To say the least this article is belated

Approval from the creditors is expected by the end of theweek and the aim is for Tribune, which owns the Chicago Tribuneand Los Angeles Times newspapers, to be negotiating with justone party by Monday, the first source said. Tribune has not submitted a winning bidder for approval byMajor League Baseball, said a fourth source familiar with theprocess who asked not to be identified An MLB spokesmanreferred questions to Tribune. Any winning bidder will need 75 percent of the 30 teamowners to approve the deal and that process can take up to twomonths as baseball officials investigate the potential newowner and the financial structure of the offer. But several sources and bankruptcy court expertsquestioned whether the process can move that fast. The Cubs open their season on April 6 in Houston and theirfirst game in Wrigley Field is April 13.

Separately, Tribune said on Thursday that it isderegistering its debt securities. As a result, it said it willno longer have to file quarterly and annual financial reportsor significant announcements with the U.S Securities andExchange Commission. (Additional reporting by Robert MacMillan in New York, editingby Matthew Lewis, Andre Grenon, Gary Hill) Stocks Mergers & Acquisitions Bonds Global Markets Funds News ETFs News Private Capital. ) To say the least, this article is belated.Nonetheless, just because time has passed does not mean that the wounds are any less present or visible.A couple years ago, the Seattle Supersonics (or "Sonics," if you're nasty) left their hometown amid a dispute over a dilapidated arena.Loyal Sonics fans were crushed, and the league in general lost a great set of fans.Gone forever were the throngs of supporters that helped make it "reign" during an era that included a once high-flying Shawn Kemp and a "glove"-ly Gary Payton.Earlier still (than my recollections go, at least) were the days in which Gus Williams torched opponents and big Jack Sikma loomed larger than a Pacific Redwood en route to their title in 1979.But their banner has no home in Seattle; rather, Oklahoma City claims that honor.This phenomenon is not new to basketball, or major sports in general.The Los Angeles Lakers claim titles won when their moniker was appropriate, back in Minneapolis.The original Cleveland Browns' titles have their home in Maryland, not alongside the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame.This happens all of the time. And it begs the question: Is this rightIn all honesty, this really had not crossed my mind until recently.I was having a conversation with the Northwest's version of "The Schwab," a man by the name of Erik DeLong. This Portland, Oregon regional treasure of sports knowledge recently asked me, "Should the titles won by the Lakers in Minnesota really count"Given that I had not really contemplated this, I gave him aquizzical look.DeLong continued, "I mean, are there a bunch of old guys in Minneapolis still rooting for their Lakers"Obviously, everyone has an angle that they are coming from, and Erik is no different.Despite being a Portland resident, he is a life-long Boston Celtics fan.As such, he has a vested interest in the bragging rights of his favorite squad, and the Lakers are beginning to move within the conversation of the Celtics when it comes to all-time supremacy.However, the more I thought about it, the more it started to bother me.When a team moves away from its home, a big piece of the community dies.Obviously there are financial ramifications.However, psychologically the wound may be even bigger.And by bringing the banners with them, they are essentially adding insult to injury.Think about all of the cities that have been scarred by teams relocating.Who can forget the Baltimore Colts leaving in the middle of the night, in the process crushing an already heartbroken town Or the new Baltimore team being brought from one of the original NFL townsAll those years, all those moments in which the fans poured their hearts out for their team are essentially wasted.The shifts of work missed in order to watch their team.The money spent on tickets rather than rent that may have resulted in evictions is completely thrown out the door.The bar fights started in order to prove fanhood, all for naught.For me, it always reminds me of the scene in Children of Men in which Clive Owen's character asked his art-collecting cousin why he would keep art that in 100 years nobody would be around to see.Wasted time, plain and simple, gone the way of the Hartford Whalers.The bottom line is that teams should not be allowed to relocate banners and titles to new cities, plain and simple.Obviously the owner of the team has rights.It is their team and they can,technically, do what they please with it.But they should not have the right to showcase their fans' hard work like a trophy of tears.. By Muchena Zigomo JOHANNESBURG, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The U.N's World Food Programme needs to secure food aid for about 6.5 million people in southern Africa by April, the bulk of them in Zimbabwe where the humanitarian situation has worsened, a WFP official said on Friday.

Zimbabwe alone has about 5.5 million people needing food aid and is also battling a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 2,500 people in Africa's worst outbreak in almost a decade. The early part of the year is usually the peak hunger season in southern Africa, falling just before the start of the harvest season in April. WFP's southern Africa spokesman Richard Lee said the agency would target people living with HIV/AIDS, orphans and children in school feeding programmes among others. "January, February, March every year is the hungriest time of the year in southern Africa because our main annual harvest .. starts coming in around April," Lee said. "So these three months are always the hardest because there are so many very poor, very vulnerable people in this region, and this is always the period when the most people struggle to find food for themselves and for their families. Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has compounded the humanitarian crisis in the country, where critics say President Robert Mugabe's policies, such as the seizure of white-owned farms, have ruined Zimbabwe's economy. But the 84-year-old ruler, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, blames Western sanctions for the crisis.