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Who was behind the St. Petersburg bombing?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

The Kremlin didn’t waste time blaming Ukraine for orchestrating the weekend bombing of a café in St. Petersburg, leaving what they claimed was 40 injured and high-profile ultra-nationalist military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky dead.And Ukrainian officials were no less firm batting away the charge.They blamed an “internal political fight” for the blast just a mile from where Vladimir Putin’s ex-wife lives in the historic heart of the Russian president’s hometown.“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” tweeted Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.Who should one believe?“Every day in Russia, it’s a thriller series,” noted Ksenia Sobchak on her Telegram channel. The former Russian presidential candidate and self-exiled daughter of Putin’s onetime patron, Anatoly Sobchak, St. Petersburg’s first post-Soviet mayor, understands better than most that things are seldom as they seem in Putin’s Russia — if ever.As in any good thriller, the assassination of Tatarsky boasts a cast...

It’s premature to start worrying about a President Le Pen

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice and a columnist for POLITICO Europe. He tweets at @Mij_Europe.The violent standoff over pension reform between President Emmanuel Macron and the people of France has raised fears that the country may come to vote for a President Marine Le Pen — the leader of the far-right National Rally — at the fourth time of asking in 2027. The speculation is premature.Both internationally and in France, commentators have suggested that Macron’s plunging popularity and the chaos on the streets offer a wide boulevard for Le Pen to win the office in four years’ time.  But the fundamentals that thwarted her in the past — the two-round system, her incoherent economic program and her past ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin — remain largely unchanged. That Macron is constitutionally barred from running again will also make her task harder, opening the 2027 field up to unexpected contenders — much like Macron was in 2017 — and ...

Corruption probe looms over Europe’s conservatives as election season begins

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

European conservatives are facing a potential political headache as the 2024 European Parliament election campaign gets underway.The man that European People’s Party chief Manfred Weber hired to run his digital campaign for the 2019 European election is now at the center of a pan-European corruption probe.A monthslong investigation spread from the central German state of Thuringia to the EPP’s headquarters on Rue du Commerce in Brussels on Tuesday, when Belgian police joined their German counterparts in a raid.They were on the hunt for information about Mario Voigt, 46, who leads the center-right Christian Democratic Union in Thuringia’s parliament. The public prosecutor’s office in Erfurt is investigating Voigt over suspicion of corruption in business dealings, according to media reports.The metastasizing probe comes just months after the EPP went after the Socialists and Democrats group — its main political rival in the upcoming European Parliament elections — ove...

Putin’s chekists are at the height of their power

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. There’s almost a 20-year difference between them — the Russian teenager dumped in an orphanage because she and her father publicly criticized the war on Ukraine, and the Wall Street Journal reporter held in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo Prison.Twenty years is also roughly the time it’s taken Russian President Vladimir Putin and his fellow chekists to turn the clock back to an era in which accredited Western journalists are arrested on bogus espionage charges, and children can be deemed enemies of the state and separated from their families.The detention of 13-year-old Masha Moskalyov, the imprisonment of her father Alexey, and the arrest of 32-year-old Evan Gershkovich are all of a piece. They are all victims of Russia’s return to the dark past — and they’re unlikely to be the last.Today’s echoes of Soviet times are haunting, and with his resurrection of the police state, Putin has demonstrated that while history may never exact...

Punch-ups at the polling booths! England goes to war over voter ID

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

LONDON — Canada, Italy, Norway, Israel and Hungary already demand it. France does too, but — naturellement — will let you use your hunting permit.But Brits have never had to show photo ID in order to vote — until now.Over the last 10 days, doormats across England have thudded to the arrival of 27.5 million polling letters, familiar missives alerting voters to annual local elections at the start of May. This year’s letters, however, are twice the normal size — the extra space filled with instructions for voters to bring one of 22 listed forms of identification to their polling station, or be refused a ballot.What sounds like a simple security step is proving hotly contentious in Westminster — and has left some election officials fearing mutiny, and even violence, at polling booths on May 4.“Will it get a bit nasty? Hopefully not so nasty that punches are traded and police are called, but who’s to say?” said a concerned returning officer — the senior official running a local ele...

