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California faces more flooding after strong Pacific storm

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) — A strong late-season Pacific storm that brought damaging winds and more rain and snow to saturated California was blamed for two deaths and forecasters said additional flooding was possible Wednesday in parts of the state.Tuesday’s storm focused most of its energy on central and southern parts of the state, bringing threats of heavy runoff and mountain snowfall. In the north, intense hail was reported in Sacramento, the state capital.Locally heavy rain and snowmelt may cause flooding Wednesday in southern California and central Arizona, the National Weather Service warned. On Tuesday, some residents of north-central Arizona were told to prepare to evacuate because of rising water levels in rivers and basins.Trees and power lines were reported downed in the San Francisco Bay Area. An Amtrak commuter train carrying 55 passengers struck a downed tree and derailed near the East Bay village of Porta Costa. The train remained upright and nobody was injured,...

Wall Street quiet ahead of Fed rate hike decision

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

BANGKOK — Wall Street quietly drifted between small gains and losses early Wednesday ahead of a closely-watched decision by the Federal Reserve on whether to raise interest rates in the midst of a global banking crisis.Futures for the Dow Jones Industrials inched less than 0.1% higher, while futures for the S&P 500 were essentially flat.Tuesday on Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 1.3% to lock in its first back-to-back gain since Silicon Valley Bank’s rapid failure began two weeks ago. Some of Wall Street’s fears over the banking sector were calmed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’ s assurance that the government could provide more assistance to lenders if needed. Investors are awaiting an interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve, which is expected to temper its efforts to tame inflation given the recent turmoil that has wracked the banking sector. Most economists expect the Fed to announce a relatively modest quarter-point hike in its benchmark rate, its nint...

Activist investor wants Parkland to consider strategic alternatives

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

CALGARY — An activist investor wants Parkland Corp. to explore strategic alternatives for what it says are the company’s non-core assets with the goal of becoming a more focused fuel and convenience store retailer. In a letter to the Parkland board of directors seeking a meeting, Engine Capital LP says it owns about a two per cent stake in the Calgary-based company, which owns gas stations as well as a refinery in Burnaby, B.C.Engine says it believes that the value creation opportunity at Parkland is significant and that there are meaningful levers for the board to enhance shareholder value.It wants the board to consider strategic alternatives including the possibility of selling or spinning off the Burnaby refinery and the company’s heating oil and propane distribution businesses.The U.S. investment firm says it believes Parkland shares could be worth around $45 per share.Parkland shares closed at $29.21 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Tuesday.This report by The Canadi...

A quarter of world population lacks safe drinking water: UN

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A report issued on the eve of the first major U.N. conference on water in over 45 years says 26% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water and 46% lacks access to basic sanitation.The U.N. World Water Development Report 2023, released Tuesday, painted a stark picture of the huge gap that needs to be filled to meet U.N. goals to ensure all people have access to clean water and sanitation by 2030.Richard Connor, editor-in-chief of the report, told a news conference that the estimated cost of meeting the goals is between $600 billion and $1 trillion a year. But equally important, Connor said, is forging partnerships with investors, financiers, governments and climate change communities to ensure that money is invested in ways to sustain the environment and provide potable water to the 2 billion people who don’t have it and sanitation to the 3.6 million in need.According to the report, water use has been increasing globally by roughly 1% ...

Macron defends French pension plan on national television

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that the pension bill that he pushed through without a vote in parliament needs to be implemented by the “end of the year.”Macron, who made the comments in an interview broadcast on national television, said the bill that raises the retirement age from 62 to 64 will “continue its democratic path” as the Constitutional Council needs to review it in the coming weeks.It was the first time that Macron had spoken publicly since his government forced the pension bill through parliament last week, prompting scattered protests in Paris and across the country, some degenerating into violence.The 45-year-old French president repeatedly said that he was convinced the retirement system needed to be modified to keep it financed.THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron will explain how he will seek to overcome tensions prompted by his plan to raise the retiremen...

