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Syria: Israeli strikes hit province of Homs, causing fires

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

BEIRUT (AP) — Suspected Israeli airstrikes targeted the Syrian province of Homs early Saturday, state media reported.Syria’s state news agency, SANA, citing military officials, said that three civilians were wounded in the strike and that a civilian fuel station caught fire and a number of fuel tankers and trucks were burned. It reported that Syrian air defenses responded to Israeli missiles in the sky over Homs and shot down some of them. The pro-government Sham FM radio said fires broke out south of the city of Homs as a result of the strikes and “successive explosions sounded from the area. The Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israeli missiles had destroyed an ammunition depot belonging to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah at a military airport in the countryside of Homs. The observatory said it was the second time Israel targeted the site in a month. On April 2, state media reported Israeli airstrikes hit several sites in Ho...

B.C. crown prosecutor says Ibrahim Ali killed girl, 13, during sexual assault

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

VANCOUVER — A B.C. Supreme Court trial can expect to hear evidence that shows a 13-year-old girl from Burnaby, B.C., was passing through a neighbourhood park when she was dragged off a pathway into the forest by Ibrahim Ali, sexually assaulted and strangled, the Crown prosecutor told the jury Friday.In an opening statement, Crown attorney Isobel Keeley said the court will hear evidence showing the murder was random, but DNA results will prove Ali sexually assaulted her. Ali is charged with first-degree murder and entered a not guilty plea before the jury earlier this month.The body of the girl, whose name is protected under a publication ban, was found in Burnaby’s Central Park in July 2017, just hours after her mother had reported her missing.“There are no eyewitnesses to the murder,” Keeley said, but told jury members that cellphone and bank records prove Ali was in Burnaby that day.They “were strangers to one another,” she said, adding that phone rec...

Report: FAA overruled engineers, let Boeing Max keep flying

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some engineers for the Federal Aviation Administration wanted to ground the Boeing 737 Max soon after a second deadly crash, but top officials in the agency overruled them, according to a government watchdog.The inspector general of the Transportation Department said in a new report that FAA officials wanted to sort out raw data about the two crashes, and held off grounding the plane despite growing international pressure.The inspector general’s office said that it reviewed emails and interviewed FAA officials. The investigation “revealed that individual engineers at the Seattle (office) recommended grounding the airplane while the accident was being investigated based on what they perceived as similarities between the accidents.”One engineer made a preliminary estimate that the chance of another Max crash was more than 13 times greater than FAA risk guidelines allow. An FAA official said the analysis “suggested that there was a 25% chance of an accident in 6...

N. Korea insults Biden, slams defense agreement with Seoul

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader says her country would stage more provocative displays of its military might in response to a new U.S.-South Korean agreement to intensify nuclear deterrence to counter the North’s nuclear threat, which she insists shows their “extreme” hostility toward Pyongyang.Kim Yo Jong also lobbed personal insults toward U.S. President Joe Biden, who after a summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday stated that any North Korean nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.Biden’s meeting with Yoon in Washington came amid heightened tensions in the Korean Peninsula as the pace of both the North Korean weapons demonstrations and the combined U.S.-South Korean military exercises have increased in a cycle of tit-for-tat. Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles, including multiple demonstrations of intercontinental ballis...

Arizona man charged with smuggling diamonds through Florida

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — An Arizona man was charged in South Florida with illegally smuggling diamonds into the United States.Guilherme Cipriani, 41, of Scottsdale, Arizona, was arrested Wednesday in his home state, according to court records. He made his first court appearance in Arizona, but his next court date is scheduled for May 24 in Miami. That’s where a federal grand jury indicted him in March on charges of smuggling diamonds into the U.S. and providing a false statement to a federal agency. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.Cipriani tried to smuggle 14 loose-cut diamonds and 53 rough-uncut diamonds into the U.S. through Miami International Airport on Nov. 10, according to the indictment. Officials didn’t provide an estimate for the value of the diamonds.Cipriani also lied when he told a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent at the airport that he was not transporting commercial merchandise into the country and had spent zero dollars on commercial merchandis...

