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After making Oscar history, Troy Kotsur pays tribute to his father in new short film

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — When Troy Kotsur made history as the first Deaf male actor win an Oscar at the 2022 Academy Awards, he was thinking about his father. By then, Kotsur had already become a hero to the Deaf community, widely celebrated for his acclaimed performance in the family drama “CODA.” It was easy to admire the tenacity and talent that had brought Kotsur, in his early 50s, to the movies’ biggest stage after years of struggle as an actor in an industry not known for its hospitality to Deaf performers. To Kotsur, his persistence was most owed to one person: His father. At the Oscar podium, Kotsur dedicated the award to him. “You are my hero,” he said. “He didn’t look at me as having limitations. He continued to push me and push me,” Kotsur said in an interview Thursday through an interpreter. “That’s why I am who I am today.”In “To My Father,” a short film premiering this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, Kotsur extends and deepens that tribute to explain his father’s...

Putin says Russian tactical nuclear weapons to be deployed to Belarus next month

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Moscow will deploy some of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus next month, a move that the Belarusian opposition described as an attempt to blackmail the West.Putin said during a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that work on building facilities for the nuclear weapons will be completed by July 7-8, and they will be moved to the territory of Russia’s neighbor and ally quickly after that.The move comes as Ukraine has stepped up attacks in several sectors of the front line in what some observers see as the start of its long-expected counteroffensive.Russia used Belarus’ territory to send its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and has kept forces and weapons on the territory of its ally.“Everything is proceeding as planned,” Putin said in televised remarks as he hosted Lukashenko at his residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. “On July 7-8 the preparations of the relevant facilities wil...

3 men begin 65-mile arduous paddleboard journey from Toronto

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

Three men have begun their arduous journey to paddleboard across Lake Ontario to raise $25,000 for Great Lakes environmental issues.Jeff Guy, Joe Lorenz and Kwin Morris left Toronto’s Humber Bay Park shores at 7 a.m. on Friday, making their way to Niagara-on-the-Lake. The round trip is just over 104 km.Guy, Lorenz and Morris have successfully paddled Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Superior and Lake Erie, with Lake Ontario representing their final journey across all five Great Lakes.The 65-mile round trip is expected to take about 24 hours, with all three men planning to return to Scarborough’s Bluffer’s Park Public Boat Launch.“We’ll begin our adventure with the Toronto skyline in view and touch the shore near Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort Niagara in New York and then paddle back to Toronto,” Morris said.The journey has been delayed due to weather-related issues and strong winds. The trio had previously scheduled the trip last year, but the safety...

Erdogan’s new central bank chief signals hope for Turkey’s economic turnaround

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed a former U.S.-based bank executive to head the central bank Friday, sending the strongest signal yet that the newly reelected leader might pivot from his unusual economic policies that many blame for worsening a cost-of-living crisis.Hafize Gaye Erkan, 41, is Princeton-educated and will become the first woman to lead the Turkish central bank. She briefly served in 2021 as co-chief executive of First Republic Bank, which last month became the second-largest U.S. bank to fail as its wealthy clients pulled their money during wider turmoil in the sector.Her nomination follows last week’s appointment of Mehmet Simsek, an internationally respected former banker, as treasury and finance minister. He was a former finance and deputy prime minister under Erdogan and returned after a five-year break from politics.The choices for two key financial roles have raised hopes that Erdogan, reelected last month to a third te...

Belmont Park will resume live racing after air quality improves ahead of Belmont Stakes

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

ELMONT, N.Y. (AP) — Live racing will resume at Belmont Park on Friday following significant improvement in air quality conditions in the state, the New York Racing Association announced.Both Belmont and Saratoga reopened for training Friday morning, and the 11-card race will start at 12:50 p.m. The NYRA said in a statement that it will actively monitor air quality conditions and forecasts to ensure the environment remains safe for racing participants and fans ahead of the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.Racing at Belmont Park was canceled on Thursday due to poor air quality from wildfires in Canada. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul had warned that the Belmont Stakes, the final leg of the Triple Crown, could be affected if conditions don’t improve by Saturday.New York Racing Association vice president of communications Patrick McKenna said in a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday that state officials and the NYRA consulted on how to proceed going forward in “our shared efforts to prov...

