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Tennessee governor, congressman discuss safety on visit to Jewish school that foiled armed intrusion

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and U.S. Rep. David Kustoff on Monday praised security measures at a Memphis Jewish school where a former student with a gun was stopped from entering the building in July, declaring strong safety procedures have become even more critical in light of the Israel-Hamas war.Lee and Kustoff, both Republicans, spoke with students at Margolin Hebrew Academy-Feinstone Yeshiva of the South during a visit to the suburban school. Kustoff, who is Jewish and attended the school from kindergarten through 2nd grade, expressed support with Lee for Israel in the war that began when it was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. Inside the one-story Memphis school, a sign saying “we stand with Israel” hangs on a hallway wall. Nearby, a bulletin board features names and photos of Israeli hostages as another sign of solidarity from the school’s students and staff.Before Lee and Kustoff addressed about 140 students, faculty and staff, Rabbi Yonasan Gersten led s...

Half of Canadian households planning to participate in Halloween: poll

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

Half of Canadian households plan to participate in Halloween this year, according to a new poll.The Maru Public Opinion survey said people will be either going out trick-or-treating or staying behind to hand out candy to children. Of those polled, those from Atlantic Canada were most likely to celebrate the holiday at 71 per cent, while those from Quebec were least likely, with just 38 per cent participating.Younger Canadians, those aged 18 to 34, were mostly likely to provide a “spirited presence” for the door-to-door tradition.Here in Toronto, trick-or-treaters will have to deal with a bit of a chilly evening. CityNews 680 meteorologist Jill Taylor says the Halloween evening forecast will see temperatures hovering around 2 C with the wind making it feel more like -5.“Dress warm,” Taylor said. “It’s just a very light wind, but enough to give us that raw kind of feeling as you’re heading out with the kids. You will definitely need the extra layers under, or over top of y...

Haiti bans charter flights to Nicaragua in blow to migrants fleeing poverty and violence

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

PORT=AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s government has banned all charter flights to Nicaragua that migrants fleeing poverty and violence had been increasingly using in their quest to reach the United States, according to a bulletin issued Monday that The Associated Press obtained.Haiti’s government did not provide an explanation for the decision in its bulletin, which was first reported by The Miami Herald. Civil aviation authorities in Haiti did not respond to a message seeking comment.The move left a couple of thousand angry and bewildered travelers stranded in a parking lot facing Haiti’s main international airport in the capital of Port-au-Prince surrounded by their luggage, with some holding babies. Among them stranded was Jean Erode Louis-Saint, 25, whose flight was scheduled for mid-afternoon Monday but never received a boarding pass.“Can you imagine that I spent all this money? I sold everything that I had,” he said. “I cannot stay in this country because of the la...

Ivanka Trump testimony delayed to Nov. 8, will follow dad Donald Trump on stand at civil fraud trial

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Ivanka Trump’s testimony at her father’s New York civil fraud trial is being delayed until next week so there is sufficient time for her to be questioned, a judge said Monday.Former President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter had been set to take the witness stand on Friday, when the Manhattan trial typically meets for a half-day session, but lawyers in the case said her testimony is likely to take a full day, if not longer.Judge Arthur Engoron, who last week rejected Ivanka Trump’s bid to avoid testifying, said she will now appear on Nov. 8. The judge had floated the idea of making Friday a full-day court session, but Donald Trump’s lawyers said they couldn’t do that because of other commitments.“I think we’re all OK with Ivanka on Wednesday the 8th,” Engoron said in court after discussing the matter with state lawyers and Donald Trump’s defense team.The scheduling change now puts Ivanka Trump on the witness stand at the end of a blockbuster stretch in a case tha...

Climate scientist Saleemul Huq, who emphasized helping poor nations adapt to warming, dies at 71

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

Saleemul Huq, a pioneering climate scientist from Bangladesh who pushed to get the world to understand, pay for and adapt to worsening warming impacts on poorer nations, died of cardiac arrest Saturday. He was 71.“Saleem always focused on the poor and marginalized, making sure that climate change was about people, their lives, health and livelihoods,” said University of Washington climate and health scientist Kristie Ebi, a friend of Huq’s.Huq, who died in Dhaka, directed and helped found the International Centre for Climate Change and Development there. He was also a senior associate and program founder at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London and taught at universities in England and Bangladesh. He was an early force for community-based efforts to adapt to what climate change did to poor nations.Queen Elizabeth II bestowed the Order of the British Empire on him in 2022 for his efforts.“As a dual Bangladeshi and British citizen, I have been working f...

