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Blinken begins high-stakes talks in China amid rising tensions between world’s two superpowers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

Beijing (CNN) — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken kicked off talks with senior Chinese officials in Beijing Sunday at the start of a high-stakes visit meant to steer relations back on course after months of inflamed tensions between the world’s two largest economies.Blinken is the first secretary of state to travel to China in five years and the most senior US official to make such a mission since President Joe Biden took office in early 2021.Observers will be closely watching for whether a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping is on the cards. Previous trips by America’s top diplomat have often involved a face to face with China’s top leader, but relations are at their lowest in decades.Officials from both governments have signaled low expectations for the visit, with a senior State Department official telling reporters earlier this week that he does not expect “a long list of deliverables.”Instead, US officials are framing the trip as an effort to resu...

Bou, Gil lead Revolution to 3-1 victory over Orlando City

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Gustavo Bou and Carles Gil both had a goal and an assist to lead New England to a 3-1 victory over Orlando City on a rainy Saturday night, extending the Revolution’s unbeaten streak at home to nine.Neither team scored until Emmanuel Boateng found the net for a second time this season, knocking in a rebound in the 51st minute to give New England (9-3-6) the lead.The Revolution took a two-goal lead in the 69th minute on a goal by Bou. Noel Buck and Gil picked up assists on Bou’s third score of the season.Orlando City (7-5-5) got back into the match when rookie Duncan McGuire found the net for a fifth time, scoring on a header in the 80th minute. Michael Halliday and Iván Angulo had assists.It took the Revolution five minutes to push their lead back to two. Gil used passes from Bou and substitute Giacomo Vrioni to score his seventh goal of the season. Gil has had a hand in five of the Revs’ last six goals. Gil has contributed to 84 regular-sea...

Howie Carr: Democrats 2024 campaign roadmap could be ‘another pandemic’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

Being a COVID dictator means never having to say you’re sorry, or even that you were wrong.They still won’t apologize. The Democrat hacks and frauds in the white lab coats refuse to concede that they concocted an utterly avoidable catastrophe, perhaps the most disastrous in American history.They gleefully ruined millions of lives and businesses for one simple goal — getting rid of Donald Trump as president.The problem was never the Red Chinese-created virus itself. That was manageable, obviously. The ongoing fiasco was created by the overreaction to the virus.It gave the Deep State the excuse to what they’d long been fantasizing about for so long in their Marxist ivory towers and think tanks — drastically curtailing the liberties of the American people.As Jane Fonda so famously put it: “COVID is God’s gift to the left.”And it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Or so the comrades hope.Just last week, Dementia Joe Biden made it clear what happens next:“There will be another pandemic,” h...

Newton man remembers wife, whose body parts may have been sold in Harvard Medical School scandal

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

Jack Porter received a very troubling letter on Wednesday from Harvard, his employer, saying that his beloved late wife Raya’s remains “may have been impacted” in a body part trafficking operation.“What bothers me is that there’s somebody in some basement somewhere in this country or elsewhere fondling my wife’s body parts,” Porter told the Herald. “It could be her brain, her skin, her bones. This is disgusting and this is why there should be a severe punishment.”The shocking letter came the same day that a former employee, Cedric Lodge, 55, of Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gifts program — which receives bodies donated to the university to teach medical students anatomy — had been indicted in federal court in Pennsylvania on charges related to stealing and then selling organs and other parts of human bodies before they were to be cremated. In all, seven people were named in court papers as participants in the ring.“We have been working with information supplied by federal auth...

Austrians say they foiled possible attack on Vienna’s Pride parade by alleged IS sympathizers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Austrian authorities said Sunday they had foiled a possible attack on Vienna’s Pride parade by three young men who had allegedly sympathized with the extremist Islamic State group.The head of Austria’s domestic intelligence service told reporters that the suspects, aged 14, 17 and 20, were arrested before the start of the Saturday’s Pride parade, which was attended by around 300,000 people, public broadcaster ORF reported.Omar Haijawi-Pirchner from the State Protection and Intelligence Directorate said that there was “no danger for the participants of the parade at any time.”The intelligence service had received advance knowledge of the suspects’ alleged plans, kept them “under constant control,” and arrested them on the orders of the St. Poelten public prosecutor’s office following house searches on Saturday that uncovered various evidence, including weapons, ORF reported.The three suspects, Austrian citizens of Bosnian and Chechen origin, whose iden...