Trump’s tariff time-bomb threatens to blow up transatlantic trade

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

BRUSSELS — The next big transatlantic trade fight is primed to explode. Negotiators from Brussels and Washington are scrambling to solve a five-year dispute over steel and aluminum dating back to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on European imports. They have until October to get a deal but are still so far apart that European officials now fear the chances of an agreement are slim. Without a deal, both sides could reimpose billions of dollars worth of trade tariffs on each other’s goods — potentially spreading well beyond steel to hit products including French wines, U.S. rum, Polish vodka and American denim jeans.While U.S. negotiators are still hopeful that an agreement can be reached in time, the political fallout of failure for President Joe Biden would be serious, with U.S. exports facing a hit just ahead of his potential re-election battle in 2024. More broadly, another breakdown in trade relations between Europe and the United States w...

Celtics wrap up East No. 2 seed with 97-93 win over Raptors

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

BOSTON (AP) — Malcolm Brogdon scored 29 points and hit two late free throws to help the Boston Celtics hold on for a 97-93 victory over the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday night.With Milwaukee’s win over Chicago, Boston (55-25) secured the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.Jaylen Brown added 25 points and 11 rebounds. Derrick White finished with 17 points in the opener of a two-game series. The teams meet again Friday in Boston.A night after their two-point loss at Philadelphia, the Celtics played without three starters. All-Star Jayson Tatum (bruised left hip), Marcus Smart (neck spasms) and Al Horford (back stiffness) all got the night off on the second night of the back-to-back.The Raptors (40-40) fell a game behind eighth-place Atlanta (41-39) in the standings. Pascal Siakam had 18 points and 11 rebounds. Scottie Barnes added 18 points and eight rebounds.Toronto went just 6 of 33 from beyond the arc. Boston didn’t shoot much better (11 of 38).Siakam scored 14 straight f...

Tom Hanks gifts autographed typewriter to Arlington store 

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

A local man and his shop recently received a special gift from Tom Hanks in the form of a typewriter that the actor signed himself. Tom Furrier owns a typewriter repair store in Arlington. He spoke with 7NEWS, saying he was shocked and thankful after receiving the gift, which even included a letter typed by Hanks.Furrier owns Cambridge Typewriter. He said he is used to shipping and receiving typewriters. When he received this package, though, he found the autograph “Tom Hanks” scrawled across the top of the typewriter. Hanks has a history of gifting machines from his personal collection, at one point telling the New York Times that he owned hundreds of typewriters. In an attempt to save some space, he started sending them to friends, co-stars and even strangers.Back in 2017, Hanks even sent a typewriter to a family in Wellesley who had written him a letter. “He’s a big supporter of people who love to type and of typewriter shops themselves,” Furrier said. “He’s u...

Healey Addresses Gold Star Spouses

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

They’re members of the “club that no one wishes to join,” as Gov. Maura Healey put it. Clad in gold jackets and garrison caps, members of the Gold Star spouses community — survivors of military members who died serving their country — filled the Senate Reading Room Wednesday for a luncheon and chance to hear from government officials. “We understand the plight of mental health right now…and that undoubtedly there are going to be more families in need of support, in need of the protections,” the governor told them. Peggy Griffin, president of the Greater Boston Chapter of Gold Star Wives of America, said the surviving spouses unite to “work for better benefits and a better life for us and our children.”While the greatest loss is emotional, there are other realities to cope with. “One of the things that happens to you when you lose your spouse, is you lose 75 percent of your income on average,” Grif...

Lowell Police Department launches body camera pilot program

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:45 GMT

The Lowell Police Department announced the launch of a body camera pilot program on Wednesday ahead of an expected rollout for the entire police department next year. The initial program will equip 30 officers with body cameras across police shifts. An additional 215 cameras will go into service with the launch for the rest of the department. Interim Lowell Police Superintendent Barry Golner thanked those involved in helping launch the program in a statement, saying the program “will ensure transparency and continue to build public trust.”“This will allow us to show the public we serve that our officers perform their duties with the highest degree of integrity and professionalism,” Golner said.