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Surfside commissioners to vote on censuring mayor over alleged racist comment

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

Surfside commissioners are set to cast their votes Tuesday night on a crucial decision: whether to censure the town’s mayor, Shlomo Danzinger. The controversy stems from allegations that Mayor Danzinger made a racially insensitive comment during a meeting last month, sparking heated debate within the community.At the center of the controversy is a statement Mayor Danzinger made during the meeting as he expressed frustration about the challenges of running the town. “What they’re looking for is, every two years, they get a new boss, new direction. It’s not easy to run a town like this. It’s not working,” he remarked. Moments later, while Commissioner Nelly Velasquez had the floor and a discussion was ongoing, Mayor Danzinger requested her to refrain from interrupting. “Commissioner, please stop interrupting,” he asserted. Following a brief pause, he added, “OK, does anybody know to speak Spanish to tell her this? Because I said it...

The 7 cringiest Olaf Scholz pirate memes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

Pirate’s life? Not for me, said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday — appearing without an eye patch for the first time in more than a week. Last week, Scholz injured his eye after he fell while out running. At the G20 summit in India over the weekend, his eye patch was apparently an icebreaker and a conversation starter for the likes of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, German media reported. After revealing the impact of his jogging mishap, one-eyed Scholz said he was “looking forward to the memes.” POLITICO hunted around online to find some of the funniest, but — important disclaimer! — our list features German humor.Who wore it better? Credit @galerie.arschgeweihCoalition mid-term reviewCredit @elhotzoQuiet weekend?Credit @socialistsanddemocratsBlinded to the rightcredit: @alman_memes2.0Long John Scholzcredit: @grande_flagelloTop Trumps: who wins? credit: @derbukkiBerghain clubbing …credit: imgflip

Escaped Pennsylvania killer is spotted again and is now armed, police say

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

(CNN) — The convicted killer who escaped from an eastern Pennsylvania prison nearly two weeks ago was spotted again Monday night and now has a weapon, police said, jolting the surrounding community into high alert.Police are expected to provide an update on the search for 34-year-old Danelo Cavalcante around 9:30 Tuesday morning.The latest sighting of Cavalcante – the first one reported since Saturday – brings a heightened sense of danger as the search enters its 13th day Tuesday.Live updates: The latest on the manhuntThe fugitive was spotted in Chester County’s South Coventry Township, about 20 miles north of the county prison he escaped from, according to an emergency alert sent by Chester County officials Monday night to area residents via email and text message.“Residents in the area are asked to lock all external doors and windows, secure vehicles, and remain indoors,” the alert read, adding that there were reports of the fugitive in the area of Ridge, Coventryvi...

Google’s search dominance challenged in the biggest antitrust trial in decades

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Google has exploited its dominance of the internet search market to lock out competitors and smother innovation, the Department of Justice charged Tuesday at the opening of the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century.“This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google’s search engine will ever face meaningful competition,″ said Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department’s lead litigator.Over the next 10 weeks, federal lawyers and state attorneys general will try to prove Google rigged the market in its favor by locking its search engine in as the default choice in a plethora of places and devices. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta likely won’t issue a ruling until early next year. If he decides Google broke the law, another trial will decide what steps should be taken to rein in the Mountain View, California-based company. Top executives at Google and its corporate parent Alphabet Inc., as well as those from other powerful technology compani...

Poland calls on the EU to extend the embargo on Ukraine grain to prevent glut and protect farmers

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s government on Tuesday called on the European Union to extend the embargo on imports of Ukrainian grain beyond an end-of-week deadline to protect Polish farmers.Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he has requested that the European Commission, the EU’s executive, extend the ban on the entry of Ukraine corn, wheat, sunflower and rapeseed or else “we will do it ourselves because we cannot allow for a deregulation of the market.”Speaking to farmers in Kosow Lacki, in Poland’s farming east region, Morawiecki said that the Oct. 15 parliamentary elections will be key for the future of Poland’s agriculture. The ruling conservative Law and Justice party is seeking to attract farmer voters in its campaign. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania — acting on a decision by the European Union — imposed an embargo on the four Ukrainian grains from April until Sept. 15 to prevent a glut in their home markets that would hurt their farmers....

