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Why Britain wants to shout about its offshore asylum ship

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

LONDON — Walking up a narrow gangplank, a small group of asylum seekers boarded the floating barge moored off England’s south coast. It would be their home for the foreseeable future. Their arrival Monday was being closely monitored — and amplified — at the highest levels of the U.K. government. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, on holiday in California, posted a video claiming he was “ending the farce of illegal migrants being put in hotels by the taxpayer.” His Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick enthusiastically shared the rolling news images being played out on social media.That only 15 migrants actually spent the night onboard the Bibby Stockholm on Monday didn’t seem to matter.Undocumented migration has become a red-hot topic for parts of the U.K. electorate, with rocketing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers attempting the dangerous crossing over the English Channel from France each year.Britain’s shambolic processing systems have been unable to cope, and ...

Last stand in Waterloo: Puigdemont sets high price to break Spanish vote impasse

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

LAST STAND IN WATERLOO Puigdemont sets high price to break Spanish vote impasseCatalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont holds the key to Pedro Sánchez staying in office — but he’s driving a hard bargain.By AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALESand EDDY WAX in BrusselsPhoto-illustration by Anthony Gerace for POLITICOSpain’s political future will be decided by one secluded man in a damp corner of Belgium.Six years after organizing an illegal referendum that sought to make Catalonia an independent republic, the region’s former President Carles Puigdemont is once again positioned to shake Spain to its core. With left and right-wing forces technically tied in the Spanish parliament, the country’s next government now depends on the support of seven lawmakers of the separatist Junts party — which Puigdemont founded and controls remotely.From his suburban home in the quaint Walloon town of Waterloo, located just a stone’s throw from the battlefields where Napoleon’s defeat...

Africa flexes its diplomatic muscles

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

Ivor Ichikowitz is an industrialist and philanthropist. He is the chair of the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, which paid for the installation of the Mandela mural in Kyiv.In the wake of this year’s Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, there are some who will point to both the drop in attendance by heads of state and the Black Sea Grain Initiative’s collapse as evidence that the inaugural African Peace Initiative was doomed before it even began.They would be wrong.When the initiative was first conceived, it seemed a mission impossible. It would be futile, cynics agreed, to get Franco and Anglophone Africa — to say nothing of the north and south — to achieve consensus on anything.Yet, seven heads of state actually did. And in June, a group representing these ostensible polar African opposites set out for Kyiv and St. Petersburg, looking to speak to the leaders of the two countries locked in an implacable war. Neither Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy nor Russian President Vlad...

Moscow doesn’t care who it starves

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.Sauntering around the port of Sevastopol in August 1989, American sailors were being mobbed by well-wishers.Their warships, the USS Gates and USS Kauffman, had just received a rapturous welcome from thousands of Soviet citizens, showering “the ships with coins, souvenir lapel pins, cigarettes, candy, and flowers.” And the mariners reciprocated, throwing their baseball caps and standard-issue white Dixie cup hats into the cheering crowd.Those were heady days, marking the end of history — or so some thought. Revolutionary change was sweeping Central Europe; Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika were in full swing; and within three months of the United Sates navy’s goodwill visit, the Berlin Wall was torn down.But as so often happened in the past, the Black Sea is now at the center of conflict once more.Dubbed the “Inhospitable Sea” by the ancient Greeks — not only for the challenge in navigating its squalls and te...

One person stabbed at hotel near Mass and Cass in Boston

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

Police responded to a report of a stabbing Tuesday night at the former Roundhouse Hotel in the area of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.Just before 9 p.m., the victim was transported to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, officials said.Until last month, the building at 91 Massachusetts Avenue had been a city-funded transitional housing and recovery center.Multiple police officers were on scene gathering evidence. This is a developing story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest updates.

