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Voters brave the heat in election that could see Spain become the latest EU member to swing right

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

MADRID (AP) — Voters in Spain braved soaring summer temperatures to vote Sunday in a general election that could make the country the latest European Union member to swing to the political right.The Interior Ministry said turnout was 40% at 2 p.m., 2.5 points more than in the last elections in November 2019.Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the early election after his Spanish Socialist Workers Party and its far-left partner, Unidas Podemos, took a severe beating in local and regional elections in May. Sánchez has been premier since 2018.Polling stations for the 37 million voters close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT). Near-final results are expected by midnight.Most opinion polls have put the right-wing Popular Party, which won the May vote, ahead of the Socialists but likely needing the support of the extreme right Vox party if they want to form a government.Such a coalition would return a far-right force to the Spanish government for the first time since the country transitioned to democra...

Bell tolls for Wisconsin man who wins Hemingway look-alike contest

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — On his 68th birthday, a white-bearded Wisconsin man won the Hemingway Look-Alike Contest, a highlight of Key West’s annual Hemingway Days celebration that ends Sunday.Gerrit Marshall, a retired television broadcast engineer from Madison, prevailed Saturday night at Sloppy Joe’s Bar, a frequent hangout of Ernest Hemingway when he lived in Key West during the 1930s.“This is the best birthday I have ever had,” said Marshall, whose birthday falls just one day after the July 21 anniversary of Hemingway’s birth.On his 11th attempt, Marshall triumphed over nearly 140 other entrants in the contest that featured two preliminary rounds and Saturday’s finals.Competitors in sportsman’s attire, most emulating the rugged “Papa” persona Hemingway adopted in his later years, paraded onstage at Sloppy Joe’s before a judging panel of previous winners.Marshall said he shares several characteristics besides appearance with Hemingway, and has written both nonfiction and short ficti...

Morocco, Benzina set to make Women’s World Cup history in a game against Germany

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — When Nouhaila Benzina steps onto the field for Morocco’s first match of the Women’s World Cup against Germany, she will make history — and not just as a player for the first Arab or North African nation ever in the tournament. The 25-year-old defender will be the first player to wear the Islamic headscarf at the senior-level Women’s World Cup. She and the Atlas Lionesses face two-time World Cup champions Germany in Melbourne, Australia, on Monday. “Girls will look at Benzina (and think) ‘That could be me,’” said Assmaah Helal, a co-founder of the Muslim Women in Sports Network said of the hijab. “Also the policymakers, the decision-makers, the administrators will say, ‘We need to do more in our country to create these accepting and open and inclusive spaces for women and girls to participate in the game.’”Benzina, who plays professional club soccer for the Association’s Sports of Forces Armed Royal – the eight-time defending champions in Morocco’s top wom...

Heavy rains in Afghanistan and Pakistan unleash flash floods that killed dozens of people

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Heavy flooding from seasonal rains in Afghanistan killed at least 31 people and left dozens missing over the past three days, while in neighboring Pakistan 13 people died due to heavy rains and landslides.Shafiullah Rahimi, the ruling Taliban’s appointed spokesman for Afghanistan’s State Ministry for Natural Disaster Management, said Sunday that at least 31 people were killed, 74 were injured and 41 others were missing. Flash floods hit the capital, Kabul, the Maidan Wardak and Ghazni provinces. He added that the majority of the casualties were in west Kabul and Maidan Wardak.Rahimi also said around 250 livestock perished in the floods.The flooding brought further misery to the already suffering Afghanistan. In April, the U.N.’s humanitarian affairs agency said the south Asian country is facing its third consecutive year of drought, its second year of severe economic hardship and the consequences of decades of war and natural disasters.The most recent flash fl...

Netanyahu deals with a medical emergency as Israel reaches a new level of unrest

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recovering in a hospital on Sunday after an emergency heart procedure, while opposition to his government’s contentious judicial overhaul plan reached a fever pitch and unrest gripped the country.Netanyahu’s doctors said Sunday the heart pacemaker implantation went smoothly and that Netanyahu, 73, felt fine. According to his office, he was expected to be discharged later in the day. But tensions were surging as lawmakers began a marathon debate over the first major piece of the overhaul, ahead of a vote in parliament enshrining it into law on Monday.Mass protests continued, part of seven straight months of the most sustained and intense demonstrations the country has ever seen. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Israel on Saturday night, while thousands marched into Jerusalem and camped out near the Knesset, or parliament, ahead of Monday’s vote.Netanyahu’s sudden ho...

