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Families reunite with 17 Thai hostages freed by Hamas at homecoming at Bangkok airport

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Seventeen Thai workers released from captivity by the militant Hamas group were greeted Thursday by family and friends, officials and journalists in an emotional homecoming at Bangkok’s international airport.The 17 are among 23 Thais freed so far, with six left temporarily behind in Israel because doctors said they were not yet fit to travel. Thai officials says another nine Thai hostages are still being held in Gaza.Ratree Sampan, who traveled from the northeastern province of Nakhon Phanom, arrived early at the airport for the reunion with her son Buddee Saengboon.“After the war broke out, I could not contact him,” said the 57-year-old Ratree. “For one month and 18 days, I assumed he was already dead.”“I waited for a miracle, and it happened. He survived,” she said.There were about 30,000 Thai workers — mostly laborers in the agricultural sector — in Israel prior to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, when militants stormed through a border fence and killed hundreds o...

Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge shows price pressures continuing to cool

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure cooled last month, the latest sign that price pressures are waning in the face of high interest rates and moderating economic growth. Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department said prices were unchanged from September to October, down from a 0.4% rise the previous month. Compared with a year ago, prices rose 3% in October, below the 3.4% annual rate in September. It was the lowest year-over-year inflation rate in more than 2 1/2 years.Excluding volatile food and energy costs, increases in so-called core prices also slowed. They rose just 0.2% from September to October, down from a 0.3% increase the previous month. Compared with 12 months ago, core prices rose 3.5%, below the 3.7% year-over-year increase in September. Economists closely track core prices, which are thought to provide a good sign of inflation’s likely future path.With inflation easing, the Fed is expected to keep its key benchmark rate unch...

Applications for US jobless benefits rise modestly, but continuing claims are most in 2 years

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

Slightly more Americans filed for jobless claims last week, pushing the overall number of people in the U.S. collecting unemployment benefits to its highest level in two years.Applications for unemployment benefits rose by 7,000 to 218,000 for the week ending Nov. 25, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Jobless claim applications are seen as representative of the number of layoffs in a given week.However, overall, 1.93 million people were collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended Nov. 18, about 86,000 more than the previous week and the most in two years. Continuing claims have risen in nine of the past 10 weeks.The four-week moving average of jobless claim applications, which flattens out some of weekly volatility, fell by 500 to 220,000.Matt Ott, The Associated Press

Russia’s Lavrov faces Western critics at security meeting, walks out after speech

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP) — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov faced Western critics while attending international security talks Thursday in Northern Macedonia, where he blamed “NATO’s reckless expansion to the East” for war returning to Europe.Lavrov arrived in Skopje to attend meetings hosted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The diplomats of several OSCE member nations, including Ukraine, boycotted the event due to Lavrov’s planned attendance amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Russian foreign minister spoke for 15 minutes before walking out of the meetings. He blamed what he described as Western tolerance of the “ruling neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv” for the war that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.“The very existence of Russians and their decisive contribution to the history of Ukraine are denied,” Lavrov said. “There are plenty of facts. The OSCE and its relevant institutions are silent.”Russian President Vladimi...

Ex-health secretary Matt Hancock defends his record at UK’s COVID inquiry

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Former British health secretary Matt Hancock defended his record at the U.K.’s COVID-19 inquiry on Thursday, contesting widespread accusations of incompetence in leading the response to the biggest public health crisis Britain faced in a century. The inquiry, which began public hearings this summer, is questioning key government officials about their political decision-making — namely when they decided to impose national lockdowns — during the pandemic.Hancock played a key role in the U.K.’s pandemic response but resigned in 2021 after he was caught on camera kissing his aide in his office, breaking the social distancing rules in place at the time.A number of officials who gave evidence at the inquiry have accused Hancock of being “overoptimistic” and recalled concerns at the time about poor organization within the health department under him.The inquiry heard that in one WhatsApp message, Mark Sedwill, the U.K.’s most senior civil servant at the time, joked to D...

