Efficiency Nova Scotia is warning residents about predatory sales tactics from companies falsely promising rebates that, in some cases, never materialize.

Spokesperson Janet Tobin told 95.7 NewsRadio the organization has heard from people who say these companies pushed high-interest, long-term financing for heat pump installations while making rebate promises they could not keep.

“There are some cases where companies are flat-out lying about being us or being affiliated with us and promising rebates that will come faster,” Tobin said. “Often, in those cases, applications have never been submitted to us. So, by the time you start making financing payments expecting a rebate, when you give us a call, we don’t have an application on file.”

Tobin said red flags to watch for include companies making bold claims, such as fast-tracking approvals or guaranteeing quick rebates. She added that if something sounds too good to be true, it often is.

She said anyone who believes they have fallen victim to one of these companies should contact local police.

OTTAWA — Liberal MPs are gathering on Parliament Hill this afternoon to huddle after the party selected its new leader, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.

Carney is heading into a day full of briefings and in the coming days will need to be sworn in as prime minister, tap his cabinet and sort out his party’s battle plans for the coming federal election — but the exact timeline for all these things remains unclear.

An early election call is widely expected to follow in the coming days or weeks after Carney is installed as prime minister, as the Liberal party looks to take advantage of the burst of momentum it gained over the past two months.

Like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before him and even Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Carney won a resounding mandate from the party base — ultimately capturing 86 per cent of the vote.

Carney’s main rival Chrystia Freeland came in a distant second and said after the event that she always knew it would be an uphill battle, since the party establishment rallied around Carney’s candidacy.

The Conservatives slammed the result as a coronation and Poilievre called it a “sneaky” move to swap Trudeau with Carney so that the Liberals can try to win a fourth mandate.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 10, 2025.

Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press

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Mark Carney, Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, speaks after being announced the winner at the Liberal leadership event in Ottawa on Sunday, March 9, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

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TORONTO — There had been warning signs for months.

There were the reports of dangerous flu-like symptoms in Asia. News of the lockdown that kept tens of millions of people inside their homes in China. Here at home, the growing ubiquity of blue surgical masks. The advice to sing “Happy Birthday” while washing your hands.

In March 2020, Ren Navarro recalled seeing large bottles of hand sanitizer at a beer event in Guelph, Ont., where she was a panellist. The Queen of Craft crowd was thinner than it should’ve been. It was being livestreamed for people at home.

“This was kind of like the unknowing precursor to what was going to happen,” she said in a recent interview.

Days later, Navarro awoke to news of a sweeping shutdown meant to rein in the spread of the novel coronavirus in Ontario — measures that would soon intensify and take hold across the country.

It was her 45th birthday.

“I just remember, at some point, sitting on the sofa and crying,” she said, even though she hadn’t planned anything special to mark the occasion. Soon came the official stay-at-home order. Her world was suddenly contained to a two-bedroom apartment in Kitchener, Ont., with her wife, two cats, and no work.

The World Health Organization’s declaration of a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, set into motion policies that would upend the lives of Canadians for years to come – from the closing of borders, to shutting down schools and businesses, to banning social gatherings.

“The early days of it was more of just like, how do I not lose my mind, and how do we stay safe from the thing that no one’s really explained to us?” said Navarro.

As time went on, the realization that she was living through a crisis of historic proportions set in, Navarro said.

“Looking back on it, I’m like, how did we survive?”

Five years later, some Canadians are remembering the COVID-19 pandemic as a time of chaos, fear and grief, but also of solidarity and reflection — and raising concerns that the lessons learned from the crisis are already being forgotten.

While not as severe as those in countries such as China, South Korea or India, the public health measures enacted in Canada included unprecedented restrictions as well as fiscal stimulus and social protection efforts, said Sanjay Ruparelia, an associate professor of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University.

At first, the federal and provincial governments “were very much generally working together and, I think for the most part, citizens here followed those public health instructions,” Ruparelia said, including staying at home.

Canadians showed a high level of social co-operation that reflected both cultural norms and a general trust that public authorities were doing the right thing, he said.

Not anymore.

The cohesion began to fray as the pandemic stretched on, partly due to disagreements over the balance of civil liberties and public safety, debates that were often fuelled by misinformation and disinformation about vaccines and the intentions of various institutions, he said.

That discontent culminated in the protests that saw a convoy of truckers descend on downtown Ottawa in early 2022. A worsening cost-of-living crisis also began to undermine trust in governments during the pandemic and in the years that followed, Ruparelia added.

The long-term effects of lockdowns and school closures, particularly on children and teens, are still unknown, he said, but what’s clear is that many of the changes that took place during that time seem to have faded from collective memory, giving rise to questions about Canada’s response to any future crises that require public co-operation and trust in the scientific consensus.

“That’s something that just upended our lives and had a huge impact on so many spheres of politics, society and our economies, (and) suddenly it’s almost like a sense of amnesia — it didn’t happen, or we’ve forgotten it happened,” he said.

The virus spared no region, but its trajectory — and the steps taken to contain it — varied across provinces, territories and populations.

Quebec and Ontario, the two most populous provinces, were the hardest hit as the pandemic carved a deadly path through their vulnerable long-term care systems.

Atlantic Canada saw comparatively few infections, which experts attributed to geography and low population density as well as the so-called Atlantic Bubble that limited access to the region from the rest of Canada but allowed residents to travel freely within the four provinces’ borders without isolating.

Meanwhile, Nunavut remained the only part of Canada without any confirmed cases for months before recording its first in Sanikiluaq in the fall of 2020.

For many, the early days of the pandemic were spent scrambling for information in the face of uncertainty, as official reports and a steady stream of news updates charted the deadly toll of the virus.

Rapidly evolving rules and public-health advice sparked new routines and practices across the country, from sanitizing groceries and stockpiling toilet paper to banging pots and pans in a show of support for health-care staff and putting teddy bears in windows for children to see.

Images of empty grocery shelves, cordoned-off playgrounds and packed virtual meetings are displayed in a pandemic archive run by Ontario’s Brock University, while diary-like submissions from residents in the Niagara Region pay tribute to lost loved ones and lay out anxieties about the long-term ramifications of closures.

Even mundane details seemed like they could be worth preserving for future generations, said Jocelyn Titone, a Brock employee who contributed to the archive.

A video that was making the rounds at the time led Titone to adopt an elaborate food-cleaning system that included wiping down all groceries outside her home in St. Catharines, Ont., and rinsing produce with water and vinegar after washing, a memory that resurfaces to this day whenever she smells a particular cleaning product, she said.

“It sounds silly now. You’re telling me I’m to tell my grandkids that these are things that we did,” she said.

“We sanitized our groceries and hung out with each other six feet apart, outside, in the freezing weather, just to see each other, or drove by somebody’s house with signs to wish them a happy 50th birthday, because that was the only way we could really celebrate, other than just giving them a call.”

