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Jimmy Butler’s 56 points power Heat past Bucks 119-114 and to stunning 3-1 series lead

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

In a building where Dwyane Wade dazzled, Shaquille O’Neal dominated and LeBron James devastated, Jimmy Butler outdid them all Monday night.Scoring 56 points, the most in Miami Heat playoff history, Butler led a heart-stopping fourth-quarter rally to position the Heat within one victory of eliminating the No. 1-seeded Milwaukee Bucks from the postseason.Even with Giannis Antetokounmpo returning from a back injury to close with a triple-double, there was no stopping Butler and the Heat from moving to a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference playoff series.Simply put, Monday night’s 119-114 Heat victory at Kaseya Center was pure Butler, a single-minded player putting his imprint on a playoff night in a way the Wade, O’Neal or even James had not before.He simply refused to lose.So he didn’t.Not even with Antetokounmpo closing with 26 points, 13 assists and 10 rebounds, his third career playoff triple-double.Butler was sublime for the Heat, setting the t...

Tips on how to protect yourself against rape, sexual assault

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

Boston police, seeking the public’s help identifying an alleged rapist, are also urging residents to take steps to protect themselves. BPD adds: “No victim is ever to blame for the actions of an attacker.”Related ArticlesCrime & Public Safety | Boston police seek public’s help identifying suspect in sexual assault Safety steps include:Be aware of your surroundings, especially at night. Keep your head up. Make quick eye contact with those around you and try to avoid poorly lit or isolated areas.When possible, walk with friends and people you know especially late at night.Avoid the distractions created when talking on a cell phone or listening to an iPod/similar device. Avoid wearing earbuds or headphones in both ears.If you believe someone is following you, change direction, cross the street, seek a populated location and call 911.Remember descriptive information about the person following you to report to the police.If confronted, believe ...

Ontario man hit with close to $300 in bank fees after online lottery purchases

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

An Ontario man is warning others after he got dinged by some pretty hefty bank fees for purchasing lottery tickets online.The GTA resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said he signed up for a lottery subscription with his credit card on the OLG website. He used the provincial lottery corporation’s relatively new Direct Pay online payment option. He said his credit card statement later showed $290 in bank fees for a total of 58 transactions.His bank, BMO Canada, treated each lottery purchase as a cash advance which carries with it additional fees and begins incurring interest immediately.“It was confusion and anger at the same time,” he told CityNews. “Why am I being charged in the first place for something that’s been marketed as not having these fees associated with it?”OLG introduced Direct Pay in November noting on its website that using the payment option may avoid cash advance fees. Except it didn’t with BMO. The financial institution told CityNews that customers shou...

Quake damages hospital, sends Indonesians racing to highland

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A strong undersea earthquake early Tuesday sent streams of people fleeing to higher ground in western Indonesia before the tsunami danger passed.Footage released by the National Disaster Mitigation Agency showed streams of people in a village on Mentawai Island fled to the highlands by foot and motorcycles under the rain in darkness, while some patients at the village’s hospital were evacuated to its yard as cracks showed in the facility’s floor.The shocks were felt in districts and cities of West Sumatra and North Sumatra provinces, and some places ordered evacuations to higher ground.Residents in parts of West Sumatra province, including the provincial capital of Padang, felt the earthquake strongly for about 30 seconds, agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said.“Many residents in several villages on Mentawai island chose to stay displaced in higher ground although the tsunami alert was ended due to fears of aftershocks,” he said, adding that authorities were...

Biden to unveil new efforts to protect S. Korea from nukes

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will use this week’s celebratory state visit by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to underscore that the U.S. is ready to step up its efforts to deter a North Korean attack on South Korea, according to the White House.Biden will announce specific new nuclear deterrence efforts as well as a new cyber security initiative, economic investments and an educational partnership, part of an effort to highlight the breadth and depth of the two countries’ relationship as they mark the 70th anniversary of their alliance, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.White House officials say Biden hopes to put a particular emphasis on the United States’ “iron clad” commitment to deterring nuclear action by North Korea as Pyongyang has stepped up ballistic missile tests, including flight-testing a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time earlier this month. The recent test is seen as a possible breakth...