Missiles, drones slam into civilian buildings in Ukraine

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s president posted a video Wednesday showing what he said was a Russian missile slamming into a city apartment building, hours after the Kremlin’s forces launched exploding drones that killed at least four people at a student dormitory near Kyiv before dawn.The video posted by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Telegram appeared to be CCTV footage that captured the moment a missile hit the nine-story residential block by a busy road in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.Ukrainian media carried pictures showing charred apartments on several stories of the affected buildings, and flames billowing from some of them. Two children were among the 18 people injured, Zaporizhzhia City Council Secretary Anatolii Kurtiev said. Local officials said 11 people were hospitalized after the apartment strike, four of them in critical condition.“Russia is shelling the city with bestial savagery,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram along with the video. “Residential areas ...

Spain’s Vox party fails in government no-confidence motion

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

MADRID (AP) — Spain’s parliament dismissed an attempt by the far-right Vox party to topple the governing leftist coalition on Wednesday, voting overwhelmingly against a no-confidence motion brought against Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government.The motion only earned the support of Vox’s 52 lawmakers plus one rogue vote, for a total of 53. The government received 201 votes, while the 91 members of the conservative Popular Party, the chamber’s leading opposition party, abstained.In a move that was slammed by other political parties, Vox leader Santiago Abascal broke with custom and didn’t stand as an alternative prime minister. Instead, Vox chose an independent candidate in a futile attempt to win wider support.The 89-year-old Ramón Tamames, a former communist leader who has journeyed across the political spectrum, was the losing candidate. The economist had pledged that his only act as prime minister would have been to immediately call for a national election to coincide wi...

China and Russia: explaining a long, complicated friendship

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping just concluded a three-day visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a warm affair in which the two men praised each other and spoke of a profound friendship. It’s a high point in a complicated, centuries-long relationship during which the two countries have been both allies and enemies.Chinese and Russian states have loomed large in each other’s foreign affairs since the 17th century, when two empires created a border with a treaty written in Latin.Neighbors can be good friends, or bitter rivals. Sharing a border of thousands of miles, Beijing and Moscow have been both.“China and Russia relations have always been uneasy,” said Susan Thornton, a former diplomat and a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. “THE SOVIET UNION’S TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW”The People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, following a brutal Japanese occupation during World War II and a bloody civil war between the Nation...

In boost to opposition, Kurdish party won’t field candidate

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s pro-Kurdish political party and its allies said Wednesday that they won’t field a candidate to run in the country’s May 14 presidential election, a move that could boost an opposition bloc’s chances of unseating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.With Turkey entangled in economic turmoil and in the midst of a difficult recovery from a devastating earthquake last month, Erdogan is facing the toughest reelection bid of his two-decade rule as prime minister and as president.A six-party opposition coalition known as the Nation Alliance has united behind the candidacy of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the secularist Republican People’s Party. The coalition has vowed to dismantle a presidential system that has concentrated a vast amount of powers in Erdogan’s hands. Critics say the system amounts to a “one-man rule” without checks and balances.In announcing that the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, would not put up its own candidate for the pr...

The many investigations of Donald J. Trump

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:49:32 GMT

In today’s Big Story podcast, it was thought that the former president might be arrested on Tuesday, and charged in relation to alleged hush-money payments to an adult film star. That hasn’t happened, but many who have been watching the case still expect charges to come. When they do, what will happen next?Aaron Rupar is an independent political and policy journalist, and the author of Public Notice. He’s on today’s Big Story to break down the several ongoing investigations involving Donald Trump, and how they may impact his upcoming presidential campaign.“There’s a possibility that if he faces felony charges in Georgia, if he faces felony charges federally in connection with the classified documents investigation, these things could definitely add up for him,” he said. “But if we’re just talking about the legal situation with Stormy Daniels and the hush payments, I don’t see this being something that is going to disqualify him in the sense ...