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B.C. to bring in law forcing Surrey to go with municipal police force

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

VICTORIA — British Columbia Solicitor General Mike Farnworth has introduced legislation that will require the City of Surrey to provide policing with a municipal force in the latest jurisdictional salvo over the RCMP and the Surrey Police Service.The update in the Police Act also gives the province the authority to cancel the RCMP contract it has with Surrey, B.C.’s second most populous city behind Vancouver. Farnworth introduced the Police Amendment Act Monday in the legislature, where he said the change would provide Surrey residents with “clarity and finality” on the future of the city’s police services.He said the changes would require any municipality that has approval from the province to change its police force to “proceed to completion” once the transition starts.In a written statement, Farnworth said a lack of clarity in the existing Police Act was “exposed” during the Surrey police transition process.He said the new amendment...

Canada’s new antisemitism envoy Deborah Lyons eyes hate speech on campuses and online

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

OTTAWA — The Trudeau government has appointed former ambassador Deborah Lyons as Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.Lyons is Canada’s former ambassador to Israel and to Afghanistan, and she replaces former attorney general Irwin Cotler, who held the role for three years.The role involves collecting data and speaking out for Jewish people when they are attacked within Canada and abroad, and similar roles exist for Muslims and LGBTQ+ people.Lyons was named to the role Monday morning during a conference on antisemitism in Ottawa.She told reporters that her appointment comes amid “the malignancy growing here, that cancerous hate speech, that desire to polarize and divide and disrupt and destroy the spirit that is Canada.”It also comes as Israel grieves a gruesome Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that left 1,400 dead, and concerns by the United Nations that Israel is violating humanitarian law by depriving Palestinian civi...

New York City limiting migrant families with children to 60-day shelter stays to ease strain on city

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that he is limiting shelter stays for migrant families with children to 60 days, bidding to ease pressure on a city housing system overwhelmed by a large influx of asylum seekers over the past year.The Democrat’s office said it will begin sending 60-day notices to migrant families with children in shelters to seek other places to live. It also will provide “intensified casework services” to help families secure new housing, according to a news release. It’s the mayor’s latest attempt to provide relief to the city’s shelter system and finances as it grapples with more than 120,000 international migrants who have come to New York, many without housing or the legal ability to work. More than 60,000 migrants currently live in city shelters, according to his office.Adams has estimated the city will spend $12 billion over the next three years to handle the influx, setting up large-scale emergency s...

CP NewsAlert: Human rights commissioner resigns over Saskatchewan’s pronoun bill

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

REGINA — Heather Kuttai, a commissioner with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, says in a letter that she is resigning immediately because of the province’s proposed legislation requiring parental permission if a child wants to use a different name or pronoun at school.More coming.The Canadian Press

Russia’s assault on a key eastern Ukraine city reported to be weakening as the war marks 600 days

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A dayslong attempt by Russian forces to storm a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine appears to be running out of steam, Kyiv officials said Monday, as the Kremlin’s war entered its 600th day.Ukrainian forces repelled 15 Russian attacks from four directions on Avdiivka over the previous 24 hours, the Ukrainian General Staff said.That compared with up to 60 attacks a day in the middle of last week, according to Vitalii Barabash, head of the city administration. The slackening suggests the Russian effort to capture Avdiivka has “deflated,” Barabash said.A Washington-based think tank broadly concurred with that assessment. “Russian forces continued offensive operations aimed at encircling Avdiivka … but have yet to make further gains amid a likely decreasing tempo of Russian operations in the area,” the Institute for the Study of War said in analysis published late Sunday.Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told a U.N. Security C...

