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If Canada is to be believed, India has gone rogue

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and writes about Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.Since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, Western democracies have kept silent on the country’s democratic backsliding — mainly to keep him onside against China, but also to push through trade deals and gain access to India’s markets.However, the long rope given Modi may just snap under the strain of Canada’s recent accusations that India carried out a targeted killing on Canadian soil.Last week, a few days after returning from the G20 summit in New Delhi, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested in parliament that Indian agents were behind the killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar — a Sikh separatist leader shot dead by masked gunmen on June 18.He said the slaying was “an unacceptable violation’’ of the country’s sovereignty. And if Canada is to be believed, India has gone rogue.As is to be expected, however, New...

Suspect in custody after allegedly stabbing police officer, injuring other officers in Taunton

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

A suspect was taken into custody Tuesday night after stabbing a police officer and injuring several other officers in Taunton, officials said. The stabbing happened in the area of West Britannia Street and Thomas Street. Later speaking to reporters, Police Chief Edward Walsh said one officer suffered multiple serious but non-life-threatening stab wounds. At least three other officers were also injured, suffering cuts and other injuries during a struggle with the suspect, Walsh said.Walsh said the suspect suffered minor injuries and said officers used a Taser several times during the arrest. Walsh said the incident began earlier Tuesday evening when the suspect showed up at an unrelated traffic stop and began yelling at officers. Walsh said the suspect got back into his car when told to leave. A short time later, Walsh said another officer spotted the suspect driving erratically and pulled him over. As officers approached, Walsh said, the suspect fled, prompting a purs...

Red Sox battle but unable to complete comeback efforts in 9-7 loss to Rays

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

If one game could encapsulate the 2023 Red Sox, it was Tuesday night’s series opener against the Tampa Bay Rays.Particularly, Tanner Houck and Zach Eflin, whose lopsided starts set a 9-7 Rays victory in motion.Last offseason, the Red Sox and Rays made identical three-year, $40 million offers to Eflin, a free agent coming off a pennant season with the Philadelphia Phillies. Eflin, a Florida native, said it was a difficult decision, but chose to play in his home state.On the mound at Fenway for the penultimate home game of the season, he showed the Red Sox exactly how different this season might’ve been, and what the organization needs to prioritize this offseason in order to turn the page next year.Coming into his 31st start of the year, Eflin’s 3.44 ERA, 30 starts, 172 ⅔ innings, and 182 strikeouts would’ve led the Red Sox rotation, and by a comfortable margin in most metrics. On Tuesday night, he added five innings to his season total, and held the Red Sox to three earned runs on f...

A fire at a wedding hall in northern Iraq has killed more than 100 people and injured 150

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — A fire that raced through a hall hosting a Christian wedding in northern Iraq killed at least 100 people and injured 150 others, authorities said Wednesday, warning the death toll could rise.The fire happened in Iraq’s Nineveh province in its Hamdaniya area, authorities said. That’s a predominantly Christian area just outside of the city of Mosul, some 335 kilometers (205 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad. Television footage showed flames rushing over the wedding hall as the fire took hold. In the blaze’s aftermath, only charred metal and debris could be seen as people walked through the scene of the fire, the only light coming from television cameras and the lights of onlookers’ mobile phones. Survivors arrived at local hospitals, receiving oxygen and bandaged, as their families milled through hallways and outside as workers organized more oxygen cylinders. The health department in Nineveh province raised the death toll to 114. Heal...

Lahaina family finds heirloom in rubble of their home on first visit after deadly wildfire

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Leola Vierra stepped gingerly among the hardened pools of melted metal, charred wood and broken glass that are almost all that remain of the home where she lived for nearly 50 years.Sifting through the rubble, she found two cow-patterned vessels, part of her extensive collection of bovine figurines. Nearby, her son discovered the blackened remnants of his late grandfather’s pistol, dating to his days as a Lahaina policeman in the 1950s. There was no sign of the beloved cat, Kitty Kai, that used to greet her when she came home from work.“I’m so sad — devastated,” she said. “This was my home.”Vierra, her husband and two adult children returned to the property Tuesday for the first time since the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century whipped through on Aug. 8, obliterating the historic town of Lahaina and killing at least 97 people. They were among the first small group of residents to be allowed back into the burn zone to see where their hom...

