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Sunak’s Conservatives suffer big defeats but avoid a wipeout in trio of UK special elections

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s governing Conservative Party avoided a drubbing Friday in a trio of special elections, managing to hold onto former premier Boris Johnson’s seat in suburban London.Though the main opposition Labour Party and the smaller centrist Liberal Democrats overturned massive Conservative majorities to win a seat apiece, the Conservatives found some crumbs of comfort in their narrow success in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in west London.Labour won the seat of Selby and Ainsty in northern England while the Liberal Democrats took Somerton and Frome in southwest England, with voters from both parties clearly backing the party most likely to beat the Conservative candidate.Facing this level of tactical voting by voters, the defeats will leave many Conservative lawmakers rattled ahead of the likely national vote next year.The defeats don’t mean a change of government, since the Conservatives still have a big majority in the House of Commons. Opinion polls have been...

Rescue efforts have resumed in western India where a landslide killed at least 16 people

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

RAIGAD, India (AP) — Rescue efforts resumed Friday after an overnight halt in India’s western Maharashtra state where a landslide triggered by torrential rains killed at least 16 people, with many others feared trapped under debris, officials said.Scores of rescuers and trained trekkers have been deployed to find people trapped by the landslide, which occurred late Wednesday night, the state’s deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis tweeted. Harsh weather conditions have hampered rescue efforts and authorities have sent in medical teams to help the injured, he added.Search operations were suspended on Thursday night due to heavy rainfall plus the threat of further landslides in the dark, said a statement by the National Disaster Response Force.While 75 people have been rescued, many others are still stuck, an official told the Press Trust of India news agency.The landslide hit the Irshalwadi village in Raigad district and buried 17 of the 50 houses there. The hilly terrain has...

Northeast floods devastate ‘heartbroken’ farmers as months of labor and crops are swept away

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

Well before it was warm enough to plant seedlings in the ground, farmer Micah Barritt began nursing crops like watermelon, eggplant and tomatoes — eventually transplanting them from his greenhouse into rich Vermont soil, hoping for a bountiful fall harvest.Within a few hours last week, those hopes were washed away when flood waters inundated the small farm, destroying a harvest with a value he estimated at $250,000. He still hopes to replant short-season crops like mustard greens, spinach, bok choy and kale“The loss of the crops is a very tangible way to measure the flood, but the loss of the work is hard to measure,” said Barritt, one of five co-owners of Diggers’ Mirth Collective Farm in Burlington, Vermont. “We’re all grieving and heartbroken because of this.”That heartbreak was felt by farmers in several Northeast states after floods dealt a devastating blow at the worst possible time, when many plants were too early to harvest, but are now too late to replant in the region’s ab...

DeSantis takes his presidential campaign to Utah, a heavily GOP state where Trump has struggled

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Ron DeSantis is taking his presidential campaign to Utah on Friday, prioritizing a state where rival Donald Trump has struggled in the past and that could be a beacon of strength for the Florida governor’s stalled bid.DeSantis is set to appear at the state Capitol with about a dozen supportive state lawmakers, meet with Republican Gov. Spencer Cox and attend a fundraiser.His trip out West comes as he has been working to reset a campaign confronting financial pressures and a static position in the field trailing Trump. The former president has remained a front-runner despite his mounting legal problems, including an expected indictment in a Justice Department investigation into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.“The more people see Governor DeSantis and hear his forward-thinking plan for our nation’s comeback, the more inspired they become to vote for him for president,” campaign spokesperson Andrew Romeo said in a statement.For DeSantis, the abili...

Actors and writers strikes enter second week with no signs of a deal to get Hollywood working again

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The combined strike by Hollywood actors and screenwriters is entering its second week with no sign that a swift ending will be achieved.For a week, actors including household names like Tina Fey, Kevin Bacon and wife Kyra Sedgwick, Rosario Dawson, David Duchovny and other stars have joined working class performers and writers on picket lines outside studios and corporate offices of streaming giants Amazon, MAX and Netflix.The actors’ regular appearance on picket lines has provided additional starpower and voices on issues that are key to both groups — better pay and preserving established practices like residual payments, as well as protection from the use of artificial intelligence. Roughly 65,000 actors — the vast majority of whom don’t make enough from acting to qualify for health benefits through their guild — along with 11,500 screenwriters, are on strike.While many of the picket lines are in Los Angeles and New York, film and television productio...

