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Hungary in the spotlight after Turkey presses on with Sweden’s bid to join NATO

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — The Hungarian parliament on Tuesday refused a proposal to hold a vote on Sweden’s bid to join NATO, further delaying the Nordic country’s inclusion in the military alliance. Hungary is the main hurdle to Sweden’s admission into NATO after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan submitted a protocol to Turkey’s parliament on Monday to approve its admission. All 31 allies must endorse the accession.The governing Fidesz party — led by populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who is widely considered one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s only allies in the EU — which holds an absolute majority in the Hungarian parliament, has stalled Sweden’s bid since July 2022, alleging that Swedish politicians have told “blatant lies” about the condition of Hungary’s democracy. Fidesz lawmakers blocked the Tuesday proposal to schedule a vote, according to Agnes Vadai, a lawmaker with Hungary’s opposition Democratic Coalition party and a former secretary of st...

Montana man pleads not guilty to charges that he threatened to kill former House Speaker McCarthy

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A Montana man pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal charges that he threatened to assault and murder former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Richard Lee Rogers of Yellowstone County in southern Montana entered the plea during an initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Cavan in federal court in Billings. Rogers is charged with threats to injure and murder a member of Congress, which carries a 10-year prison sentence and $250,000 fine. He faces a second charge of making harassing telephone calls.The threats allegedly happened Feb. 3, several weeks after Republicans elected McCarthy to his short-lived tenure as speaker —which was characterized by frequent clashes with hard-right members of his own party.A grand jury indictment filed last month said the threats were intended as retaliation for McCarthy’s actions as House speaker but did not provide details. The indictment said Rogers made repeated interstate phone calls “solely to harass a perso...

Atlanta temporarily closes 3 fire stations as city amid truck, firefighter shortages

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — The city of Atlanta has temporarily closed three of its more than 30 fire stations because of truck breakdowns and a shortage of firefighters.Atlanta Fire Rescue Chief Roderick Smith told a City Council committee of the closures on Monday.Smith told the committee that the department had 17 fire trucks out of service on Monday, including eight of 31 fire engines and nine of 15 ladder trucks. Many of the trucks are being repaired, but those repairs can take months.Some other trucks, while still running, don’t have their full capabilities.“Right now I think we’re down to two or three fully operational ladder trucks in the whole city,” said Dustin Hillis, chair of the council’s Public Safety Committee.While Hillis described the fire truck fleet as being “in shambles”, Smith told council members the situation while serious, is “not in a dire space right now.” He said the city is working to replace its reserve fleet.Firefighters have seen the number ...

U.S. states sue Meta claiming Facebook, Instagram are addictive and harming children’s mental health

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

Dozens of U.S. states, including California and New York, are suing Meta Platforms Inc. for harming young people’s mental health and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.The lawsuit filed in federal court in California also claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law.“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its social media platforms,” the complaint says. “It has concealed the ways in which these platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children.”The Meta logo is seen at the Vivate...

Grain farmers hit by seaway strike, as management asks labour board for exception

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

MONTREAL — Grain farmers, steelmakers and fertilizer shippers are all feeling the squeeze from a strike by St. Lawrence Seaway workers.The job action by 361 Unifor members at 13 of the 15 locks along the key trade corridor kicked off Sunday, shutting it down immediately.Crosby Devitt, who heads the Grain Farmers of Ontario, says the majority of crops yielded by the 28,000 producers he represents are exported, as farmers wrap up the soybean harvest and begin to reap corn.Devitt says there is no export alternative to the seaway, which runs between Lake Erie and Montreal and carried $16.7 billion worth of cargo last year — nearly half of it grain and iron ore.The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp. says it has applied to the Canada Industrial Relations Board for an exception on the transport of grain, a request that if granted would see the commodity flow through the artery despite the strike.Meanwhile, Algoma Central, the biggest domestic ship operator on the Great Lakes, has said ma...

