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Poland still worst country to be gay in the EU: Report

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

For a fourth year in a row, Poland holds the worst record on LGBTQ+ rights in the EU behind Romania and Bulgaria, a report from rights organization ILGA-Europe released Thursday shows.The report ranks European countries based on a review of laws and policies affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. Each country is assigned a grade, ranging from 0 (gross violations of human rights) to 100 percent (full equality).Similar to 2022, Malta tops the list with a score of 89 percent, followed by Belgium and Denmark, tied at 76 percent — all far above Poland (15 percent), Romania (18 percent) and Bulgaria (20 percent).“Despite intense anti-LGBTI attacks in several countries, equality is still advancing across Europe,” through the passing of “legislation recognising gender identity,” ILGA-Europe said in a press release.Although Poland remains worst-in-class among EU countries — which has been the case since 2020 — it gained two points c...

Residents raise concerns over Del Mar housing project

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

 DEL MAR, Calif. – Some Del Mar residents are concerned the bluff north of the Dog Beach is not stable enough for a proposed housing project.“We need some reports that really tell us what’s really going on here,” said Carla Hayes, with Friends of Del Mar North Bluff.Hayes is leading the effort to fund two reports on Del Mar North Bluff about its stability and depth of its sea caves, because that bluff may be the future home of affordable housing project Seaside Ridge.“Everybody in this community knows that that bluff happens to be very fragile and is sliding all the time. When you see the sea caves, and you see all this dirt sloughing off, little rockslides pretty much year-round, you can can’t predict it,” Hayes said.She’s hired a Scripps Institute researcher and geotechnical engineer at a cost of around $15,000.The reports will likely be completed in the coming weeks and a GoFundMe started by Hayes reached more than $3,000 as of Wednesday evening.In a statement from the spokespers...

Israel kills another militant commander in Gaza as fighting goes on, truce efforts falter

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip killed a fourth militant commander on Thursday, raising the death toll from the latest burst of fighting to 25. Israel braced for more rocket fire amid reports of faltering Egyptian attempts to broker a cease-fire. It has been the worst bout of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza in months, and among the dead were also women and children. The conflagration comes at a time of soaring tensions and spiking violence over the past year in the West Bank. Early on Thursday, the Israeli military carried out strikes against the Islamic Jihad militant group and said a senior commander in charge of the group’s rocket launching force, Ali Ghali, was killed when his apartment was hit. Military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told Israeli Army Radio that two other militants were also killed in the strike and that the rest of the building remained intact. “The apartment was targeted in a very precise wa...

How Europe is building artificial intelligence guardrails

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Authorities around the world are racing to draw up rules for artificial intelligence, including in the European Union, where draft legislation faces a pivotal moment on Thursday. A European Parliament committee is set to vote on the proposed rules, part of a yearslong effort to draw up guardrails for artificial intelligence. Those efforts have taken on more urgency as the rapid advance of ChatGPT highlights benefits the emerging technology can bring — and the new perils it poses.Here’s a look at the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act: HOW DO THE RULES WORK? The AI Act, first proposed in 2021, will govern any product or service that uses an artificial intelligence system. The act will classify AI systems according to four levels of risk, from minimal to unacceptable. Riskier applications will face tougher requirements, including being more transparent and using accurate data. Think about it as a “risk management system for AI,” said Johann Laux, an exper...

Bank of England set to raise UK interest rates to highest level since 2008

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

LONDON (AP) — The Bank of England is set to raise interest rates later Thursday to their highest level since late 2008 as it continues to combat stubbornly high inflation in the U.K.Financial markets expect the bank’s nine-member Monetary Policy Committee to lift its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.5%, its 12th straight increase. Other major central banks, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, have also been raising interest rates at a consistent pace in order to get inflation rates down from multi-decade highs.The Bank of England started raising interest rates in late 2021 from a low of 0.1% in order to keep a lid on price rises that were first largely stoked by bottlenecks resulting from the lifting of coronavirus lockdown restrictions and subsequently by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led to energy prices surging.Alongside its interest rate decision, the bank will be publishing its quarterly economic projection...

Head of Russia's Wagner group says still no sign of promised ammunition

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

Russia's mercenary Wagner forces have not yet received the ammunition promised by Moscow, the head of the group said on Tuesday (9 May), rowing back from comments hours earlier that initial data showed they had begun to get it.But Yevgeny Prigozhin (pictured), whose forces have spent months trying to capture the eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut, added that he did not want to "spoil" Russia's big Victory Day parade set for 0700 GMT, and would reveal more details afterwards."The people who were supposed to fulfil the (shipment) orders have so far, over the past day, not fulfilled them," Prigozhin said in a video post on the messaging app Telegram.Late on Monday, he had said preliminary data showed his troops were beginning to get the ammunition, while cautioning they had not "seen it in practice".President Vladimir Putin will speak at the military parade in Red Square, one of Russia's most cherished public events, held to mark the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.On Su...

European Parliament recognizes the strategic importance of standardization 

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

“I'm pleased to see that standardization is increasingly at the heart of the EU's Digital and Industrial Strategy, recognising its strategic importance in shaping our future,” said ECR Rapporteur Adam Bielan after his report on a standardization strategy for the internal market was adopted by the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 9 May. Presenting the text, Bielan pointed out that the functioning of the internal market was greatly facilitated by the adoption of market standards, which replace up to 34 national standards with one common European standard. “This meets the needs of European industry as well as the interests of society as a whole. Our commitment to the market-based and voluntary process behind standards is key to promoting a sustainable global system,” Bielan stressed. He also added that one of the key issues highlighted in the report was the need for international co-operation on standardization, concluding that: “Given the changing and complex dynamics of global tr...

Czech power utility CEZ net profit down in Q1, proposes record dividend

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech dominant power utility CEZ said on Thursday its net profit in the first quarter of the year was 10.8 billion Czech crowns ($505 million), 60% less than a year ago.At the same time, the board of directors has approved a proposal for a record dividend of 117 Czech crowns per share for the company’s annual shareholder meeting on June 26.That came after CEZ reported in March net profit of 80.7 billion Czech crowns in 2022, eight times as much as the previous year.The country’s main electricity producer attributed the massive increase to an “enormous rise in prices” caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and to higher profit from commodity trading on foreign markets and also high operational reliability in its power plants.The Czech state, which has an almost 70% stake in the company, will receive in 2023 more than 100 billion Czech crowns from CEZ in dividends, income taxes and levies on production sales, including a windfall tax on profits introduced as pric...

Yellen says defaulting on the US national debt is “unthinkable” and would rank as a catastrophe for the global economy

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

NIIGATA, Japan (AP) — Yellen says defaulting on the US national debt is “unthinkable” and would rank as a catastrophe for the global economy.Source

Zelenskyy: Ukraine counteroffensive needs more time, launching now would cost too many lives

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:32 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his country’s military needs more time to prepare an anticipated counteroffensive aimed at pushing back Russian occupying forces.Zelenskyy said in an interview broadcast Thursday by the BBC that it would be “unacceptable” to launch the assault now because too many lives would be lost.“With (what we have) we can go forward and be successful,” Zelenskyy said in the interview, according to the BBC.“But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable,” he was quoted as saying. The interview was reportedly carried out in Kyiv with public service broadcasters who are members of Eurovision News, including the BBC.“So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time,” Zelenskyy was quoted as saying.A Ukrainian fightback against Russia’s invasion more than 14 months ago has been expected for weeks. Ukraine is receiving advanced Western weapons, including tanks and other armored vehicles, and Western training for its...