These Americans are enduring an agonizing wait for news about loved ones in Israel and Gaza
For Israelis and Palestinians alike, the world has been upended in a matter of days. For them, along with anxious loved ones across the United States, a terrifying new reality is starting to set in: A sense of impending doom, loss and uncertainty.
2023-10-15 05:25
Dominik Mysterio praises Logan Paul in shoutout tweet, Internet says 'future Tag Team Champions'
Dominik Mysterio praised Logan Paul on social media with a three-word message
2023-11-12 13:54
Clashes in Senegal leave at least 9 dead; government bans use of social media platforms
Clashes between police and supporters of Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko left nine people dead, the government said Friday, with authorities issuing a blanket ban on the use of several social media platforms in the aftermath of the violence. The deaths occurred mainly in the capital, Dakar, and Ziguinchor in the south, where Sonko is mayor, Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome said in a statement. Some social media sites used by demonstrators to incite violence, such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter have been suspended, he said. “The state of Senegal has taken every measure to guarantee the safety of people and property. We are going to reinforce security everywhere in the country,” Diome said. Sonko was convicted Thursday of corrupting youth but acquitted on charges of raping a woman who worked at a massage parlor and making death threats against her. The court sentenced Sonko to two years in prison. He didn't attend his trial in Dakar, and was judged in absentia. His lawyer said a warrant hadn't been issued yet for the politician’s arrest. Sonko came in third in Senegal’s 2019 presidential election and is popular with the country’s youth. His supporters maintain his legal troubles are part of a government effort to derail his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. Sonko is considered President Macky Sall’s main competition and has urged Sall to state publicly that he won't seek a third term in office. Corrupting young people, which includes using one’s position of power to have sex with people under the age of 21, is a criminal offense in Senegal that is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to more than $6,000. Under Senegalese law, his conviction would bar Sonko from running in next year’s election, said Bamba Cisse, another defense lawyer. “The conviction for corruption of youth hinders his eligibility, because he was sentenced in absentia, so we can’t appeal,” Cisse said. However, the government said that Sonko can ask for a retrial once he is imprisoned. It was unclear when he would be taken into custody. Shortly after the verdict was announced Thursday, clashes erupted throughout the country with Sonko’s PASTEF party calling for people to take to the streets. In Dakar, protesters threw rocks, burned vehicles and in some places erected barricades while police fired tear gas. Plumes of black smoke and the sound of tear gas being fired were seen and heard throughout the city. Those who weren't protesting stayed indoors, leaving much of Dakar a ghost town with boarded-up shops and empty streets as people feared the violence would escalate. “The verdict cements the criticism that Sall’s government is weaponizing the judiciary to eliminate prominent rivals that could shake his rule,” said Mucahid Durmaz, senior analyst at global risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft. “Despite being presented as a beacon (of) democracy, the Sonko cases demonstrate the structural issues Senegal grapples with. The court decision and the prospect of Sall’s bid for a third term in the election next year will fuel fierce criticism around erosion of judicial independence and democratic backsliding,” Dumaz said. Government spokesman Abdou Karim Fofana said that the damage caused by months of demonstrations has cost the country millions of dollars. “These calls (to protest), it’s a bit like the anti-republican nature of all these movements that hide behind social networks and don’t believe in the foundations of democracy, which are elections, freedom of expression, but also the resources that our (legal) system offers,” Fofana said. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide US reopens embassy in Seychelles after 27-year absence US expands slots for asylum app at land crossings as demand overwhelms supply Restoration lags for Syria's famed Roman ruins at Palmyra and other war-battered historic sites
2023-06-02 14:49
Alexander Payne makes 'em like they used to: Fall Movie Preview
The great films of the 1970s have long loomed in the imagination of filmmakers raised during one of the most fertile periods of American movies
2023-09-07 07:45
Louisiana Democratic governor vetoes bill banning gender-affirming care for minors
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has vetoed a ban on gender-affirming care for most minors in the state, the latest Democratic governor to push back on a GOP-led legislature's efforts to restrict transgender youth's access to such treatments.
