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Lawmakers tour site of Parkland school massacre before experts recreate shooting inside

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — Nine members of Congress toured the blood-stained and bullet-pocked halls at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Friday, shortly before ballistics technicians reenact the massacre that left 14 students and three staff members dead.Few have been inside the three-story building since the Valentine’s Day 2018 shooting. The structure looms over the campus, locked behind a chain-link fence for use as evidence in last year’s penalty trial for the shooter.There is broken glass on the floor, along with wilted roses, deflated balloons and discarded gifts. Opened textbooks and laptop computers remain on students’ desks — at least those that weren’t toppled during the chaos.In one classroom, there is an unfinished chess game one of the slain students had been playing, the pieces unmoved. The Associated Press was one of five media outlets allowed to tour the building after shooter Nikolas Cruz’s jury went through.The House members were led to the same...

Google update makes it easier for US users to remove some unwanted search results

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

(CNN) — Google unveiled new privacy updates this week that lets US users have a wee bit more control over the search results that pop up about themselves online.The tech giant said that it was rolling out a new dashboard that will let you know if web results with your contact information are showing up on its search engine. “Then, you can quickly request the removal of those results from Google — right in the tool,” Danielle Romain, the vice president of Trust at Google, said in a blog post Thursday.Romain added that Google will also notify you when new results from the web containing your contact info appear, for added “peace of mind.”Google also said it was enabling people to remove any of their personal, explicit images that they no longer wish to be visible in its search engine. For example, if you uploaded explicit content to a website and then subsequently deleted it, you can request its removal from Google’s Search if it’s being published elsewhere without your...

GOP presidential hopeful Chris Christie meets with Zelenskyy in unannounced visit to Ukraine

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine. (WSVN) – Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Friday made an unannounced trip to Ukraine and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.The trip marks the presidential candidate’s first visit to the war torn country.Christie is expected to tour several sites, including a civilian burial site and a history museum.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson surprises UFC fighter Themba Gorimbo in Miami after inspired by his $7 journey

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

Themba Gorimbo, the dedicated UFC fighter known for his relentless commitment to training, has traded the gym floors for a new place to call his own, all thanks to an unexpected act of kindness from his idol, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.Themba, got to meet him when Johnson flew to Florida to meet him. Johnson, often referred to as “The Rock,” had initially told planned to meet up with his friend, Jay, at his Miami apartment. Little did Gorimbo know that this meetup would lead to a life-changing moment. Upon arriving at the location, Johnson was met with a heartwarming surprise — framed family photos adorned the walls, and the realization struck that this was no ordinary apartment; it was Gorimbo’s new residence.In a YouTube video, Gorimbo can be heard saying, “Isn’t that cool? Is that like Sadio Mane? Oh, it’s my family, oh my god.” Johnson, clearly moved by the significance of the occasion, responded, “I don’t know any...

‘Stalinist.’ Putin nemesis Alexei Navalny gets 19 more years in prison

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

A Russian court on Friday sentenced opposition leader and Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to an additional 19 years in a maximum-security prison, finding him guilty on extremism charges in what critics have lambasted as a “sham trial.”Navalny, who is already serving a nine-year prison term in a maximum-security facility in Melekhovo, 250 kilometers east of Moscow, now faces decades behind bars.Prosecutors had requested a 20-year sentence for Navalny, who said on social media on Thursday before the verdict that he expected to receive a lengthy “Stalinist” sentence.“When the figure is announced, please show solidarity with me and other political prisoners by thinking for a minute why such an exemplary huge term is necessary,” he wrote. “Its main purpose is to intimidate. You, not me.”Although he has visibly lost weight, Navalny cut a relaxed figure, chatting to co-defendant Daniel Kholodny ahead of the hearing and appearing to crack jokes with the defense team while the verd...

