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Income inequality in Canada has hit the highest level ever recorded as wealth becomes increasingly concentrated in fewer hands, says Canada's statistics agency.

The gap in the share of disposable income between the richest two-fifths of Canadians and the bottom two-fifths grew to 47 percentage points in the second quarter of 2024, Statistics Canada reported Thursday.

That's the widest gap recorded since 1999, when Statistics Canada first started collecting such data.

The gap was driven by the top 20 per cent of income earners, who saw the largest increase in their share of disposable income, the report said. That increase was driven largely by investment gains, which the statistics agency attributed to high interest rates.

The system for testing truck drivers in Ontario has been compromised by bribes, forged documents and rigged testing, says a memo leaked to CBC's Marketplace by an industry insider.

Ontario's DriveTest centres are managed by a company called Serco, which oversees operations and logistics for a variety of organizations, ranging from air traffic control for the Canadian Armed Forces to employment services for the federal government.

The leaked internal memo, which was shared with Marketplace following an investigation into driving schools, was addressed to all driving examiners in Ontario. It reveals "a number of employees have either resigned or been terminated this past year due to investigations that we have completed involving allegations of inappropriate and illegal behaviour."

This behaviour ranges from examiners "accepting bribes for issuing road test passes, to manipulation of automatic versus manual transmission certificates, to false driver experience being added to driver records," according to the memo.

But as the community prospered, trouble grew. According to B.C. Emergency Health Services, overdose calls in the community exploded almost five-fold, from 48 in 2016 to 234 in 2023. Since 2021, 44 people in the region have died from an overdose.

The biggest killer, by far, is fentanyl. Seventy-nine per cent of the northern health region’s drug overdoses were caused by the synthetic opioid in 2023.

In 2021, a man was found dead on a rural road, south of Dawson Creek. His car had been set on fire. In January 2023, there was the double killing in Mile Zero Trailer Park. In April 2023, a body was found under a historic trestle bridge west of Dawson Creek.

Then, following in quick succession, several more killings and mysterious disappearances, including cousins Renee Didier and Daralyn Supernant and a young man passing through town.

Eleven missing or killed in total. All of them unsolved to this day.

Abortion has passed inflation to become the top issue in the presidential election for women younger than 30 since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, according to results released Friday of a survey of female voters by KFF.

About 2 in 5 in the group of young voters said abortion was their top concern in the recent survey, compared with 1 in 5 who ranked it most important in the same survey in the spring.

In the earlier edition, inflation was the top concern for younger voters, as it was for women voters of all ages. Inflation remained the top concern for women in each age group over 30 and women overall. Women overall ranked abortion as their No. 3 concern, after inflation and threats to democracy, but ahead of immigration.

North Korea has accused rival South Korea of flying drones to its capital to drop anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets and threatened to respond with force if such flights occur again. South Korea issued a vague denial of the allegation.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that South Korean drones were detected in the night skies of Pyongyang on Oct. 3 and Wednesday and Thursday this week.

The ministry accused the South of violating North Korea’s “sacred” sovereignty and threatening its security, and described the alleged flights as a “dangerous provocation” that could escalate to an armed conflict and even war.

It said North Korean forces will prepare “all means of attack” capable of destroying the southern side of the border and the South Korean military, and respond without warning if South Korean drones are detected in its territory again.

BrucePac of Woodburn, Oregon, recalled the roughly 5,000 tons of ready-to-eat foods this week after U.S. Agriculture Department officials detected listeria in samples of poultry during routine testing. Further tests identified BrucePac chicken as the source. The recall includes 75 meat and chicken products.

The foods include products like grilled chicken breast strips that were made at the company’s facility in Durant, Oklahoma. They were produced between June 19 and Oct. 8 and shipped to restaurants, food service vendors and other sites nationwide, government officials said.

The products have a best-by date of June 19, 2025 to Oct. 8, 2025. Officials said they are concerned that the foods may still be available for use or stored in refrigerators or freezers. The products should be thrown away, they added.

One person was killed and 12 people were rescued after being trapped for about six hours at the bottom of a former Colorado gold mine when an elevator malfunctioned at the tourist site, authorities said.

