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Rising Mississippi River continuing to test flood defenses

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — The rising Mississippi River will continue to test flood defenses in southeast Iowa and northwest Illinois on Monday as it crests in the area.The peak water levels this spring will likely rank in the top 10 of all time in many places, but the National Weather Service said river levels will generally remain well below past records. That should help most towns along the river withstand the floodwaters though officials will be checking their floodwalls and sandbag barriers closely in the next few days.“Luckily we’ve had relatively dry weather over the last week or so and not expecting much in the way of rainfall as well,” National Weather Service meteorologist Tom Philip said. “So it’s coming through as forecast for the most part.”The river peaked in the Dubuque area Saturday at 23.03 feet (7 meters)— well below the 25.7 feet (7.8 meters) record — but officials there were grateful to have the floodwall the city built 50 years ago in place. Without that floodwall,...

Met Gala 2023 live updates: Get set for fashion’s big night

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Fashion’s biggest night is just a few hours away — after all, it is the first Monday in May. Follow along for real-time updates on the 2023 Met Gala from The Associated Press. We’ll be bringing you news in all formats, all day and all night, from the carpet and behind the scenes. ___WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH KARL LAGERFELDThe late fashion designer’s selection as the theme is not without controversy, with some criticizing his unapologetically polemical comments on a variety of topics, including xenophobic and fatphobic remarks. AP Entertainment Writer Leanne Italie, who will be anchoring our coverage tonight, breaks down the designer’s multifaceted legacy.___WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THIS YEAR’S MET GALAThis year is themed around the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibit, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” Given that Lagerfeld was, well, a fashion designer, you can expect many a haute look. The guest list is heavily guarded, but ever...

Grab your fancy duds for Met Gala mania with Karl Lagerfeld

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s the first Monday in May: Welcome to Met Gala mania.With a livestream available when the evening gets underway, the world’s most fashionable fundraiser takes on one of the world’s most prolific — and controversial — designers, the late Karl Lagerfeld, as the starry party’s theme. So how would the man of the hour, who died in 2019, feel about all the hullabaloo? Lagerfeld was a student of history, to be sure, but his eyes were forever on the future.“Karl never wanted to have a retrospective when he was alive. He felt that it was funereal. He made the point that (Cristóbal) Balenciaga and (Coco) Chanel never had them when they were alive,” said William Middleton, who wrote the biography “Paradise Now: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld.”So what about now?“He believed very much in fashion history, so he’s a part of fashion history now. I don’t think he would have had a problem with it,” Middleton surmised.Others aren’t...

Paraguay’s long-ruling Colorado Party has easy election win

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay (AP) — Paraguayans voted overwhelmingly to keep the long-ruling Colorado Party in power for five more years, backing its presidential candidate and giving it control of both houses of Congress.Santiago Peña, a 44-year-old economist, had 43% of the votes in a preliminary count from Sunday’s election, with nearly all voting places reporting. That was far ahead of the 27% held by his closest challenger, Efraín Alegre of the Pact for a New Paraguay, a broad-based opposition coalition that had united in an effort to bring to an end Colorado’s seven-decade stranglehold on power.The conservative Colorado Party also had a strong showing in congressional elections, winning majorities of 45 seats in the Senate and 80 seats in the lower house. Led by Alegre, the opposition coalition had been optimistic it was going to be able to win votes due to widespread unhappiness over high levels of corruption and failures in the health and education systems, which took center sta...

Man who lost wife, son in Texas mass shooting tells story

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

CLEVELAND, Texas (AP) — Wilson Garcia hadn’t even asked his neighbor to stop shooting his gun. People in their rural town north of Houston are used to people firing their weapons to blow off steam, but it was late Friday night, and Garcia had a month-old son who was crying.So, Garcia said, he and two other people went to his neighbor’s house to “respectfully” ask that he shoot farther away from their home.“He told us he was on his property, and he could do what he wanted,” Garcia said Sunday after a vigil in Cleveland, Texas, for his 9-year-old son who was killed in the attack that soon followed. The suspect, 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, remained at large late Sunday despite a search involving more than 200 police from multiple jurisdictions.Garcia called the police after Oropeza rejected his request. The man shot some more, and now it sounded louder. In the neighborhood of homes on 1-acre lots, Garcia could see the man on his front porch but couldn’t tell what he was doing.His fa...

