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Lionel Messi and Inter Miami add Japan stop to preseason tour

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The preseason tour for Lionel Messi and Inter Miami keeps growing, with the team revealing Friday that a stop in Japan has now been added to the schedule.Inter Miami will face Japanese league champion Vissel Kobe at the Japan National Stadium on Feb. 7. That will be the fourth match of a tour that includes games in Saudi Arabia — including one pitting Messi against longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo — on Jan. 29 and Feb. 1, and a game against a team of pro players from Hong Kong on Feb. 4.Among those on the Vissel Kobe roster: Andrés Iniesta, who once teamed up with Messi and fellow Inter Miami players Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba at Barcelona. Iniesta also was teammates with Busquets when Spain won the 2010 World Cup.Inter Miami now has five preseason matches announced; there’s the four on the Saudi Arabia-Hong Kong-Japan trip and another in El Salvador on Jan. 19.The team will begin preseason training in early January and the Major League Soccer ...

1 airlifted following collision on northbound I-75 at Miami Gardens Drive; All lanes closed

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

At least one person was airlifted to the hospital following a vehicle collision on northbound I-75 in northwest Miami-Dade. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and Florida Highway Patrol units responded to the crash on northbound I-75 at Miami Gardens Drive in northwest Miami-Dade, at around 10:00 a.m., Friday.All northbound lanes have been closed for air rescue.Please check back on WSVN.com and 7News for more details on this developing story.

Broad Causeway Bridge shutdown following collision

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

Police notified the public of a traffic alert following a collision in Bay Harbor Islands, Friday morning. Just before 9 a.m., local police officers, along with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, arrived at the scene on the Broad Causeway Bridge where a motorcycle and a truck were involved in a crash. According to a post on X from the Bay Harbor Islands Police Department, the bridge is closed to all traffic until further notice. Morning commuters are urged to find an alternate route.

Germany extends checks at Polish, Czech, Swiss borders until mid-March

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

The German Ministry of the Interior has on Friday announced the extension of the controls on its borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland until mid-March 2024 as Berlin continues to combat smuggling and limit irregular migration.“The European law provides for this step-by-step approach. This means that the Federal Police can continue to flexibly deploy the entire bundle of stationary and mobile border police measures,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.“Our fight against the unscrupulous business of smugglers, who brutally put people’s lives at risk, is successful,” Faeser said. Since mid-October, the Federal Police have arrested around 340 smugglers as part of internal border controls, she added. According to her, the number of unauthorized entries nationwide has fallen by more than 60 percent since the temporary border controls were introduced in October, from over 20,000 in October to about 7,300 in November.In late Septem...

EU negotiators reach agreement on media law to curb spying on reporters

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

BRUSSELS — European Union negotiators reached an agreement Friday on the European Media Freedom Act, the bloc’s new set of rules aimed at safeguarding the independence of newsrooms and fostering media pluralism.The new law will introduce requirements for media to provide transparency over ownership and funding and it will force national governments to set up an oversight system that guarantees editorial freedom, including for public media. It also requires checks on mergers and sets up a new European watchdog to oversee it all. Negotiators of the European Parliament, the EU Council representing national governments, and the European Commission on Friday cleared the last hurdle: an agreement on provisions in the law limiting how governments conduct operations on journalists using spyware and other methods to identify and access their sources. The European Commission originally introduced an exemption for the investigation of certain crimes like terrorism and human trafficking, ...

LIVE COVERAGE: Funeral begins as community mourns police officer killed in crash

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

The funeral for fallen Waltham police officer Paul Tracey got underway at Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted church Friday as the community continues to mourn Tracey after his death last week.Thousands have gathered for the funeral, which was underway as of 10:30 a.m.7NEWS has live team coverage throughout the day. —RELATED: Thousands gather in Waltham for funeral for fallen officer Paul Tracey 

Rogers Sugar strike at impasse, company says as it pauses talks with union

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

VANCOUVER — Rogers Sugar Inc. says it is pausing negotiations after the union representing striking workers at its Vancouver refinery rejected the company’s latest offer.Workers at the refinery have been on strike since Sept. 28 over issues like wages, benefits and the company’s proposal to increase refinery operations to 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.The Rogers Sugar refinery in Vancouver is one of only three large sugar refineries in the country that processes imported cane sugar.The strike has caused intermittent sugar shortages in Western Canada this fall. But the company says there is currently ample supply of white sugar in the market, and it has restarted production of brown sugar at the Vancouver refinery.Rogers Sugar has been operating the Vancouver refinery at reduced capacity, and says it has enough raw sugar on site to continue to do so until May 2024.This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 15, 2023.Companies in this story: (TSX:RSI)The...

With Iowa’s caucuses a month away, Trump urges voters to hand him not just a victory, but a blowout

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

CORALVILLE, Iowa (AP) — Donald Trump was uncharacteristically serious when he implored an audience in eastern Iowa to carry him to a blowout in next month’s Republican caucuses. “The margin of victory is very important, it’s just very important,” Trump told about 1,000 people attending a Wednesday rally aimed at organizing campaign volunteers. “It’s time for the Republican Party to unite, to come together and focus our energy and resources on beating Crooked Joe Biden and taking back our country. Very simple.” For the blustery former president, it was both caution against complacency and a sign that he and his team believe the first contest on Jan. 15 can be not just the start of the nominating campaign, but the beginning of the end.Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win Iowa, one month away from the caucuses. A myriad of well-qualified GOP challengers and anti-Trump groups haven’t changed that dynamic after crisscrossing the state over the last year and spendin...

A Thai senator linked to a Myanmar tycoon is indicted for drug trafficking and money laundering

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — State prosecutors in Thailand indicted a member of the country’s Senate on six charges involving narcotics trafficking, money laundering and association with a transnational criminal organization, said a statement received Friday from the attorney-general’s office.The senator, Upakit Pachariyangkun, denied all the charges when he appeared Thursday at criminal court in Bangkok, and was granted release on bail of 10 million baht ($286,000).Upakit’s case is linked to that of Tun Min Latt, an influential businessman from neighboring Myanmar who is reputedly close to that country’s ruling military and especially its army chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. The general came to power in Myanmar after ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. The case against all of them involves allegations that profits from the sale of illegal drugs were laundered through a power company that Tun Min Latt and Upakit controlled, though the latter claimed to have so...

A Spanish official says spotter planes are helping curtail the number of West African migrant boats

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:43:00 GMT

MADRID (AP) — The deployment of two Spanish surveillance planes to watch for migrant boats heading on the treacherous route from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands has enabled authorities to stop 59 canoes from Senegal and Gambia carrying around 7,200 migrants in the past two months, a senior official said Friday.The boats that were stopped accounted for around half of those that officials believed would otherwise be heading to the Canary Islands off northwest Africa over that period, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.The archipelago has witnessed a record number of irregular migrant arrivals this year.Grande-Marlaska told reporters during a visit to the archipelago that “we have saved lives, because you know that the Canary Islands route is a very dangerous route.” The spotter planes are stationed in Senegal and the Canary Islands, he said.Grande-Marlaska held talks in the islands with the European Union’s home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, am...