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Russian missile attack on Ukraine kills at least 10 in Zelenskyy’s hometown

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian missiles hit civilian buildings in a central Ukrainian city overnight, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than two dozen in a warehouse and a residential building, regional officials said Tuesday.The devastation in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, is the latest bloodshed in Russia’s war in Ukraine, as Ukrainian forces are in the early stages of a counteroffensive using Western-supplied firepower.Images from the scene relayed by Zelenskyy on his Telegram channel showed firefighters battling the blaze as pockets of fire poked through multiple broken windows of a building. Charred and damaged vehicles littered the nearby ground. “More terrorist missiles,” he wrote. “Russian killers continue their war against residential buildings, ordinary cities and people.”The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lysak, wrote on the social media app that the bodies of six people were recovered from the warehouse of an unspecified pr...

AI helped create ‘last Beatles record,’ Paul McCartney says

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Artificial intelligence has been used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” Paul McCartney said Tuesday. McCartney, 80, told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.” The new song is set to be released later this year, he said. Jackson was “able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano,” McCartney told BBC radio. “He could separate them with AI, he’d tell the machine ‘That’s a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar’.”“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had that we worked on,” he added. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI so then we could mix the record as you would do. It gives you some sort of leeway.”McCartney described AI technology...

Turkey says it’s ready to open consulate in city that Azerbaijan took from Armenian forces

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday his country is ready to open a consulate in Shusha, a city that Azerbaijan took from Armenian forces in a war in 2020.Erdogan made the comment during a visit to Azerbaijan at the start of his third term in office following presidential elections last month.“We are ready to open our consulate whenever you wish,” Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Erdogan as telling Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other officials at the start of bilateral talks. “If we can open a consulate in Shusha, this would be a message to the world and especially to Armenia,” he said.Shusha, a center of Azeri culture for centuries, came under Armenian control in 1992 in fighting over the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region. Its retaking by Azerbaijan’s forces in 2020 was of symbolic and strategic importance because it sits high above the region’s nearby capital, Stepanakert.Turkey actively supported Azerbaijan in the last confli...

Police find 3 dead and 3 other people struck by van in UK city of Nottingham

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

LONDON (AP) — A man was arrested on suspicion of murder in the English city of Nottingham on Tuesday after three people were found dead in the street and three others were hit and injured by a van in related early-morning incidents, police said.“This is an horrific and tragic incident which has claimed the lives of three people,” said Nottinghamshire Police Chief Constable Kate Meynell.Two people were found dead in one street just after 4 a.m. and a third on a different street. The three wounded by the van were at a different location and were being treated in a hospital. There was no immediate word on their conditions.Witness Lynn Haggitt was on her way to work when a white van pulled up beside her at 5:30 a.m. She saw the driver look in his mirror and spot a police car approaching slowly from behind without its lights on. The driver then accelerated and struck a man and woman at a street corner. “He went straight into them, he didn’t even bother to turn,” Haggitt told ...

Bunge and Viterra sign merger agreement to create global agribusiness

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

TORONTO — U.S. company Bunge Ltd. has signed a deal to merge with Viterra Ltd., which is owned by Glencore, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and B.C. Investment Management Corp.The companies say the deal will create a global agribusiness company well positioned to meet the demands of complex markets and better serve farmers and customers.Under the terms of the agreement, Viterra’s shareholders will receive 65.6 million Bunge shares, valued at a total of about US$6.2 billion, and about US$2.0 billion in cash. Bunge will also assume US$9.8 billion of Viterra debt.Viterra shareholders will own 30 per cent of the combined company on a fully diluted basis when the deal closes and about 33 per cent after completion of a planned US$2-billion share repurchase plan by Bunge.The combined company will be led by Bunge chief executive Greg Heckman and Bunge chief financial officer John Neppl, while Viterra chief executive David Mattiske will become co-chief operating officer.This r...