Case details Sinaloa cartel’s fentanyl-fueled evolution

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — With Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán serving a life sentence, his sons steered the family business into fentanyl, establishing a network of labs churning out massive quantities of the cheap, deadly drug that they smuggled into the U.S., prosecutors revealed in a recent indictment.Although Guzmán’s trial revolved around cocaine shipments, the case against his sons exposes the inner workings of a cartel undergoing a generational shift as it worked “to manufacture the most potent fentanyl and to sell it in the United States at the lowest price,” according to the indictment unsealed April 14 in Manhattan.Synthetic opioids — mostly fentanyl — now kill more Americans every year than died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, feeding an argument among some politicians that the cartels should be branded terrorist organizations and prompting once-unthinkable calls for U.S. military intervention across the border.“The problem with fentanyl,...

Biden’s diverse coalition of support risks fraying in 2024

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat-turned-Independent long known for his centrist views, voted for Joe Biden in 2020. But as Biden’s reelection campaign begins, Lieberman is preparing to recruit a third-party candidate capable of defeating the Democratic president.“Centrists and moderates feel that he’s governed more from the left than they hoped,” Lieberman, a leader of the group, No Labels, said of Biden in an interview. “He hasn’t been able to be the unifier that he promised to be.”Biden’s political challenges are not confined to voters in the middle. In the days since he formally launched his 2024 campaign, key members of the sprawling political coalition that lifted him over former President Donald Trump in 2020 are far from excited about the prospect of four more years. That underscores the test confronting Biden as he aims to motivate the coalition of African Americans, Latinos, young people, suburban voters and independents to show up for h...

US readies second attempt at speedy border asylum screenings

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Joe Biden scrapped expedited asylum screenings during his first month in office as part of a gutting of Trump administration border polices that included building a wall with Mexico. Now he’s preparing his own version.Donald Trump’s fast-track reviews drew sharp criticism from internal government watchdog agencies as the percentage of people who passed those “credible fear interviews” plummeted. But the Biden administration has insisted its speedy screening for asylum-seekers is different: Interviews will be done exclusively by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, not by Border Patrol agents, and everyone will have access to legal counsel. The decision to use fast-track screenings comes as COVID-19 asylum restrictions are set to expire on May 11 and the U.S. government prepares for an expected increase in immigrants trying to cross the border with Mexico. Normally, about three in four migrants pass credible fear interviews, though far fewer eve...

Poll: Americans fault news media for dividing country

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — When it comes to the news media and the impact it’s having on democracy and political polarization in the United States, Americans are likelier to say it’s doing more harm than good.Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults say the news media is increasing political polarization in this country, and just under half say they have little to no trust in the media’s ability to report the news fairly and accurately, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.The poll, released before World Press Freedom Day on Wednesday, shows Americans have significant concerns about misinformation — and the role played by the media itself along with politicians and social media companies in spreading it — but that many are also concerned about growing threats to journalists’ safety.“The news riles people up,” said 53-year-old Barbara Jordan, a Democrat from Hutchinson, Kansas. ...

LGBTQ+ lawmaker to GOP: ‘I’m literally trying to exist’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:20:22 GMT

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — State Sen. Shevrin Jones can often be seen at the Florida Capitol greeting staff and colleagues with a smile or laugh, but when he’s alone it’s a different story.“The outward expression is to show God’s love. That’s what I was taught,” said Jones, a Democrat. But, he said, “I have enough tears in my car to fill a lake.”For Jones, who is gay, the past two years have been emotionally draining as Florida passed a flurry of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. More than 200 LGBTQ+ lawmakers across the country feel just like Jones, at a time when anti-gay and anti-transgender legislation is flourishing — as if they are under personal attack, and that they need to continually defend their community’s right to exist. The issue exploded into the national spotlight last week when Montana Republicans voted to bar Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who is transgender, from the House floor after a standoff over gender-affirming medical care for minors.The ACLU is tracking nearly 470 ant...