2023-07-01 10:51
Berlin Wall relic gets a 'second life' on US-Mexico border as Biden adds barriers
As the U.S. government built its latest stretch of border wall, Mexico made a statement of its own by laying remains of the Berlin Wall a few steps away. The 3-ton pockmarked, gray concrete slab sits between a bullring, a lighthouse and the border wall, which extends into the Pacific Ocean. “May this be a lesson to build a society that knocks down walls and builds bridges,” reads the inscription below the towering Cold War relic, attributed to Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero and titled, “A World Without Walls.” For Caballero, like many of Tijuana's 2 million residents, the U.S. wall is personal and political, a part of the city's fabric and a fact of life. She considers herself a migrant, having moved from the southern Mexico city of Oaxaca when she was 2 with her mother, who fled "the vicious cycle of poverty, physical abuse and illiteracy.” The installation opened Aug. 13 at a ceremony with Caballero and Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s former foreign secretary who is now a leading presidential candidate. Caballero, 41, is married to an Iranian man who became a U.S. citizen and lives in the United States. She and their 9-year-old son used to cross the border between Tijuana and San Diego. Since June, Caballero has lived in a military barracks in Tijuana, saying she acted on credible threats against her brought to her attention by U.S. intelligence officials and a recommendation by Mexico's federal government. Weeks earlier, her bodyguard survived an assassination attempt. Caballero said that she doesn't know who wants to kill her but suspects payback for having seized arms from violent criminals who plague her city. "Someone is probably upset with me,” she said in her spacious City Hall office. Shards of the Berlin Wall scattered worldwide after it crumbled in 1989, with collectors putting them in hotels, schools, transit stations and parks. Marcos Cline, who makes commercials and other digital productions in Los Angeles, needed a home for his artifact and found an ally in Tijuana's mayor. “Why in Tijuana?" Caballero said. “How many families have shed blood, labor and their lives to get past the wall? The social and political conflict is different than the Berlin Wall, but it's a wall at the end of the day. And a wall is always a sphinx that divides and bloodies nations.” President Joe Biden issued an executive order his first day in office to halt wall construction, ending a signature effort by his predecessor, Donald Trump. But his administration has moved ahead with small, already-contracted projects, including replacing a two-layered wall in San Diego standing 18 feet (5.5 meters) high with one rising 30 feet (9.1 meters) and stretching 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) to the ocean. The wall slices through Friendship Park, a cross-border site inaugurated by then-U.S. first lady Pat Nixon in 1971 to symbolize binational ties. For decades, families separated by immigration status met through barbed wire and, later, a chain-link fence. It is a cherished, festive destination for tourists and residents in Mexico. At an arts festival in 2005, David “The Human Cannonball” Smith Jr. flashed his passport in Tijuana as he lowered himself into a barrel and was shot over the wall, landing on a net on the beach with U.S. border agents nearby. In 2019, artist Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana covered the Tijuana side of the wall with paintings of adults who moved to the U.S. illegally as young children and were deported. Visitors who held up their phones to bar codes were taken to a website that voiced their first-person narratives. Cline said he was turned away at the White House when he tried delivering the Berlin Wall relic to Trump and then trucked it across the country to find a suitable home. He said the piece has found “its second life” at the Tijuana park alongside the colorful paintings on the border wall that express views on politics and immigration. The U.S. government has gradually restricted park access from San Diego over the last 15 years in a state park that once allowed cross-border yoga classes, religious services and music festivals. After lengthy consideration, the Biden administration agreed to keep the wall at 18 feet for a small section where some access will be allowed. Dan Watman of Friends of Friendship Park, which advocates for cross-border park access, said the 60-foot (18.3-meter) section that will remain at the lower height is only a token gesture. “The park on the Mexican side has become sort of a one-sided party,” he said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that it anticipates replacing the “deteriorated” two-layer barrier by November and that the higher one under construction ”will provide much needed improvements." The Berlin Wall installation has gotten rave reviews from visitors. Sandra Flores, 55, who vacationed from the Mexican port city of Mazatlan, drew parallels between the Berlin slab and the U.S.-built wall. “It's a little less severe here than it was in Germany but it's a wall that divides nations, lives, social and economic lives and everything related to the United States,” she said. Lydia Vanasse, who works in the financial sector in San Diego and lives in Tijuana, said the relic took her back to her 20s when the Soviet empire fell and Germans were suddenly allowed to move freely. “San Diego and Tijuana are sister cities," she said. “The wall separates us, but we are united in many ways. It would be better if there wasn't a wall.” Direct criticism of any U.S. president or policy has been rare. Tijuana's mayor said she understands the need for the U.S. to enforce borders and she has warm relations with U.S officials, including Ken Salazar, the ambassador to Mexico. She said Salazar asked her to evict migrants who camped with hopes of getting asylum in the U.S. and blocked access to a U.S. border crossing in 2022. She heeded his recommendation. Any failures at the border are a collective responsibility of governing nations, the mayor said. “We are against violence, we are against family separation, we are against division, and that's what the wall represents,” she said. ___ Associated Press video journalist Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributated to this report. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide AI project imagines adult faces of children who disappeared during Argentina's military dictatorship Tribe getting piece of Minnesota back more than a century after ancestors died there Students criticize the University of North Carolina's response to an active shooter emergency
2023-09-03 12:15
Analysis-US debt-ceiling deal averts disaster, but savings might be less than advertised
By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON The bipartisan debt-ceiling deal that could clear Congress as soon as Thursday would stave
2023-06-01 22:56
Biden 'looks forward' to meeting Zelensky in Hiroshima: White House
US President Joe Biden "looks forward" to meeting Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in Hiroshima on Sunday on the sidelines of a G7 summit in the...
2023-05-21 05:51
Malaysia Renews Hamas Backing, Defying Threat of US Sanctions
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Palestinians had the right to defend themselves against Israel, and the Southeast
2023-11-07 18:52
Phoenix has set another heat record by hitting 110 degrees on 54 days this year
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2023-09-10 07:29
Taylor Swift 'devastated' as fan dies before show
The pop star gave out water bottles to fans during the concert in Brazil, amid sweltering heat.
2023-11-18 18:55
Five people arrested after Just Stop Oil protesters disrupt London performance of 'Les Misérables'
Five climate protesters from the activist group Just Stop Oil disrupted a performance of the musical "Les Misérables" at the Sondheim Theatre in London's West End on Wednesday night.
2023-10-05 18:47
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