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Brother of gay American attacked on Sydney cliff in 1988 says killer deserves no leniency

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

SYDNEY (AP) — A man who admitted killing American mathematician Scott Johnson by punching him from a cliff top at a gay meeting place in Sydney in 1988 deserves no leniency and should face the longest time in jail, the victim’s brother said Tuesday.Scott Phillip White, 52, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing hearing after pleading guilty to manslaughter. White had pleaded guilty to murder last year, but changed his mind and had that conviction overturned on appeal.Johnson’s Boston-based older brother Steve Johnson said White had lost the family’s sympathy by withdrawing his confession to murder.He and his wife Rosemary “felt some compassion because of his generous plea. Today I have no sympathy,” Steve Johnson said in a victim impact statement read out to the court.Any gratitude the family felt was undone after White’s conviction and jail sentence were overturned on appeal, he told reporters after the hearing.“So I am hoping the judge will give him t...

Ukraine accuses Russia of destroying major dam near Kherson, warns of ecological disaster

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russian forces of blowing up a major dam and hydroelectric power station in a part of southern Ukraine that Russia controls, sending water gushing from the breached facility and threatening possible massive flooding and what officials called an “ecological disaster.” Ukrainian authorities ordered hundreds of thousands of residents downriver to evacuate.Russian officials countered that the Kakhovka dam was damaged by Ukrainian military strikes in the contested area.The fallout could have broad consequences: Flooding homes, streets and businesses downstream; depleting water levels upstream that help cool Europe’s largest nuclear power plant; and draining supplies of drinking water to the south in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed.The dam break added a complex new element to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month, as Ukrainian forces were widely seen to be moving forward with a long-anticipated counteroffensive in pat...

Prince Harry gets his day in court against tabloids he accuses of blighting his life

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry is due at a London court Tuesday to testify against a tabloid publisher he accuses of phone hacking and other unlawful snooping.Harry alleges that journalists at the Daily Mirror and its sister papers used unlawful techniques on an “industrial scale” to get scoops.Publisher Mirror Group Newspapers is contesting the claims. Harry faces cross-examination by the company’s lawyer when he enters the witness box at the High Court in London.The 38-year-old son of King Charles III will be the first British royal since the 19th century to face questioning in a court. An ancestor, the future King Edward VII, appeared as a witness in a trial over a gambling scandal in 1891.Harry has made a mission of holding the U.K. press to account for what he sees as its hounding of him and his family.Setting out the prince’s case in court Monday, his lawyer, David Sherborne, said that from Harry’s childhood, British newspapers used hacking and subterfuge to mine snippets of...

Iran unveils what it calls a hypersonic missile able to beat air defenses amid tensions with US

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran claimed on Tuesday that it had created a hypersonic missile capable of traveling at 15 times the speed of sound. The announcement comes as tensions remain high with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program.Iran’s state television reported that the missile — called Fattah, or “Conqueror” in Farsi — had a range of up to 1,400 kilometers (870 miles).The report also claimed the missile could pass through any regional missile defense system, though it offered no evidence to support the claim. The TV broadcast what appeared to be a model of the missile being unveiled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a hard-line paramilitary organization in the Islamic Republic, before President Ebrahim Raisi. The Guard already has a vast arsenal of ballistic missiles.In November, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh of the Revolutionary Guard claimed that Iran had created a hypersonic missile, without offering evidence to support it. That claim came during the n...

Car bombing in northeast Afghanistan kills local official and his driver, wounds 10 people

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A car bombing in Afghanistan’s northeast on Tuesday killed a provincial deputy governor and his driver, a local official said. Ten people were also wounded in the blast. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in the city of Faizabad in Badakhshan province. The deputy governor, Molvi Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, was wounded in the explosion and died shortly after at a local hospital, according to Badakhshan’s cultural director Moazuddin Ahmadi. A car bombing last December killed Badakhshan’s police chief as he was on his way to work. The regional affiliate of the Islamic State group — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province — said at the time that it had carried out that attack. IS said it had parked an explosive-laden car on the road and detonated it when the police chief was close by.The Associated Press

Japan earmarks $107 billion for developing hydrogen energy to cut emissions, stabilize supplies

