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Georgian president pardons jailed journalist after EU, US outcry

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has pardoned a prominent opposition journalist who spent more than a year in jail, amid pressure from the EU, U.S. and international NGOs seeking to secure his release.In a statement issued Thursday evening, the president of the South Caucasus nation announced she had “signed the act pardoning Nikoloz Gvaramia,” a high-profile critic of the government who was sentenced to three and a half years behind bars in May 2022.Zourabichvili said she made the decision to intervene after the Supreme Court declined to hear Gvaramia’s appeal. “I am not going to give any explanation for this decision, it is my discretionary right and I am using it today,” she added.In a statement following Zourabichvili’s decision, European Council President Charles Michel welcomed the pardon “as an essential step towards depolarisation in Georgia.”Despite a publicly stated ambition to join the EU, Georgia’s application ...

POLITICO Pro Morning Energy and Climate UK: CBAM countdown — Net zero and tax — Où est Rishi?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

Presented by SSE By CHARLIE COOPER, ABBY WALLACE and RUSSELL HARGRAVE PRESENTED BY View in your browser or listen to audioSNEAK PEEK— The clock is ticking for the U.K. to decide whether it wants its own carbon border tax.— Does the tax system hold the key to net zero policy? One climate expert wants the Treasury to do more.— Why isn’t Rishi Sunak at the climate finance summit in Paris? Good question, say campaigners. A very warm welcome to Friday’s POLITICO Pro Morning Energy and Climate UK. Hay fever is letting up and Elton John is headlining Glastonbury — there can’t be a better way to ease into the weekend.If you are not already a Pro subscriber and would like a free trial of this newsletter, sign up here.DRIVING THE DAYCBAM COUNTDOWN: A government consultation on a potential U.K. carbon tax on imports is, as of midnight last night, closed — and the clock is ticking for the government to decide the way ahead.Recap: Ministers launched the co...

City Heights murder suspect to undergo mental competency evaluation

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- Facing a first-degree murder charge, 23-year-old Siliveinusi Hamala appeared in court Thursday.Hamala allegedly stabbed and killed 65-year-old Chi Cao in City Heights Monday morning.On Thursday, Hamala was expected to be arraigned, but he did not make a plea.“Rather than being arraigned and entering a plea of guilty or not guilty, his attorney immediately declared a doubt as to his mental competency and criminal proceedings were suspended," Deputy District Attorney Amelia Diedrich said.Police say Cao was exercising at the Central Avenue Mini Park near her home around 8:30 a.m. when, without warning, she was attacked and stabbed multiple times.About nine hours later, police found and arrested Hamala at a home a few blocks away on 39th Street. 2 arrested in San Diego drug bust Irene Peralta says she knew Cao for a long time and often took walks with her.“I feel so bad. I was praying -- I still pray for her every day because I can't believe what happened," Peralta said.H...

SDPD plan to activate smart street lights, license plate readers moves forward

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

SAN DIEGO—The debate over smart surveillance street lights and license plate readers in the city of San Diego is heating up again. The San Diego Privacy Advisory Board voted unanimously to push the plan forward to the city council. The plan would make San Diego the largest city to use street lights with license plate readers.But some are worried about privacy.“Put the cameras away. Who watches who?” said community members at the meeting.Community members expressed their opposition to more surveillance technology potentially hitting the streets of San Diego.“Our biggest concern is this money should be going to our communities not towards cameras and surveillance,” said Stacey Uy with Asian Solidarity Collective. “We all know it’s not cameras that keep us safe. It’s youth drop-in centers. It’s community health centers. It’s mental health services. We need so much more than just cameras.”Smart street lights have been installed throughout the city but are not currently in use. The ...

