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UK autumn spending statement set for November 22

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

LONDON — Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will set out the U.K.’s next tax and spend plan on November 22, he confirmed Tuesday.The autumn statement is one of two fiscal events delivered every year in the British parliament, alongside the main budget which came in the spring. Hunt told MPs Tuesday the statement will take place next month.Hunt will use the speech to update MPs on the state of the U.K. economy, and set out any changes to tax policy or new public spending commitments. The statement will come alongside an economic and fiscal forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility watchdog.The Chancellor faces pressure from some Conservative backbenchers to introduce tax cuts before next year’s general election — something he has indicated is unlikely, amid efforts from the government to meet Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to halve U.K. inflation from its high of ten percent by the end of the year. His announcement comes after the Office of National Statistics rev...

LGBTQ+ volleyball champion hits a nerve in Turkey’s culture war

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

Turkey’s women volleyballers may have won the European championship on Sunday but the presence of a prominent LGBTQ+ star in the team has reopened the country’s bitterly divisive culture war.The storm over 1.96m-tall Ebrar Karakurt is one of the most high-profile tests of the country’s social direction since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won re-election at the end of May on a conservative Islamist platform, in which he repeatedly pledged to protect traditional families from the “deviant structures” and “virus of heresy” represented by the LGBTQ+ community.Although Erdoğan himself congratulated the team — nicknamed the “Sultans of the Net” —  there has been a tide of invective on social media, and the government is accused of doing little to defend Karakurt from widespread homophobic attacks from the country’s Islamist camp.  A video, filmed a day after the volleyballers claimed victory in the final against Serbia, showed a woman angrily shouting on a bus: “You...

1 dead, 2 injured in early morning Pembroke crash

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

One person is dead, and two others are hospitalized after an early morning crash on Route 3 in Pembroke, state police said.Troopers responding to a single-vehicle crash on Route 3 southbound around 3:45 a.m. Tuesday determined the crash resulted in a fatality and assisted in transporting two other occupants to an area hospital. The name of the person who died has not been released.The cause of the crash remains under investigation.No additional information was immediately available.This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.

The Patriots traded for a former 310-pound tight end. How will they use him?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

The opposing coaches used to gawk.Stand and gawk.Sometimes point, or deliberate how or why or what. But mostly, standing at the 50-yard line, they gawked.It was the way this 310-pound menace snapped off his routes in pregame warmups, cradled passes and manhandled his blocking assignments. Every movement so smooth and under control. He carried a gravity of attention, like the tallest kid in school.Except in 2018, new Patriots offensive tackle Tyrone Wheatley Jr. was neither the tallest, nor the heaviest at Stony Brook, a small FCS program on Long Island. He was simply the most mystifying.How did a 6-foot-6, 310-pound person play tight end? And why didn’t he play offensive line?Five years ago, Wheatley Jr. transformed Stony Brook’s offense upon arrival, despite showing up late to training camp with an injury and zero experience. He immediately mastered the playbook and tilted it toward a two-tight end system. Wheatley had transferred from Michigan, where he caught six pass...

Hong Kong’s top court rules in favor of recognizing same-sex partnerships in a landmark case

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s top court ruled on Tuesday that the government should provide a framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships in a landmark decision for the city’s LGBTQ+ community.The ruling did not grant full marriage rights to same-sex couples but was a partial victory for prominent pro-democracy Jimmy Sham, who had fought a five-year legal battle over the recognition of same-sex marriage registered overseas. Sham married his husband in New York in 2013, and argued that Hong Kong’s laws, which don’t recognize foreign same-sex marriage, violate the constitutional right to equality. Equality advocates said the judgment was a step forward and will have strong implications for the lives of the LGBTQ+ community and the financial hub’s reputation as an inclusive place to stay and work.Judges at the top court, by a majority, declared in a written ruling that the government is in violation of its positive obligation to establish an alternative framework for legal recogniti...

