Russia’s space chief says the country will opt out of the International Space Station after 2024 and focus on building its own orbiting outpost. (July 26)
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Wildfires raging in the forests of eastern Algeria have killed at least 37 people and wounded 161 others, the civil protection department of the North African country said Thursday. Most of the victims were reported in the wilaya, or region, of El Tarf, near the northern Algeria-Tunisian border, where 34 people were found dead. The death toll included a family of five found in their home and eight people on a public bus whose driver was surprised by flames while traveling
New Zealand police are investigating the suspected murder of two children whose remains were found in suitcases bought at an online auction for an unclaimed locker last week. Police launched a homicide inquiry in Auckland last week after the remains were found by a family going through the contents of a storage locker they had purchased unseen. The two children were aged between 5 and 10 years and had been dead for some time, police said in a statement on Thursday.
The executive director of Quadrangle, an advocacy group for the LGBTQ community, says it's troubling that gay contacts of two probable monkeypox cases in Newfoundland and Labrador were treated differently than straight contacts. In an exclusive interview with CBC News, two men said 811 gave them incorrect information, which resulted in delays in testing and protection for close contacts. The provincial Public Health division announced the first probable case of the viral disease on July 28. Both
A doctor in eastern Ontario charged with first-degree murder in the death of an elderly patient last year is now facing three new first-degree murder charges. Dr. Brian Nadler was arrested Wednesday. All three of the latest alleged victims were under Nadler's care.
Four times the tonnage of the original Open Arms rescue tugboat and with a capacity to carry up to 1,000 people, the Open Arms Uno made its first rescue on Wednesday, picking up 101 migrants stranded on a wooden boat off the Tunisian coast. "Sit down, if you don't sit down we don't continue," a crew member shouted to the excited migrants from a speed boat launched from the vessel operated by the Spanish charity Open Arms before all were taken aboard. One had jumped into the water to try to reach the speed boat, prompting it to briefly move away in a safety maneuver.
Environment Canada is continuing to issue heat warnings for Calgary and much of southern Alberta with daily high temperatures expected to reach 30 C for the rest of the week. Daytime temperatures in some parts of the province are forecast to range from 29 to 34 C. The heat should taper off Monday night and Tuesday before rising again on Wednesday, the agency said on its alerts page. As of 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, the heat warnings covered these areas: Calgary. Okotoks, High River, Claresholm. Drumh
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve officials saw signs that the U.S. economy was weakening at their last meeting but still called inflation “unacceptably high’’ before raising their benchmark interest rate by a sizable three-quarters of a point in their drive to slow spiking prices. In minutes from their July 26-27 meeting released Wednesday, the policymakers said they expected the U.S. economy to expand in the second half of 2022. But many of them suggested that growth would weaken as higher rat
China has issued its first national drought alert of the year as authorities battle forest fires and mobilise specialist teams to protect crops from scorching temperatures across the Yangtze river basin. The national 'yellow alert', issued late on Thursday, comes after regions from Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the Yangtze delta have experienced weeks of extreme heat, with government officials repeatedly citing global climate change as the cause. In one of the Yangtze's important flood basins in central China's Jiangxi province, the Poyang Lake has now shrunk to a quarter of its normal size for this time of year, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday.
