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Fort Lauderdale residents say efforts to control flooding harming their environment

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

It is a project meant to help reduce storm flooding, but it’s stirring up a flood of outrage among residents.The Night Team’s Kevin Ozebek investigates their environmental concerns.Ted Inserra is no stranger in this Fort Lauderdale neighborhood…Ted Inserra, resident: ”I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 67 years.”He walks his dog, Lily, everyday alongside the canal on Coconut Drive.He says it’s in bad shape.Ted Inserra: “I mean, I just was stunned.”Work to improve storm drainage began in the River Oaks neighborhood in 2021. It eventually made its way over to the canal.Ted Inserra: “I just saw what they were doing to the canal, cutting down all the trees.”He also recorded a crew dumping gravel into the canal in February.Ted Inserra: “The color, the color of the water was just, it was milky white.”Ted’s neighbors also noticed what was happening.Mallorie Cove, resident: “I was concerned. I’d walk up and down here early hours of the morning and I woul...

Tkachuk scores as Panthers beat Sabres for 4th straight win

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Matthew Tkachuk snapped a tie in the opening minute of the third period, and the Florida Panthers topped the Buffalo Sabres 2-1 on Tuesday night for their fourth consecutive victory.Aaron Ekblad also scored for Florida, and Alex Lyon made 40 saves for his fourth straight win.It’s the longest win streak of the season for the Panthers (40-31-7), who moved into a tie with the New York Islanders for the top spot in the Eastern Conference wild-card standings. Florida owns the first tiebreaker because of its regulations wins.Pittsburgh is one point behind Florida and New York with four games left for each team.Dylan Cozens scored for Buffalo, which had won four of five. Devon Levi, a seventh-round pick by Florida in the 2020 draft, made 34 saves in his first loss in two NHL starts.The Sabres (37-32-7) are six points behind the Panthers and Islanders. The Sabres have six games left.Cozens scored on a Buffalo power play 8:58 into the first period. It was his 29th ...

The new revelations — and key questions — in the Trump indictment

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

The 16-page indictment against Donald Trump accuses him of 34 felonies for allegedly falsifying business records in a bid to violate campaign finance laws — a bevy of charges setting in motion the first criminal prosecution of a former president in American history.Manhattan prosecutors allege that Trump concealed hush money payments by falsely labeling related transactions as legal expenses and by arranging for a tabloid publisher to bottle up the story of a woman who said she had a sexual relationship with Trump.In doing so, the prosecutors say, Trump repeatedly violated a New York corporate record-keeping law and agreed to break campaign finance laws.All 34 felony charges against Trump are identical, with each carrying the possibility of up to four years in prison, although judges rarely sentence defendants to jail for such offenses.The indictment is a bare-bones document that simply recites the alleged offenses in boiler-plate language. However, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin...

Trump decries charges against him as an ‘insult to our country’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

Former President Donald Trump struck a defiant note Tuesday evening, declaring that felony charges made against him were erroneous, politically motivated and “an insult to our country.”“The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” he said while addressing his supporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate just hours after being arraigned in New York.The remarks were Trump’s first since the details of the indictment were unveiled Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan. The former president pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of filing false business records related to an alleged scheme to bury allegations about extramarital affairs ahead of the 2016 presidential election.Trump went after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, describing him as a “criminal,” a “radical left” prosecutor and a “failed district attorney,” while calling for him to be prosecuted.“The criminal is the district attorney, because he illegally leaked massive amo...

Foreign business community in China beware

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

Peter Humphrey is a former Reuters correspondent and spent over a decade as a fraud investigator in China for Western firms. He is currently an external research affiliate of Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a mentor to families of foreigners wrongfully detained in China.The recent raid against American due diligence firm Mintz in Beijing, and the arrest of all five of its Chinese employees there, carries echoes of the past.Reminiscent of the raid against my own due diligence firm ChinaWhys almost 10 years ago, which led to my wrongful imprisonment for two years on cooked-up charges of illegal information gathering, the latest raid has sent a chilling warning to all foreign businesses operating in China — gather information at your own peril; you can become a target at any time.Mintz is a respected United States-based global due diligence firm, and as an American firm, it is, of course, an obvious target for proxy reprisals over Washington’s growing pushb...

