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Australia PM: US effort to extradite Assange not worth it

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed frustration at the United States’ continuing efforts to extradite WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange, saying: “There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration.”Albanese’s comments Friday in an Australian Broadcasting Corp. interview appeared to escalate diplomatic pressure on the United States to drop the charges against the 51-year-old Assange, who has spent four years in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison fighting extradition to the United States.Before that, Assange had taken asylum for seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.Albanese said Assange’s case had to be examined in terms of whether the time Assange had “effectively served” was in excess of what would be “reasonable” if the allegations against him were proved.“I just say that enough is enough. There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration,” Albanese said.“I know it’s frustrating, I share the frustr...

8 fatally shot in Serbian town day after 9 killed at school

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — A shooter killed at least eight people and wounded 13 in a drive-by attack late Thursday in Serbia’s second such mass killing in two days, state television reported.The attacker shot randomly at people near the town of Mladenovac, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the capital, RTS reported early Friday. Police were looking for a 21-year-old suspect who fled after the attack, the report said.The shooting came a day after a 13-year-old boy used his father’s guns to kill eight fellow students and a guard at a school in Belgrade.The bloodshed sent shockwaves through a Balkan nation scarred by wars but unused to mass murders.Though Serbia is awash with weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s, mass shootings are extremely rare. Wednesday’s school shooting was the first in the country’s modern history. The last mass shooting before this week was in 2013, when a war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.Serbian Interior Min...

Biden sends wife Jill to King Charles’ coronation Saturday

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jill Biden has celebrated the athleticism of wounded service members with Prince Harry, discussed the value of early childhood education with Princess Kate and sipped tea poured by Queen Elizabeth II. Now the first lady is back in London for another royal engagement. President Joe Biden has dispatched his wife to represent the United States at Saturday’s coronation of King Charles III, the late queen’s eldest son. No American president has ever attended a British coronation.“Headed to the U.K. for the Coronation of King Charles III – the first in 70 years!,” Jill Biden tweeted before her flight Thursday to London. “It’s an honor to represent the United States for this historic moment and celebrate the special relationship between our countries.” Jill Biden was just 2 years old when Elizabeth was crowned in June 1953. She held the throne for seven decades until her death last September at age 96.While in London, Jill Biden will engage in some soft ...

Dog Show 101: What’s what at the Westminster Kennel Club

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — To the casual viewer, competing at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show might look pretty simple: Get a dog. Groom it. Pose it. Lead it around a ring. But there’s a lot more than that to getting to and exhibiting in the United States’ most prestigious canine event, now in its 147th year. So here are the ins and outs of the show, which starts Saturday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. HOW MANY DOGS COMPETE? Twenty-five hundred dogs from 210 different breeds and varieties signed up to vie for the best in show trophy that gets awarded Tuesday night. (Varieties are subsets of breeds. Think smooth, longhaired and wirehaired dachshunds.) Hailing from 49 states and 13 countries, contestants range from tiny Chihuahuas to giant Great Danes. They include familiar breeds like Labrador retrievers, rarities such as the sloughi, and a newcomer, the bracco Italiano. Agility and obedience contests Saturday involve a few hundred more dogs, i...

Stock market today: Asia mixed after Wall St sinks

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets were mixed Friday after Wall Street sank on worries about the health of U.S. banks that are under pressure from interest rate hikes.Shanghai declined while Hong Kong and Sydney advanced. Markets in Japan and South Korea were closed for holidays. Oil prices advanced.Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index lost 0.7% on Thursday as investors worried about the health of banks following three high-profile failures in the United States and one in Switzerland. Shares of PacWest Bancorp, a target of investor scrutiny, tumbled 50.6%. The bank said it was considering options and has been approached by potential partners and investors.Investors are watching what steps authorities might take to “limit further contagion risks,” Yeap Jun Rong of IG said in a report. “Any inaction over the weekend could translate to a more downbeat risk environment to start next week.”The Shanghai Composite Index shed 0.7% to 3,326.18 while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong gain...

