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Vermont-based Phish to play 2 shows to benefit flood recovery efforts

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — Phish will play two special shows next month to benefit flood recovery efforts in Vermont and upstate New York. The band, which was formed in Vermont in 1983, says on its website that it will play at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in New York on Aug. 25 and Aug. 26. The band said 100% of net proceeds from all concert and merchandise sales will be directed to a 2023 Flood Recovery Fund that’s part of a foundation it created in 1997. Phish “will support the many victims and their families, area businesses and nonprofits.”The band has been on tour. “As soon as we realized the scope of the devastation, we all together said, ‘Is there anything we can do?’” Phish member Page McConnell told WCAX-TV. “The wheels started turning within the first few days of all the rain and flooding that was happening up there.”Storms dumped up to two months’ worth of rain over a couple of days in parts of the region earlier this month.The Associated Press

Top Russian cybersecurity executive sentenced to 14 years for treason

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced the head of one of the country’s top cybersecurity companies to 14 years in prison for high treason.The trial of Ilya Sachkov was held behind closed doors, which is conventional practice for treason trials, and little is publicly known about the case against him. After his arrest in September 2021, reports said he was suspected of passing on state secrets but did not give specifics.Sachkov is the founder of Group-IB, which specializes in combating cyberattacks and online fraud and investigating high-tech cyber crimes. Top Russian banks and companies, including state-run ones, are among the company’s clients.The Associated Press

Pakistan’s Supreme Court rejects Imran Khan’s request to halt his concealing assets trial

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a petition from former Prime Minister Imran Khan about halting his trial in a lingering case involving the concealment of assets after selling state gifts, officials said.The latest court ruling was a blow to Khan, who was disqualified by the Election Commission in October 2022 on charges he didn’t correctly disclose his assets after selling state gifts that he had received from foreign dignitaries and heads of state after coming to power in 2018. Under last year’s ruling by the country’s election oversight body, Khan also lost his seat in the National Assembly in the graft case. Since then, Khan has been fighting a legal battle to avoid conviction in the case by the trial court. Khan’s trial in the case will resume on Thursday at a court in the capital, Islamabad.Khan has insisted he didn’t buy or sell state gifts in violation of the rules. In Pakistan, government leaders are allowed to bu...

Rogers records adjusted profit of $544 million in second quarter amid Shaw takeover

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc. saw its profit decrease by 73 per cent to $109 million in its most recent quarter when it closed its deal to buy Shaw Communications Inc.The Toronto-based telecommunications company says its second-quarter profit compared with a net income of $409 million in the same period last year.The profit amounted to diluted earnings per share of 20 cents for the period ending June 30, down from 76 cents during its previous second quarter.Rogers says the significant drop in net income and diluted earnings per share reflects an ongoing increase of approximately $500 million in quarterly depreciation and amortization from the assets acquired in its $26-billion merger with Shaw, which closed in April.On an adjusted basis, its net income totalled $544 million, a 17 per cent increase from $463 million during the prior second quarter, while its adjusted diluted earnings per share moved from 86 cents to $1.02 per share.Revenue for the period grew 30 per cent to $5...

Most kids with autism won’t get core therapy funding soon: Ontario ministry document

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

Most of the children in Ontario waiting for publicly funded core autism therapy will not receive it any time soon, the government says in an internal assessment obtained by The Canadian Press.Days into his new role this spring as Minister of Children, Community and Social Services, Michael Parsa was given a transition binder with information on the files he now oversees.The document obtained through a Freedom of Information request provides a much fuller picture of the Ontario Autism Program than the Progressive Conservative government has so far publicly disclosed.The current program budget is $667 million, but that will only serve about 20,000 children in core clinical therapies, the document says. Meanwhile, there are about 60,000 children seeking services through the program and about 7,000 more are added to the list each year.“Families can access a range of other OAP services, but most children and youth will not receive core clinical services funding in the short to medi...