Beleaguered Armenian region in Azerbaijan accepts urgent aid shipment

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Authorities in an isolated ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan on Tuesday allowed entry of a humanitarian aid shipment in a step toward easing a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan that has blocked transport to the region since late last year.The region, called Nagorno-Karabakh, has been under the control of ethnic Armenians since the 1994 end of a separatist war. That war had left much of the surrounding territory under Armenian control as well, but Azerbaijan regained that territory in a six-week-long war with Armenia in 2020; Nagorno-Karabakh itself remained outside Azerbaijani control.Under the armistice that ended the war, Russia deployed some 3,000 peacekeeping troops in Nagorno-Karabakh and were to ensure that the sole road connecting the enclave to Armenia would remain open. However, Azerbaijan began blocking the road in December, alleging Armenians were using it to ship weapons and smuggle minerals. The blockage caused serious food shortages in N...

Book Review: Novelist and blogger Cory Doctorow pens a manual for destroying Big Tech

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

As a leading blogger in the pre-Substack era, novelist and public-interest technologist Cory Doctorow often warned that Big Tech was rendering of cyberspace a polluted, dystopian, crassly commercial and often hostile world of limited options.Now it’s happened. Facebook, Instagram and other walled fiefdoms of surveillance capitalism distract discourse with scrolls of targeted ads and trending video reels. More genteel competitors were long ago muscled out. Hateful trolls, violent speech and addictive algorithms thrive. And when a user account is mistakenly or unjustly shuttered, platform automation means the aggrieved will encounter callous indifference. It’s gotten to where anti-Big Tech initiatives enjoy bipartisan backing in an otherwise teetering U.S. democracy.“There is no fixing Big Tech,” Doctorow, who blogged for years on the website “Boing Boing,” writes in his new book “The Internet Con: How To Seize The Means of Computation.” The breezily written 173-page manifesto i...

A rhino at an Austrian zoo kills a zookeeper and seriously injures her husband

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — A rhino at a zoo in Austria attacked a married couple working as zookeepers Tuesday, killing the woman and seriously injuring the man, authorities said. The fatal attack happened at the Hellbrunn zoo in the western Austrian city of Salzburg.Zoo director, Sabine Grebner, told reporters later on Tuesday that the 33-year-old woman, a German citizen from Bavaria, was assigned that day to put an insect deterrent on the rhino.It was then that 30-year-old female rhino, Jeti, attacked the keeper though it was not clear why, Austria’s APA news agency cited Grebner as saying.Salzburg police said that “the woman succumbed to her injuries at the scene of the accident.”The other zoo keeper, a 34-year-old Austrian citizen, was also attacked and injured when he tried to chase the rhino away from his wife. The woman suffered severe chest trauma because of the attack and died in the enclosure while her her husband had a fractured leg and was taken to the hospital, APA reported.The name...

Police round up migrants in Serbia and report finding weapons in raid of a border area with Hungary

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Police in Serbia said they rounded up hundreds of migrants and found automatic weapons during a raid Tuesday along the border with Hungary, the location of frequently reported clashes between groups of smugglers exploiting the hardship of people trying to reach Western Europe.Thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia travel along the land route that leads west from Turkey and through the Balkans. Serbia lies at the heart of the migration route.Serbian police said officers found 371 migrants during a sweep near the border towns of Subotica, Kikinda and Sombor, along with three automatic riles, one semi-automatic rifle and a hand gun. The migrants were taken to state-run reception centers, a police statement said.Earlier Tuesday, Serbian state TV network RTS reported that one person died and three were wounded during an armed clash near the border with Hungary. Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic said police are focus...

Stock market today: Wall Street edges lower at the open ahead of inflation reports

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:56:38 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are drifting lower as Wall Street waits to see what reports coming up this week on the economy and Big Tech companies say. The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% early Tuesday. The Dow fell 28 points and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.3%. Oracle weighed on tech stocks after the software giant reported revenue that fell just short of what analysts expected. Oracle’s forecast for how much revenue it will make in the current quarter wasn’t as strong as some analysts expected. Stocks have see-sawed in recent weeks amid uncertainty about whether the Federal Reserve is done with hiking interest rates. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.Wall Street drifted modestly lower early Tuesday ahead of a highly anticipated update on U.S. consumer prices later this week. Futures for the Dow Jones industrials fell 0.2% before the bell, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.3%.The Federal Reserve is weighing whether to keep raising interest rates steady in its effort ...