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Macron keeps Borne as PM amid stalled second term

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron will stick with Elisabeth Borne as his prime minister, ending speculation that he would seek a wider reset after recent unrest.The president decided to maintain Borne in the position because “calm had returned” to France and the Bastille Day celebrations were “a success” despite fears that they would be marred by clashes, according to his staff.After her appointment in May 2022, Borne steered the government through several crises — including weeks of violent demonstrations this spring over Macron’s plans to raise the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62. Last month, the fatal shooting of a young man of North African descent during a police intervention sparked days of riots and chaos in poorer French suburbs.“Borne is a good compromise for Macron. She is doing the job better than expected. He’ll probably change her only after the next elections if the result is very bad for [Macron’s] Renaissance party,” said Bruno Jeanbart, a pollster ...

Spain’s far-right leader threatens long-term occupation of Catalonia

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

MADRID — Far-right leader Santiago Abascal on Tuesday predicted that tensions between Spain and the dormant Catalan separatist movement would be revived and “become much worse” if his Vox party and the center-right Popular Party gain enough votes to form a government after the July 23 national election.“The only way for there to not be any tension is to allow [Catalonia] to secede, for us to just surrender,” he said at an event in Madrid. “But we won’t hesitate: We will lay down the law.”Abascal said that Spain had failed to address the problem of Catalan separatism in 2017, when the region held an illegal independence referendum. In the aftermath of that vote, conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy evoked Article 155 of the Spanish constitution to dissolve the regional government and assume direct control over some of Catalonia’s autonomous powers for over half a year.The far-right leader said that Rajoy’s intervention in Cat...

Police search for two armed home invasion suspects in Brookline

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

Police in Brookline are working to identify two suspects who forced their way into a home and assaulted a man inside early Tuesday morning.The Brookline Police Department said a 61-year-old man was left with a laceration wound to the head after “multiple masked suspects” broke into a home on Warren Street early Tuesday morning and assaulted the resident. Police added there was also evidence that a gun was fired during the incident.Authorities said that based on their investigation, they believed the suspects forced their way through the balcony of the home’s second floor while the residents were sleeping inside.The two suspects were able to flee the scene, according to authorities, while the resident who was attacked was later taken to a hospital as a precaution. Brookline PD later released footage and images of two masked individuals, including video of a suspect approaching a camera and attempting to cover it. This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS ...

Accused Discord leaker Jack Teixeira argues he should be let out of jail as he awaits his classified documents trial, citing Trump’s release

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

(CNN) — The Massachusetts Air National Guardsman who is accused of posting a trove of classified documents to social media asked a judge to reconsider his detention on Monday, pointing out that he is charged with the same federal counts as former President Donald Trump and that prosecutors did not oppose Trump’s release.In May, a Massachusetts judge ruled that 21-year-old Jack Teixeira would be held in jail while he awaits trial for charges under the Espionage Act after prosecutors argued he callously mishandled highly sensitive national security information during his short tenure in the National Guard. The magistrate judge, David Hennessy, said that Teixeira posed a continued threat to national security.Teixeira’s lawyers argued in a new filing on Monday that a judge should reverse a decision to keep Teixeira detained, pointing to several other criminal defendants who were released while awaiting trial, including Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta.“The specu...

Suicide bomber targets truck carrying troops in northwestern Pakistan, wounding 8 people

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A suicide bomber targeted a truck carrying security forces in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, wounding at least eight people, police said amid increasing violence in the region.The attack took place in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan and is a former stronghold of the militant Pakistani Taliban group, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, who have stepped up attacks on security forces in recent months. The military truck was badly damaged. Police did not give any details about any troop casualties. A senior police officer in the city, Waqas Rafique, said the victims were taken to a nearby hospital and that the attack also damaged other nearby vehicles carrying civilians. The Pakistani Taliban — also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP — are a separate group but an ally of the Afghan Tali...