Do French trade unions still hold sway over the street?

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

French trades unions have fought President Emmanuel Macron to a near standstill on pension reform. They have disrupted the country for more than two months. After a long standoff, trade union leaders are meeting Macron’s chief lieutenant Elisabeth Borne today to discuss the pensions affair.The union leaders enjoy popularity ratings that politicians — both government and opposition — can only dream about. The French unions appear strong, popular and united — for now. They brought out protesting crowds of over 1 million nationwide on three occasions since mid-January. And yet the ferocity of their opposition to a relatively modest reform can be explained partly by their fundamental weakness.Unions are a French paradox — one of many. In Germany or the Netherlands, or even in Britain, the unions have more members and fewer internal divisions. They are more willing to consider arguments about long-term prosperity and the stability of the welfare system. In France, the unions are s...

A wartime NATO struggles to replace its chief

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

It’s the rumor inflating the Brussels bubble: The EU’s top executive, Ursula von der Leyen, could be crossing town to run NATO. The rationale makes sense. She has a good working relationship with Washington. She is a former defense minister. And as European Commission president, she has experience working with most NATO heads of government. Plus, if chosen, she would become the alliance’s first-ever female leader. The conversation has crested in recent weeks, as people eye current NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s pending exit at the end of September.Yet according to those inside NATO and at the Commission, the murmurings are more wish-casting than hints of a pending job switch. There is no evidence von der Leyen is interested in the role, and those in Brussels don’t expect her to quit before her first presidential term ends in 2024.The chatter is similar to the rumblings around Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a long-serving leader who checks every box but in...

Japanese FM: It’s time to deepen cooperation

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

Yoshimasa Hayashi is the minister for foreign affairs of Japan.The security of Europe and that of the Indo-Pacific region can no longer be discussed separately — that was my main message when I attended the NATO ministerial meeting last year for the first time as Japanese foreign minister.Today’s complex and severe international security environment requires like-minded partners to intensify cooperation. This perception is widely shared among NATO members and partner countries, and cooperation has remarkably deepened throughout the past year.NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg visited Japan this January, where we shared views on the security environment in the Indo-Pacific and reaffirmed the need for like-minded countries to take united action — this includes our response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the most deplorable example of a unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force. We also discussed the future of Japan-NATO cooperation, and expressed our strong de...

UK MPs are again pushing to tighten rules around backbench groups

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

LONDON — The British parliament’s controversial backbench groups have been back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Now some MPs want to tighten the rules that govern them.A new report from the U.K. parliament’s Committee on Standards has probed the membership and financial affairs of so-called All-Party Parliamentary Groups, and is now recommending a cap on the number of backbench groups in which an MP can hold an role, and a ban on secretariats which are “either provided or funded by a foreign government.” The groups are subject to less stringent rules than the House of Commons’ better-known select committees, but are still able to use parliamentary premises for their meetingsNew proposals include mandatory annual reports for groups that receive over £1,500 a year, while MPs will be banned from acting as an officer for more than six APPGs at once. The plan for toughening the rules comes almost a year after a previous report identified improper ...

The politics of poo: How sewage-strewn beaches became Britain’s new election battleground

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:17 GMT

LONDON — British politics has long been seen as a shitshow. It’s taken on a more literal meaning of late.Rishi Sunak’s government is scrambling to manage rising public anger over the dumping of untreated sewage into Britain’s rivers and oceans by privately-owned water firms. The unpalatable results are often visible to the naked eye, enraging locals and holidaymakers and rendering once-proud British beaches unusable for days at a time.Under mounting pressure — three separate national newspapers now have “clean water” campaigns running — Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey pushed out a raft of measures Tuesday aimed at improving water quality, including the threat of unlimited fines for water companies that break the rules. The announcement — the government’s second such action plan in seven months — is unlikely to quell public discontent. Britain’s waterways have become the focus of toxic claims and counter-claims since a viral social media campaign two...