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Biden signs an executive order changing the military code of justice for sexual assault victims

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday giving decisions on the prosecution of serious military crimes, including sexual assault, to independent military attorneys, taking that power away from victims’ commanders.The order formally implements legislation passed by Congress in 2022 aimed at strengthening protections for service members, who were often at the mercy of their commanders to decide whether to take their assault claims seriously. Members of Congress, frustrated with the growing number of sexual assaults in the military, fought with defense leaders for several years over the issue. They argued that commanders at times were willing to ignore charges or incidents in their units to protect those accused of offenses and that using independent lawyers would beef up prosecutions. Military leaders balked, saying it could erode commanders’ authority.The change was among more than two dozen recommendations made in 2021 by an independent ...

How living in a mobile home makes you more likely to die in a tornado

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

ROLLING FORK, Miss. (AP) — Many were not just killed at home. They were killed by their homes.Angela Eason had visited Brenda Odoms’ tidy mobile home before. It was a place where Odoms, who had many tragedies in her life, felt safe.In March, a tornado ripped through this small Mississippi town and people in mobile or manufactured homes were hit the hardest. Inside a mobile morgue, Eason, the county coroner, examined Odoms’ gaping fatal head wound. Odoms was found just outside of her collapsed mobile home that was tossed around by a tornado. Blunt force trauma killed her.“The one place she felt safe she was not,” Eason said. Fourteen people died in that Rolling Fork tornado, nine of them, including Odoms, were in uprooted manufactured or mobile homes.Tornadoes in the United States are disproportionately killing more people in mobile or manufactured homes, especially in the South, often victimizing some of the most socially and economically vulnerable residents. Since 1996, tornadoes ...

Federal government posts $1.5B surplus for first two months of fiscal year

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

OTTAWA — The federal government posted a budgetary surplus of $1.5 billion in April and May, the first two months of the 2023-24 fiscal year.In its monthly fiscal monitor, the Finance Department says the result compared to a surplus of $5.3 billion during the same period in the previous fiscal year.Revenues rose by $1.3 billion or 1.8 per cent due to higher interest and employment insurance premiums, on top of greater proceeds from personal income tax and a carbon pricing hike.Expenses rose $3.9 billion or 6.6 per cent as the government paid out more returns under the pollution pricing framework as well as higher elderly benefits and transfers to other levels of government — all partly offset by the wind-down of COVID-19 income supports.Higher interest rates have pushed up public debt charges by $1.3 billion or 22.8 per cent since the year before.Meanwhile, net actuarial losses decreased by $100 million or 4.7 per cent.This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 28, 2...

Salvage crews board a cargo ship burning off the Netherlands. The smoke and flames are easing

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Salvage crews dealing with a cargo ship loaded with cars that has been burning for more than two days off the northern Dutch coast boarded the vessel for the first time Friday as heat, flames and smoke eased, the Netherlands’ coast guard said.“In the course of the morning, after measurements by the recovery companies, it turned out that the temperature on board the Fremantle Highway had dropped sharply. The fire is still raging but decreasing. The smoke is also decreasing,” the coast guard said in a statement.Salvage workers boarded the ship and established “a new more robust towing connection,” the agency added. “This makes it easier to move the ship and keep it under control.”Government officials are now “looking at various scenarios to determine the next steps,” the coast guard said.One crew member died and others were injured after the blaze started. The entire crew was evacuated from the ship in the early hours of Wednesday, with some leaping into ...

S&P/TSX composite up in late-morning trading Friday, U.S. markets also rise

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

TORONTO — Canada’s main stock index rose more than 100 points in late-morning trading, led by energy, industrial and technology stocks, while U.S. markets also rose. The S&P/TSX composite index was up 179.49 points at 20,564.96.In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 245.89 points at 35,528.61. The S&P 500 index was up 48.73 points at 4,586.14, while the Nasdaq composite was up 271.21 points at 14,321.32.The Canadian dollar traded for 75.59 cents UScompared with 75.75 cents US on Thursday.The September crude oil contract was down seven cents at US$80.02 per barrel and the September natural gas contract was up two cents at US$2.62 per mmBTU.The December gold contract was up US$15.90 at US$2,001.10 an ounce and the September copper contract was up four cents at US$3.91 a pound.This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 28, 2023.Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD=X)The Canadian Press

