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Protesters fill French streets as anger at Macron mounts

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

PARIS (AP) — Protesters filled the streets of Paris and other French cities Thursday, with violence marring several marches, a day after President Emmanuel Macron further angered his critics by standing strong on a bill raising the retirement age that his government forced through parliament without a vote.Strikes upended travel as protesters blockaded train stations, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, refineries and ports. More than 250 protests were organized across the country and union leaders praised the “significant” mobilization.In Paris, street battles between police and black-clad, masked groups who attacked at least two fast food restaurants, a supermarket and a bank reflected intensifying violence and drew attention away from the tens of thousands of peaceful marchers.Police, pelted by objects and fireworks, charged multiple times and used tear gas to disperse rioters. A haze of tear gas fumes covered part of the Place de l’Opera, where demonstrators converged at t...

Feds: Woman charged in Wyoming clinic fire opposes abortion

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A woman accused of setting fire last year to a Wyoming abortion clinic that was under construction told investigators she opposed abortion and was experiencing anxiety and nightmares over the facility opening, authorities say in court documents.According to the court filing, Lorna Roxanne Green, of Casper, told Matthew T. Wright, an agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, that she broke into the Wellspring Health Access clinic in Casper on May 25, poured gasoline around the facility and lit it.Several tipsters identified Green as a possible suspect after the reward for information in the case was increased to $15,000 earlier this month. Officers arrested Green in Casper on Tuesday.Green, 22, made an initial appearance by video Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kelly Rankin in Cheyenne. She remained jailed in Wheatland, a town of 3,500 people about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of Cheyenne, with no bond set yet.Appearing in...

Mexico president confirms killer of Jesuits was found dead

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president said Thursday forensic tests have confirmed that a body found in northern Mexico was that of a drug gang leader accused of murdering two Jesuit priests last year. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not say whether the tests involved a DNA match or fingerprints. The sister of accused killer José Noriel Portillo Gil, alias “El Chueco,” or “The Crooked One,” had earlier identified his body by sight. The murder of the two beloved Jesuit priests in June 2022 had shocked Mexico. The Jesuits said in a statement Wednesday that the suspect’s death proves the government can’t catch criminals and has lost control of parts of the country.Despite nine months of supposed searches for Portillo Gil, the circumstances of his death suggest he was executed by his own or a rival drug gang. Portillo Gil’s gang was also implicated in the 2018 killing of an American travelling in the area.Portillo Gil was believed to have been shot to death some time Monday. Th...

Denver school shooting suspect dead; parents push security

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

DENVER (AP) — A 17-year-old student was found dead in the Colorado woods after being accused of shooting and wounding two administrators at his Denver high school where students and parents were already fed up over recent violence and a lack of action by officials, authorities said Thursday.The shooting occurred Wednesday morning at East High School, not far from downtown, while two administrators searched Austin Lyle for weapons, a daily requirement because of the boy’s behavioral issues, authorities said.Lyle fled after the shooting and his body was found Wednesday night near his car in a remote, mountain area about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Denver, outside the small town of Bailey, in Park County. The county coroner’s office confirmed early Thursday that the body was Lyle’s. Cause of death was not released, pending an autopsy.The shooting, at a time of rising gun violence on school campuses across the U.S., has stoked a backlash against a policy adopted in Denver seve...

Idaho hospital to stop baby deliveries, partly over politics

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

A rural hospital in northern Idaho will stop delivering babies or providing other obstetrical care, citing a shifting legal climate in which recently enacted state laws could subject physicians to prosecution for providing abortions, among other reasons.Bonner General Health in Sandpoint will discontinue obstetrical services in mid-May. It also cited a decreasing number of deliveries and a loss of doctors among other factors in its decision.Those pregnant in the city of about 9,000 — with an average annual snowfall of about 60 inches (150 centimeters) — will most likely have to travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers) to Coeur d’Alene for care, or to hospitals farther away in Idaho, Washington and Montana.The decision to discontinue providing obstetrical services was emotional and difficult, hospital officials said in a news release.“We have made every effort to avoid eliminating these services,” Ford Elsaesser, Bonner General Health’s Board president, said in the release. “We hoped to...