Kremlin critic Navalny convicted of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

MELEKHOVO, Russia (AP) — A Russian court convicted imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny on charges of extremism and sentenced him to 19 years in prison Friday. Navalny is already serving a nine-year term on a variety of charges that he says were politically motivated.The new charges related to the activities of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. It was his fifth criminal conviction and the third and longest prison term handed to him, all of which his supporters see as a deliberate Kremlin strategy to silence its most ardent opponent. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he would serve this new term concurrently with his current sentence on charges of fraud and contempt of court. The prosecution had demanded a 20-year prison sentence, and the politician himself said beforehand that he expected to receive a lengthy term. Navalny was also sentenced in 2021 to two and a half years in prison for a parole violation. The extre...

Column: Chicago Cubs face a measuring stick for October with a weekend series against the MLB-best Atlanta Braves

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

The best team in baseball comes to Wrigley Field on Friday when the Atlanta Braves meet the Chicago Cubs for a three-game series.Shortstop Dansby Swanson faces his former teammates for the first time since signing a seven-year, $177 million deal in December, and the Cubs get a chance to prove their recent 13-3 stretch isn’t just a byproduct of a soft part of the schedule.If not for Lollapalooza, the Cubs-Braves series might be the hottest ticket in town. After their 5-3 victory against the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday night at Wrigley Field, the Cubs are 30-17 since June 9, the second-best winning percentage in baseball behind the Braves’ .705 (32-13).They’re 2 1/2 games behind the first-place Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central and two games back of the third wild-card spot.It’s a proverbial measuring-stick series for a Cubs team that’s barely over .500 but looking more and more like it could do damage in the postseason if it makes it — like last ...

Pioneering mothers are breaking down barriers to breastfeeding in Olympic sports

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

PARIS (AP) — When Clarisse Agbégnénou won her sixth world judo title, confirming the reigning Olympic champion as one of the athletes to watch at next year’s Paris Games, the French star’s smallest but greatest fan was less wild about her mother’s newest gold medal than she was about her breast milk.After a peckish day of few feeds — because mum had been busy putting opponents through the wringer — 10-month-old Athéna made amends that night.“She didn’t let my boobs out of her mouth,” Agbégnénou says. “I was like, ‘Wow, okay.’ I think it was really something for her.”Breastfeeding and high-performance sports were long an almost impossible combination for top female athletes, torn for decades between careers or motherhood, because having both was so tough.But that’s becoming less true ahead of the 2024 Olympics, where women will take another step forward in their long march for equality, competing in equal numbers with men for the first time, and with pio...

US employers add a still-solid 187,000 jobs in July; unemployment dips to 3.5%

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The job market has cooled over the summer. But it’s still strong enough to defy predictions that higher interest rates would tip the United States into recession. U.S. employers added 187,000 jobs last month, fewer than expected. But the unemployment rate dipped to 3.5% in a sign that the job market remains resilient.Hiring was up from 185,000 in June, a figure that the Labor Department revised down from an originally reported 209,000. Economists had expected to see 200,000 new jobs in July.Still last month’s hiring was solid, considering that the Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest 11 times since March 2022. And the Fed’s inflation fighters will welcome news that more Americans entered the job market last month, easing pressure on employers to raise wages to attract and keep staff.“This is a good strong report,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at the jobs website ZipRecruiter. ”The worst fears that people had of a painful downtur...

Global food prices rise after Russia ends grain deal and India restricts rice exports

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:48 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Global prices for food commodities like rice and vegetable oil have risen for the first time in months after Russia pulled out of a wartime agreement allowing Ukraine to ship grain to the world, and India restricted some of its rice exports, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday.The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of commonly traded food commodities, increased 1.3% in July over June, driven by higher costs for rice and vegetable oil. It was the first uptick since April, when higher sugar prices bumped up the index slightly for the first time in a year. Commodity prices have been falling since hitting record highs last year in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Disrupted supplies from the two countries exacerbated a global food crisis because they’re leading suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other affordable food products, especially to nations in parts of Africa, the Middle East an...