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‘Catastrophic’ Leominster flooding prompts emergency declaration, closure of schools

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

City officials declared a state of emergency in Leominster Monday night as heavy rains triggered a flash flood that damaged roads, homes, business, and prompted the closure of local schools. The city’s mayor says the light of day is providing an unimaginable amount of damage across the area.The flash flood emergency declared by the National Weather Service included Leominster, Fitchburg, Lunenburg, Princeton and Sterling as of around 11 p.m. A larger swath of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire was included under a series of flash flood warnings earlier in the evening.Leominster received more than 10 inches of rain in a matter of about 6 hours beginning about 4 p.m.Mutual aid from neighboring communities and state agencies responded to hard-hit areas and crews could be seen rescuing residents from their homes using inflatable boats. More than 100 people are taking advantage of an emergency shelter in the city, Leominster Mayor Dean J. Mazzarella said.Schools in the ...

Emergency declared after flash flooding soaks Leominster

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

Heavy rainfall has flooded parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, with one city declaring a state of emergency as water poured into homes, creating moats around their foundations, and stranded drivers.Mayor Dean Mazzarella in Leominster urged people not to venture outside as roads flooded Monday night, but some residents were evacuated as water came into their basements. All schools were closed Tuesday and two shelters were set up.“The storm stopped over us last night. It didn’t move for close to five hours. It had dumped 11 inches (27.9 centimeters) of rain,” Mazzarella said at a news conference Tuesday morning.On Monday night, in a recording posted online, he had urged people, “Find a high spot somewhere. Find a high spot and stay there until this is over.”He said if there were any injuries they were minor.Early Tuesday, the city said people living in areas near a brook and the North Nashua River in Leominster should “immediately evacuate̶...

Pakistan court orders 5 siblings of girl found dead near London put into child protection center

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — A Pakistani court on Tuesday ordered the five siblings of a 10-year-old girl who was found dead with extensive injuries near London put into a children’s protection center after they were located by police.The police are continuing their search for the girl’s father and stepmother in connection with her death.Sara Sharif was found dead at her home in Woking, on the southern outskirts of London, on Aug. 10. British police identified her father, Urfan Sharif, his wife, Beinash Batool, and Urfan’s brother, Faisal Malik, as people they want to speak to in the investigation.An autopsy of the girl didn’t establish a cause of death but showed that she had suffered “multiple and extensive injuries, which are likely to have been caused over a sustained and extended period of time,” British police said in a statement.Urfan Sharif traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, with Batool and Malik on Aug. 9, bringing the five children with them. The couple then went ...

Israeli Supreme Court hears first challenge to Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul that has divided nation

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s Supreme Court heard the first challenge Tuesday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious judicial overhaul — deepening a showdown with the far-right government that has bitterly divided the nation and put the country on the brink of a constitutional crisis.Netanyahu’s coalition, a collection of ultranationalist and ultrareligious lawmakers, unveiled the overhaul earlier this year, saying it was necessary to rein in an unelected judiciary they believe wields too much power. Critics say the plan — which would weaken the Supreme Court — represents a profound threat to Israeli democracy and argue it would concentrate power in the hands of Netanyahu and his allies. They contend that the court is a key check on majority rule in a country with an otherwise weak system of checks and balances — just one house of parliament where the governing coalition is headed by the prime minister. The country’s president is a figurehead, and there is no firm, wri...

Thousands feared dead as Libyans search for bodies in a city devastated by floods

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

CAIRO (AP) — Emergency workers uncovered hundreds of bodies as they dug through the wreckage of Libya’s eastern city of Derna on Tuesday, and 10,000 people were reported still missing after floodwaters broke through dams and smashed through the city, washing away entire neighborhoods.At least 700 recovered bodies have been buried so far, the health minister for eastern Libya said. Derna’s ambulance authority put the current death toll at 2,300. But the toll is likely to be far higher, in the thousands, said Tamer Ramadan, Libya envoy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He told a U.N. briefing in Geneva via videoconference from Tunisia that at least 10,000 people were still missing.The situation in Libya was “as devastating as the situation in Morocco,” Ramadan said, referring to the deadly earthquake that hit near the city of Marrakesh on Friday night.The destruction came to Derna and other parts of eastern Libya on Sunday night, when Mediterran...

