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10 years since bankruptcy, Detroit’s finances are better but city workers and retirees feel burned

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — Mike Berent has spent more than 27 years rushing into burning houses in Detroit, pulling people to safety and ensuring his fellow firefighters get out alive.But as the 52-year-old Detroit Fire Department lieutenant approaches mandatory retirement at age 60, he says one thing is clear: He will need to keep working to make ends meet.“I’m trying to put as much money away as a I can,” said Berent, who also works in sales. “A second job affords you to have a little bit of extra.”Thousands of city employees and retirees lost big on July 18, 2013, when a state-appointed manager made Detroit the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy.A decade later, the Motor City has risen from the ashes of insolvency, with balanced budgets, revenue increases and millions of dollars socked away. But Berent and others who spent years on Detroit’s payroll say they can’t help but feel left behind.“You become a firefighter because that’s your passion and you’ll make a decent living...

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds embraces role as a key player in Republican presidential race

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — When Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds seized the spotlight from a half dozen Republican presidential contenders on Friday by signing a restrictive abortion measure into law at an event meant to showcase the candidates, she embraced her front-and-center role in the 2024 presidential election.The standing ovation she received from some 2,000 conservative Christians gathered in Des Moines only reinforced the influence she wields, not just in Iowa but increasingly on a national stage.“I could not imagine a more appropriate place to sign this bill,” Reynolds said. “Today, the most glaring injustice of all is about to be put right.”Reynolds had always been scheduled to give remarks at The Family Leadership Summit, one of many places this summer where Republican presidential candidates are expected to address Iowa’s voters, who will cast the first ballots in just six months. But the appearance morphed into a triumphant demonstration of the governor’s rising nation...

Judge in Trump documents case under the spotlight as arguments near

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — A month after former President Donald Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents, the judge presiding over the case is set to take on a more visible role as she weighs competing requests on a trial date and hears arguments this week on a procedural, but potentially crucial, area of the law.A pretrial conference Tuesday to discuss procedures for handling classified information will represent the first courtroom arguments in the case before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon since Trump was indicted five weeks ago. The arguments could provide insight into how Cannon intends to preside over the case while she also confronts the unresolved question of how to schedule Trump’s trial as he campaigns for president.Those issues would be closely watched in any trial involving a former president. But Cannon could face additional scrutiny in light of a much-dissected ruling she issued last year that granted the Trump team’s request for a special master to conduct ...

Fuzzy invasion of domestic rabbits has a Florida suburb hopping into a hunt for new owners

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

WILTON MANORS, Fla. (AP) — When Alicia Griggs steps outside her suburban Fort Lauderdale home, Florida’s latest invasive species comes a-hoppin’ down the street: lionhead rabbits. The bunnies, which sport an impressive flowing mane around their heads, want the food Griggs carries. But she also represents their best chance of survival and moving where this domesticated breed belongs: inside homes, away from cars, cats, hawks, Florida heat and possibly government-hired exterminators. Griggs is spearheading efforts to raise the $20,000 to $40,000 it would cost for a rescue group to capture, neuter, vaccinate, shelter and then give away the estimated 60 to 100 lionheads now populating Jenada Isles, an 81-home community in Wilton Manors. They are descendants of a group a backyard breeder illegally let loose when she moved away two years ago. “They really need to be rescued. So we’ve tried to get the city to do it, but they’re just dragging their feet,” Griggs said. “They thin...

The Vatican’s next doctrinal guardian defends the book on kissing he wrote as a young priest

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

LA PLATA, Argentina (AP) — Three decades ago, when he was a parish priest in Argentina, the man named by Pope Francis to be the Catholic Church’s new guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy wrote a short book about kissing and the sensations it evokes.Some conservative sectors in the church are using the reflections in “Heal Me with Your Mouth. The Art of Kissing” to criticize the designation of Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández to lead the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, a body once known as the Holy Office that for centuries was responsible for persecuting heretics, disciplining dissidents and enforcing sexual morality.“These are ultra-conservative sectors that deeply hate the Argentine pontiff (Francis),” Fernández, the archbishop of La Plata, a city 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Buenos Aires, told The Associated Press.“They take a phrase from the book and say: ‘Look at the level of this theologian. How can a person who uses these expressions be the prefect of the...

