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Hong Kong, other parts of south China grind to near standstill as powerful Typhoon Saola passes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — Most of Hong Kong and other parts of southern China ground to a near standstill Friday with classes and flights canceled as powerful Typhoon Saola passed along the coast. Many workers stayed at home and students in various cities saw the start of their school year postponed to next week. Trading on Hong Kong’s stock market was suspended and hundreds of people were stranded at the airport after about 460 flights were canceled in the key regional business and travel hub.Rail authorities in mainland China halted all trains entering or leaving Guangdong province from Friday night to Saturday evening, state television CCTV reported.The Hong Kong Observatory issued a No. 10 hurricane signal, the highest warning under the city’s weather system. It was the first No. 10 warning since Super Typhoon Mangkhut hit Hong Kong in 2018.The observatory said Saola — with maximum sustained winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour — came its closest to the financial hub at aro...

Stock market today: Wall Street is mixed following data that shows the labor market is cooling

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

NEW YORK — Stocks turned mixed on Wall Street in afternoon trading Friday as investors weigh the implications of a new government report showing that U.S. job growth increased at a healthy but more moderate pace last month. The major indexes have wavered between small gains and losses after rising as much as 0.8% in the early going. Stocks initially got a boost from the jobs report, which supports investors’ hopes that the Federal Reserve will hold off on raising interest rates again in its bid to lower inflation. The indexes gave back most of their early gains as bond yields began ticking higher.The S&P 500 was up 0.1%. The benchmark index is coming off its first monthly loss since February, but is on pace for its second straight weekly gain.The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 69 points, or 0.2%, to 34,791 as of 1:38 p.m. Eastern. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1%.The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added a solid 187,000 jobs in August. The job growth marked...

Police identify suspect in fatal double shooting in Toronto’s west end

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

Toronto police have identified a suspect in a fatal double shooting in the city’s west end that claimed the life of a 23-year-old man and left a woman with injuries.Officers responded to reports of a shooting in the Northcliffe Boulevard and St. Clair Avenue West area on Thursday, Aug. 24, at around 7:35 p.m.Police say a man walked into a restaurant in the area asking for help because he had been shot.The man, identified as Nakhari Negus Henry-Robinson, 23, of Toronto, (pictured below) was later pronounced dead at hospital.Emergency crews found a second victim in the area — a 51-year-old woman.She was treated at hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.Photo of homicide victim Nakhari Negus Henry-Robinson. HANDOUT/Toronto Police ServiceOn Friday, police issued an arrest warrant for a suspect.Ridge Kazumba, 26, of Toronto, is wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for second-degree murder.He’s described as approximately six feet tall with a medium-heavy build, brown eyes...

Metal factory explosion in Brazil kills 2 people and injures several others

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

SAO PAULO (AP) — An explosion Friday at a metal factory in southern Brazil killed two people and seriously injured at least 12 others, state officials said. Dozens of firefighters and rescue teams were sent to the site of the explosion in the countryside city of Cabreuva in Sao Paulo state, Gov. Tarcisio de Freitas said on social media. Cabreuva lies about 90 kilometers (about 60 miles) northwest of the city of Sao Paulo.Footage on Brazilian TV broadcasters showed the factory completely destroyed by the explosion.Local media outlets said the blast was triggered by overheating equipment, and that hospitals in the area had been warned there would be a big influx of injured patients. The Associated Press

Gun and drug charges filed against Myon Burrell, sent to prison for life as teen but freed in 2020

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Prosecutors filed gun and drug charges Friday against Myon Burrell, who was sent to prison for life as a teenager but was set free in 2020 after 18 years behind bars after his sentence was commuted in a high-profile murder case.Burrell, now 37, was arrested in the Minneapolis suburb of Robbinsdale on Tuesday after police said they found a handgun and drugs in his SUV during a traffic stop. His prosecution and harsh punishment in the murder case raised questions about the integrity of the criminal justice system that put him away for the death 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards, of Minneapolis, who was killed by a stray bullet as she was doing her homework in 2008. The Associated Press and APM Reports in 2020 uncovered new evidence and serious flaws in that police investigation, ultimately leading to the creation of an independent national legal panel to review the case, which led the state pardons board to commute Burrell’s sentence. However, his request for a pardo...