Kim Jong Un and Putin may meet. What do North Korea and Russia need from each other?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may travel to Russia for a summit with President Vladimir Putin, a U.S. official said, in a trip that would underscore deepening cooperation as the two isolated leaders are locked in separate confrontations with the U.S.U.S. officials also said that Russia is seeking to buy ammunition from North Korea to refill reserves drained by its war in Ukraine. In return, experts said, North Korea will likely want food and energy shipments and transfers of sophisticated weapons technologies.A meeting with Putin would be Kim’s first summit with a foreign leader since North Korea closed its borders in January 2020. They met for the first time in April 2019, two months after Kim’s high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with then-U.S. President Donald Trump collapsed. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu traveled to Pyongyang in July and asked Kim to send more ammunition to Russia, according to U.S. officials. Shoigu said Moscow and Py...

TikTok’s Irish data center up and running as European privacy project gets under way

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

LONDON (AP) — TikTok said Tuesday that operations are underway at the first of its three European data centers, part of the popular Chinese owned app’s effort to ease Western fears about privacy risks. The video sharing app said it began transferring European user information to a data center in Dublin. Two more data centers, another in Ireland and one in Norway, are under construction, TikTok said in an update on its plan to localize European user data, dubbed Project Clover. TikTok has been under scrutiny by European and American regulators over concerns that sensitive user data may end up in China. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. TikTok unveiled its plan earlier this year to store data in Europe, where there are stringent privacy laws, after a slew of Western governments banned the app from official devices. NCC Group, a British cybersecurity company, is overseeing the project, TikTok’s vice president o...

Syria’s US-backed Kurdish forces hope to end weeklong clashes with militia in the ‘next 24 hours’

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

DEIR EL-ZOUR, Syria (AP) — Syria’s U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led forces on Tuesday pushed deeper into the last stronghold of Arab tribesmen who have taken up arms against them in eastern Syria. A spokesperson said they hoped to end the dayslong clashes there in the “next 24 hours.”The fighting, which broke out eight days ago in the oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour along the Euphrates River, has so far killed at least 50 people, including several civilians, and wounded dozens. Hundreds of U.S. troops have been based in eastern Syria since 2015 to help battle the Islamic State group.The violence has pitted the Syrian Democratic Forces against the tribesmen and former allies of the the Arab-led militia known as the Deir el-Zour Military Council. It was sparked by the arrest last month of the militia’s leader, Ahmad Khbeil, better known as Abu Khawla, accused by SDF of “multiple crimes and violations,” including drug trafficking. SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami told The Associa...

Meredith Shaw joins Breakfast Television as new co-host

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

Citytv announced that Canadian television and radio personality Meredith Shaw has joined Breakfast Television as its new co-host.Shaw will co-host alongside Sid Seixeiro and the BT family, including Devo Brown, Tammie Sutherland, Stephanie Henry, and Frank Ferragine, beginning Sep.11.The 38-year-old joins the BT morning show with years of experience in the industry, including regular appearances on The Marilyn Denis Show, The Social, CTV’s Your Morning, and etalk.Shaw is well-regarded not only as a reputable Canadian broadcaster but also as a style expert and advocate for inclusion and empowerment.“Well, this is going to be fun! I have so much respect for this award-winning team and great admiration for the BT audience,” said Shaw.“It is my pleasure to step into this new role, a real dream come true. From the moment I met Sid, I knew we could talk about anything, laugh about anything, and, most of all, be honest with each other and the audience. I’m so ...

America’s small towns are disbanding police forces, citing hiring woes. It’s not all bad

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:51 GMT

GOODHUE, Minnesota (AP) — As Goodhue Police Chief Josh Smith struggled this summer to fill vacancies in his small department, he warned the town’s City Council that unless pay and benefits improved, finding new officers would never happen.When nothing changed, Smith quit. So did his few remaining officers, leading the Minnesota town of 1,300 residents to shutter its police force in late August.America is in the midst of a police officer shortage that many in law enforcement blame on the two-fold morale hit of 2020 — the coronavirus pandemic and criticism of police that boiled over with the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. From Minnesota to Maine, Ohio to Texas, small towns unable to fill jobs are eliminating their police departments and turning over police work to their county sheriff, a neighboring town or state police.The trend isn’t altogether new.At least 521 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000 to 200,000 disbanded policing between 1972 and 201...