New Mexico prosecutors won't pursue an appeal of a court's decision to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against actor Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a western movie, the Santa Fe district attorney's office announced Monday.

A white Christmas may increasingly become a nostalgic memory as the Northern Hemisphere sees ever fewer snowy winter days due to climate change, with Europe warming quickest, a report warned on Tuesday.

Driven primarily by humanity’s mass burning of fossil fuels, that decline in days below freezing threatens tourism, the economy and cultures, according to Climate Central.

Tuesday’s report by the US-based research institute argues that manmade climate change had caused more than a third of the 123 countries and nearly half of the 901 cities studied to lose the equivalent of at least a week’s worth of days below freezing — zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit — over a decade.

The report’s analysis is based on the daily minimum temperatures covering the months of December to February — roughly the span of the Northern Hemisphere winter — from 2014 to 2023.

Those lows were then compared to a simulation of a climate without the warming effects of humanity’s widespread use of coal, oil and gas.

It found that climate change had particularly increased the number of winter days above zero in Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent.

Denmark and the Baltic states were the countries most affected.

“The snow, ice, and chilly temperatures that used to be hallmarks of the winter season are fast disappearing in many places, threatening ecosystems, economies, and cultural traditions,” said Climate Central’s vice president for science Kristina Dahl.

“Freezing winter days are crucial for sustaining snow and ice for winter recreation and sports, replenishing the snowpack that supplies freshwater sources, and maintaining plant, animal, and insect life cycles,” Dahl added.

Cold weather helps to control populations of disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes and ticks, while shorter winters encourage the spread of pollen — and therefore allergies.

The study also warned that hotter winters may also affect agriculture, particularly the cultivation of fruits which require prolonged cool periods such as apples and peaches.

The post White Christmas dreams dashed as Europe’s winters heat up appeared first on CANADIAN AFFAIRS.

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Environment and Climate Change Canada’s weather service updated its special weather statement for southern New Brunswick, with more detail on how much snow to expect.

The federal service issued the special weather statement Sunday, advising of the potential for significant snowfall Tuesday in parts of New Brunswick, including the Fredericton region.

In an update Monday, it forecast 10 to 15 centimetres of snow in the southern part of the province, stretching from the western border to the eastern.

“A developing system is expected to give snowfall on Tuesday, which may impact holiday travel on Tuesday,” the statement said.

“There is unusual uncertainty in the amount of snowfall accumulation expected with this system.”

It said the snow is expected to start Monday night and last until Tuesday night.

The Fredericton Independent can be reached at [email protected].

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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador’s Congress approved Monday a law that would lift the country’s seven-year-old ban on mining for metals.

The law, proposed by President Nayib Bukele and passed on a 57 to 3 vote, would allow mining everywhere except nature reserves and sensitive watersheds. It’s expected to go into law with his approval.

The law bans the use of toxic mercury in gold mining, and would require private companies to enter a type of joint venture with the government to open mines.

Environmentalists and the Roman Catholic church oppose the resumption of mining, citing potential damage to ecosystems, but Bukele called the ban “absurd” earlier this year.

Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas recently asked the president not to reverse the ban, which has been in place since 2017.

“It will damage this country forever,” Msgr. Escobar Alas said in a homily.

That view was also voiced by about 100 civic and environmental activists who protested near Congress.

“They are giving us a gift, on Dec. 23, 2024, of pollution for our water, our land,” said Adalberto Blanco, of the Permanent Roundtable on Risk Management.

A poll released by Central American University José Simeón Cañas suggested that a majority of Salvadorans feel mining is not appropriate for their country.

In November, the highly popular Bukele proposed mining gold. The county’s unmined gold could be “wealth that could transform El Salvador,” he wrote on the social platform X. He has estimated the country’s gold reserves are worth $3 trillion.

At this point, exploration has revealed deposits of gold and silver, but has been was no large-scale metal mining. It’s unclear what how large the country’s gold reserves could be.

Bukele’s party controls El Salvador’s Congress by a wide margin and his political opposition has been devastated.

The Associated Press

If you were on Vancouver Island in August 2024, you might have stumbled upon a music festival everyone was talking about. The atmosphere there felt like any other festival, with mosh pits, dancing, laughter. But there was one notable difference. 

“Everyone was sober,” says Mike Manhas, the festival’s founder.

Manhas, who has spent 20 years battling addiction, says he often felt isolated at music festivals steeped in a culture of drugs and drinking. So in 2022, he created something different — a space where sobriety is celebrated.

That’s how Sober Fest was born: an annual, alcohol-free festival on Vancouver Island focused on connection, fun and healing. All proceeds from ticket sales go to addiction treatment programs.

In its first year, 500 attendees raised $6,000. This year, 4,000 people joined the celebration, helping raise $1.6 million. That money will go to ReWired Recovery Foundation, a non-profit that helped organize the festival, and which will send about 60 people to treatment with the funds.

Sober Fest is part of a broader trend. 

Since 2008, alcohol consumption in Canada has fallen twelve per cent, reflecting growing health awareness and evolving social habits. 

This cultural change is fueling a new type of celebration: alcohol-free festivals that challenge the traditional link between partying and drinking.

“At the end of the day, everyone deserves to dance at a festival in a safe environment,” Manhas says. 