A salvage team is set to begin siphoning oil out of rusting tanker moored off Yemen, UN says

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

CAIRO (AP) — An international team is set to begin siphoning oil out of the hull of a decrepit tanker moored off the coast of war-torn Yemen this week, a U.N. official said Sunday. It will mark the first concrete step in an operation years in the making aimed at preventing a massive oil spill in the Red Sea.More than 1.1 million barrels of oil stored in the tanker, known as SOF Safer, will be transferred to another vessel the United Nations purchased as a replacement to the rusting storage tanker, said Achim Steiner, administrator of the U.N. development program.“We have reached a critical stage in this salvage operation,” Steiner told The Associated Press hours after the salvage team on Saturday managed to moor the replacement vessel alongside the Safer tanker in the Red Sea. “This marks, in a sense, the completion of the month-long preparatory phase.”The rusting tanker is a Japanese-made vessel built in the 1970s and sold to the Yemeni government in the 1980s to store up to 3 mill...

Search continues for four people missing after record rainfall in Nova Scotia

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia RCMP say the search continues for four people, including two children, after intense thunderstorms dumped record amounts of rain across the province.Cpl. Guillaume Tremblay released no other details, but says police would update the progress of the search later today.All four people were reported missing Saturday in separate incidents in West Hants – a largely rural municipality northwest of Halifax.Police say the children were with three other people who managed to escape from a car that got stuck in floodwaters. A second vehicle carrying four people was also submerged and two people escaped, but a youth and a man remain unaccounted for.Meanwhile, municipal emergency officials in West Hants lifted an evacuation order for the area early Sunday.Environment Canada says the downpour, which began Friday, dumped between 200-250 millimetres of rain along the province’s South Shore, across the Halifax area and into central and western parts of Nova Scotia....

‘A long journey’: Reconciliation happening day by day, one year after Pope’s apology

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

Phil Fontaine has had a year to reflect since he heard an apology from the head of the Roman Catholic Church, something the former Assembly of First Nations national chief fought much of his life to have delivered on Canadian soil.“Without an apology, it would be impossible to forgive,” Fontaine says after taking a few moments to contemplate the historic moment. “And without forgiveness, there can’t be any true healing.”This week marks a year since Pope Francis arrived in Canada. He delivered his first apology in Maskwacis, a Cree community south of Edmonton, in front of thousands of survivors, leaders and community members.Pope Francis said he was sorry for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the cultural destruction and forced assimilation of Indigenous people, which culminated in residential schools.The pontiff would deliver further apologies as he made stops in Alberta, Quebec and Nunavut during the six-day tour. On his flight back to Rome, in...

Inflation has fallen, but the Bank of Canada hasn’t backed off rate hikes. Here’s why

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

OTTAWA — Canada’s inflation rate has returned to the country’s target range after a tumultuous couple of years of soaring prices.Statistics Canada reported on Tuesday that inflation fell to 2.8 per cent in June, down significantly from the eye-popping peak of 8.1 per cent reached last summer.That’s within the country’s one to three per cent inflation target and, as Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has boasted, the lowest inflation rate in the G7.But despite the good news, the Bank of Canada is still in inflation-fighting mode and seems more likely to raise interest rates further than cut them anytime soon.Earlier this month, the central bank raised its key interest rate again by a quarter percentage point, bringing its key rate to five per cent. At the time, the most recent inflation reading showed the annual rate had fallen to 3.4 per cent in May.Though the decline in inflation was praised by governor Tiff Macklem, he also issued a warning that the central...

6 dead, 14 injured in reported shootings in Chicago over weekend

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:03:23 GMT

CHICAGO — Six people have died and more than 14 people have been shot due to gun violence since Friday night. According to the Chicago Police Department, the shootings took place from the Loop, all the way down to the West Pullman Neighborhood with the victims ages ranging from 16 to 50.Police reposed to a call of a person shot in Little Village around 1:25 a.m. Sunday morning and found a man with a gunshot wound to the head inside of a flipped over vehicle. He was transported to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition and later died of his injuries.Community activist Andrew Holmes said he and his team has been assisting impacted families. Here's a breakdown of what we know from each shooting, in chronological order, beginning late Friday night:1200 Block of West 81st Street (Auburn Gresham) - Friday, around 10:15 p.m.According to CPD, a 16-year-old boy, who had been shot multiple times in the chest, was discovered on the sidewalk and taken to Comer Children's Hospital, where he ...