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

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 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, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 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, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 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, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 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, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 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, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 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, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 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...

St. Paul City Council to consider ballot questions Wednesday for roads, parks and early childcare

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 GMT

The St. Paul City Council will weigh on Wednesday whether to put two tax-related questions on the November 2023 and November 2024 voter ballots. The first involves sales tax funding for roads and parks and the second is aimed at raising funds for early childcare initiatives through a dedicated, 10-year property tax levy.The council could vote Wednesday on two resolutions in support of moving forward with both citywide ballot questions.On Friday, former City Council President Kathy Lantry and St. Paul Parks and Recreation Director Mike Hahm announced they were leading an outreach effort to support a “yes” vote on a likely Nov. 7 ballot question that could raise nearly $1 billion in St. Paul sales tax revenue for arterial road reconstruction and parks spending over 20 years.The proposal, which would triple the city portion of the sales tax from .5 to 1.5%, was generated by St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s office but has met strong resistance from the St. Paul Area Cham...

Fargo officer slain in shooting was a ‘member of our family,’ police chief says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 GMT

FARGO, N.D. — From Day 1 with the Fargo Police Department, Officer Jake Wallin made his colleagues laugh.So much so that Chief David Zibolski remembered him by name, though the chief said he wasn’t quite sure how to pronounce it at first. When Wallin said Wal-leen, putting extra emphasis on the last syllable, everyone laughed, Zibolski said.“He meant a lot to the department,” Zibolski said before playing a video to give people a sense of who Wallin was.Fargo Police Officer Jake Wallin trains at the Fargo Police Academy in this undated photo. (Courtesy of the Fargo Police Department)The 23-year-old officer who was sworn in by the Fargo Police Department less than three months ago was killed Friday afternoon as he and other officers responded to what Zibolski called a routine crash response. As officers arrived on the scene, 37-year-old Mohamad Barakat of Fargo opened fire for an unknown reason, Zibolski said Saturday afternoon during a news conference announcing the names of those in...

Rapidly spreading ‘Rabbit Fire’ continues to scorch over 7,500 acres in Riverside County; remains 25 percent contained 

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:10 GMT

The “Rabbit Fire” that broke out on Friday night is continuing to spread and force evacuations near Beaumont. According to fire officials, the blaze has torched 7,600 acres and is 25 percent contained. Mountainsides near the 79 Freeway were seen charred by the wildfires as early as 6 a.m. Sunday morning, and authorities confirmed that flames did briefly cross the freeway late Saturday night before crews were able to contain them. The two biggest challenges firefighters face are accessing the remote area that the fire is spreading through and mitigating the effects of the large amounts of dry brush in the area, but fighting the blaze at night is proving to be a key tactic in extinguishing it. “As the earth cools down, the wind will go in the reverse direction of where it was coming to,” said Cal Fire Deputy Chief Lucas Spelman. “In this area we’ve been having fires over and over the last few weeks because of the heat and how dry it is.” The “Rabbit Fire” that brok...