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Firefighters are battling a wildfire on the slopes of a mountain near Cape Town in South Africa

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — More than 300 firefighters were battling a blaze on the slopes of a mountain near Cape Town in South Africa for a second day on Wednesday and residents were evacuated from at least one neighborhood overnight, emergency services said.Five firefighters were injured and two were taken to the hospital, the city’s Emergency Services spokesperson Jermaine Carelse said.The wildfire on the mountain slopes near the seaside town of Simon’s Town, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Cape Town, had threatened houses in the pre-dawn hours after it started on Tuesday. That threat was narrowly averted, Carelse said. He said only one derelict building on the grounds of a nearby South African navy base had been damaged.Residents were evacuated from the neighborhood most at threat just before 1 a.m. as a precaution, he said. Three helicopters continued to scoop up water from the ocean and drop it on the fire.Firefighters had worked to put out the fire th...

Airbnb admits misleading Australian customers by charging in US dollars instead of local currency

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian court on Wednesday ordered Airbnb to pay a 15 million Australian dollar ($10 million) fine, and the accommodation rental company could pay as much again in compensating customers who had been unaware they were being charged in U.S. rather than Australian dollars.Airbnb admitted making false or misleading representations to Australian users between January 2018 and August 2021 that prices shown on its platform for Australian accommodations were in Australian dollars, which are worth less than the greenback. For about 63,000 customers, the prices were in U.S. dollars.Federal Court Justice Brendan McElwaine ordered Airbnb to pay a AU$15 million fine within 30 days for breaching Australian consumer law, plus AU$400,000 in prosecution costs.Airbnb had earlier provided the court with an undertaking that it would pay as much as AU$15 million in compensation to eligible customers.Airbnb amended its platform on Aug. 31, 2021, so that prices in U.S. do...

Some state abortion bans stir confusion, and it’s uncertain if lawmakers will clarify them

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

Ever since the nation’s highest court ended abortion rights more than a year ago, vaguely worded bans enacted in some Republican-controlled states have caused bewilderment over how exceptions should be applied.Supporters have touted these exemptions, tucked inside statutes restricting abortion, as sufficient enough to protect the life of the woman. Yet repeatedly, when applied in heart-wrenching situations, the results are much murkier.“We have black and white laws on something that is almost always multiple shades of gray,” said Kaitlyn Kash, one of 20 Texas women denied abortion who are suing the state seeking clarification of the laws — one of a handful of similar lawsuits playing out across the country.State lawmakers there and elsewhere face growing pressure to answer these questions by amending laws in legislative sessions that start in most states next month. But it’s not certain how — or whether — they will.Before the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in...

Takeaways on AP’s investigation into cocoa coming from a protected Nigerian rainforest

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

OMO FOREST RESERVE, Nigeria (AP) — Habitat for a dwindling population of critically endangered African forest elephants is under threat, a casualty of the world’s appetite for chocolate. Deforestation driven by planting cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate, is whittling down Omo Forest Reserve, a protected rainforest in southwestern Nigeria that helps combat climate change and is one of Africa’s oldest and largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. Farmers are expanding into conservation areas where cocoa farming is banned, conservation officials say.The Associated Press spoke to 20 farmers, two brokers and five licensed buying agents who are growing and selling cocoa from the reserve to figure out where cocoa beans used in holiday sweets are heading.Here are takeaways from AP’s investigation:COMPANIES GET COCOA FROM THE FORESTThe AP visited plantations and warehouses of farmers and licensed buying agents who acknowledge that they operate illegally in the reserve’s conservation area. AP ...

Drilling under Pennsylvania’s ‘Gasland’ town has been banned since 2010. It’s coming back.

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

A year after pleading no contest to criminal charges, one of Pennsylvania’s leading natural gas companies is poised to drill and frack in the rural community where it was banned for a dozen years for polluting the water supply.Coterra Energy Inc. has won permission from state environmental regulators to drill 11 gas wells underneath Dimock Township, in the state’s northeastern corner — the sweet spot of the largest natural gas field in the United States, according to well permit records reviewed by The Associated Press. Billions of dollars worth of natural gas, now locked in shale rock deep underground, await Coterra’s drilling rigs.Some landowners, long shut out of royalties because of the state’s lengthy moratorium, can’t wait for the Houston-based drilling giant to resume production in Dimock. Other residents dread the industry’s return. They worry about truck traffic, noise and the threat of new contamination.Coterra has not set a date for the resumption of dri...