Those little rituals punctuated what often felt like overwhelming and unrelenting demands on her time and energy, said Titone, who suddenly found herself juggling full-time work in a new position and round-the-clock care for her two children, then three and five, during the lockdown.

The stress was compounded by grief when her grandfather died in the U.S. in August 2020, and while his death wasn’t due to COVID-19, pandemic rules meant she couldn’t say goodbye in person or attend his funeral, she said.

“It was the worst mental health experience of my life,” she said. As restrictions loosened, Titone began spending more time outside, rekindled her love of reading and started keeping a gratitude journal on her phone, small steps that helped her recalibrate, she said.

For Heather Breadner, the lockdown meant the abrupt closure of her yarn store in Lindsay, Ont. — and the birth of a new project she now considers her life’s work.

As the death toll rose, Breadner and two friends set out to craft a blanket out of knitted squares to honour those whose lives were lost to the virus. At the time, some 4,000 people in Canada had died due to COVID-19, she said. The tally surpassed 50,000 in early 2023 and continues to increase, though at a slower rate.

The trio shared their plan on social media, thinking the project could provide a welcome distraction from the anxieties of the pandemic, she said.

More than a thousand knitters answered the call, something for which Breadner said she will forever be grateful.

So far, the group has assembled some 7,000 squares, working away at the blanket while watching movies in their spare time, she said. Another 5,000 or so still need to be added, with more potentially on the way, she said.

“Particularly at the five-year anniversary mark, I feel it’s so important, because I feel like the further away we get from those early days, the further we get away from the fact that it’s still happening,” said Breadner, whose cousin is included in the memorial.

“There are still people who are going into hospitals and not coming out, and there’s still empty chairs at tables … because there’s still people dying from COVID,” she said.

When the lockdown brought her advocacy and consulting work to a grinding halt, Navarro was forced to take a break for the first time in a while, she said.

The pause was bewildering at first, but eventually led her to take stock of her life and career, she said. She invested in a Zoom account and expanded her diversity work beyond the beer industry to include post-secondary and other sectors, a move that likely saved her business, she said.

For a while, pandemic restrictions forced people to slow down and break away from the hectic pace of modern life, while fear and isolation pushed them to reconnect with neighbours, friends and family members, Navarro said.

“But now we’re back into the work capitalism and we don’t care about people,” she said. “It’s almost like the lockdown years didn’t happen and we didn’t learn anything from it.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 10, 2025.

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press

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A health care worker sits at a registration table during a media tour of the COVID-19 Assessment Centre at Brewer Park Arena in Ottawa, Friday, March 13, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

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OTTAWA — The Bank of Canada’s interest rate announcement arrives on Wednesday in a cloud of uncertainty thanks to a shifting trade war with the United States.

Most economists expect the central bank will deliver another quarter-point rate cut while it waits to see how long the dispute with Canada’s largest trading partner lasts.

The Bank of Canada faces a difficult task: setting monetary policy at a time when inflation has shown signs of stubbornness and the economy picks up steam, while risks of a sharp downturn tied to U.S. tariffs loom on the horizon.

“It’s a very difficult position for the Bank of Canada to be in,” said Randall Bartlett, Desjardins Group deputy chief economist, in an interview.

Even as U.S. President Donald Trump followed through on his promises to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods on March 4, the exact nature of those tariffs have shifted with a series of pauses and amendments in the days since.

“Who knows what this could look like from day-to-day? It’s almost anyone’s guess,” Bartlett said.

There will be harsh consequences for the Canadian economy in the event of a prolonged trade war with the U.S.

Inflation is likely to rise in the near-term from the trade disruptions, Bartlett said, and job losses in hard-hit sectors could quickly pile up if those industries don’t receive tariff reprieves.

Desjardins expects Canada would fall into a recession by mid-year if steep tariffs remain in place.

That’s a far cry from the trajectory the Canadian economy had been on heading into 2025.

There were signs late last year that previous interest rate cuts from the Bank of Canada were starting to filter through the economy. A renewed Canadian consumer led to a surge in retail activity to close out 2024 and suggested that, barring a major disruption, 2025 was going to be a year of recovery.

After six consecutive cuts to bring the Bank of Canada’s interest rate down to three per cent, Bartlett said the “economic tea leaves” should have been telling the central bank to pause its easing cycle and wait to see where inflation and the economy settled in the coming months.

“But then obviously we got hit with the tariff shock on March 4 and all bets are off in terms of what that means … for the Bank of Canada,” Bartlett said.

Financial markets were largely tilted toward a quarter-point rate cut as of Friday, according to LSEG Data & Analytics. Before tariffs went ahead, markets were showing odds of a hold or cut were essentially a toss-up.

Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said in a speech on Feb. 21 that, if tariffs are broad-based and long-lasting, “there won’t be a bounce back” in the Canadian economy as there was during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. It would be a “structural change,” he warned.

Macklem went on to explain that the central bank can’t lean against both weak growth and rising inflation tied to a tariff shock at the same time. He said the central bank plans to use its policy rate to help “smooth” the impact on the economy while keeping inflation expectations well anchored to the two per cent target.

Andrew Grantham, senior economist with CIBC Capital Markets, said in a note to clients on Friday that the central bank “can’t solve the tariff issue” with rate cuts, but it can help the economy transition through the turbulence.

CIBC expects the bank to deliver a quarter-point cut on Wednesday, lowering the benchmark rate to 2.75 per cent, with more cuts to follow this year if trade uncertainty lasts.

Bartlett said he expected the Bank of Canada would err on the side of providing a bit of support to the Canadian economy with a 25-basis-point cut, but hold back from anything larger as it waits to see how long tariffs stay in place in the coming weeks.

He warned the central bank will be constrained in how low it can take its policy rate, in part because of the flagging Canadian dollar.

The loonie is vulnerable not only to hits from the trade war, but also to a widening differential between policy rates in Canada and the U.S., Bartlett said.

If the Bank of Canada drops its policy rate too sharply, the loonie could fall as well, leading to a bigger surge in inflation on food and other goods imported from the U.S.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 10, 2025.

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press

When the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, companies across Canada scrambled to shift their employees to home setups.

Within days, old computer monitors were dragged up from basements and assembled into makeshift work stations. Spouses jostled for laptop space at the kitchen table, while other workers designed camera-ready backdrops of bookshelves and plants for daily Zoom meetings.

For the dozen or so staff at Edmonton-based tech company Punchcard Systems, the new reality meant figuring out “new patterns” of how to communicate as they would have at their downtown office. That meant implementing systems to streamline collaboration and automate workflows, the company said.

Five years on, many office workers from Victoria to St. John’s are back to busy commutes and coffee runs, at least some of the time.

