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China’s top diplomat to visit Washington this week

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

(CNN) — China’s top diplomat Wang Yi will visit Washington, DC, later this week, senior administration officials said Monday ahead of a potential meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in California next month.Wang will meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security Adviser Jake Sullivan during his trip to the US capital October 26-28, the officials said.They would not say if Wang will meet with Biden. However, Blinken met with Xi while in Beijing and one of the officials described Wang’s trip as “a reciprocal visit after Secretary Blinken’s trip to Beijing in June.”Tensions between the two countries have been high but the Biden administration has been making an effort to push dialog with Beijing. Wang’s trip comes as the US is looking to prevent the Israel-Hamas war escalating into a wider conflict in the Middle East and as the Ukraine-Russia war continues.“This visit by Wang Yi is part of ongoing efforts to maintain open channels of c...

North Atlantic right whale population levels off, but they’re still ‘swimming along the cliff of extinction’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

The North Atlantic right whale population might be leveling off after years of decline, but the critically endangered species still faces significant threats as the whales keep “swimming along the cliff of extinction,” according to advocates.A new estimate from the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium has found that the North Atlantic right whale population was around 356 whales last year.In 2021, their population estimate was around 364 animals North Atlantic right whales, primarily due to the recent cataloging of 18 calves born that year.“While certainly more encouraging than a continued decline, the ‘flattening’ of the population estimate indicates that human activities are killing as many whales as are being born into the population, creating an untenable burden on the species,” said Heather Pettis, a research scientist in the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.There have been two detected deaths of right whales ...

CTE risk increases with longer rugby careers: Boston University study

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

A rugby player’s risk for developing CTE increases the longer their career lasts, according to a new landmark study involving Boston University researchers.Scientists from BU, the University of Glasgow and University of Sydney have found new evidence that links playing rugby union — either at the amateur or elite level — with developing the degenerative brain condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy.Much of the focus around CTE has involved American football players, and their exposure to repeated head impacts and concussion head injuries. Researchers are only able to diagnose CTE in those who have died.This latest study looked at the results of postmortem brain examinations of 31 former amateur and elite rugby union players whose brains were donated for research purposes in the U.S., United Kingdom, and Australia. CTE was found in 68% of the brains examined, and in both amateur and elite players.The risk for developing CTE was tied with the length of a player...

Robbins: Biden stands firm against Hamas cheerleaders

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

The narrative that President Biden is too old to be president isn’t holding up all that well, taking more than a few hits in recent months. Biden’s arduous secret trip to Kiev to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine while it fends off Vladimir Putin’s barbarism didn’t exactly advance the narrative. His visit to Israel while it is besieged by thousands of Hamas rockets, landing on Air Force One at an airport easily reached by the Iranian proxy’s missiles, set the narrative back even further. If this is what it means to be too old to lead the free world, one wonders whether there is anything a younger president could do to make Americans prouder.Biden’s personal courage was accompanied by wisdom, all displayed with the knowledge that his immediate, resolute commitment to Israel would unleash rage from the predictable quarters. The leaders of Arab countries that American taxpayers help sustain nonetheless refused to meet with Biden on his Mideast trip, fearful of being toppled by the sp...

Boston City Council to vote on amended Mass and Cass tent ban Wednesday

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

Ricardo Arroyo will ask his City Council colleagues to vote Wednesday on an amended anti-encampment ordinance he’s filed, saying that the changes strengthen the legality of what the mayor proposed in late August for the Mass and Cass zone.The amendments would eliminate a monetary, or $25, penalty for people who refuse tent removal, and directly involve the Boston Public Health Commission in cases where shelter space is unavailable, but the city must place restrictions on outdoor encampment activity for public health and safety reasons.City officials would also be required to track available shelter space on a daily basis, per the changes, and provide notice of tent removal in a variety of languages, Arroyo wrote in a letter to councilors.“The chair of the committee does not support this ordinance,” Arroyo wrote, referring to himself. “These amendments, however, clarify implementation of this ordinance for city departments and city employees, and also make efforts to strengthen the l...