Royals hit 3 home runs, beat Red Sox 9-3 to spoil season debut of Boston’s Trevor Story

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

BOSTON (AP) — Drew Waters, MJ Melendez and Michael Massey each hit two-run home runs and the Kansas City Royals snapped a three-game losing streak with a 9-3 win over the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night.Brady Singer (8-8) allowed three runs off five hits over 6 2/3 innings, and the Royals finished with six extra-base hits.Adam Duvall had his 10th home run of the season, and Connor Wong and Jarren Duran added RBIs for Boston, which has lost five of its last six.Kutter Crawford (5-6) allowed three runs on seven hits over 3 1/3 innings, striking out six and walking two.The loss spoiled the season debut of Boston’s Trevor Story, who was in the lineup for the first time since last September after being activated off the 60-day injured list following offseason shoulder surgery. He went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts.With Kansas City leading 1-0 with a runner on in the fourth, Waters connected on Crawford’s cutter and lofted it into Boston’s bullpen in right field for his seventh homer of t...

Yankees’ Aaron Boone says ‘quite a few’ managers called him after ejection: ‘A lot of funny stuff’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

Aaron Boone’s animated ejection earned the admiration of his fellow MLB managers.The Yankees skipper said he heard from “quite a few” of his contemporaries after he drew a line in the dirt near home plate and mimicked umpire Laz Diaz’s strikeout call during Monday night’s road game against the Chicago White Sox.Boone declined to share what other MLB managers told him but said it was “a lot of funny stuff.”The ejection occurred after Diaz called a third strike against Yankees rookie Anthony Volpe in the eighth inning of Monday’s 5-1 loss.“All I know is Laz was telling me, ‘Go.’ So he, I feel like in a way, egged me on to ‘go make a fool of yourself.’ I guess I obliged,” Boone said.Boone, who said Monday that the exchange stemmed from his frustration over multiple calls, added Tuesday that he thought his outburst embarrassed his daughter, Bella.The ejection was Boone’s sixth this s...

Jameson Taillon, Mike Tauchman sink Mets as Cubs even up series, 3-2

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

The good vibes didn’t keep on rolling Tuesday at Citi Field.Mike Tauchman’s go-ahead solo homer off of Drew Smith in the top of the eighth inning proved to be the difference as the Chicago Cubs defeated the Mets, 3-2, in the second of a three-game set.The low-scoring affair needed only one late-inning swing as the Amazins’ had no answer for former Yankee Jameson Taillon. Taillon put together a stellar performance pitching deep into the game.The 31-year-old tossed seven innings, allowing two runs on three hits while striking out seven. He held the Mets scoreless after a first-inning, two-run jack off the bat of Pete Alonso as Buck Showlter’s squad went silently into the night in the final eight frames.Smith squandered a valiant pitching effort from Carlos Carrasco, who turned in a strong performance. The starter got some help from horrible Cubs’ baserunning in the fifth after the road team made two outs on the basepaths.The right-hander tossed five innin...

Royals spoil Story’s return, beat Red Sox 9-3

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

Trevor Story is a great player. He’s a two-time All-Star, a two-time Silver Slugger and one of the best all-around shortstops in baseball.But he’s also just one man, and if fans expected Trevor Story to solve all of the Red Sox problems by himself, Tuesday was a reminder that the club’s issues won’t be easily fixed.Coming off Monday’s thrilling walk-off and with Story making his season debut, the Red Sox couldn’t capitalize on their momentum and fell back to Earth with a listless 9-3 loss to Kansas City. Outside of a two-run rally in the bottom of the fifth the Red Sox bats were mostly silent, and the Royals just teed off on Boston’s beleaguered pitching staff.Story going 0 for 4 with three strikeouts in his return didn’t help, but if the Red Sox pitching staff is going to surrender 15 hits, three home runs and a season-high six stolen bases, there’s only so much any position player can do.“Obviously for how much we want hi...

Terms of new contract that resolved British Columbia port dispute are released

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:11:04 GMT

VANCOUVER — The Canada Industrial Relations Board has released the new terms of the agreement that resolved British Columbia’s port dispute, including a commitment by employers to train workers to perform maintenance on new equipment.Contracting out of maintenance work to third parties had been one of the most contentious issues during the months-long dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada and the BC Maritime Employers Association.The four-year agreement also contains several terms about workers’ compensation.They include increases in the “Modernization and Mechanization retirement lump sum,” bringing that payout to $96,250 in 2026 for eligible retirees, over and above normal pension entitlements.The union representing about 7,400 workers said last Friday its members voted almost 75 per cent in favour of ratifying the new deal, ending a dispute that included a 13-day strike and halted movement of cargo worth billions.The deal f...