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Key EU nature law in jeopardy after committee rejection

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

The EU’s flagship nature law failed to pass a key committee vote Tuesday, jeopardizing a key pillar of the bloc’s Green Deal plans. Lawmakers in the European Parliament’s environment committee (ENVI) voted 44 in favor to 44 against on adopting a position on the contentious Nature Restoration Law. A tie amounts to rejection, as it means there is no majority in favor.The legislation, an ambitious plan to return the Continent’s degraded natural areas to a healthy state, will nevertheless go to a plenary vote in the Parliament; the vote is scheduled for July 11.With two other committees having already voted against the proposal, ENVI’s failure to submit a position on the bill means MEPs will now have three weeks to find a compromise that’s acceptable to a majority in the whole Parliament, or risk rejection of the entire law.The backlash against the Nature Restoration Law was led by conservative MEPs and farmers’ groups, who claimed that the proposed rules threaten farmers’ li...

Hungary’s Judit Varga will lead Orbán’s party in EU elections, report says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga will run in the European Parliament election next year as the ruling Fidesz party’s lead candidate, government-affiliated media reported Tuesday.Varga, whose portfolio includes EU affairs, is a well-known personality in Brussels for her confrontational rhetoric, social media posts criticizing EU institutions and deep loyalty to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.But she is also regarded in EU circles as a polyglot who knows Brussels well and as someone the relatively isolated Hungarian government can still dispatch to sit down with European officials. A lawyer by profession, Varga worked at the European Parliament as an adviser for Hungarian MEPs between 2009 and 2018. She was then plucked out of obscurity and made a minister of state for EU relations, the beginning of a meteoric rise through the ranks of Orbán’s associates, culminating in her appointment as jus...

Russia drops charges over Wagner mutiny, reports say

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

Russian authorities have closed the mutiny probe into the Wagner Group, run by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, state-owned media reported Tuesday.“During the investigation of the criminal case initiated by the investigative department of the Russian Federal Security Service on June 23 under Article 279 of the Criminal Code on the fact of an armed mutiny, it was found that its participants on June 24 stopped the actions directly aimed at committing a crime,” said a statement from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), RIA Novosti reported. “Given this and other circumstances relevant to the investigation, the investigating authority issued a decision to terminate the criminal case on June 27,” said the security service.RIA also reported that preparations were underway to transfer heavy military equipment from the Wagner Group to Russia’s official armed forces.Prigozhin — who has railed against Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of...

German ruling parties finalize deal on controversial heating law

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

BERLIN — Germany’s three ruling parties agreed late Monday on final details of a green energy law to phase out gas and oil heating, paving the way for the bill to be adopted next week ahead of the German Bundestag’s summer recess. Senior lawmakers from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) agreed on the fine print of the heating law, a cornerstone of Germany’s efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, a spokesperson for the SPD confirmed to POLITICO.The spokesperson could not immediately provide details of the agreement but said it is based on broader guidelines agreed by the parties earlier this month and that link key deadlines to municipal heating planning.Disputes over the law almost caused a government crisis last month. The Greens and their Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck had pushed for an ambitious rollout but faced fierce criticism not only from the opposition but also the liberal FDP. Habeck, once...

DA: Suspect arrested on murder charge in horrific Newton triple homicide

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

A man has been arrested on a murder charge in connection with the gruesome deaths of three elderly people in Newton over the weekend as the community prepares to come together to mourn the victims at a vigil on Tuesday.Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan announced Monday that 41-year-old Christopher Ferguson, of Newton, is expected to be arraigned on a slew of charges, including murder, in connection with the apparently random triple homicide on Broadway Street that sent shockwaves through Newton’s quiet Nonantum neighborhood.Authorities initially responded on Sunday morning around 10 a.m. after a friend found the victims inside the home. They were pronounced dead at the scene.A day later, Ryan said evidence gathered at the crime scene led them to Ferguson. Ryan said Ferguson lives nearby and allegedly broke into the home on Broadway Street for reasons still unknown. An email circulated by the victims’ parish on Monday identified the three as Jill and Bruno D’Amore...

