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Hong Kong to cut elected council seats in blow to democracy

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday stepped up a campaign to shut down further democratic challenges by unveiling plans to eliminate most directly elected seats on local district councils, the last major political representative bodies chosen by the public.Chief Executive John Lee said the proposed overhaul will reduce the proportion of directly elected seats in the municipal-level organization to about 20% — from some 90% currently. That is even lower than the level when these bodies were first set up in the 1980s, when Hong Kong was ruled by Britain. He said the rest of the 470 seats will be filled by government appointees, rural committee chairpersons and others elected by local committees that are staffed by many pro-establishment figures.“I do not agree that pure counting (of) election votes mean democracy,” he said. “Different places have their own systems that must take into consideration all the characteristics and all the elements of that place.” The planned elec...

Homegrown Live returns with over 100 local music performances

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

Homegrown Live Music Festival is back for its 15th anniversary on May 6. The one-day music festival will take place in over 10 locations across Kingston, with over 100 local music acts performing throughout the day.The festival raises funds for the Joe Chithalen Memorial Musical Instrument Lending Library (Joe’s M.I.L.L), a registered charity that loans out musical instruments to community members to make music education and appreciation accessible. The festival has been scaled back or held virtually since the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning this year is its return to a fully live and in person festival.Chris Morris, festival director, spoke with CFRC about the format of Homegrown, adding that it is not like other music festivals that start with smaller artists in the afternoon and have big headliners in the evening; it is a mix of smaller and bigger musicians in town that play after one another. Each venue has a broad musical genre picked so people can choose where to go for the da...

Coloradan creates first commercial smart gun with facial, fingerprint recognition

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

BROOMFIELD, Colo. (KDVR) — A Colorado native created the first commercial biometric gun with fingerprint and facial recognition.Biofire Technologies founder and CEO Kai Kloepfer started working on smart guns nearly 11 years ago, in the wake of the Aurora theater shooting. “I had been to that movie theater, and so that's really for me what prompted me to start thinking about, you know, rather than building a robot or some other piece of technology, would it make sense to think about some piece of technology on a gun?" Kloepfer said. Gun owners group suing Polis, state over new laws Kloepfer started working on the idea for a science fair project. Over a decade later, the Biofire Smart Gun has been crafted with home defense in mind."I've never talked to a gun owner that wanted their kid to find their gun," Kloepfer said. "If we can provide them better tools that ensure that there's no possibility for mistakes, that their kid will never have access to that firearm, I think that's real...

Suspected Texas gunman caught hiding under laundry: sheriff

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

CLEVELAND, Texas (AP) — A four-day manhunt in Texas for a gunman accused of killing five neighbors ended Tuesday not far from the site of the shooting when authorities, acting on a tip, said they found the suspect hiding underneath a pile of laundry in the closet of a house.Francisco Oropeza, 38, was captured without incident near Houston and about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from his home in the rural town of Cleveland, where authorities say he went next door and shot his neighbors with an AR-style rifle after some of them had asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard because it was keeping a baby awake.“They can rest easy now, because he is behind bars,” Capers said of the families of the victims. “He will live out his life behind bars for killing those five.”The arrest happened near Conroe, ending what had become a widening dragnet that had grown to more than 250 people from multiple jurisdictions. As recently as Tuesday morning, the FBI said that Oropeza “coul...

Man shot at Walmart in Lauderdale Lakes dies in hospital; suspect in custody

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

A man who was airlifted to the hospital after being shot at a South Florida Walmart has dies of his injuries at the hospital, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.Earlier, deputies said, hours after the shooting, they had taken a suspect into custody.The details around the shooter’s capture remain unknown.It all began before deputies arrived at the Walmart, located at 3001 N. State Road 7, Tuesday afternoon, just after 3. “It was my first time ever experiencing anything like that,” said Walmart employee Shay Johnson, “so I went with my first instinct, and that’s to protect. I went to go get my brothers.”Johnson was on her break and returning to the store when she heard the shots fired, and her first thought was with her twin brother.“And before I can get back to the room I’m usually in, I heard maybe like, five, six shots pop off right in front of me,” the employee said, “and I, without thinking, I just turned a...