Ontario government investing $12M to help people with criminal records find jobs

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

As Ontario deals with soaring demand for skilled labour, the provincial government is investing $12 million for nine organizations to ramp up programs to get people with criminal records into the trades as well as the hospitality and tourism sectors.One of the groups receiving funding is the Oaks Revitalization Association, which has focused on youth programming in the Chalkfarm area of Toronto. CityNews spoke with members of the association’s board and they said they found there was a growing need to provide wraparound supports for people who have had interactions with the justice system.“Reintegrating back into society is a massive challenge and what we wanted to do was to step in and help people get back into society,” Joe Williams, the association’s managing director, said while speaking about criminal records.“Applying for a job, the first thing that happens is there’s a criminal check and usually you find that people that have criminal recor...

Victim’s sister tells jurors about quick funeral, remarriage

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The sister of a woman killed in what prosecutors say was a doomsday-focused plot told jurors Friday that her sister’s funeral was held so quickly that some family members couldn’t attend and that she was devastated when she learned her former brother-in-law remarried just a few weeks later. “You don’t get married four weeks after you just buried your wife of almost 30 years — you just don’t do that,” Samantha Gwilliam said, explaining that she later learned that Lori Vallow Daybell married Gwilliam’s former brother-in-law, Chad Daybell, just two weeks after Gwilliam’s sister Tammy Daybell died. The testimony came in the triple murder trial of Vallow Daybell, who is accused along with Chad Daybell in Tammy Daybell’s death and the deaths of her own two youngest children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow and Tylee Ryan. Idaho prosecutors say the couple espoused strange doomsday-focused beliefs involving demonic possession and “zombies” to furth...

Chile, Peru discuss safe passage for stranded migrants

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

TACNA, Peru (AP) — Stranded for five days under the scorching desert sun alongside a highway, Venezuelan Rosmary Morales looked on helplessly Friday at a wall of police officers blocking her passage into Peru. The 45-year-old waits alongside hundreds of others who have set up a makeshift refugee camp on the Chilean side of the border they can’t cross because they lack the proper documentation. “There isn’t even an awning,” Morales said, adding she felt she was being treated “like a dog.”Morales is among the Venezuelans, Colombians and Haitians stranded for two weeks along the Peru-Chile border, eager to return home as living costs skyrocket and as lawmakers in both countries propose penalties for undocumented migration. Political leaders, meanwhile, are discussing how to facilitate their passage through Peru at a time when migrants increasingly are being blamed for rising crime on both sides of the border.Chile said Friday it would start registering all the undocumented migrants who...

Army grounds aviators for training after fatal Alaska crash

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Army says Friday that it has grounded non-critical aviators for training after deadly helicopter crashes in Alaska and Kentucky killed 12 in the past month. Military investigators were making their way to Alaska’s interior on Friday, one day after a midair collision between two helicopters killed three soldiers and injured a fourth.The investigative team from Fort Novosel, Alabama, was expected to arrive at the scene of the crash near Healy, Alaska, by Saturday, said John Pennell, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Alaska. Little new information about the crash was released Friday.The Army on Thursday said two of the soldiers died at the crash site, and a third died on the way to a hospital in Fairbanks. A fourth soldier was injured and taken to a hospital. That soldier was in stable condition on Friday, Pennell said. The names of those who were killed were not immediately released.The Army said more details would be releas...

Street League Skateboarding kicks off 2023 tour in Chicago

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:15:36 GMT

CHICAGO -- Street League Skateboarding lands in the Windy City this weekend.The Street League Skateboarding Championship Tour will make the only United States stop on Saturday when they take over the Wintrust Arena in Chicago.Pro skateboarder Rob Dyrdek, famously known for his hit MTV shows “Rob & Big, “Fantasy Factory,” and “Ridiculousness,” founded Street League Skateboarding in 2010."The thing that makes Street League standout more than any other contest is it's rooted and based and founded by real skateboarders," Skateboarding legend Paul Rodriguez said."Before (Street League Skateboarding), all the other events around skateboarding were basically like festivals that were action sports based - BMX, Motocross, and Rollerblading - which is cool and all, but it feels real special to have an event that's just skateboarding."Street League Skateboarding has separated itself from widely known events like the X-Games by creating a traveling competition for the top skateboarders in t...