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8 police officers assigned to protect South Africa’s deputy president arrested over highway attack

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Eight police officers assigned to a security team protecting South Africa’s deputy president have been arrested and are expected to appear in a courtroom on Monday after they were caught on video kicking and stomping on two off-duty trainee soldiers having pulled their car over on a highway in Johannesburg.Some of the plainclothes VIP protection officers were carrying assault rifles when they dragged the men out of their car and attacked them earlier this month. One of the men was kicked unconcious in the attack, which was caught on video by another motorist and shared widely on social media.It’s unclear why the officers pulled the car over as the video only starts as they are dragging one of the men across the road.But the officers are part of a VIP protection unit known in South Africa as the “blue light brigade” and which has a reputation for driving dangerously fast and reacting with unneccesary force if cars don’t immediately get out of their way. The unit n...

New evacuations ordered in Greece as high winds and heat fuel wildfires

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

RHODES, Greece (AP) — A weeklong wildfire on the Greek island of Rhodes tore past defenses Monday, forcing more evacuations, as three major fires raged elsewhere in the country fueled by strong winds and successive heat waves. The latest evacuations were ordered in south Rhodes after 19,000 people, mostly tourists, were moved in buses and boats over the weekend out of the path of the fire that reached several coastal areas from nearby mountains. Help continued to arrive from the European Union and elsewhere, with Turkish firefighting planes joining the effort in Rhodes, where eight water-dropping planes and 10 helicopters buzzed over flames up to five meters (16 feet) tall despite low visibility. “The risk of fire will be extreme in several areas of Greece today,” Fire Service spokesperson Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said a day after temperatures on the southern Greek mainland soared as high as 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). Overnight, evacuations were also ordered on the...

Jesuits confirm expulsion of a priest artist and lament that Vatican norms block harsher sanctions

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

ROME (AP) — The Jesuits said Monday that a famous artist priest is definitively expelled from the religious order for sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusing women, and lamented they couldn’t prosecute him more vigorously under the Vatican’s internal procedures.The Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik remains a Catholic priest but is no longer a Jesuit priest, after he didn’t appeal his June expulsion decree, said Rupnik’s former superior, the Rev. Johan Verschueren.Rupnik, a Slovenian priest, is one of the most celebrated religious artists in the Catholic Church. His mosaics decorate churches and basilicas around the world, including at the Vatican.Late last year, the Jesuits acknowledged Rupnik had been accused by several women of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse over 30 years. He had largely escaped punishment until then, apparently in part because of his exalted status in the church and at the Vatican, where even Pope Francis’ role in the case came into question...

Russia says Moscow and Crimea hit by Ukrainian drones while Russian forces bombard Ukraine’s south

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian authorities accused Ukraine of launching a drone attack on Moscow early Monday that saw one of the aircraft fall near the Defense Ministry’s main headquarters, while the Russian military launched new strikes on port infrastructure in southern Ukraine.Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties when the drones struck two nonresidential buildings. The Defense Ministry claimed that the military jammed both attacking drones, forcing them to crash. Russian media reported that one of the drones fell on the Komsomolsky highway near Moscow’s center, close to the main Defense Ministry building. Another drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting its upper floors.Emergency workers were inspecting the damage and traffic was halted on sections of highways where the drones fell.Ukrainian authorities didn’t immediately claim responsibility for the strike, which was the second drone attack on the Russian capital this month....

German opposition leader faces unease over comments on cooperation with far right

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s opposition leader insisted on Monday that there will be no “cooperation” at the local level between his party and the far-right Alternative for Germany after his suggestion that they might somehow work together drew unease within his own conservative bloc.Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union has long said it won’t work with Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which has drifted steadily further right. Merz reiterated in a ZDF television interview Sunday that there would be no cooperation in the national, state or European parliaments with AfD, which recently has surged in polls. But he was more equivocal about the situation at town and county level, after the first AfD candidates recently won elections in eastern Germany to lead a county administration and become the full-time mayor of a municipality. Those were democratic elections that “we have to accept,” Merz said. “And then of course ways have to be sought in local parla...