Mexico charges 2 men in activists’ disappearance

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Prosecutors in Mexico said Monday they have charged two men in the Jan. 15 disappearance of two environmental and community activists in a dangerous corner of western Mexico. Lawyer Ricardo Lagunes and schoolteacher Antonio Díaz have been missing for over three months. Their bullet-ridden truck was found a road near the iron-ore mining town of Aquila, in the western state of Michoacan. Federal prosecutors did not say whether the two were still alive, nor did they specify what evidence led them to charge the two suspects. A prosecution spokesman did not answer messages seeking clarification.Both suspects have been ordered to stand trial on charges of “disappearance,” defined as an abduction in which the victim isn’t heard from again. The TDT Network, a rights group, said one of the suspects was a leader of a faction of farmers in the Indigenous community of Aquila. It said the suspect — who was identified only by his first name, José, in keeping with Mexican legal ...

Australians and New Zealanders recall war dead on Anzac Day

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

Hundreds of thousands of Australians gathered at dawn services and veterans’ street marches across the nation on Tuesday to commemorate their war dead on Anzac Day as recent events focused minds on the cost of war and the new threat of China’s rapid military buildup.Australia and New Zealand commemorate Anzac Day every April 25 — the date in 1915 when the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the beaches of Gallipoli, in northwest Turkey, in an ill-fated campaign that was the soldiers’ first combat of World War I.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke to more than 30,000 people who gathered at the Australian War Memorial in the national capital Canberra for the first Anzac Day since his government was elected almost a year ago.“Gallipoli is just one battle in our history, but in all its stories of valor and resilience, in its simple truth of Australians looking out for each other no matter how bad things got, it has come to stand for something so much bigger in our collectiv...

UN chief: Haiti’s gang violence nears conflict, help needed

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations chief urged the immediate deployment of an international armed force in Haiti to stem escalating gang violence and the country’s worst human rights crisis in decades, warning in a new report that insecurity in the capital “has reached levels comparable to countries in armed conflict.”Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued an urgent appeal for a specialized armed force to stop the crisis in Latin America’s poorest country last October at the request of Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the country’s Council of Ministers. But at a U.N. Security Council meeting in January neither the United States, which has been criticized for previous interventions in Haiti, nor Canada showed any interest in leading such a force, and there are no signs that opposition has changed. The international community has instead opted to impose sanctions and send military equipment and other resources.Guterres reiterated in a report to the Security Council circulated M...

As sand miners prosper in Uganda, a vital lake basin suffers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

LWERA WETLAND, Uganda (AP) — The excavator grunts in the heart of the wetland, baring its teeth. There are trucks waiting to be loaded with sand, and more almost certainly on the way. This is how it is here daily in Lwera — a central Ugandan region on the fringes of Lake Victoria: a near-constant demand for sand that’s exerting pressure on a wetland that’s home to locals and animals and feeds into Africa’s largest freshwater lake.Lwera is a breeding ground for fish, serves as a stop for migratory birds and can store vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide underground. The wetland stretches more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) astride the highway from the Ugandan capital Kampala into the western interior. It has long been worked over by sand miners, both legal and illegal, motivated by demand from the construction industry. Now, all known corporate operations within the wetland have authorization to be there, giving them a measure of legitimacy that’s frustrating environmen...

LA’s big Armenian community marks genocide remembrance day

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:50 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The killing and deportation of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 1900s was remembered Monday in Southern California, home to an enormous Armenian American community that only recently has been able to celebrate U.S. recognition that the systematic oppression was genocide.Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day was marked in the Los Angeles region by big rallies and marches long before 2021, when President Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to use the word “genocide” to describe the campaign of violence.For decades, the White House had avoided using using the term for fear of alienating Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire and a NATO ally. The government of Turkey vehemently rejected Biden’s use of the word. Biden on Monday issued a statement renewing a pledge to never forget.“On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople — the start of a systematic campaign of violence aga...