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Israel Ramps Up Drone Sales to Morocco for Its Colonial War in Western Sahara

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

When Abdelahi Emhamed first caught sight of the two drones overhead, he thought it was normal. A 24-year-old fighter in the Polisario Front, he had become accustomed to Moroccan surveillance drones and had learned to shrug off the occasional sighting as a matter of course.A young man with a tired smile, Emhamed joined the army in 2020 when a 29-year ceasefire between the Polisario Front and Morocco came to an abrupt end. The Front has fought for nationhood for Western Sahara’s indigenous Sahrawi population for 50 years; Morocco occupied Western Sahara in 1975, and Emhamed grew up on stories of a lost land while living in refugee camps near Tindouf, a town in an inhospitable desert corner of southwestern Algeria. When the ceasefire ended, Emhamed jumped at the opportunity to join the armed forcesHe became part of a small unit of mobile fighters sleeping in the open between a smattering of thorny acacia trees amidst a ceaseless repetition of flat, brown, and black-pebbled plains...

Feeling the Heat with Some Storms this Long Holiday Weekend

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

The halfway mark of the year has arrived as we begin July this weekend, and we’ll begin the month right where we left off with hot and humid conditions plus the risk for showers and storms.The pattern from now through the Fourth of July will be fairly similar each and everyday but there remains some uncertainty as to how much of metro South Florida will see the storms as that depends on how strong our onshore breeze will be.This breeze is expected to gradually strengthen heading into next week, which will help push the sea breeze farther inland and therefore providing more dry time to areas near the east coast.Out of the four-day holiday weekend stretch, this Saturday will be the wettest with the highest rain chance at a 60% chance. Following several hours of sunshine and soaring temperatures this morning, scattered showers and storms will break out with the most likely timing being from 11AM-4PM. Similar as yesterday, more clouds will overspread our skies for the afternooon, ...

One number that defines every Orioles player through the first half of the season

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

Despite having one of the best records in the American League, Brandon Hyde thinks the Orioles can play better.Baltimore’s game Saturday against the Minnesota Twins will be its 81st — the exact midway point of the season. Unlike his first four years as manager, the Orioles are well-above .500 through 81 games at 48-32 and have spent much of the first three months as one of the three best teams in the major leagues.The success, though, doesn’t mean the Orioles have been perfect, and Hyde knows with a remaining schedule that is one of the sport’s hardest, that his club will likely have to get better down the stretch to make the postseason.“I’m really happy with how our team’s played so far this year, and I think that we have room to grow and room to get better,” Hyde said. “We’ve had some really good stretches. I don’t think we’ve played our best baseball in June. If you look at our schedule, it doesn’t get ...

Battenfeld: Defeated Democrats vow to plow ahead and defy the Supreme Court

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

With the Supreme Court blowing up key pillars of the Democratic Party agenda, President Biden and other party leaders are doubling down and blaming Donald Trump and Republicans for the recent high court rulings.Defeated Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley are vowing to plow ahead with debt relief despite the fact the law of the land is now against it.“I think the court misinterpreted the Constitution,” Biden said after the ruling on student loans Friday.Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was always sketchy and it was not a surprise the conservative high court ruled the president didn’t have the authority to implement it.Biden, running as a moderate during the 2020 campaign, himself even questioned whether he had the power to invalidate thousands of loans. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the same thing.Now it turns out they were right.Yet Democrats are hoping to turn the Supreme Court setback into a plus somehow. Warren and Pressley went on a “s...

The 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party a key focus during Boston’s Harborfest

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

With the cutting of a gigantic cake topped with a decorative ship, Harborfest has arrived in Boston, and commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party is a top focus of the weekend-long festival.The Old State House on Saturday is opening a new exhibit called ‘Impassioned Destruction,’ exploring protests in the context of 1773, but also in other moments throughout history to present day, Nathaniel Schniedley, president and CEO of Revolutionary Spaces, told a gathering of more than a hundred guests in Downtown Crossing.Dec. 16 will mark the 250th anniversary of when colonists protested taxation without representation by throwing British tea into Boston Harbor in what is considered a pivotal event leading to the American Revolution.“We hope you will think about the legacy of the moment that we are celebrating here together during Harborfest,” Schniedley said, “and we hope you will come back often throughout the rest of this commemorative year to join us in thinking deeply...

