The Gophers men’s basketball program has added to its roster in consecutive days.

Incoming freshman guard Kai Shinholster said he will remain in the U’s 2025 class through the coaching change from Ben Johnson to Niko Medved.

“Locked in!!” Shinholster posted on social media Tuesday.

Shinholster’s news comes after Colorado State forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson entered the transfer portal and committed to Minnesota on Tuesday. Crocker-Johnson has two years of eligibility remaining for the U.

Shinholster, a 6-foot-5 combo guard from Philadelphia, is a three-star recruit who had scholarship offers from Mississippi State, James Madison, St. Louis, Tempe and others.

The two other signees from Johnson’s class — center Parker Jefferson and guard Jacob Ross — said within the last week they want out of their national letters of intent to Minnesota.

The Gophers now has four roster spots filled — including to-be sophomores Isaac Asuma and Grayson Grove — and nine open scholarship spots for next season.

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Jason Statham’s latest thriller “A Working Man” is “Taken,” if “Taken” took place in Chicago and Joliet and their environs.

For those who don’t live in the area, Joliet is a 45-minute or so drive southwest of Chicago, depending on traffic. “A Working Man” imagines an insidious sex trafficking network run by Russian mobsters in very silly tracksuits, whose owners clearly are just asking for it. What is “it”? “It” is Statham. Based on the book “Levon’s Trade,” the first of 12 Chuck Dixon novels, this overripe exercise in vigilante slaughter casts Stathan as Royal Marines veteran Levon Cade, now working as a construction foreman for a family-run company.

Levon is up against it, life-wise. He’s fighting to retain co-parenting custody of his daughter, he’s sleeping in his car and he’s struggling to keep a lid on his most violent impulses, without which, of course, there would be no movie.

In the line of duty, he has killed plenty; his American wife committed suicide prior to the film’s timeline, while he was away. It’s a lot for one person to shoulder, but in this realm of action fantasy, there’s only so much emotional realism allowed. In “A Working Man,” when someone encourages Levon to work through his probable post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s practically a laugh line and treated as dismissible woke nonsense.

The screenplay adaptation comes from Sylvester Stallone and director David Ayer, and it has a sure sense of what Statham’s audience wants and doesn’t want. In the previous Ayer/Statham meetup “The Beekeeper,” the star took on online scam artists and massive political corruption; in “A Working Man,” it’s sex trafficking. When the daughter (Arianna Rivas) of Statham’s weak, indulgent boss (Michael Peña) is abducted, it’s up to Levon, his scowl and his dazzling combat skills to save this surrogate daughter, while securing his relationship with his own daughter (Isla Gie).

Once abducted, the Rivas character falls out of the movie for a long while. There’s too much killing to do to accommodate her. Stabbing, impaling, shooting and neck-snapping his way from Chicago to Joliet, Levon leaves 50-plus bodies (of Russians and Latinos, mostly) strewn all over the Land of Lincoln as he uncovers the sorry depths of Russian mob corruption.

This includes cops on the take and a Joliet roadhouse drug dealer (Chidi Ajufo) who livens things up. Levon goes undercover as a meth customer as part of his rescue mission. During Statham’s entertaining initial scene with Ajufo — the movie has its moments, and a few diverting blurs of fast-cut mayhem — we get the line we’ve been waiting for, delivered by Ajufo’s Mr. Big, a man who outfits his German biker helmet with enormous stag horns. In the bar, he regards Levon, who one of the baddies suspects is undercover law enforcement. Looking at Statham’s mitts, Ajufo says: “You ain’t a cop.” (Pause, camera zips in for a close-up.) “You’re a working man.“

Director Ayer may have hit the bloody sweet spot more engagingly in “The Beekeeper,” but you can’t say he’s not trying things here. Visually, “A Working Man” flips from absurd stylization (love that Joliet roadhouse, which looks gaudy enough for Caligula) to handheld faux-realism and back again. Several points in the climax have a comically enormous full moon serving as backdrop. As arguments for vigilante justice go, this one appears likely to lead to a sequel or three — and unless the filmmakers are dolts, they’ll jolly well bring back Gunny, the blind combat vet with a devotion to archery, so drolly underplayed by David Harbour.

