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TikTok thinks Europe won’t move to a full ban on its app

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

The United States is considering a full ban on the use of social media application TikTok, but Europe is unlikely to go down that route, the Chinese-owned social media app’s head of European public policy said Friday.“When it comes to freedom of speech for the public, I think those rules are clear. You’d have to have a very strong legal basis to ban any app in any country in Europe,” Theo Bertram, vice president of government relations and public policy for Europe at TikTok, said in a video call. Bertram said “there is a clear understanding” among policymakers, experts and politicians he spoke with in recent weeks that a general ban on the social media app’s use in European countries would be “a completely different level of scale.”In the U.S., the Biden administration banned the app from federal government devices in December. The administration this week ordered that TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance divest from the app or face a possible ban in the U.S. — a ...

ICC issues arrest warrant for Putin over child deportations from Ukraine

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant Friday for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the forced transfer of children to Russia after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.Ukrainians accuse Moscow of attempting genocide against them and seeking to destroy their identity — partly through deporting children to Russia. Putin is “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children)” and that of “unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation,” the Hague-based court said in a statement Friday.“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for these crimes, the statement read.The Russian president, the court argued, failed “to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts” and who were “under his effective authority and ...

ICE Air a one-way ticket for illegal immigrant deportees

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

You don’t need a reservation on ICE Air, but it’s a one-way flight.Jairo Soares-Pereira, 37, found that out earlier this month when he was arrested in Malden and quickly flown — via ICE Air — to Brazil to serve out his three-year sentence for fraud.“Perpetrators of these type of crimes care very little about the havoc they cause to the victims involved,” said Todd Lyons, a top immigration official based out of Boston.Lyons, field office director for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), said “law enforcement partners” at home and abroad helped send this convicted fraudster back to Brazil.A charter flight coordinated by ICE’s Air Operations Unit flew Soares-Pereira to Tancredo Neves International Airport in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.Interpol lists 7,016 “red notices” as of Friday for illegal immigrants who are wanted back in their home countries to serve prison sentences or stand trial for crimes — and “...

Lucas: Why not move politicians to Springfield?

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

If Gov. Maura Healey were truly concerned about solving the housing crisis, she would move the State House to Springfield.Not the stately and historic building itself, of course, but the politicians in it.There is plenty of fresh air and open land in and around Springfield as well as lots of parking. And it has no dreary MBTA or massive traffic jams to deal with.It also has the huge Springfield  Civic Center which can house the governor’s office, the Legislature and the other state-wide constitutional offices.To be more than a symbolic gesture, Healey could also take with her the thousands of state workers in the pair of high-rise state government office buildings on Beacon Hill — the McCormack and the Saltonstall.The housing issue is so important to Healey that one of her first acts as governor was to raise the issue to Cabinet-level status and name a secretary of housing.Those two 22-floor high rises would create a lot of housing after they were turned over to Boston and renovated...

Mostly calm on Paris streets, garbage still piled up

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

PARIS (AP) — A spattering of protests were planned to continue in France over the weekend against President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pension reform, as garbage continued to reek in the streets of Paris and beyond owing to continuing action by refuse collectors.An eerie calm, returned to Paris Saturday after two nights of thousands-strong protests across the French capital, with one flash point at the elegant Place de la Concorde where angry protesters tossed an effigy of Macron into a bonfire to cheers from the crowd Friday night. Police dispersed crowds with tear gas and water cannons and there were hundreds of arrests. Protesters are trying to pressure lawmakers to bring down Macron’s government and doom the unpopular retirement age increase he’s trying to impose without a vote in the National Assembly. Further protests were planned Saturday in Paris as well as in the cities of Marseille and Nantes, but they were expected to be smaller than in previous days.In Paris’ 12th d...

Heathrow security guards to strike for 10 days over Easter

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Security guards at London’s Heathrow Airport will walk off their jobs for 10 days over the Easter break, the latest in a wave of strike action to affect the U.K. The union Unite said Friday more than 1,400 security guards employed by Heathrow Airport, one of Europe’s busiest, will strike from March 31 to Easter Sunday, April 9, to demand better pay. Unite said those striking include guards who work at the airport’s Terminal Five, which is used exclusively by British Airways, as well as those responsible for checking all cargo that enters the airport. The strikes will coincide with the two-week Easter school holidays, traditionally a peak time for travel for many in Britain. The union said workers are forced to take action because they cannot make ends meet as a cost-of-living crisis continues to affect millions of Britons. Heathrow has offered a 10% pay increase, but the union said that wasn’t enough amid soaring inflation and following years of...

Kazakhs to vote in newly energized parliament elections

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — Voters in Kazakhstan will cast ballots Sunday after a short but active campaign for seats in the lower house of parliament that is being reconfigured in the wake of deadly unrest that gripped the resource-rich Central Asian nation a year ago.The snap election comes on the third anniversary of the resignation as president of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had led Kazakhstan since independence following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and who had established immense influence. His successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, was widely expected to continue Nazarbayev’s authoritarian course and even renamed the capital as Nur-Sultan in his predecessor’s honor.But the country’s political landscape changed markedly after a wave of violence in January 2022 when provincial protests initially sparked by a fuel price hike engulfed other cities, notably the commercial capital, Almaty, and became overtly political as demonstrators shouted “Old man out!” in reference to ...

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon champions Indigenous diplomacy, seeks new ties abroad

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

OTTAWA — Gov. Gen. Mary Simon is using her role to help build ties between Indigenous people across the globe — an effort experts say is leveraging a colonial institution to advance reconciliation abroad and bolster centuries of collaboration.“I’ve had some very interesting dialogue,” Simon said in an interview last month after a trip to Finland.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent the Governor General to Helsinki in February to mark the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and Finland, and to show solidarity as the country seeks closer military ties with other western countries following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Simon, who is Inuk, also used the trip to bring along Indigenous leaders and foster ties with the Sami, who are the Indigenous people of northern Europe.“As an Indigenous Governor General, I was able to connect well with the Indigenous representatives in Finland, with Sami people,” she said.“We discussed with th...

Russian attacks continue in wake of Putin arrest warrant

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Widespread Russian attacks continued in Ukraine following the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights.Ukraine was attacked by 16 Russian drones on Friday night, the Ukrainian Air Force said in the early hours of Saturday. Writing on Telegram, the air force command said that 11 out of 16 drones were shot down “in the central, western and eastern regions.” Among areas targeted were the capital, Kyiv, and the western Lviv province.The head of the Kyiv city administration, Serhii Popko, said Ukrainian air defenses shot down all drones heading for the Ukrainian capital, while Lviv regional Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi said Saturday that three of six drones were shot down, with the other three hitting a district bordering Poland. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the attacks were carried out from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov and Russia’s Bryansk provinc...

St. Paul Regional Water hires 30 new employees to speed lead line replacement

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:47:58 GMT

Over the course of 10 years, St. Paul Regional Water intends to replace every lead pipe servicing private property in St. Paul, free of charge to homeowners.To accomplish that, the utility is growing its workforce by at least 10 percent, including 30 new hires who start Monday.The effort to replace lead service lines extending from home water meters got underway last year with the removal of an initial 350 lines. Another 850 could be replaced this year, following the hiring of 30 new employees and additional trainees.As challenging as it will be to maintain funding and recruit workers, one of the trickiest aspects of the program has been getting permission from property owners.“Some people aren’t understanding why we’re reaching out,” said Racquel Vaske, assistant general manager of St. Paul Regional Water.Lead exposure has been shown to seriously harm the development of children, causing lower IQ, poor school performance and attention problems, according to ...