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Suspended Miami city commissioner pleads not guilty to money laundering and other charges

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — A suspended Miami city commissioner who is accused of accepting $245,000 in exchange for voting to approve construction of a sports facility has pleaded not guilty to multiple felony charges, including bribery and money laundering.Alex Diaz de la Portilla did not appear in court Friday, but his attorney, Ben Kuehne, entered the plea for him.Diaz de la Portilla and a co-defendant, Miami attorney William Riley Jr., were arrested Sept. 14.Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Diaz de la Portilla, who is a fellow Republican, after the commissioner’s arrest. Kuehne said Friday that his client was campaigning for the Nov. 7 election to keep his seat on the commission.“We look forward to a vindication of these charges because Alex is not guilty,” Kuehne said at the Miami-Dade criminal courthouse, according to the Miami Herald.Kuehne requested that Diaz de la Portilla be tried separately from Riley, WPLG-TV reported.On Friday, Riley’s attorney also entered a not guilty ...

Italian court confirms extradition of a priest wanted for murder, torture in Argentina dictatorship

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

ROME (AP) — Italy’s top criminal court has confirmed the extradition of an Italian priest sought by Argentina on charges of murder and torture during its last military dictatorship, rejecting the priest’s appeal, a lawyer said Sunday. Arturo Salerni, who represented Argentina in the case, told The Associated Press that the decision by Italy’s Court of Cassation in the case of the Rev. Franco Reverberi confirms a previous ruling by a Bologna appeal court and is now definitive. Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio has now 45 days to issue a decree that requests the extradition of Reverberi, 86, who served as military chaplain during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. “The battle for truth and justice that has been conducted primarily by the families of the victims of the terrible years of the Argentine dictatorship reached another important result,” Salerni said. “This decision affirms a universal jurisdiction on the violations of human rights,” he added. Reverb...

Azerbaijan’s president raises the nation’s flag in a former breakaway region’s capital

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has raised his nation’s flag over the capital city of a former breakaway region in a ceremony reaffirming Baku’s control over it.The Azerbaijani leader delivered a speech and raised the flag over the city, which is known as Khankendi by Azerbaijan and Stepanakert by Armenians, the presidential office said Sunday.The Karabakh region, which was previously known as Nagorno-Karabakh and is known to Armenians as Artsakh, is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, but became a breakaway state under the control of ethnic Armenian forces in 1994 following a six-year conflict.A subsequent war in 2020 returned control of much of the area to Azerbaijan, until a lightning offensive last month forced separatists to relinquish the rest of the region.In a 24-hour campaign that began on Sept. 19, the Azerbaijani army routed the area’s undermanned and outgunned ethnic Armenian forces, forcing them to capitulate.The majority of the area’s ethnic Armenia...

Police investigating alleged sexual assault in Greektown

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

Toronto police are investigating a sexual assault that occurred on Saturday in Greektown.On Oct. 14 at approximately 3:15 a.m., in the Logan Avenue and Danforth Avenue area, a man reportedly followed a woman on foot.He reportedly approached the woman and sexually assaulted her, then fled on foot.The man is described as black, 5’9″-5’11”, with a thin build. The man was wearing a black hooded sweater, a black vest, blue jeans, black shoes with white soles and wearing a light blue surgical mask.

Ecuadorians are electing a new president. The choice is between a banana empire heir and an attorney

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Frightened by unprecedented violence on the streets and within prisons, Ecuadorians have a universal demand for the president they are choosing Sunday — safety.The runoff election in the South American country pits an heir to a banana empire, Daniel Noboa, against an attorney, Luisa González. Both have limited governing experience and will undoubtedly have their work cut out.The election comes as more Ecuadorians become victims of drug-related violence that erupted roughly three years ago and intensified in August, when a presidential candidate was assassinated in broad daylight. People continuously watch their backs and limit how often they leave home. The uneasiness even pushed Noboa to add a bulletproof vest to his daily outfit.Whoever wins with a simple majority of votes will govern for only 15 months, until May 2025, which is what remains of the tenure of President Guillermo Lasso. He cut his term short when he dissolved the country’s National Assembly...