But for Punchcard, now with more than 50 staff scattered across the country, home is where they remain. The company, which develops custom software, apps and other digital tools, has ditched the centralized office in its headquarter city entirely.

“Obviously in March 2020, the parameters for all of us changed and that was really, I think, a point of inflection for us as an organization,” said Sam Jenkins, Punchcard’s managing partner.

“We knew that once we opened Pandora’s box of a distributed team that we had to make sure we didn’t turn remote employees into second-class citizens. If we pulled in our Edmonton staff into a single office, I don’t think it would be fair for Edmonton and it wouldn’t be fair for the rest of our team.”

As the five-year anniversary of the pandemic approaches, companies and their employees continue to wrestle over the ideal balance of in-office and work-from-home requirements.

Costs, productivity and morale are among the factors tilting the pendulum in either direction, with many workplaces having settled somewhere in between a fully remote or in-person model. But there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all happy medium, especially for the new parent juggling work with childcare responsibilities, or the boss trying to build a culture of camaraderie that goes beyond screens.

John Trougakos, a professor of organizational behaviour and HR management at the University of Toronto, said one of the “silver linings of a very terrible time” is that the pandemic normalized the concept of hybrid work, which had been uncommon before 2020.

“The pandemic has fundamentally shifted the way we work,” said Trougakos.

“The majority of office jobs now can in some way incorporate hybrid into their work based on the technologies that are available and the comfort that everyone has utilizing these technologies.”

A report released last September by the C.D. Howe Institute said just over one-quarter of paid employees across Canada spent at least part of their week working from home by the end of 2023.

While that’s down from 42 per cent in the spring of 2020, Trougakos said the proportion of Canadians still working primarily from home today is more than double what it was before COVID-19.

Those still working from home tend to be more educated, employed by large organizations, and are more likely to have young children, wrote Tammy Schirle, author of the C.D. Howe report and an economics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University.

“From an employer’s point of view, offering work-from-home arrangements can help with efforts to attract and retain productive employees who may have otherwise searched for more flexible work arrangements with other employers,” she wrote.

The study also found work-from-home arrangements are more prominent in regions where industries such as finance and insurance, professional services, or public administration — occupations often characterized as “office jobs” — account for a large part of the local economy.

Contrary to some fears over employees being less productive at home, Trougakos said many companies have found their staff actually get more work done in their own surroundings.

Not only are there fewer distractions and disruptions than a shared office space, but remote and hybrid employees tend to indicate they’re less stressed, take fewer sick days and value time saved from not having to commute, said Trougakos.

“They have better work-life balance,” he said.

As an employer, Jenkins said he worried at the outset of the pandemic that Punchcard would “lose our culture” and productivity would lag when employees first began working from home.

“I didn’t realize how much I was going to have to trust that our employees were going to do the right thing, even when nobody’s watching,” he said.

“Lo and behold, we’re more productive in a remote environment because people really value the autonomy they get and the flexibility to work in the formats and patterns that work best for them.”

Still, it’s unclear how long these arrangements will stay mainstream.

South of the border, Donald Trump kicked off his presidency by ordering federal departments to end remote work and require employees to return to the office in-person full-time.

Many large U.S. companies have taken that same approach and it could trickle over to Canada too, said employment and labour lawyer Andy Pushalik.

KPMG’s 2024 CEO outlook, which surveyed large business leaders from 11 markets including Canada, found 83 per cent of chief executives expect a full return to office within three years.

“Maybe the pendulum is really swinging back,” said Pushalik, a partner at Dentons.

“You just see so much movement of these large companies — Dell, Amazon, JPMorgan and most importantly, the U.S. government — that there’s going to be other C-suite leaders looking and saying, ‘Well, we may want to make a change for our own workforce.'”

Pushalik said U.S. law generally gives employers more flexibility to make workforce changes without notice obligations. But Canadian laws around constructive dismissal mean an employer can’t change certain terms of employment overnight, such as in-office requirements, he said.

“An employer could not necessarily decide on a Friday that they want everybody working in the office five days a week on Monday,” he said.

“(An employee) could potentially launch a constructive dismissal claim saying, ‘Look, you didn’t give me the right amount of notice and this is actually akin to a termination, so pay me out.'”

That legal foundation makes it unlikely Canadian companies will fully embrace return-to-office models in the near future, said Pushalik.

“I think people have got a taste of the flexibility that can come with the benefits of our technology and our ability to be connected anywhere that it’s going to be tough to necessarily go back to fully five days a week,” he said.

“The challenge is, how can we harness the new normal to have a productive economy, with workplaces that are filled with collaboration and innovation?”

For Punchcard, the permanent shift to remote work has prompted the tech company to invest more in digital tools, said Jenkins.

Some money saved from reduced overhead has also been put back into the company for travel, so employees can come together twice a year for social and development retreats.

But with his team now spread well-beyond Edmonton, including in cities such as Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto, he said he won’t require them to go to an office, even part of the week.

“People do value the camaraderie of getting to see some of their co-workers, but they also value the flexibility of being able to do that on their own terms and their own schedule,” said Jenkins.

“I don’t think we can put that genie back in the bottle.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 10, 2025.

Sammy Hudes, The Canadian Press

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A lone commuter walks a tunnel leading to the subway in Montreal, on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020. Quebec has given offices the greenlight to allow up to 25 per cent of workers to return to the job but the response has been lukewarm. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Athol Fugard, South Africa’s foremost dramatist who explored the pervasiveness of apartheid in such searing works as “The Blood Knot” and “’Master Harold’… and the Boys,” has died. He was 92.

The South African government confirmed Fugard’s death and said the country “has lost one of its greatest literary and theatrical icons, whose work shaped the cultural and social landscape of our nation.”

Six of Fugard’s plays landed on Broadway, including two productions of “’Master Harold’… and the Boys,” in 1982 and 2003.

Because Fugard’s best-known plays center on the suffering caused by the apartheid policies of South Africa’s white-minority government, some among Fugard’s audience abroad were surprised to find he was white himself.

“’Master Harold’… and the Boys” is a Tony Award-nominated work set in a South African tea shop in 1950. It centers on the relationship between the son of the white owner and two Black servants who have served as surrogate parents. One rainy afternoon, the bonds between the characters are stressed to breaking point when the young man begins to abuse his elders.

“In plain words, just get on with your job,” the boy tells one servant. “My mother is right. She’s always warning me about allowing you to get too familiar. Well, this time you’ve gone too far. It’s going to stop right now. You’re only a servant in here, and don’t forget it.”

When it opened in Johannesburg in 1983 — at the height of apartheid — in the audience was anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu. “I thought it was something for which you don’t applaud. The first response is weeping,” Tutu, who died in 2021, said after the final curtain. “It’s saying something we know, that we’ve said so often about what this country does to human relations.”

