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EU negotiators reach agreement on media law to curb spying on reporters

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 GMT

BRUSSELS — European Union negotiators reached an agreement Friday on the European Media Freedom Act, the bloc’s new set of rules aimed at safeguarding the independence of newsrooms and fostering media pluralism.The new law will introduce requirements for media to provide transparency over ownership and funding and it will force national governments to set up an oversight system that guarantees editorial freedom, including for public media. It also requires checks on mergers and sets up a new European watchdog to oversee it all. Negotiators of the European Parliament, the EU Council representing national governments, and the European Commission on Friday cleared the last hurdle: an agreement on provisions in the law limiting how governments conduct operations on journalists using spyware and other methods to identify and access their sources. The European Commission originally introduced an exemption for the investigation of certain crimes like terrorism and human trafficking, ...

LIVE COVERAGE: Funeral begins as community mourns police officer killed in crash

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 GMT

The funeral for fallen Waltham police officer Paul Tracey got underway at Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted church Friday as the community continues to mourn Tracey after his death last week.Thousands have gathered for the funeral, which was underway as of 10:30 a.m.7NEWS has live team coverage throughout the day. —RELATED: Thousands gather in Waltham for funeral for fallen officer Paul Tracey 

Rogers Sugar strike at impasse, company says as it pauses talks with union

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 GMT

VANCOUVER — Rogers Sugar Inc. says it is pausing negotiations after the union representing striking workers at its Vancouver refinery rejected the company’s latest offer.Workers at the refinery have been on strike since Sept. 28 over issues like wages, benefits and the company’s proposal to increase refinery operations to 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.The Rogers Sugar refinery in Vancouver is one of only three large sugar refineries in the country that processes imported cane sugar.The strike has caused intermittent sugar shortages in Western Canada this fall. But the company says there is currently ample supply of white sugar in the market, and it has restarted production of brown sugar at the Vancouver refinery.Rogers Sugar has been operating the Vancouver refinery at reduced capacity, and says it has enough raw sugar on site to continue to do so until May 2024.This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 15, 2023.Companies in this story: (TSX:RSI)The...

With Iowa’s caucuses a month away, Trump urges voters to hand him not just a victory, but a blowout

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 GMT

CORALVILLE, Iowa (AP) — Donald Trump was uncharacteristically serious when he implored an audience in eastern Iowa to carry him to a blowout in next month’s Republican caucuses. “The margin of victory is very important, it’s just very important,” Trump told about 1,000 people attending a Wednesday rally aimed at organizing campaign volunteers. “It’s time for the Republican Party to unite, to come together and focus our energy and resources on beating Crooked Joe Biden and taking back our country. Very simple.” For the blustery former president, it was both caution against complacency and a sign that he and his team believe the first contest on Jan. 15 can be not just the start of the nominating campaign, but the beginning of the end.Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win Iowa, one month away from the caucuses. A myriad of well-qualified GOP challengers and anti-Trump groups haven’t changed that dynamic after crisscrossing the state over the last year and spendin...

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

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 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 Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 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 Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 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 Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 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 Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 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 Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:10 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...