Zexi Li, ‘Freedom Convoy’ lawyers spar at organizers’ criminal trial

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

OTTAWA — The woman who went to court to get an injunction against the “Freedom Convoy” last year faced the protest organizers in criminal court Monday in some of the most combative lines of questioning the trial has seen so far. Zexi Li took the stand against Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, who are accused mischief and counselling others to commit mischief for their role in leading the protest, among other charges.The courtroom was unusually crowded Monday as Li took the stand. She kept her composure in the witness box during the cross-examination. Early in her evidence, defence lawyers challenged Li’s use of the word “occupation” to describe the protest, in which big-rigs, trucks and large crowds of people blocked streets in downtown Ottawa for weeks.“I object by the continuous use of the word ‘occupation,'” Chris Barber’s lawyer Diane Magas said. “It’s very irritating to my ears.”Magas said the word was inflammatory, especially b...

Complainant in Nygard trial says mogul said he wanted to help with fashion career

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

TORONTO — Note: This story contains graphic content.A woman who has accused Peter Nygard of sexual assault told his trial Monday that the former fashion mogul flew her to Toronto under the guise of helping with her designer aspirations, but what she thought would be a business meeting turned into an attack. Nygard, the founder of a now-defunct international women’s clothing company, is accused of using his position in the fashion industry to lure women and girls.The 82-year-old has pleaded not guilty to five counts of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement in alleged incidents ranging from the 1980s to mid-2000s.The case’s fifth and final complainant – whose identity is protected by a publication ban – said she first met Nygard in the late 1980s at a popular nightclub in Gatineau, Que. The woman, in her late teens or early 20s at the time, was living with her family in nearby Ottawa, where she worked in television and sold hand-painted clothing on weekends....

Georgia agency investigating fatal shoot by a deputy during a traffic stop

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

KINGSLAND, Ga. (AP) — Georgia authorities are investigating after a sheriff’s deputy fatally shot a 53-year-old motorist during a traffic stop on Monday.The Camden County deputy pulled over a driver along Interstate 95 near the Georgia-Florida line. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the driver got out of the car at the deputy’s request and cooperated at first, but became violent after he was told he was being arrested.A GBI news release said preliminary information shows the deputy shocked the driver with a stun gun when he failed to obey commands, and the driver then began assaulting the deputy. The GBI said the deputy again tried using the stun gun and a baton to subdue him, then drew his gun and shot the driver when he continued to resist.The agency identified the motorist killed as Leonard Allen Cure. It did not say what prompted the traffic stop.It is customary for Georgia law enforcement agencies to ask the GBI to investigate shootings involving officers. Th...

Ex-FTX exec was ‘horrified’ last year when he learned of $13 billion shortfall

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A former FTX executive and onetime billionaire testified against the cryptocurrency exchange’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, on Monday at his fraud trial, saying his admiration for him faded as he watched excessive spending on investments, property and celebrities precede a $13 billion shortfall that left him feeling “blindsided and horrified.”Nishad Singh, the former head of engineering at FTX, was part of Bankman-Fried’s trusted inner circle before the cryptocurrency empire collapsed last November. Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas a month later. Singh pleaded guilty to fraud charges and agreed to testify against the man he’d known since high school.Singh told a Manhattan federal court jury that he “felt really betrayed” when he learned in a private conversation with Bankman-Fried on the balcony of their penthouse apartment in September 2022 that there was not sufficient assets to cover $13 billion that had been spent largely on investments,...

Semitruck driver killed when train derails on Colorado bridge, spilling coal cars onto major highway

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 07:12:24 GMT

DENVER (AP) — A semi-trailer truck driver was killed when a train derailed and a railroad bridge collapsed onto a major highway near Pueblo, Colorado, spilling coal and mangled rail cars onto the roadway and shutting it down indefinitely, authorities said Monday. The 60-year-old driver was initially said to be trapped in the Sunday afternoon accident on Interstate 25, but authorities said Monday that he had died. It was unknown whether any other vehicles were involved, Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Gayle Perez said.Photos and videos posted by authorities showed the partially collapsed bridge with the semi-truck caught beneath in the right lane. The images also show a pileup of train cars and wheels scattered across the scene and loads of coal covering a portion of the highway.A nine-mile stretch of I-25 — the main north-south road corridor in Colorado, used by 39,000 to 44,000 vehicles daily — was shut down in what the Colorado Department of Transportation said Monday ...