Drone hits residential building in southwestern Russia near border amid surge in Ukraine fighting

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A drone crashed into a high-rise residential building in southwestern Russia near the border with Ukraine, a regional governor said Friday, exposing the latest vulnerabilities in the country’s air defense systems as President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine increasingly affects Russian soil.The latest drone attack to target Russian cities in recent weeks wounded three people and came amid a front-line push by Ukrainian forces in what appears to be the early stages of a long-awaited counteroffensive in pockets of south and east Ukraine that Russia invaded more than 15 months ago.The Ukrainian presidency’s website posted a video statement overnight from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that alluded to the latest efforts of his country’s forces to drive out the Russian invaders, along various parts of the more than 1,000-kilometer (about 620-mile) front line. Speaking inside what appeared to be a train car after visiting flood-hit southern Ukraine on Thurs...

For many cities around the world, bad air an inescapable part of life

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thick, smoky air from Canadian wildfires made for days of misery in New York City and across the U.S. Northeast this week. But for much of the rest of the world, breathing dangerously polluted air is an inescapable fact of life — and death.Almost the entire world breathes air that exceeds the World Health Organization’s air-quality limits at least occasionally. The danger grows worse when that bad air is more persistent than the nightmarish shroud that hit the U.S. — usually in developing or newly industrialized nations. That’s where most of the 4.2 million deaths blamed on outdoor air pollution occurred in 2019, the UN’s health agency reported.“Air pollution has no boundaries, and it is high time everyone comes together to fight it,” said Bhavreen Kandhari, the co-founder of Warrior Moms in India, a network of mothers pushing for clean air and climate action in a nation with some of the world’s consistently worst air. “What we are seeing in...

UN agency says Myanmar has suspended international aid deliveries to cyclone-hit areas

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military government has rescinded its approval for international organizations to distribute food, shelter and medicines to thousands of residents of cyclone-hit areas in the country’s west, a U.N. agency said Friday. Cyclone Mocha hit the coastline of Bangladesh and Myanmar in mid-May with winds of up to 209 kilometers (130 miles) per hour. The damage was worst around the coastal city of Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, but was also severe as the storm moved inland into Chin state.The military authorities also suspended travel authorizations for international humanitarian organizations, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a situation report. It said the suspension of aid activities “could not have come at a worse time” because of the arrival of the annual monsoon season.The report did not say why the military government’s Disaster Management Committee suspended the travel authorizations.Myanm...

Russia claims it blew up advanced Ukrainian tank, but video shows its helicopter attacked a tractor

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A grainy black-and-white gunsight video Russia released this week to bolster a claim its military blew up some of Ukraine’s most fearsome tanks actually documented the destruction of a tractor, according to a visual analysis by The Associated Press. The Russian Embassy in Washington announced Monday on Twitter its forces had “annihilated” eight German-made Leopard tanks, among the most advanced and powerful weapons NATO countries have provided to Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense then posted a video Tuesday on the social media network Telegram with text saying it showed “footage of the destruction of foreign armored vehicles, including Leopard tanks.”The video was shown extensively by Russian state-controlled broadcasters and news sites, which said it was recorded from the thermal imaging system of a KA-52 Alligator attack helicopter. Several black silhouettes of vehicles can be seen, before the helicopter launches a guided missile that strikes one, ca...

Here’s a quick glance at unemployment rates for May, by Canadian city

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:35:34 GMT

OTTAWA — The national unemployment rate was 5.2 per cent in May. Statistics Canada also released seasonally adjusted, three-month moving average unemployment rates for major cities. It cautions, however, that the figures may fluctuate widely because they are based on small statistical samples. Here are the jobless rates last month by city (numbers from the previous month in brackets):_ St. John’s, N.L. 5.0 per cent (4.9)_ Halifax 4.9 per cent (4.7)_ Moncton, N.B. 5.5 per cent (5.5)_ Saint John, N.B. 5.2 per cent (5.5)_ Saguenay, Que. 3.4 per cent (3.4)_ Quebec City 2.6 per cent (1.7)_ Sherbrooke, Que. 4.6 per cent (4.9)_ Trois-Rivières, Que. 3.9 per cent (3.8)_ Montreal 4.4 per cent (4.8)_ Gatineau, Que. 3.9 per cent (4.3)_ Ottawa 4.3 per cent (4.2)_ Kingston, Ont. 4.3 per cent (5.1)_ Belleville, Ont. 5.3 per cent (4.1)_ Peterborough, Ont. 7.1 per cent (5.3)_ Oshawa, Ont. 5.1 per cent (4.6)_ Toronto 5.9 per cent (5.6)_ Hamilton, Ont. 5.0 per cent (5.4)_ St. Catharines-Niagara,...