East Timor’s independence hero Xanana Gusmao returns to power as prime minister

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

DILI, East Timor (AP) — Former East Timor independence fighter Xanana Gusmao was sworn in on Saturday as prime minister of Asia’s youngest country after his party won the parliamentary election in May.Crowd cheered as the former guerrilla leader traveled by motorcade to the presidential palace in Dili, the capital, where he and his members of Cabinet were sworn into office by President Jose Ramos-Horta, his fellow independence fighter during Indonesia’s occupation. The new government is a coalition between Gusmao’s National Congress of the Reconstruction of East Timor, known as CNRT, and the Democratic Party.Gusmao, 77, became the nation’s first president between 2002 and 2007, and served as prime minister between 2007 and 2015. In the May election, his party won 41% of the vote to capture 31 out of 65 seats in the National Parliament. That is just short of the 33 needed for an outright majority, and Gusmao agreed to form a government with the Democratic Party, which won six s...

Celebrations, fireworks taking place in Ottawa despite air quality concerns

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

OTTAWA — Canada Day celebrations are taking place in Ottawa and across the country on Saturday, although some have been scaled back due to poor air quality.Canada’s capital city will see some festivities around Parliament Hill, but the main entertainment will be at LeBreton Flats, just west of downtown, where celebrations are expected to return to a sense of normalcy this year.The COVID-19 pandemic cancelled events across the country for two years, including in Ottawa. Then last year, remnants of the “Freedom Convoy” protests that had clogged city streets that winter created tension that disrupted the day and caused some to be wary of heading downtown.The federal Heritage Department has a slate of activities planned throughout the National Capital Region.There will be a Changing of the Guard ceremony regularly between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET, as well as piping and drumming by the Royal Canadian Air Force at Parliament Hill. If weather permits, the Air Force is also p...

Legacy of Canada’s ban on Chinese immigration lasted longer than the law

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

OTTAWA — When Matthew Yan looks at the stoic and determined expression on his father’s face in the black and white photo affixed to the identification papers he carried for decades, he mostly feels pity.The photo features Bing Sun Jun in borrowed clothes: a grown man’s suit sagging on his adolescent shoulders, making him look far older than his 13 years.The boy’s jaw is set and his eyes are focused, as if he’s trying to be the man he’s been dressed up to be.It’s the face of a person Yan scarcely got to know. “My heart just feels sorry for him, alone all his life,” said Yan, now 74, reflecting on the photo more than a century after it was taken.The date typed neatly on the bottom of the certificate reads Dec. 23, 1920, just three years before Chinese people would be banned from entering Canada.This Canada Day, the country marks 100 years since the federal government introduced legislation to ban Chinese immigrants from Canada. Thousands...

At 88, former St. Paul Mayor George Latimer cheats death — and jokes about it

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

When then-St. Paul Mayor George Latimer proposed an overpass over Shepard Road, Highland Park residents rallied ready to “ream him out,” recalled Ken Peterson, recounting the fateful day the two sides met at a community speak-out.By the end of the meeting, Latimer had agreed to disagree with his critics, but also relented on his proposal in the face of strong opposition. The room, fully charmed, gave him a standing ovation.“George was so classy,” said Peterson, who would go on to become the director of the city’s Department of Planning and Economic Development, as well as a mayoral chief of staff and deputy Minnesota attorney general. “We all stood up and cheered for him.”Latimer, St. Paul mayor from 1976 to 1990, took his setback in stride.“I got killed on that one,” he quipped to a room full of longtime fans gathered for lunch in a meeting room of the Downtowner Woodfire Grill on Friday.St. Paul’s longest-serving and argu...

Ask Amy: Volunteer wonders about service animals

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:15:52 GMT

Dear Amy: I volunteer at several public venues (including a zoo) where visitors frequently bring a pet that they claim is a service animal.Oftentimes this is clearly a lie. For instance, today a visitor at the zoo claimed that her puppy was a service animal.When I told her that animals weren’t allowed in this space, she took exception and dared me to quiz her on laws governing service animals.Management has warned volunteers like me to avoid getting into tangles with these folks — unless the so-called service animal is creating a nuisance or is a danger.When someone insists that their animal companion is a service animal or an “emotional support animal,” we are told to take them at their word. This is mostly to avoid the threat of a lawsuit.Would you please remind your readers that a service animal is a specific legal entity? Pretending that your dog — or any other pet — is a service animal does the rest of us a disservice. It’s entitled, selfish behavior that potentiall...