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Bulgaria holds 5th parliamentary election in 2 years

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Bulgaria held its fifth general election in two years Sunday, which political leaders hoped would end government instability and provide a path to overcoming economic woes fueled by the war in Ukraine.Turnout was expected to be low due to voter apathy and disillusionment with politicians, who have been repeatedly unable to cobble together a viable governing coalition. The latest opinion polls suggested the chances for an immediate end to the political stalemate were low, with up to seven groups potentially reaching the 4% threshold to enter a fragmented parliament. According to the polls, populist and pro-Russia parties were likely to increase their representation.Most pollsters see three-time Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s center-right GERB party running neck-and-neck at around 26% with its main rival, Kiril Petkov’s liberal We Continue the Change party, which recently formed a coalition with the right-wing Democratic Bulgaria.After casting his ballot, Boris...

RCMP hopes to gain recruits with 150th anniversary, as N.S. inquiry casts new shadow

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

OTTAWA — The RCMP is hoping to boost recruitment numbers in marking its upcoming 150th anniversary — even as the national force’s structure and practices come under damning new scrutiny. The Mass Casualty Commission released it final report last week into the April 2020 shooting rampage that left 22 people dead in Nova Scotia. It named a litany of RCMP fallings and issued a call for the force to “finally” undergo the fundamental changes previous probes have demanded. That finding came less than two months ahead of the Mounties’ 150th anniversary on May 23.Documents obtained by The Canadian Press under federal access-to-information laws show the Mounties have been planning to mark the event since at least last summer — and they say they are not adjusting those plans in light of recent criticisms.Planning documents show that to celebrate, RCMP divisions have been planning to host various gatherings, and thousands of memento cards and special coins have been ord...

Six Canadian children to return from Syrian detention without their mother: advocates

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

OTTAWA — Six Canadian children are set to leave a Syrian prison camp and fly to Canada without their mother, who cannot come with them because federal officials have not completed her security assessment, advocates for the family say.The federal government gave the Quebec woman until today to decide whether her children would join other Canadians on the repatriation flight, expected to depart any day now, or remain with her in Syria, said Alexandra Bain of the group Families Against Violent Extremism.“I’m shocked. It doesn’t make any sense,” Bain said Saturday in an interview. “It’s not how I expect Canada to behave.”The Canadians are among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The children, ranging in age from as young as three to 16 years, have no family in Quebec, said Bain, whose organization helps families with loved on...

Pamela Paul: The most profound loss on campuses isn’t free speech. It’s listening.

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

On April 8, 1991, when I was a sophomore at Brown University, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia came to campus to speak. Conservatives allegedly existed at Brown, but the school was as true to its left-leaning reputation then as it is now. This was where Amy Carter, the daughter of the former president, got in trouble for protesting apartheid, where a longhaired John F. Kennedy Jr. was also an anti-apartheid activist, where the most popular campus newspaper comic strip featured a character named P.C. Person.We were right about everything. We knew our enemy, and we hated him, whether it was former segregationist Strom Thurmond or bigoted Jesse Helms, both somehow in Congress, or pugnacious Senate minority leader Bob Dole. Students regularly protested in favor of abortion access and need-blind admissions.That April evening of Scalia’s talk, I lined up with my anti-Helms T-shirt on. I barely made it into a back row of the packed auditorium, where I awaited what would surely be a tri...

Eight years after being stolen, three Native jingle dresses showed up in an online auction. Who rightfully owns them?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

Arlene Duncan was at work when she saw the text messages.Look at these online auction listings, her friends urged. They texted screenshots of three jingle dresses, colorful handmade garments with sacred meaning in Native culture.Don’t these dresses look familiar?Three jingle dresses made by Arlene Duncan, which she said were stolen in 2015, were listed in an online auction run by a North St. Paul consignment business in February 2023. Listings are shown here in a composite screenshot from March 24, 2023.Duncan stared at her phone in shock. Of course she recognized the dresses: She’d made them herself — and hadn’t seen them in eight years.Arlene Duncan, left, poses with then-President Barack Obama at a White House Tribal Nations Summit in approximately 2012. Duncan, a member of the White Earth nation, is wearing a traditional jingle dress, though not one of the dresses that was listed for sale in a 2023 online auction. (Photo courtesy Arlene Duncan)The garments were three...

