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China’s premier says economic growth is accelerating and the country can hit its 5% target this year

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

BEIJING (AP) — China’s No. 2 leader said Tuesday that economic growth accelerated in the latest quarter and expressed confidence it can hit the ruling Communist Party’s official target of 5% for the year.Premier Li Qiang, speaking at a conference in the eastern city of Tianjin, gave no figure for the three months ending in June but said it was faster than the previous quarter’s 4.5%.The world’s second-largest economy rebounded from 2022’s unusually weak 3% growth following the end of anti-virus controls on travel and business activity. But that faded faster than expected. Consumer and factory activity weakened in May and record-setting youth unemployment spiked up.“It is expected that the second quarter will be faster than the first quarter,” Li said at the World Economic Forum. “We expect to achieve the economic growth rate of about 5% determined at the start of the year.”Private sector forecasters expect China’s economic output to grow by at least 5% ...

Olivia Chow elected next mayor of Toronto, vows to bring change

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

TORONTO — Olivia Chow, a former NDP parliamentarian and longtime standard bearer for the progressive left, was elected mayor of Toronto on Monday, promising to bring change to a city grappling with housing unaffordability, public safety concerns and a massive budget shortfall. Chow, who beat out 101 other candidates, also became the first person of colour elected to the mayor’s chair in Canada’s most populous city. Her victory represents a high mark in a political career spanning nearly four decades, from her election as a Toronto school board trustee in 1985 through to her tenure in the House of Commons alongside her late husband and federal NDP leader Jack Layton.“If you ever doubted what’s possible together, if you ever questioned your faith in a better future and what we can do with each other, for each other, tonight is your answer,” Chow, 66, said in her speech to a crowd of cheering supporters. “Thank you to the people of Toronto for the trust yo...

Buffalo shooting survivor’s mom faces former mayoral hopeful in local NY primaries

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

One nearly became Buffalo’s first female mayor. The other was thrust into prominence after her son survived a racist mass shooting.Democrats India Walton and Zeneta Everhart consider themselves political allies but they are pitted against each other in a race for a seat on Buffalo’s Common Council, one of many local government offices at stake in primary elections being held across New York on Tuesday.The two Black women are vying to represent a part of the Rust Belt city still healing from a white supremacist’s attack that killed 10 people at a neighborhood supermarket just over a year ago. That mass shooting was followed by a punishing December blizzard that killed 47 people in the city and its suburbs, with a disproportionate number of the victims coming from Buffalo’s Black neighborhoods.Walton, 41, is trying to make a comeback after a rollercoaster defeat in the city’s mayoral race in 2021. In that contest, she stunned the political establishment b...

US Interior Secretary Haaland reflects on tenure and tradition amid policy challenges

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — It was never about making history for Deb Haaland, but rather making her parents proud.She says she worked hard, putting herself through school, starting a small business to pay bills and eventually finding her way into politics — first as a campaign volunteer and later as the first Native American woman to lead a political party in New Mexico.The rest seems like history. Haaland was sworn in as one of the first two Native American women in Congress in 2019. Two years later, she took the reins at the U.S. Interior Department — an agency whose responsibilities stretch from managing energy development to meeting the nation’s treaty obligations to 574 federally recognized tribes.Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet member in the U.S., spoke to The Associated Press about her tenure leading the 70,000-employee agency that oversees subsurface minerals and millions of acres of public land.The hardest part? Balancing the interests of every single American, she...

Washington’s long-term care payroll tax starts July 1, as other states explore similar programs

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

SEATTLE (AP) — On some days, Anthony Jones can’t get to work.Since he was a teen, the 41-year-old Seattle resident has often struggled with lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause the body to attack tissue surrounding joints and organs, making everyday tasks like showering, cooking and commuting to his golf course restaurant job impossible.And due to his preexisting condition, Jones doesn’t qualify for private long-term care insurance to help manage his disease when he is older and needs more assistance.Lawmakers had cases like his in mind when they passed a new program called WA Cares. Beginning July 1, Washington will be the first state to deduct money from workers’ paychecks to finance long-term care benefits for residents who can’t live independently due to illness, injury or aging-related conditions such as dementia. “There have been times I’ve been unable to work,” Jones said. “It’s very hard for me to live, walk my dog, cook for myself. Sometimes it gets so ba...

