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Canadian returns home after being stuck in Gaza for almost 2 months

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

It took multiple attempts for 73-year-old Akram to cross the Rafah border from Gaza into Egypt, but he finally made it home to Canada after being stuck there for almost two months.At Toronto Pearson Airport, greeted by his children and grandchildren, he told CityNews he was glad to return home for good.Akram left Canada in late September to visit family in Northern Gaza and was there on Oct. 7. Since the war broke out, his children, including daughter Samah, had been urging the federal government to do more for Canadians stuck in Gaza.It was an emotional reunion as Akram recounted his harrowing journey from northern Gaza to the border. He made the trek alone, first by walking. Eventually, kind people gave him a ride, but along the way, he witnessed destruction and dead bodies as he escaped danger. Akram was supposed to make the journey with his brother, but his family wasn’t able to accompany him so he remains behind in Gaza.He had made it to the border prior to his eventual c...

4 out of 5 Mexicans who got a flu shot this year turned down Cuban and Russian COVID-19 vaccines

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Four out of five people in Mexico who got influenza shots so far this year turned down the government’s recommendation that they get Russian or Cuban COVID-19 boosters at the same time, officials said Tuesday.Assistant Health Secretary Ruy López Ridaura attributed the high refusal rate to people being reluctant to get two vaccines at the same time.“People have a certain reluctance to get simultaneous vaccinations,” López Ridaura said.But the population eligible for flu and COVID-19 shots — people over 60 and people with underlying health problems — are considered high-risk, and Mexicans in those groups had extremely high take-up rates for Covid vaccines in 2021 and 2022, according to the Health Department.Some people appear to simply distrust the Russian Sputnik and Cuban Abdala vaccines, both designed in 2020 for variants prevalent at the time.“It is an old antigen, it’s as if they were going to give me an influenza vaccine from 2020,” said Andreu Comas, a ...

Five new affordability measures in the Liberal government’s fall fiscal update

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

OTTAWA — Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled a fall economic statement on Tuesday that aims to support middle-class Canadians amid soaring consumer prices and looming mortgage renewals. She announced $168 million in new spending over six years for programs focused on at saving Canadians money. Here’s what the government proposes to do. Competition and trade The Liberals have proposed several amendments to the Competition Act in an attempt to improve consumer choice and lower prices.The economic statement proposes a “crackdown” on predatory pricing and “killer acquisitions.”Proposed legislative changes would also broaden the reach of the law so more private parties can bring cases before the Competition Tribunal and receive payment if they win.The government also wants to make sure that when Canada opens market access to trade partners, Canadian companies are given similar access abroad. “Going forward, Canada will consider reciprocity as a k...

Kansas officials blame 5-week disruption of court system on ‘sophisticated foreign cyberattack’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Cybercriminals hacked into the Kansas court system, stole sensitive data and threatened to post it on the dark web in a ransomware attack that has hobbled access to records for more than five weeks, officials said Tuesday. The announcement of a “sophisticated foreign cyberattack” was confirmation of what computer security experts suspected after the state’s Judicial Branch said Oct. 12 that it was pausing electronic filings. Until now, state officials had released few details, describing it simply as a “security incident.” Upon learning about the attack, the state disconnected its court information system from external access and notified authorities, the Judicial Branch said in a statement. That disrupted daily operations of the state’s appellate courts and all but one county. Johnson County, the state’s most populous, operates its own computer systems and had not yet switched over to the state’s new online system.In recent weeks many attorneys have been ...

Feds set aside $7B from Canada Growth Fund for carbon-price contract guarantees

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

OTTAWA — Almost half of the Canada Growth Fund for clean technology investments will be allocated to special contracts intended to give companies the confidence they need to make major investments to lower their greenhouse-gas emissions.Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland used her fall economic update Tuesday to confirm that the fund – which she launched a year ago in the 2022 fall economic statement – would be the principal vehicle to deliver carbon contracts for difference.She said up to $7 billion of the $15-billion fund will be set aside for contracts for difference, some of which are already being negotiated.The contracts acknowledge that companies are making decisions to invest in things that lower their carbon emissions based on how much they expect to pay for the carbon price over several years. Those investments are only sound if they would cost less than what the company would pay in carbon pricing without the technology.If the carbon pricing system changes in the future, t...

