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Chinese Premier Li Qian takes a test ride on Indonesia’s new high-speed railway

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Chinese Premier Li Qiang took a test ride Wednesday on Southeast Asia’s first high-speed railway, which connects two Indonesian cities as part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.Li is visiting Jakarta for two days of talks with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations and other countries.The $7.3 billion rail project, funded largely by China, connects Jakarta and Bandung, the heavily populated capital of West Java province. It is to begin commercial operations on Oct. 1 and will cut travel time between the two cities from the current three hours to about 40 minutes.Li rode the train from Halim station in eastern Jakarta to the next station in West Java’s Karawang city, a 40-kilometer (25-mile) distance that took about 11 minutes. He was accompanied by Indonesian officials including the coordinating minister for maritime and investment, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.“This is clear proof of modern, high-quality cooperation between the tw...

Stock market today: Wall Street opens lower as weak stretch continues

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are opening lower on Wall Street, continuing a weak stretch on this holiday-shortened week. The S&P 500 slipped 0.4% in the early going Wednesday. The Dow fell 131 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite gave back 0.4%. Crude oil prices were stable and Treasury yields were little changed. Roku jumped 12.5% after saying it would cut 10% of its staff. The company also raised its forecast for quarterly revenue. Later in the morning the Institute for Supply Management will release its latest report on the services sector. GameStop and Dave & Buster’s will release their latest results after the bell.THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.Wall Street is on track for a modestly lower open Wednesday in a holiday-shortened week with so far little in the way of market-moving news.Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials were both off 0.2% before the bell.Coming off the Labor Day holiday in the U.S., investors have few major...

David Bergen, Sarah Bernstein among authors on 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize long list

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

David Bergen, Sarah Bernstein and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer are among the authors on the long list for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize. Last year’s winner, Suzette Mayr, revealed the list in St. John’s, N.L., at an event that kicked off the 30th anniversary of the Canadian literary prize.Bergen, who won the 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel “The Time In Between,” made the 2023 long list with “Away from the Dead,” published by Goose Lane Editions.Bernstein received a nod for her second novel “Study for Obedience,” published by Knopf Canada, which also made the long list for the prestigious Booker Prize earlier this summer. Also on the list is Kuitenbrouwer’s “Wait Softly Brother,” a novel published by Wolsak & Wynn that has been described as autobiographical fiction.Organizers say the 12 titles were chosen from a record number of 145 book submissions made by publishers across Canada and the short list for the prize will be announced on Oct. 11.The Scotiabank Giller Prize...

A Brazil storm leaves at least 27 dead and 1,600 homeless while families plead for help

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — An extratropical cyclone in southern Brazil caused floods in several cities, killing at least 27 people and leaving more than 1,600 homeless, authorities said Wednesday.More than 60 cities have been battered by the storm since Monday night, and Rio Grande do Sul Gov. Eduardo Leite said the death toll was the state’s highest due to a climate event.Rescue efforts expanded farther west on Wednesday with helicopters headed to the Rio Pardo Valley. Search and rescue teams had been focusing around the Taquari Valley, about 150 kilometers (31 miles) northwest of the state capital Porto Alegre, where most of the victims and damage were recorded.More heavy rains were expected to hit the state’s center-south region, but possibly sparing worst-hit areas.Authorities maintained three flooding alerts on Wednesday — for the Jacui, Cai and Taquari rivers.TV footage showed families on the top of their houses pleading for help as rivers overflowed their banks. Some areas w...

UK government accused of ‘cutting corners’ as 147 schools named at risk due to crumbling concrete

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

LONDON (AP) — The British government has been accused of “cutting corners” as it published Wednesday a list of 147 schools in England that are potentially at risk of collapse from crumbling concrete.The list from the Department for Education, which oversees schools in England, shows that 19 schools have had to delay the start of the new academic year because of the concrete crisis and that students at 24 others will receive some remote learning, with four having switched to fully remote learning at the weekend. Other educational establishments could be added to the list over the coming days or weeks. Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, likened the government to “cowboy builders” — a widely used British term to denote reckless and unreliable builders — during a rowdy first Prime Minister’s Questions session following the summer break. “The truth is this crisis is the inevitable result of 13 years of cutting corners, botched jobs, sticking-plaster pol...

