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Macron keeps France guessing as reshuffle rumors swirl

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

PARIS – French politics is in limbo as ministers eagerly wait to hear news of a rumored cabinet reshuffle. The mounting speculation over recent days once again highlights President Emmanuel Macron’s nerve-wrecking methods of managing his team.Macron fueled the uncertainty after cancelling the first scheduled 2024 cabinet meeting this week, with a member of the president’s entourage stating that there was “no absolute necessity” for a government get together to kick off the new year. The president extended his say at one of his official retreats, La Lanterne, and did not reveal any specific agenda items other than a ceremony in honor of Jacques Delors on Friday.It remains unclear whether Elisabeth Borne will stay on as Prime Minister but odds are against her after a series of crises left the Macron’s governing coalition seriously bruised. Political divisions in the presidential camp were on full display just before the holidays when Borne’s governm...

UK slams Putin over use of North Korean missiles in Ukraine

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

LONDON — Britain accused Russia of using North Korean missiles in Ukraine in an act of “desperation.”The White House on Thursday said it had intelligence indicating “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea recently provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and several ballistic missiles,” and that Russian forces had launched “at least one of these North Korean missiles into Ukraine” on December 30.Spokesperson John Kirby said further Pyongyang-supplied missiles had been launched in subsequent days.In its own statement issued Thursday night, the U.K.’s Foreign Office backed that assessment and urged North Korea “to cease its arms supply to Russia.”“Russia is turning to North Korea for its weapons in pursuit of its cynical and ill-conceived military aims in Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the department said.“This is symptomatic of its isolation on the world stage and a sign of its desperation,” they added. “Furthermore, this...

Mob of German farmers accosts top Green as protests escalate

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

BERLIN — Tensions over Germany’s budget crisis escalated significantly late Thursday as a group of angry farmers protested against tax hikes by blocking Greens Economy Minister Robert Habeck from disembarking from a ferry as it docked in northern Germany.The mob of more than 100 people harangued Habeck in a scene local police described as “very, very tense.” The incident underlines growing discontent and political tensions over spending cuts that the leaders of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition have proposed amid the country’s still-roiling budget crisis. The government had to significantly reduce spending in a new draft budget for 2024 after a constitutional court ruling in November blew a €60 billion hole in its finances.As part of their budget plans, ruling coalition leaders proposed removing key tax privileges for farmers, including a tax break on diesel fuel. Those plans have stoked outrage, leading to big protests.Farmers on Thursday...

Biting Cold to Weekend Snow

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

Brrrr! The winter winds are certainly in charge this morning as wind chills start off the day in the single digits and air temps run in the teens to lower 20s. Highs rebound into the lower 30s this afternoon under a partly to mostly sunny sky. Winds will gust 15-25mph through early afternoon, then taper off. It’ll be dry and cold tonight and dry during the daylight hours tomorrow. Highs reach the low to mid 30s tomorrow afternoon as clouds thicken up. That colder air will set the stage for the first significant snow of the season for a large portion of southern New England tomorrow night into Sunday. As an area of low pressure traverses the country over the next couple of days, it’ll pick up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico as well as the Atlantic and push it into the cold air across the Northeast. As it does so, snow will break out across the region late Saturday evening and through the day Sunday. A snowy Sunday is likely at Gillette! Snow breaks out tomorrow evening, with...

In newly unsealed court documents, a detective describes recruitment of dozens of girls for Epstein

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

(CNN) — Nineteen unsealed documents from a lawsuit connected to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile who died in jail before he could face trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, were publicly released on Thursday.This is the second batch stemming from a December 18 court order from the judge overseeing the lawsuit, a response to media’s legal efforts to publicly release the documents. The documents on Thursday night total more than 300 pages.The documents are part of a 2015 civil defamation suit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an American woman who claimed Epstein sexually abused her as a minor and that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, aided in the abuse.Thursday’s release follows hundreds of pages of documents unsealed on Wednesday, with more expected in the coming weeks.The documents in total, including material yet to be unsealed, are expected to include nearly 200 names, including some of Epstein’s accusers, prominent businesspeople, politicians a...

