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UK handed Boris Johnson and Liz Truss aides nearly £3M in exit pay

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

LONDON — Political chaos is expensive.Top advisers to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss — whose governments both imploded in spectacular fashion in 2023 — cost taxpayers almost £3M in severance payments as they left office, transparency figures released Thursday evening by the British government show.An annual report on special advisers — temporary civil servants who add political and policy heft to a minister’s team — shows that £1 million-worth of exit payments were made to departing SpAds in the wake of Truss’ disastrous 49-day premiership.Meanwhile some £1.9 million in severance payments went to ex-SpAds when Johnson left the stage as prime minister.That compares to just £100,000 in severance payments to former special advisers handed out in the comparatively calm year of 2021-22.Separate disclosures from the U.K.’s finance ministry Thursday also put a hefty price-tag on Liz Truss ill-fated battle against the country’s economic “orthodoxy.”Tom Scholar — t...

Ukraine threatens Russian Black Sea ships in tit-for-tat move against Moscow

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

Ukraine on Thursday warned that all ships sailing to Russian-controlled Black Sea ports could be targeted by attacks — a response by Kyiv to Moscow’s threat against civilian vessels traveling to Ukrainian seaports.Kyiv’s defense ministry said in a statement that such vessels “may be considered by Ukraine as carrying military cargo with all the corresponding risks” from midnight Friday. The move comes as a response to Moscow withdrawing Monday from a U.N.-brokered deal allowing passage to cargo ships carrying grain from Ukrainian ports. Russia followed up by launching a barrage of airstrikes at Kyiv’s ports this week. On Wednesday, the Russian defense ministry said that “all ships going across the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports will be considered potential carriers of military-purpose cargoes” — meaning they could be subject to attack.“The Russian Federation has once again brutally violated the universal right to free navigation for the w...

Victory for Nigel? Coutts bank boss apologizes to Farage over account closure

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

LONDON — Sorry we cancelled your account, Nigel.That was the message from NatWest Group boss Alison Rose Thursday as she apologized for the un-banking of ex-Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage by high-end lender Coutts.Rose, chief executive of the banking giant of which Coutts is a subsidiary, expressed regret after a row over whether the leading Brexiteer’s political views cost him his ability to bank with the institution.“I am writing to apologise for the deeply inappropriate comments about yourself made in the now published papers prepared for the Wealth Committee,” Rose said in her apology letter to Farage.“I believe very strongly that freedom of expression and access to banking are fundamental to our society and it is absolutely not our policy to exit a customer on the basis of legally held political and personal views,” she added.Farage has been embroiled in a row with the institution after Coutts cancelled his account earlier this month.Documents ob...

Blockaded on all fronts: Poland and Hungary threaten to cut Ukraine’s export route to the West

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

As Russia once again bombards and blockades Ukraine’s Black Sea ports — through which the country exports its vast agricultural produce — Poland and Hungary threaten to cut off the country’s western exit routes.Poland will unilaterally block trade with Ukraine if the European Commission fails to extend temporary restrictions on grain imports at least until the end of the year, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a meeting of agriculture ministers from five Eastern EU countries in Warsaw on Wednesday.“I want to make it clear,” Morawiecki told reporters, “we will not open our border. Either the European Commission will agree to jointly work out regulations that will extend this ban, or we will do it ourselves.”Hungarian Agriculture Minister István Nagy echoed Morawiecki, saying his country would “protect Hungarian farmers with all its means.”Days after killing a deal to allow Ukraine to export grain across the Black Sea, Moscow unleashed a wave of attacks on the Uk...

Mayo Clinic Minute: How heat affects medication

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

Deb Balzer | (TNS) Mayo Clinic News NetworkFinding ways to keep your body cool during extremely high temperatures is important, and so is ensuring your medications aren’t exposed to extreme heat.Scott Hall, a Mayo Clinic pharmacist, says medications can become degraded during temperature changes. He says some medications also can cause heat intolerance.Temperature can impact any medication a person is taking, but some are more prone to problems than others.“Insulin is definitely going to be one of those medications. So patients with diabetes should try not to store their insulin in a place where the temperature will get too high,” says Hall.Store your medications in a cool, dry place. If you keep them in a bathroom where you shower, leave the medicine in the original container.“Keeping it in those bottles where they can remain sealed is really going to help prevent any negative effects of heat.”Some medicines can cause heat intolerance— Blood pres...