Families ask full appellate court to reconsider Alabama transgender care ban

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama families with transgender children asked a full appellate court Monday to review a decision that will let the state enforce a ban on treating minors with gender-affirming hormones and puberty blockers.The families asked all of the judges of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review a three-judge panel decision issued last month. The panel lifted a judge’s temporary injunction that had blocked Alabama from enforcing the law while a lawsuit over the ban goes forward.The Alabama ban makes it a felony — punishable by up to 10 years in prison — for doctors to treat people under 19 with puberty blockers or hormones to help affirm a new gender identity. The court filing argues the ban violates parents’ longstanding and accepted right to make medical decisions for their children.“Parents, not the government, are best situated to make medical decisions for their children. That understanding is deeply rooted in our common understanding and our legal foun...

Escaped Pennsylvania murderer Danelo Cavalcante is armed, residents should stay inside, police say

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

Authorities warned that an escaped murderer who has evaded capture in southeastern Pennsylvania for nearly two weeks was armed and urged residents Tuesday in the area where he was being pursued to lock up, secure vehicles and remain indoors.Pennsylvania State Police posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the department was pursuing Danelo Souza Cavalcante in South Coventry Township. Police also asked that the public call 911 if Cavalcante is seen and not to approach him.At least one nearby school district announced early Tuesday that it would close all schools and offices for the day and another in the area planned to keep students indoors. Police closed roads in the search area. Video from a roadblock showed law enforcement officers stopping and checking vehicles leaving the area.On Monday, state and federal officials pushed back against questions about whether they blew a chance to catch Cavalcante, saying that the area where hundreds had been searching included...

North Korea’s leader is in Russia to meet Putin, with both locked in standoffs with the West

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s Kim Jong Un rolled into Russia on an armored train Tuesday to see President Vladimir Putin, a rare meeting between isolated leaders driven together by their need for support in escalating standoffs with the West.Kim is expected to seek economic aid and military technology for his impoverished country, and, in an unusual twist, appears to have something Putin desperately needs: munitions for Russia’s grueling war in Ukraine.This meeting is a chance for the North Korean leader to get around crippling U.N. sanctions and years of diplomatic isolation. For Putin, it’s an opportunity to refill ammunition stores that the war has drained.Any arms deal with North Korea would violate the sanctions, which Russia supported in the past.North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim boarded his personal train bound for Russia on Sunday afternoon, accompanied by members of the ruling party, government and military.His final destination is u...

Stock market today: Wall Street slips ahead of new data on inflation and a big week for Big Tech

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

TOKYO — Wall Street drifted modestly lower early Tuesday ahead of a highly anticipated update on U.S. consumer prices later this week. Futures for the Dow Jones industrials fell 0.2% before the bell, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.3%.The Federal Reserve is weighing whether to keep raising interest rates steady in its effort to get inflation back to 2%. On Wednesday, the U.S. government will offer the latest monthly update on prices consumers are paying across the economy, and the forecast is they were 3.6% higher in August than a year earlier.“Upcoming U.S. data will be crucial leading up to the Federal Reserve’s decision next week,” Anderson Alves of ActivTrades said.The Fed has already hiked its main interest rate to the highest level in more than two decades, and it has said it will make upcoming moves based on how inflation and other parts of the economy perform. Inflation has come down from last year’s peak above 9%, but economists warn the last bit of improvement to get to th...

Author Sandra Cisneros receives Holbrooke award for work that helps promote peace and understanding

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:25:30 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Author Sandra Cisneros is this year’s winner of the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, honoring writers who help foster “understanding between and among people.”Cisneros, best known for her million-selling novel “The House on Mango Street,” has often drawn upon her Mexican heritage and her childhood community in her own work and supported other writers through her nonprofits the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation.The Holbrooke award, named for the late U.S. diplomat, is presented by the Ohio-based Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. In 1995, Holbrooke helped broker the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Bosnian War, a conflict Cisneros has thought of often.“I witnessed a war’s effects personally with the 40-year friendship of my hermana-amiga (sister-friend) from Sarajevo. And what I learned was this; the casualties of a war are not simply those killed in warfare. Civilians and unborn genera...