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U.K. government moves asylum seekers to a barge moored off southern England in a bid to cut costs

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

A small group of asylum-seekers has been moved onto a barge moored in southern England as the U.K. government tries to cut the cost of sheltering people seeking protection in the country, British news media reported Monday.The asylum-seekers were transferred to the Bibby Stockholm, a floating hostel that will ultimately house up to 500 men, from other sites around the country. More were expected to arrive later Monday as authorities seek to reduce the number of asylum-seekers housed in expensive hotel rooms that were requisitioned on an emergency basis as the number of arrivals has surged in recent years.The barge, which is owned by UK-based Bibby Marine, is normally used to provide temporary housing for workers when local accommodation isn’t available. With three stories of closely packed bedrooms, the barge resembles a college dormitory, though the rooms are utilitarian. It also includes a kitchen, dining area, common rooms and laundry facilities.The Bibby Stockholm is moore...

DeSantis finally acknowledges the truth about Trump’s 2020 election lies: ‘Of course he lost’

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said definitively that rival Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, an acknowledgement the Florida governor made after years of equivocating answers. “Of course he lost,” DeSantis said an interview with NBC News posted Monday. “Joe Biden’s the president.”DeSantis has often sidestepped questions about whether he believes the 2020 election results were legitimate. But in recent days he has started publicly questioning the lies that Trump and his allies have made about the election’s legitimacy.Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general said there was no credible evidence the election’s outcome was affected by fraud. The former president’s allegations were also roundly rejected by courts at the time, including judges he appointed.Last week, Trump was charged by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith with four felonies related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 elec...

Ex-Minneapolis officer sentenced to nearly 5 years on state charge for role in George Floyd’s death

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Tou Thao, the last former Minneapolis police officer convicted in state court for his role in the killing of George Floyd, was sentenced Monday to 4 years and 9 months.Thao had testified that he merely served as a “human traffic cone” when he held back concerned bystanders who gathered as former Officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes while the Black man pleaded for his life on May 25, 2020.A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.”Floyd’s killing touched off protests worldwide and forced a national reckoning of police brutality and racism.Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill found Thao guilty in May of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. In his 177-page ruling, Cahill said Thao’s actions separated Chauvin and two other former officers from the crowd, including an emergency medical technician, allowing his colleagues to continue restraining Floyd and preventing bystanders from providin...

Stormy weather across northern Europe kills at least 1 person, and idles ferries and delays flights

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Stormy weather across the Baltic Sea region Monday killed at least one person and caused airport delays, suspended ferry services and a train’s partial derailment.Three people had been taken to hospital in Sweden when two of the train’s passenger cars went off the tracks in Hudiksvall, a town 280 kilometers (174 miles) north of Stockholm, police said. The derailment happened because ”the embankment has been undermined by the heavy rain and landslides,“ they said, adding that the extent of their injuries is unclear. There had been 120 people on the train, Swedish media said.Ferries linking Poland to Sweden, two German islands to mainland Germany and Norway to Denmark remained in harbor. Ferries and water taxis to the German islands of Hiddensee and Ruegen were canceled for Monday and Tuesday morning, and vacationers were asked to change their travels plans to Wednesday. In Lithuania, a 50-year old woman was killed by falling trees near the Latvi...

Saudi oil giant Aramco reports $30B in profits, down nearly 40% from last year due to lower prices

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi state-run oil giant Aramco on Monday reported $30 billion in second quarter profit, a nearly 40% decline from the same period the previous year that it attributed to lower oil prices.Total sales stood at just over $106 billion, down from $150 billion in the second quarter of 2022. In an earnings report filed with the Saudi stock exchange, Aramco said the decrease “mainly reflected the impact of lower crude oil prices and weakening refining and chemicals margins.”The company reported net income of $30 billion, compared to $48 billion in the second quarter of 2022, a decline of 37.8%.Aramco nevertheless raised its dividend paid out to investors to $29.38 billion, compared to $18.8 billion in the second quarter of 2022. The performance-based dividend is partly based on the company’s record earnings last year, it said.“Our strong results reflect our resilience and ability to adapt through market cycles,” Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in...

