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Spooky harvest: Droughts, heavy rain create challenge for Canada’s pumpkin season

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

Extreme weather caused by climate change — droughts followed by heavy rains — wreaked havoc with the pumpkin harvest across Canada this year.Nova Scotia pumpkin farmer Danny Dill said the spring planting season was extremely dry. A spell of hot weather and then nearly two weeks of historic wildfires in late May and early June left behind more than 235 square kilometres of scorched ground.“It was just like a dust bowl there,” said Dill, owner of Howard Dill Enterprises in Windsor, N.S.But starting in June heavy rains poured in, which made his farm resemble a waterbed and kept the bees away. When the pumpkin flowers bloomed across his patch, he said, there were fewer bees than usual to pollinate them. “It’s been a spooky, really spooky season for a lot of us.”This year’s pumpkin harvest in Canada and the United States is a stark reminder of the fact farmers are at the mercy of the weather gods. Climate change led to parts of the continent bakin...

The UAW says its strike ‘won things no one thought possible’ from automakers. Here’s how it fared

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

The United Auto Workers won at least partial victories on many of the key demands that led to the six-week strike against Ford, General Motors and Jeep maker Stellantis.The union has given some details of the deals, including a detailed explanation of the agreement it reached with Ford. The agreement is expected to become the model for later settlements with GM and Stellantis. Rank-and-file UAW members must ratify each contract before it takes effect.“We won things no one thought possible,” UAW President Shawn Fain said when he announced the tentative agreement last week.The union represents 57,000 workers at the company, and about 16,600 of them were on strike. Here are the key terms of the agreements, as detailed by the union:PAY The tentative agreements call for 25% increases in pay by April 2028, raising top pay to about $42 an hour, according to the union. That starts with an 11% boost upon ratification, three annual raises of 3% each, and a final increase of 5%. The UAW ...

California’s Newsom plays hardball in China, collides with student during schoolyard basketball game

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Politicians have long sought to project vitality, youth and a common touch by staging photo shoots spotlighting their athletic prowess. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is the latest to find out that plans for a confident jump shot can turn into a torrent of online potshots. On a trip to China, the two-term Democrat took a detour from his official meetings on climate change to join a group of Beijing schoolkids for a game of basketball. Before long, he was on his backside after accidentally steamrolling a grade-school defender.No one was injured, but Newsom joins a long line of political figures whose attempts at a sporty glamour shot didn’t work out as planned. In a similar scene, British politician Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, knocked down a 10-year-old boy while playing a friendly game of rugby on a trip to Japan.Bill Clinton and Al Gore were needled for photos of them jogging in snug short-shorts while in office. In the 2004 presidential election, shots of...

An Alaska State Trooper fatally shoots a man seen brandishing a rifle outside motel, authorities say

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

TOK, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska State Trooper fatally shot a man who was brandishing a rifle outside a motel early Monday in the community of Tok, authorities said.The trooper was responding to a 911 call from the occupants of a motel room who said a man was trying to break in, according to a statement from the state Department of Public Safety. The trooper “observed an adult male brandishing an AK47 style rifle outside of the motel. Due to the adult male’s actions, the Trooper shot the adult male with their handgun,” the statement says.The agency identified the man who died as Timothy Thomas, 21, of Northway. The name of the trooper was not immediately released. The incident is being investigated by the Alaska Bureau of Investigation.The trooper who fired the gun has been placed on 72 hours of administrative leave in line with the Department of Public Safety policy.An email seeking additional details was sent to agency spokespersons.Tok is near the state’s eastern border with Canada a...

Spending passes $17M in Pennsylvania high court campaign as billionaires, unions and lawyers dig in

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Millions more dollars are flowing into Pennsylvania’s race for an open state Supreme Court seat, as labor unions, trial lawyers and billionaires are spending heavily in the campaign to influence a court that has been pivotal in major election-related cases.Total spending zipped past $17 million, according to the latest campaign finance reports due Friday, as Democrat Dan McCaffery, Republican Carolyn Carluccio and their allies claw for an advantage in the presidential battleground state.The election is Nov. 7.More than half of that spending — at least $12 million — came after Sept. 18, as cash from labor unions, lawyers’ groups, trade associations and wealthy donors underwrites ads on TV, the internet and fliers showing up in the mail across Pennsylvania.More than $5 million has come from groups that are conduits for two billionaires who are among the GOP’s top national donors.The contest will not change the fact that Democrats hold a majority on t...