Fed’s unwanted ally in bid to tame inflation: Credit crunch

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve is getting some unwanted help in its drive to slow the U.S. economy and defeat the worst bout of inflation in four decades: A cutback in bank lending.The upheaval in the financial system that’s followed the collapse of two major U.S. banks is raising the likelihood that lending standards will become sharply more restrictive. Fewer loans would mean less spending by consumers and businesses. That, in turn, would make it harder for companies to raise prices, thereby reducing inflationary pressures.At the same time, some economists worry that the slowdown might prove so severe as to send the economy sliding into a painful recession.On Wednesday, the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate for the ninth time in just over a year. The central bank’s policymakers are struggling with a persistently high inflation rate that has bedeviled American households and heightened the uncertainties overhanging the economy. At roughly 6%, U.S. inflation ...

South Carolina’s top accountant to resign after $3.5B error

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s embattled top accountant will step down next month after a $3.5 billion error in the year-end financial report he oversaw, according to a resignation letter written Thursday that was obtained by The Associated Press.Republican Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom’s decision to leave the post he has held for 20 years came after intense scrutiny of his performance following the blunder and amid rising calls for him to either quit or be removed. The Senate panel investigating the financial misstatement issued a damning report last week accusing Eckstrom of “willful neglect of duty.” As recently as last week, however, Eckstrom had said he would not resign. “I have never taken service to the state I love or the jobs to which I have been elected lightly, endeavoring to work with my colleagues … to be a strong defender of the taxpayer and a good steward of their hard-earned tax dollars,” Eckstrom wrote in the letter to South Ca...

Oxford school shooter’s parents can face manslaughter trial

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — The parents of a teenager who killed four students at a Michigan high school can face trial for involuntary manslaughter, the state appeals court said Thursday in a groundbreaking case of criminal responsibility for the acts of a child. The murders would not have happened if the parents hadn’t purchased a gun for Ethan Crumbley or if they had taken him home from Oxford High School on the day of the shooting, when staff became alarmed about his extreme drawings, the appeals court said.The court noted that the legal threshold at this stage of the case is fairly low under Michigan law. “Whether a jury actually finds that causation has been proven after a full trial, where the record will almost surely be more expansive — including evidence produced by defendants — is an issue separate from what we decide today,” the court said in a 3-0 opinion.James and Jennifer Crumbley are accused of failing to secure a gun and ignoring the mental health needs of thei...

House China panel turns focus to plight of Uyghurs

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two women who experienced life in Chinese “re-education” camps for Uyghurs will be among the witnesses Thursday as a special House committee focused on countering China shines a light on human rights abuses in the country.Qelbinur Sidik is a member of China’s ethnic Uzbek minority who was forced to teach Chinese in separate detention facilities for Uyghur men and women. In advance of the hearing, she described through an interpreter hearing the screams of men being tortured in interrogation rooms nearby as she taught at the men’s facility. At the women’s facility, she said, inmates were routinely raped. “Each time, when you see them walking in the hallway or when they walk in the classrooms, you can see, you can feel what kind of horrific torture they faced because of the mobility, the difficulty of moving around,” Sidik said.Gulbahar Haitiwaji is a Uyghur who wrote a book about the experience of being held in two “re-education” camps and police s...

Beijing denies meddling after MP Han Dong’s resignation from Liberal caucus

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:23:55 GMT

Beijing says it has nothing to say about ongoing allegations that China has meddled in Canadian affairs, including those regarding a member of Parliament who resigned from the Liberal caucus.Han Dong announced Wednesday night that he will now sit as an Independent while a rapporteur investigates claims of Chinese interference, including allegations the Toronto MP willingly received electoral support through Chinese officials.“We have no interest in, and will not interfere in, Canada’s internal affairs,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Thursday, when asked about Dong’s resignation.“There should be no irresponsible comments on this,” reads the official English transcript of a press conference in Beijing.Dong resigned from his party after Global News published a report, citing unnamed security sources, alleging that he spoke about Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig with a Chinese diplomat in Toronto in February 2021.The MP said he met wi...