Israel-Hamas war upends China’s ambitions in the Middle East but may serve Beijing in the end

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — In June, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted the Palestinian president in Beijing and invited the Israeli prime minister for an official state visit. Benjamin Netanyahu accepted, and China was on track for a bigger role in the region.Then came the Hamas attack against Israel, which has made Netanyahu’s late October trip uncertain and put Beijing’s Middle East approach to the test. China’s stated neutrality on the war has upset Israel, but Beijing may gain in the long run by forging closer ties with Arab countries, experts said.“For a while at least, Beijing’s Middle East policy is paralyzed by the war,” said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijing-based Renmin University of China. “The U.S., which strongly supports Israel, is directly or indirectly involved. Who is there to listen to China?” That hasn’t stopped China from trying to be heard. Its Middle East envoy, Zhai Jun, talked to Palestinian and Egyptian officials by phone this ...

Transgender Manitoba MLA aims to bring personal experience to justice, health issues

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

WINNIPEG — Logan Oxenham is celebrating a number of firsts this month. He was elected for the first time to Manitoba’s legislature with the New Democrats in the Oct. 3 election. The 46-year-old’s win has also been called historic, as he’s believed to be the first openly transgender person elected at the provincial level in Manitoba, and possibly in Canada.He was also just measured for his first fitted suit.“I feel honoured,” Oxenham said in a recent interview about his election win.“I feel that I have an opportunity now to really amplify voices that have traditionally not been heard in places such as the legislative building,”Transgender and gender-diverse people have long been under-represented in political office at all levels of government. Jamie Lee Hamilton was the first transgender person to seek public office in Canada, when she unsuccessfully ran for Vancouver city council in 1996.Since then, a small group of transgender men and wome...

When do we turn clocks back an hour in 2023?

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

WASHINGTON (WDVM) — The time to fall back is upon us, with most of the country getting ready to return to standard time.This year, the day to roll clocks back by an hour falls on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. The official time for the change is 2 a.m. Daylight saving time: Why are we still changing the clocks? Daylight saving time is supposed to more accurately reflect the actual daylight hours of the day. (In order to accomplish that, we spring forward an hour. This year, we did that on March 12.)The practice has followed us since the early 1900s when it was introduced as a wartime measure during World War I. It was repealed in 1919, then brought back in 1942 during World War II. Congress later passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966 to make the bi-annual changing of the clocks the norm. We briefly tried daylight saving time year-round in 1973, but then-President Gerald Ford signed a bill in 1974 to put the U.S. back on standard time for four months.Ever since then, we've had ...

Trudy Rubin: As Israel strikes back against Hamas, questions linger about the long road ahead

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

As Israel relentlessly bombs Gaza and moves troops toward the border, it is hard to predict how the war with Hamas terrorists will end.The scenes of carnage in Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza border — 900 dead, including scores of families with small children executed in cold blood; young women dragged off as hostages, some with babies; and 260 young people gunned down at a music concert — have horrified Israel and much of the world. This was an ISIS-style slaughter.Yet the challenges confronting Israel in its expressed goal of smashing Hamas are mammoth. The terrorist group and others were holding around 150 Israelis hostage in Gaza and have threatened to kill them if the bombing continues. The war could expand to the occupied West Bank and to Lebanon, where Hezbollah militants, backed by Iran, have 150,000 missiles pointed at Israel.And hanging over this crisis is a question about whether the current Israeli government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, can handle...

Real World Economics: Nobelist connects women’s workplace equity and economic efficiency

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

Edward LottermanI can imagine the barb coming all the way from Stockholm: “Take that Tommy, you ignorant twit!”Um, well, no. The Swedish Royal Academy did not give Harvard Prof. Claudia Goldin the 2023 Economics Nobel just to flip the bird at Alabama’s GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Yet there is a link between her work and his political causes that demonstrates how fruitful insights from economics can extend further than one might think.But hold that thought while we review the backstory.Start with Goldin’s Nobel. She got it “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes” and “uncovered key drivers of gender differences in the labour market.”Most media accounts condensed this to her having “studied the wage gap between women and men.” True, but it’s more complex than one might think.Goldin is intellectually curious. As a kid she wanted to be an archeologist and then a microbiologist. She was majoring in this at Cornell when economist Alfred Kahn showed he...