“The Road to Mecca,” with its three white characters, touches on apartheid of a different sort. It concerns an adventurous artist named Miss Helen, at odds with and cut off from the rigid and unyielding Afrikaners around her. It’s her eccentric artwork that severs her from society and makes her the subject of a fight for control.

A production opened in San Francisco in 2023, prompting the San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic to note that “its central concern — how to deal with people who are aging and alone — feels ripe for our own moment of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy amid a fraying social safety net.”

Fugard once told an interviewer that the best theater in Africa would come from South Africa because the country’s “daily tally of injustice and brutality has forced a maturity of thinking and feeling and an awareness of basic values I do not find equaled anywhere in Africa.”

Fugard was born in Middleburg in the semiarid Karoo on June 11, 1932. His father was an English-Irish man whose joy was playing jazz piano. His mother was Afrikaans, descended from South Africa’s early Dutch-German settlers, and earned the family’s income by running a store.

Fugard said his first trip into Johannesburg’s Black enclave of Sophiatown — since destroyed and replaced with a white residential area — was “a definitive event of my life. I first went in there as the result of an accident. I suddenly encountered township life.”

This ignited Fugard’s longstanding urge to write. He left the University of Cape Town just before he would have graduated in philosophy because “I had a feeling that if I stayed I might be stuck into academia.”

Fugard became a target for the apartheid government and his passport was taken away for four years after he directed a Black theater workshop, “The Serpent Players.” Five workshop members were imprisoned on Robben Island, where South Africa kept political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. Fugard and his family endured years of government surveillance; their mail was opened, their phones tapped, and their home subjected to midnight police searches.

He hitchhiked through Africa in 1953 with South African poet Perseus Adams, and ended up working as a sailor, the only white seaman on his ship. Fugard’s theater experience was confined to acting in a school play until 1956, when he married actor Sheila Meiring and began concentrating on stage writing. He and Meiring later divorced. He married second wife Paula Fourie in 2016.

He took a job in 1958 as a clerk with a Johannesburg Native Commissioner’s Court, where Black people who broke racial laws were sentenced, “one every two minutes.”

“We were absolutely broke. I needed a job and I needed information on the pass system,” Fugard said. His job included witnessing the caning of lawbreakers. “It was the darkest period of my life.”

He got some satisfaction in putting a small wrench in the works, by “shuffling up the charge sheets,” delaying proceedings enough for friends of the Black detainees to get them lawyers.

Fugard wrote, directed and acted in his early productions. On the eve of the opening of “A Lesson From Aloes,” at Johannesburg’s Market Theater, Fugard dismissed one of the three performers and took the role himself.

Later in life, Fugard taught acting, directing and playwriting at the University of California, San Diego. In 2006, the film “Tsotsi,” based on his 1961 novel, won international awards, including the Oscar for foreign language film. He won a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011.

More recent plays include “The Train Driver” (2010) and “The Bird Watchers” (2011), which both premiered at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. As an actor, he appeared in the films “The Killing Fields” and “Gandhi.” In 2014, Fugard returned to the stage as an actor for the first time in 15 years in his own play, “Shadow of the Hummingbird,” at the Long Wharf in New Haven, Connecticut.

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Kennedy reported from New York.

Mark Kennedy And Gerald Imray, The Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) — A one-day strike by workers at 13 German airports, including the Frankfurt and Munich hubs and all the country’s other main destinations, caused the cancelation of most flights on Monday.

The 24-hour walkout, which started at midnight, involves public-sector employees at the airports as well as ground and security staff.

At Frankfurt Airport, 1,054 of the day’s 1,116 scheduled takeoffs and landings had been canceled, German news agency dpa reported, citing airport traffic management.

All of Berlin Airport’s regular departures and arrivals were canceled, while Hamburg Airport said no departures would be possible. Cologne/Bonn Airport said there was no regular passenger service and Munich Airport advised travelers to expect a “greatly reduced flight schedule.”

The ver.di service workers union’s strike also targeted the Hamburg, Bremen, Hannover, Berlin, Duesseldorf, Dortmund, Cologne/Bonn, Leipzig/Halle, Stuttgart and Munich airports. At the smaller Weeze and Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden airports, only security workers were called out.

The union announced the strike on Friday. But at Hamburg Airport, it added a short-notice walkout on Sunday to the strike on Monday, arguing that it must ensure the measure was effective.

The so-called “warning strike,” a common tactic in German wage negotiations, relates to two separate pay disputes: negotiations on a new pay and conditions contract for airport security workers, and a wider dispute over pay for employees of federal and municipal governments.

The latter already has led to walkouts at Cologne/Bonn, Duesseldorf, Hamburg and Munich airports. Pay talks in that dispute are due to resume on Friday, while the next round of talks for airport security workers is expected to start on March 26.

The Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian stocks got a mixed start to trading Monday as uncertainty persisted over what President Donald Trump will do with tariffs.

U.S. futures were lower and oil prices also fell.

Shares in China led losses in Asia, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index down 2.1% at 23,720.26. The Shanghai Composite index shed 0.6% to 3,352.59.

In the latest sign of weakness for the world’s second-largest economy, consumer prices fell in China in February for the first time in 13 months, as persistent weak demand was compounded by the early timing of the Lunar New Year holiday.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 edged 0.1% higher to 36,936.39. Japan’s trade minister, Yoji Muto, was visiting Washington for talks on ways to avert higher U.S. tariffs on Japanese exports of steel, aluminum, and automobiles.

“Taking into account the voices we have heard from the industrial sector, we would like to hold discussions that will be a win-win for both Japan and the U.S.,” Muto told reporters late last week.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will take effect Wednesday.

Elsewhere in the region, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.2% at 7,966.40, while the Kospi in South Korea gained 0.4% to 2,574.90.

Taiwan’s Taiex lost 0.4% and the Sensex in India gained 0.3%. Bangkok’s SET slipped 1.1%.

On Friday, Wall Street rose after a wild ending to a brutal week of scary swings dominated by worries about the U.S. economy and uncertainty about what President Donald Trump will do with tariffs.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% to 5,770.20 after storming back from an earlier loss that had reached 1.3%. It was coming off a punishing stretch where it swung more than 1%, up or down, for six straight days.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5% to 42,801.72, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.7% to 18,196.22. Last week was the worst for the S&P 500 since September and left the index a little more than 6% below its all-time high set last month.

The head of the Federal Reserve helped ease the market’s worries on Friday afternoon after saying he thinks the economy looks stable at the moment, and he doesn’t feel pressure to cut interest rates in order to prop it up.

“The costs of being cautious are very, very low” right now, Powell said about holding steady on interest rates. “The economy is fine. It doesn’t need us to do anything really. We can wait, and we should wait.”

U.S. Labor Department said Friday that U.S. employers added 151,000 more jobs last month than they cut. That was slightly below economists’ expectations, but it was an acceleration from January’s hiring.

