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Sanna Marin to step down as leader of Finland’s Social Democrats

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

Outgoing Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said Wednesday she would resign as Social Democrat party leader. “Now it’s time to join the ranks again and step down from the party chair’s position,” Marin announced at a press conference, according to Finnish public broadcaster Yle.Marin, whose Social Democrats were defeated in a national election on Sunday, will be replaced by a new party leader at the next party congress, she added. She will continue to sit as a Social Democrat parliamentarian.Marin became prime minister in 2019 and has been a star of the European left since coming to power.But faced with concerns at home over Finland’s economic situation, her Social Democrats only came in third in the election, behind the center-right National Coalition Party and the anti-immigration Finns Party.

Zelenskyy visits Polish President Duda in Warsaw

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Warsaw on Wednesday, where he will meet his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in his second trip to Poland since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine.Their talks will focus on security issues, economic cooperation and historical matters, Duda’s office said in a statement.“We want to conduct these talks in the spirit of thinking about the future,” presidential foreign policy adviser Marcin Przydacz said.This will be Zelenskyy’s second visit to Poland since the beginning of the war — but his first “official” one, according to the Polish presidential office.The Ukrainian president has only been outside of the country twice since February 2022. He first traveled to the U.S. last December, before heading to London, Paris and Brussels in a tour of allied European capitals in February. He then briefly stopped in Rzeszów, Poland, on his way back from Brussels, where he met with Duda.Duda has visit...

Editorial: A case Tony Soprano would like

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

There’s a big difference between prosecution and persecution.The 34-count indictment against former President Donald Trump is a political hatchet job years in the making. The timing is glaring.Alleged hush-money payments to a porn star — who is now feeding off the renewed notoriety like a shark in the summer — just adds to this Big Apple circus. It is clear these charges will hurt Trump among middle-aged women. That’s a voting bloc he’ll need — if he can survive the legal onslaught that has just been unleashed.Other cases are percolating, and we’ll weigh those on their merits. But this one?The legal foundation of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s case is that Trump allegedly conspired to illegally influence the 2016 election through a series of hush money payments. Porn stars and extramarital affairs make for spicy reading. But this case has been stewing for so long it is just overcooked.Bragg was just the right progressive prosecutor to come...

Cargo ship sinks off Turkish coast, 9 crew members missing

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A Guinea-Bissau flagged cargo ship with 14 crew members on board sank off Turkey’s Mediterranean coast on Wednesday, Turkish officials said. Five crew members were rescued while efforts to find nine others were underway.The Joe 2 sank off the coast of Kumluca, in Antalya province, while heading to Ukraine from the Turkish port of Iskenderun, the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Gov. Ersin Yazici as saying. The cause of the ship sinking was not immediately clear.The Turkish Coast Guard Command said it received a distress call at 3:47 a.m. and dispatched a vessel, several boats and two helicopters. Two crew members were rescued by the coast guard helicopters while three others were saved by other vessels in the area, it said.All of the crew were Syrian nationals.The coast guard said an investigation has been launched by the chief prosecutor’s office for Kumluca. The Associated Press

In final speech, Ardern reflects on leading New Zealand

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — In her final speech to New Zealand’s Parliament on Wednesday, Jacinda Ardern described in emotional terms how she’d navigated a pandemic and a mass-shooting during her tumultuous five-year tenure as prime minister.She also told humorous anecdotes like how a European leader so admired the striking hair of Ardern’s chief-of-staff that he fluffed it like a hairdresser — which she joked had helped secure a free-trade deal — and how her mother once sent her a uplifting, if somewhat grandiose, message: “Remember, even Jesus had people who didn’t like him.”On a more serious note, she urged lawmakers to take the politics out of climate change. “There will always be policy differences,” Ardern said during her valedictory address, wearing a traditional Māori cloak called a korowai. “But beneath that, we have what we need to make the progress we must.” When Ardern finished speaking after about 35 minutes, she she was greeted wi...