Israel’s economy recovered from previous wars with Hamas, but this one might go longer, hit harder

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Just last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted a new era of peace and prosperity in the Middle East, based on growing acceptance of Israel within the region. Today, with the Israel-Hamas war in its fourth week, that vision is in tatters. The mobilization of 360,000 reservists and the evacuation of 250,000 Israelis from their homes, according to numbers provided by the Israeli military, has upended many businesses. Restaurants and stores have emptied. Airlines have canceled most flights to Israel, and tourists have called off trips. A main natural gas field has been shut down, farms have been destroyed for lack of workers and businesses have furloughed tens of thousands of workers.Israel has vowed to crush the Gaza Strip’s ruling Hamas group, which killed 1,400 people and took more than 240 others hostage in an Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel. Israeli airstrikes have flattened entire neighborhoods in Gaza and killed more than 8,000 peopl...

Hospitals, province preparing for triple-virus season

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

As the province rolls out the vaccination program for the respiratory season, hospitals are urging people to take advantage of the vaccines available to avoid the same volume of patients as last year.Farad Razak, an Internal Medicine physician with St. Michael’s Hospital, said they are currently tracking what happened in the southern hemisphere to predict what could happen here in Canada.“What we saw in Australia was a worse than average year of influenza infections, both in terms of the number of people who got infected and the number of people who’ve had serious illness ending up in hospital.”But Razak tells CityNews this year’s version of the flu vaccine is a good match for what is currently circulating. “And so the added benefit of vaccination becomes especially clear.”“Certainly increasing vaccination rates in general at any country will reduce the severity of the influenza impact on the health system.”He adds having a vacci...

Some 5,000 migrants set out on foot from Mexico’s southern border, tired of long waits for visas

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — About 5,000 migrants from Central America, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti set out on foot from Mexico’s southern border Monday, walking north toward the U.S. The migrants complained that processing for refugee or exit visas takes too long at Mexico’s main migrant processing center in the city of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. Under Mexico’s overwhelmed migration system, people seeking such visas often wait for weeks or months, without being able to work.The migrants formed a long line Monday along the highway, escorted at times by police. The police are usually there to prevent them from blocking the entire highway, and sometimes keep them from hitching rides. Monday’s march was among the largest since June 2022. Migrant caravans in 2018 and 2019 drew far greater attention. But with as many as 10,000 migrants showing up at the U.S. border in recent weeks, Monday’s march is now just a drop in the bucket. “We have been travelling for...

A North Carolina woman and her dad enter pleas in the beating death of her Irish husband

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

LEXINGTON, N.C. (AP) — The wife of an Irish businessman and her father entered pleas to voluntary manslaughter Monday in her husband’s beating death at their North Carolina home.Molly Corbett pleaded no contest and Thomas Martens pleaded guilty to the charge, news outlets reported.Corbett’s husband, Jason Corbett, died at their home in a golf course community in Davidson County in 2015. Investigators said Molly Corbett and Martens, who was a former FBI agent, used an aluminum baseball bat and brick paver to kill Jason Corbett, fracturing his skull and causing injuries to his arm, legs and torso.Defense attorneys have said the two were acting in self-defense and that they feared for their lives during a struggle with the husband.In 2021, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed their convictions on second-degree murder and ordered a new trial. Each had been sentenced in 2017 from 20 to 25 years.The high court pointed to omitted statements that the Corbetts’ two children had made dur...

Alabama man charged with making threats against Georgia prosecutor, sheriff over Trump election case

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:28 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — An Alabama man has been indicted on federal charges that he threatened violence against a Georgia prosecutor and sheriff related to an investigation into former President Donald Trump.The indictment returned Oct. 25 and unsealed Monday accuses Arthur Ray Hanson II of Huntsville of leaving threatening voicemails for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat on Aug. 6. Reached by phone Monday, Hanson, 59, said he is not guilty of the charges.Willis on Aug. 14 obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 other people, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to try to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The indictment — the fourth criminal case filed against Trump in a matter of months — had been widely anticipated.Shortly before the indictment was returned, Labat was asked during a news conference whether Trump would have a mug shot taken if he was indicted. Labat responded, “Unless someone ...