Mali’s military junta holds referendum on new constitution that it calls a step toward new elections

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Malian voters cast ballots on a new draft constitution Sunday in a referendum that the country’s coup leader says will pave the way toward holding new elections in 2024, but that critics have called a delaying tactic for him to extend his time in power.In a message broadcast on state television on the eve of the vote, Col. Assimi Goita told Malians that the proposed draft constitution “provides for a better-organized executive power, while maintaining the necessary balance with the legislative power.”However, Imam Mahmoud Dicko, an opponent of the military junta, invited his supporters to a large hall in Bamako on Friday to ask them to vote against it. “In our country today, can we speak of justice, democracy, human rights, the rule of law? What kind of democracy are we talking about? Where is it? What rule of law is there in a country where justice is used by the military to repress people? That’s the reality of this country today,” said Dicko, a one-time ...

Netanyahu says will move ahead on contentious judicial overhaul plan after talks crumble

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday his government intends to move ahead on contentious plans to change the country’s judicial system after talks aimed at finding a compromise solution appeared to be crumbling.The government’s plans to overhaul the judiciary plunged Israel into one of its worst domestic crises ever earlier this year. Negotiations between the government and opposition parties somewhat alleviated the crisis with attempts to find a middle ground over proposed changes to the country’s justice system. Those talks were jolted last week over a crisis surrounding the powerful regular committee responsible for picking the country’s judges. Opposition leaders said negotiations were frozen until the committee is formed. At a meeting of his Cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said the opposition wasn’t negotiating seriously and that his government would move ahead cautiously on the overhaul.“We will begin, this week, practica...

In Labrador, those caring for a town’s homeless population face backlash, criticism

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

HAPPY VALLEY-GOOSE BAY, N.L. — On a recent spring day in a sandy church parking lot in Labrador, Vanessa Hamel stopped mid-sentence to lean out of a food truck window and wave to an approaching group of people.“Whaddaya doin’?” she sang out to them, laughing. They waved and laughed back.She pulled her head back into the truck — the local Salvation Army’s Emergency Disaster Relief Vehicle — and began gathering up bags of ham sandwiches, juices and snacks to hand out to them. They’re homeless and they sometimes get extra, said Hamel, who is a community outreach worker with the church.A church offering food to those who can’t afford it is generally unremarkable. But in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L., it’s become controversial. Among Hamel’s familiar clients are homeless and transient people who live along the wooded trails that snake through the town. Their numbers have spiked from a few dozen to more than 80 in recent years. As governments and organizations...

Readers and writers: Author digs into family’s intersection with legendary Hormel swindle

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

Gretchen Cherington might be a wealthy woman today as a stockholder in the $11 billion Hormel Foods Corp., if only Hormel hadn’t been robbed of $1.2 million by a company executive who was found out in 1921. The business, known then as Geo. A. Hormel & Co., almost didn’t survive. It left her grandfather bankrupt.Gretchen Cherington launches her new book, “The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy,” about how her grandfather lost his fortune to an embezzler in the Hormel company. (Gretchen Cherington)Cherington’s new memoir, “The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy” (She Writes Press, $17.95), is the engrossing, well-told story of the entwined lives of three ambitious men living in Austin, Minn., in the early 20th-century glory days of entrepreneurs.“The Butcher” is George Hormel, a German American who could “cleave a hog with a single blow,” innovative founder of a company in 1891 that sold good meats that ...

40 years later, Burnsville-based Northern Tool brings its first product into the battery-powered age

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:38 GMT

What began as a single build-it-yourself product out of a garage in Eagan has grown to a billion-dollar multi-channel retailer with 130 stores.Northern Tool + Equipment is celebrating more than 40 years in business by updating its flagship product that Minnesotans know all too well: the log splitter.Don Kotula, founder of Burnsville-based Northern Tool + Equipment uses the company’s original log splitter (undated). The retailer debuted its new battery-powered log splitter in June 2023. (Courtesy of Northern Tool + Equipment)Don Kotula started his family-owned company, first known as Northern Hydraulics, in 1981 with a log splitter that customers had to build themselves. This month, his sons and now co-owners Ryan and Wade Kotula launched the company’s first battery-powered log splitter.“We are getting back to our roots and what started the company,” said Ryan Kotula.Headquartered in Burnsville, Northern Tool sells tools and equipment online, mostly to trades professionals, and...