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Ukraine foreign minister pushes back against counteroffensive doubters

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

Paul Ronzheimer is the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO.Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Saturday pushed back against growing doubts about the prospects for the counteroffensive that Kyiv is waging against Russia’s all-out invasion of his country. At the same time, Kuleba urged Kyiv’s allies to continue supplying Ukrainian armed forces with the assistance needed to make its military push succeed. His remarks in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company, come as the counteroffensive struggles to achieve a major breakthrough. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the U.S. intelligence community assesses that the Ukrainian push will fail to achieve a key goal: the southeastern city of Melitopol, a strategic Russian logistics hub. “We take such remarks in stride,” Kuleba said in the interview. “According to unnamed officials, genera...

James Buckley, conservative ex-senator and brother of late writer William F. Buckley, dies at 100

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former New York Sen. James Buckley, an early agitator for then-President Richard Nixon’s resignation and winner of a landmark lawsuit challenging campaign spending limits, died Friday at age 100.Buckley died at a hospital in Washington, D.C., according to his son David Buckley of Arlington, Virginia.Buckley was the fourth of 10 children of a millionaire oilman and older brother of conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr., who died in February 2008. He was the last survivor of the 10 siblings.Buckley was the sole Conservative Party candidate to win statewide office in New York, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970 in a three-way race with 39% of the vote. Republican Sen. Charles Goodell, who was appointed to the job in 1968 after the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and Democratic Rep. Richard Ottinger split the moderate vote, allowing Buckley to capture the seat.His younger brother called his win “the crystallization of counterrevolutionary...

Emerging economies are pushing to end the US dollar’s dominance

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Business has vanished at Kingsley Odafe’s clothing shop in Nigeria’s capital, forcing him to lay off three employees.One culprit for his troubles stands out: The U.S. dollar’s strength against the Nigerian currency, the naira, has pushed the price of garments and other foreign goods beyond the reach of local consumers. A bag of imported clothes costs three times what it did two years ago. The price these days is running around 350,000 naira, or $450.“There are no sales anymore because people have to eat first before thinking of buying clothes,” Odafe said.Across the developing world, many countries are fed up with America’s dominance of the global financial system — especially the power of the dollar. They will air their grievances next week as the BRICS bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa meet with other emerging market countries in Johannesburg, South Africa.But griping about King Dollar is easier than actually deposing the de facto wo...

Elon Musk says X, formerly known as Twitter, will get rid of blocking

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

The block tool on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, will be removed, according to owner Elon Musk.“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” said Musk in a post to X on Friday. “It makes no sense.”The block button allowed users to prevent others from seeing or responding to any of their content. Leaving blocking intact for direct messages, also known as DMs, would allow users to control who can contact them privately.As a substitute for blocking, Musk said in a subsequent post, users will be able to use the mute button. Muting an account prevents that user’s posts from appearing in one’s timeline but it’s still possible to see them by clicking on links, and the muted user can still view the content of the user who muted them.

Gerrit Cole gives up early grand slam as Red Sox push Yankees losing streak to 7

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

Hours before the Yankees played the Red Sox on Saturday, Aaron Boone spoke about correcting course and teams that have gone on unlikely runs.“The reality is we still have a chance, and we got to kind of prepare and compete every day with a mind that today’s the day we turn it around,” said the manager, who addressed his team following a Friday beatdown.But Saturday was not the day the Yankees turned it around. Instead, Boston won, 8-1, as the pinstripers dropped their seventh straight game despite having their ace on the mound at home.Gerrit Cole, working on a Cy Young-caliber campaign, could not bail the Yankees out following a loss, something he’s done all season. Rather, the right-hander found himself in trouble in the second inning, when a couple of singles and a walk set the stage for a Luis Urías grand slam.Urías, Boston’s No. 9 hitter, had just two home runs prior to the at-bat against Cole, but he also hit a grand slam in his last game...

