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Harris enters the fray over democracy with visit to Tanzania

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will step onto the front lines of the battle for democracy in Africa on Thursday, spending time in Tanzania as it makes fragile progress toward restoring its reputation as a more inclusive government.Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania’s first female president, has undone some of the country’s more oppressive policies, such as a ban on opposition rallies, even though she came to power as a member of the ruling party.She’s finishing out the term of President John Magufuli, who died in office and earned a reputation for stamping out dissent, arresting critics and forcing them into exile. Hard-liners have been uncomfortable with some of Hassan’s changes, however, which could cost her in the next election two years from now.Harris, the first woman to serve as U.S. vice president, will meet with Hassan on Thursday, a noteworthy show of support from Washington as the United States deepens its outreach to Africa.“There’s so much ex...

Asian stocks mixed after Wall St rally as bank fears ease

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Thursday following a rally on Wall Street as worries over banks following the collapses of several lenders in recent weeks eased further. Forceful actions by regulators have helped to calm markets as investors have turned their focus to how central banks might adjust their interest rate policies to reflect persisting worries over how higher rates might affect lenders. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.8% to 27,662.54. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.9% to 7,110.20. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.2% to 2,449.45. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.7% to 20,048.99, while the Shanghai Composite declined 0.2% to 3,232.39. “Fading concern about the banking sector is also supporting risk assets as the end of the month and quarter approaches,” Anderson Alves of ActivTrades said in a commentary. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 1.4% to 4,027.81, for its fourth gain in the last five days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1% ...

Across Latin America, migrant blaze families left reeling

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

SAN MARTIN JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala (AP) — The last Ana Marina López heard of her husband, the 51-year-old Guatemalan migrant told his family that he was being detained by Mexican immigration agents at the U.S.-Mexico border.That was two days before a fire in an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juárez claimed the lives of at least 39 migrants and left more than two dozen injured. Then his name appeared on a government list of the fire victims, but not specifying whether he was among the dead or the hospitalized. That has left López and her daughter back in their small western Guatemalan town clinging to hope that he may be alive. And they aren’t the only ones. As images of the devastating blaze consume news broadcasts and social media, families scattered across the Americas are reeling in agony as they await news of their loved ones. The pain and uncertainty felt by families underscores how the effects of migration ripple far beyond the individuals who embark on the perilo...

Australia makes biggest carbon polluters curb emissions

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian Parliament created landmark new laws Thursday that will make the nation’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters reduce their emissions or pay for carbon credits.The center-left Labor Party administration said the so-called Safeguard Mechanism reforms are essential to Australia reaching its target of reducing its emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. Set to take effect July 1, the reforms create a ceiling on the nation’s emissions and force Australia’s 215 most polluting facilities to reduce their emissions by 4.9% a year or reach the target with carbon credits. The laws create Australia’s first price on carbon since a former Labor government created a carbon tax in 2012. A conservative government repealed that tax in 2014 and has since rejected any climate policies that would make polluters pay.The bills passed the Senate on Thursday by a vote of 32 to 26, with Labor senators supported by the minor Greens party and unaligne...

Manhattan claws back people as urban counties stem outflow

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

Turns out the pandemic hasn’t permanently dissuaded people — especially immigrants — from seeking their fortunes amid Manhattan’s gritty streets and neon lights.The county that encompasses Manhattan added more than 17,000 residents in the year ending last July after losing almost 111,000 people in the previous 12-month period, according to population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The earlier decline was among the worst urban population losses from the COVID-19 outbreak.New York County was among several large, urban U.S. counties that either gained residents or stemmed the rate of declines between July 2021 and July 2022 compared with a year earlier.The reversal in population losses was particularly notable in King County, Washington, home to Seattle; as well as in large Sunbelt counties such as Dallas County, Texas; and two South Florida counties, Miami-Dade and Broward. The locations all had something in common: international immigration led the...