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s government on Tuesday adopted a revision to the country’s plans to use more hydrogen as fuel as part of the effort to reduce carbon emissions. The plan sets an ambitious target to increase the annual supply by six times from the current level to 12 million tons by 2040. It also pledges 15 trillion yen ($107 billion) in funding from both private and public sources to build up hydrogen-related supply chains over the next 15 years. Japan’s decarbonization strategy centers on using so-called clean coal, hydrogen and nuclear energy to bridge its transition to renewable energy. Russia’s war on Ukraine has deepened concerns over energy security and complicated that effort, but other advanced Western nations are pushing for faster adoption of renewable energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal.So far, Japan is relying on hydrogen mainly produced using fossil fuels. Some experts say strategies like commercializing the use of hydrogen and ammonia mainly cater to big busi...

Computer outage cripples train traffic in the Netherlands

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

A computer outage is disrupting train travel to and from Amsterdam and in other parts of the Netherlands on Monday (5 June), Dutch railway company NS said.The computer outage hit traffic control around 6 p.m. local time (1600GMT) on Sunday (4 June) afternoon and has crippled train traffic since, the NS said.The railway company on Monday morning said the problems would also affect international trains to Amsterdam, as the outage had not been resolved yet."The outage has a big impact, also on other parts of the country," NS said on its website.The company did not predict how long it would take to resolve the problems, but said no trains would operate until at least the afternoon.The outage left about 100 passengers stranded in Utrecht Central Station on Sunday night, Dutch news agency ANP said.At Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome concert hall, hundreds of fans of British pop singer Harry Styles waited until early on Monday morning for alternative transport home.

Lawyer: GOP Rep. Santos will go to jail rather than reveal donors

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

By Michael R. Sisak | Associated PressNEW YORK — Rep. George Santos’ lawyer said Monday the indicted New York Republican would risk going to jail to protect the identities of the people who cosigned the $500,000 bond enabling his pretrial release.The lawyer, Joseph Murray, urged a judge to deny a request by news outlets to unseal the names of Santos’ bond suretors, suggesting they could “suffer great distress,” including possible job losses and physical harm, if they’re identified publicly.“My client would rather surrender to pretrial detainment than subject these suretors to what will inevitably come,” Murray wrote in a letter to U.S. Magistrate Judge Anne Shields.Murray asked that she give them time to withdraw as cosignors if she decides to unseal the suretors’ names, which Shields kept off the public court docket at the lawyer’s request.Murray said he, Santos and Santos’ staff have been receiving threatening and harassi...

Biden Embraces Antisemitism Definition That Has Upended Free Speech in Europe

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

During a graduation speech at the City University of New York’s law school last month, Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Yemeni American student, criticized “Israeli settler colonialism” and advocated for “the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism.”Her words, which the university administration condemned as “hate speech,” kicked off a new round of public debate about the distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. Republican members of Congress responded by introducing legislation that would deny federal funding to academic institutions that “authorize Anti-Semitic events.”The bill cites a definition of antisemitism that the Israeli government and its supporters have been pushing in the United States and elsewhere, one that conflates prejudice toward Jews with criticism of Zionism and the state of Israel. And it comes on the heels of President Joe Biden nodding to the definition in the White House’s national strategy to combat antisemitism, released in late...

Stewart leads New York against Minnesota after 20-point showing

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:00:36 GMT

Minnesota Lynx (1-6, 0-3 Western Conference) at New York Liberty (4-2, 3-2 Eastern Conference)New York; Wednesday, 7 p.m. EDTBOTTOM LINE: New York plays the Minnesota Lynx after Breanna Stewart scored 20 points in the New York Liberty’s 86-82 loss to the Chicago Sky.New York went 16-20 overall last season while going 9-9 at home. The Liberty averaged 79.6 points per game while allowing opponents to score 82.0 last season.Minnesota went 14-22 overall a season ago while going 7-11 on the road. The Lynx gave up 83.9 points per game while committing 16.9 fouls last season.INJURIES: Liberty: None listed.Lynx: Diamond Miller: out (ankle), Natalie Achonwa: out (personal).___The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.Source