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Toronto Mayor Chow apologizes for treatment of asylum seekers, calls for more federal funding

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow apologized to the hundreds of refugees who have been forced to sleep on the sidewalk after arriving in Canada for how they’ve been treated.For the last two weeks, hundreds of asylum seekers have been sheltered at Revivaltime Tabernacle Church and Dominion Church International Toronto, two local churches.The group of more than 200 refugees spent days living on the sidewalk outside a downtown Toronto shelter intake office.The makeshift camp outside 129 Peter Street had some calling it home for four weeks because of a lack of space at city shelters. The asylum seekers sleeping on the sidewalk are all from African nations.Chow toured the Revivaltime Tabernacle Church to see the conditions these asylum seekers have been living in.“The way they’ve been treated on the streets and the lack of dignity that they experience. There are absolutely no excuses whatsoever to be in a new country, lost both physically, spiritually, and materially,” sa...

Brazil’s Indigenous chief fighting to save Amazon urges President Lula to defend people’s rights

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — The Amazon’s most famous Indigenous leader called upon Brazil’s president on Friday to defend the rights of Indigenous people. Chief Raoni Metuktire demanded that “invaders” be removed from their territories and that the government stop negotiations on carbon credits that had excluded Indigenous people from the discussions.In a letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Raoni demanded a government response to 11 specific requests by Aug. 9, the second and final day of the Amazon summit that Lula and other South American heads of state will attend in the city of Belem.The manifest was handed over to the minister of the Indigenous peoples, Sonia Guajajara, at an event attended by 1,000 members of different ethnic groups in the town of Sao Jose do Xingu in the state of Mato Grosso. Lula in May signed legislation paving the way for a market to trade carbon credits — generated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, and whic...

Attorneys preserve the right to invoke insanity plea for man accused of killing 4 people in Maine

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

WEST BATH, Maine (AP) — A man who told police he killed his parents and their friends and shot at motorists on a busy interstate highway might try to show he was insane, based on pleas he entered Friday.The 34-year-old ex-convict Joseph Eaton entered pleas of both not guilty and not criminally responsible, leaving him the option of an insanity defense against charges including four counts of murder.“At this point we are preserving the ability to move forward with the so-called insanity defense. Once we have more forensic information, full discovery, and are able to view the case as a whole, we will then decide how to proceed,” Andrew Wright, one of his attorneys, told The Associated Press before the hearing in West Bath.Law enforcement officials say Eaton confessed to the killings at a property in rural Bowdoin, and to wounding three people while shooting at vehicles on Interstate 295 in Yarmouth. Eaton has been jailed since his arrest on April 18 near the chaotic scene along the hi...

Charges dropped against 7 Oklahoma police officers in 3 separate fatal shootings

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The new prosecutor in Oklahoma’s biggest county announced Friday she’s dropping criminal charges against seven police officers in three separate fatal police shootings from 2020.District Attorney Vicki Behenna’s predecessor, David Prater, had filed criminal charges against police officers in all three cases before he left office, and Behenna hired a use-of-force expert to examine the evidence in each case.“I know how highly charged the topic of law-enforcement use of force is in the current environment,” Behenna said in a statement. “It is critical to evaluate each case independently and make a decision based on facts, not emotion.”Behenna, a Democrat from the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, defeated conservative Republican Kevin Calvey last year to win a four-year term as the top prosecutor in the state’s most populous county. A former federal prosecutor and defense attorney, Behenna is the first woman to hold the post in Oklahoma County.The most hi...

Trump and DeSantis set to address influential Iowans at GOP dinner as candidates face pivotal moment

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

OSKALOOSA, Iowa (AP) — Donald Trump and rival Ron DeSantis are appearing for the first time at the same Iowa presidential campaign event, both addressing a major Republican dinner Friday night as they each face critical moments that could reshape the direction of the race.Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination, is making a rare appearance with the rest of the field at an Iowa Republican Party fundraiser a day after he was charged with additional counts over his retention of classified documents. He is also bracing to be charged soon in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Trump frequently avoids attending multicandidate events in person, questioning why he would share a stage with competitors who are badly trailing him in polls.But Iowa leads off primary voting and, with its caucuses less than six months away, Trump and a dozen other GOP hopefuls are taking advantage of the chance to speak to about 1,200 GOP members and activists at the Lincol...