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Estonia’s foreign minister on Thursday defended his country’s decision to bar Russian tourists, saying they are shirking their “moral responsibility” to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and its “genocidal war” in Ukraine. The small Baltic country, which shares a 300-kilometer (190-mile) border with Russia, stopped issuing tourist visas to Russians months ago, and as of Thursday no longer accepts those previously issued. “Our idea is to give a signal t
SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva remains the front-runner to win Brazil's presidential election in October, a poll of voter support showed on Thursday, although incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro is gaining ground. Lula received 47% voter support versus Bolsonaro's 32% in the latest survey by pollster Datafolha, compared with 47% and 29% respectively in July.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading reproductive health care provider and abortion rights advocacy organization, plans to spend a record $50 million ahead of November's midterm elections, pouring money into contests where access to abortion will be on the ballot. The effort, which breaks the group's previous $45 million spending record set in 2020, comes months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that created a constitutional right to hav
Mayors, police leaders and businesses in Ontario are calling on the province to provide more help in dealing with the growing homelessness and opioid crises gripping both big cities and small towns. Ontario's Big City Mayors, a group that includes 29 mayors of cities with a population of 100,000 or more, requested an emergency meeting with the province and Premier Doug Ford two months ago to address homelessness, the opioid crisis and mental health, said Cam Guthrie, the organization's chair. So
Outgoing health minister Christian Dubé has promised to "de-bureaucratize" the province's health-care network by creating a new government agency to co-ordinate operations, if his ruling Coalition Avenir Québec party is re-elected Oct. 3. Dubé, who is seeking re-election in October, made the announcement Wednesday morning. "We've all seen the shortcomings of our health system during the pandemic. Everyone agrees we must change the way things work in health and social services," Dubé said. The ag
AIRDRIE, Alta. — An urgent care centre in a city north of Calgary is returning to its normal operations this weekend. The facility in Airdrie, Alta., was to be closed overnight on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from July 22 until mid-September due to a lack of available doctors to cover shifts. Alberta Health Services says in a news release that it will now reopen Friday. Dr. Charles Wong, who is in charge of urgent care for the Calgary area, says in the release that four new doctors have been r
The World Health Organization's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has suggested that racism is behind a lack of international attention being paid to the plight of civilians in Ethiopia's war-shattered Tigray region. Calling it the "worst humanitarian crisis in the world", with 6 million people unable to access basic services, Tedros questioned in an emotional appeal why the situation is not getting the same attention as the Ukraine conflict. "Maybe the reason is the colour of the skin of the people," Tedros, who is from Tigray, told a virtual media briefing on Wednesday.
Eleven Nova Scotians died from COVID-19 the week of Aug. 9-15, the province's updated COVID-19 dashboard showed Thursday. There were an average of 206 daily COVID-19 cases during that time, a decrease from 249 the previous week. Five deaths from COVID-19 were reported last week. New hospital admissions due to COVID-19 were 40, down from 46 a week ago. Nova Scotia Health reported Thursday that: 50 patients are in hospital being treated for COVID-19, seven of whom are in intensive care. 127 patien
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — A federal judge Thursday kept jurisdiction over a lawsuit seeking to close an oil pipeline crossing a section of the Great Lakes, rejecting Michigan's effort to shift the case to state court. U.S. District Judge Janet Neff sided a second time with Enbridge Energy, which contends regulation of its Line 5 is a federal matter and federal courts should handle legal arguments about whether it should continue operating. “The Court reinforces the importance of a federal foru
A plan to kill off an invasive fish, along with all other fish species in New Brunswick's Miramichi Lake, can go ahead — for now. Last week, Court of Queen's Bench Judge Terrence Morrison issued an emergency injunction temporarily barring a group from using rotenone, a pesticide and piscicide, on the lake with the intent of killing off invasive smallmouth bass. That injunction expired at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, and a hearing in Woodstock Court of Queen's Bench that was supposed to include arguments
PARIS (AP) — Violent thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds left at least eight dead Thursday in France and Italy, uprooting trees in Tuscany and on the French island of Corsica and ripping away brick shards from St. Mark's famed bell tower in Venice. Over 100 boats in the Mediterranean Sea called for emergency help, authorities said. The storm produced gusts of more than 220 kph (136 mph) in some areas, the national weather agency Meteo France said. About 45,000 households were without power o
PEEKSKILL, N.Y. (AP) — At a recent rally with union workers and other supporters in the downtown square of this small city on the banks of the Hudson River, New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney tried to remind Democrats of everything he thinks the party has accomplished. He touted the sweeping coronavirus relief legislation passed in early 2021, last fall's infrastructure deal, a plan to boost high-tech manufacturing, the toughest limits on guns in decades and, just recently, a climate and health