Recent, discouraging surveys had shown souring confidence for U.S. businesses and households because of uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs, and economists were waiting to see if Friday’s report would show if that was translating into real pain for the economy and job market.

The whiplash actions from the White House on tariffs — first placing them on trading partners and then exempting some and then doing it again — have raised uncertainty for businesses.

That sparked fears businesses might freeze in response to what they have described as “chaos” and pull back on hiring. U.S. households, meanwhile, are bracing for higher inflation because of tariffs, which is weakening their confidence and could hold back their spending. That would sap more energy from the economy.

Trump said Friday he wants tariffs to bring jobs back to the United States, and he gave no indication more certainty is imminent for financial markets. “There will always be changes and adjustments,” he said in comments from the Oval Office.

On Wall Street, Walgreens Boots Alliance climbed 7.5% after the pharmacy and drug store chain agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. The buyout would take the struggling chain private for the first time since 1927 and give it more flexibility to make changes to improve its business without worrying about Wall Street’s reaction.

In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 38 cents to $66.66 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 35 cents to $70.01 per barrel.

The U.S. dollar slipped to 147.72 Japanese yen from 147.94 yen. The euro fell to $1.0831 from $1.0836.

Elaine Kurtenbach, The Associated Press

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Panagis hauls himself out of the pool at a rehabilitation center in Greece and scurries over for a delectable lunch: whole mackerel. It’s been about three months since the orphaned seal pup was found struggling in the coastal waters of Cyprus. Soon, he’ll be well enough to go home.

Panagis is one of dozens of Mediterranean monk seals, or Monachus monachus, that have been nursed back to health by Greece’s MOm, a charity dedicated to the care and protection of the rare marine mammal whose population had dwindled so dramatically that at one point it faced extinction.

Thanks to conservation efforts, the seals with the big, round eyes and prominent whiskers are now making a remarkable comeback. Nearly half of their estimated global population of 800 live in Greek waters, where the extensive coastline offers an abundance of sea caves that provide shelter for females to rear their young.

From near extinction to recovery

Sleek and remarkably fast in the water, the monk seal is a skillful hunter and can consume up to 3 kilograms (6 pounds) of fish, octopus and squid a day. But it’s not averse to a ready meal, and can rip through fishing nets to steal fish — which led fishermen to view them as pests.

For decades, they were hunted, contributing to a major population decline between the 1960s and 1980s that led the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, to list them as critically endangered.

When conservation efforts began in the 1980s, combined with outreach programs to educate the public — and fishermen — “society gradually began to change … and the population began to recover,” said Panagiotis Dendrinos.

Dendrinos, a marine biologist and coordinator of the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal — or MOm — that has pioneered the Monachus monachus conservation program, says the monk seal is the only seal species in the Mediterranean Sea and also “one of the rarest species of seal and marine mammal in the world.”

“To protect an animal like the Mediterranean monk seal in its natural environment, you essentially have to protect the entire marine ecosystem,” he said.

Conservation efforts have paid off, and in recent years, the species climbed down a notch on the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species to “endangered.” About a year ago improved one step further, to “vulnerable.”

A unique seal rehab

Usually contacted by members of the public who find an animal in distress, MOm specialists tend to adult seals on location where possible, and transport young seals to the organization’s rehabilitation center housed in the grounds of Athens zoo, on the outskirts of the Greek capital.

There, the young mammals are looked after by veterinarians, fed a special diet to provide them with the best nutrition and hone their swimming skills in a pool.

Their carers give them names — often after the people who found them — but make sure contact with humans is kept to a minimum to prepare the animals for their return into the wild.

The young seals typically stay in the rehab center for several months, until they’ve put on enough weight and their natural hunting instinct kicks in, allowing them to fend for themselves. They are then tagged so they can be tracked, and re-introduced into the wild.

MOm, the only center of its kind in the region, has cared for about 40 seals from far and wide, both on location and in its facilities, Dendrinos said.

“This year, we had a really pleasant surprise,” he said. A female seal that had been treated and released four years ago was spotted nursing a pup.

Planes, boats and cars to the rescue

Panagis was found in Cyprus, near where the body of his mother had been found a few days earlier. Alerted by locals, the organization arranged for the seal to be flown to Athens.

“Transportation is carried out with whatever is available,” said veterinary assistant Nikitas Vogiatzis, shortly after feeding Panagis. “Either by plane, or by boat, or even by taxi. “Konstantina came in a taxi, Panagis by plane, Renos came on a boat,” he said, listing MOm’s most recent wards.

Weighing just under 15 kilograms (33 pounds) when he arrived, the now 3-month-old seal has reached over 40 kilograms (88 pounds). Panagis is nearly ready for his return trip home, which MOm experts hope will happen in May.

Back into the wild

Renos — short for Renos-Pantelis — was found in November in the small Aegean island of Anafi by a nurse and a military conscript whom he was named after.

The seal pup was shipped to MOm’s facility. He got medical treatment and was put on a special diet until he was old enough to move on to solid fish — the mackerel that Panagis is so fond of.

He recovered and on a cold, sunny February day, it was his turn to head back into the wild. MOm personnel loaded him into a crate and whisked him by speedboat to the uninhabited islet of Gyaros, the closest marine protected area to Athens.

The release location is chosen “based on there being enough food, and there being no disturbance by people, which is very important,” said Vogiatzis, the veterinary assistant.

The crate is placed near the water, he said. Then, “you open the door, you say a prayer and you say: ‘So long’.”

Renos’ crate was deposited on a beach and the door opened. The young seal sniffed the air timidly, and waited. Slowly, he inched his way out of the crate, then picked up speed as he belly-hauled his way down the beach, splashed into the sea and was gone.

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Associated Press photographer Thanassis Stavrakis in Gyaros, Greece, contributed to this report.

Elena Becatoros, The Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — More than 100,000 people were killed in a single night 80 years ago Monday in the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo, the Japanese capital. The attack, made with conventional bombs, destroyed downtown Tokyo and filled the streets with heaps of charred bodies.

The damage was comparable to the atomic bombings a few months later in August 1945, but unlike those attacks, the Japanese government has not provided aid to victims and the events of that day have largely been ignored or forgotten.

Elderly survivors are making a last-ditch effort to tell their stories and push for financial assistance and recognition. Some are speaking out for the first time, trying to tell a younger generation about their lessons.

Shizuyo Takeuchi, 94, says her mission is to keep telling the history she witnessed at 14, speaking out on behalf of those who died.

Red skies, charred bodies

On the night of March 10, 1945, hundreds of B-29s raided Tokyo, dumping cluster bombs with napalm specially designed with sticky oil to destroy traditional Japanese-style wood and paper homes in the crowded “shitamachi” downtown neighborhoods.