Trump speaks to packed house in New Hampshire after filing nomination papers

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

DERRY, N.H. — While former President Donald Trump was in Concord filing his nomination paperwork with the New Hampshire Secretary of State, thousands of his supporters began to line up at the New England Sports Center to await his arrival.The room where Trump would speak, a gymnasium covered in folding chairs, filled to capacity with “MAGA” bedecked voters well before the 45th president took the stage around 3 p.m. on Monday. Some chanted and danced in the aisles as they waited for the former president.“Vote for Trump and solve your problems,” Trump told an audience of more than 2,500.The former president seemed full of energy as he delivered a wide-ranging, nearly two-hour address that brought the crowd to its feet on several occasions. Trump more than once took specific aim at President Biden, who Trump said was left with a roaring economy that the current president has not maintained.“I will end Joe Biden’s inflation disaster and we will quickly rebuild the greatest economy...

Boston-area dentist who ripped down posters of Israeli hostages has been fired: ‘It’s appalling. It’s cold-hearted. It’s evil’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

A woman who was caught on camera ripping down posters of Israeli hostages at a Chestnut Hill shopping center has been fired from a local dental office.The video of the Boston-area dentist went viral over the weekend after she was seen at The Street shopping area taking down posters of Israelis, who have been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.After the organization StopAntisemitism identified the woman as a local endodontist, the group reached out to her employer and she was fired soon after.“It’s appalling. It’s cold-hearted. It’s evil,” StopAntisemitism Executive Director Liora Rez told the Herald on Monday.“I’m not sure what sort of depraved human being would look at posters of kidnapped babies and think the appropriate course of action would be to tear them down,” Rez added. “Tearing down any attempt to bring awareness to that campaign is very frightening.”The Herald reached out to the Boston-area dentist, but she could not ...

Hamas frees two Israeli women, but not their husbands

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas on Monday released two elderly Israeli women held hostage in Gaza as the United States asked Israel to hold off on a ground assault to negotiate the release of more hostages.The two freed hostages, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, were taken out of Gaza at the Rafah crossing into Egypt, where they were put into ambulances, according to footage shown on Egyptian TV. The two women, along with their husbands, were snatched from their homes in the kibbutz of Nir Oz near the Gaza border during Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israeli communities. Their husbands, ages 83 and 84, were not released.“While I cannot put into words the relief that she is now safe, I will remain focused on securing the release of my father and all those — some 200 innocent people — who remain hostages in Gaza,” Lifshitz’ daughter, Sharone Lifschitz, said in a statement.Lifschitz, an artist and academic in London who uses a different spelli...

Battenfeld: War and foreign policy become new flash point in 2024 White House campaign

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

With President Biden threatening to draw the U.S. into a wider Mideast war, suddenly foreign policy – an issue almost overlooked weeks before – has become a heated flash point in the 2024 White House campaign.Biden’s attempt to tie the Israel-Hamas conflict to support for Ukraine has drawn the ire of Republicans and presidential candidates looking to separate themselves from the crowded field. And the Democratic president’s strong stance for Israel is prompting blowback in his own party — potentially siphoning away badly-needed progressive voters.Some candidates and their super PACs are jumping into war footing, flooding the airwaves with new ads about the Israeli-Hamas war.“The shame of it all is that we wouldn’t be in this terrible position if Joe Biden hadn’t been so weak in Afghanistan, so slow in Ukraine, so pandering to Iran, and so absent from the border,” GOP presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said on X. “The world is on fire and Am...

Appeals panel questions why ‘presidential immunity’ argument wasn’t pursued years ago in Trump case

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:14 GMT

By LARRY NEUMEISTER (Associated Press)NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals panel wants to know why lawyers for former President Donald Trump didn’t try years ago to use a claim of absolute presidential immunity to shield him from a defamation lawsuit by a woman who accused him of sexual assault.A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan listened Monday as a lawyer for Trump argued that a lower-court judge was wrong to reject the defense after it was raised three years after columnist E. Jean Carroll first sued Trump.The lawsuit seeks to hold Trump liable for comments he made while president in 2019 after Carroll said publicly for the first time in a memoir that Trump sexually abused her in the dressing room of a Manhattan luxury department store in 1996. Trump has adamantly denied ever encountering Carroll in the store or knowing her.The court did not immediately rule.Circuit judges Maria Araujo Kahn and Denny Chin questioned Trump attorney Mi...