Firefighter injured battling blaze at North York home

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

A Toronto firefighter was seriously injured battling a blaze at an unoccupied home in North York on Tuesday night.The three-alarm firm broke out at a home under construction on Wedgewood Drive at around 8:30 p.m.When crews arrived the basement and first floor were ablaze. The fire was doused around an hour later.Paramedics say the firefighter was taken to hospital with serious, but non life-threatening injuries.The cause of the fire is under investigation.First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers are with our injured team member. We are all deeply appreciative for our Paramedic and trauma centre healthcare professionals for all they do to protect our team.— Matthew Pegg (@ChiefPeggTFS) September 27, 2023 More to come

Congress says its wants to avoid a shutdown. But the House and Senate are moving even further apart.

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Congress is starkly divided over very different paths to preventing a federal shutdown — the Senate charging ahead with a bipartisan package to temporarily fund the government but the House slogging through a longshot effort with no real chance of finishing by Saturday’s deadline.With days remaining before a federal closure, the stakes are rising with no resolution at hand. A shutdown would furlough millions of federal employees, leave the military without pay, disrupt air travel and cut off vital safety net services, and it would be politically punishing to lawmakers whose job it is to fund government.President Joe Biden, who earlier this year reached a budget deal with Speaker Kevin McCarthy that became law, believes it’s up to the House Republicans to deliver.“A deal is a deal,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “This is for them to fix.”Late Tuesday, the Senate pushed ahead in sweeping bipartisan fashion to break the stalemate...

Oregon Gov. Kotek directs state police to crack down on fentanyl distribution

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said Tuesday she has directed state police to launch new strategies aimed at disrupting the fentanyl supply chain and holding sellers of the frequently deadly drug accountable. Kotek said in a statement that she made the announcement at a Tuesday meeting of her task force created to revitalize downtown Portland. “I want all Oregonians to know that the state is moving forward with several new fentanyl strategic enforcement and disruption strategies,” Kotek’s statement said.The plans include increasing and reallocating state police staff to local drug enforcement teams, holding trainings with the Oregon Department of Justice to address potential biases and avoid unlawful searches, and leading interagency patrols that emphasize intercepting fentanyl using drug dogs and detectives, Kotek said.She said a pilot project using a data-driven approach to identifying drug- and alcohol-impaired drivers would also be extended.During one weekend in ...

9 years later, families of 43 missing Mexican students march to demand answers in emblematic case

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Chanting from one to 43, relatives of students abducted nine years ago counted out the number of the missing youths as they marched through Mexico City Tuesday to demand answers to one of Mexico’s most infamous human rights cases.With President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term ending next year, family members face not only the prospect of a ninth year of not knowing what happened to their sons but fears that the next administration will start the error-plagued investigation over from scratch yet again.In 2014, a group of students were attacked by municipal police in the southern city of Iguala, Guerrero, who handed them over to a local drug gang that apparently killed them and burned their bodies. Since the Sept. 26 attack, only three of their remains have been identified.After an initial coverup, last year a government truth commission concluded that local, state and federal authorities colluded with the gang to murder the students in what it called...

An Abe Lincoln photo made during his 1858 ascendancy has been donated to his museum in Illinois

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:50:31 GMT

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — During his momentous U.S. Senate campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln sat for a photograph after politicking in western Illinois and presented one of the copies to a man severely injured while testing a cannon for Lincoln’s campaign rally. As a small measure of compassion, Lincoln presented one version of the image to the injured man, Charles Lame, who overcame a deadly infection in an arm torn up by the blast with the help of flesh-eating maggots. The tale provides an unlikely, ghastly background to the original 1858 ambrotype created during the future nation-saving Civil War president’s ascendancy, an image which the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has added to its collection, officials said Tuesday. “Original images of Abraham Lincoln are extraordinarily rare, and images with a fascinating back story like this are even more rare,” said Christina Shutt, executive director of the library and museum. “Lincoln...