“A Working Man” — 2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong violence, language throughout and drug content)

Running time: 1:56

How to watch: Premieres in theaters March 28

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

When it comes to the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease, a new study suggests that the nose knows.

Mass General Brigham neurology researchers have created a smell test that shows promise as a tool for identifying risk of cognitive impairment.

They found that test participants could successfully take the test at home, and that older adults with cognitive impairment scored lower on the test than cognitively normal adults.

Their study on the test could help identify people who are at risk of Alzheimer’s, and help physicians intervene before serious symptoms set in.

“Early detection of cognitive impairment could help us identify people who are at risk of Alzheimer’s disease and intervene years before memory symptoms begin,” said senior author Mark Albers, of the Laboratory of Olfactory Neurotranslation, the McCance Center for Brain Health, and Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Our goal has been to develop and validate a cost-effective, non-invasive test that can be performed at home, helping to set the stage for advancing research and treatment for Alzheimer’s,” Albers added.

Early symptoms for Alzheimer’s disease typically appear after age 60, and the risk increases with age.

The researchers’ olfactory tests — which involve participants peeling and then sniffing odors on a card — assess people’s ability to identify and remember odors.

Albers and colleagues are interested in whether olfactory dysfunction — the sometimes-subtle loss of sense of smell — can serve as an early warning sign for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and traumatic brain injury.

Albers helped found a company that makes the Aromha Brain Health Test, the test used by the research team to conduct this study.

To evaluate the olfactory test, the team recruited English and Spanish speaking participants who had self-reported concerns about memory, or those with mild cognitive impairment.

The researchers compared these participants’ test results with those who had no sense of smell and with cognitively normal individuals.

The research team found that odor identification, memory, and discrimination declined with age. They also found that older adults with mild cognitive impairment had lower scores for odor discrimination and identification compared with older adults who were cognitively normal.

Overall, the researchers found that test results were similar across English and Spanish speakers, and participants performed the test equally successfully regardless of whether they were observed by a research assistant.

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The authors noted that future studies could incorporate neuropsychological testing and could follow patients over time to see if the tool can predict cognitive decline.

“Our results suggest that olfactory testing could be used in clinical research settings in different languages and among older adults to predict neurodegenerative disease and development of clinical symptoms,” Albers said.

The number of people living with Alzheimer’s is projected to double from 6.9 million in 2020 to nearly 14 million people by 2060.

Alzheimer’s disease is a top 10 leading cause of death in the U.S.

In 2022, it was the seventh leading cause of death among U.S. adults, and the sixth leading cause of death among adults 65-plus. The actual number of older people who die from Alzheimer’s may be much higher than what is officially recorded. Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia are not always reported on death certificates.

Meanwhile at Mass General Brigham, researchers in a different study showed that a nasal spray being tested for use in preventing Alzheimer’s disease could also reduce neuroinflammation in traumatic brain injury.

Foralumab, a nasal spray originally developed to treat multiple sclerosis and used by MGB physicians for Alzheimer’s treatment under FDA compassionate use protocols, was tested in mouse models with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury.

The researchers found that Foralumab induces immune cells to travel up to the brain and come in contact with microglial cells, the cells that regulate brain development and injury repair, to reduce inflammation in the brain.

The study results show that the spray could reduce damage to the central nervous system and behavioral deficits, suggesting a potential therapeutic approach for TBI and other acute forms of brain injury.

“This opens up a whole new area of research and treatment in traumatic brain injury, something that’s almost impossible to treat,” said senior author Howard Weiner, co-director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “It also means this could work in intracerebral hemorrhage and other stroke patients with brain injury.”

By ALI SWENSON and CHRISTINE FERNANDO

PEWAUKEE, Wis. (AP) — As the first news outlets began calling the Wisconsin Supreme Court election for the liberal candidate Susan Crawford, her opponent called her — to concede.

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Minutes later Tuesday night, the conservative-backed Brad Schimel took the stage at his watch party to acknowledge the loss. Angry yells broke out. One woman began to chant about his opponent: “Cheater.”

Schimel didn’t hesitate. “No,” he responded. “You’ve got to accept the results.” Later, he returned to the stage with his classic rock cover band to jam on his bass.

