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NATO summit reaches agreement on admitting Sweden but faces division over Ukraine

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday hailed an agreement for Sweden to join NATO as more work remained to determine a path forward for Ukraine’s future with the alliance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized as “absurd” the absence of a timetable for his country’s entry.Biden described the summit as a “historic moment” and said the United States agreed with a proposal, yet to be released publicly, to outline a path for Ukraine’s eventual membership.However, Zelenskyy, who was on his way to Vilnius to join the summit, expressed disappointment with how the negotiations were playing out. “We value our allies,” he wrote on Twitter but added that “Ukraine also deserves respect.”“It’s unprecedented and absurd when time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership,” Zelensky said. He finished with, “Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit.”A public flash of anger from the U...

Rain moving out after flooding hits Vermont hard and other parts of the Northeast are saturated

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

ANDOVER, Vt. (AP) — A storm that left up to two months’ worth of rain in Vermont and saturated other parts of the Northeast was moving out Tuesday, but more flooding was expected after already cutting off access to some communities, including the main approach to the state capital.There have been no reports of injuries or deaths related to the Vermont flooding, according to emergency officials. But dozens of roads were closed, including many along the spine of the Green Mountains. And the National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings and advisories for much of the state from the Massachusetts line north to the Canadian border.The slow-moving storm reached New England after hitting parts of New York, where one person died as she was trying to leave her home during flash flooding, and Connecticut on Sunday.President Joe Biden, who is in Vilnius, Lithuania, attending the annual NATO summit, declared an emergency exists in Vermont and authorized the Federal Emergency Manage...

Supreme Court justices and donors mingle at campus visits. These documents show the ethical dilemmas

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas headlined a 2017 program at McLennan Community College in Texas, his hosts had more than a speech in mind. Working with the prominent conservative lawyer Ken Starr, school officials crafted a guest list for a dinner at the home of a wealthy Texas businessman, hoping an audience with Thomas would be a reward for school patrons -– and an inducement to prospective donors.Before Justice Elena Kagan visited the University of Colorado’s law school in 2019, one official in Boulder suggested a “larger donor to staff ratio” for a dinner with her. After Justice Sonia Sotomayor confirmed she would attend a 2017 question-and-answer session at Clemson University and a private luncheon, officials there made sure to invite $1 million-plus donors to the South Carolina college. The Associated Press obtained tens of thousands of pages of emails and other documents that reveal the extent to which public colleges and universities have seen vi...

Rights group urges probe into Darfur atrocities by Sudanese paramilitary forces battling the army

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

CAIRO (AP) — A prominent rights group on Tuesday called for the International Criminal Court to investigate atrocities in Sudan’s volatile Darfur region, including what it says were “summary executions” of 28 non-Arab tribesmen by a Sudanese paramilitary force and allied Arab militias in May. Human Rights Watch said several thousand members of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and their allies rampaged through the Darfur town of Misterei, home to the non-Arab Massalit tribe, on May 28. The assailants killed the tribesmen and also left dozens of civilians dead or wounded, the New York-based watchdog said. The attack came as the paramilitary and Sudan’s army have been engaged in monthslong fighting that the United Nations says has brought Sudan to the brink of a full-scale civil war.“The mass killings of civilians and total destruction of the town of Misterei demonstrates the need for a stronger international response to the widening conflict,” said Jean Baptiste Gallopin, senior ...

MTY Food Group reports Q2 profit up from year ago, acquisitions help boost revenue

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

MONTREAL — MTY Food Group Inc. reported its second-quarter profit rose compared with a year ago as acquisitions helped boost revenue.The restaurant franchisor and operator says its net income attributable to owners totalled $30.4 million or $1.24 per diluted share for the quarter ended May 31, up from $28.6 million or $1.17 per diluted share a year earlier.Revenue for the quarter was $305.2 million, up from $162.5 million in the same quarter last year.MTY says the main contributors to revenue growth were its acquisitions of BBQ Holdings, Wetzel’s Pretzels, and Sauce Pizza and Wine.Overall, same-store sales in the quarter were up five per cent year-over-year.Same-store sales in Canada rose six per cent, while the U.S. saw a four per cent gain and its international operations added two per cent.This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2023.Companies in this story: (TSX:MTY)The Canadian Press

