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Venezuela’s high court has suspended the opposition’s primary election process, including its result

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s high court on Monday suspended the opposition’s entire primary election process, including its result, in the latest challenge by the government of Nicolás Maduro to its adversaries ahead of the 2024 presidential vote.The court ruled the opposition’s Oct. 22 contest may be in violation of the law. It was not immediately clear whether the suspension would effectively result in the nullification of the primary vote.The Associated Press could not immediately seek clarification from the head of the National Primary Commission as he entered the attorney general’s office minutes after the ruling was issued. The commission is an independent body that formed to organize the opposition’s primary.Maduro and allies have ridiculed and minimized the primary all year, but they escalated their attacks after the election exceeded participation expectations. More than 2.4 million Venezuelans in the country and abroad voted, including in areas once co...

Climate change: Droughts, heavy rain turn Canada’s pumpkin harvest spooky

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

Severe weather across Canada caused by climate change has wreaked havoc with the pumpkin harvest this year.Nova Scotia pumpkin farmer Danny Dill says the spring planting season was arid because of wildfires, then heavy rains in the summer flooded his fields.Dill, owner of Howard Dill Enterprises in Windsor, N.S., calls this year’s pumpkin season “spooky,” adding that it’s the worst harvest he’s had in his 40 years of farming.Pumpkin farmer Mike Williams of Ponoka, Alta., says the weather was so dry when the season began that he irrigated his farm with 12,000 litres of water every week for two months — and the bill to run the pump won’t be covered by the harvest.This year’s severe weather — climate change-exacerbated droughts followed by heavy rain — has also hit pumpkin farmers hard in the United States.Some growers in states like Texas, New Mexico and Colorado lost 20 per cent or more of their predicted yields, while others left their land ...

Texas AG Ken Paxton’s securities fraud trial set for April, more than 8 years after indictment

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will stand trial on securities fraud charges in April, a judge ruled Monday, more than eight years after the Republican was indicted and a month after his acquittal in an impeachment trial over separate corruption accusations.Paxton was in the courtroom when state District Judge Andrea Beall of Houston set the April 15 trial date in the long-delayed criminal case, which began in 2015 when a Texas grand jury indicted him on charges of duping investors in a tech startup. At the time, the felony charges appeared to threaten his political career. But Paxton, who has pleaded not guilty, has instead become an even more dominant figure in the Texas GOP and won reelection twice since his indictment.The scheduling of the trial comes at a moment when Paxton has appeared politically recharged after the Texas Senate acquitted him on impeachment charges over accusations that he used his office to help a political donor. Since then, Paxton has retu...

Federal charge says former North Dakota lawmaker traveled to Prague with intent to rape minor

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A former, longtime North Dakota lawmaker has been indicted on a federal charge alleging he traveled to Prague with the intent to rape a minor.The four-page indictment against former state Sen. Ray Holmberg also charges him with one count of receiving images depicting child sexual abuse. The indictment was filed Thursday in federal court in North Dakota. It accuses the 79-year-old Holmberg of traveling from North Dakota to the Czech Republic from about June 2011 to November 2016 to rape a person under age 18. Phone and text messages left with Holmberg’s attorney on Monday were not immediately returned. A text message sent to Holmberg was not immediately returned and voicemail on his phone was not set up, so a message could not be left. Jack Dura, The Associated Press

Halloween weekend shootings across US leave at least 11 dead, scores injured

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Shootings across the U.S. over the weekend before Halloween have left at least 11 people dead and more than 70 injured, authorities said.The deaths between Friday and Sunday included two in Tampa, Florida, three in Texarkana, Texas, and two each in Dodge City, Kansas; San Antonio, Texas; and Mansfield, Ohio, according to police. Many involved altercations arising from Halloween celebrations, including the mass shooting in Tampa’s Ybor City section early Sunday as bars were closing and scores of people in costumes spilled out on the streets before groups began arguing.The spate of weekend violence unfolded as people mourn the 18 people killed by a gunman last week in Lewiston, Maine. More than 1,000 people turned out Sunday for a vigil.“A neighborhood bar. A bowling alley. A Halloween party. It seems we can’t go one day without a mass shooting in America,” said Kris Brown, president of Brady, a gun violence prevention group. “Anger plus firearms is a...