Senators rebuke Wisconsin congressman who yelled vulgarities at high school-age pages

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A freshman Republican congressman from Wisconsin is refusing to apologize after he yelled and cursed at high school-aged Senate pages during a late night tour of the Capitol this week, eliciting a bipartisan rebuke from Senate leaders. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, speaking in a round of interviews Friday on Wisconsin conservative talk radio, did not refute reports of his actions or back down from what he did.Van Orden used a profanity to describe the pages as lazy and and another to order them off the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday night, according to a report in the online political newsletter PunchBowl News. The pages were laying down to take photos in the Rotunda, according to the publication.“I’m not going to apologize for making sure that anybody — I don’t care who you are and who you’re related to — defiles this House,” Van Orden said on “The Dan O’Donnell Show.” “It’s not going to happen on my watch, man.”Van Orden said he was protecting th...

Man pleads guilty to vehicular homicide in death of Black Lives Matter protester in Seattle

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

SEATTLE (AP) — A man who hit two protesters with his car, killing one of them, during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020 in Seattle has pleaded guilty to multiple felonies. Dawit Kelete, 30, pleaded guilty on Thursday to vehicular homicide in the death of 24-year-old Summer Taylor, The Seattle Times reported. He also pleaded guilty to vehicular assault and reckless driving charges. Attorneys as part of the plea deal have agreed to recommend a sentence of more than six years in prison and 18 months of probation. Kelete is set to be sentenced in September.On July 4, 2020, the Washington State Patrol said Kelete drove the wrong way onto Interstate 5, around a barricade of parked vehicles, and struck Taylor and Diaz Love. Taylor later died and Love was hospitalized with multiple injuries.Kelete was arrested shortly afterward and told police he was withdrawing from the narcotic pain medication Percocet and struggled with an “untreated addiction,” court documents said.Francisco Du...

Montreal water main breaks and leaves buildings flooded, vehicles submerged

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

MONTREAL — A major water main break in northeastern Montreal on Friday forced evacuations, damaged roads and submerged vehicles.The city said it ordered the evacuation of 18 buildings and cut power to the area as a precaution. No one was injured, and Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante said the priority was to have power and water restored as soon as possible to the affected sector of the city’s Villeray-St-Michel-Park-Extension borough.City officials said a 36-inch drinking water pipe burst around 4 a.m., and flooded a neighbourhood street, causing the road to buckle.Chantal Morrissette, the city’s water service director, said plugging the leak was complex. Public works employees first had to find the broken pipe, then had to turn off several valves on the main and secondary pipes before the water began to recede about 11 a.m., she said.Repair work could take several hours, a fire official said.The cause of the break is unknown. Morrisette said the pipe in question had been i...

S&P/TSX composite rises Friday on energy, tech gains, U.S. markets also rise

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

TORONTO — Canada’s main stock index rose Friday, led by gains in the energy, technology and health-care sectors, while U.S. markets also posted gains. The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 133.90 points at 20,519.37.Economic data was the main driver of market gains Friday, said Macan Nia, co-chief investment strategist at Manulife Investment Management. Two of the Federal Reserve’s preferred measures of inflation came out Friday, showing continued signs of economic declaration, said Nia.“Markets are taking that as a positive sign that the U.S. Federal Reserve is much closer to the pause today than what they were a quarter ago,” he said. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 176.57 points at 35,459.29. The S&P 500 index was up 44.82 points at 4,582.23, while the Nasdaq composite was up 266.55 points at 14,316.66.Over the past couple of weeks, more and more evidence has piled up suggesting a resilient economy even as inflation recedes under the weight of h...

Chicago rapper G Herbo pleads guilty in wire fraud conspiracy, lying to federal agents in court

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:00 GMT

BOSTON — Chicago rapper G Herbo pleaded guilty Friday in a federal court in Massachusetts to a nationwide wire fraud conspiracy and making false statements to a federal agent.According to the Department of Justice, Herbert Wright, 27, known as G Herbo, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of making a false statement to a federal agent. Chicago rapper G-Herbo agrees to plead guilty to wire fraud, lying to feds: reports He is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 7.In December 2020, he was one of six people indicted by a federal grand jury. Rapper G Herbo arrested in Chicago on gun charges: reports “Mr. Wright used stolen account information as his very own unlimited funding source, using victims’ payment cards to finance an extravagant lifestyle and advance his career," Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said in a press release. "Mr. Wright’s conduct affected countless businesses and individuals across the United States who had to foot his nearly...