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France’s mayors wade into a crisis zone on Armenia’s border

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

KORNIDZOR, Armenia — Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s motorcade tore through the Armenian countryside on Wednesday, escorted by a dozen or so beaten-up cars blaring their horns and flying the French tricolor in appreciation, leaving bemused street dogs and the occasional military outpost in their dust.Her visit, along with a group of French regional leaders, was part of an improbable gambit to draw attention to a burgeoning humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, bringing together politicians more accustomed to dealing with planning permissions and bin collectors’ pensions than tense foreign policy on Europe’s far-flung fringe.Behind the black diplomatic SUVs and the minibuses full of foreign and local press were 10 white trucks filled with humanitarian aid donated from France, each emblazoned with the names of the regions taking part — including Ville de Paris, Île-de-France, Occitanie, Pays de la Loire and Strasbourg. The unusual decision for mayors to wade into an international ...

Ryan Reynolds has transformed Wrexham. Who will save Britain’s other struggling towns?

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

WREXHAM, Wales — Sitting in the Royal Oak, a narrow but implausibly long pub in Wrexham’s town center, Gary Tipping is reflecting on the rollercoaster fortunes of his favorite football team.Wrexham Association Football Club (A.F.C.) — a lower-league team barely recognizable since it was bought up by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2021 — has just lost its opening game of the season. But little can dampen the enthusiasm of Tipping or his fellow fans.“What they’ve done for this town, it’s beyond what I could have ever dreamed of,” he says.“People want to see the town and breathe in the atmosphere here,” adds his 21-year-old son Sam, who’s been going to the football with Gary since he was five years old. “There’s a hype around the place.”“Hype” was not a word formerly associated with Wrexham. The third-oldest professional football club in the world, it had fallen on hard times and was struggling to stay afloat in t...

American Airlines flight attendants vote to authorize a strike

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

(CNN) — The latest aviation employees to vote in favor of a strike are American Airlines flight attendants.The union representing them, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, reported a 99.47% vote in favor of a strike authorization vote with 93% of union membership voting.“We’re pushing back and we’re fighting corporate greed, and corporate greed is alive here at American Airlines,” union president Julie Hedrick said Wednesday, which says it represents more than 26,000 workers.“We’re proud of the progress we’ve made in negotiations with the APFA, and we look forward to reaching an agreement that provides our flight attendants with real and meaningful value,” an American Airlines spokesperson said in a statement. “We understand that a strike authorization vote is one of the important ways flight attendants express their desire to get a deal done. The results don’t change our commitment or distract us from working expeditiously to reach an agreement.”The vote does no...

McConnell appears to freeze while speaking with reporters in Kentucky

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

(CNN) — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze for about 30 seconds on Wednesday while speaking with reporters after a speech in Covington, Kentucky.The incident is similar to an episode McConnell experienced at the US Capitol late last month and is likely to raise additional questions about the fitness of the 81-year-old to lead the Senate Republican caucus.Wednesday’s episode occurred when a reporter asked the Republican leader if he was planning to run for reelection in 2026. McConnell had to ask him to repeat the question several times, chuckled for a moment, and then paused, closing his mouth and staring straight ahead.Someone at his side then asked him, “Did you hear the question, senator, running for reelection in 2026?” McConnell did not respond.“I’m sorry you all, we’re gonna need a minute,” the aide told reporters. A member of the senator’s detail spoke quietly to him for a moment, and McConnell was able to whisper an answer to h...

Fall TV preview 2023: 15 shows premiering in the coming weeks as the Hollywood strikes continue

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

Nina Metz | Chicago TribuneHollywood has been in limbo these last few months. It’s been especially tough for everyone who earns their living making TV and film. But it also means viewers will start seeing just how that is impacting the fall network lineup. A prolonged strike — still ongoing — will inevitably have that effect and the work stoppage has reshaped prime time in significant ways.For NBC, that means no new episodes of producer Dick Wolf’s “One Chicago” and “Law & Order” franchises. But there will be new episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Magnum P.I.” (which is moving over from CBS to finish out its run) because both series completed filming before the strikes.ABC is sticking with unscripted staples such as “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Golden Bachelor” a spinoff of “The Bachelor” featuring a 71-year-old widower from Indiana. ABC will also air reruns of “Abbott Elementary.”On CBS, along with expanded versions of the reality shows “The Amazing Race” and “Survivor,” the ...

