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Denver's homeless plan: Mayor answers to concerned residents at town hall

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston held another town hall Tuesday, hearing residents react to his plan for housing sites for the homeless.Last month, Johnston’s office released 11 potential locations for his proposed communities for unhoused people. Many who live near these proposed sites are sharing concerns.“The more units we add, the more blocks we close off, the more parts of the city no longer have encampments in them,” Johnston said.The mayor hopes to house 1,000 unhoused individuals by the end of 2023, shutting down encampments in the process.“If you look at just the 911 calls we've gotten to encampments this past year, over the last 12 months, that is more than 8,000 911 calls,” Johnston said. “The most unsafe setting there is."Denver Mayor Mike Johnston's administration recently cleared out this homeless encampment along Logan Street near 17th Avenue after a shooting nearby. (KDVR)What neighbors say about homeless planThe safety of neighbors located near the potenti...

SWAT responds to barricaded subject in Lauderhill

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

A neighborhood in Lauderhill was locked down after deputies responded to reports of a person who barricaded themselves in a home. Broward Sheriff’s Office SWAT arrived at the home, located at 1410 NW 33rd Way, Tuesday evening. 7News camera captured several fire rescue trucks at the scene, as well as officers armed with long guns. A tank with a battering ram with also at the scene. According to BSO, VIPER detectives were attempting to serve a warrant at the home when subject barricaded himself inside the home and refused to come out. Neighbors in the area were told to remain in there homes until deputies continue to work the incident. Please check back on WSVN.com and 7News for more details on this developing story.

Miami Beach Police searching for unidentified man posing as armed law enforcement officer

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

A man accused of posing as police is on the run after a South Beach meet-up turned into an alleyway gun brandishing and pepper spray to the face, all caught on security video obtained exclusively by 7News. “Why you got a gun?” said a security guard. “Get outta here.”Footage from Aug. 3 showed a Mango’s Tropical Cafe South Beach security guard interacting with a man wearing a backpack on his chest and what appeared to be a pistol in his hand, at the intersection of Ninth Street and Collins Avenue.“They gonna shoot anybody, you don’t know,” said a tourist who saw the bizarre encounter from her Sherbrooke Hotel room window with her 13-year-old nephew. “I saw the man, and I saw him screaming, ‘I’m a cop.'” After the security guard asked the man why he had a gun, the guard approached and sprayed the unidentified man with what seemed to be pepper spray.The situation became more bizarre once the man started saying what...

Woman blindsided with bill after being told insurance covered remainder of auto loan after accident 20 years ago

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

A South Florida woman was involved in a car accident 20 years ago. So why is she still in dealing with a debt disaster? 7’s Karen Hensel investigates.A lot of South Floridians are living paycheck to paycheck. But Veronique Nesmith says she isn’t even getting her whole paycheck.Veronique Nesmith: “It’s affecting me a lot. It’s affecting, I can’t, I can’t start to tell you.”She’s on the hook for thousands of dollars, from a car accident that happened nearly 20 years ago. She only found out last year when she started a new job and her paycheck kept coming up short.Veronique Nesmith: “Almost $400, like $300 and some dollars.”When she asked about it , she found out her wages were being garnished.This is the actual court order sent to her employer.It says in 2006, a judgment was entered against her for $14,801.91.Veronique Nesmith: “I just, I literally just broke down.”Veronique discovered the debt was being pur...

BRICS hypocrisy on offshore reform

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

Andrea Binder is a Freigeist fellow and research group leader at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin and the author of “Offshore Finance and State Power.” Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is professor of the International Politics of Africa at Oxford University and is currently writing a monograph titled “Africa Offshore.”Of all the challenges in global governance discussed at the latest BRICS summit in Johannesburg, the role of offshore financial centers should have loomed large. Instead, the issue barely got a noncommittal half paragraph on page eight of the summit’s 26-page declaration.In an example of breathtaking hypocrisy, BRICS countries rail against the global financial architecture but offer no collective action on offshore banking, and they also continue to be among its major users themselves.Data leaks such as the Pandora Papers and Panama Papers have shown just how vast amounts of cash end up in jurisdictions that ca...

