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Sacramento prosecutor sues California’s capital city over failure to clean up homeless encampments

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A Sacramento prosecutor is suing California’s capital city over failure to clean up homeless encampments.Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho says his office asked the city to enforce laws around sidewalk obstruction and to create additional professionally operated camping sites.He announced the suit Tuesday during a news conference in Sacramento.Ho said the city is seeing a “collapse into chaos” and an “erosion of every day life.”Sacramento County had nearly 9,300 homeless people in 2022, based on data from the annual Point in Time count. That was up 67% from 2019. Roughly three-quarters of the county’s homeless population is unsheltered.Homeless tent encampments have grown visibly in cities across the U.S. but especially in California, which is home to nearly one-third of unhoused people in the country.The prosecutor had threatened in August to file charges against city officials if they didn’t implement changes within 30 days.At the time, Sacramento May...

South Carolina women senators who fought abortion ban to receive JFK Profile in Courage award

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

BOSTON (AP) — Five women state senators from South Carolina who formed a bipartisan coalition to filibuster a near-total abortion ban in their state have been chosen to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year.A special International Profile in Courage Award will honor South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for working to improve relations between their countries despite domestic opposition.During the filibuster the senators – Republicans Katrina Shealy, Sandy Senn, and Penry Gustafson, Democrat Margie Bright Matthews, and independent Mia McLeod — took turns “describing the complexities of pregnancy and the reproductive system, the dangers of lack of access to contraception, and inadequate privacy laws,” award officials said in written release.Officials noted that members of the coalition, who became known as the “sister senators,” were heckled by anti-abortion activists and the three Republicans were also met...

Colombian leader summons intense oratory for a bleak warning: that humanity is making itself extinct

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro delivered an ominous prophecy with grandiose language on Tuesday, painting a grim picture of what lies ahead if nations fail to swiftly redesign the way humans live on this planet.“It has been a year in which humanity lost and without hesitation has advanced the times of extinction,” he said in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly. “It would seem as though the global leadership has made enemies with life.”Eloquent oratory is a skill Petro often deploys. Lately, he has done so to project himself as a global leader on climate change — and to reproach others for failing to fully heed its peril. He stole the show at Brazil’s Amazon Summit in July, calling on his oil-producing neighbors to abandon fossil fuels, and asserting that allowing continued drilling while calling for a green transition is tantamount to being in denial.At the U.N., he said that what he called “the crisis of life” has already begun, as signaled by mi...

Did your kids buy gear in Fortnite without asking you? The FTC says you could get a refund

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Parents whose kids bought virtual gear without their knowledge on the popular Fortnite video game could soon be able to get a refund.U.S. regulators are starting to notify more than 37 million people by email that they may be eligible for compensation as part of a legal settlement with Fortnite’s maker, Epic Games Inc. The Federal Trade Commission announced late last year that Epic Games would pay $520 million in penalties and refunds to settle complaints revolving around children’s privacy and its payment methods that tricked players into making unintended purchases. Part of that $520 million consists of $245 million in customer refunds, as part of a settlement finalized in March. It’s meant to cover some of the costs of unwanted V-Bucks, the game’s in-game currency, or virtual items such as outfits or cartoonish purple llama loot crates.Consumers have until Jan. 17 to submit a claim.Epic Games also agreed to pay a $275 million fine for collectin...

Former Indiana congressman sentenced to 22 months in prison for insider trading convictions

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A former Indiana congressman was sentenced Tuesday to 22 months in prison for his insider trading conviction for making illegal stock trades while working as a consultant and lobbyist.Steve Buyer, 64, whose congressional career stretched from 1993 to 2011, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Richard M. Berman. The judge also ordered Buyer to forfeit $354,027, representing the amount of illegal gains, and to pay a $10,000 fine.The judge said Buyer’s conviction by a jury in March was not a close call because the case against him “screams guilty,” and he concluded that Buyer lied when he testified at his trial about when he learned about mergers that he profited from.Berman noted that he had previously rejected claims that Buyer, a Republican, was unjustly prosecuted or that he could not obtain a fair trial in Manhattan because the population of New York City favors Democrats. Berman named six suburban counties outside of the city where jurors were a...