Exploding fire extinguisher kills student and injures 5 during Bangkok high school fire drill

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — A fire extinguisher exploded during a high school’s annual fire drill Friday in Thailand’s capital, killing one student and injuring five others, a rescuer said.The canister that exploded was a CO2-type fire extinguisher and may have become defective from sun or heat exposure, said Anyawut Phoampai of the Ruam Katanyu Foundation, one of Thailand’s biggest rescue organizations, who confirmed the death and injuries.The incident happened at Rajavinit Mathayom School in Bangkok’s Dusit district.The Associated Press

Malaysia charges 4 Thais over the mass graves and human trafficking camps found in 2015

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Four Thai nationals were charged Friday under Malaysia’s anti-trafficking laws in connection with the 2015 discovery of mass graves believed to be of Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis held in camps in a hilly jungle area on the country’s border with Thailand.Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution said in a statement that the four were among 10 Thai citizens the government had sought for extradition in 2017 over the tragedy at Wang Kelian in northern Perlis state that had shocked the nation. Following cooperation with Thai authorities, he said the four men were caught and extradicted to Malaysia on Thursday to face charges.In May 2015, Malaysian police announced the discovery of a cluster of abandoned jungle camps used by human traffickers in Wang Kelian and later exhumed 139 bodies from mass graves there. The findings followed a similar discovery earlier the same month by Thai police, who unearthed 36 bodies from shallow graves on the Thai side of...

Storms and heavy rain flood roads, block railway lines in Germany

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Storms and heavy rain across a large swath of Germany flooded roads and forced the closure of some major railway routes on Friday, but there was no immediate word of any injuries.Germany’s national weather service had warned earlier this week of severe storms with significant amounts of rainfall, which hit on Thursday. In the western city of Duisburg, the fire service said it rescued several people from cars that got stuck on flooded streets. Shops were flooded and streets inundated in the northern city of Braunschweig, and there were similar reports from Kassel. In Hattersheim, near Frankfurt, trees fell on houses and cars, German news agency dpa reported.Germany’s national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, said that the main line between Hamburg and Berlin was closed because of storm damage, as was a major north-south route between Kassel and Goettingen.The Associated Press

Germany’s biggest Jewish educational and cultural complex since the Holocaust to open in Berlin

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — When Berlin Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal first talked about his dream of building Germany’s biggest Jewish educational and cultural complex since the Holocaust, most people who heard about the plan were skeptical.But five years after the groundbreaking, Teichtal, a Berlin rabbi and head of the local Chabad community, beams as he steps onto the seventh-floor balcony of the new curved, blue-tiled building overlooking the campus amphitheater, garden, playground and a plot still covered with containers and construction material that will eventually become a sports field.“We’re changing the narrative about Jews in Germany,” Teichtal told The Associated Press earlier this week.“Too often people only think about the Holocaust and antisemitism when it comes to Jews in Germany,” the 51-year-old rabbi said. “Our Jewish campus is about the future, it’s about joy, about studying and living together.”The Pears Jewish Campus, in the German capital’s Wilmersdorf neighborhood, officially ope...

Greek elections a one-horse race after conservatives topple left-wing strongholds

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greeks return to the polls Sunday for a second general election in five weeks, with the conservative front-runners eyeing a landslide win after toppling strongholds dominated by their opponents for decades.Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the 55-year-old conservative leader, is seeking a second four-year term as prime minister. His center-right New Democracy party won by a huge margin in May elections but is heading to a second ballot to take advantage of election law changes that favor the winning party.Sunday’s vote comes days after hundreds of migrants died and went missing in southern Greece when an over-crowded fishing trawler capsized and sank, drawing criticism over how Greek authorities handled the rescue.But the disaster did little to dent Mitsotakis’ 20-point lead in opinion polls over left-wing rivals.As Greece emerges from a major financial crisis in the previous decade and turmoil caused by the pandemic, voters are happy to return a prime minister who delivere...

Oklahoma death row inmate plans to reject chance for clemency despite maintaining his innocence

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:18 GMT

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A man scheduled to be executed in September for the 1996 killing of a University of Oklahoma dance student plans to reject his chance for a clemency hearing, saying there is little hope the state’s Republican governor would spare his life.Anthony Sanchez, 44, said in a telephone interview Thursday from Oklahoma’s death row that even in the rare case when the five-member Pardon and Parole Board recommends clemency, Gov. Kevin Stitt is unlikely to grant it.“I’ve sat in my cell and I’ve watched inmate after inmate after inmate get clemency and get denied clemency,” Sanchez said. “Either way, it doesn’t go well for the inmates.”Sanchez cited the recent cases of Bigler Stouffer and James Coddington, both of whom were executed after the board voted 3-2 for clemency that was later rejected by Stitt.“They went out there and poured their hearts out, man,” Sanchez said. “Why would I want to be a part of anything like that, if you’re goi...