Colombia veers to the right as President Petro’s allies lose by wide margins in regional elections

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Allies of President Gustavo Petro lost by wide margins in municipal and provincial elections Sunday, in what analysts called a sign of growing discontent with Colombia’s first left-wing government.Candidates for the president’s Historical Pact party failed to win mayorships in any of the nation’s main cities and won governorships in only two small provinces along Colombia’s southern border, according to results released on Sunday night by election officials.Races for governorships were won mostly by candidates from traditional parties on the center and the right, which were beaten by Petro in last year’s presidential election and lost to independent candidates in the last regional elections four years ago.Analysts said Sunday’s outcome threatens Petro’s efforts to get the congress to make significant changes to the nation’s health system and its labor laws.“This sends a message to some lawmakers who were perhaps on the fence about returning to the government,...

Watchdog group says attack that killed videographer ‘explicitly targeted’ Lebanon journalists

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

BEIRUT (AP) — A watchdog group advocating for press freedom said that the strikes that hit a group of journalists in southern Lebanon earlier this month, killing one, were targeted rather than accidental and that the journalists were clearly identified as press.Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, published preliminary conclusions Sunday in an ongoing investigation, based on video evidence and witness testimonies, into two strikes that killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six journalists from Reuters, AFP and Al Jazeera as they were covering clashes on the southern Lebanese border on Oct. 13. The first strike killed Abdallah, and the second hit a vehicle belonging to an Al Jazeera team, injuring journalists standing next to it. Both came from the direction of the Israeli border, the report said, but it did not explicitly name Israel as being responsible.“What we can prove with facts, with evidence for the moment, is that the location where the journalists were standi...

Autoworkers are the latest to spotlight the power of US labor. What is the state of unions today?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. labor unions are once again flexing the muscles in the national spotlight.The United Auto Workers’ tentative agreements with Detroit’s Big Three automakers could end the union’s six-week strike. Gridlock persists in Hollywood between actors and major studios, while hospitality workers in Las Vegas, Detroit, Southern California and beyond are fighting for better pay and protections.But despite historic walkouts and record contract deals seen this year, there’s a lot stacked against labor organizers. Union membership rates in the U.S. have been falling for decades due to changes in the economy, employer opposition, growing political partisanship and legal challenges.“Even though we’re seeing stronger support for unions, (with) the highest popularity of union favorability in polls since at least the 1960s, translating the worker desire for representation into actual representation is really hard under our current system,” Alexander Colvin, d...

Two hours of terror and now years of devastation for Acapulco’s poor in Hurricane Otis aftermath

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Estela Sandoval Díaz was huddled in her tiny concrete bathroom, sure these were the final moments of her life, when Hurricane Otis ripped off her tin roof.With it went clothing, savings, furniture, photos and 33 years of the life Sandoval built piece-by-piece on the forgotten fringes of Acapulco, Mexico.Sandoval was among hundreds of thousands of people whose lives were torn apart when the fastest intensifying hurricane on record in the Eastern Pacific shredded the coastal city of 1 million, leaving at least 45 dead. The Category 5 hurricane damaged nearly all of Acapulco’s homes, left bodies bobbing along the coastline and much of the city foraging for food.While authorities were hard at work restoring order in Acapulco’s tourist center — cutting through trees in front of high-rise hotels and restoring power — the city’s poorest, like Sandova,l said they felt abandoned. She and hundreds of thousands others lived two hours of terror last wee...

First Quantum shares sink 28 per cent after Panama announces referendum on mine deal

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:30 GMT

TORONTO — Shares in First Quantum Minerals Ltd. lost more than a quarter of their value on Monday after the president of Panama said over the weekend that he would hold a referendum on a law that cleared the way for the company’s Cobre Panama mine.The vote on whether or not to repeal the law will be held on Dec. 17 and the results will be binding, the president said Sunday.The decision by the government comes after protesters took to the streets in Panama demanding the government rescind the contract with First Quantum.The referendum brings fresh uncertainty over the company’s operations in the country.The company and Panama’s government reached a deal in March that supposedly ended a long-standing dispute over profit sharing at the mine and included substantially higher payments to Panama. The contract was enacted into law on Oct. 20.First Quantum shares closed $7.96, or 28 per cent, at $20 on Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange and saw more than five times more ...