‘Super pigs’ took over the prairies. Now they’re spreading further, quickly

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

For years, some researchers have been sounding the alarm, about the spread of wild boars—also called ‘super pigs”—on Canada’s prairies. A few years ago, the situation was bad. Now it’s critical. The pigs are multiplying and becoming harder to hunt or capture. They’ve now been seen in British Columbia and Ontario. And the US media is now reporting on the threat of invading Canadian super pigs.Dr. Ryan Brook, a professor in the Department of Animal and Poultry Science at the University of Saskatchewan, says the response to the spread of the pigs, to this point, has involved too much talk and too little action. “I’ve sort of said, you know what, I’m not coming to a meeting anymore unless everybody shows up with at least four dead pigs in the back of their truck, because we can talk about this until the end of time, but we have to actually get serious and do something,” says Brook.  How did these pigs become “super” in the first place? What...

Pakistan police arrest 4 men in the death of a woman after a photo with her boyfriend went viral

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani authorities have arrested four people who allegedly killed an 18-year-old woman in the purported name of honor after a picture of her sitting with a boyfriend went viral on social media, police said Thursday.The woman’s father and three other men were detained days after the slaying in Kohistan, a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. Police said they told about the killing on Nov. 24 and officers were still investigating.According to the local police chief, Masood Khan, the four arrested men apparently killed the woman on orders from village elders, who thought she had brought shame to her family by posing for pictures with a boy. Khan said the investigation determined that the photo of the couple that went viral had been edited by someone before it was shared on the social media. He said investigators are trying to trace whoever edited and posted the image since it led to her killing.It was not immediately clear if...

On 1st day, UN climate conference sets up fund for countries hit by disasters like flood and drought

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The world just took a big step toward compensating countries hit by deadly floods, heat and droughts.Nearly all the world’s nations on Thursday finalized the creation of a fund to help compensate countries struggling to cope with loss and damage caused by climate change, seen as a major first-day breakthrough at this year’s U.N. climate conference. Some countries started putting in money right away — if little compared to the overall anticipated needs. Sultan al-Jaber, the president of the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, hailed “the first decision to be adopted on day one of any COP” — and his country, the United Arab Emirates — would chip in $100 million to the fund. Other countries stepped up with big-ticket commitments, including Germany, also at $100 million. Developing nations had long sought to address the problem of inadequate funding for responding to climate disasters caused by climate change, which hit them especially hard, and f...

BRP reports Q3 profit down from year ago, lowers guidance for full year

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

VALCOURT, Que. — BRP Inc. reported its third-quarter profit and revenue fell compared with a year ago and lowered its financial guidance for its full year.The manufacturer of Sea-Doos and Ski-Doos reported a profit of $63.1 million or 81 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Oct. 31, down from $141.6 million or $1.76 per diluted share a year earlier.Revenue for the quarter totalled $2.47 billion, down from $2.71 billion in the same quarter last year. BRP says its normalized earnings per share for its most recent quarter amounted to $3.06 per diluted share, down from $3.64 per diluted share a year earlier.In its outlook, the company now says revenue for its 2024 financial year is expected to grow four to five per cent, compared with earlier expectations for growth of seven to 10 per cent.BRP also says it now expects its normalized earnings per share for its full year to come in between $11.10 and $11.35, a result that would mean a drop of six to eight per cent compared to $12...

What to know about Hannukah and how it’s celebrated around the world

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:11:23 GMT

Hanukkah — also spelled Chanukah or other transliterations from Hebrew — is Judaism’s “festival of lights.” On eight consecutive nightfalls, Jews gather with family and friends to light one additional candle in the menorah — a multibranched candelabra. In Hebrew, Hanukkah means “dedication,” and the holiday marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the 2nd century BC, after a small group of Jewish fighters liberated it from occupying foreign forces.With the tiny supply of ritually pure oil that they found in the temple, they lit the menorah — and it stayed lit for eight days. The ritual of lighting a nightly candle, as well as the emphasis on cooking foods in oil such as potato pancakes called latkes, memorialize this miraculously long-lasting oil.When is Hanukkah 2023?The dates of the holiday are based on Hebrew month of Kislev, which usually coincides with November-December in the Gregorian calendar.This year, Hanukkah will be celebrated from Dec. 7 through Dec. 15.Does...