Passenger rights overhaul will barely dent bottom line, Air Canada says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

MONTREAL — Air Canada says the country’s passenger rights overhaul will hardly hurt its bottom line.On a call with analysts Monday, chief financial officer John Di Bert said the financial impact of the reforms will be “incremental.”He says the full impact of the updated rights charter will become more apparent in 2024, noting there would be some added pressure.In April, the federal government announced sweeping reforms to the Air Passenger Protection Regulations, with the specifics now being hashed out by Canada’s transport regulator.The changes appear to scrap a loophole through which airlines have denied customers compensation for flight delays or cancellations when they were required for safety purposes.The new rules also ratchet up the maximum penalty for airline violations to $250,000 — a tenfold increase — and put the regulatory cost of complaints on carriers.This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 30, 2023.Companies in this story: (T...

Tropical Storm Pilar heads toward El Salvador and is expected to bring heavy rain to Central America

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Tropical Storm Pilar threatened to bring heavy rain and flash flooding to El Salvador and other parts of Central America as it sat just off the Pacific coast Monday.The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Pilar was located about 225 miles (360 kilometers) southwest of San Salvador with winds of 50 mph (85 kph) and was moving east-northeast at 6 mph (9 kph).The storm was expected to maintain that general track for the next day or two, stall for a day or more just off the coast and then abruptly turn around and head back out to sea without making landfall, the center said.The storm was forecast to dump five to 10 inches (12-24 centimeters) of rain from El Salvador to Costa Rica with as much as 15 inches (38 centimeters) in some areas.El Salvador’s government put the country on alert Sunday and Congress declared a national emergency, which allows civil defense authorities to force evacuations for people who are at risk.Classes were suspended across the ...

Cyprus prepares for a potential migrant influx due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cyprus is doubling the existing 1,153-person capacity of its main migrant reception camp as the island nation prepares for potentially a large influx of people if the crisis in neighboring Israel and Gaza escalates, authorities said Monday.The Pournara reception camp — on the outskirts of the capital Nicosia — will see an increase in staffing to adequately provide needed care to new arrivals and expedite asylum application processing, Cypriot Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou said in a statement.Authorities have evaluated different venues where migrants could be accommodated if arrivals exceed the capacity of the center and would immediately ask the European Union to dispatch more personnel to help process asylum applications, the statement said. Nearly 200 migrants arrived in Cyprus aboard four separate boats on Saturday alone, likely setting sail from Lebanon which is 108 miles (174 kilometers) from the country’s eastern coastline – reported...

Death toll lowered to 7 in Louisiana super fog highway crashes involving 160 vehicles

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The death toll from last week’s series of highway crashes blamed on a “super fog” of smoke from marsh fires mixed with dense fog has been lowered from eight to seven people, according to Louisiana State Police.The Oct. 24 pileups involved about 160 vehicles on Interstate 55 near New Orleans. “Due to the intense fire and the extensive wreckage, the initial investigation led Troopers to believe that there were a total of eight victims,” state police said in a Friday news release. The final number was lowered to seven after further forensic investigation involving the St. John the Baptist Parish Coroner’s Office, the Jefferson Parish Coroner’s Office, and the LSU Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Laboratory. The cars crashed after smoke spreading through the region from a marsh fire east of New Orleans combined with thick fog and reduced visibility on highways to near nothing. The National Weather Service dubbed it a “super fog” — fog enhanced b...

New Slovakia’s government announces a massive deployment at the Hungarian border to curb migration

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:42:00 GMT

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — The new Slovak government announced a big deployment of police and armed forces Monday along the border with Hungary to prevent growing numbers of migrants entering the country.Prime Minister Robert Fico did not immediately give details of the deployment but said that illegal migration needs to be under control or else people linked to “terrorist” groups could enter the country. Fico, who spoke after meeting Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Esto, said the deployment would start later Monday and that he would personally inspect the situation at border.His new government was sworn in last Wednesday after his leftist Smer, or Direction, party won the Sept. 30 parliamentary election, opening the way for the populist leader to become the prime minister for the fourth time.The new government has not yet released its policy program, but Fico has suggested it will include a tough stance against migration.Sutaj Esto said that the situation in the world has been serio...