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A Thai senator linked to a Myanmar tycoon is indicted for drug trafficking and money laundering

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — State prosecutors in Thailand indicted a member of the country’s Senate on six charges involving narcotics trafficking, money laundering and association with a transnational criminal organization, said a statement received Friday from the attorney-general’s office.The senator, Upakit Pachariyangkun, denied all the charges when he appeared Thursday at criminal court in Bangkok, and was granted release on bail of 10 million baht ($286,000).Upakit’s case is linked to that of Tun Min Latt, an influential businessman from neighboring Myanmar who is reputedly close to that country’s ruling military and especially its army chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. The general came to power in Myanmar after ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. The case against all of them involves allegations that profits from the sale of illegal drugs were laundered through a power company that Tun Min Latt and Upakit controlled, though the latter claimed to have so...

A Spanish official says spotter planes are helping curtail the number of West African migrant boats

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

MADRID (AP) — The deployment of two Spanish surveillance planes to watch for migrant boats heading on the treacherous route from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands has enabled authorities to stop 59 canoes from Senegal and Gambia carrying around 7,200 migrants in the past two months, a senior official said Friday.The boats that were stopped accounted for around half of those that officials believed would otherwise be heading to the Canary Islands off northwest Africa over that period, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.The archipelago has witnessed a record number of irregular migrant arrivals this year.Grande-Marlaska told reporters during a visit to the archipelago that “we have saved lives, because you know that the Canary Islands route is a very dangerous route.” The spotter planes are stationed in Senegal and the Canary Islands, he said.Grande-Marlaska held talks in the islands with the European Union’s home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, am...

Wholesale sales, excluding petroleum products and oilseeds and grains, down

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

OTTAWA — Statistics Canada says wholesale sales, excluding petroleum, petroleum products, and other hydrocarbons and excluding oilseeds and grain, fell 0.5 per cent to $81.7 billion in October. The agency says sales fell in five of the seven subsectors it tracks, led by the machinery, equipment and supplies subsector, which fell 1.6 per cent in October to $17.7 billion.It says the drop in the subsector was led by lower sales of the construction, forestry, mining, and industrial machinery, equipment and supplies industry group which fell 3.6 per cent to $6.0 billion, while the computer and communications equipment and supplies industry group fell 2.9 per cent to $5.0 billion.The building material and supplies subsector rose 1.1 per cent to $12.1 billion.In volume terms, wholesale sales, excluding petroleum, petroleum products, and other hydrocarbons and excluding oilseeds and grain, fell 0.7 per cent in October.Statistics Canada began including the oilseed and grain industry group as...

Georgia election workers’ defamation case against Giuliani opens second day of damages deliberations

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jurors on Friday began their second day of deliberations to decide how much Rudy Giuliani must pay two former Georgia election workers for spreading lies about them after the 2020 election that led to a barrage of racist threats and upended their lives.The jurors considered the case for more than three hours on Thursday after a three-day trial in in Washington’s federal courthouse. Giuliani has already been found liable of defamation in the case, and the jurors are considering only how much he’ll pay in damages.Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, are seeking tens of millions of dollars over Giuliani’s false claims accusing them of ballot fraud while the former New York City mayor was fighting to keep Republican Donald Trump in the White House after Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.The potential hefty damages come at the same time Giuliani, a Republican, is gearing up to defend himself against criminal charges stemming from his le...

Biggest solar flare in years temporarily disrupts radio signals on Earth

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA telescope has captured the biggest solar flare in years, which temporarily knocked out radio communication on Earth. The sun spit out the huge flare on Thursday, resulting in two hours of radio interference in parts of the U.S. and other sunlit parts of the world. Scientists said it was the biggest flare since 2017. Multiple pilots reported communication disruptions, with the impact felt across the country, said the government’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Scientists are now monitoring this sunspot region and analyzing for a possible outburst of plasma from the sun, also known as a coronal mass ejection, directed at Earth. The eruption occurred in the far northwest section of the sun, according to the center.NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the action in extreme ultraviolet light, recording the powerful surge of energy as a huge, bright flash. Launched in 2010, the spacecraft is in an extremely high orbit around Earth, where it c...