New report recommends limiting police pursuits to violent crimes after rise in fatalities

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Aiming to curb the hundreds of deaths caused by police chases in the U.S. each year, a new report calls for police not to start a pursuit unless a violent crime has been committed and the suspect poses an imminent threat.The study released Tuesday by the Police Executive Research Forum, a national think tank on policing standards, follows a spike in fatalities from police chases during the pandemic and the criticism of several police departments for the increased use of pursuits, including in Houston and New York City. The report produced by a committee of experts and policing executives says police chases should be rare, noting that the danger to suspects, officers and bystanders often outweighs the immediate need to take someone into custody.“A lot of this has to do with the new thinking in policing today, which is about proportionality,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of PERF. “It’s about the sanctity of life and balancing the risk to everyo...

Movie Review: ‘Dumb Money’ recalls GameStop squeeze, when regular folk put the screws on Wall Street

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

The little guy — or at least the little guy with a few hundred bucks to sink into the stock market — gets a movie to cheer with “Dumb Money,” the real story of a very recent financial rebellion that shook Wall Street to its loafers.Paul Dano plays our hero here, Keith Gill, a new dad from the Boston suburbs who goes online to advise anyone listening about his stock picks wearing a red headband and colorful, cat-themed T-shirts. “I wouldn’t take investment advice from a guy in a cat shirt,” one character warns. But they do.Gill was bullish on one particular company — GameStop, the struggling retail chain that sells video games and accessories. Large institutional Wall Street firms were betting the company would continue to flounder and parked money on losses.But Gill convinced a band of smaller-pocketed and novice investors to pile in and buy GameStop stock, pushing the stock higher and higher, a so-called “short squeeze” that caused billions of loses for hedge funds. That is until W...

Michigan attorney general blames Gov. Whitmer kidnap trial acquittals on ‘right-leaning’ jurors

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — Michigan’s attorney general suggested conservative politics played a role in the acquittal of three men in the final trial related to a plan to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.Dana Nessel, also a Democrat, told a liberal group Monday the trial was held in a “very right-leaning county.”She said Friday’s verdicts were “perplexing, confusing but terrifying.” The Detroit News obtained a video of Nessel’s remarks to a group called Protectors of Equality in Government.It is uncommon for a prosecutor, or even a defense lawyer, to publicly question a jury’s motivation. Unlike Nessel, the U.S. Justice Department did not blame two federal acquittals last year in the same investigation on ideology.William Null, twin brother Michael Null and Eric Molitor were found not guilty of providing material support for a terrorist act and a weapon charge. They were the last of 14 men to face charges in state or federal court. Nine were convicted and a ...

More than 1,200 children have died in the past 5 months in conflict-wrecked Sudan, the UN says

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

CAIRO (AP) — More than 1,200 children under age 5 have died in nine camps in war-scarred Sudan in the past five months, because of a deadly combination of measles and malnutrition, the U.N.’s refugee agency said Tuesday.The UNHCR said the deaths, between May 15 and Sept. 14, were documented by its teams in the White Nile province, where thousands of Sudanese have sheltered as fighting has raged for six months between rival generals, in the capital of Khartoum and elsewhere. There were thousands of suspected cases of cholera in other parts of the country, UNHCR public health chief Allen Maina said.“Dozens of children are dying every day — a result of this devastating conflict and a lack of global attention,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April, when simmering tensions between the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into ope...

Tuesday Forecast: Temps in upper 60s with scattered showers

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:28:01 GMT

CHICAGO — Cloudy, rain with t'storms Tuesday and a wide temperature range. Winds: S 5-15 G20. High: 67. Interactive Radar: Track showers and storm here Mainly cloudy tonight with rain and storms. Winds: SE 5-10 G15. Low: 60.Wednesday Forecast: Mostly cloudy Wednesday with a 20 percent AM rain chance. Winds: SSW 5-10. High: 82.Full forecast details and more at the WGN Weather Center blog