Nashville Mayor Candidates 2019

SEOUL, South Korea – Crews scrubbed everything from money to buses, military bases were on high alert and quarantines were enforced Wednesday from a beachfront resort in the Atlantic to a remote island in the Pacific, as the world worked to halt the fast-spreading virus that for the first time counted more new cases outside China than inside the country, where the epidemic originated. Worries over the ever-expanding economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis multiplied, with factories idled, trade routes frozen and tourism crippled, while a growing list of nations braced for the illness to breach their borders.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis celebrated the Ash Wednesday ritual that marks the opening of the Catholic Church’s Lenten season in traditional fashion while greeting the public in Rome as other Masses were canceled in northern Italy over fears of the coronavirus outbreak. Francis and a long line of priests, bishops and cardinals walked in a procession through Rome’s Aventine hill into the 5th-century Santa Sabina basilica for a late-afternoon Mass.

WASHINGTON – Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday urged party unity amid Bernie Sanders’ surge in the presidential race, even as House Democrats worry about a volatile election season that could put a self-described democratic socialist atop the ticket and threaten their majority. “I would hope that everyone would say, no matter who the nominee is for president, we wholeheartedly embrace that person,” Pelosi, D-Calif., told the House Democratic caucus at a closed-door meeting.

CAIRO – Egypt was holding a full-honors military funeral Wednesday for the country’s former autocratic President Hosni Mubarak, who was for decades the face of stability in the Middle East but who was ousted from power in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that swept much of the region. A few dozen Mubarak supporters, clad in black and carrying posters of the former president, had gathered since morning hours at a mosque complex in an eastern New Cairo neighborhood, where Mubarak’s body was brought for the funeral service. Military pallbearers carried Mubarak’s casket wrapped in the Egyptian flag into the mosque for prayers.

Fans of McHenry Outdoor Theater, the only remaining drive-in in the suburbs, can rejoice that its owner has long-term plans for the future with a bunch of upgrades and improvements. Scott Dehn, who has operated the theater for years, announced on Feb. 20 on Facebook that about two months ago he exercised his option to buy the property at 1510 Chapel Hill Road in McHenry. "The threat of redevelopment is now nonexistent," wrote Dehn, whose company Golden Age Holdings, LLC, is listed as the property owner by the McHenry County Treasurer's office. Dehn said he's planning to install a new screen for "the brightest and most crisp resolution" ever projected at the theater; add stone, gravel and rock to the parking lot and grade it to eliminate potholes; and add speakers to the exterior of all buildings. After complaints from patrons, smoking will not be allowed in the main parking lot and instead will be allowed only behind the concession stand, where the public does not park, Dehn said. The McHenry theater has been in existence since the 1940s and became the last of its kind in the suburbs in March 2019, after the Cascade Drive-In in West Chicago ended its 57-year run. The theater is open every Friday and Saturday May through October, rain or shine.

MILWAUKEE – An employee opened fire Wednesday at one of the nation’s largest breweries in Milwaukee, killing five fellow workers before taking his own life, police said. The assailant who attacked the Molson Coors complex was identified as a 51-year-old Milwaukee man who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. “There were five individuals who went to work today, just like everybody goes to work, and they thought they were going to go to work, finish their day and return to their families.