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Mali’s top diplomat demands UN peacekeepers leave the country after more than 10 years

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Mali’s top diplomat demanded Friday that U.N. peacekeepers who have been in this West African country grappling with an Islamic insurgency for more than a decade leave immediately, claiming they had failed in their mission. Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop made the request in a speech to the United Nations Security Council. He said the U.N. mission had not achieved its objectives and was sowing distrust among the people. Mali has struggled to contain an Islamic extremist insurgency since 2012. Extremist rebels were forced from power in Mali’s northern cities the following year, with the help of a French-led military operation, but they regrouped in the desert and began launching attacks on the Malian army and its allies. The U.N. peacekeepers — a contingent of more than 15,000 — came in a few months later in what has become one of the most dangerous U.N. missions in the world. At least 170 peacekeepers have been killed in the country since 2013, according to the U...

Florida man gets 4 years, 9 months for attacking officer at US Capitol insurrection

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Florida man was sentenced Friday to four years and nine months in federal prison for storming the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and attacking a police officer.Mason Joel Courson, 27, of Tamarac, Florida, was sentenced in District of Columbia federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in November to assaulting, resisting or impeding a law enforcement officer with a dangerous weapon. The judge also ordered three years of supervised release and restitution of $2,000. Courson was arrested in South Florida in December 2021.According to court documents, Courson joined with others objecting to Democratic President Joe Biden’s election victory over former Republican President Donald Trump. A mob attacked the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying election results, authorities said. Five people died in the violence.According to an indictment, Courson participated in an assault of a Metropolitan Police Department offic...

Teen says she was sexually assaulted by boys at Greg Norman’s home after being served alcohol

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — LIV Golf leader Greg Norman and his wife are being sued by a high school girl who says she was sexually assaulted at their Florida home by two boys during a party where alcohol was served to her, her alleged attackers and other minors. The lawsuit alleges that Norman, 68, and his wife, interior designer Kirsten Kutner, served alcohol to minors during a pool party her teenage daughter hosted for her Oxbridge Academy classmates and other teens at their Palm Beach Gardens mansion in September 2021. The girl and her parents allege that Kutner served her daughter and the girl drinks before other guests arrived. More alcohol was served throughout the party, the lawsuit alleges, and the girl became “incapable of standing on her own and was seen stumbling around the party.” The girl alleges that two boys, who also had been drinking at the party, then sexually assaulted her on the grass next to the pool. The lawsuit, which was filed in March, alleges that Norman ...

Demolition crew saves abandoned litter of baby raccoons in Utah

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

MORGAN, Utah (AP) — An abandoned litter of raccoons discovered at a construction site in northern Utah found new homes earlier this week after a construction crew uncovered the animals below the remnants of a demolished home.“A big-hearted foreman for the demolition crew working on Morgan Valley Drive came to the fire station asking for help,” the Morgan County Fire Department said in a statement on Wednesday. “After his crew knocked down an abandoned home, they heard chirping in the rubble.”The eight baby raccoons appeared to have no mother. Firefighters cared for them until someone with permits to raise raccoons offered to adopt them. Utah requires permits to home non-native species like raccoons or coyotes, which frequently roam wild.The Associated Press

New Hampshire prosecutors appeal dismissal of complaints against white nationalists

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

The New Hampshire Department of Justice has asked a judge to reconsider the dismissal of trespassing complaints against white nationalists accused of displaying “Keep New England White” banners from a highway overpass.The New Hampshire attorney general’s office had said the men were motivated by race and trespassed on public property when they displayed the banners in Portsmouth last July. They are members of a group known as NSC-131 or the Nationalist Social Club, which the Anti-Defamation League describes as a New England-based neo-Nazi group founded in 2019 that “espouses racism, antisemitism and intolerance.”Rockingham County Judge David Ruoff dismissed the state’s case earlier this month, ruling that the government was relying on an overly broad interpretation of the law and infringing on the group’s free speech rights.In the appeal filed Friday, state prosecutors argued the judge misapplied the law. They said while there is general right to access public roads, par...