Takeuchi and her parents had lost their own home in an earlier firebombing in February and were taking shelter at a relative’s riverside home. Her father insisted on crossing the river in the opposite direction from where the crowds were headed, a decision that saved the family. Takeuchi remembers walking through the night beneath a red sky. Orange sunsets and sirens still make her uncomfortable.

By the next morning, everything had burned. Two blackened figures caught her eyes. Taking a closer look, she realized one was a woman and what looked like a lump of coal at her side was her baby. “I was terribly shocked. … I felt sorry for them,” she said. “But after seeing so many others I was emotionless in the end.”

Many of those who didn’t burn to death quickly jumped into the Sumida River and were crushed or drowned.

More than 105,000 people were estimated to have died that night. A million others became homeless. The death toll exceeds those killed in the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

But the Tokyo firebombing has been largely eclipsed by the two atomic bombings. And firebombings on dozens of other Japanese cities have received even less attention.

The bombing came after the collapse of Japanese air and naval defenses following the U.S. capture of a string of former Japanese strongholds in the Pacific that allowed B-29 Superfortress bombers to easily hit Japan’s main islands. There was growing frustration in the United States at the length of the war and past Japanese military atrocities, such as the Bataan Death March.

Recording survivors’ voices

Ai Saotome has a house full of notes, photos and other material her father left behind when he died at age 90 in 2022. Her father, Katsumoto Saotome, was an award-winning writer and a Tokyo firebombing survivor. He gathered accounts of his peers to raise awareness of the civilian deaths and the importance of peace.

Saotome says the sense of urgency that her father and other survivors felt is not shared among younger generations.

Though her father published books on the Tokyo firebombing and its victims, going through his raw material gave her new perspectives and an awareness of Japan’s aggression during the war.

She is digitalizing the material at the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, a museum her father opened in 2002 after collecting records and artifacts about the attack.

“Our generation doesn’t know much about (the survivors’) experience, but at least we can hear their stories and record their voices,” she said. “That’s the responsibility of our generation.”

“In about 10 years, when we have a world where nobody remembers anything (about this), I hope these documents and records can help,” Saotome says.

Demands for financial help

Postwar governments have provided 60 trillion yen ($405 billion) in welfare support for military veterans and bereaved families, and medical support for survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Civilian victims of the U.S. firebombings received nothing.

A group of survivors who want government recognition of their suffering and financial help met earlier this month, renewing their demands.

No government agency handles civilian survivors or keeps their records. Japanese courts rejected their compensation demands of 11 million yen ($74,300) each, saying citizens were supposed to endure suffering in emergencies like war. A group of lawmakers in 2020 compiled a draft proposal of a half million-yen ($3,380 ) one-time payment, but the plan has stalled due to opposition from some ruling party members.

“This year will be our last chance,” Yumi Yoshida, who lost her parents and sister in the bombing, said at a meeting, referring to the 80th anniversary of Japan’s WWII defeat.

Burnt skin and screams

On March 10, 1945, Reiko Muto, a former nurse, was on her bed still wearing her uniform and shoes. Muto leapt up when she heard air raid sirens and rushed to the pediatric department where she was a student nurse. With elevators stopped because of the raid, she went up and down a dimly lit stairwell carrying infants to a basement gym for shelter.

Soon, truckloads of people started to arrive. They were taken to the basement and lined up “like tuna fish at a market.” Many had serious burns and were crying and begging for water. The screaming and the smell of burned skin stayed with her for a long time.

Comforting them was the best she could do because of a shortage of medical supplies.

When the war ended five months later, on Aug. 15, she immediately thought: No more firebombing meant that she could leave the lights on. She finished her studies and worked as a nurse to help children and teenagers.

“What we went through should never be repeated,” she says.

Mari Yamaguchi And Mayuko Ono, The Associated Press

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — NFL MVP Josh Allen was rewarded Sunday with a contract extension that is reportedly worth $330 million, which would make him among the league’s highest-paid players.

The Buffalo Bills announced the agreement, which adds two years to Allen’s contract and locks the 28-year-old in through the 2030 season. ESPN.com reported the deal’s value and includes an NFL-record $250 million guaranteed.

The Bills did not release the value of the contract.

The extension comes following Allen’s seventh NFL season in which he became the Bills third player to earn NFL MVP, and first since running back Thurman Thomas did so in 1991. The new deal eclipses Allen’s previous contract, a six-year $258 deal he signed with Buffalo in August 2021.

Allen has established himself as one of the league’s elite quarterbacks and re-written nearly every franchise single-season passing and scoring record at his position. In doing so, he’s overcome the many questions and criticisms he faced for being considered a raw and inaccurate player when Buffalo selected him with the No. 7 pick in the 2018 draft out of Wyoming.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

John Wawrow, The Associated Press

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that freedom, democracy and Canada “are not a given” in his farewell speech to Liberals as they prepare to select a new leader.

This comes as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens Canada with economic annexation and places tariffs on Canadian imports coming into the States.

In Trudeau’s speech, the outgoing prime minister says he doesn’t want to look too much at the past as the Liberal party looks to the future.

Ella Grace Trudeau, his daughter, introduced the prime minister to the stage and says she is looking forward to seeing less of her dad in the news and being able to just see him more.

As the Liberals get ready for the first election in a decade without Trudeau at the helm, he says that you should never count the Liberals out.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Mar. 9, 2025.

David Baxter, The Canadian Press

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finishes his speech at the Liberal leadership announcement in Ottawa on Sunday, March 9, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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With a spike in measles in North America, Nova Scotia Health is asking people to get vaccinated, especially if they plan to travel. At a mobile clinic Sunday in Dartmouth, a number of Nova Scotians heeded the call.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Air Force fighter jets intercepted a civilian aircraft flying in the temporarily restricted airspace near Donald Trump’s Florida home Sunday, bringing the number of violations to more than 20 since the president took office on Jan. 20.

North American Aerospace Defense Command said in a statement that Sunday’s incident, which took place as Trump finished a round of golf at his West Palm Beach golf course, saw F-16s deploy flares to get the attention of the civilian pilot. Jets also conducted an intercept on Saturday morning shortly after Trump arrived at the course from his private Mar-a-Lago club and residence.

The airspace intrusions in the heavily congested south Florida airspace have prompted fighter jet intercepts but did not alter Trump’s schedule or impact his security, officials said. NORAD says the flares may have been visible from the ground but that they burn out quickly and don’t pose danger.

Federal officials maintain a permanent flight restriction over Trump’s club that expands to a radius of 30 nautical miles when the president is in residence.

Violations, and intercepts, are relatively routine, but NORAD is raising alarm over the frequency of the intrusions since Trump’s inauguration, saying it has responded to more than 20 incidents and blames civilian pilots for not following regulations requiring them to check for airspace restrictions before taking off.

