Softball: The NFL broke its silence on the Patriots ball scandal yesterday, saying 40 people have been interviewed and that the league has even hired a video/electronic forensic expert to find out who dunnit. Reports say 11 0f 12 Patriot game balls in last Sunday’s AFC Championship were under inflated. A league statement said, “While the evidence thus far supports the conclusion that footballs that were under-inflated were used by the Patriots in the first half, the footballs were properly inflated for the second half and confirmed at the conclusion of the game to have remained properly inflated.”

Ukraine: Major fighting has broken out again along several fronts in Eastern Ukraine with evidence that rebels are backed by thousands of Russian troops. At least 10 people were killed by a rocket attack today in the port city of Mariupol. The presence of Russian troops suggest that the falling price of oil and international economic sanctions have not discouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin from interfering in Ukraine.

World: Greek voters go to the polls tomorrow to choose between the parties of current Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and the left wing Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras. Samaras says his fiscal austerity is digging Greece out of debt, but Tsipras wants to restore the country’s “dignity” and raises the possibility of defaulting on international bailout loans and pulling out of the Euro zone. He’s got the European economy on edge.

Death Be Not Proud: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging Oklahoma’s method of execution by lethal injection. Oddly, this comes just a week after the court declined to stop an Oklahoma execution with some of the same chemicals under question. Last April convict Clayton Lockett was described as struggling and writhing in pain for 43 minutes after he was administered a lethal cocktail of drugs.

The Obit Page: Ernie Banks, the great power-hitting shortstop who played 19 perpetually hopeful seasons with the bumbling Chicago Cubs, has died at age 83. He used to say, “It’s a beautiful day, let’s play two.” >Peggy Charren, who waged a campaign to improve children’s television, has died of vascular dementia at age 86. In the 1970s Charren, who founded Action for Children’s Television, began the fight against what she called “wall-to-wall monster cartoons.”

Outbreak: The measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland has drawn attention to the increasing anti-vaccination movement. At least 66 people have contracted the highly contagious disease and many of them were never vaccinated. Some people object for religious reasons, or claim vaccinations cause autism. Measles was considered to have been eliminated in the US in 2000, but last year there was a spike in cases, 644, which is more than three times the number in 2013.

Farmed Out: The John Deere farm equipment company laid off 900 workers in Iowa yesterday. It’s the company’s third round of layoffs in five months. Deere says the demand for its equipment is falling as farmers face lower commodity prices and higher costs. Workers have suffered some big layoffs in recent weeks: DreamWorks Animation, 500; eBay, 2,400; American Express, 4,000. And by some estimates, the US oil industry could lose 20,000 jobs this year as the price of oil continues to skid and make some operations unprofitable.

Shopped Out: First your local mall and now SkyMall, the airline-shopping magazine, is going out of business. It’s your last chance to buy a fish hotel, an Eiffel Tower tea lamp, circulation-improving leg wraps, or a yard Yeti. The only choice for inflight shopping has been killed by available Wi-Fi and easy Internet shopping while flying. You’re just going to have to search the net to buy a Night Glow Toilet Seat from your padded seat on an airplane.

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