Judge to weigh whether Trump’s New York criminal case should be moved to federal court

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A U.S. judge is set to hear arguments Tuesday over President Donald Trump’s attempt to move his criminal case in New York out of the state court, where he was indicted, to a federal court where he could potentially try to get the case dismissed.Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein will listen to the afternoon arguments, though he isn’t expected to immediately rule.Trump’s lawyers sought to move the case to Manhattan federal court soon after Trump pleaded not guilty in April to charges that he falsified his company’s business records to hide hush money payouts aimed at burying allegations of extramarital sexual encounters.While requests to move criminal cases from state to federal court are rarely granted, the prosecution of Trump is unprecedented.The Republican’s lawyers say the charges, while related to his private company’s records, involve things he did while he was president. U.S. law allows criminal prosecutions to be removed from state court if th...

Trump valet set for arraignment in classified documents case

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — A valet for Donald Trump is set to be arraigned Tuesday on charges that he helped the former president hide classified documents that the Justice Department wanted back.Walt Nauta was charged earlier this month alongside Trump in a 38-count indictment filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. Though Trump has already entered a not guilty plea to the charges, a judge postponed the arraignment for Nauta to give him time to find a Florida-based lawyer.The indictment accuses Nauta of conspiring with Trump to conceal records that he had taken with him from the White House to his Florida property, Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors allege that Nauta, at the former president’s direction, moved boxes of documents bearing classification markings so that they would not be found by a Trump lawyer who was tasked with searching the home for classified records to be returned to the government. That, prosecutors said, resulted in a false representation to the Justice Departme...

Fire engulfs high-rise in United Arab Emirates. No reports of injuries

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A fire tore through a high-rise residential building in the United Arab Emirates early Tuesday before being brought under control, according to videos circulating online.There were no immediate reports of injuries from the blaze in Ajman, one of the seven emirates that makes up the UAE, which also includes the futuristic cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.The footage showed a corner of the building engulfed in flames reaching from the ground level to the top, with debris falling to the street below.Ajman News, a local media outlet, later reported that the fire had been brought under control. Footage on its Instagram showed the blackened exterior of the building and firefighters on the street below.There was no immediate comment from UAE officials.The UAE has seen a number of similar fires in recent years that have been linked to flammable cladding on many of the country’s ubiquitous high-rises.On New Year’s Eve in 2015, a blaze raced through an up...

Trump and DeSantis to hold dueling campaign events in New Hampshire after squabbling over timing

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

HOLLIS, N.H. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will hold dueling campaign events Tuesday in New Hampshire after some squabbling over the close timing of the appearances.DeSantis, who released an immigration and border security policy proposal on Monday, was set to appear at a town hall event in Hollis, while Trump, the leading GOP presidential candidate, was scheduled to speak at a lunch in Concord hosted by a Republican women’s club and attend the opening of his campaign’s state office in Manchester.The New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women, which is hosting Trump, issued a statement last week saying it was disappointed with the DeSantis campaign for scheduling a town hall around the same time as its own event — 40 miles (64 kilometers) away and a couple of hours before.The group branded it “an attempt to steal focus from” the organization’s sold-out “Lilac Luncheon” fundraiser and said that other presidential candidates had sched...

Court to hear appeal over Biden-backed Nevada lithium mine opposed by tribes, environmentalists

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:28 GMT

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A U.S. appeals court will consider challenges Tuesday to a huge lithium mine in Nevada in a case that pits environmentalists and Native Americans against President Joe Biden’s plans to combat climate change and could have broad implications for mining operations across the West.For the first time since it blocked construction of an Arizona copper mine last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear oral arguments in a two-year-old legal battle with striking similarities to the Arizona case. The Nevada mine is in the works near the Oregon line and would involve extraction of the silvery-white metal used in electric-vehicle batteries.Lawyers for Lithium Americas — the Canadian company that broke ground on the project in March — as well as the U.S. government, conservationists, tribes and a Nevada rancher were allotted time to highlight their positions during Tuesday’s hearing before a three-judge panel in Pasadena, California.Leaders of t...