Oregon GOP boycott: most bills have high reading score

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

Oregon Republicans blocking bills about abortion, gun control and gender-affirming healthcare in the Statehouse say they are simply following a decades-old law requiring that bill summaries be easy to read.The 1979 state law requires a score of at least 60 on something called the Flesch readability test. That’s the equivalent of an 8th- or 9th-grade reading level. Dr. Rudolf Flesch, a Vienna-born psychologist, developed the test in the 1940s.Scores range from 1 to 100, with 100 being the easiest to read and 1 being the most difficult. But most bills have a college-level reading score, regardless of political party affiliation. Here is a sampling of summaries from some recent Oregon bills and their Flesch readability scores:CONTESTED BILLS:House Bill 2005 What it’s about: A gun control measure banning untraceable guns, raising minimum age to buy firearms like semiautomatic weapons from 18 to 21 and allowing local agencies to prohibit firearms on government property. Flesch Reading Sc...

Press group: China biggest global jailer of journalists

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — China was the biggest global jailer of journalists last year with more than 100 behind bars, according to a press freedom group, as President Xi Jinping’s government tightened control over society.Xi’s government also was one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content, according to Reporters without Boarders. China ranked second to last on the group’s annual index of press freedom, behind only neighbor North Korea.The ruling Communist Party has tightened already strict controls on media in China, where all newspapers and broadcasters are state-owned. Websites and social media are required to enforce censorship that bans material that might spread opposition to one-party rule.Xi, China’s most powerful figure in decades, called during a 2016 meeting with journalists who had been awarded official prizes for them to adhere to “the correct orientation of public opinion.”Xi is pursuing a “crusade against journalism,” Reporters Without Borders said in a re...

Pride organizers keep eye on drag laws ahead of festivals

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Tennessee organizers booked more than 50 drag entertainers for next month’s Midsouth Pride festival in Memphis now that the state’s new law placing strict limits on cabaret shows is temporarily on hold. But they are being cautious, making adjustments to performances should the limits of the first-in-the-nation law essentially banning drag from public property or in the presence of minors kick in before June celebrations. “As soon as this stuff started making its way, I immediately started coming out with plans to be able to counteract that,” said longtime festival organizer Vanessa Rodley. “Because, at the end of the day, we can’t put on an event that then segregates a huge portion of our community, right? We just can’t do that. So you have to find ways around it.”The show must go on.Organizers of Pride festivals and parades in mostly conservative states where there’s been a broader push targeting LGBTQ+ rights have been under increasin...

Massachusetts blast site where 1 died moves to cleanup phase

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

NEWBURYPORT, Mass. (AP) — Rescue workers in Massachusetts have recovered the body of a person killed Thursday after a powerful explosion tore through a pharmaceutical chemical plant.Acting Newburyport Fire Chief Stephen Bradbury III described the blast as a seven-alarm hazardous materials event and said crews were expected to resume cleanup Friday morning, including removing chemicals from the building.Authorities said there was no threat to the nearby population. The explosion happened around 1 a.m. Thursday at the Sequens/PCI Synthesis plant, officials said. Video showed most of the roof torn off a building, marking at least the third safety problem at the plant since 2020.U.S. Sen. Edward Mark of Massachusetts said the company needs to provide answers about what happened.“We can’t keep excusing companies’ flagrant disregard for worker safety,” he said in a tweet. It wasn’t immediately known what caused the explosion, or what — if any — chemicals were involved. Smoke from th...

Faster IRS offering better picture on looming debt ‘X-date’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:30:12 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — That big infusion of cash that Congress approved last year to shape up the beleaguered IRS is having an unexpected side benefit.The funding increase has helped the agency to catch up on processing new and backlogged tax returns. And that, in turn, has allowed federal bean-counters to give policymakers a more precise picture of when the Treasury could run out of money — the so-called X-date — if the government isn’t able to take on more debt.The nation is stepping uncomfortably close to an unprecedented default that could have catastrophic effects on the global economy because it is bumping up against its legal limit for borrowing. Congress and the White House have been unable to agree on a plan to lift or suspend the borrowing limit. The debt covers the gap between revenues collected by the government and the programs, projects and services it provides.In the meantime, the Treasury is using “extraordinary measures” to keep the U.S. from running out of cash. T...