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UK inflation falls by more than anticipated to a 15-month low of 7.9%; may limit interest rate hikes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Inflation in the U.K. has fallen by more than anticipated to a 15-month low, official figures showed Wednesday, a development that may ease the pressure for the Bank of England to raise interest rates sharply over the coming months.The Office for National Statistics said that inflation, as measured by the consumer prices index, fell to 7.9% in the year to June from 8.7% the previous month. Economists had expected a more modest decline to 8.2%.The statistics agency said the falling of fuel prices was the biggest driver behind the drop, while food price inflation also pared back, though they remained historically high. Despite the decline, inflation is still running far higher than the Bank of England’s target rate of 2%. As a result, the central bank is expected to raise its main interest rate further at its upcoming meeting in early August. However, the bigger-than-expected fall may mean it only raises it by a quarter of a percentage to 5.25% rather than a half-p...

Russia launches intense night attacks across Ukraine, targeting southern port city for second night

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched an intense series of night-time air attacks using drones and missiles against targets across Ukraine, and targeting the southern port city of Odesa for a second night in a row, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday. Meanwhile, a fire at a military facility in Russian-annexed Crimea caused the closure of an important highway and the evacuation of civilians from four settlements, according to Sergey Aksyonov, the Russia-appointed head of the region, which was annexed in 2014. He did not specific a cause for the fire at the facility in Kirovsky district, which came two days after an attack on a bridge linking Russia to the peninsula that the Kremlin has blamed on Ukraine. “A difficult night of air attacks for all of Ukraine,” said Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration in a statement on Telegram. Popko said the attacks were especially fierce in Odesa for a second consecutive night. Odesa’s regional governor Oleh Kiper said th...

11 dead after a wall collapses near an under-construction bridge in Pakistan, officials say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Eleven workers were killed early Wednesday after a wall collapsed near an under-construction bridge on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, police and rescue officials said.The wall fell while the workers sat inside their roadside tents at the construction site. Local police official Mohammad Akram and Emergency Service Rescue 1122 said the collapse happened amid the monsoon rains near the neighborhood of Golra and that the bodies of the deceased were recovered.Monsoon rains have been lashing Pakistan since June 25, killing at least 112 people in weather-related incidents. The rains have also swelled Pakistan’s rivers in eastern Punjab province, swamping hundreds of villages and displacing at least 15,000 people.The rains returned to Pakistan a year after climate-induced downpours inundated at one point one-third of Pakistan, killing 1,739 people. The floods also caused $30 billion in damage in cash-strapped Pakistan in 2022.The Associated Press

UK’s governing Conservatives face a reckoning with voters in 3 special elections

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Bad things may come in threes for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose Conservative Party faces a trio of unwanted verdicts from voters this week.The U.K. is holding three special elections for House of Commons seats on Thursday that will let a broad cross-section of voters — in northern England, southwest England and on London’s suburban fringe — deliver a verdict on the party that has governed Britain since 2010.The Tories are bracing for the worst.“Midterm by-elections for incumbent governments are always difficult,” Sunak said Monday. “I don’t expect these to be any different from that.”It could be different, or at least rare, if the Conservatives lose all three seats. The last time a governing party lost three by-elections in one day was in 1968 under Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.The three elections are part of the still-rippling shockwaves from the turbulent term of ex-leader Boris Johnson. He quit as a lawmaker last month, almost a year after resigni...

Metro workers at 27 stores across GTA reach a deal and avoid a strike

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

TORONTO — Metro workers at 27 grocery stores across the Greater Toronto Area reached a deal with the grocery giant just after midnight when they were set to go on strike. In a statement, Unifor National President Lana Payne says “This is a milestone agreement that underscores Unifor’s deep commitment to grocery workers in the retail sector and our important work to advance their workplace rights.”She adds, “This agreement will lay the foundation for grocery workers across the country as workers, both unionized and non-unionized, make clear their urgent need for improved working conditions amidst a chronic affordability crisis.”Details of the tentative agreement will not be released prior to being presented to members for a ratification vote in the coming week.The workers, represented by Unifor, headed into bargaining in June with a 100 per cent strike mandate.  A strike would have affected some 3,700 workers across the GTA. The union has said its priorities for Met...

