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Fire at New Zealand hostel kills at least 6 people, officials say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

By NICK PERRY (Associated Press)WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A fire ripped through a hostel in New Zealand’s capital overnight, killing at least six people and forcing others to flee the four-story building in their pajamas in what a fire chief on Tuesday called his “worst nightmare.”Six bodies were found but not all areas of the building had been searched yet because the roof on the top floor had collapsed, bringing down debris and making the area unsafe, said Bruce Stubbs, the incident controller for Fire and Emergency New Zealand.Officials said 52 people had made it out of the building alive but they were still trying to account for others. Loafers Lodge resident Tala Sili told news outlet RNZ that he saw smoke pouring through under his door and opened it to find the hallway was pitch-black.“I was on the top floor and I couldn’t go through the hallway because there was just too much smoke, so I jumped out the window,” Sili said.He said ...

Family of sisters killed in Mother's Day hit-and-run crash speak out

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- The family of two sisters, who were killed in a hit-and-run crash in the Bay Terraces neighborhood on Mother’s Day morning, spoke to FOX 5 about their loved ones.Daniel Jimenez, the husband of 25-year-old Elizabeth Higuera Cano, says he’s having a hard time accepting the fact his wife is gone, let alone the fact it happened on Mother’s Day.“A beautiful person inside and out and I know that she’s impacted a lot of people. Talking to friends, I just found out she was four weeks pregnant. She was trying to celebrate Mother’s Day,” Jimenez said. “She’s really an amazing mom and wife, my soulmate and the best person I could ask for to be with.”Elizabeth and her 23-year-old sister Jazmin Higuera Cano were killed by a hit-and-run driver around 2:30 a.m. Sunday. Two other friends in the car with them were injured, but survived.Jimenez speaks of Liz being bold, saying she was an artist, supportive of his career in the Navy and above all else, a loving mother.Speaking about Jazmi...

Comedian Ramy Youssef to bring laughs to San Diego

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- Comedian Ramy Youssef is bringing his summer stand-up tour to San Diego this year.Youssef will be stopping at The Observatory North Park on Thursday, Aug. 3, Live Nation Entertainment officials said in a press release Monday.Known for his starring role in "Ramy," Youssef is the creator of the hit Hulu show that is inspired by his own experiences about a first-generation Egyptian-American Muslim on a spiritual journey in his politically-divided New Jersey neighborhood. The 32-year-old comedian won a Golden Globe in 2020 for "Ramy" in the category of "Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy.” San Diego-area cities among worst places to start a career: study Youssef also has his own one-hour HBO comedy special "Ramy Youssef: Feelings."Tickets will be available for the general public starting Friday at 10 a.m.

Races for 4 court seats, including 1 on Supreme Court, lead statewide Pennsylvania primary ballots

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Party nominees for four statewide judicial posts, including one on the Supreme Court, will be settled in Tuesday’s primary election in Pennsylvania.Democrats currently hold a 4-2 majority on the state’s highest court, which is playing a prominent role in settling disputes over voting rights, abortion rights and gun rights in the presidential battleground state.Running on the Democratic ticket are Dan McCaffery of Philadelphia and Deborah Kunselman of Beaver County. Both of them currently sit on the state Superior Court, a statewide appellate body that handles appeals from county courts in criminal and civil cases.Competing on the Republican ticket are Carolyn Carluccio, a Montgomery County judge; and Patricia McCullough, a judge on the Commonwealth Court, a statewide appellate court that handles cases involving government agencies or challenges to state laws.McCullough, of Allegheny County, also ran for state Supreme Court in 2021 and lost in the p...

Republican abortion debate inches toward resolution in South Carolina

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Abortion access would be almost entirely banned after about six weeks of pregnancy under a bill set for debate Tuesday in the South Carolina House, after the state Senate rejected a proposal to nearly outlaw the procedure.The two GOP-dominated chambers’ disagreement epitomizes the intra-Republican debates over how far to restrict access that have developed nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year and allowed states to set their own policies on abortion.“It became like we were playing with live ammunition,” said South Carolina Republican Sen. Tom Davis, who helped block the near-total ban but supports other limits. “It was like this is for real now and everything that we debate and pass is going to be law.”The impasse in South Carolina dates back to a special session last fall when House lawmakers demanding a near-total ban did not meet to negotiate with their Senate counterparts pushing for a ban around six weeks. The stalemate ...

