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Spain’s Sánchez seals deal to stay in power

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

MADRID — Pedro Sánchez has secured the crucial support he needed to stay in power as Spain’s prime minister, vindicating his dramatic gamble on a snap election earlier this year. On Thursday the Catalan separatist Junts party gave its backing to Sánchez’ Socialists to form a government, four months after that election resulted in no single party winning an overall majority in Spain’s parliament.The deal puts Sánchez, the 51-year-old who’s been premier since 2018, on course to extend his career at the top. That seemed a far-fetched outcome when he called for a national vote last May, just hours after regional and local elections which saw his party suffer devastating losses across the country. But after 15 weeks of tortuous horse-trading with other leftist parties — and, critically, an offer of an amnesty to Catalan separatist plotters — Sánchez has sidestepped the threat of fresh elections and managed to ensure his continuity as prime minister. In exchange fo...

€13B tax fight against Apple gets boost from EU top court adviser

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

A European Union top court adviser gave some hope to regulators’ battles against Big Tech tax deals when he said that judges should reconsider scrapping Apple’s massive back-tax order.Advocate General Giovanni Giovanni Pitruzzella recommended the Court of Justice should tell a lower tribunal that it made errors when it struck down the European Commission’s landmark order for Ireland to reclaim €13 billion of unpaid taxes from the tech giant. If followed by the court, that would reverse the Commission’s 2020 court defeat. While the advocate general’s opinion isn’t binding on the court, judges frequently follow the advice.“The General Court committed a series of errors in law when it ruled that the Commission had not shown to the requisite legal standard that the intellectual property licenses” held by Apple units from sales made outside the United States “had to be attributed for tax purposes to the Irish branches,” sai...

Apple hits setback in dispute with European Union over tax case

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Apple might end up on the hook after all for billions of euros in back taxes to Ireland in the latest twist in a longrunning European Union dispute, following a legal opinion Thursday from an adviser to the bloc’s top court.A decision by a lower court that the U.S. tech giant doesn’t have to repay the 13 billion euros ($13.9 billion) in taxes “should be set aside,” Advocate General Giovanni Pitruzzella said in his opinion to the European Court of Justice.The case drew outrage from Apple when it was opened in 2016, with CEO Tim Cook calling it “total political crap.” Then-U.S. President Donald Trump referred to European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who spearheaded the campaign to root out special tax deals and crack down on big U.S. tech companies, as the “tax lady” who “really hates the U.S.”In its 2020 ruling, the European Union’s General Court disagreed with the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, wh...

‘The Legend of Zelda’ will be made into a live-action film

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Nintendo is developing a live-action film based on its hit video game “The Legend of Zelda,” the Japanese company behind the Super Mario franchise said Wednesday.The film, with financing from Sony Pictures Entertainment as well as its own investment, will be directed by Wes Ball, the American director of the upcoming “Planet of the Apes” film. It’s being co-produced by Nintendo and Arad Productions Inc., which is behind the live-action Spider-Man films and headed by Avi Arad.The move highlights Kyoto-based Nintendo’s strategy to leverage various aspects of its business, including theme parks, merchandising and movies, to boost machine and software sales, and vice versa.That strategy has met success. Its animated film “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” released earlier this year, has raked in more than $1.3 billion and drew nearly 170 million people worldwide.President Shuntaro Furukawa, briefing reporters online, said the company was pleased with the success of the Super Ma...

Week 10 high school football schedules

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

 THURSDAY’S GAMESDIVISION 1 QUARTERFINALSMethuen at Needham, 7Weymouth at Andover, 7DIVISION 3 QUARTERFINALDartmouth at Milton, 6:30VOCATIONAL BOWLLARGE SCHOOL QUARTERFINALSNortheast at Whittier, 6Monty Tech at Gr. New Bedford, 6:30Essex Tech at Bay Path, 7SMALL SCHOOL QUARTERFINALNashoba Tech at Blue Hills, 6NON-PLAYOFF GAMESSt. Paul Diocesan at Keefe Tech, 2:30Latin Academy vs. Excel/Burke, 4 (WS)Quincy at Newton North, 4:30Taunton at Brockton, 4:30Bristol-Plymouth at Medway, 5Case at Nantucket, 5English/New Mission at Somerville, 5Acton-Boxboro at Chelmsford, 6Arch. Williams at East Bridgewater, 6Attleboro at Sharon, 6Boston Latin at Malden, 6Braintree at New Bedford, 6Cambridge at Lowell, 6Dennis-Yarmouth at Sandwich, 6Diman at Bourne, 6East Boston at Dracut/Innovation, 6Gloucester at Revere, 6Greater Lowell at Ipswich, 6Holbrook/Avon at Millis, 6Hull at Atlantis Charter/Westport, 6Lexington at Newton South, 6Lynn Tech at Lynn English, 6Martha’s Vineyard at Oliv...