Stranded at a closed border as bombs fall, foreign nationals in besieged Gaza await evacuation

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — For more than a week, Talaat Ghabayen, a citizen of Norway who spent his whole life in Oslo, has waited days and nights at the Gaza Strip’s land crossing with Egypt as his embassy advised, hoping to flee Israel’s bombardment and looming ground invasion and reunite with his wife and sons back home.“Egypt is literally meters away, I can see it,” Ghabayen, a 54-year-old insurance agent who traveled to Gaza before the war erupted for his mother’s funeral, said Tuesday from the Rafah crossing. Under intense Western pressure, the gates at Rafah opened over the weekend for the first time since the war broke out, letting a trickle of humanitarian aid into the besieged strip and stoking hopes that hundreds of foreign nationals trapped in Gaza would be able to cross into safety.But with each passing hour, Ghabayen loses hope. And each day that Rafah remains shut, he said, is another day that he could die. “They tell us to go south, then they bo...

‘It is pure hate’: Groups condemn protests at Cafe Landwer in Toronto, Ottawa conference

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

The leaders of two prominent Canadian Jewish groups are questioning the approach police and Crown prosecutors are using when it comes to protests that have been condemned for targeting a Jewish business in Toronto and an antisemitism conference in Ottawa.Videos shared on social media showed a group of protesters, including many holding Palestinian flags, gathered in front of a Toronto restaurant this weekend, where some in the crowd could be heard calling it a “Zionist café” — referring to a movement to establish, and develop, a Jewish homeland in Israel — and chanting for a boycott.“Lines have been crossed,” Michael Mostyn, the CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, said Monday.Silence is complicity. Toronto has 25 MPs, 25 MPPs, 25 councillors & the mayor. Of the 76, I can count on my hands how many condemned the blatant #antisemitism at @CafeLandwer.#NeverAgain is not about history, it’s about now.Every act of antisemitism must be condemned. pic.twitter...

New Toronto Raptors assistant coach ready to take on first NBA role

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

A new era begins Thursday night for the Toronto Raptors with a nearly brand-new coaching staff including head coach Darko Rajaković and assistant coach James Wade. Just one assistant coach, Jim Sann, will be returning from last season.Just a few months ago, James Wade was head coach and General Manager of the Chicago Sky, one of the teams involved in the first WNBA game ever played in Canada.He’s now back in Toronto and excited for his new journey with the Raptors.“A humbling experience. And, you know, we’re just happy that it was able to work out the way it didWade coached the Sky to their first WNBA title in 2021 and was with the team this summer, when he got a call out of the blue that Rajaković wanted to speak to him.They had no previous working relationship, but the two met over zoom and shortly after, Wade joined the Raptors coaching staff.“It’s been a whirlwind, something that wasn’t really a part of my process every day of thinking about t...

Burying friends, updating death lists: The morbid routine of displaced survivors of a Hamas massacre

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

EIN BOKEK, Israel (AP) — For evacuees of Kibbutz Be’eri, the salty waters of the lowest point on earth, known for their healing powers, are little comfort for a grief that feels bottomless.More than two weeks after Hamas militants killed more than 100 of some 1,100 members of their community, torturing scores and kidnapping 10, the Israeli government has relocated most of the kibbutz to an upscale resort. The hotel-turned-refugee camp is nestled among the jagged bluffs surrounding the Dead Sea, some 1,000 feet (305 meters) below sea level. The survivors now follow a morbid routine. They wake up and board tour buses repurposed into funeral shuttles. Some attend five services a day, burying friends and family in temporary graves because the Be’eri cemetery is off limits, located in the closed military zone now encircling the kibbutz. At nightly meetings, they gather in the main hall to hear the news of the day. Kibbutz leaders recite the names that have officially migrated from ...

UN chief warns that the risk of the Gaza war spreading is growing as situation becomes more dire

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:06 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations chief warned at a high-level U.N. meeting Tuesday that the situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour with the risk of the Gaza war spreading through the region increasing as societies splinter and tensions threaten to boil over.Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire to deliver desperately needed food, water, medicine and fuel. He appealed “to all to pull back from the brink before the violence claims even more lives and spreads even farther.”Guterres told the U.N. Security Council’s monthly meeting on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict — which has turned into a major event with ministers from the war’s key parties and a dozen other countries flying to New York -– that the rules of war must be obeyed.The secretary-general said the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify “the horrifying and unprecedented Oct. 7 acts of terror” by Hamas in Israel and dema...