COVID-19 inquiry in UK asks whether ‘terrible consequences’ could have been avoided

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

LONDON (AP) — A mammoth three-year public inquiry into the U.K. government’s handling of the response to COVID-19 opened Tuesday by asking whether suffering and death could have been avoided with better planning.Lawyer Hugo Keith, who is counsel to the inquiry, said the coronavirus pandemic had brought “death and illness on an unprecedented scale” in modern Britain. He said that COVID-19 has been recorded as a cause of death for 226,977 people in the U.K.“The key issue is whether that impact was inevitable,” Keith said. “Were those terrible consequences inexorable, or were they avoidable or capable of mitigation?”A group of people who lost relatives to COVID-19 held pictures of their loved one outside the inquiry venue, an anonymous London office building. The first day of public hearings began with a 17-minute video in which people described the devastating impact of the pandemic on them and their loved ones.Britain’s pandemic death toll is one of the highest in Europe, and t...

John Fru Ndi, leader of Cameroon’s main opposition party and critic of president, dies at 81

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) — John Fru Ndi, the leader of Cameroon’s opposition Social Democratic Front and one of the party’s founders, has died after a prolonged illness. He was 81.The party said Fru Ndi, who had been battling health issues for months, died late on Monday at his residence in the capital, Yaounde, a month ahead of his 82nd birthday in July.“It is with sadness that we announce the transition into eternal glory of the National Chairman of the (party),” Joshua Osh, the party’s vice president, said on Tuesday. An influential figure, Fru Ndi he was one of the founders of the Social Democratic Front in 1990 and a prominent opponent of Cameroon’s longtime President Paul Biya. He went up against Biya in three elections — losing each one — and more recently, became a strong critic of the president’s handling of the country’s crisis following the 2017 rebellion of English-speaking separatists. Last November, Biya marked 40 years in power — the only president most of t...

Lower house of Japan’s parliament passes bill to promote LGBTQ+ awareness, but not guarantee rights

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — The powerful lower house of Japan’s parliament on Tuesday passed a bill to promote understanding of LGBTQ+ issues amid protests by activists that last-minute revisions by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s conservative party favored opponents of sexual equality instead of guaranteeing equal rights. The passage followed only a few hours of debate in a lower house committee last Friday, an unusually short period. The bill is expected to be approved quickly by parliament’s upper house, which is also controlled by Kishida’s governing bloc.Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations which does not have LGTBQ+ legal protections. Support for same-sex marriage and other rights has grown among the Japanese public, but opposition remains strong within the governing Liberal Democratic Party, known for conservative values and a reluctance to promote gender equality and sexual diversity.LGBTQ+ activists have increased their efforts to ...

Millennial Money: How to use ChatGPT to plan your next trip

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

Planning travel can be a daunting maze. Guidebooks, by their nature, send all readers to the same destinations. And web searches can yield an unhelpful mess of content.Yet some tech-savvy travelers are finding success using artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard to inspire and plan their vacations, treating these services like free, on-demand travel agents.“I liked the idea of ChatGPT because it gives you a very clear list,” says Alpa Patel, an avid traveler based out of New York City.Patel has been planning a family trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, for the summer. After getting frustrated with the cookie-cutter travel websites served up by Google, she had an idea: Why not ask ChatGPT for some advice?“I started with the best places to stay and it gave me a list of neighborhoods, along with the best hotels. I actually picked my hotel through that list,” Patel says.SET YOUR PREFERENCESAlthough Patel enjoyed the simplicity of these responses, she quickly found another reaso...

11 people shot in downtown Denver after Nuggets win NBA Finals

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:11:00 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — Multiple shootings sent 11 people to the hospital early Tuesday morning after thousands flocked downtown in celebration of the Denver Nuggets' historic NBA Finals win, celebrating into the early morning hours.Just before 1 a.m., the Denver Police Department tweeted that they were investigating a shooting in the 2000 block of Market Street. DPD said nine gunshot victims were located and that they identified a suspect who also had a gunshot wound. Three victims were in critical condition at a local hospital, and the other victims appeared to have non-life-threatening injuries, according to DPD. Photos: Denver Nuggets celebrate championship win At around 1:11 a.m., DPD said they were investigating a shooting in an area where one person was shot. However, officers provided an update that the victim was actually shot in a different location and self-transported to the hospital.In total, 10 people were injured in the 2000 block of Market Street, which is next to Coors F...