“Adherence to TFR procedures is essential to ensure flight safety, national security, and the security of the President,” Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of NORAD and US Northern Command said in a statement. “The procedures are not optional, and the excessive number of recent TFR violations indicates many civil aviators are not reading Notice to Airmen, or NOTAMS, before each flight as required by the FAA, and has resulted in multiple responses by NORAD fighter aircraft to guide offending aircraft out of the TFR.”

Zeke Miller, The Associated Press

This is a photo collection curated by AP photo editors.

The Associated Press

Two men have been arrested for impaired operation causing death after a vehicle rolled over onto an elderly male passenger.

Annapolis District RCMP, Emergency Health Services and firefighters were dispatched to the scene of an off-highway collision on March 8 at approximately 4:40 p.m. Upon arrival at the scene, on Heartland Road in West Dalhousie, responding officers observed two side-by-side vehicles in the ditch, several people gathered, and a man lying on the ground.

Through an investigation officers determined that the two vehicles collided and a male passenger was ejected from the vehicle before it rolled onto him. The 72-year-old from West Dalhousie was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver of one vehicle, a 53-year-old man of Carleton Corner, suffered minor injuries and was transported to hospital where he was arrested for impaired operation causing death. Upon release from the hospital he was transported to Bridgetown RCMP Detachment and is being held in custody pending a court appearance on March 10.

The driver of the second vehicle, a 49-year-old man of West Dalhousie, was arrested for impaired operation causing death at a nearby home shortly after the incident. He was transported to Middleton RCMP Detachment and later released pending a future court appearance.

A third side-by-side vehicle was present at the scene but it is not believed to have been involved in the collision.

An investigation is ongoing, led by Annapolis District RCMP with assistance of the RCMP Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Services and the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service. Anyone with information is asked to contact RCMP or submit an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers.

ENNIS, Texas (AP) — One man died and three family members were injured when their RV flipped over several times at the Texas Motorplex during a strong thunderstorm that caused widespread damage in an area about 25 minutes south of Dallas on Saturday.

Strong winds of up to 90 mph (145 kph) ripped the roof off a Days Inn along Interstate 45, damaged homes throughout Ellis County and toppled at least seven semitractor-trailers on Interstate 35. The strong storms also knocked out power to nearly 20,000 people, but didn’t generate any tornadoes. About 1,000 remained without power Sunday. Some quarter-sized hail also fell in the area.

Ennis Police confirmed the storm death but didn’t immediately provide details. Family members told KXAS-TV that the 42-year-old man who died was from Midlothian, Texas, and his wife and two sons were inside an RV that rolled over at the racetrack. The man’s family members were treated at a hospital for injuries and released.

Ennis Mayor Kameron Raburn said in a statement Saturday that the city is beginning to pick up debris and work on recovering from the storm.

“The safety of our residents is our top priority,” Roburn said.

The nearby city of Waxahachie had to cancel its planned Tulipalooza festival because of the storm damage.

The Associated Press

Two men have been charged with drunk driving causing death after an incident in Annapolis County where two ATVs collided, a passenger was ejected and then had one of the ATVs roll on top of him.

Harsh winter weather and the impending threat of tariffs from both the U.S. and China have taken a toll on the labour market. In February, just 1,100 jobs were added to the Canadian economy, falling well below economists’ predictions and the 76,000 jobs added in January. But while employment remained stagnant across most of the country, Nova Scotia was hit hard with a loss of 4,300 jobs increasing the unemployment rate by 0.7 percentage points.

The unemployment rate in the province now sits at 6.6 per cent, which is still consistent with the rest of the country. Across provinces, the unemployment rate in February was lowest in Quebec at 5.3 per cent, while it was highest in Newfoundland and Labrador at 10.5 per cent.

In Nova Scotia, men 25 year old and up were the hardest hit by job losses. The unemployment rate for this demographic increased 1.4 per cent since January. The unemployment rate for women of the same age increased 0.7 per cent over the same time frame. Meanwhile the unemployment rate for those of any gender between the ages of 15 and 24 decreased from 13 per cent in January to 11.9 per cent in February.

Nova Scotia’s biggest employers are in the service industries, some of which faced the biggest job losses nationwide. Some of the biggest hit industries were manufacturing (4.8 per cent decrease), utilities (7.8 per cent decrease), and transportation and warehousing (23 per cent decrease).

All of the job losses in the province were in part-time work.

The Canadian economy has been functioning in a quasi limbo in light of impending tariffs from the U.S.

Brendon Bernard, senior economist at job site Indeed, said in an interview that stability in the unemployment rate is a clear sign that Canadian employers were not turning to layoffs en masse ahead of looming tariffs from the United States.

“There’s potential trouble ahead for the job market, but that’s not what we saw in February,” he said.

TD Bank director of economics James Orlando said in a note to clients Friday that the harsh winter weather was the “likely culprit” for Canada’s weak labour market results in February, but added that fears of the impending tariffs may have also started to bleed into the data.

“Luckily, the Canadian labour market came into the current tariff crisis on solid footing, which is important given the significant headwinds the economy is facing,” he said.

The good news for Nova Scotia is that it is likely the province will experience the smallest impacts from tariffs from the neighbours to the south, according to a report from the Conference Board of Canada.

The research states that the small but mighty province is the best set up to defend American tariffs because of its “broadly favourable industry mix.” It also sends the lowest proportion of its exports to the U.S. of all the provinces.

“But, more importantly, the province’s economy has limited dependence on international exports,” it reads. Services make up the largest proportion of the province’s GDP: 81 per cent. International goods exports account for just 11 per cent.

The biggest uncertainty is what will happen to the fishing industry, which heavily relies on American processors.

-With files from the Canadian Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump is dismissing business concerns over the uncertainty caused by his planned tariffs on a range of American trading partners and the prospect of higher prices, and isn’t ruling out the possibility of a recession this year.

After imposing and then quickly pausing 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada that sent markets tumbling over concerns of a trade war, Trump said his plans for broader “reciprocal” tariffs will go into effect April 2, raising them to match what other countries assess.

“April 2nd, it becomes all reciprocal,” he said in a taped interview with Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “What they charge us, we charge them.”

Asked about the Atlanta Fed’s warning of an economic contraction in the first quarter of the year, Trump seemingly acknowledged that his plans could affect U.S. growth. Still, he claimed, it would ultimately be “be great for us.”

“There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big,” Trump said. “It takes a little time. It takes a little time.”

On Wall Street, it was a tough week with wild swings dominated by worries about the economy and uncertainty about what Trump’s tariffs.

Trump brushed aside concerns from businesses seeking stability as they make investment decisions. He said that “for years the globalists, the big globalists have been ripping off the United States” and that now, “all we’re doing is getting some of it back, and we’re going to treat our country fairly.”

“You know, the tariffs could go up as time goes by, and they may go up and, you know, I don’t know if it’s predictability,” the Republican president said.

Trump last week lifted the Mexico and Canada tariffs on American car manufacturers, and then virtually all imports to the U.S., but kept them on goods from China.

