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UK leader Sunak chides China after report a UK Parliament staffer is a suspected Beijing spy

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chastised China’s premier on Sunday for “unacceptable” interference in British democracy, after a newspaper reported that a researcher in Parliament was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of spying for Beijing.Sunak said he raised the issue with Premier LI Qiang when the two met at a Group of 20 summit in India. He told British broadcasters in New Delhi that he’d expressed “my very strong concerns about any interference in our parliamentary democracy, which is obviously unacceptable.”The two men met after the Metropolitan Police force confirmed that a man in his 20s and a man in his 30s were arrested in March under the Official Secrets Act. Neither has been charged and both were bailed until October pending further inquiries.The Sunday Times reported that the younger man was a parliamentary researcher who worked with senior lawmakers from the governing Conservatives, including Alicia Kearns, who now heads the powerful Foreign Affairs Com...

Operation to extract American researcher from one of the world’s deepest caves advances to 700m

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

TASELI PLATEAU, Turkey (AP) — Rescue teams on Sunday in Turkey successfully carried an American researcher up from the depth of a cave at 1,040 meters (3,410 feet) to the 700-meter (2,297 feet) mark where he will rest at a base camp before they continue the taxing journey to the surface. An experienced caver, Mark Dickey, 40, started vomiting on Sept. 2 because of stomach bleeding while on an expedition with a handful of others in the Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains, one of the deepest in the world, according to experts.A rescue operation began Saturday afternoon with doctors, paramedics and experienced cavers from across Europe rushing to help. They set up small medical base camps at various levels along the shaft, providing Dickey an opportunity to rest during the slow and arduous extrication.“Mark was delivered to the campsite at -700 meters as of 03:24 local time (GMT+3). At this stage, he will set out again after resting and having the necessary treatments,” th...

Sri Lanka’s president will appoint a committee to probe allegations of complicity in 2019 bombings

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s president said Sunday he will appoint a committee chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge to investigate allegations made in a British television report that the South Asian country’s intelligence was complicit in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 people.The attacks, which included simultaneous suicide bombings, targeted three churches and three tourist hotels. The dead included 42 foreigners from 14 countries. President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s decision to appoint a committee headed by a judge to investigate claims that Sri Lankan intelligence had a hand in the bombings that were carried out by Islamic militants came under pressure from opposition lawmakers, religious leaders, activists as well as the victims’ relatives. They say that previous probes failed to reveal the truth behind the bombings.In a program broadcast Tuesday, Channel 4 interviewed a man who said had arranged a meeting between a local Islamic State-ins...

Russian strikes on Ukraine kill 2 foreign aid workers, target Kyiv

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Two foreign aid workers were reportedly killed in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Russian shelling hit a van carrying a team of four working with a Ukrainian NGO, while dozens of Russian drones targeted Kyiv and wounded at least one civilian. The four volunteers from the Road to Relief NGO, which helps evacuate wounded people from front-line areas, were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the town of Chasiv Yar, the organization said on its Instagram page. Road to Relief said Canadian Anthony Ihnat died in the attack, while German medical volunteer Ruben Mawick and Swedish volunteer Johan Mathias Thyr were seriously injured. Road to Relief added that it could not trace the whereabouts of the van’s fourth passenger, Emma Igual, a Spanish national who was the organization’s director. Hours later, Spain’s acting foreign minister José Manuel Albares told Spanish media that authorities in Madrid had rec...

A drone attack kills at least 30 in Sudan’s capital as rival troops battle, activists say

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

CAIRO (AP) — A drone attack Sunday on an open market south of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, killed at least 30 people, activists and medical workers said, as the military and a powerful paramilitary group battle for control of the country. At least three dozen others were injured in the attack in Khartoum’s May neighborhood, according to an activist group known as the Resistance Committees and two health care workers at the Bashair University Hospital, where the casualties were treated.The activist group posted footage on social media showing bodies wrapped in white sheets in an open yard at the hospital.It was not immediately clear which side was behind Sunday’s attack. Indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes by both factions aren’t uncommon in Sudan’s war, which has reduced the Greater Khartoum area to a battleground.Sudan has been rocked by violence since mid-April, when tensions between the country’s military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Ra...

Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev meet again in the US Open men’s final

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev will meet again to determine the U.S. Open men’s champion.Their match Sunday afternoon is a rematch of the 2021 final in Flushing Meadows. Medvedev won that day for his lone Grand Slam title.The 27-year-old from Russia also denied Djokovic what would have been the first calendar-year Grand Slam in men’s tennis since 1969.Djokovic has gone on to win two more major titles this year, at the Australian Open and French Open, to raise his career total to 23. That is the most Grand Slam singles titles in men’s tennis history and ties Serena Williams for the most in the professional era, dating to 1968.The 36-year-old from Serbia is playing in his 10th U.S. Open final. If he wins it, he would be the oldest male champion there in the open era.Medvedev earned the chance to stop him by knocking off defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in the semifinals. He is playing in his third U.S. Open final in five years.___AP tennis covera...

Readers and writers: Plan a fall of reading with Minnesota writers and publishers

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

Here we go. A first look at a new season of books by Minnesota authors/publishers. It’s a dandy, with mysteries, memoir, autobiography, good representation from Native authors and much more. (This list does not include reviewed books; it’s a clip-and-save reminder for readers about what’s in the pipeline. Information about forthcoming books provided by publishers.)September and late AugustFiction(Courtesy of Mariner Books)“A Council of Dolls”: by Mona Susan Power (Marine Books) — St. Paul-based author of the widely praised and popular “The Grass Dancer” and two other novels gives us a story spanning three generations of Dakota women told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried, moving from mid-century Chicago to the windswept ancestral lands of the Dakota and the brutal Indian boarding schools. Power is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.“Discernment”: by Roy Close (Beaver’s Pond Press) ...

Good Samaritan, Sanford Health drop assisted-living residents from Roseville’s Heritage Place

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

In late August, Thomas Reiter received the kind of news dreaded by every adult child of an elderly parent. His 97-year-old father, Tony, a former Ramsey County land commissioner, would be forced to move out of an assisted-living facility in Roseville as it would be transitioning exclusively to independent living.Reiter had 60 days, he learned, to find his nearly century-old dad, a World War II naval veteran, new housing.The given explanation that Reiter, of Afton, received in an Aug. 24 letter from management boiled down to staffing, or a lack thereof:“The senior care industry, including our location in Roseville, faces challenges that have worsened following the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve experienced persistent challenges maintaining a full team of caregivers for assisted living services.”Reiter was furious. Heritage Place of Roseville, operated by the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, had been a comfortable fit, at first, for his father, who relied on its skil...

Panel to probe allegations of a toxic workplace at Minnesota veterans homes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

There is growing evidence that allegations of a toxic workplace extend beyond the Minnesota Veterans Home in Hastings and the state Department of Veterans Affairs has been slow to address them.New complaints have surfaced since workers first spoke publicly about problems in March. Altogether, at least a dozen current and former caregivers have filed official complaints with state and federal agencies over their treatment by superiors.They contend that their workplaces have a toxic atmosphere where bullying, intimidation and reprisal are common. This poor treatment of staff, they say, can lead to inadequate care and even endanger veterans.Next week, a special panel created by the Legislature to probe the level of care provided to veterans at the state’s two assisted-living-style homes — called domiciliaries — is required to hold its first meeting. In addition, state lawmakers hope the panel will look deeper at allegations of toxic work environments at state Departme...

Literary calendar for week of Sept. 10

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:53:47 GMT

C.M. ALONGI: Graduate of Hastings High School and Hamline University introduces her debut adult sci fi novel “Citadel,” about the only city on a planet, which has a holy mission to exterminate demons from the Flooded Forest. When a 19-year-old nonverbal, autistic woman meets one of the “demons,” she realizes these are not vicious animals, or unholy, but sentient people. She embarks on a hazardous journey into the Flooded Forest where she faces flesh-eating predators, telekinetic zealot-warriors and demons of her own past. What the author didn’t reveal to anyone, until her five-figure contract was signed, is that her mother is bestselling Minnesota author MaryJanice Davidson. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 12, SubText Books, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul.Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison introduces his new book, “Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence,” Sept. 19, 2023 at Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis. (Courtesy of Hache...