Death toll from Johannesburg fire rises to 76 as city turns to tough job of identifying victims

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Search teams finished checking a derelict Johannesburg apartment building a day after one of South Africa’s deadliest fires broke out there as pathologists faced the grisly task Friday of identifying charred bodies and body parts that were transported in large trucks to mortuaries across the city.The death toll from Thursday’s predawn blaze rose to 76 after two people died in a hospital overnight, Health Minister Joe Phaahla told reporters. At least 12 of the victims were children, authorities said.Homeless South Africans, poor foreign migrants and others who found themselves marginalized in a city often referred to as Africa’s richest but which has deep social problems inhabited the downtown building.The number of injured people hospitalized from the fire also increased to 88, according to a provincial health official.After conducting three searches through each of the building’s five stories, emergency services personnel believed that all huma...

‘Please share the road’: OPP reminding motorists to drive safely over long weekend

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

The unofficial end of summer is here, and with many hitting the road over the Labour Day long weekend provincial police are asking motorists to drive safely — with a sobering reminder.“Two hundred and thirty nine people have died already this year in road collisions” OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.“In the last five years, 946 people have died and when we look at those collisions, over half of them died as a result of one of the leading causes of death and injury on our highways. We call them the ‘big four’: aggressive driving, impaired driving, distracted driving, and not wearing your seatbelt.”Schmidt said there were five fatal incidents during last year’s Labour Day long weekend including two road deaths.He’s asking anyone travelling the roads this weekend to be sure they’re making good decisions.“Wherever you are, please share the road,” Schmidt said. “Use your safety equipment, focus on the task of driving, obey the s...

Proud Boy who smashed Capitol window on Jan. 6 gets 10 years in prison, then declares, ‘Trump won!’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former member of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group who smashed a window at the U.S. Capitol in the building’s first breach of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot was sentenced on Friday to 10 years in prison — and then defiantly declared as he walked out of the courtroom, “Trump won!”The sentence for Dominic Pezzola is the latest handed down after leaders of the group were convicted of spearheading an attack aimed at preventing the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election.Pezzola, 46, took a police officer’s riot shield and used it to smash the window, allow rioters to make the first breach into the Capitol, and he later filmed a “celebratory video” with a cigar inside the building, prosecutors said. He was a recent Proud Boys recruit, however, and a jury acquitted him of the most high-profile charge, seditious conspiracy, a rarely brought Civil War-era offense. He was convicted of other serious charges, and p...

Civil rights group wants independent probe into the record number of deaths in Alaska prisons

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A civil rights group is asking the state court system to order an independent investigation into the Alaska Department of Corrections after a record number of deaths were reported last year.The request from the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska came Thursday when it announced separate lawsuits against the state Department of Corrections on behalf of two men who died by suicide while in prison in the last year, the Anchorage Daily News reported.The lawsuits, filed jointly by the organization and private attorneys on behalf of family members of the two men, seeks financial settlements and the outside investigation.“There must be greater accountability and transparency on behalf of the Department of Corrections to prevent these tragedies from occurring,” Ruth Botstein, the ACLU of Alaska’s legal director, said at a news conference.Neither the the Alaska Department of Corrections nor the attorney general’s office had been served with the lawsuits by...

Gabon opposition leader alleges the ousted president’s family arranged the coup to retain power

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:40 GMT

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Gabon’s opposition leader accused the family of the recently ousted president of engineering his removal from power in order to retain their control in the oil-rich Central African nation, and said Friday that he should have won last week’s presidential election.Albert Ondo Ossa told The Associated Press on Friday that the junta who ousted Gabon’s president on Wednesday, just after he had been declared the winner in the election, did not engage in a coup but rather a “palace revolution” in order to continue his family’s reign.Soldiers toppled President Ali Bongo Ondimba and put him under house arrest, accusing him of irresponsible governance that risked leading the country into chaos. They then put Bongo’s cousin, Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, head of the elite republican guard, in charge. Oligui is expected to be sworn into office on Monday before the constitutional court. Ossa lost the Aug. 26 presidential election to Bongo by more than 30 percenta...