Pakistan militants kill 4 police officers, hurt 6 in attacks

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Taliban militants killed four police officers by targeting a police vehicle with a roadside bomb and wounded six in an attack on a police station in northwest Pakistan early Thursday, police and the insurgents said.The bomb killed four officers in a police vehicle carrying reinforcements sent to respond to the attack on a police station in Lakki Marwat, a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. Six officers were wounded in the attack at the police station. Local police officer Ashfaq Khan said a search was underway for the militant suspects who attacked the police station in Lakki Marwat and later targeted the police vehicle with a bomb.The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. The group know as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP is separate but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban. There has been an uptick in attacks in Pakistan after the Pakistani Taliban ended a cease-fire with the government of Pakistan.TTP has been e...

AP News in Brief at 12:19 a.m. EDT

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

Ukraine by rail: Inside Zelenskyy’s efforts to buoy a nationZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — The caravan of unmarked vehicles tears across the muddy grass next to the playground. On the merry-go-round, the children stop swinging and spinning. The curious — parents and other residents of this southeastern town — gather around. Car doors swing open, and heavily armed security guards in battlefield fatigues spill out.And just like that, he is among them: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wartime leader and his country’s chief morale officer.This week, Zelenskyy shuttled across the country on a 48-hour train trip to rally soldiers who are battling Russian forces — and, just as important, to buoy the communities often caught in the crossfire. Here, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the front lines, Zelenskyy came to see for himself the destruction from a Russian attack that damaged dozens of apartments one week ago. The violence hit just steps from the playground and mer...

Ukraine by rail: Inside Zelenskyy’s efforts to buoy a nation

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — The caravan of unmarked vehicles tears across the muddy grass next to the playground. On the merry-go-round, the children stop swinging and spinning. The curious — parents and other residents of this southeastern town — gather around. Car doors swing open, and heavily armed security guards in battlefield fatigues spill out.And just like that, he is among them: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wartime leader and his country’s chief morale officer.This week, Zelenskyy shuttled across the country on a 48-hour train trip to rally soldiers who are battling Russian forces — and, just as important, to buoy the communities often caught in the crossfire. Here, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the front lines, Zelenskyy came to see for himself the destruction from a Russian attack that damaged dozens of apartments one week ago. The violence hit just steps from the playground and merry-go-round. One person was killed and 30 others wounded. For Zapo...

Taiwan’s president begins US visit to shore up support

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Taiwan’s president is beginning a swing through the United States and Central America, a visit aimed at showing that her self-ruled island has allies as it faces a rising threat from China.Taiwan was carefully calibrating President Tsai Ing-wen’s stops in the United States, and as always forgoing any official meetings with senior U.S. leaders in Washington, in an effort to contain what China said would be a strong but as yet unspecified response.Tsai arrived in New York on Wednesday and was scheduled to spend Thursday in the city, but few details of the trip were made public.A senior Chinese diplomat in Washington, embassy charge d’affaires Xu Xueyan, pointed to an expected meeting between Tsai and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy elsewhere in the country. The meeting would have serious repercussions overall and a “serious, serious, serious” impact on U.S.-China relations, she said in a virtual session with reporters on Wednesday.Sen. Robert Menendez, a New...

House GOP pushes sprawling bill to ‘unleash’ American energy

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are set to approve a sprawling energy package that seeks to undo virtually all of President Joe Biden’s agenda to address climate change.The massive GOP bill up for a vote Thursday would sharply increase domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal, and ease permitting restrictions that delay pipelines, refineries and other projects. It also would boost production of critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt that are used in products such as electric vehicles, computers and cellphones.Republicans call the bill the “Lower Energy Costs Act” and have given it the symbolic label H.R. 1 — the top legislative priority of the new GOP majority, which took control of the House in January. The measure, which combines dozens of separate proposals, represents more than two years of work by Republicans who are have chafed at Biden’s environmental agenda. They say Biden’s efforts have thwarted U.S. energy production and increase...