The elevator was descending into the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near the town of Cripple Creek when it had a mechanical problem around 500 feet (152 meters) beneath the surface, creating a “severe danger for the participants,” Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said.

The 12 adults who were trapped about 1,000 feet (305 meters) below ground had access to water and used radios to communicate with authorities, who told them there was an elevator issue, Mikesell said.

Two U.S. Navy SEALs drowned as they tried to climb aboard a ship carrying illicit Iranian-made weapons to Yemen because of glaring training failures and a lack of understanding about what to do after falling into deep, turbulent waters, according to a military investigation into the January deaths.

The review concluded that the drownings of Chief Special Warfare Operator Christopher J. Chambers and Navy Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Nathan Gage Ingram could have been prevented. But both sank quickly in the high seas off the coast of Somalia, weighed down by heavy equipment they were carrying and not knowing or disregarding concerns that their flotation devices could not compensate for the additional weight. Both were lost at sea.

The highly critical and heavily redacted report — written by a Navy officer from outside Naval Special Warfare Command, which oversees the SEALs — concluded there were “deficiencies, gaps and inconsistencies” in training, policies, tactics and procedures as well as “conflicting guidance” on when and how to use emergency flotation devices and extra buoyancy material that could have kept them alive.

Two employees killed when hydrogen sulfide leaked at a Houston-area oil refinery were employees of a subcontractor performing maintenance work, the director of Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil company that operates the plant, said Friday.

The two “were in the zone directly affected, and who received the direct impact of the gas,” Pemex Director Victor Rodriguez said during a news briefing in Mexico City. Both bodies have been recovered.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the two workers were killed and nearly three dozen others were either transported to hospitals or treated at the scene following the leak of hydrogen sulfide Thursday at the facility in Deer Park.

AS BEIRUT BURNS under Israel’s bombs, it is obvious for anyone who is paying attention that America has long incubated the emergence of the worst possible version of Israel. Decades of U.S. foreign policy have rewarded and accelerated a downward trajectory of genocidal politics and actions in both Israeli society and government. And now, with the full backing of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Israel is driving wave after wave of escalating violence in its ongoing push to eliminate any opposition to the continued expansion of a Jewish state in lands where millions of Palestinian, Lebanese, and other people already live.

The Israel that we see today is the worst of all potential outcomes, a chauvinist, racist, and genocidal country that perceives Christian and Muslim Arabs as bodies to be crushed and destroyed. This ugly reality is the direct result of decades of massive military subsidies and political support by the United States. Without this support, Israel would have had to compromise with their neighbors years ago.

U.S. support for Israel has totally insulated Israeli political elites from any consequences for their actions. As a result, Israeli society has now become a horrifying case study in the politics of genocide. Today, Zionist Israeli officials even call Palestinian infants “terrorists,” while Israeli snipers in Gaza put bullets in Palestinian children’s hearts and heads. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers openly daydream about Zionist colonization of Palestinian and Lebanese land. And as a reward for driving these genocidal politics, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has achieved newfound popularity among voters.

Jennifer Johnson, Lacombe-Ponoka legislature member, has been welcomed back into the United Conservative Party (UCP).

Johnson was banned in 2023 over comments where she compared the issue of transgender students in Alberta's schools to baking cookies with feces inside.

“We can be top three per cent but that little bit of poop is what wrecks it,” Johnson said in audio from a 2022 talk at the Western Unity Group in Stettler.

“This is more than a teaspoon of poop in the cookie batch, right?"

As U.S. officials struggle to push back against misinformation about natural disasters hitting the country, at least three congressional Republicans condemned conspiracy theories repeated by fellow members of their party.

Representative Chuck Edwards, who represents a North Carolina district hit hard by flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in late September, called out the "outrageous rumours" spread by "untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos."

The flooding decimated much of North Carolina's inland west, an unexpected outcome in a state which is used to dealing with hurricanes along its Atlantic coast.At the time,Florida was bracing for a direct hit from the powerful Hurricane Milton, headed for its western coast.