Moscow blames Kyiv for a missile attack in southern Russia as Kremlin forces pound Ukrainian village

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces on Friday pounded a key village that Ukraine claimed to have recaptured in its grinding counteroffensive in the country’s southeast, while Moscow accused Kyiv of firing a missile at a city in southern Russia that officials there said wounded 15 people.President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, marked Ukraine’s Statehood Day by reaffirming the country’s sovereignty — a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who used his claim that Ukraine didn’t exist as a nation to justify his invasion.“Now, like more than a thousand years ago, our civilizational choice is unity with the world,” Zelenskyy said in a speech outside St. Michael’s Monastery in Kyiv. “To be a power in world history. To have the right to its national history – of its people, its land, its state. And of our children – all future generations of the Ukrainian people. We will definitely win!”He also honored servicemen and handed out first passports to young citiz...

Soldiers declare Niger general as head of state after he led a coup and detained the president

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Mutinous soldiers who ousted Niger’s president declared Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, the coup leader, as head of state Friday, hours after the general defended the takeover and asked for support from the nation and international partners.Amid growing concerns that the political crisis could set back Niger’s fight against jihadists and increase Russia’s influence in West Africa, spokesman Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane said on state television that the constitution was suspended and Tchiani was in charge of the nation. State TV identified Tchiani as the leader of the group of soldiers who said they staged the coup.Various factions of Niger’s military have reportedly wrangled for control since members of the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum, who was elected two years ago in Niger’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence from France. Niger is seen as the last reliable partner for the West in efforts to battle jihadists linked ...

Swedish mining firm Boliden is exempted from paying compensation for toxic spill in Spain in 1998

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A Spanish court on Friday exempted a Swedish mining firm from paying 89 million euros ($98 million) in compensation for the cleaning of a toxic sludge spill that occurred in 1998 at a heavy metals mine in southern Spain.The court dismissed the lawsuit brought by the regional government of Andalusia, which demanded that the firm Boliden pay the sum for the environmental cleaning operations following the spill at a wastewater reservoir in the Aznalcóllar mine.The court said there was insufficient evidence to prove that Boliden was legally obliged to pay for the restoration and cleaning work and exonerated it from any environmental responsibility. The verdict, handed down by a court in the southern city of Seville, can be appealed before Spain’s Supreme Court.In the trial earlier this month, the Swedish firm said it spent the equivalent of some 600,000 euros back in 1998 in the cleaning.In 1999, Boliden’s Spanish branch was sentenced to pay the equivalent ...

Economy grew in May despite wildfire effects, looks to have slowed in June: StatCan

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

OTTAWA — The Canadian economy grew by 0.3 per cent in May despite downward pressure from wildfire-hit oil and gas production but it looks to have slowed in June, Statistics Canada said Friday.In its latest report on economic growth, the federal agency’s preliminary estimate suggests real gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of one per cent in the second quarter.The May figure came in slightly lower than was expected by Statistics Canada as mining and oil and gas companies reduced their operations in Alberta at the outset of the record-breaking wildfire season.The energy sector was down 2.1 per cent in May, the release shows.“This was the sector’s first decline in five months and its largest since August 2020,” the agency said.The modest GDP increase in May was driven in part by a rebound in the public administration sector as most federal public servants on strike returned to work by the end of April. However, 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency workers remained on...

Naperville man found guilty of sexual abusing 13-year-old

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:15:09 GMT

WHEATON, Ill. — A Naperville man was found guilty Thursday of sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl he met through Snapchat.James Nead, 30, was guilty on three counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, solicitation to meet a child and traveling to meet a child.In June 2019, the 13-year-old girl received a message on Snapchat from Nead. Several days later, he convinced the girl to meet him and threatened to released photographs of her if she did not.On June 28, she met Nead at a strip mall and he sexually abused her in his car. The victim blocked Nead, but he contacted her making the same threats through another account.According to a release, the victim's father got involved and contacted the police.He was taken into custody a year later on June 29, 2020 after a warrant as issued.Nead's next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 31. He faces up to seven years in prison.