Mayo Clinic Minute: Heat exhaustion and heatstroke

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

Jason Howland | (TNS) Mayo Clinic News NetworkExtreme heat continues to cause issues across the country and the globe. As the temperature rises, so does the risk of heat-related illnesses, like heat exhaustion and heatstroke. Over the past 30 years, extreme heat has claimed more lives in America than any other weather-related hazard, including flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes or lightning, according to the National Weather Service.Experts at Mayo Clinic say it’s important to recognize the signs and symptoms of heat illnesses, and learn how to prevent them.Your body is like a car’s engine. If it starts to overheat, the warning light goes on. And that is heat exhaustion.“Which is where you feel nauseous or dizzy. You just don’t feel right, and you’re sweating profusely,” says Dr. Neha Raukar, a Mayo Clinic emergency medicine physician.Anyone at any age can suffer from heat exhaustion. High temperatures, particularly when paired with high humidity, ar...

Workers lack protections when wildfire smoke makes the air dangerous

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

By Caitlin Dewey, Stateline.orgMillions of American workers have breathed in dangerous levels of air pollution this year as smoke from Canada’s record wildfire season blankets cities across the Northeast.Now experts are calling on federal regulators to adopt standards protecting outdoor workers from worsening air quality, potentially modeled after the few states that have such standards, including California and Oregon.Rules could require employers to monitor air pollution and provide protective equipment such as N95 masks on days when air quality levels fall below certain thresholds. But regulations are not common in much of the country, where wildfire smoke and the health damage it wreaks are both relatively new concerns. And even supporters of regulations say states with rules have had some difficulty with implementation.Cities across the Northeast and Midwest broke longtime records for air pollution last month, prompting a wide range of employer reactions. In Wilkes-Barre, Penns...

‘Barbie’ filmmaker Greta Gerwig wants to embrace the mess

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

Barbie, the doll, may be 64 years old, but “Barbie,” the movie, is a pandemic baby. Greta Gerwig, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind “Little Women” and “Lady Bird,” started dreaming it up at a time when she wasn’t sure movies would ever come back.“I wanted to channel something that had that ache in it, but also something so wild and unruly and something that was so just spilling out over the edges of it that you want to be in a group and see it big,” Gerwig told The Associated Press this week. “Because I thought we’ll never make any movies again, but if they’re going to, I’d like this.”Her “Barbie,” which releases in theaters on Friday, is a joyful, maximalist, deeply weird, insightful and defiantly pink confection starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. She co-wrote it with her partner, Noah Baumbach, with whom she shares two sons — a toddler and a five-month-old whom they welcomed into the world while getting “Barbie” out to the world.Gerwig spoke to the AP th...

Trudeau ‘dismayed’ at B.C. port union’s ‘unacceptable’ decision to reject deal

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

VANCOUVER — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government is “dismayed” that an agreement to end the job action at British Columbia’s ports was rejected by the longshore union leadership.Trudeau says the union caucus’ decision to reject a federal mediator’s tentative deal that was agreed to at the bargaining table is “unacceptable.”The stability of work at B.C. ports, key West Coast gateways for imports and exports, has been up in the air since the leadership caucus of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada voted down the mediator’s terms on Tuesday, briefly sending workers back to picket lines.That move was ruled illegal by the Canada Industrial Relations Board which led the union to issue a new a 72-hour strike notice on Wednesday only to rescind that order hours later.Trudeau convened a meeting of the government’s incident response group, a move reserved for crisis situations, and says the governmen...

A Miami mother tried to hire a hitman to kill her 3-year-old son, police say. She’s been arrested

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:50 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — An 18-year-old Miami woman is accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill her 3-year-old son.The woman appeared before a Miami-Dade County judge Wednesday following her arrest on charges of solicitation of murder and unlawful use of a communications device.The woman visited a parody hit-for-hire website — intended to assist law enforcement — in an attempt to have the boy “taken away, far, far, far away and possibly be killed but ASAP,” Miami-Dade police said in a report. It said she was willing to pay $3,000.The woman listed wanting “to get something done once and for all” as the reason for hiring a hitman, the report said. Police said she provided an address where the boy lives with his grandmother, a recent photo of him and her phone number when she made contact with the website.A man who runs the website contacted Miami-Dade police and detectives tracked down the woman on Tuesday, using the IP address and phone number provided. The Associated Press is not naming...