Ticker: Wall Street’s dismal August drags on with 3rd straight losing week

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

NEW YORK — Wall Street limped to the finish line of its third losing week in a row. The S&P 500 barely budged Friday, ending the day down by less than 0.1%. It lost more than 2% for the week, like other U.S. indexes.The Dow edged up 25 points, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.2%. August has been rough for the stock market, which has given back more than a quarter of the S&P 500’s torrid gains for the year’s first seven months. That’s in part because a swift rise in yields has forced investors to reconsider whether stocks got too expensive.Thousands more Mauritanians are making their way to the USCINCINNATI — Thousands of migrants from the West African country of Mauritania have arrived in the U.S. in recent months, following a new route taking them to Nicaragua and up through the southern border.Previously, those fleeing Mauritania entered through Brazil and took a treacherous jungle passage — or risked their lives on boats to Europe. The Nicaragua route doesn’t requ...

Urías historic slam, Crawford’s no-hit bid lead Red Sox over imploding Cole, Yankees

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

Whenever the Red Sox play the Yankees, all eyes turn to Rafael Devers.Especially when it’s Gerrit Cole’s turn to start.Before the contest, Alex Cora offered high praise for the New York starter. “He’s one of those guys, just like (Justin) Verlander. You’re impressed and in awe with the way they keep developing. He’s one of the best contracts in baseball,” the manager told reporters. “We respect him.”Maybe so, but if Pedro Martinez once thought the Yankees were his daddy, Devers and the Red Sox truly are Cole’s. Entering the series, the 26-year-old already had seven career regular-season home runs against the Yankees ace, and on Saturday afternoon, the Red Sox wiped the floor with the Yankees, to the tune of an 8-1 final score.“The at-bats were tremendous today,” Cora told reporters after his squad’s 12-hit, 3-walk game.Devers wasted no time. His 1-out single in the first inning was Boston’s first hit...

Regional delegation meets Niger junta leader, deposed president in effort to resolve crisis

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — A delegation from nations in the region met for the first time Saturday with Niger’s junta leader and the country’s deposed president in a last-ditch diplomatic effort to peacefully resolve the country’s crisis.Representatives from the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, led by former Nigerian head of state Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, met separately with Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, the junta leader, and toppled President Mohamed Bazoum. They joined efforts by the United Nations Special Representative for West Africa and the Sahel, Leonardo Santos Simao, who arrived on Friday, in trying to facilitate a resolution to the predicament.The meetings come after ECOWAS on Aug. 10 ordered the deployment of a “standby force” to restore constitutional rule in Niger. On Friday, the ECOWAS commissioner for peace and security, Abdel-Fatau Musah, said 11 of its 15 member states had agreed to commit troops to a military intervention, saying they were “ready to g...

Pacific coast battens down as Hurricane Hilary threatens ‘catastrophic’ flooding

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

Hurricane Hilary headed for Mexico’s Baja California on Saturday as the U.S. National Hurricane Center predicted “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” for the peninsula and for the southwestern United States, where it was forecast to cross the border as a tropical storm on Sunday.Officials issued an evacuation advisory for the tourist destination of Santa Catalina Island, 23 miles (37 kilometers) off the Southern California coast, while authorities in Los Angeles scrambled to get the homeless off the streets and into shelters.Hilary remained a Major Category 3 hurricane, set to plow into Mexico’s Baja peninsula on Saturday night before rushing north and entering the history books as the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years.“I don’t think any of us — I know me particularly — never thought I’d be standing here talking about a hurricane or a tropical storm,” said Janice Hahn, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.The U.S. Nationa...

A look at fires, evacuations in N.W.T. and B.C.

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:28 GMT

Thousands of people have been ordered to leave their homes as wildfires approach in the Northwest Territories, including some 20,000 people in the territorial capital of Yellowknife. Meanwhile, flames have devoured a number of houses as a wildfire burns in West Kelowna, a city in British Columbia’s interior. Here’s a look at the fires by the numbers:YellowknifeDistance between Yellowknife and the fire: about 15 kilometresSize of the blaze: 1,669 square kilometresPopulation of Yellowknife: approximately 20,000 peopleResidents ordered to evacuate: all of Yellowknife and thousands in other N.W.T. communitiesPercentage of residents who have evacuated: 95 per centNumber of wildfires burning in the N.W.T: 236West Kelowna Size of the fire that has spread around West Kelowna: 105 square kilometres, but officials say it is likely largerPopulation of West Kelowna: approximately 38,000 peopleNumber of West Kelowna properties ordered to evacuate: about 10,700Number of West Kelowna p...