Biden is building his reelection bid around an organization Obama shunned

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is staking his reelection bid on the political and financial muscle of the Democratic National Committee.As it prepares for a bruising 2024 contest, his campaign plans to raise and spend around $2 billion. But it will do so in coordination with the national and state Democratic parties, in an effort to establish a coordinated campaign around the country. The idea is to bolster field, volunteer and data organizations, and ensure they work jointly to promote Biden and down-ballot Democratic candidates.“The president is really rewriting the playbook when it comes to what a reelection campaign looks like and how we are in deep partnership with the DNC,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, “and will continue to show, by all metrics, that we’re running a successful campaign.” The strategy is different from the way the last Democratic president treated the DNC. Barack Obama largely shunned the party’s traditional fundraising ap...

Former Israeli principal will be sentenced in Australia next month for abusing 2 students

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A former principal of an Australian Jewish school will be sentenced on Aug. 24 on convictions for sexually abusing two students. Judge Mark Gamble set the date Friday after a third day of hearing submissions on what sentence Malka Leifer should receive following her convictions by a Victoria state jury in early April. Leifer’s sentencing is potentially the final chapter of an extended battle that tested Israeli-Australian relations to bring the 56-year-old Israeli citizen to justice.Leifer abused sisters Dassi Erlick and Elly Sapper between 2003 and 2007 while she was principal of Melbourne’s ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel School for girls.Erlick was 14 and Sapper 12 when Leifer arrived at the school from Israel in 2000 first as a head of religion.The sisters told the court in victim impact statements last month that being sexually abused by Leifer broke their ability to trust and was painful to remember.The Associated Press does not usually identify victims ...

Music Review: ‘Barbie’ soundtrack delivers a dreamhouse of Kenergy and ballads alike

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

“Barbie: The Album” by Various Artists (Atlantic/Warner/Mattel)The Barbie industrial complex has detonated, coating the planet in pink, sparkly fallout. For the blockbuster’s soundtrack, “Barbie: The Album,” film director Greta Gerwig and music producer Mark Ronson corralled a set of huge artists at the top of their games and have come away with a raucous, joyous and, occasionally, touching compilation.The soundtrack works because the contributors understood the assignment. Collectively, they deliver a dreamhouse of songs that are each at least a little better than they have to be. The tracks succeed both as cinematic elements and as standalone songs. The result is a worthy, danceable bookend to the classic “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack of a generation before.Director Greta Gerwig has now delivered small, medium, large and stratospheric films with excellent soundtracks. Her commitment to quirky rock songs and contemporary classical spans, with this latest endeavor, a whole...

A notorious Indonesian animal market has ended its brutal dog and cat meat trade, campaigners say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

TOMOHON, Indonesia (AP) — Authorities on Friday announced the end of the “brutally cruel” dog and cat meat slaughter at a notorious animal market on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi following a years-long campaign by local activists and world celebrities. The Tomohon Extreme Market will become the first such market in Indonesia to go dog and cat meat-free, according to the anti-animal cruelty group Humane Society International, or HSI. Images of dogs and cats being bludgeoned and blow-torched while still alive had sparked outrage. The permanent end of the slaughter and trade was announced on Friday by the mayor of the city of Tomohon, Caroll Senduk. HSI said they will be rescuing all the remaining live dogs and cats from the slaughterhouse suppliers and taking them to sanctuaries.The Tomohon Extreme Market had previously been touted as a tourist attraction and listed on TripAdvisor as a destination that also sells cat meat and the carcasses of wild and protected species such as bat...

ILWU Local 502 says second tentative deal reached in B.C.’s port strike

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:09 GMT

The ongoing labour dispute at B.C.’s ports may be coming to an end.The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 502 says on its website that its bargaining committee has reached a tentative agreement with the BC Maritime Employers Association.The union adds there will be a meeting held on Friday, to vote on whether the tentative deal will be sent to members for ratification.About 7,400 workers at about 30 B.C. ports walked off the job on July 1. While they returned on July 13 after a tentative deal was reached, they went back on the picket lines on Tuesday after the union’s caucus voted the deal down. But on Wednesday, the federal labour minister called the renewed strike action illegal and there’s been confusion over where things stand, ever since.Business groups have said the labour dispute has cost Canada’s economy billions of dollars.