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EU prosecutor swings into action over misused European cash in Bulgaria

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

European Public Prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi is finally turning up the heat on Bulgaria — long seen as one of the EU’s most glaring examples of Brussels’ impotence in the face of the theft of European funds. On Thursday, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) raided 28 homes and offices as part of efforts to investigate the misuse of EU cash in railway projects, while the mayor of a small town was arrested Wednesday.A reckoning has been expected for several years, with leading politicians from Bulgaria’s reformist camp arguing that the siphoning of EU funds has become one of the chief revenue streams of organized crime groups. The Center for the Study of Democracy, a nongovernmental organization in Sofia, concluded in 2020 that as much as 15 percent of the country’s EU money was regularly misappropriated. EPPO is currently conducting 143 investigations in Bulgaria with “estimated total damages” worth a total of €492 million, according ...

US attorney leading Hunter Biden criminal probe is now a special counsel after plea talks break down and a trial looms

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

Washington (CNN) — The Trump-appointed US attorney who is investigating Hunter Biden has been given special counsel status after plea talks between the Justice Department and the president’s son fell apart.The prosecutor, David Weiss, asked Attorney General Merrick Garland for the new authority after plea talks to resolve tax and gun charges fell apart, with a trial now likely.Garland’s decision, which he announced Friday, gives Weiss more powers than a typical US attorney and puts the nation in uncharted territory, with three special counsels at the Justice Department currently investigating the sitting president, his son and the previous president.It’s the latest dramatic turn in the long-running criminal investigation of Hunter Biden that’s impacted President Joe Biden’s White House and has been a priority of congressional Republicans.The probe appeared to reach its conclusion when a plea deal was announced in June. In a two-pronged agreement, Hunter Biden planned ...

Rent control ballot question violates constitutional requirements, fiscal group argues

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

A New England fiscal group argued Friday that an effort to repeal a statewide ban on rent control violates two constitutional provisions that govern whether ballot questions can make it before voters in fall 2024.The Fiscal Alliance Foundation submitted comments in opposition to a proposed ballot question filed by Rep. Mike Connolly that would scrap a portion of state law banning rent control and replace it with new language allowing municipalities to regulate residential evictions, rents and fees, brokers’ fees, and the removal of housing units from the rental housing market.In a letter to Attorney General Andrea Campbell, foundation chair Danielle Webb said the question crossed two sections of the state constitution that prohibit ballot questions that create takings of property without just compensation and proposals that address multiple unrelated policies in the same question.Webb said because the question grants municipalities the power to regulate residential rents, fees...

They lost everything in the Paradise fire. Now they’re reliving their grief as fires rage in Hawaii

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Melissa Crick was heartbroken this week while watching videos on her phone of people fleeing from a fast-moving wildfire in Hawaii.“Sending love and support from Paradise, California,” Crick commented on one woman’s social media post.To Crick’s surprise, the woman wrote back. She knew Paradise — the small Northern California city in the Sierra Nevada foothills that was mostly destroyed by a wildfire in 2018. The woman told Crick her support meant a lot to her.“That was a really heavy moment,” Crick told The Associated Press.Lahaina, Hawaii, is a tropical paradise on the northwest coast of Maui. But wildfires ravaging the region have forever linked it to another Paradise, this one in California. The two small towns have the grim distinction of experiencing the two deadliest wildfires in U.S. history — tragedies that played out in a remarkably similar way.“It’s not what we want to be remembered for,” Crick said. Both blazes started in the ov...

Blue Jays option Alek Manoah to minor leagues for second time this season

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

The Toronto Blue Jays have optioned former ace Alek Manoah to triple-A Buffalo.The move will take Manoah out of the rotation while the Blue Jays navigate a slower part of their schedule with three off days over the next week and a half.In a corresponding move, right-hander Hagen Danner has been recalled from Buffalo. Danner, 24, has never pitched in the majors.Manoah allowed four earned runs in four innings of work in Thursday’s loss to the Guardians. The 25-year-old started Opening Day for the Blue Jays but struggled so much that he was optioned to the minors for most of the month of June.This season Manoah has a 5.87 ERA in 19 starts for the Blue Jays.

