams, dating to the original Jets in 1988. He did some broadcasting with TNT since stepping away from his most recent job in Winnipeg.

Evason was just past the midway point of his second season in charge of the Blue Jackets. Waddell’s first order of business upon becoming GM was to fire then-coach Pascal Vincent and put Evason behind the bench.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

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Some Other Things Donald Trump Will Probably Try to Buy

President Trump keeps talking about buying Greenland. Perhaps via a lump sum to Denmark, perhaps through individual payments to each Greenlander? We have reached the stage of the imperial presidency where we just start pointing at the map and demanding the things we see there. Formerly, when something bad happened in the news, the only people allowed to become immediately richer were defense contractors. Now there is something called a political betting market, where this kind of bad news can enrich anyone. Just one of many things that’s great for our democracy at this time.

I hesitate to suggest what other things on the map might be considered for purchase, lest someone feel inspired to actually write a check, but I will go ahead and make the relevant Polymarket bets so that I may make my fortune! (At least until they announce that based on how I phrased my wager, they will not deliver.)

France (Odds: 1,789 to 1): Have we ever looked into purchasing France? Geographically not unlike Texas, but they do very different things with the vowels there. Would make a lovely fiefdom for Rubio or another attendant lord to rule in his spare time.

Great Britain (1,215 to 1): Somewhat depreciated after all this time, and they felt the need to put great in the name, which feels like try-hardism. But we have a legacy connection there and are almost fluent in the language. (I would not have put this on the list, but J. D. Vance says that the British and French are threats now!)

Canada (1,867 to 1): It is a truth universally acknowledged that an adjacent country, in possession of a sufficient landmass, must be in want of annexation. But what could we offer individual Canadians as an incentive to join? Perhaps the opportunity to become mired in crippling medical debt?

China (9,000 to 1): It looks almost as big and important as Greenland on the map! No, nothing can be as important as Greenland. Look at the map!

Ireland (1,916 to 1): I foresee zero difficulties with trying to make Ireland do anything against its will.

Liechtenstein (825 to 1): This country is too small for the length of its name. U.S. would look much nicer. The populace would certainly get on board if they understood that we were just trying to make them look better on the map.

Prime Meridian (7 to 3): This looks very important on the map and is even labeled “Prime,” but in the real world, it is invisible! We must buy it at once! An invisible line that runs through eight countries and three continents could be useful for spycraft.

Northwest Passage (70 to 1): Do we get a finder’s fee?

Iceland (6 to 1): I think this is the one to buy, actually. Way more verdant than Greenland. Just got confused by the name! Oh well, too late now.

Vinland (5 to 1, if we can find it): Which one is Vinland? We want that too.

Atlantis (80,000 to 1): If it’s under there, we absolutely want it! (Do they take bitcoin?)

Golden City of El Dorado (80,000 to 1): Who wouldn’t want an entire city made of gold? Do they take bitcoin?

The Moon (1 to 1): Has a whole Sea of Tranquility, a resource we could really use in these times. We can put server farms there. Also full of flags, and helpful for supplementing cheese reserves.

The Big Black Line That Outlines the Whole Map and Holds It Together in an Oval Shape (3,720 to 1): Is this for sale? Could be fun to mess around with alternative world shapes if this is in play.

The Big A off the coast of North Carolina (Actually any of the letters—the T L A N T I C or the O C E A N) (725 to 1): Each letter is the size of Pennsylvania, if the world map the president is looking at is to scale, and could perhaps function as a naval base! (If the map isn’t to scale, we’re going to have a lot of problems.)

The Post–World War II International Order in Which We Respect Other Countries’ Sovereignty Because the Alternative Is an Ongoing Might-Makes-Right Nightmare of Chaos and Bloodshed: Don’t see this on the map anywhere; probably worthless.

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‘One Battle’ Beauty Teyana Taylor Takes Home Her First Golden Globe & Other Big Winners From The 2026 Ceremony

Teyana Taylor wins first ever Golden Globe for best supporting actress.
Taylor gives heartfelt speech, acknowledging her purpose and thanking director Paul Thomas Anderson.
Taylor dedicates her win to Black women, affirming their power and right to shine in any space.

Teyana Taylor’s awards season started with a bang!

Source: Christopher Polk/2026GG / Getty

The actress hit a huge career milestone at the 2026 Golden Globes on Sunday, Jan. 12 when she won her first ever Golden Globe. The One Battle After Another star won Best Supporting Actress, coming out on top of heavyweights like Emily Blunt, Elle Fanning, Ariana Grande, Amy Madigan and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.

To start her emotional speech, Taylor made a cheeky nod to her whale tail cutout dress. “Wait, see my body in the back,” she said as she turned around for the camera. Quickly, however, Taylor grew emotional as the win settled in, getting choked up at various points in her speech.

“I almost didn’t even write a speech because I didn’t think I was [going to win],” the singer said. “Thank you to the Golden Globe voters for seeing me and reminding me that purpose always finds its moment.”

Taylor also gave a shoutout to her One Battle After Another director, Paul Thomas Anderson, whom she dubbed Paul “Let ’em cook” Thomas Anderson.

“Thank you for your vision, your trust and your brilliance. My gratitude is endless,” Teyana gushed. “I love you. We love you, and thank you so much for holding space for me and our entire cast.”

The Grammy-nominated artist also paid a heartfelt tribute to her Black roots, finishing her speech by dedicating her win to “my Brown sisters and little Brown girls watching.”

“Our softness is not a liability. Our depth is not too much,” Taylor said. “Our light does not need permission to shine. We belong in every room we walk into. Our voices matter, and our dreams deserve space.”

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Real. Reliable. Texas Public Radio.