Bill Ackman’s wife is accused of plagiarizing part of her dissertation

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

New York (CNN) — Neri Oxman, an academic and wife of billionaire investor Bill Ackman, plagiarized parts of her doctoral dissertation at MIT, according to a report from Business Insider.Ackman has become one of the most prominent critics amplifying a series of accusations, including plagiarism, against Harvard’s leader, who resigned this week.The Business Insider report, which CNN could not independently verify, said Oxman “plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation.” The report “found at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.”Oxman, an American–Israeli designer, wrote a more than 800-word response to Business Insider on social media Thursday. Oxman acknowledged that there were four paragraphs in her 330-page dissertation in which she correctly cited her sources but “did not place the subject language in quotation marks, whic...

Homicides dropped by over 10% in America’s biggest cities in 2023

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

(CNN) — After three years of distressingly high levels, homicides in the US declined significantly across the board in 2023 – even as the public’s concerns about crime remained at its highest in over two decades.In particular, the five biggest cities in the US – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix – each saw homicides fall by over 10%, according to the latest data from those police departments.Further, national data from the FBI covering January to September 2023 showed an 8.2% drop in all violent crime, including a 15.6% drop in murders, compared to the same period in 2022. These declines were seen in cities over 1 million people and those under 10,000, and across all four regional quadrants of the US. The full year of data won’t be released until this fall, but the trend is clear.Taken together, the broad decline in crimes in 2023 suggests societal disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 police murder of George Floyd h...

Girls cross-country All-Scholastics and league All-Stars

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

Lauren Augustyn (Bishop Feehan)Madeline Courtemanche (Central Catholic)Kaylie Dalgar (Pentucket)Ella Dunbury (West Bridgewater)Ciara Evans (Newton North)Abigail Hennessy (Westford Academy)Maggie Kuchman (Holliston)Carmen Luisi (Holliston)Paige McInerney (Acton-Boxboro)Marrietta O’Connell (Marblehead)Lauren Raffetto (Canton)Gracie Richard (Weymouth)Aoife Shovlin (Cambridge)Emilia Smith (Attleboro)Katie Sobieraj (Oliver Ames)Emma Tuxbury (Wellesley)Lucia Werner (Brookline)Susan Wisniewski (Pentucket) LAUREN AUGUSTYNBISHOP FEEHANThis senior ran to a stellar eighth-place finish at the Meet of Champions after a top-three showing in the Div. 1C race. The Catholic Conference champion for the third time, Augustyn was also the conference MVP. She is a member of the National Honor Society and the Science and English National Honor Society. Augustyn will attend Syracuse University.MADELINE COURTEMANCHECENTRAL CATHOLICThe Merrimack Valley Conference champion, this junior took fourth in the...

Sunderland apologizes to its fans for rebranding stadium bar in Newcastle colors for FA Cup game

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

SUNDERLAND, England (AP) — Sunderland scored a spectacular own-goal off the field well before its FA Cup showdown with archrival Newcastle.The second-tier English soccer club apologized to fans after a bar at its Stadium of Light was rebranded in Newcastle colors and banners ahead of Saturday’s derby.The Black Cats Bar will serve as a corporate hospitality suite for visiting fans, but Sunderland pledged to return the space to its original state after a fan backlash.Sunderland apologized for “a serious error in judgment” and said it had “requested an immediate review is undertaken to determine how this process unfolded.”Club owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus also apologized and said he was “disgusted and hurt” by the news.“I take full responsibility for every decision that is taken by the employees of our club and you have my word that I will personally make sure that we make the necessary changes required to improve because it is clear that there are many areas where we need to ...

PepsiCo products are being pulled from some Carrefour grocery stores in Europe over price hikes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:16:02 GMT

PARIS (AP) — Global supermarket chain Carrefour will stop selling PepsiCo products in it stores in France, Belgium, Spain and Italy over price increases for popular items like Lay’s potato chips, Quaker Oats, Lipton tea and its namesake soda.The French grocery chain said it pulled PepsiCo products from shelves in France on Thursday and added small signs in stores that say, “We no longer sell this brand due to unacceptable price increases.” The ban also will extend to Belgium, Spain and Italy, but Carrefour, which has 12,225 stores in more than 30 countries, didn’t say when it would take effect in those three countries.PepsiCo said in a statement that it has “been in discussion with Carrefour for many months and we will continue to engage in good faith in order to try to ensure that our products are available.”The company behind Cheetos, Mountain Dew and Rice-A-Roni has raised prices by double-digit percentages for seven straight quarters, most recently hiking by 11% in t...