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Battenfeld: Trumped up charges could become rallying cry for Republicans

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

The likely indictment of former President Donald Trump is a bold – some would say foolhardy – political gambit and could simply become a rallying cry for Trump’s presidential campaign.Liberal Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is risking galvanizing Republicans by charging the former president in a seven-year-old hush money deal to silence a porn star right before the 2016 election.Trump is already making hay of his potential arrest by urging supporters to protest – while other Republicans, even those like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – are rallying to Trump’s side.DeSantis criticized Bragg as a “Soros-funded prosecutor” who is “pursuing a political agenda” – comments that drew Trump’s attention on Monday.“Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future as he gets older, wiser and better known,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site. “I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do.”Of course DeSantis isn’t f...

Report: more private equity invested in Mass. in 2022 than the state budget

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

Despite any doom and gloom about the state economy, rising inflation and increases in the cost of living and doing business, Massachusetts came in sixth among states ranked by private investment in 2022, according to a new report.“Private equity invested more than $55 billion in 312 businesses in Massachusetts last year and directly employed more than 307,000 workers across the commonwealth,” Drew Maloney, president and CEO of the American Investment Council told the Herald Monday.The council’s annual Top States & Districts report shows that the Bay State received more in private investment last year than the state’s final enacted budget for fiscal 2022, about $48 billion, or the next fiscal year’s about $53 billion.Two congressional districts in Massachusetts, represented by U.S. Reps. Katherine Clark and Stephen Lynch, saw more investment than any others in the state and more than most in the country, the report shows.According to the report, Lynch’s MA-8 district was th...

Japan, China leaders begin visits to rivals in Ukraine war

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrived in Kyiv for a surprise visit shortly after noon Tuesday, hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in neighboring Russia for a three-day trip. Moscow’s invasion will be in the spotlight at both meetings. Footage shown on Japanese national broadcaster NHK showed Kishida walking on the platform of a train station, escorted by a few people who appeared to be Ukrainian officials.It was uncertain whether either meeting would change the course of the almost 13-month war in Ukraine, but the talks about 800 kilometers (500 miles) apart highlighted the war’s repercussions for international diplomacy as countries line up behind rival parties. They came after a week in which China and Japan both enjoyed diplomatic successes that have emboldened their foreign policy.Kishida will meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital, coinciding with Xi’s talks with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.Kishi...

With crowded jails, North Macedonia adopts pandemic amnesty

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP) — North Macedonia’s parliament has adopted a legislative amendment to pardon people facing imprisonment for violating COVID-19 safety rules.Lawmakers late Monday voted 76-1 in favor of the amnesty which will affect more than 200 people currently facing trial as well as more than 90 people reportedly serving prison sentences.North Macedonia had one of the highest fatality rates in the world from the coronavirus, in part due to late access to vaccines. It imposed strict penalties for safety violations, on charges of facilitating the transmission of an infectious disease and failure to comply with health regulations during a pandemic.According to the court data, 1,223 people were fined up to 2,000 euros ($2,140) for violating pandemic protocols, and 205 of them were facing jail time for failing to pay the fine.The amnesty, which applies to citizens and not legal entities, will allow those already serving prison sentences to apply for immediate release.The a...

UN: Months after Pakistan floods, millions lack safe water

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The United Nations children’s agency on Tuesday warned that after last summer’s devastating floods, 10 million people in Pakistan, including children, still live in flood-affected areas without access to safe drinking water. The statement from UNICEF underscored the dire situation in impoverished Pakistan, a country with a population of 220 million that months later is still struggling with the consequences of the flooding, as well as a spiraling economic crisis. The floods, which experts attribute in part to climate change, killed 1,739 people, including 647 children and 353 women. So far, less than half of UNICEF’s funding appeal for Pakistan — 45% of $173.5 million — has been met. According to the agency, before the floods struck last June, water from only 36% of Pakistan’s water system was considered safe for human consumption. The floods damaged most of the water pipelines systems in affected areas, forcing more than 5.4 million people, including 2....

Cyprus court: Briton freely confessed to wife’s killing

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

PAPHOS, Cyprus (AP) — A Cyprus court on Tuesday rejected a defense argument that a British man’s confession to killing his ailing wife was unlawfully obtained, because he was in no frame of mind at the time to speak to police without a lawyer present.David Hunter, 75, made the statements to law enforcement officials and medical staff on five separate occasions following his arrest “undoubtedly of his own free will” without pressure or coercion, the three-judge panel said in a unanimous ruling.The court said it couldn’t accept testimony from a defense expert that Hunter suffered from “disassociation” following his wife Janice’s December 2021 killing at the couple’s retirement home in the coastal resort town of Paphos and wasn’t fully cognizant of what he was saying.The court said that Hunter couldn’t have suffered from disassociation. At the time of his arrest, he recalled to law enforcement officials and to his brother back in the U.K. in detail how he strangled hi...

Early morning drive-by shooting in Mississauga leaves 2 injured

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

Two people are in hospital with injuries after an early morning drive-by shooting in Mississauga.Police responded to a shooting around 1:15 a.m. Tuesday on Ettridge Court, in the area of Cawthra and Lakeshore roads.Investigators say the two victims were getting out of a vehicle when the suspect, or suspects, opened fire from another vehicle.The victims were taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.No suspect descriptions have been made available.

US tells China a Taiwan president stopover is ‘nothing new’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is putting out the word that an expected stopover in the United States by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen would fall in line with recent precedent and should not be used as a pretext by China to step up aggressive activity in the Taiwan Strait.In recent weeks, senior U.S. officials in Washington and Beijing have underscored to their Chinese counterparts that transit visits through the United States during broader international travel by the Taiwanese president have been routine in recent years, according to a senior administration official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.In such unofficial visits in recent years, Tsai has met with members of Congress and the Taiwanese diaspora and has been welcomed by the chairperson of the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S. government-run nonprofit that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan. The official added that the anticipated stopover is “noth...

Spanish govt faces confidence vote brought by far right

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s parliament on Tuesday debated a confidence vote brought by the nation’s far-right Vox party against the governing left-wing coalition that has little chance of succeeding.No other party in the 348-member lower chamber in Madrid has said it will support the attempt by Vox’s 52 lawmakers to topple the government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez when the vote is held on Wednesday.In a move that has been widely panned by other political parties and Spanish media, Vox leader Santiago Abascal has broken with custom and is not presenting himself as an alternative prime minister. Instead, in an attempt to lure votes from centrist and leftist legislators, Vox convinced a former communist party member and university professor to lead the no-confidence measure. Ramón Tamames, 89, who was a lawmaker in the 1970s-80s, has pledged that if the vote were to prosper, his only act as prime minister would be to immediately call for national elections to coincid...

Trump legal woes force another moment of choosing for Republicans

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:06:10 GMT

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — From the moment he rode down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his first presidential campaign, a searing question has hung over the Republican Party: Is this the moment to break from Donald Trump?Elected Republicans have wavered at times — whether it was Trump's condemnation of John McCain's war record, his racist attack against a Mexican-American judge, his sexually predatory language caught on video, his alleged extramarital affairs, his decision to side with Russian President Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence, his promotion of false allegations of election fraud and his incitement of a violent mob that threatened the lives of lawmakers in both parties. NYC preparing for protests ahead of possible Trump indictment But after almost eight years of near-constant scandal, Republicans have ultimately rallied behind Trump over and over and over again.Now, on the eve of a new presidential campaign season, that loyalty is being tested anew as Trump prepares...