In any other American era, Schimel’s concession wouldn’t be considered unusual – except maybe the guitar part. But it stands out at a time when the nation’s politics have opened a fissure between those who trust election results and those who don’t.

“It shouldn’t be super laudable,” said Jeff Mandel, general counsel of the Madison-based liberal law firm Law Forward. “But given where we are and given what we’ve seen over the past few years nationwide and in Wisconsin, it is laudable.”

Accusations of cheating are common now

Over the past several years, numerous Republicans — and some Democrats — have lobbed unfounded accusations of voter fraud, harassed election officials and pointed to “irregularities” to dispute their election losses. President Donald Trump led that movement in 2020, when he filed lawsuits in battleground states, including one thrown out by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, seeking to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Schimel’s concession of that very same court to a liberal majority, though in line with what generations of candidates have done in the past, was not a given in today’s divisive atmosphere.

Onstage, as his supporters yelled, Schimel shook his head and left no uncertainty he’d lost — a result that would become even clearer later in the night as Crawford’s lead grew to around 10 percentage points.

“The numbers aren’t going to — aren’t going to turn around,” he told the crowd. “They’re too bad, and we’re not going to pull this off.”

By acknowledging his loss quickly, Schimel curtailed the kind of explanation-seeking and digital digging that erupted online after Trump, a Republican, lost the 2020 presidential election, with citizen journalists falsely accusing innocent election workers and voters of fraud.

Schimel also avoided the impulses to which many in his party have defaulted in recent elections across the country, as they’ve dragged their feet to avoid accepting defeat.

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel makes his concession speech to a crowd at his election night party Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Pewaukee, Wis. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)

Last fall, Wisconsin Republican Eric Hovde spent days sowing doubt in the results after he lost a Senate race to Democrat Tammy Baldwin. He conceded nearly two weeks after Election Day, saying he did not want to “add to political strife through a contentious recount” even as he raised debunked election conspiracies.

In a 2024 state Supreme Court race in North Carolina, two recounts have affirmed Democrat Allison Riggs narrowly won the election, but her Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin, is still seeking to reverse the outcome by having ballots thrown out.

Trump also has continued to falsely claim he won the 2020 presidential election, even though there was no evidence of widespread fraud and the results were confirmed through multiple recounts, reviews and audits. His close adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, has also spread a flurry of unfounded claims about voter fraud involving noncitizens.

Musk and his affiliated groups sank at least $21 million into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and he personally paid three voters $1 million each for signing a petition to boost turnout. He had said the race was central to the “future of America and Western civilization.”

But after the results came in, he said he “expected to lose” and touted the successful passage of a voter ID amendment in Wisconsin’s Constitution. Trump, who had endorsed Schimel, didn’t post about the loss but used his Truth Social platform to celebrate the voter ID win.

An assessment: ‘That’s democracy’

Not all Republicans watching the race were in a magnanimous mood as they processed the results. Peter Bernegger, the head of an election integrity organization who has brought numerous lawsuits against Wisconsin election clerks and offices, raised the specter that an “algorithm” was behind Crawford’s win. InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reacted to the results on X, saying, “Election fraud should be investigated.”

But at Schimel’s watch party, several supporters applauded his high road.

“He was all class,” said Russell Jones, a 51-year-old attorney. “That’s how you lose.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel talks with supporters after making his concession speech Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Pewaukee, Wis. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)

Adam Manka, of the La Crosse County Republican Party, said he worries about how a liberal court could redraw the state’s congressional districts. “But you can’t exactly change it,” Manka said, calling Schimel “very graceful” in his defeat. “This is democracy.”

The moment is a good example for future candidates, said Ari Mittleman, executive director of the Wisconsin-based nonprofit Keep Our Republic, which aims to rebuild trust and confidence in elections. He compared elections to a Green Bay Packers football game: “We know who won, we know who lost.” He said he thinks Schimel, a lifelong Wisconsinite, understands that.

“It’s transparent, and we accept the final score,” Mittleman said. “That’s democracy.”

Schimel and his band, performing for a thinning crowd Tuesday night, took the loss in stride.

“Can you ask them at the bar to get me a Coors Light please?” Schimel said between songs. “Put it on my tab.”

Associated Press writer Scott Bauer contributed from Madison, Wis. Swenson reported from New York. The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about the AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.