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Rip currents prompted 200 rescues in Virginia and North Carolina over the July Fourth weekend

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Strong rip currents prompted lifeguards to pull about 200 swimmers from the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia and North Carolina over the holiday weekend. Tom Gill, chief of the Virginia Beach Lifesaving Service, told The Virginian-Pilot that the city’s more than 180 rescues were high even for a holiday weekend. Gill said that three of the rescued swimmers were taken to hospitals for treatment after appearing to have inhaled water. Virginia Beach lifeguards had been flying red flags to warn of dangerous rip currents. But it was difficult to keep people out of the water given the hot weather, Gill said.“It’s hot and people want to get in the water and need to get in the water,” he said. “And we understand that.”On North Carolina’s Hatteras Island, authorities reported 21 rescues over the weekend, the Pilot reported. The rescues in Virginia and North Carolina follow at least 10 deaths last month that authorities attributed to rip currents along the Gulf...

Wisconsin’s Democratic governor scales back Republican tax cut, signs state budget

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed off on a two-year spending plan Wednesday after dramatically scaling back the size of a Republican income tax cut that would have moved the state closer to a flat rate.Evers, a Democrat, called the Republican-authored budget “imperfect and incomplete” but stopped short of vetoing the entire plan, which would have required the Legislature to start over. He called on Republicans to do more to address key areas, including higher education and child care support.Republicans proposed tapping nearly half of the state’s projected $7 billion budget surplus to cut income taxes across the board by $3.5 billion. Evers reduced the size of the cut to $800 million by doing away with rate reductions for the two highest brackets.Evers was unable to undo the $32 million cut to the University of Wisconsin, which was funding that Republicans said would have gone toward diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — programming and staff. Th...

Mitigation efforts continue at Suncor in wake of cyberattack

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

CALGARY — Canada’s top technical authority on cybersecurity says it is working closely with Suncor Energy Inc. in the aftermath of a high-profile systems breach at the energy giant.The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security says it can’t disclose details of the cybersecurity incident that caused payment systems at many of Suncor’s Petro-Canada locations across the country to go down last week. Sami Khoury, head of the centre — which leads Canada’s federal response to cybersecurity incidents — says mitigation efforts at Suncor are still ongoing, and sharing information too soon may compromise those efforts.Suncor has not provided details about the type of cyberattack that occurred or whether any of its other operations were affected.Some experts have said the Suncor systems breach will likely cost the company millions of dollars before it is resolved.Khoury says the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security recently briefed high-level oil and gas executives about how to ...

Exonerated member of ‘Central Park Five’ wins primary, nearly assuring seat on NYC Council

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated “Central Park Five,” has won the Democratic primary, all but assuring him a seat on the New York City Council. It’s an improbable feat for a political novice who was wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned as a teenager for the rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park.Salaam’s primary win is for the seat representing Central Harlem on the City Council. The Associated Press refrained from calling the race on election night but additional votes released Wednesday showed him to be the clear winner.“I am here because, Harlem, you believed in me,” Salaam said in his victory speech Tuesday night.Salaam and the four other Black and Latino teens from Harlem became known as the “Central Park Five” after their arrest in 1985 in the headline-grabbing rape, one of the city’s most notorious and racially fraught crimes. He served nearly seven years in prison before the group was exonerated through DNA evidence.His outsider camp...

Media outlets pull back from Facebook, Instagram as Meta plans to block news

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

Media companies began pulling advertising from some social media platforms and telling readers and viewers how to access news directly as Google and Metamoved toward blocking Canadian news from their services.News and telecommunications company Quebecor Inc. announced Wednesday it would immediately withdraw advertising from Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms, a move that comes after the tech giant’s decision to remove Canadian news from its sites.“Any move by Meta to circumvent Canadian law, block news for its users or discriminate against Canadian media content on its platforms, through its algorithms or otherwise, cannot be tolerated,” Quebecor said in a press release.Meta has chosen to block Canadian news from its social media services in response to the federal Online News Act, which will require Google and Meta to pay news publishers for content that appears on their sites if it helps them generate money. The act known as Bill C-18 is due to come in...