Lights flicker across NYC as brief power outage affects subways, elevators

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Lights flickered, a subway line was disrupted and some elevators and escalators briefly stopped running when a small explosion at an electrical facility caused a momentary power outage in New York City.The brief outage just before midnight Thursday affected most of the city, officials said.“Essentially people saw a flicker in their lights for about a second a little bit before midnight and then voltage recovered or kind of went back to normal,” Matthew Ketschke, the president of the power utility Con Edison.Ketschke told reporters early Friday that a piece of equipment at a Brooklyn substation short-circuited. He said a protective system akin to a circuit breaker isolated the failed equipment, leading to a brief voltage dip.Ketschke said about 10 people had to be rescued from stalled elevators across the city.The outage halted subway service between Grand Central Terminal and Wall Street, New York City Transit officials said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. The...

Moldova and Georgia celebrate as their aspirations for EU membership take crucial steps forward

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Moldova and Georgia celebrated after European Union leaders buoyed their aspirations to join the 27 member nation bloc by removing key hurdles on their long path toward membership.Lawmakers in both the Moldovan and Georgian parliaments waved EU flags and played the bloc’s anthem at Friday’s opening of their parliamentary sessions, following Thursday’s surprise announcement to open membership negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and to grant candidacy status to Georgia. The announcement came despite strong opposition from Hungary and the fact that Ukraine and Georgia are partially occupied by Russia which also has troops deployed in Moldova’s Transnistria region.Thousands of Georgians gathered in the country’s capital Tbilisi to celebrate, while Moldova’s President Maia Sandu invited citizens to a pro-European gathering scheduled for Sunday in the capital Chisinau to herald what she described as a “historic step for the destiny of our country.”M...

Sunshine, double digits expected today as mild December rolls on

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

The official start of winter is less than a week away but it’s going to feel more like spring on Friday with sunshine and temperatures in the double digits.Toronto will see a guaranteed high of 11 C on Friday and the mild air will stick around through the weekend with daytime highs of 6 C and 8 C expected on Saturday and Sunday.“We do have a little bit of a drop in the temperature for Monday afternoon and for Tuesday,” says CityNews 680 meteorologist Jill Taylor. “But this stretch is quite mild, just that little blip before we’re right back into the plus side.”The average high of this time of the year is 2 C.Mild stretch continues! Tune in to find out just how mild it will be for your Friday. The above average temps will stick around until Monday morning then a brief cool down. Some rain and a chance of wet flurries in the forecast too. https://t.co/DgcH1BtWJs— Jill Taylor (@JillTaylorCity) December 15, 2023The prospect of a white Christmas...

West African court orders Niger’s president to be released and reinstated nearly 5 months after coup

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — A court of the West African regional bloc ordered the release and reinstatement of Niger’s democratically elected president Friday, nearly five months after he was overthrown by mutinous soldiers.The ECOWAS Court of Justice ruled that President Mohamed Bazoum and his family were arbitrarily detained and called for him to be restored to office, his legal team said in a statement. Bazoum has been under house arrest with his wife and son since the July coup. The family hasn’t been given access to a judge or informed of proceedings against them and have remained in their residence cut off from the world, with a doctor the only visitor, the president’s lawyers said. They said Friday’s ruling was the first binding order from an international court on restoring Niger to democratic rule,. The Court of Justice is the regional bloc’s main judicial body. The court’s decisions are not subject to appeal and are binding on all ECOWAS insti...

Online News Act funding capped for private broadcasters, CBC: regulations

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:52 GMT

OTTAWA — Final regulations for the Online News Act shows the amount of funding private broadcasters will get through the government’s $100-million deal with Google will be limited, with an even lower cap for the CBC.The regulation released today show broadcasters will get $30 million at most from the fund, with CBC/Radio-Canada getting no more than $7 million.The rest of the money is earmarked for other qualifying news outlets such as newspapers and digital platforms. Google agreed last month to contribute $100 million a year, indexed to inflation, to Canadian news publishers, in a deal that had the Liberal government bending to the tech giant’s demands after it threatened to remove news links from its search engine. As a result, Google will be exempt from the legislation, which compels tech companies to enter into compensation agreements with news publishers for linking to their content, if it generates revenue for those digital giants.Google will instead enter into a s...