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‘Home is like jail’: Afghan soldier who helped the US weathers injuries, uncertainty in asylum bid

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

HOUSTON (AP) — The April visit to a Houston clinic was just one of a never-ending assembly line of medical appointments Abdul Wasi Safi has had since his January release from an immigration detention center.The former Afghan soldier, called Wasi by family and friends, sat in a dental chair and conversed in Pashto with his older brother Sami as Carrie Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova” played in the background. It was a scene thousands of miles from the places he’d been the past two years.After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, fear of retribution from the Taliban for sharing information with American soldiers while he was an intelligence officer drove Wasi Safi to flee to Brazil. The goal? Reaching the U.S. and applying for asylum.He eventually made it after crossing 10 countries, but the journey came at a high cost. A brutal beating by police officers in Panama severely damaged his teeth and jaw and left him with permanent hearing loss.Wasi Safi didn’t appear ne...

Stock market today: Wall Street edges higher to edge of a new bull market

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is drifting higher as the market continues to hover near the edge of a new bull market. The S&P 500 rose 0.2% early Wednesday. The U.S. stock market’s main benchmark is 20% above where it was in mid-October. If it holds those gains, it will mark the end to its painful bear market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 49 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.5%. Wayfair rose 3.5% after the home goods retailer said its revenue trends have been improving. Campbell Soup fell 8% after reporting weaker revenue than expected.THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.Markets were slow to gain traction again on Wednesday with scant market-moving news scheduled until next week’s inflation reports.Futures for the S&P 500 were up just 0.1%, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrials were essentially flat. Next week, the U.S. government will publish its latest monthly updates on inflation and the Federal Reserve wi...

Ukraine rushes drinking water to flooded areas as officials wrestle with impact of major dam breach

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — Authorities on Wednesday rushed supplies of drinking water to flooded areas from a collapsed dam in southern Ukraine as officials weighed where they might resettle residents who relied on the breached reservoir on the Dnieper River that forms part of the front line in the 15-month war.More than 2,700 people have fled flooded areas on both the Russian and Ukrainian-controlled sides of the river, according to official tallies, but it was not clear whether the true scale of the disaster had yet emerged in an area that was home to more than 60,000 people.The Kakhovka hydroelectric dam and reservoir, essential for supplying drinking water and irrigation to a huge area of southern Ukraine, lies in a part of the Kherson region occupied by Moscow’s forces for the past year. It is also critical for water supplies to the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.Ukraine holds the western bank of the Dnieper, while Russia controls the eastern side...

Andrew Young was at Martin Luther King’s side throughout often violent struggle for civil rights

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — Andrew Young’s first thought when he heard the Voting Rights Act had been signed into law was not celebratory. It was strategic.“Where are we going to get the money to get the country mobilized to register these voters?” he recalled thinking at that momentous time nearly 60 years ago.Now 91, Young is one of the last surviving members of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner circle. The two were together from their first meeting in 1957 at a fraternity symposium at Talladega College until King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.But while King and fellow close adviser Ralph Abernathy were at the U.S. Capitol for the 1965 signing, Young was not.“That wasn’t my part of the movement,” he said. “I was maybe a field general.”Young would go on to become mayor of Atlanta, a congressman and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.The journey to the Voting Rights Act was an arduous one, he recalled. In December 1964, Young and King headed to Washington to meet with Presi...

Shell’s clean energy campaign is misleading, UK advertising watchdog says

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

LONDON (AP) — A marketing campaign by oil major Shell has been banned by the U.K.’s advertising watchdog Wednesday for implying a big proportion of its business was in low carbon energy even though fossil fuels make up the “vast majority” of its operations.A television commercial, a YouTube video and a poster campaign in Bristol, England, variously described providing large numbers of British homes with 100% renewable energy, installing electric vehicle charging points and driving the energy transition.In its written ruling the Advertising Standards Authority found consumers would interpret the marketing materials as making a “broader claim about Shell as a whole providing cleaner energy.”Although Shell does have a clean energy business, the company estimates its operations released almost 1.4 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in 2021.In a statement, Shell spokesperson Tara Lemay said the company “strongly” disagrees with the ASA’s decision, “which could slow the U....

