Top of the Key: Los Angeles Lakers basketball great Kobe Bryant announced that he’s retiring at the end of this season, his 20^th in professional basketball.

Bryant made his announcement in a 52-line poem he wrote and posted on Derek Jeter’s website, The Players’ Tribune.

The poem, in part:

You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream

And I’ll always love you for it.

But I can’t love you obsessively for much longer.

This season is all I have left to give.

My heart can take the pounding

My mind can handle the grind

But my body knows it’s time to say goodbye.”

He’s a much better basketball player than a poet. Bryant came right out of high school and has played his entire career with the Lakers and won five NBA titles. But plagued by injuries for the past two years and low stats on the court, it has been evident that Bryant’s career was coming to the end.

Nation: The University of Chicago cancelled all classes today after the FBI informed the school about an online threat of a gun attack. The threat said the incident would happen on the campus quad at 10 am. A university spokesman said, “”It was pretty specific in terms of time and place.” The cancellation affects 30,000 people.

Political Climate: On the eve of the Paris climate summit, China released a discouraging report about the country’s future as the world warms. The Chinese report talks about rising sea levels, dwindling supplies of water, shifting rain and snowfall patterns, and melting glaciers.

China is the world’s biggest polluter, followed by the United States, which produces about half the greenhouse gases as China.

President Obama and more that 100 world leaders opened the talks today in a grand negotiation aimed at reaching a worldwide agreement that will begin to curb the effects of greenhouse gases and global warming. Previous attempts have failed, but one difference this time is that the US and China come to the table with a mutual agreement to curtail pollution in their own countries.

World: Under pressure from Germany, which has been swamped with migrants, the European Union has offered Turkey more than $3 billion to stop immigrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan from reaching Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that the EU needs to “replace illegal migration with legal migration.”

Turkey is host to two million Syrian refugees and with the expense and social upheaval that comes with mass immigration, the EU would be happy to have them stay there.

Polite Society: Police in some recent mass shootings have been slow to respond because the incidents occurred in “open carry” states where it’s legal to carry a firearm in public. A woman called 911 in Colorado Springs the other day as a gunman approached the offices of Planned Parenthood and the operator told the caller the state has an open carry law. The cops came running only after the shooter opened fire. Three people were killed, including a police officer.

Snowball: In falling wet snow in Denver last night, the Broncos broke the undefeated season of the New England Patriots 30-24. The Broncos came back from 14 points behind and took the game into overtime, driven by quarterback Brock Osweiler, who’s been the backup until the Super Bowl winning Peyton Manning was benched two weeks ago.

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