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Turkey’s president condemns Quran burning in Sweden, signals it’ll obstruct NATO membership

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday condemned a Quran-burning protest in Sweden, signaling that this would pose another obstacle to the country’s bid for NATO membership.Speaking to members of his Justice and Development Party, Erdogan equated “those who permitted the crime” to those who perpetrated it.Swedish police allowed the protest outside a mosque in central Stockholm citing freedom of speech after a court overturned a ban on a similar Quran-burning. “We will eventually teach Western monuments of hubris that insulting Muslims’ sacred values is not freedom of thought,” Erdogan said.Erdogan implied that Turkey wasn’t ready to lift its objections that are holding up Sweden joinint NATO. “We will put forward our reaction in the strongest possible way until there is a concerted effort to combat the enemies of Islam as well as terrorist organizations.”Sweden applied to join NATO last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the milit...

Paris region town announces overnight curfew through the weekend in response to rioting over teen’s shooting death

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

CLAMART, France (AP) — Paris region town announces overnight curfew through the weekend in response to rioting over teen’s shooting death.Source

Club Q shooter transferred to diagnostic facility in Denver

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) – The Club Q shooter has been transferred to a diagnostic facility in Denver, records from the Colorado Department of Corrections show.Anderson Lee Aldrich pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder earlier this week in relation to the November attack in Colorado Springs. Problem Solvers: Fired prosecutor blackmailed over naked photo As part of the plea, Aldrich was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences for the murder charges and will not have the possibility of parole.Five people were killed and 17 others injured when Aldrich entered the club and opened fire. There were dozens of other people inside as well who escaped without physical injury.When Aldrich was sentenced, the El Paso County district attorney said they would be assessed in Denver then a determination would be made on which state facility in which they would serve their sentence.The 23-year-old identifies as non-binary according to their lawyer, but the DOC paperwor...

Could the Supreme Court's decision change CU Boulder enrollment?

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) -- Now that affirmative action is effectively dead for U.S. colleges, could it reverse the trend of Colorado's largest university growing less and less white? In a pair of cases Thursday, The Supreme Court of the United States severely limited the use of race as a factor in college admissions, upending decades of affirmative action programs that U.S. institutions have used to select students from their applicant pools. Supreme Court upends affirmative action in college admissions In rulings that broke along ideological lines, the court’s six conservative justices invalidated admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by ruling they did not comply with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.At Colorado's largest university, the student body's racial composition has changed over time but more in some groups than others. Hispanic/Latino representation rose markedly, while Black/African American representation has...

Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions, Biden ‘strongly’ disagrees

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.The court’s conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively.Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”Justice Clarence Thomas — the nation’s second Black justice, who had long called for an end to affirmative action — wrote separately that the decision “sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial...

European Parliament wants Ukraine’s EU membership talks to start in December

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

BRUSSELS — European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said she wants the European Union to open serious negotiations on Ukraine’s EU membership bid in mid-December this year.“We must keep our promises on opening negotiations,” the Maltese member of European Parliament told journalists after participating in a summit of EU heads of state and government. “Ukraine’s efforts on reforms have been extraordinary, even and especially in times of war. If the reform criteria have been sufficiently met, we need to respond.” “And I remain optimistic that this can still be achieved this year,” Metsola said.Metsola has been one of the most outspoken EU figures supporting Ukraine’s bid to become the bloc’s 28th member, having twice visited the country since the full-scale invasion started and meeting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who addressed EU leaders by video link Thursday. She pushed for months for Ukraine’s accession talks to start th...

Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson criticize each other in unusually sharp language in affirmative action case

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

Washington (CNN) — The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling Thursday on affirmative action pitted its two Black justices against each other, with the ideologically opposed jurists employing unusually sharp language attacking each other by name.The majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts said colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, saying programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause because they failed to offer “measurable” objectives to justify the use of race.Justice Clarence Thomas and the court’s other four conservatives joined Roberts’ opinion. But Thomas, who in 1991 became the second Black person to ascend to the nation’s highest court, issued a lengthy concurrence that attacked such admissions programs and tore into arguments posited by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman...

Your risk of getting sick from germy food has gone up again, CDC says

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

(CNN) — The risk of getting sick from E-coli, salmonella, listeria and other foodborne germs rose to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday.“Progress in reducing (intestinal) infection incidence was not observed during 2022, as influences of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided,” the CDC said in its weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.“Collaboration among food growers, processors, retail stores, restaurants, and regulators is needed to reduce pathogen contamination during poultry slaughter and to prevent contamination of leafy greens.”Listeria is a rare but serious illness that even with treatment has a high mortality rate of 20% to 30%, according to the US Food and Drug Administration. The infectious bacteria is so hardy that it can continue to grow while refrigerated.Salmonella and E-coli are two of the more common foodborne illnesses. Symptoms of salmonella in...

Flight delays are easing on a busy travel day. One airline has by far the most cancellations

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

By DAVID KOENIG (AP Airlines Writer)DALLAS (AP) — Backups are easing at U.S. airports thanks to a break in the weather, but United Airlines continues to struggle, accounting for more than 80% of canceled flights in the United States early Thursday.United vowed to get back on track for the July 4 holiday weekend when the number of air travelers could set a pandemic-era record, though Thursday is expected to be the busiest day of the holiday stretch at the nation’s airports.Hundreds of thousands of people have had travel plans thrown in the air after a wave of storms raked the Northeast over the past few days and frustrations are running high. Airports in Chicago, Denver and Newark, New Jersey — all hubs for United — were seeing the most delays on Thursday, according to FlightAware.By midday on the East Coast, United had canceled more than 390 flights, the bulk of the 475 cancellations toted up by FlightAware. The Chicago carrier is poised to lead all airlines ...

H-1B visa: Canada launches new bid to poach skilled tech workers from US

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:54 GMT

Canada’s history of trying to poach skilled foreign technology talent from Silicon Valley continued Tuesday with the announcement of a new program to lure away thousands of tech workers from the U.S.“I would say the majority would come from Silicon Valley,” said Rana Sarkar, consul general of Canada in San Francisco. “This is where the talent is. This is where we’re coming to attract talent.”The nation to the north, with a population that just surpassed 40 million thanks to high immigration numbers, is once again attempting to leverage foreign workers’ difficulties with the U.S. H-1B visa, the work permit of choice for Bay Area companies wanting to hire tech workers.“We’re targeting newcomers that can help enshrine Canada as a world leader in a variety of emerging technologies,” Canada’s immigration minister, Sean Fraser, said in a statement.Canada’s overt efforts to persuade Silicon Valley H-1B workers to abandon the U.S. and head northward date back a decade, when the Canadian gov...