Police warn of items related to sodium nitrate that can cause self-harm circulating in community

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

Peel police are asking members of the public to be on the lookout for items that can cause self-harm circulating in the community.It comes as they continue their investigation into a Mississauga resident accused of distributing sodium nitrite online across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that resulted in two deaths.In an online video posted Friday, police asked that people be on the alert for any packaging or labels identifying sodium nitrate, including hoods and/or masks that can be used to cause self-harm.“We are concerned that members of the community are in possession of these items and ask everyone to be vigilant of any online transactions made by your loved ones from these noted companies: Academic / ACademic, AmbuCA, Escape Mode / escMode, Imtime Cuisine, and ICemac,” said Const. Sarah Patten.“If you or someone you know received a package containing the described items from these businesses or have information about an incident please contact your local polic...

Chicago police sergeant fired for role in botched raid where Black woman was handcuffed nude

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago police sergeant has been fired for his role in a botched 2019 raid at the home of a Black woman who was handcuffed while naked after police officers were sent to the wrong address.The Chicago Police Board voted 5-3 Thursday to fire Sgt. Alex Wolinski for multiple rules violations and “failure of leadership” in the raid at the apartment of Anjanette Young, according to a 31-page written ruling, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.Young, a social worker, was getting ready for bed in February 2019 when several officers serving a no-knock warrant stormed into her apartment on Chicago’s Near West Side searching for a man believed to have an illegal gun.Police body-camera footage of the raid showed that officers handcuffed Young, who was naked when police arrived, as she repeatedly told them that they were in the wrong place. The city’s law department said Young was naked for 16 seconds but the covering officers put on her kept falling off before she was al...

Surrey, B.C., to stay with RCMP over independent force, costing the city millions

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

SURREY, B.C. — The mayor of Surrey, B.C., says council has voted to revert its policing back to the RCMP, a move than will cost the city millions of dollars. Mayor Brenda Locke told reporters that she has spoken to Premier David Eby and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth about council’s decision.The B.C. government recommended in April that Surrey continue its transition to the independent Surrey Police Service, offering $150 million over five years to help the city cover costs, but saying it would not pay the estimated $72 million in severance for officers if council decided to go back to the RCMP.The transition to the independent police force was well underway when Locke was elected on the promise to return policing to the Mounties. Locke says she couldn’t estimate the cost of the move back to the RCMP, saying only that it will “obviously be millions.” Farnworth said the government’s decision to recommend staying with the independent force was a safety issue ...

Manitoba RCMP, community leaders look to Saskatchewan after deadly crash

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

The mayor of Dauphin, Man., and a city councillor in Humboldt, Sask., are members of a club that no one wants to belong to: community leaders responding to unimaginable and unexpected tragedies. Fifteen people were killed and 10 more were sent to hospital Thursday after a firey crash between a bus full of seniors en route to a casino and a semi-trailer on the Trans-Canada Highway west of Winnipeg.The 25 people on the bus were from Dauphin and the surrounding rural area. Mayor David Bosiak said there’s a collective feeling of shock in the tight-knit community of about 8,600, some 190 kilometres north of the crash site. “It’s just a tremendous tragedy for our little community,” Bosiak said.In Humboldt, a small Saskatchewan city east of Saskatoon, the Manitoba crash has brought many residents back to April 2018 when a semi ran through a stop sign at a rural intersection, striking a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team. Sixteen were killed and 13 were injured.“I we...

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked Pentagon Papers, dies at 92

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:48:41 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Daniel Ellsberg, the history-making whistleblower who by leaking the Pentagon Papers revealed longtime government doubts and deceit about the Vietnam War and inspired acts of retaliation by President Richard Nixon that helped lead to his resignation, has died.He was 92.Ellsberg, who announced in February that he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer, died Friday morning, according to a letter from his family released by a spokeswoman, Julia Pacetti.Until the early 1970s, when he revealed that he was the source for the stunning media reports on the 47-volume, 7,000-page Defense Department study of the U.S. role in Indochina, Ellsberg was a well-placed member of the government-military elite. He was a Harvard graduate and self-defined “cold warrior” who served as a private and government consultant on Vietnam throughout the 1960s, risked his life on the battlefield, received the highest security clearances and came to be trusted by officials in Democratic and Repub...