Key highlights from the Liberals’ 2023 fall economic statement

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

OTTAWA — Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled her fall economic statement on Tuesday, updating Canadians on the country’s financial health and introducing some new measures to target the housing crisis. Here are the highlights. — $20.8 billion: New federal spending since the spring budget.— $488.7 billion: Total government spending for the current fiscal year, through the end of March 2024. — 1.1 per cent: The real rate of GDP growth for 2023. Growth is expected to decline to 0.4 next year, but the government says it doesn’t expect the slowdown to result in a recession. — $40 billion: The updated deficit for this year. — $38.4 billion: Next year’s projected deficit — a $3.4-billion increase from the government’s previous projection. — $15 billion: The amount of money expected to go toward loan funding, beginning in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, to build more than 30,000 homes across Canada. — $1 billion: The cost of a new affordable housing fund over three ...

After the dollar-loving Milei wins the presidency, Argentines anxiously watch the exchange rate

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — As soon as Leandro Francisco Diana woke up Tuesday, he reached for his phone like many Argentines on the first business day after the election victory of President-elect Javier Milei.“I opened my eyes, got my phone and looked for the price of the dollar to see how the country had awakened,” said the 26-year-old Diana, who owns a hardware store with his father in Villa Crespo, a middle-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires.The exchange rate of the peso with the U.S. dollar has become a widely watched barometer of the nation’s economic health, and is top of mind for millions of Argentines coping with triple-digit inflation. Knowing a further depreciation of the peso will boost the price of consumer goods, they are anxious for signs of what Milei’s victory on Sunday meant for the value of the currency that has tanked against the U.S. dollar in the past year.Diana, who loves traveling to New York and visited Miami last month, said he had feared he would find ...

Freeland’s fiscal update pledges new guardrails to keep deficits in check

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

The Liberal government’s fall economic statement acknowledges the cost-of-living crisis weighing on Canadians but offers few new measures to tackle it while pledging to keep deficits in check.Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland presented her fiscal update in the House of Commons on Tuesday, stressing the pressure inflation and a slowing economy are putting on federal finances.At a time when the Liberals are facing pointed criticism from the Opposition Conservatives for years of deficit spending, the update outlines new guardrails to demonstrate fiscal restraint.That includes setting a goal to keep deficits below one per cent of the GDP beginning in 2026-27.The Liberals are also aiming to maintain the current fiscal year’s deficit at or below the spring budget projection of $40.1 billion and lower the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2024-25 relative to the projection in the fall economic statement.The new fiscal objectives come as the Liberals face an election in no more than two yea...

Teachers in Portland, Oregon, march and temporarily block bridge in third week of strike

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Teachers in Portland, Oregon, temporarily shut down a major bridge Tuesday morning as they marched in a strike started roughly three weeks ago.Members of the Portland Association of Teachers union and their supporters stopped in the middle of the Burnside Bridge for about 15 minutes, KGW reported. By 9 a.m. the bridge was clear and cars were driving across, according to the news outlet.Photos posted by the union on its Facebook page showed teachers sitting down on the bridge donning blue clothes and holding banners calling for better pay and teaching conditions. The union had called on supporters to meet at its headquarters, roughly half a mile from the bridge, at 7:30 a.m. before beginning the march at 8 a.m.Portland teachers have been on strike since Nov. 1, shuttering schools serving about 45,000 students in Oregon’s largest district. Students have missed 11 days of class because of the walkout.In marathon bargaining sessions that at times went through...

Disability advocate says Eglinton Avenue bike lane a danger to visually impaired pedestrians

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:28 GMT

A disability advocate is speaking out about a bike lane installed along Eglinton Avenue that he says could be dangerous for visually impaired pedestrians.In a video released by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance (AODA), David Lepofsky, AODA’s chair, walks along the north side of Eglinton with his cane, unable to tell the difference between the sidewalk and the raised bike lane.Lepofsky, a lawyer and associate professor, said he had to be told that the bike lane was at sidewalk level, not road level. “I’d never encountered this before. It is a serious and dangerous threat to blind pedestrians like me,” Leposky told CityNews.And he’s not just concerned for himself and other visually impaired pedestrians. “It’s also a danger to sighted pedestrians if they’re looking down at their phone, texting and having to walk into a bike path,” explained Lepofsky. “It’s dangerous to cyclists because I coul...