Dozens rally against Fukushima plant water release plan

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Dozens of anti-nuclear activists protested Tuesday to demand Japan scrap its plan to release treated but still radioactive water from a tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant into the sea, which may begin this summer. ”Don’t dump contaminated water into sea!” protesters chanted outside the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holding’s headquarters in Tokyo, holding banners with their demands such as “Don’t nuke the Pacific,” and “Stop contaminated water.”The utility that operates the plant wrecked in the 2011 disaster has almost finished building the needed facilities to release the massive amounts of water, which has been speculated to begin sometime after June.“Even after treatment, some radiation stays in the water,” said Harumichi Saito, an activist from Iwaki, a city south of the wrecked plant. “It’s a decades-long, multi-generational project that must get public consensus.”The tsunami and earthquake on March 11, 2011, damaged the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s coolin...

Nebraska lawmakers to debate attaching 12-week abortion ban to trans youth health care ban

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska lawmakers are set to take up debate late Tuesday on a plan that would tack on a proposed 12-week abortion ban to a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The combination of the two highly contentious measures sets up what could be one of the most volatile debates of the session.Technically, lawmakers are slated to take up the final round of debate on the trans health bill, which has already advanced from the first two of three rounds it must survive to pass and go to Gov. Jim Pillen’s desk. But because legislative rules don’t allow amendments to be attached to bills in the final round, lawmakers will debate whether to send the bill back for a second round of debate in order to add the abortion amendment to it.Opponents of the move plan to filibuster for the entire two hours of debate allowed in the final reading of a bill. Conservatives in the unique single-chamber, officially nonpartisan legislature will need 33 o...

Pennsylvania House control up for grabs yet again in special elections

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democrats’ narrow majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives is on the line Tuesday with two special elections that will determine which party controls the chamber.One of those special elections is expected to swing Republicans’ way, but the other in Delaware County, in the Philadelphia suburbs, will be more competitive. It’s the second time this year that Democrats have sweated the outcome of House special elections, and they hope to be just as lucky as before.The stakes are high: A Democratic victory in Delaware County would give first-term Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro at least one chamber to aid his agenda going into the final month of budget negotiations. The results could also affect a proposed constitutional amendment on abortion rights that legislative Republicans are one House vote away from putting before voters as a referendum.In that race, Democrat Heather Boyd, a former congressional and state legislative aide, will be going up aga...

Stage set for Ecuadorian president or lawmakers to be booted out of office

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — A showdown between Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso and the opposition-led National Assembly could result in either side being booted from office this week as lawmakers seek to try him for embezzlement and he mulls exercising his constitutional power to dissolve the legislature.Lawmakers will continue impeachment proceedings against the right-leaning politician Tuesday during a session of the unicameral assembly that Lasso is expected to attend. Political tensions have risen in Ecuador since Lasso, a former banker, was elected in 2021 and clashed from the start with a strong opposition in the Assembly. At the same time, the South American country has experienced an increase in drug-related violence, including several massacres in prisons over the past two years.Whatever happens this week, the country’s overall instability will certainly deepen.“The removal of the president, being an institutional earthquake in any democracy, will be an event that it will sha...

Danny Masterson’s rape retrial: Closing arguments set to begin

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:59:45 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Closing arguments are expected to begin Tuesday at the second trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, who is charged with raping three women at his Los Angeles home between 2001 and 2003. Attorneys for both sides rested their cases Friday, three weeks into the trial. Masterson’s defense attorneys declined to call any witnesses. The 47-year-old’s first trial ended in a mistrial in December, with jurors hopelessly deadlocked on all three counts.The actor has pleaded not guilty. He could get 45 years in prison if convicted on all three counts.The Church of Scientology, of which Masterson is a member and all three women are former members, has played an even larger role in the second trial than it did in the first. The judge allowed a former member of the church’s leadership to testify as an expert on the institution’s policies about going to police, and a courtroom controversy broke out during the trial over a Scientology attorney apparentl...