Q-Pop: Peru’s social media phenomenon Lenin Tamayo fuses Quechua and K-pop

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

LIMA, Peru (AP) — What happens when you take Quechua, the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas, and fuse it with K-pop, the global musical sensation with roots in South Korea?Ask Lenin Tamayo, who has become a social media phenomenon with “Q-pop” and released his first digital album this week.Tamayo grew up listening to his mother, a Peruvian folk artist who sings in Spanish and Quechua, a language shared by 10 million speakers in countries including Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. As a teenager, K-pop became his passion and helped him find a group of like-minded female classmates who helped fight the bullying he says he faced at school for his Indigenous looks.Now himself a musician, the 23-year-old Tamayo has fused those chapters, mixing Spanish and Quechua lyrics with K-pop beats to create Q-pop (in which the “Q” stands for “Quechua”). He’s amassed more than 4.4 million likes on his TikTok account and released five digital singles ...

More than 1 million barrels of oil removed from deteriorating tanker moored off Yemen, UN says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The transfer of more than a million barrels of oil from an aging tanker moored off the coast of war-torn Yemen has been completed, avoiding an environmental disaster, the United Nations said Friday. In a statement, Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the operation had prevented “monumental environmental and humanitarian catastrophe.” An international team began siphoning the oil from the dilapidated vessel known as SOF Safer on July 25. All of the oil is now aboard a replacement tanker called the MOST Yemen. Before the transfer, the Safer carried four times as much oil than was spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska, one of the world’s worst ecological catastrophes, according to the U.N.International organizations and rights groups warned for years of the potential for a spill or an explosion involved the tanker, which has not been maintained and has seawater in its engine compartment and damaged pipes.It i...

Devastating 2023 Canadian wildfire season sets multiple records: Feds

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

The 2023 wildfire season has set multiple records across Canada already this year, the federal government says, as we move into the second half of the summer.In an update Friday, Michael Norton, the director general of the Northern Forestry Centre at Natural Resources Canada, explains as of Aug 10, 5,093 wildfires across Canada have burned over 13 million hectares of land.This is six times the average land burned, as the 10-year average at this time of year is 4,600 fires with 2 million hectares of land burned.More to come

Forensic audit into Lebanon’s central bank reveals misconduct and ‘illegitimate’ commissions

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

BEIRUT (AP) — A forensic audit into Lebanon’s central bank by a New York-based company has revealed yearslong misconduct by the bank’s former governor and $111 million in “illegitimate commissions,” according to a report by the company. It’s the latest chapter in the saga of Lebanon’s embattled former central bank governor Riad Salameh, 73, who ended his 30-year career as governor last month under a cloud of investigation and blame for his country’s economic meltdown. A copy of the 331-page document by Alvarez & Marsal, seen by The Associated Press, was handed over to parliament on Friday. The audit was among key demands by the international community and the International Monetary Fund, which over the years increasingly lost confidence in crisis-hit Lebanon. Lebanon’s government and Alvarez & Marsal signed a contract in September 2021 but the audit subsequently stalled. It covers the period between 2015 and 2020; Lebanon’s economic meltdown began in ...

Judge rejects class-action lawsuit in Lytton, B.C. wildfire, suggests amended claim

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:58:44 GMT

VANCOUVER — A British Columbia Supreme Court justice has refused to certify a class-action lawsuit linked to the wildfire that destroyed the village of Lytton in 2021, but the ruling also allows for an amended claim, potentially keeping the lawsuit alive.Chief Jordan Spinks of the Lytton-area Kanaka Bar Indian Band is the only remaining plaintiff in the claim after the death of fellow Lytton resident and plaintiff Chris O’Conner.Spinks argues the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways, along with the Attorney General of Canada, Transport Canada and others “caused or contributed” to the devastating wildfire that levelled most of Lytton and killed two people.But the ruling from Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson finds “deficiencies” he says make it “plain and obvious” that the suit will fail, such as overly broad allegations or a lack of clarity about the special damages class members might have suffered.Hinkson writes that although th...