Severe storms, heavy rain possible this evening as GTA enters heat wave

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

It may be a good idea to adjust any outdoor plans for Wednesday night with possibly intense storms and significant rain expected to roll through southern Ontario.CityNews 680 meteorologist Jill Taylor says the evening storms from the west could bring very strong, gusty wind and heavy downpours.“We’ll get into a few showers late afternoon but its into the evening, that’s when we get into the possibility of some severe storms,” says Taylor.It will be partly cloudy through the day with most areas of the GTA staying dry until a few showers arrive after 4 p.m. Thunderstorms and more showers are expected after 8 p.m. from the west to the east.Taylor says the unsettled weather will hang around into Thursday morning before things clear up.Heat Warning today through Friday and heads up #Toronto GTHA if you have outdoor plans tonightStorms after 8pm tonight could bring very strong wind and heavy downpours!— Jill Taylor (@JillTaylorCity) July 26, 2023The GTA also ...

ASEAN states should engage bilaterally with Myanmar to resolve crisis, Malaysian leader says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) — Southeast Asian countries should be given some latitude to engage informally with Myanmar on an individual basis to help resolve a deepening crisis there, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Wednesday.Anwar said he and visiting Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. agreed during talks on the need to strengthen the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in ending the violence that started after Myanmar’s army seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government on Feb. 1, 2021.At the same time, Anwar said neighboring countries should be given “some flexibility, room and space” to engage with Myanmar on an informal basis. But he said it must not come at the expense of “sacrificing the issues of human rights and the treatment of minorities,” particularly the ethnic Muslim Rohingya and others.Some ASEAN countries, including current chair Indonesia, have been frustrated with Myanmar’s refusal to cooperate with...

On their own front line, Ukraine’s surgeons treat waves of soldiers since the counteroffensive began

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

DNIPRO, Ukraine (AP) — The horrors of war arrive through the night at a hospital in eastern Ukraine, a procession of stretchers bearing limp bodies whisked from the front line.The soldiers come with bandaged limbs soaked in blood, faces blackened with shrapnel fragments and stunned eyes fixed on the ceiling, frozen in shock. Lately, they’ve been coming with ever-greater frequency.“Pain!” shrieks a serviceman with a gaping thigh wound as medical workers move him to a surgical gurney.Evacuated from trenches in the east, forests in the north and the open fields of the south, wounded soldiers begin showing up at the Mechnikov Hospital in late afternoon, and dozens more in desperate need of surgery are wheeled in before the sun rises the next day.The surge of wounded soldiers coincides with the major counteroffensive Ukraine launched in June to try to recapture its land, nearly one-fifth of which is now under Russian control. Surgeons at Mechnikov are busier now than perhaps at any other...

Singapore hangs a man for drug trafficking. It will hang a woman on Friday – the first in 19 years

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Singapore executed a man Wednesday for drug trafficking and is set to hang a woman Friday — the first in 19 years — prompting renewed calls for a halt to capital punishment.Mohammed Aziz Hussain, 56, was hanged at Singapore’s Changi Prison and has been buried, said activist Kirsten Han of Transformative Justice Collective, which advocates for abolishing the death penalty in Singapore. A citizen of the city-state, he was sentenced to death in 2018 for trafficking around 50 grams (1.75 ounces) of heroin, Han said.Saridewi Djamani, a 45-year-old Singaporean woman, is due to be hanged Friday after she was convicted and sentenced in 2018 for trafficking around 30 grams (1.05 ounces) of heroin, the group and other human rights organizations said. Han said the last woman known to have been hanged in Singapore was 36-year-old hairdresser Yen May Woen, also for drug trafficking, in 2004. “Singaporean authorities must immediately stop these blatant violatio...

Typhoon Doksuri leaves at least 2 dead and displaces thousands in the northern Philippines

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:12:51 GMT

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Typhoon Doksuri blew ashore in a cluster of islands and lashed northern Philippine provinces with ferocious wind and rain Wednesday, leaving at least two people dead and displacing thousands of others as it blew roofs off rural houses, flooded low-lying villages and toppled trees, officials said.The typhoon slammed into Fuga Island before dawn and later hit another island in Cagayan province, where nearly 16,000 people were evacuated from high-risk coastal villages and schools and workplaces were shut down as a precaution as Doksuri approached.They were among tens of thousands of people in northern provinces who were affected by flooding and other problems caused by the typhoon, which has a 700-kilometer-wide (435-mile-wide) band of wind and rain, disaster-response officials said.A 17-year-old resident died in the northern mountain city of Baguio when a huge mound of soil loosened by heavy rains hit and buried his house, city officials said.In Isabela prov...