Miami Springs road reopens after pipe burst

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

Public works crews have resurfaced and reopened a road in Miami Springs that had been shut down since Monday night.South Royal Poinciana Boulevard between Coolidge and Sheridan Drive had been closed after a pipe burst. Water and sewer workers had to tear it up to get to a leaking pipe.Operations in the area have resumed as normal.

Brunson, Randle help Knicks beat Heat 111-105 to even series

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Jalen Brunson scored 30 points and keyed the run the New York Knicks needed just in time to get by a Miami Heat team playing without Jimmy Butler, evening the Eastern Conference semifinals at a game apiece with a 111-105 victory Tuesday night.Julius Randle returned from a sprained left ankle that sidelined him in Game 1 with 25 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists, and RJ Barrett scored 24 points for the No. 5-seeded Knicks. Josh Hart finished with 14 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists.But it was Brunson, who pointed the blame at himself and said he had to be better after going 0 for 7 from 3-point range in the opener, who made the biggest plays in a game the Knicks trailed much of the way.Caleb Martin scored 22 points in place of Butler for the Heat, who host Game 3 on Saturday afternoon. They will hope to have Butler, the leading scorer in the playoffs who sat out after spraining his right ankle late in their 108-101 victory in the opener.They almost didn’...

‘Hyper-personalization’ or ‘creepy’: Snapchat’s new AI chatbot raising some concern about its conversations

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

A popular social media app recently rolled out new artificial intelligence, but wait until you see the conversations that have left some parents horrified. Karen Hensel has tonight’s 7 Investigates.When Kortni Couch, a Broward County mom of two, received a new notification from her Snapchat account, she didn’t think much about it.Kortni Couch: “Something about My AI. I didn’t really understand it.”My AI stands for “my artificial intelligence,” which is a new experimental chatbot on snapchat.Users can message and have a conversation with it in the app.Kortni Couch: “So I said, ‘Let me give it a try.’ I didn’t know much about it.”As a mom, she wanted to see what kids could do in the chat, and as she tested the boundaries, she was shocked.Kortni Couch: “My whole goal today is really just to make sure other parents are aware of this new feature on Snapchat.”Watch her conversation with the chatbot when sh...

In Ukraine, it’s not hatred they feel, its wrath

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.“We were invisible before, and to become visible is a huge step,” historian Olena Dzhedzhora said, as we discussed how Ukraine has drawn the attention of the rest of Europe and the United States.The dignified, gray-haired historian joined the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv as it was being founded in 2002 — the first Catholic university to open anywhere in the former Soviet Union — just three years after the country declared independence. And since Russia’s invasion, Dzhedzhora, an archeologist-turned-medievalist, has been busy making darkness visible, along with around 30 volunteers — students, lecturers and others — who’ve been video recording and transcribing war testimonies gathered from people of all walks of life in Ukraine.Last year, Lviv became a sort of Noah’s Ark, crowded with the displaced. And Dzhedzhora’s university stopped functioning for months — sheltering war refugees, feeding them, collecting medicine and rai...

Meet the Belarusians who tricked Russia into firing on its own men

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:51:19 GMT

KYIV — The Belarusian volunteers laugh as they tell the story of one of their commanders who deceived the Russians into unleashing artillery salvoes on their own positions near the war-torn salt-mining town of Bakhmut. “After we overran a trench, the commander used a radio we found, pretended to be Russian and gave false coordinates for a Russian fire mission,” explained Pavel Shurmei, a 46-year-old former Olympic rower who’s been fighting for Ukraine.“And it worked,” chimed in a 25-year-old volunteer, with a rueful smile.***Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has dubbed the Belarusians fighting for Ukraine “crazed citizens” — but of all the foreign troops battling in Ukraine, the Belarusian volunteers are largely seen by their peers as among the most disciplined and lionhearted. They’ve won battle honors, having in the early weeks after the invasion helped to defend Kyiv and recapture Irpin,...