Finnish populist party picks economy minister to replace Cabinet member who quit over far-right ties

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

HELSINKI (AP) — A populist party that is part of Finland’s recently installed right-wing coalition government on Wednesday selected a new economy minister to replace a Cabinet member who resigned last week over alleged ties to far-right circles and Nazi remarks.The Finns Party said in a statement that Wille Rydman, 37, was chosen “unanimously” for the post. Rydman has been a lawmaker at Eduskunta, the Finnish legislature, since 2015 and a member of the Helsinki City Council since 2012.He has been involved in national politics since 2007 in the ranks of the National Coalition Party, Finland’s main conservative party, which is the senior partner in the current government led by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, who is NCP chair.In early January, however, Rydman joined the nationalist Finns Party after he was ousted from the NCP last year because of allegations of harassment and improper relationships with young women and teenage girls. The case led to a police investigation, and he was lat...

Former New York Mayor de Blasio and wife announce separation, but not divorce

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, are separating but not divorcing after 29 years of a marriage that helped lift de Blasio into the mayor’s job.McCray, 68, confirmed the separation in a text to The Associated Press after The New York Times published a story in which she and De Blasio, 62, said they will continue to share the same Brooklyn townhouse while dating other people.They arrived together at the realization that the spark had gone out of their relationship, they told the newspaper in a joint interview.“You can’t fake it,” McCray said.“You can feel when things are off,” de Blasio said, “and you don’t want to live that way.”McCray said the pair spoke to the Times in an effort to head off gossip.“As very public people embarking on a new chapter, we thought it better to say all this openly before anyone tries to find negativity, or before any misunderstandings occur,” she told the AP.McCray said she and de Blasio “have...

Canadian government suspends advertising on Facebook, Instagram

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez says the federal government will stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram.The decision comes after Meta began blocking Canadian news content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms in response to Canada’s recently passed Online News Act, which would make tech giants pay media outlets in exchange for using their content.Rodriguez says the decision from Meta, which is already blocking content for some users as part of a test that began before the bill passed, is “unreasonable” and “irresponsible,” and as a result, Canada will stop advertising on their platforms.RELATED: Google set to remove news links in Canada over online news lawGoogle has also promised to start blocking Canadian news when the bill comes into force in six months, but Rodriguez says the government is in talks with the company and believes their concerns will be managed by the regulations that will come to implement the bill.Google did not say exactly w...

Attorney who challenged Trump’s 2020 loss gives up law license as states weigh disciplining him

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Attorney Lin Wood, who filed legal challenges seeking to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, is relinquishing his law license, electing to retire from practicing rather than face possible disbarment. Multiple states have weighed disciplining him for pushing Trump’s false claims that he defeated Joe Biden.On Tuesday, Wood asked officials in his home state of Georgia to “retire” his law license in light of “disciplinary proceedings pending against me.” In the request, made in a letter and posted on his Telegram account, Wood acknowledges that he is “prohibited from practicing law in this State and in any other state or jurisdiction and that I may not reapply for admission.”Wood, a licensed attorney in Georgia since 1977, did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday seeking comment on the letter. A listing on the website for the State Bar of Georgia accessed on Wednesday showed him as retired and with no disciplinary infractions on his rec...

Auto sales continue to rise in June, up 12.6 per cent from last year: DesRosiers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:31 GMT

RICHMOND HILL, Ont. — DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. says June brought another strong month for auto sales. The consultancy firm says total light vehicle sales for the month were up 12.6 per cent from a year ago.Sales were 161,901 units in June, up 1.38 per cent from May, marking eight consecutive months of year-over-year gains. DesRosiers managing partner Andrew King says in a statement that the seasonally adjusted annual rate for June was 1.64 million in June, up from 1.54 million in May and the highest level since February. The firm says that sales this year reached around 813,000 units, up from 756,000 in the first half of 2022, but less than 1.04 million during the same period in 2018. General Motors led sales during the first half of 2023 with 127,561 units, up 15.7 per cent from a year earlier. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2023.The Canadian Press