Takeaways from AP’s report on elite Russian defector

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

LONDON (AP) — In October, an officer in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s elite personal security service defected while on a business trip in Kazakhstan.Now a wanted man in Russia, Gleb Karakulov spoke out for the first time in a series of interviews with the Dossier Center, an investigative group in London funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The AP took steps to review and verify the material.“Our president has become a war criminal,” said the 35-year-old engineer. “It is time to end this war and stop being silent.”Karakulov is one of few Russians to flee and go public who have rank, as well as knowledge of intimate details of Putin’s life. Karakulov was a captain in Russia’s secretive Federal Protective Service. or FSO, tasked with setting up secure communications for the Russian president and prime minister. Here’s what he had to say about Putin and the war in Ukraine.PUTIN DOESN’T USE A MOBILE PHONE OR THE INTERNETIn 13 years of service, Karakulov s...

Quebec truck attack suspect due in court : In The News for April 5

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what’s on the radar of our editors for the morning of April 5 …What we are watching in Canada …A Quebec man accused of driving his truck into groups of pedestrians last month is due back in court today.Steeve Gagnon is expected to be arraigned on three counts of first-degree murder and nine counts of attempted murder.Gagnon has been in custody since the March 13 crash, when several groups of pedestrians were struck on a main street in Amqui, Que., in what police have described as an intentional act.The appearance is set to take place at the courthouse in Amqui, about 350 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.Gagnon, 38, was charged with two counts of dangerous driving causing death, but the prosecutor had indicated more charges were expected, and a third victim has died since the accused’s initial court appearance.The three people killed were Gérald Charest, 65; ...

Swiss regulators defend rescue of Credit Suisse via UBS deal

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

GENEVA (AP) — The head of the Swiss financial regulator on Wednesday defended the rescue of Credit Suisse through a controversial takeover by rival bank UBS as the best solution with least risk of spreading a wider crisis and severe damaging Switzerland’s standing as a financial center.The merger was “the best option” and one that “minimized risk of contagion and maximized trust,” said Urban Angehrn, chief executive of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or FINMA.Angern said two other options — a takeover by the Swiss government or putting Credit Suisse into insolvency proceedings — had serious drawbacks. Insolvency would have left the functional parts of Credit Suisse in operation as a Swiss-only bank, but one with a “damaged reputation” through bankruptcy, he told reporters in the Swiss capital of Bern. A temporary takeover by the Swiss government would have exposed taxpayers to the risk of losses.“One can well imagine, what devastating effect the insolvency of...

Feds back away from timeline for law to make First Nations policing essential service

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

OTTAWA — The federal government is backing awayfrom setting a timelineto introduce legislation that would declare First Nations policing an essential service, but at least one regional chief hopes to see it this spring.Ghislain Picard, a member of the Assembly of First Nations executive, says it has been fighting for improvements to First Nations policing on two fronts: securing better funding for existing services and helping to draft new legislation. “We’ve been talking about this for years,” said Picard, one of the leads on justice and policing issues for the national advocacy organization that represents more than 600 First Nations.Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told The Canadian Press last December that the government hoped to table a bill in 2023. This week, however, a press secretary for the minister backed away from any timeline, saying “It is too early to say when the legislation will be tabled.”In September 2022, Mendicino told reporte...

Federal lawyers set to explain legal rationale for government use of Emergencies Act

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:40:20 GMT

OTTAWA — Lawyers for the federal attorney general are set to elaborate today on the legal rationale for the historic use of the Emergencies Act to dispel “Freedom Convoy” protesters early last year.The lawyers plan to spell out reasons the Federal Court should dismiss arguments from several groups and individuals who reject the Liberal government’s invocation of the emergency law.Civil liberties and constitutional defence groups have told Justice Richard Mosley this week the government did not meet the legal threshold for resorting to the Emergencies Act.The act allowed for temporary measures including prohibition of public assemblies, the designation of secure places, direction to banks to freeze assets and a ban on support for participants.The government says the extraordinary measures were targeted, proportional, time limited and compliant with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.The Federal Court’s three-day review is slated to wrap up today.This report by...