girlfreddy

Another beluga whale has died at Marineland and four years into a provincial probe, Ontario's solicitor general is saying little about the investigation's progress.

The latest beluga death is the fourth in the past year, provincial records show. Since 2019, 16 belugas and one killer whale have died at the Niagara Falls, Ont., tourist attraction, the only place in the country that still holds whales in captivity. And three out of five belugas that Marineland sold to Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut have died since being moved there in the spring of 2021.

Ontario's Animal Welfare Services, which is part of the Ministry of the Solicitor General, launched an investigation into Marineland in 2020. The next year, the province declared all marine mammals at Marineland in distress due to poor water quality and ordered the park to fix the issue — the park appealed while denying its animals were in distress, but later dropped that appeal.

A national bird conservation organization says grassland habitat loss on the Prairies has created a "conservation crisis" for dozens of species of birds.

The crisis is illustrated in a new State of Canada's Birds report published Tuesday by Birds Canada in partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

It says that since 1970, when dependable bird count data started being kept, birds living full or part time in Prairie grasslands have declined by 67 per cent.

Birds that live primarily or only in Prairie grassland areas have declined by 90 per cent over that same time period, the report shows.

The young man put it this way to the police officer: Halifax lawyer Billy Sparks had done more for him than even his own mother. He'd taken him golfing and to the casino, paid for food and beer, and let him sleep on the couch when he needed a place to stay.

But in August 2023, the young man shared a secret with the constable, whom he had come to trust. For about two years, he said, Sparks had also been extorting him, requesting explicit photos and videos in exchange for representing him in criminal cases.

Sparks, 52, killed himself earlier this year in the south-end Halifax duplex where he lived, just days after police searched the home, which doubled as a law office, as they investigated allegations he had groomed, extorted and sexually assaulted vulnerable clients with little money.

The roots of this odd struggle can be traced to a motion passed by the House before MPs went on their summer break.

With opposition MPs voting in favour and Liberal MPs voting against, the House adopted a Conservative motion on June 10 that ordered the government to turn over documents related to Sustainable Development Technology Canada, the federal agency that was shut down in June after the auditor general raised serious concerns about its management.

Such production orders are not unheard of, but in this case the Conservatives went a step further. According to the motion, the documents were to be provided to the House's law clerk, who would then turn them over to the RCMP.

(RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme stated) "It is therefore highly unlikely that any information obtained by the RCMP under the Motion where privacy interests exist could be used to support a criminal prosecution or further a criminal investigation."

"The House order solely required the law clerk and parliamentary counsel to transmit the documents," Scheer told the House in September. "It has not obliged the RCMP to open the envelope or insert the USB key into a computer."

But if that's the case, what exactly is the point of this current fight?

For the first time in over 10 years, Luci Harrell can vote in a presidential election.

Around the time she graduated law school this year, Harrell completed two years of parole and became legally allowed to register.

“It feels important to me...real and symbolic,” Harrell said. “For years I was required by the federal government to pay taxes and pay student loans, yet being denied the ability to vote.”

Harrell is one of an estimated 450,000 people in Georgia with past convictions who are eligible to cast ballots. As get-out-the-vote efforts ramp up across the swing state, advocates have a hard time reaching those who are formerly incarcerated, in part because many of them don’t know they can vote.

Britain’s new Labour government unveiled Thursday a slew of new rights for workers, including more generous rules for sick pay and parental leave and major restrictions on certain precarious employment practices such as zero-hour contracts and fire and rehire — a move described by ministers as the biggest overhaul of workers’ rights for a generation.

The Employment Rights Bill was published around 100 days after Labour took power for the first time in 14 years following its crushing victory over the Conservative Party in the general election.

The 28 measures have been broadly welcomed by unions and lobby groups representing businesses, though one described it as “clumsy, chaotic and poorly planned.”

The number of Americans filing for for unemployment benefits last week jumped to their highest level in a year, a possible sign of softness in the labor market, though some analysts suggested it was due to recent hurricanes.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for jobless claims jumped by by 33,000 to 258,000 for the week of Oct. 3. That’s the most since Aug. 5, 2023 and well above the 229,000 analysts were expecting.

