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Nadia Calviño named EIB chief

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

BRUSSELS – Spain’s Finance Minister Nadia Calviño will become the next head of the European Investment Bank after EU countries agreed on Friday morning to her appointment.After a contest lasting several months, Calviño saw off the challenge of Margrethe Vestager, who took leave from her job as the EU digital and competition chief. She is scheduled to start at the Luxembourg-based bank on January 1, the expiry date of current chief Werner Hoyer. “I am grateful and honored to get the support of my my fellow finance ministers to be at the helm of the European Investment Bank,” Calviño told reporters in Brussels. “[The EIB] will have an even more important role going forward to fund the green transition to provide financial support to the rebuilding of Ukraine and also support the role of Europe in the world.”The political blessing from the EU’s 27 finance ministers came at a meeting in Brussels after they had already spent much of the night discussing and failing to get a de...

Former NFL player Sergio Brown pleads not guilty to killing his mother in Maywood

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

Former NFL player Sergio Brown pleaded not guilty to killing his mother during an arraignment Wednesday.Brown was charged with first-degree murder in the September death of his mother, Myrtle Simmons-Brown, who prosecutors said he lived with in Maywood.The 35-year-old who played for seven seasons as a safety for the New England Patriots, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills was also charged with concealment of a homicidal death, court records show.He pleaded not guilty to the concealment charge and two murder charges, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office said.The disappearance of Brown after police discovered his mother’s body wrapped in a sheet near a creek close to their home drew national attention. Brown resurfaced days after the gruesome finding in expletive-filled social media posts calling reports tying him to his mother’s death “fake news.”Three weeks after police found Simmons-Brown’s body, Mexican authori...

Howie Carr: Harvard poison ivy

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

It’s time for Elvis Presley’s estate to re-release the King’s underrated 1964 song from the movie Roustabout.This tune is called “Poison Ivy League.” Its moment has arrived, after the Congressional hearing Tuesday with the two college presidents from the Poison Ivy League as well as the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of Penn and Sally Kornbluth of the one non-Ivy (but probably even more prestigious) MIT.Demands for genocide are… nuanced, you see. Hate speech involves context, to use their new favorite word. For example, fataphobia, whatever that is, is violence. But “Globalize the intifada,” not so much.Everything is turned upside down in the Poison Ivy League. On the Harvard Hit Parade, Silent Night now trails far behind Kristallnacht. Forget “With Crimson in Triumph Flashing.” The new Harvard fight song is Deutschland Uber Alles.At the House committee hearings, all three of the college presidents were obtuse. They couldn’...

How to adapt to climate change may be secondary at COP28, but it’s key to saving lives, experts say

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — As United Nations climate talks enter their second week, negotiators who are largely focused on how to curb climate change have another thing on their plates: how to adapt to the warming that’s already here.Discussions for what’s known as the Global Goal on Adaptation — a commitment made in the 2015 Paris Agreement to ramp up the world’s capacity to cope with climate-fueled extreme weather — are being overshadowed by negotiations on how the world is going to slash the use of fossil fuels, causing frustration among some climate campaigners in the most vulnerable countries.Officials and activists from climate-vulnerable nations are pushing for more money to help them deal with scorching temperatures, punishing droughts and deluges and strengthening storms made worse by global warming. Major fossil fuel-emitting countries need to pay vulnerable, developing countries being battered by these events, experts and officials say, to help t...

Live updates | Palestinians live in dire conditions in Gaza despite Israel’s safe zone

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

Israel has designated a safe zone in southern Gaza, but its widening air and ground offensive has left Palestinians packed together in dire humanitarian conditions. United Nations monitors said Thursday that a hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis received its first delivery of supplies since Nov. 29. Aid groups are severely limited by fighting and restrictions placed by the military. The United Nations estimates 1.9 million people have been displaced and new military evacuation orders are squeezing people into ever-smaller areas. Most lack food, water and medicine.Around 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the territory has surpassed 17,100, with more than 46,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but said 70% of the dead were women and children. Currently: — Palestinians try to survi...