In the news today: Nova Scotia surveys damage from massive weekend rainfall

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today…Municipal offices in Halifax closed after weekend rainsMunicipal offices across Halifax will be closed today as emergency crews work to repair damage caused by extensive rainfalls over the weekend. The Halifax Regional Municipality says many areas remain inaccessible, leading to safety concerns for local residents.Rescue efforts are also continuing at a flooded Nova Scotia field where four people, including two children, were lost after rushing water swamped the vehicles they were travelling in.Massive floods triggered by widespread rainstorms over the weekend dumped more than 200 millimetres of rain in the Hammonds Plains, Bedford and Lower Sackville areas.Fast-growing fire near Kamloops prompts evacuation alerts and ordersA fast-moving wildfire has prompted officials in the Kamloops area to issue evacuation orders and alerts for nearby properties as the fire ...

Russian athletes can qualify for Olympic spots in an increasing number of sports with a year to go

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

DUESSELDORF, Germany (AP) — A year before the Paris Olympics, and nearly a year-and-a-half since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, officials governing many of the sports on the 2024 program are still split on how to treat Russian athletes.Increasingly, various governing bodies are allowing them back into Olympic qualifying competitions as neutral competitors without national flags or anthems. Most sports initially barred Russians from competing soon after last year’s full-scale invasion.The International Olympic Committee strongly backs those moves even as the body itself says it hasn’t decided if athletes from Russia and ally Belarus can compete at the Paris Games. However, the IOC has delayed action on the one sport whose qualification it runs in-house, boxing.Most of the sports which have allowed Russians to return also followed IOC advice on its preferred name — “individual neutral athletes” — and to keep barring those who are under contract with the military...

Biles, Ledecky, McLaughlin-Levrone all look for Olympic encores in Paris

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

The city itself will be one of the brightest stars at the Paris Olympics, with ceremonies on the Seine, beach volleyball by the Eiffel Tower and a marathon route that passes through Versailles.In the end, though, it will be the 10,500 athletes who will grab the spotlight once the festivities begin one year from Wednesday (July 26). Simone Biles is on a comeback, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone never left. A skateboarder who also likes to surf named Sky Brown is in contention to win gold medals in two events some 9,000 miles apart (more on that in a moment) and Katie Ledecky is still swimming strong heading into her fourth Olympics. Some athletes to watch next year in Paris include:SIMONE BILESBiles will be 27 by the time the Paris Games open, which is considered retirement age for most American female gymnasts. But Biles has been redefining what’s possible ever since she burst onto the scene 10 years ago. Her game-changing legacy included the decision to exit the competition at the ...

‘We take pride in what we accomplished’: Canadian veterans remember the Korean War

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

Bill Black still gets letters and cards thanking him and other Canadian veterans for their service in the Korean War.Quite a few of those notes from South Koreans have arrived lately at the Korea Veterans Association, where Black is president of an Ottawa chapter, as the 70th anniversary of the armistice in that conflict approaches. More than 26,000 Canadian Armed Forces were deployed to assist South Korea after it was invaded by North Korea in 1950 and 7,000 more followed to help with peacekeeping after the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. Black was part of the peacekeeping contingent. He worked on a navy destroyer assigned to patrol South Korean waters and says it remains an honour to have served. “We take pride in what we accomplished there, all of our Canadian veterans who served in Korea take pride,” the 89-year-old Canadian veteran says. “We sort of slap ourselves on the back that we were there to contribute, to aid them.”Canada lost 516 soldiers ...

First Nation spends day in ceremony to launch dig for potential unmarked graves

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:25:42 GMT

MINEGOZIIBE ANISHINABE — Before the sun broke through the sky Monday morning, members of a Manitoba First Nation planned to start a critical month-long search in a good way. Spiritual advisers were to lead a pipe ceremony in Minegoziibe Anishinabe while a sacred fire was to be lit near where potential graves of children forced to attend residential school may be. The sacred fire is expected to burn for the entirety of the estimated four-week-long excavation of an area underneath the Catholic church where 14 anomalies were detected using ground-penetrating radar last year. “This allows for a trauma-informed, spiritually and culturally sensitive approach to the work that we have to do in the community,” Chief Derek Nepinak said before the ceremony. Monday is about ensuring elders, survivors and intergenerational survivors of the former Pine Creek Residential School are provided support before ground is expected to be broken Tuesday. The First Nation, northwest of Winnipeg,...