Applications for jobless benefits are widely considered representative of U.S. layoffs in a given week, however they can be volatile and prone to revision.

The four-week average of claims, which evens out some of that weekly volatility, rose by 6,750 to 231,000.

Former President Donald Trump hurled insults at his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other women Wednesday — saying he had no interest in stopping his attacks even if they turn off female voters — as Hurricane Milton made landfall, lashing Florida with rain, tornadoes and tropical-storm-force winds.

“I don’t want to be nice,” Trump said at his first of two rallies of the day in the pivotal battleground state of Pennsylvania. “You know, somebody said, ‘You should be nicer. Women won’t like it.’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’”

He later refuted the idea that his rhetoric was a problem, even as polls show Trump is viewed less favorably by women than by men. “The women want to see our country come back,” he said. “They don’t care.”

IN MARCH, AS Israel threatened to invade Rafah in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been sheltering, President Joe Biden acknowledged that if Israel invaded the city, it would be crossing “a red line.”

It was Biden’s first public acknowledgement that any “red line,” limits, or conditions existed for U.S. support for Israel. In May, Biden followed up by halting the transfer of 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs to Israel in an effort to limit civilian casualties in Rafah.

In July, however, the U.S. resumed shipments of 500-pound bombs. The following month, the Biden administration approved a $20 billion weapons sales deal to Israel for the coming years, which is currently being held up in Congress due to a resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. In September, the Biden administration approved a separate $8.7 billion arms package.

SIX YEARS AFTER Brett Kavanaugh joined the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, a Democratic senator claims the FBI barely followed up on explosive sexual assault allegations that emerged during his nomination. A report released Tuesday lays out how White House officials kept a tight leash on the FBI’s inquiry, contrary to Trump’s claims at the time that the agency had “free rein” to investigate the claims.

“Far from getting to the bottom of the allegations against Kavanaugh,” reads the report (pdf), which was released by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., after years of fighting both the Trump and Biden administrations for clarity, the FBI’s investigation “raised additional questions about the thoroughness of the FBI’s review and whether its scope had been purposely curtailed.”

Manchin and Senate Republicans pointed to the fact that the FBI found little to substantiate the accusations. But Whitehouse’s report says this was the inevitable outcome, since the Trump administration hemmed in the FBI to the point that agents were not authorized to pursue even obvious leads.

When Republican Kelly Armstrong filed his federal financial disclosure after being elected to Congress in 2018, he revealed his extensive ties to the oil and gas industry in his home state of North Dakota. It detailed his income from hundreds of oil wells and his financial relationship with two of the state’s largest oil producers.

Those ties will matter a great deal if, as is likely, he’s elected as North Dakota’s governor next month. Under North Dakota’s system, he will automatically chair two state bodies that regulate the energy industry, meaning Armstrong would be expected to preside over decisions that directly impact companies in which he has financial or familial ties.

As head of both the North Dakota Industrial Commission and the Land Board, Armstrong would have a nearly unmatched level of control and oversight compared with leaders in other states. The former state senator would help set policy at a time when North Dakota — the No. 3 oil producer in the nation — is entering a new phase of energy development. The Industrial Commission has faced criticism in recent years from landowners and legislators, including for being too supportive of corporate interests.

The first article in the Mount Vernon News last fall about a planned solar farm simply noted that residents were “expressing their concern.” But soon the county’s only newspaper was packed with stories about solar energy that almost uniformly criticized the project and quoted its opponents.

Then a new “grassroots” organization materialized and invited locals to an elaborate event billed as a town hall, with a keynote speaker who denied that humans cause climate change.

Someone sent text messages to residents urging them to “stop the solar invasion” and elect two county commission candidates who opposed the solar farm. And one day this past March, residents received an unfamiliar newspaper that contained only articles attacking Frasier Solar, a large project that would replace hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans with the equivalent of 630 football fields of solar panels.

To many in the deep-red central Ohio community, it seemed that solar had become the focus of news and politics. They were right. Fossil fuel interests were secretly working to shape the conversation in Knox County.