Wisconsin Democrats combat impeachment of court justice with $4M effort

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Democratic Party on Wednesday launched a $4 million effort to pressure Republicans to back down from impeaching a new liberal state Supreme Court justice being targeted after she criticized GOP-drawn legislative electoral maps and spoke in favor of abortion rights.After investing nearly $10 million in electing Justice Janet Protasiewicz, the effort is meant to protect what Democrats hailed as a major political victory. The judge’s election tipped the balance of power in the state Supreme Court, giving Democrats the upper hand in state’s fights over abortion and redistricting. “Republicans are holding a political nuclear football,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said in reference to impeachment. The effort will include digital and television ads, in-person voter outreach, and a website tracking where every Republican lawmaker stands on impeachment.Protasiewicz is part of a 4-3 liberal majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Co...

Turkey asks the EU to take bold steps to advance its membership bid, while the EU urges reforms

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s top diplomat on Wednesday affirmed his country’s resolve to join the European Union and urged the 27-member bloc to take courageous steps to advance its bid.Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan made the comments in a news conference with the EU’s top official for enlargement. Their meeting in Ankara came as Turkey tries to put its strained relations with the EU back on track.“The European Union cannot be a truly global actor without Turkey,” Fidan said. “It is vital that the path to Turkey’s EU membership is cleared and the perspective for membership is revitalized.”“Our expectation is that they display the determination needed to advance our relations and that they are able to act more courageously,” he added.The country, which straddles Europe and Asia, became a candidate to join the EU in 1999 and started membership negotiations in 2005.The negotiations, however, came to a standstill in 2018 over Turkey’s democratic backsliding and erosion of th...

Authorities try to flush out escaped murderer in suburban Philadelphia manhunt

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) — Two suburban Philadelphia school districts remained shuttered and one of the nation’s premier botanical gardens was closed Wednesday as authorities worked to flush out a convicted murderer who escaped from prison last week.Danelo Cavalcante, 34, has been spotted five times since he escaped Thursday from the Chester State Prison. The most recent sighting came Monday night at Longwood Gardens, where trail surveillance video captured him walking through the area with a duffel bag, backpack and hooded sweatshirt he apparently stole while on the run.That sighting led officials to move the search area farther south on Tuesday after they determined that Cavalcante had likely slipped through the original perimeter set by hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement officers, but they said his movements show he’s feeling the pressure of the massive search and that his options are dwindling.The ongoing manhunt forced officials in two school districts within th...

Alaskan fishers fear another bleak season as crab populations dwindle in warming waters

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

KODIAK, Alaska (AP) — Gabriel Prout worked four seasons on his father’s crab boat, the Silver Spray, before joining his two brothers in 2020 to buy a half-interest plus access rights for a snow crab fishery that’s typically the largest and richest in the Bering Sea. Then in 2021, disaster: an annual survey found crabs crashing to an all-time low. The red king crab fishery was closed; the snow crab fishery cut to a tenth of the previous year’s take.After another bad survey last year, the red king crab fishery closed again and the snow crab fishery closed for the first time ever. Suddenly, Prout’s optimism about being his family’s third generation in crab fishing seemed misplaced. “It’s very hard to find a way to keep going forward,” said Prout, 33. With almost all his expected income gone, he’s scrambled ever since to scratch out a living by working as a salmon tender — using his boat to supply other boats and offload their catch.Researchers are sc...

2 top officials of Tunisia’s moderate Islamist party arrested while its leader languishes in jail

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:49:27 GMT

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisian officials detained a former prime minister for questioning then freed him hours later early Wednesday, but jailed two top officials in the moderate Islamist Ennahdha party whose leader has been imprisoned, the official news agency said. A statement by Ennahdha said the party’s interim president, Mondher Ounissi, and the head of its Shura council, an internal parliament, Abdelkarim Harouni, were both arrested on Tuesday. That information later appeared on TAP news agency, citing the party. According to Ennahdha, Ounissi, who is standing in for jailed party leader Rached Ghannouchi, was stopped Tuesday night by security forces while driving his car and taken to “an unknown destination.” The party demanded his release and denounced a “malevolent campaign” aimed at “hurting the Islamist movement and its leaders.” Ennahdha also criticized the arrest of Harouni, expressing concern that his health would be compromised after receiving burns in a recent fire at...