Wildfire smoke blankets Ontario, Quebec, air quality plummets, affects activities

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

TORONTO — Poor air quality is forecast to persist into the weekend across parts of Ontario, as plumes of wildfire smoke blanket the province and prompt school boards to limit outdoor activities.Environment Canada has issued special air quality advisories for large swaths of Ontario and Quebec, warning of high levels of pollution from wildfires burning across both provinces.Ottawa, Belleville and Kingston registered some of the worst air pollution levels in the country, maxing out the air quality index at very high risk. Air quality index levels were forecasted to peak at high risk in many other Ontario cities, from Windsor through to Toronto and north to Sudbury. Toronto District School Board says all strenuous outdoor activities will be rescheduled, or moved indoors when possible, while school boards in York Region say they will hold recess inside. As of Tuesday, there were more than 200 forest fires burning across Quebec and northern Ontario. This report by The Canadian Press was ...

Money wasted? Drivers speak out on newly rebuilt Gardiner on-ramp nobody can use

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

Our Speakers Corner report takes us to the intersection of Lake Shore Boulevard and Lower Jarvis Street, where there are daily traffic jams in nearly all directions.“It’s a mess morning, noon and sometimes late at night,” said Toronto driver Omid Ghiei.The issues can be traced back to 2021 when the city tore down the Gardiner Expressway’s on and off ramps at Logan Avenue. That forced traffic heading east off the Gardiner to exit at Lower Jarvis onto Lake Shore Boulevard.Drivers heading west to access the Gardiner had to use the expressway west on-ramp at Lower Jarvis. Mix in some road repairs being made to Lake Shore Boulevard, and drivers say it’s the perfect recipe to create daily headaches.“You sometimes have to wait 20 minutes on Lakeshore just to go a couple of blocks,” Ghiei said.Another ongoing problem has drivers scratching their heads. It’s for vehicles accessing the Gardiner Expressway East at Lower Jarvis. In 2021, that east...

Voices from the violent civil rights era see attacks on voting rights as part of ongoing struggle

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

They are part of a small, vanishing group who lived at the epicenter of the struggle for voting rights six decades ago, an era driven by segregation, violence and the yearning for equality that eventually led to laws bringing the U.S. closer to its promise of democracy for all its citizens.As the country awaits a Supreme Court decision on whether one of those laws, the Voting Rights Act, will be reinforced or further eroded, they reflect on the times and their struggles, and why they are certain it all was worth it. Ten years ago this month, the court halted what many consider the heart of that landmark law — the ability of the Justice Department to enforce it in states and counties with a history of voter suppression. The justices now will decide how strongly to protect minority groups when they challenge political boundaries drawn through states’ redistricting.The stories from those on the front lines of history recount tragedy, racism, oppression and ultimately hope in seei...

Statistics Canada reports merchandise trade surplus rose to $1.9B in April

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

OTTAWA — Statistics Canada say the country’s merchandise trade surplus increased to $1.9 billion in April, helped by higher exports of gold, oil and cars and light trucks.The result followed a revised surplus of $231 million in March. The agency’s initial reading for March released last month had indicated a surplus of $972 million.Exports for April rose 2.5 per cent to $64.8 billion as exports of metal and non-metallic mineral products gained 13.6 per cent, lifted higher by a 46.0 per cent gain in unwrought gold.Exports of energy products gained 6.4 per cent as higher prices helped lift crude oil exports 7.1 per cent. Exports by the motor vehicles and parts sector rose 7.4 per cent as exports of passenger cars and light trucks gained 7.7 per cent and engines and parts added 9.9 per cent.Meanwhile, imports in April fell 0.2 per cent to $62.9 billion as imports of energy products fell 12.8 per cent with crude oil imports down 20.5 per cent, in part due to lower shipments ...

Young lawyer who helped write voting rights bill ‘star-struck’ as he witnessed 1965 signing into law

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:00:24 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joel Finkelstein is an accidental witness to one of the seminal events of the civil rights movement, the signing in 1965 of the Voting Rights Act.He was a year out of law school at Cornell when he received the call to head to the Capitol for the signing. Now 83, Finkelstein still isn’t sure how he ended up witnessing the signing — on his 25th birthday — but figured President Lyndon Johnson wanted people who had worked on the bill to be present.Finkelstein helped write the law as a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.“Well, I was one of the staff and that’s how I got there,” he said.Finkelstein had wanted to work for the Justice Department as long as he could remember. He was raised in Savannah, Georgia, and had gone to undergraduate school at Tulane in New Orleans.“I was not unfamiliar with what went on in the South,” he said.It was a time when some of the nation’s best young lawyers sought work at the Justice Department, where Finkelstein reca...