Europe’s green deal will need broad support to succeed

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

Jean Pisani-Ferry, Simone Tagliapietra and Georg Zachmann are senior fellows at Bruegel.The European Union turned green into its defining color with the European Green Deal, setting ambitious climate targets and unleashing a wave of legislation to get there.But as decarbonization costs become more visible and changing political conditions constrain the politics of climate action, ensuring these achievements won’t fall short of commitments will be challenging. To this end, the EU must strengthen its climate and energy governance, and increase the financial resources allocated to supporting its goals.It must be clear to all that what the EU has embarked on is no less than an industrial revolution. A revolution that — unlike those of the past — is set against a tight deadline. And even if its benefits will by far outweigh its costs, this transformation will still entail significant pain along the way — even in strict economic terms.Some assets will lose value, some jobs will be destroy...

Lettuce remember: One year on, Liz Truss’ 9 wildest moments

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

LONDON — Oh what fun we had! It’s a year to the day since Liz Truss became Britain’s prime minister, kicking off the wildest and shortest-ever tenure of a U.K. leader.As her successor (and former rival) Rishi Sunak studiously plods on with the business of government, Truss has been busy defending her record and even plans a big speech later this month addressing the economic chaos that swiftly called time on her administration. The opposition Labour Party’s keen to remind voters of all that too, funnily enough.Take a walk down memory lane as POLITICO runs through nine of the most memorable moments from the Truss premiership.1) Truss enters Downing Street for glorious reignWhat happened: Having trounced her hopeless rival Sunak (whatever happened to that guy??) after a hard-fought contest to win over Conservative members, Britain’s former foreign secretary had a spring in her step as she got going.Stood on the steps of No. 10 Downing Street a year ago this week, Truss vow...

Ukraine’s democratic dilemma: When to hold elections

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

KYIV — If Russia hadn’t invaded, Ukraine was meant to hold parliamentary elections next month and a presidential vote in March 2024.Whether elections could or should happen is once again a lively topic of discussion in Kyiv, after U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham in late August called for Kyiv to organize “free and fair” elections even when it is under all-out assault from Russian attacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is strongly suggesting he wants to run for a second term. “In 2024, if the war continues and if elections are held, I will never in my life abandon my country. Because I am the guarantor of the Constitution, and I will defend it in any case,” he said in a recent interview with the Portuguese public broadcaster RTP.Zelenskyy responded to Graham by saying he is ready — if parliament agrees — to overturn the martial law that bans the country from holding elections in time of war, but it’s a ...

EU enlargement can combat Putin’s influence, France says

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

The European Union should help countries stand up to Vladimir Putin by sending a clear message about their prospects for joining the EU, French Europe Minister Laurence Boone told POLITICO.The EU is preparing for a potential wave of expansion that could bring as many as eight new members, including Ukraine and six Balkan countries, into the fold in the years to come.Several of these countries are prime targets for Russian influence campaigns that aim to weaken support for the EU and keep them out of the bloc — which is why the EU needs to be “clear and balanced” about what’s required for them to join, Boone said. “There is a lot of disinformation and interference in these [candidate] countries. It’s an issue,” she told POLITICO on the phone from Paris. “Vladimir Putin, in addition to his territorial ambitions, also aims to weaken the European Union. That’s a factor we need to take into account and fight against.”She added th...

The specter of Liz Truss still haunts Britain

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:00:36 GMT

LONDON — A year is a long time in politics — but the reverberations of the surreal fall of 2022 are still being felt across the U.K.Wednesday marks the first anniversary of Liz Truss’ ill-fated appointment as prime minister — a year on from that rainy day in September when she stood outside No. 10 Downing Street and vowed to “transform Britain” with free market shock therapy. Truss’ £45 billion package of unfunded tax cuts — with the promise of more to come — instead sunk the pound, sent interest rates soaring, caused chaos on the bond markets and forced the Bank of England to prop up failing pension funds.Humiliated, Truss had little choice but to junk her entire economic program and less than four weeks later she was gone — the U.K.’s shortest-ever serving prime minister, famously outlasted by a supermarket lettuce.The legacy of the period still is fiercely debated among Britain’s left and right-wing commentariat. In Westminster, some Tory faction...