GOP vs. FBI: A Republican campaign to stop a new FBI headquarters is revving up after Trump probes

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested recently he might stop the FBI from relocating its downtown headquarters to a new facility planned for the Washington suburbs, it was more than idle thinking about an office renovation.The nod from the Republican speaker is elevating a once-fringe proposal to upend the FBI in the aftermath of the federal indictment of Donald Trump over classified documents and the Justice Department’s prosecution of his allies, including some of the nearly 1,000 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.Moving from far-right corners into the mainstream, the emerging effort to overhaul the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is rooted in increasingly forceful conservative complaints about an overly biased FBI that they claim is being weaponized against them. “This is a pretty dramatic reversal of what the politics would have been 50 years ago,” said Beverly Gage, a historian at Yale who won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for her ...

Hong Kong’s seafood businesses brace for a sales slump as Japan plans to discharge radioactive water

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — As Tokyo plans to discharge treated radioactive wastewater into the sea, Japanese restaurant operator Sam Lam is busy finding substitutes for Japanese seafood that could soon be banned from entering Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government said last Wednesday that the city would immediately bar the import of aquatic products from 10 Japanese prefectures if wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant is released into the Pacific Ocean.Lam said his team could get seafood from other sources and change menus to adjust to the ban, but he predicted that revenues could nevertheless drop from 10% to 20% if the Japanese and Hong Kong governments press ahead with their plans. “My customers told me that once the water is discharged, they will eat fewer (aquatic products) or stop eating them,” he said in an interview Friday. Lam is not alone among Japanese restaurants and seafood suppliers in Hong Kong who are bracing for a slump in business under the potential ban, and who ...

Magnitude 6.6 quake strikes in Argentina and is felt in neighboring Chile, but no damage reported

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck deep in the Earth under Argentina on Sunday and was felt in neighboring Chile, but authorities didn’t report any damage. The quake occurred at a depth of 171 kilometers (106 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter was in the province of Neuquen, in western Argentina, 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) east-southeast of the town of Loncopue.The earthquake was felt in the central and southern parts of neighboring Chile. Neither Argentine nor Chilean authorities reported any damages.The Associated Press

Swimmer dead after being pulled from Lake Austin

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A swimmer is dead after first responders searched for and ultimately pulled a body from Lake Austin Sunday evening. According to a post from Austin-Travis County EMS, paramedics and Austin firefighters responded to the Loop 360 boat ramp near the Pennybacker Bridge to start looking for a person who went underwater and never resurfaced. At about 8:50 p.m. Sunday, first responders shared that they found this person's body in the water. In a final update posted on social media Sunday night, ATCEMS shared its paramedics pronounced the swimmer dead after "lengthy resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful." No other information about the victim is known except for that person is an adult. KXAN will work to gather more information from first responders and update this story once more details are known.

Will Antell, who gave voice to Indian education issues, will be honored Tuesday in Stillwater

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 12:16:19 GMT

Will Antell is well known in the Stillwater area as a former teacher, coach and football referee, but many don’t know that he spent decades promoting education opportunities for American Indians.Widely regarded as an authority on Indian education and desegregation, Antell, a member of the White Earth Band of Anishinaabe Indians, helped guide policy for American Indian education at the state and federal levels. Antell served as director of Indian Education for Minnesota and was founder and president of the National Indian Education Association. In 1972, Antell helped write the landmark Indian Education Act, which allowed American Indians to decide their own education for the first time.Antell will be honored Tuesday by the Stillwater City Council. He will receive the Stillwater Human Rights Award, given annually to recognize those in the city who work to “build an environment that promotes fair and equal treatment for everyone.”Antell, 87, formerly of Bayport, deser...