Britain’s MI6 intelligence chief says AI won’t replace the need for human spies

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

PRAGUE (AP) — Artificial intelligence will change the world of espionage, but it won’t replace the need for human spies, the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency says in prepared remarks released Wednesday. Richard Moore, director of the U.K.’s foreign intelligence agency, is set to speak in Prague on evolving threats to the West from Russia and Iran, and argue that the “human factor” will remain crucial in an era of rapidly evolving machine learning.“AI is going to make information infinitely more accessible and some have asked whether it will put intelligence services like mine out of business,” he says in extracts released in advance by the U.K. government.“In fact, the opposite is likely to be true,” he adds. “As AI trawls the ocean of open source, there will be even greater value in landing, with a well-cast fly, the secrets that lie beyond the reach of its nets.”Moore, who has previously warned that the West was falling behind rivals in the AI race, will argue...

Adrift for months, Australian and his dog lived on raw fish until Mexican fishermen rescued them

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

MANZANILLO, Mexico (AP) — Lost at sea for months on a disabled catamaran, with no way to cook and no source of fresh water but the rain, Australian Timothy Shaddock said he expected to die.There was a lot to like about the experience, he said. Like when he would plunge into the sea for a swim, or when his dog, Bella, would stir him to keep going. “I did enjoy being at sea, I enjoy being out there,” he said. He recalled the full moon in early May that illuminated his turn away from the Baja Peninsula, his last sight of land until he came ashore Tuesday. Shaddock, 54, smiling and good humored, was the living image of a castaway, with a long blonde beard and emaciated appearance, as he joked with a group of reporters Tuesday, standing in front of the fishing boat that rescued him at a port on Mexico’s Pacific coast. He granted that there were “many, many, many bad days,” but declined to elaborate.Shaddock and his dog left northwest Mexico in a catamaran in late April, he said, pl...

Spain’s political escape artist Pedro Sánchez has odds against him yet again in national election

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been prematurely counted out more than once in his relatively short but action-packed political career.Battered and bruised after seeing his Socialists take a drumming in local and regional elections in May, Sánchez took no time to lick his wounds. The very next day he stunned his buoyant rivals by bringing forward general elections from December to this Sunday, smack in the middle of the sweltering Spanish summer.Translated from politics to street talk that was the equivalent of saying: Let’s settle this, once and for all.Most polling points to the conservative Popular Party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo getting the most votes and being in position to form a coalition government with the far-right Vox party. If that comes about, Spain would follow a European drift to the right and put in question the two main pillars of Sánchez’s leftist government — the green energy revolution backed by the European Union and an ambiti...

Demolition of historic minaret in southern Iraq’s Basra sparks outcry

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

BASRA, Iraq (AP) — For three centuries, the al-Siraji Mosque, with its minaret fashioned from weathered bricks and its pinnacle inlaid with blue ceramic tiles, was a distinctive feature of the city of Basra in southern Iraq. In recent years, it was one of the few tourist attractions in the oil-rich but neglected city, although locals complained that the minaret jutted out into the street, snarling traffic.In the early hours Friday morning, the 11-meter-high (33-foot-high) minaret was razed to the ground, with the governor of Basra attending the demolition, igniting a wave of social media backlash among advocates for the preservation of Iraq’s cultural heritage.Heritage sites in Iraq, home to multiple civilizations going back more than six millennia, have been hard hit by looting and damage over the decades of conflict before and after the U.S. invasion of 2003. Most notoriously, the militant Islamic State group demolished numerous ancient sites in northern Iraq, including Islamic sh...

Ukraine says fighting in east has intensified

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:19 GMT

Fighting in eastern Ukraine has "somewhat intensified" as Ukrainian and Russian forces clash in at least three areas on the eastern front, a senior Ukrainian defence official said on Sunday (16 July).Kyiv launched a counteroffensive last month in a bid to retake Russian-occupied territory and seize the initiative in Russia's full-scale invasion, now in its 17th month.Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said on Telegram that Russian forces have been attacking in the direction of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region for two successive days."We are on the defensive," Maliar wrote. "There are fierce battles, the positions of both sides change dynamically several times a day."Maliar also said the two armies were pummelling one another around the ruined city of Bakhmut but that Ukrainian forces were "gradually moving forward" along its southern flank.She added that Kyiv's troops were also fending off Russian attacks near Avdiivka and Maryinka.A spokesman for the military's southern command sai...