The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games are coming up in February. Athletes from across the globe will be performing together on the highest platform their sport can reach. It’s an exciting time not just for the athletes who have trained incredibly hard to qualify, but for all of us watching from home.

In this Winter Olympic Games we have a fellow Wisconsinite to cheer on – Staff Sargent Deedra Irwin. She’s on Team USA competing in the biathlon and currently holds the best placement for an American athlete in the event with her 7th place finish from her Olympic debut in Beijing.

Irwin is from Pulaski, Wisconsin and is also part of the Army’s World Class Athlete Program. To share more about how she got into the biathlon and her outlook on the upcoming Olympics, she joins Lake Effect's Audrey Nowakowski.

Every year, Woodland Pattern selects a Milwaukee Youth Poet Laureate through a competition. Last summer, the local non-profit crowned Angela Wang with the literary honor. She's a senior at the University School of Milwaukee and wraps up her service this upcoming May.

As Youth Poet Laureate, Wang shares her poetry across the city and helps guide other young poets through writing workshops. Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez talks with Wang about what inspires her poems and what’s she learned in the year-long role.

Starting this week, some bus riders across Milwaukee County will need to wait longer for their rides. Especially on the weekends. That’s because the Milwaukee County Transit System reduced service to some routes to help deal with a multimillion dollar budget deficit.

Regular fares also went up by 75 cents at the beginning of this year. To learn more about the changes, WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal is joined by Jesus Ochoa and Brian DeNeeve Brian with MCTS.