Rail service in southern Pakistan is partially restored after train crash that killed 30 people

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Passenger rail service was partially restored Monday in southern Pakistan, a day after a train derailed in the region, killing at least 30 people and injuring scores, officials said. Families were holding funerals for the victims of the crash.According to Aqeel Ahmed Qureshi, a doctor at a hospital in the district of Nawabshah in Sindh province, 27 bodies of the victims have been handed over to relatives for burials while three bodies have still to be identified. Dozens of injured people remained in hospital as funerals got underway on Monday. Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafiq said engineers had opened a probe into the train accident.“Unfortunately,” he told reporters, “we don’t have enough funds to properly maintain our aging railway tracks, and yesterday’s train crash apparently took place because of it.”Sunday’s crash happened when 10 cars of the Hazara Express train went off the tracks near the Sarhari railway station. Train tra...

Book Review: A private eye’s death sets a Chicago cop on a hairy investigation in ‘Dead and Gone’

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

“Dead and Gone,” by Joanna Schaffhausen (Minotaur)A private eye named Sam Tran is dead, hanged from a tree in a local cemetery, and Chicago P.D. Detective Annalisa Vega catches the case. Tran was once on the job himself, but as it turns out, that’s not the only reason the case is fraught.Vega figures the death is most likely related to a case Tran had been working on, of which there were three. Two are cold cases: A young woman had hired him to discover what happened to her mother, who disappeared more than 30 years ago; and a man had hired him to figure out who killed his cheating wife and her lover in a motel room more than 20 years ago.However, the third case makes things more than a little awkward for Vega. Her brother Vincent had hired Tran to catch a mysterious stalker who had been harassing his daughter Quinn and other female students on their college campus. Unsurprisingly, Vega’s first priority is protecting Quinn. This proves problematic since the college is located outsid...

People are losing more money to scammers than ever before. Here’s how to keep yourself safe

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — With the help of technology, scammers are tricking Americans out of more money than ever before. But there are steps you can take to keep your money and information safe. In 2022, reported consumer losses to fraud totaled $8.8 billion — a 30 percent increase from 2021, according to the most recent data from the Federal Trade Commission. The biggest losses were to investment scams, including cryptocurrency schemes, which cost people more than $3.8 billion, double the amount in 2021.Younger adults ages 20-29 reported losing money more often than older adults ages 70-79, the FTC found. But when older adults did lose money, they lost more. Many retirees have assets like savings, pensions, life insurance policies or property for scammers to target.With the rise of the digital economy, scammers now reach targets by social media and text, as well as phone and email. Online payment platforms, apps, and marketplaces have also increased opportunities. Still, many of their tact...

Book Review: James McBride’s latest novel is a tour de force celebrating community and compassion

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride (Riverhead Books)“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” James McBride’s tour de force of a new novel, opens in 1972, when authorities discover a human skeleton and mezuzah at the bottom of a well in the small community of Pottstown in southeast Pennsylvania. Suspecting foul play, they question an old Jewish man who lives in the ramshackle neighborhood of Chicken Hill, where the town’s Jews, Blacks and immigrant whites once lived together in harmony. Waving off the suggestion that something is amiss because the mezuzah wasn’t attached to its customary place on the door of a Jewish home, Malachi offers up this sage observation: “Jewish life is portable.” The very next day, Hurricane Agnes barrels into the region, churning up flood waters that wipe out every trace of the potential crime, prompting this humorous aside from a chorus of elderly Black women: “White folks was jumping off their rooftops in Pottstown like they was on th...

The UK government moves asylum-seekers to a barge moored off southern England in a bid to cut costs

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:50:15 GMT

LONDON (AP) — A small group of asylum-seekers has been moved onto a barge moored in southern England as the U.K. government tries to cut the cost of sheltering people seeking protection in the country, British news media reported Monday.The asylum-seekers were transferred to the Bibby Stockholm, a floating hostel that will ultimately house up to 500 men, from other sites around the country. More were expected to arrive later Monday as authorities seek to reduce the number of asylum-seekers housed in expensive hotel rooms that were requisitioned on an emergency basis as the number of arrivals has surged in recent years.The barge, which is owned by UK-based Bibby Marine, is normally used to provide temporary housing for workers when local accommodation isn’t available. With three stories of closely packed bedrooms, the barge resembles a college dormitory, though the rooms are utilitarian. It also includes a kitchen, dining area, common rooms and laundry facilities.The Bibby Stoc...