‘I will not stay quiet’: Israel evicts Palestinian family from home after 45-year legal battle

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli authorities on Tuesday evicted a Palestinian family from their contested apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City, the family said, capping a decades-long legal battle that has come to symbolize conflicting claims to the holy city. Activists say the Ghaith-Sub Laban family’s eviction is part of a wider trend of Israeli settlers, backed by the government, encroaching on Palestinian neighborhoods and cementing Israeli control by seizing property in east Jerusalem. Israel describes it as a simple battle over real estate, with settlers claiming the family are squatters in an apartment formerly owned by Jews. Earlier this year, Israel’s Supreme Court struck down the family’s final appeal, capping a 45-year-long legal battle over their right to live in the apartment. “I will not stay quiet,” Nora Sub-Laban said. “If I find any loophole in the law, I will use it and I will sue them, because this is my right, and this is my home, and this is my land, and this i...

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — For colleges and libraries seeking a boldfaced name for a guest lecturer, few come bigger than Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court justice who rose from poverty in the Bronx to the nation’s highest court.She has benefited, too — from schools’ purchases of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the books she has written over the years.Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that have earned her at least $3.7 million since she joined the court in 2009. Details of those events, largely out of public view, were obtained by The Associated Press through more than 100 open records requests to public institutions. The resulting tens of thousands of pages of documents offer a rare look at Sotomayor and her fellow justices beyond their official duties.In her case, the documents reveal repeated examples of taxpayer-funded court staff performing tasks for the justice’s book ventures, whic...

Aid group says 2 children died as families fled Taliban demolition of their Kabul shantytown

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Two children died as scores of Afghan families fled a Taliban demolition this week of their shantytown homes in Kabul, an international aid group said Tuesday. The Norwegian Refugee Council said the demolition of the ramshackle settlement in the Pul-e-Shina area outside of Kabul this week left 280 families, or around 1,700 people, homeless. The group said it received reports of two children — one aged 4 and another aged 15 — dying as families evacuated their homes.The group did not know the immediate cause of death. No one from the Taliban-led government or the Kabul municipality was immediately available for comment. More than 6 million people are internally displaced in Afghanistan, mostly due to decades of war. But worsening living conditions since the Taliban takeover in August 2021 — as U.S. and NATO forces were withdrawing from the country after 20 years of war — and increased economic hardship are also forcing people to move. The economic collapse has driven ...

China says its foreign minister is ill. A senior diplomat will take his place at ASEAN

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang is unwell and the country’s senior diplomat will take his place at a two-day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this week in Jakarta, Indonesia, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin gave no details of what was ailing Qin, who has not been seen in public in more than two weeks. “State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang is unable to attend this series of foreign ministers’ meetings due to health reasons,” Wang said at a daily briefing Tuesday. Wang Yi, a former foreign minister and the current head of the ruling Communist Party’s Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, will represent China at the meetings Thursday and Friday, Wang Wenbin said. Wang Yi drew controversy last week with comments saying Westerners are incapable of distinguishing among Chinese, Koreans and Japanese, and suggesting the three countries with vastly different societies and polities form an allia...

Millennial Money: Stop using paper checks, already

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:58 GMT

Sure, you’re probably not using paper checks for most things. But are you returning payments to medical providers and insurance companies in the mail? Paying by check for the random parking ticket or your child’s piano lessons? Now is a good time to stop: Check fraud tied to mail theft is up nationwide, according to a February alert from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. And letter carrier robberies are also on the rise.This is partially due to the effects of the pandemic, when thieves targeted government relief checks in the mail. “Fraudsters just went back to tried-and-true potential attack factors that seemed to be working,” says Michael Bruemmer, head of global data breach resolution for Experian.The U.S. Postal Service is vulnerable, and thieves who can access your checks can change the amount and ferret those funds right out of your bank account. And then it can take weeks to get the funds back.“It’s absolutely a life disruption event when you mail a check and it’s bee...