An American soldier is detained by North Korea after crossing its heavily armed border

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — An American soldier crossed the heavily armed border from South Korea into North Korea “willfully and without authorization,” U.S. officials said Tuesday, becoming the first American detained in the North in nearly five years amid heightened tensions over its nuclear program.There were no immediate details about why or how the soldier crossed the border or whether the soldier was on duty. The four U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of a public announcement.The American-led U.N. Command overseeing the area tweeted earlier Tuesday that the detained U.S. citizen was on a tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom. The U.S. military in South Korea said in a statement that he “willfully and without authorization” crossed the military demarcation line into North Korea.It said he is believed to be in North Korean custody and that the U.N. Command is working with its North Korean counterparts to resolve the incident. ...

Torontonians need to earn more than double minimum wage to afford apartment: Report

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

A new report finds there would need to be a huge boost to the minimum wage for low-income earners in Toronto to even come close to comfortably affording a two-bedroom apartment.The findings from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suggests people living in the city would need to earn $40 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment and then still have money left over for food and utilities. For a one bedroom apartment they would need to earn close to $34 an hour.Ontario currently has the second highest minimum wage in the country at $15.50, and will have the highest in October 2023 when it increases to $16.55. The report finds the climbing cost of housing in Toronto has wiped out any gains made by recent minimum wage increases.“The discrepancy between the rental wage and the minimum wage is such that, in most Canadian cities, minimum-wage earners are extremely unlikely to escape core housing need,” reads the report. “They are likely spending too much on rent, ...

A look at some American who crossed into North Korea over the past years

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The U.S.-led United Nations Command is trying to secure the release of an unidentified American soldier who entered North Korea from the South Korean side of a border village. It’s not immediately clear what motivated the soldier to cross into North Korea during a time of high tensions as the pace of both the North’s weapons demonstrations and U.S.-South Korean joint military training have intensified in a cycle of tit-for-tat.There have been cases of Americans crossing into North Korea over the past years, including a small number of U.S. soldiers. Some of the Americans who crossed were driven by evangelical zeal or simply attracted by the mystery of a severely cloistered police state fueled by anti-U.S. hatred. Other Americans were detained after entering North Korea as tourists. In one tragic case, it ended in death.Here’s a look at Americans who entered North Korea in the past years:___CHARLES JENKINSBorn in Rich Square, N.C., Charles Jenkins was one of...

High court upholds cash-free bail in Illinois, takes effect in September

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of a state law ending cash bail, ordering implementation in mid-September. The ruling overturns a Kankakee County judge’s opinion in December that the law violated the constitution’s provision that “all persons shall be bailable by sufficient sureties.”Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Ann Theis delivered the court’s opinion, approved 5-2, saying that the constitution “does not mandate that monetary bail is the only means to ensure criminal defendants appear for trials or the only means to protect the public.”The General Assembly dominated by Democrats approved the plan in January 2021 as part of an expansive overhaul of the state’s criminal justice system known as the SAFE-T Act. It followed the police-involved murders of George Floyd in Minnesota the previous spring. The Kankakee County judge’s ruling did not block implementation of the law, set to take ef...

Tourists and residents warned to stay inside as deadly heat hits Europe during peak travel season

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:50:00 GMT

MILAN (AP) — Officials warned residents and tourists packing Mediterranean destinations on Tuesday to stay indoors during the hottest hours as the second heat wave in as many weeks hits the region and Greece, Spain and Switzerland battled wildfires. In Italy, civil protection workers monitored crowds for people in distress from the heat in central Rome, while Red Cross teams in Portugal took to social media to warn people not to leave pets or children in parked cars. In Greece, volunteers handed out drinking water, and in Spain they reminded people to protect themselves from breathing in smoke from fires.“Heat waves are really an invisible killer,” Panu Saaristo, the emergency health team leader for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said during a Geneva briefing. “We are experiencing hotter and hotter temperatures for longer stretches of time every single summer here in Europe.”The new heat wave in several parts of southern Europe is expected to p...