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Are Declining Stocking Rates Underexplored By Scientists? – Inside Climate News

If you stood in front of a map of the world, subtracted its oceans and threw a dart, you would have about a one-in-four chance of hitting land humans use for grazing livestock. But concentrations of grazing animals used for human consumption across the world have been shifting for the last 25 years, according to a new study, suggesting profound environmental and climate consequences.

In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, authors from Arizona State University used data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to establish livestock trends from 1999 to 2023. In middle Africa, parts of Asia and Central and South America, livestock numbers are on the rise, while in North America, Europe and Australia their numbers are falling.

But the environmental changes associated with a decrease in livestock on the land have not always been studied at the same rate as the impacts of an increase in stocking on a landscape. From 1999 to 2023, there were about 10 papers published on overgrazing, the ecological impact of species like cattle eating the same patch of land too frequently, for every one study exploring how landscapes respond in the absence of livestock, said Osvaldo Sala, director of Arizona State University’s Global Drylands Center and one of the paper’s authors.

As a result, scientists do not understand the ecological consequences of decreasing livestock as well as they understand overgrazing’s impacts.

“The mismatch between the patterns of stocking rates and the literature really surprised me,” Sala said. “Policy is determined by what scientists tell the broader community, so if the scientists are [saying] that the major problem is overgrazing, the policy will be to try to study overgrazing, combat overgrazing, while, in fact, that only addresses the challenges in half of the world.”

Increasing concentrations of livestock were driven by factors like regional changes in total meat consumption and the amount of poultry or pork production, and correlated with wealth and population growth.

Fewer livestock in North America and elsewhere in the West brings difficult-to-predict environmental consequences. Sometimes ecosystems can rebound in the absence of cattle, restoring biodiversity, but this is not guaranteed. The paper found that decreased grazing can affect local water cycles, increase a landscape’s wildfire risk or reduce biodiversity if regeneration is not properly managed.

These changes can have climate implications—more plant growth traps more carbon, but can make a landscape more likely to burn more severely, releasing carbon stored in vegetation into the atmosphere. Without more research into these outcomes and their relationship to declining stocking rates, scientists may be missing a key component of agriculture’s connection to climate change.

“It’s not only an opportunity but a need if we want to have a full picture of climate change,” Sala said.

The vast majority of U.S. livestock is in ranges in the American West. Sala emphasized that even though there are fewer cattle on the landscape today than there were in 1999, that doesn’t mean that overgrazing isn’t still an issue.

According to reporting by High Country News, wealthy landowners in the region allow their cattle to overgraze rangeland despite warnings from federal agencies.

“They’ve highlighted a really important blind spot that exists in general research about livestock trends globally,” said Retta Bruegger, a rangeland ecologist at Colorado State University, who was not involved in the paper. “I think the implications for rangeland health are really important here.”

Drought and wildfire sprang to her mind as potentially fruitful avenues of future research for scientists.

Bruegger, who works with ranchers on Colorado’s western slope, added that the paper underscores researchers’ need to pay attention to historical livestocking trends, particularly in the West. “Sometimes we have this idea [that] the numbers of livestock on our public rangelands in the West are constant or maybe they’re increasing and they’re really not, according to the paper,” she said. The new work “highlights the need to really be engaged with the actual trends that are happening as we think about ecology and landscapes.”

Sala is excited by the many research opportunities his paper suggests. Even something as well-understood as plants’ ability to trap carbon must be explored more, he said. It’s not enough to simply suspect that flora no longer exposed to grazing will store more carbon, he said. “We need to find out how much, where, and when. We don’t know.”

About This Story

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Jake Bolster reports on Wyoming and the West for Inside Climate News. Previously, he worked as a freelancer, covering climate change, energy, and the environment across the United States. He holds a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University.

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CNBC host Jim Cramer: Trump threat against Powell “does feel like a combination of McCarthy … and Nixon”

DAVID FABER (CO-HOST): You know, Powell fights and he is clearly doing that here, Jim. We should point out as well, though, that this is an administration whose Justice Department has chosen to prosecute others who are perceived to be enemies of the president, and has failed, actually, in at least one instance I’m aware of, to even get indictments for those prosecutions or potential prosecutions, which is extremely rare.

JIM CRAMER (CO-HOST): Right. Well, look, the Nixonian thing, I mean, it does feel like a combination of McCarthy, and that’s Sen. McCarthy, and Nixon, when you decide that you don’t like someone, and the Justice Department is moderately independent, but not totally independent — you can go after people. You can savage their lives. I mean, I think that Jay Powell’s life is about to be savaged by the president of United States. I think the president could say the Justice Department looked into this and decided that the contractors were directly related to doing whatever Powell did. I think it will be fatuous, but it doesn’t matter if it’s fatuous. Carl, when you’re indicted by the Justice Department, you’re not the same person. You’re not. You’re a person who basically just says, I don’t want this job. And the new Fed guys, I guess they just say, you know, I lower rates, no indictment, I raise rates, maybe an indictment.

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ICE’s Violence Isn’t a Flaw in the System—It’s the Bedrock

State-sanctioned cruelty is revealing itself as a governing strategy that treats certain lives as expendable.

People march during a protest after the killing of Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis. (Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)

It’s a heavy time in the U.S.

Early in the month, we learned of the death of Dr. Janell Green Smith, a certified nurse-midwife and doctor of nursing practice (DNP) in South Carolina. Smith was a Black maternal health advocate, who chose to become a midwife in order to help combat the Black maternal mortality crisis.

The fact that she died in childbirth is not lost on us. It’s a sobering reminder of why her work matters, and serves to further underscore its urgency. Black women are three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the CDC. It’s a crisis that has only been compounded by abortion bans in the wake of Dobbs; on Ms.’ running list of preventable deaths caused by abortion bans, Black women are disproportionately represented.