Skywatch: The changing of the guard

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

April evenings are a little more comfortable for stargazers, but there are tradeoffs. Later sunsets mean a later start for your stargazing. Another tradeoff is that the winter constellations, the best and brightest, in my opinion, are heading for the celestial exits. As April progresses, the mighty constellation Orion the Hunter and his gang of bright stars and constellations begin the evenings lower and lower in the western sky. Eventually, they’ll disappear entirely until late next autumn. Enjoy the best array of constellations while you can.In early April, all of Orion’s gang is still prominently displayed in the western half of the sky. Orion the Hunter is the leading player. It’s one of the few constellations that actually resembles what it’s supposed to be, and it’s pretty easy to envision it as a muscular man’s torso. Surrounding Orion are the constellations Taurus the Bull, resembling a small downward pointing arrow; Auriga the Chariot dri...

St. Paul’s hotly debated Summit Avenue bike trail approaches key hearing. Things to know.

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

Paul Nelson, who gets most everywhere by bicycle, began riding down St. Paul’s historic Summit Avenue to work even before in-street bike lanes were added to the tree-lined corridor in the early 1990s. They were thought at the time to be the first bike lanes in the state, the beginning of a quiet revolution that has picked up enough momentum as to leave the pioneering infrastructure outdated.In Nelson’s view, the lanes he welcomed 30 years ago along Summit — home to the longest stretch of Victorian mansions in the nation — are yesterday’s news. It’s time, he figures, for one of St. Paul’s most celebrated residential streets to add an elevated 4.7-mile bike path on the same level as the sidewalk.A badly needed, multi-segment road reconstruction in the foreseeable future would provide St. Paul Public Works and St. Paul Parks and Recreation just the opportunity, he said, as dozens of boulevard trees will have to come down either way.“They ...

‘Once it’s gone, there’s no getting it back’: Scammers now sending victims to cryptocurrency ATMs

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

Woodbury Police Detective Lynn Lawrence explains how thieves scam people using bitcoin ATMs, like this one located at a gas station in Woodbury. More than 46,000 people in the U.S. reported losing more than $1.3 billion in cryptocurrency to scams from the start of 2021 through June 2022, according to a report by the Federal Trade Commission. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)The email that arrived in a Woodbury woman’s inbox on Valentine’s Day 2022 purportedly came from Geek Squad. It said her subscription to the 24-hour in-home computer support and repair services was being renewed. Her account would be debited $1,145.“Years ago, we had a service contract with Geek Squad, so I didn’t think much about it,” the woman said. “The email said if I didn’t want to renew, I had 48 hours to cancel it, but that 48-hour period had already passed.”The woman called the phone number listed on the email — which had a fake invoice number and an official-looking logo — and told the...

Tips to avoid being crypto-scammed

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

More than 46,000 people in the U.S. reported losing more than $1.3 billion in cryptocurrency to scams from the start of 2021 through June 2022, according to a report by the Federal Trade Commission.Here are some tips to avoid becoming one of them:Block unrecognized callers and texters.Don’t give your personal or financial information in response to a request that you didn’t expect. Honest organizations won’t call, email or text to ask for your personal information, like your Social Security, bank account or credit card numbers.If you get an email or text message from a company you do business with and you think it’s real, it’s still best not to click on any links. Instead, contact them using a website you know is trustworthy. Or look up their phone number. Don’t call a number they gave you or the number from your caller ID.Resist the pressure to act immediately. Honest businesses will give you time to make a decision. Anyone who pressures you to pay or give them your personal inform...

Literary calendar for week of April 2

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:18:11 GMT

BLACK/KELLER: Cara Black and Rebecca A. Keller in conversation moderated by Jess Lourey. In Black’s novel “Night Flight to Paris,” Kate Rees has been dragged back into the British Secret Service by her former handler for a risky mission in Paris. Keller’s “You Should Have Known” is about retired nurse Frannie Greene who moves into a senior living apartment and makes friends with a woman married to a judge Frannie believes is implicated in the death of her beloved grandmother. Lourey’s latest novel is “The Quarry Girls.” 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 4, Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls.EKPHRASTIC EXTRAVAGANZA!: Poets Margaret Hasse, Tish Jones, Freya Manfred and Joyce Suphen read poems they’ve written about the art and life of Tressa Sularz, a Minneapolis basket maker and fiber artist who uses ancient techniques of wicker, plaiting, coiling and twining to make things. The reading is part of an opening of Sularz’s retro...