Week 10 high school football preview: Classic showdowns are on tap all over the state

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

There are so many storylines as we head into the state quarterfinal contests this week.We sifted through each of the eight divisions and picked off some of the better matchups as well as a couple of intriguing non-playoff matchups.Let’s start in Division 1, where two of the four contests have a bit of intrigue. BC High travels to St. John’s Prep in a rematch of a game played two weeks ago where St. John’s Prep rolled to a 34-6 victory. Following the game, the coaching staffs exchanged some less than savory pleasantries.On the other side of the bracket, Springfield Central has been a thorn in Xaverian’s side in recent years. The Western Mass. juggernaut has taken out the Hawks in each of the last two playoffs and will be looking for a three-peat when the sides meet at the Hawk Bowl.In a Div. 3 quarterfinal, Mansfield and Walpole are two of the more storied programs in the history of Massachusetts football. They will be meeting for the right to advance to the s...

A Russian missile hits a Liberia-flagged ship in Odesa, Ukraine’s main Black Sea port

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian port of Odesa hit a Liberian-flagged freighter, killing a port worker and injuring three citizens of the Philippines, who are crew members on the ship, Ukraine’s armed forces said Thursday.The report did not give the name of the ship or the country of its owners, but Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the ship was to carry iron ore to China. The extent of the damage was not immediately reported. Another port worker was injured in the attack along with the one killed. The Odesa port and others in the region are economically vital to Ukraine as its outlets to the Black Sea, from which ships can head for world markets. Odesa port facilities have come under Russian attack 21 times since Russia in August declined to renew a deal allowing Ukraine to safely export grain via the Black Sea, Kubrakov said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in October that a new Black Sea export corridor had allowed some 50 ship...

Spain’s Socialists to grant amnesty to Catalan separatists in exchange for support of new government

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

MADRID (AP) — Spain’s Socialist Party has struck a deal with a fringe Catalan separatist party to grant an amnesty for potentially thousands of people involved in the region’s failed secession bid in exchange for its key backing of acting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in forming a new government.Socialist lawmaker and party official Santos Cerdán announced the deal on Thursday in Brussels after sealing the agreement with the party led by Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium after leading the failed 2017 independence attempt for Catalonia.“This a political agreement and an agreement for an amnesty,” Cedrán said.The decision greatly boosts Sánchez’s chances of forming another minority leftist coalition government. Sánchez, a Socialist and Spain’s leader since 2018, still needs the backing a small Basque party but he is likely to achieve that.An amnesty has been the crucial part of difficult negotiations by representatives of Sánchez’s caretaker leftist government ...

Last 12 months on Earth were the hottest ever recorded, analysis finds

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

The last 12 months were the hottest Earth has ever recorded, according to a new report by Climate Central, a nonprofit science research group. The peer-reviewed report says burning gasoline, coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels that release planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide, and other human activities, caused the unnatural warming from November 2022 to October 2023. Over the course of the year, 7.3 billion people, or 90% of humanity, endured at least 10 days of high temperatures that were made at least three times more likely because of climate change.“People know that things are weird, but they don’t they don’t necessarily know why it’s weird. They don’t connect back to the fact that we’re still burning coal, oil and natural gas,” said Andrew Pershing, a climate scientist at Climate Central. “I think the thing that really came screaming out of the data this year was nobody is safe. Everybody was experiencing unusual climate-driven heat at some point during the year,” sai...

Israeli strikes pound Gaza City, which tens of thousands have fled in recent days

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:20:55 GMT

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes pounded Gaza City overnight into Thursday as ground forces battled Hamas militants in dense urban neighborhoods from which tens of thousands have fled in recent days.Israeli troops were around 3 kilometers (2 miles) from Shifa Hospital in the heart of downtown, the hospital’s director said. Israel has been vague on troop movements, but officials say Gaza’s largest city is the focus of their campaign to crush Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 assault inside Israel.Amid a drumbeat of international concern over dire conditions inside Gaza, mediators were closing in on a possible deal for a three-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of around a dozen hostages held by Hamas, according to two Egyptian officials, a United Nations official and a Western diplomat. The deal would also allow a small amount of fuel to enter the territory, which is currently reliant on generators for electricity, for the first time since the war be...