Fire crews battle multi-alarm East Boston blaze

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

Fire crews extinguished a multi-alarm fire that broke out in a residential building in East Boston early Tuesday morning.Crews responding to a reported structure fire on Meridian Street around 2:30 a.m. found smoke showing from a three-story attached building.Using ladder trucks, firefighters braved humid conditions to knock down the flames in about an hour.There were no reported injuries.The cause of the fire remains under investigation.https://twitter.com/BostonFire/status/1673588198017040384https://twitter.com/BostonFire/status/1673590825991716865https://twitter.com/BostonFire/status/1673592610500345858This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.

More June Gloom

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

Does this June seem a little gloomy? It’s not your imagination. This is one of the cloudiest Junes on record for the city of Boston. Unlike temperature records that go back to the 1800s, cloud cover data isn’t as deep, only going back to 1952. But still, 2023 is tied for second place for cloudiest June since 1952. And with our unsettled pattern lasting for much of this week, we’ll have a good shot at maybe taking second place all alone.Today will once again feature a lot of cloud cover with a few sunny breaks from time to time. Temperatures will be pretty typical for late June in the upper 70s but that humidity will be back in full force again today. With the warmth and humidity, we’ll keep a few showers or a thunderstorm in the forecast for the afternoon, but they don’t look to be as widespread or as robust as yesterday’s storms or what some of us woke up to this morning.Once these morning storms move out, we’ll dry out for a few hours with...

Red Sox notebook: Sox have been picture of mediocrity through season’s first half

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

It seems like every time the Red Sox have turned a corner, they’ve found a way to stumble back to square one.When they won eight straight to move a season-high seven games over .500, they then lost six of their next seven, including a three-game sweep at the hands of the last-place St. Louis Cardinals at Fenway Park.When they bounced back with four straight wins and a pair of series victories over Seattle and San Diego, they face-planted again and went 5-12 over the next two-plus weeks.Now, since winning six straight to move back into the playoff picture, the Red Sox have dropped four of five to a pair of unremarkable AL Central clubs, including this weekend’s series against a bad Chicago White Sox team that seems destined to sell off its entire starting rotation ahead of the trade deadline.As a result, the Red Sox come into the week 40-39, last in the AL East and three games back of the last Wild Card spot with three teams to jump.They haven’t been bad, per se. Th...

Robbins: GOP censure of Schiff perfect

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

In his 2021 book “Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy And Still Could,” Congressman Adam Schiff recounts Donald Trump’s attempts to sell out American interests for his own personal benefit while president, supported at every turn by a Republican Party too corrupt and too terrified to stand up to an obvious crook.“There is now a dangerous vein of autocratic thought running through one of America’s great parties, and it poses an existential danger to our country,” Schiff writes. “The experience of the last four years will require constant vigilance on our part so that it does not gain another foothold in the highest office in our land.”As Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff oversaw the inquiry into Trump’s gambit to extort a contrived announcement of a phony investigation into political rival Joe Biden in exchange for the release of desperately needed assistance that Congress had authorized for Ukraine’s self-defense against Russia. Tr...

The FBI and Homeland Security had ‘a massive amount’ of warnings about Jan. 6, a Senate report finds

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:15 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security downplayed or ignored “a massive amount of intelligence information” ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S Capitol, according to the chairman of a Senate panel that on Tuesday is releasing a new report on the intelligence failures ahead of the insurrection. The report details how the agencies failed to recognize and warn of the potential for violence as some of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters openly planned the siege in messages and forums online.Among the multitude of intelligence that was overlooked was a December 2020 tip to the FBI that members of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys planned to be in Washington, D.C., for the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and their “plan is to literally kill people,” the report said. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said the agencies were also aware of many social media posts that foreshadowed violence, some cal...