‘Sober-curious’ movement

Music festivals are often billed as immersive experiences, where alcohol and drugs have long played a central — and sometimes dangerous — role. A 2015 report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse revealed at least five young adults died at Canadian festivals in the summer of 2014.

Now, younger Canadians are leading the charge toward drinking less, sources say. Many are embracing the “sober-curious” movement, which encourages re-evaluating one’s relationship with alcohol without necessarily giving it up entirely.

In fact, many attendees at sober festivals are not completely abstinent. At Sober Fest on Vancouver Island, about one-third of attendees were not in recovery, Manhas estimates. They simply wanted a fun, safe environment.

Niki Sawni, CEO of the non-alcoholic beverage company Gruvi, says about three-quarter of the Canadian company’s customers still drink alcohol, but are cutting back on weekday drinking.

Connect with a community

For 26-year-old Kalil Magtoto, a night of blackout drinking in August was a wake-up call.

“I woke up the next morning and didn’t even know how I got home,” said the Toronto resident. “I thought to myself, I don’t want this to happen ever again.”

Determined to live a “soberish” lifestyle — consuming alcohol more mindfully but not giving it up entirely — Magtoto discovered Toronto’s sober community. In November, she attended Soberish Fest, an alcohol-free event hosted by Bevvy’s, a non-alcoholic beverage shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market.

Bevvy’s founder, Cristian Villamarin, opened the store in January 2024 after noticing a gap in the market. “I wanted a space where people could find great non-alcoholic drinks and connect with a community,” said Villamarin, who has been sober-curious for a decade.

That vision extended to Soberish Fest, which debuted this summer with 1,000 attendees. While alcohol was available, the event celebrated the quality and diversity of non-alcoholic options. In true festival fashion, there was also a DJ.

“These [non-alcoholic] drinks aren’t new, but the perception is that they’re bad. That’s not true,” Villamarin said. “In the last few years, so many high-quality products have come out.”

Villamarin sees these festivals as essential for the sober and sober-curious communities. “It’s about creating a safe space to enjoy music and discover new options.”

All the rage

Rodolfo Aldana, co-founder and CEO of non-alcoholic drink company Parch, refers to sober festivals as a “place of discovery.”

“People go because they want to moderate their consumption or because they want to be sober completely,” said Aldana, who was a vendor at Soberish Fest in Toronto. “These festivals reaffirm their choices.”

“This is something that is happening everywhere,” Aldana added, pointing to a growing number of sober events, including Calgary’s Sober Stampede.

But this shift is not limited to the rare festival or corporate event. The non-alcoholic beverage market in Canada is booming. Ontario’s liquor store, the LCBO, reported a nearly 200 per cent increase in non-alcoholic beverage sales since 2022.

This trend has traditional music venues and festivals hopping on the bandwagon. 

In 2023, Coachella, a world-famous music and arts festival held in the California desert, partnered with its first alcohol-free drink shop, The New Bar. It brought the shop back again this year.

Local festivals are following suit. At this year’s Supercrawl festival in Hamilton, Ont., Sawni handed out 10,000 samples of Gruvi to festivalgoers. His non-alcoholic sales at many independent music venues have grown “three to four times” this year, he says.

By reimagining festival culture, events like Sober Fest and Soberish Fest are normalizing sober spaces and demonstrating that joy and connection do not have to come from a bottle.

“Not drinking used to be a punishment,” Aldana said. Now, “these experiences celebrate your choices. And they’re happening everywhere.”

The post Sober festivals reflect larger trend of ‘sober-curious’ movement appeared first on CANADIAN AFFAIRS.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday signed into law a defense bill that authorizes significant pay raises for junior enlisted service members, aims to counter China’s growing power and boosts overall military spending to $895 billion despite his objections to language stripping coverage of transgender medical treatments for children in military families.

Biden said his administration strongly opposes the provision because it targets a group based on gender identity and “interferes with parents’ roles to determine the best care for their children.” He said it also undermines the all-volunteer military’s ability to recruit and retain talent.

“No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our nation,” the president said in a statement.

The Senate forwarded the bill to Biden after passing it last week by a vote of 85-14. In the House, a majority of Democrats voted against the bill after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted on adding the provision to ban transgender medical care for children. The legislation easily passed by a vote of 281-140.

Biden also objected to other language in the bill prohibiting the use of money earmarked to transfer detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to some foreign countries and into the United States. He urged Congress to lift those restrictions.

The annual defense authorization bill, which directs Pentagon policy, provides a 14.5% pay raise for junior enlisted service members and a 4.5% increase for others.

The legislation also directs resources towards a more confrontational approach to China, including establishing a fund that could be used to send military resources to Taiwan in much the same way that the U.S. has backed Ukraine. It also invests in new military technologies, including artificial intelligence, and bolsters the U.S. production of ammunition.

The U.S. has also moved in recent years to ban the military from purchasing Chinese products, and the defense bill extended that with prohibitions on Chinese goods from garlic in military commissaries to drone technology.

The legislation still must be backed up with a spending package.

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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

Darlene Superville, The Associated Press

Four heli-skiers and their guide had to be rescued after an avalanche buried them near Whistler, B.C., on Monday.

Ontario has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on a historic youth-led challenge of the province's climate plan, moving the case a step closer to a possible hearing before Canada's top court.