In the news today: Jury to resume deliberations in B.C. murder trial

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today…Ibrahim Ali murder jury to resume deliberationsA jury is resuming deliberations today in the case of Ibrahim Ali, whose marathon first-degree murder trial in B.C. Supreme Court wrapped up Thursday.Ali is accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl in a Burnaby, B.C., park more than six years ago.The closing stages of the eight-month trial this week heard that Ali’s defence team had been receiving threats over the case, with lawyer Kevin McCullough reading out one that said his family faced “a violent and brutal death” before Christmas.Emails show universities’ debate on Israel, HamasDocuments obtained from Quebec’s largest universities through access to information requests show how they developed statements following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and some of the reaction to those statements. Emails between senior administrators at...

Canada Bread denies price-fixing scheme in court filing, points finger at Maple Leaf

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

The bread supplier that admitted to price-fixing earlier this year says in new court filings that any anti-competitive behaviour it participated in was at the direction and to the benefit of its then-majority owner Maple Leaf Foods.In a statement of defence for a class-action lawsuit alleging a bread price-fixing scheme, Canada Bread Co. Ltd. denied participating in a “lengthy, wide-ranging conspiracy” to fix the price of bread. It also denied profiting from the alleged conspiracy, or from the price increases it pleaded guilty to participating in as part of the Competition Bureau’s investigation. “To the extent that Canada Bread profited from any actionable anti-competitive behaviour, all of the material benefit accrued to Maple Leaf,” the company said its statement filed to Ontario Superior Court on Oct. 25. Allegations of improper pricing conduct at Canada Bread while Maple Leaf was a shareholder are “totally unfounded,” said Suzanne Hathaway, Maple Leaf’s senior vice-presid...

As fossil fuel execs descend on U.N. climate summit, some ask ‘what are COPs about?’

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

TORONTO — The world’s major climate negotiations risk turning into a trade show spectacle of unchecked corporate influence, some observers warn, as a record number of delegates representing fossil fuel interests descend on the United Nations climate change conference known as COP28. Hundreds of delegates with links to fossil fuel interests, including from Canada, are turning up at this year’s climate summit currently underway in Dubai, according to recent analyses by climate organizations and news agencies. Despite making up a small share of the more than 80,000 registered attendees, the fossil fuel industry’s presence at COP28 could water down action when the world risks careening past its emissions targets, said political economist Gordon Laxer.“It’s the political power and influence of Big Oil which is stopping real action,” said Laxer, a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta who researches the industry’s political influence. “There s...

Time’s up for some short-term rentals in B.C., as new housing rules transform scene

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

VICTORIA — Nancy Paine’s short-term rental business is dead in the water.As co-founder and CEO of Victoria-based Superhost, Paine said she had been at the forefront of the Airbnb revolution for seven years, acting as a “liaison” for homeowners needing help with the logistics of running a listing on the accommodation site.At the peak of business, her staff managed 65 properties, welcoming thousands of guests from around the world to what Condé Nast Traveller magazine recently rated as the “best city in the world.”“I have such great relationships with my homeowners,” Paine said. But Paine said that will all come to an end next spring when British Columbia enacts a law restricting short-term rentals to a homeowner’s principal residence. It’s among new housing regulations being rolled out over two years, with the government saying it wants to stop short-term rentals “taking away homes people need.”“I expect business volumes to really plumm...

Quebec unions representing 420,000 public sector workers start weeklong strike

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 07:25:54 GMT

MONTREAL — Unions representing 420,000 Quebec public sector workers are beginning a weeklong strike today.The workers, including teachers, education support staff and lab technicians, are members of a group of unions that calls itself the “common front.”The temporary strike comes after the common front rejected the government’s most recent contract offer, which includes a salary increase of 12.7 per cent over five years. It is the group’s third temporary strike since early November, and the unions say it will be the last before they launch an unlimited strike.Around 66,000 teachers who are members of a different union have been on strike since Nov. 23, while 80,000 nurses and other health-care workers will begin a four-day strike Monday.Quebec Premier François Legault said Thursday he’s willing to offer the workers more money but wants unions to make concessions on management issues, such as the transfer of nurses between health facilities.This report b...