How brothers Lee and Tod Goldberg turned crime fiction into a family business

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

As light streams through the tree canopy at Descanso Gardens, brothers Lee and Tod Goldberg pause to survey the lush, sun-dappled landscape.“This,” says Tod as he takes in the idyllic view, “would be a great place to bury a body.”The brothers Goldberg agreed to meet on a July morning at the La Cañada Flintridge botanical garden, not to stash a corpse, but to discuss the new crime novels each will be publishing in the next few weeks.Lee Goldberg’s “Malibu Burning,” which lands Sept. 1, tracks a high-stakes heist going down during a massive Southern California wildfire, and Tod Goldberg’s “Gangsters Don’t Die,” in stores Sept. 12, is the final installment in a trilogy more than a decade in the making about a Chicago hitman who hides out in Las Vegas posing as a rabbi.Related: Sign up for our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and moreOver nearly two hours, the brothers, who are hilarious and quotable (as well as hilariously unquotable), walked the grounds, posed for...

Mutineers in Gabon appoint a military leader after detaining the president, alleging corruption

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

LIBREVILLE, Gabon (AP) — Mutinous soldiers in Gabon proclaimed the republican guard chief as their country’s leader Wednesday after placing the just-reelected President Ali Bongo Ondimba under house arrest, alleging betrayal and massive embezzlement during his long-time rule over the oil-rich Central African nation.The coup leaders said in an announcement on Gabon’s state TV that Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema had been “unanimously” designated president of a transitional committee to lead the country. Oligui is a cousin of Bongo, who earlier Wednesday had been declared the winner of the country’s latest presidential election following 55 years of rule by him and his late father. In a video from detention in his residence, Bongo called on people to “make noise” to support him. But the crowds who took to the streets of the capital instead celebrated the coup against a dynasty accused of getting rich on the country’s resource wealth while many of its citizens struggle.“Thank y...

From strikes to wildfire evacuations: How to manage a short-term income loss

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

TORONTO — Whether it’s wildfire evacuations, a labour strike or an unexpected illness, experts say Canadians facing a short-term loss of income should navigate the disruption differently than a longer-term income loss such as a layoff.“I’ve seen people give up a lot of short-term spending, knowing it’s going to be for a really brief time,” said Mark Kalinowski, a financial educator and credit counsellor at Credit Counselling Society.“If you know it’s short and you have a target of when you’re going to go back to work and things are going to return to normal, when you do your budget, you can say ‘you know what, I don’t need to have Netflix this month, I don’t need to go to the coffee shop to buy coffee … for now, I can put these things off.’”It’s a different strategy than a longer-term income change, when you still need to “have some happiness in your life,” he said, because you don’t know how long it could take to find your next job. In an emergency, every penny counts.T...

Prosecutors drop felony charges against Iowa man who had guns, ammunition in Chicago hotel room

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — Prosecutors have dropped all felony charges against an Iowa man who was arrested in 2021 by Chicago police for having guns and ammunition in his hotel room overlooking a popular tourist attraction.Cook County prosecutors dropped the felony charges against Keegan Casteel on Monday after he pleaded guilty to reckless conduct, a misdemeanor, and was ordered to pay a $500 fine.The Ankeny, Iowa, man had faced two felony counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, but no evidence was ever produced in court files that Casteel had anything nefarious planned, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.Casteel was arrested on July 4, 2021, when a housekeeper found the guns and ammunition in his room at the W Hotel. The weapons — a rifle with a laser sight, a handgun and ammunition — were found on the sill of a 12th-floor window that had a view of Ohio Street Beach and Navy Pier, a major tourist attraction along Lake Michigan.Police video showed he told officers he “didn’t mean to startl...

Palestinians clash with their own security forces in a West Bank refugee camp, leaving 1 dead

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:46:15 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Fighting erupted in a refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on Wednesday between Palestinians and their own security forces, leaving a 25-year-old Palestinian dead, officials said. The unrest underscored the challenges facing Palestinian police trying to impose order in the restive territory.In Jerusalem, Israeli police said a Palestinian assailant stabbed an Israeli man near a light-rail station before the attacker was shot and killed by an officer. Israeli paramedics pronounced the attacker dead and said the Israeli man in his mid-20s was moderately wounded.The incident occurred along the invisible line straddling east and west Jerusalem. Police later released a photo of what they said was the knife, its tip stained with blood. Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli security forces shot a Palestinian man who they said tried to ram his car into soldiers at a military checkpoint, hitting and lightly wounding a soldier, authorities said. Wednesday’s inci...