Cocoa grown illegally in a Nigerian rainforest heads to companies that supply major chocolate makers

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

OMO FOREST RESERVE, Nigeria (AP) — Men in dusty workwear trudge through a thicket, making their way up a hill where sprawling plantations lay tucked in a Nigerian rainforest whose trees have been hacked away to make room for cocoa bound for places like Europe and the U.S.Kehinde Kumayon and his assistant clear low bushes that compete for sunlight with their cocoa trees, which have replaced the lush and dense natural foliage. The farmers swing their machetes, careful to avoid the ripening yellow pods containing beans that will help create chocolate, the treat shoppers are snapping up for Christmas.Over the course of two visits and several days, The Associated Press repeatedly documented farmers harvesting cocoa beans where that work is banned in conservation areas of Omo Forest Reserve, a protected tropical rainforest 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of the coastal city of Lagos in southwestern Nigeria. Trees here rustle as dwindling herds of critically endangered African forest e...

America’s animal shelters are overcrowded with pets from families facing economic and housing woes

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

MENANDS, N.Y. (AP) — Kaine is a big, buoyant dog looking for a home. But lately, he’s spending a lot of time at the office. Animal shelters around the U.S. are bursting at the seams amid the rising cost of living, so the gray and white 7-year-old has been staying in a worker’s office at the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society while awaiting adoption.The shelter near Albany, New York, is “beyond full,” said CEO Ashley Jeffrey Bouck. That means Kaine — along with his crate, dog bed and chewy toys — has to share space with a staffer, a desk and file cabinets.“He is one of our ‘office fosters’ as we’re calling it,” Bouck said as she visited Kaine’s office recently. “They are here all day and all night. They are not going into a kennel because we don’t have a kennel for them to go into.”The number of animals entering shelters began to climb in 2021, after a pandemic-related dip. Adoptions haven’t kept pace with the influx of pets — especially larger dog...

Native American translations are being added to more US road signs to promote language and awareness

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A few years back, Sage Brook Carbone was attending a powwow at the Mashantucket Western Pequot reservation in Connecticut when she noticed signs in the Pequot language.Carbone, a citizen of the Northern Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island, thought back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she has lived for much of her life. She never saw any street signs honoring Native Americans, nor any featuring Indigenous languages. She submitted to city officials the idea of adding Native American translations to city street signs. Residents approved her plan and will install about 70 signs featuring the language of the Massachusett Tribe, which English settlers encountered upon their arrival.“What a great, universal way of teaching language,” she said of the project done in consultation with a a member of the Massachusett Tribe and other Native Americans.“We see multiple languages written almost everywhere, but not on municipal signage,” she said. “Living on a numbe...

Commission mobilises more than €65 million for member states to support people fleeing Russian aggression against Ukraine

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

The European Commission has decided last week to make available over €65 million from the Asylum Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) to support Bulgaria, Czechia, Poland, and Romania in hosting people fleeing the Russian aggression against Ukraine. This decision follows a targeted call for financing of the projects aiming to alleviate the pressure on the reception capacity of these Member States and to help them ensure that beneficiaries of temporary protection receive the necessary support, services and assistance.  The European Union is currently hosting more than 4.1 million people benefiting from temporary protection, which was triggered for the first time shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and in September this year further extended until March 2025. The Commission continues to take measures to support people fleeing Ukraine and member states hosting them.  Bulgaria, Czechia, Poland, and Romania can now use this additional funding from the EU budget to h...

L.A. Dodger-themed Christmas house an annual spectacle

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:40:46 GMT

For the last 20 Christmases, a family in San Bernardino County has decked out their home with Los Angeles Dodger decorations, making a pitch perfect spectacle that people all over Southern California travel to see. “I’ll come up with an idea and it starts with a little drawing on a scratch piece of paper,” Adam Abadie told KTLA’s Omar Lewis. “They’ll figure out where it should go and how I can correlate or bridge Christmas and the Dodgers.”  Every inch of the Abadie’s home on Havenhurst Way in Upland is a festive fusion of Christmas cheer and Dodger’s gear. From the latest addition of the Shohei Ohtani display to the Houston Astro’s Grinch and the Vin Scully tribute, every sign is handcrafted by Adam himself.  A home in Upland decorated in Dodger-themed Christmas displays seen here on Dec. 19, 2023. (KTLA)“He starts all the way back in the summer and they’ll start designing things,” Kelly Abadie, Adam's wife, said. “Like, right as we’re out here, it’ll be, ‘What’s the...