More tariffs are coming this week, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will take effect Wednesday. Lutnick said Trump’s threatened tariffs on Canadian dairy and lumber though would wait until April.

“Will there be distortions? Of course,” Lutnick said. “Foreign goods may get a little more expensive. But American goods are going to get cheaper, and you’re going to be helping Americans by buying American.”

Zeke Miller, The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Firefighters in New York were continuing to battle at least one brush fire in a wooded stretch of Long Island on Sunday as officials warned that high wind gusts would leave the region vulnerable to additional blazes.

Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency Saturday after four separate fires broke out across large swaths of Long Island’s Pine Barrens region, prompting closures to the highway and evacuations of a military base.

As of Sunday morning, three of those fires had been contained, while one was still burning in the hamlet of Westhampton, according to Michael Martino, a spokesperson for Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine.

Local fire crews, as well as the Air National Guard, worked through the night, containing roughly 80% of the blaze, according to Martino.

He said the Suffolk County Police Department’s arson squad had initiated an investigation into the blaze, though there was no immediate evidence to suggest arson.

At least two commercial structures had been damaged. One firefighter was flown to a hospital to be treated for burns to the face on Saturday.

Officials warned that continuing high winds Sunday could make the fire difficult to quickly put out. According to the National Weather Service, wind gusts of up to 30 mph (48 kph) were expected Sunday.

“Our biggest problem is the wind,” Romaine said at an earlier news conference. “It is driving this fire.”

Roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) west, officials were monitoring a small brush fire along Sunrise Highway early Sunday, Brookhaven Town Supervisor Daniel J. Panico said. But there were no visible flames as of Sunday morning.

The Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian special forces walked kilometers (miles) inside of a gas pipeline to strike Ukrainian units from the rear in the Kursk region, Ukraine’s military and Russian war bloggers reported, as Moscow moves to recapture parts of its border province that Kyiv seized in a shock offensive.

Ukraine launched a daring cross-border incursion into Kursk i n August, in what marked the largest attack on Russian territory since World War II. Within days, Ukrainian units had captured 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of territory, including the strategic border town of Sudzha, and taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war. According to Kyiv, the operation aimed to gain a bargaining chip in future peace talks, and force Russia to divert troops away from its grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine.

But months after Ukraine’s thunder run, its soldiers in Kursk are weary and bloodied by relentless assaults of more than 50,000 troops, including some from Russia’s ally North Korea. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers run the risk of being encircled, open source maps of the battlefield show.

According to Telegram posts by a Ukrainian-born, pro-Kremlin blogger, Russian operatives walked about 15 kilometers (9 miles) inside the pipeline, which Moscow had until recently used to send gas to Europe. Some Russian troops had spent several days in the pipe before striking Ukrainian units from the rear near the town of Sudzha, blogger Yuri Podolyaka claimed.

The town had some 5,000 residents before the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and houses major gas transfer and measuring stations along the pipeline, once a major outlet for Russian natural gas exports through Ukrainian territory.

Another war blogger, who uses the alias Two Majors, said fierce fighting was underway for Sudzha, and that Russian forces managed to enter the town through a gas pipeline. Russian Telegram channels showed photos of what they said were special forces operatives, wearing gas masks and moving along what looked like the inside of a large pipe.

Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed on Saturday evening that Russian “sabotage and assault groups” used the pipeline in a bid to gain a foothold outside Sudzha. In a Telegram post, it said the Russian troops were “detected in a timely manner” and that Ukraine responded with rockets and artillery.

“At present, Russian special forces are being detected, blocked and destroyed. The enemy’s losses in Sudzha are very high,” the General Staff reported.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

The Associated Press

Nine months after officials with Northern Pulp started examining the viability of a new mill in Queens County, Premier Tim Houston says it is his understanding the work continues.

Shawn Carrier wasn't disappointed when he learned last off-season that he had been traded from the contending Moncton Wildcats to the rebuilding Halifax Mooseheads. He actually thought it was an amazing opportunity.

Megan Banning never thought her music recordings from the 1980s would ever come out of her basement. But after her son brought her story to an American podcast, everything changed.

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (AP) — Rohingya refugees in crammed Bangladeshi camps say they are worried about a U.S. decision to cut food rations by half beginning next month, while a refugee official says the reduction will impact the nutrition of more than 1 million refugees and create “social and mental pressure.”

President Donald Trump abruptly stopped most foreign aid and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has significantly hampered the global humanitarian sector. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order froze the funding for a 90-day review.

The World Food Program, the main U.N. food agency, recently announced that cuts to food rations will take effect from April 1 in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where dozens of camps are inhabited by Rohingya refugees.

More than 700,000 Muslim Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar starting in late August 2017 when Myanmar’s military launched a “clearance operation.” The ethnic group faces discrimination and are denied citizenship and other rights in the Buddhist-majority nation. Following a miliary takeover in 2021, the country has been engulfed in an armed conflict widely seen as civil war.

It was not immediately clear if the WFP’s decision was directly related to the Trump administration’s action.

“We received a letter that (says) previously it was $12.50, and now it is $6. They used to get $12.50 per month, and from now $6, this will greatly affect them,” Shamsud Douza, additional refugee relief and repatriation commissioner of Bangladesh, told The Associated Press.

“As the food is cut, they will get less nutritious food, which may lead to a lack of nutrition. There will be social and mental pressure created amongst the Rohingya people in their community. They will have to look for an alternative for the food,” he said.

Douza said there are more sectors where budgets have been cut beyond the food rations, but he would not say whether WFP cuts were related to the U.S. funding rollback.

“Generally, there will be less (support) for the (Rohingya) response after the funding cuts. The response already has been slowed, and some people, including Rohingya, have lost their jobs, and some services are reduced. It does not bring a good result when the available services get reduced,” he said.

The interim Bangladesh government said the end of USAID payments would stop other projects in Bangladesh, but funding for Rohingya refugees will continue to flow.

The U.S. has been the top donor to Bangladesh for Rohingya refugees, providing the U.N. with emergency food and nutrition assistance. The U.S. usually provides almost half of the aid money spent on the humanitarian response to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, which provided about $300 million in 2024.

As the news of the impending food reductions spread through the camps in Cox’s Bazar, fear and frustration gripped the refugees.

“I am afraid now about how I am going to run my family, as we don’t have any income-generating opportunities here. I got scared when I heard it,” 40-year-old Manzur Ahmed said. “How will I buy rice, chilies, salt, sugar and dal, let alone fish, meat and vegetables, with 700 taka ($6)? We won’t even be able to buy (cooking) oil. How are we going to get them?”

Medical treatment also is decreasing, refugees said.

“When we go to the hospital, they don’t provide medicines unless it’s an emergency. They only provide medicines to the very emergency patients. Earlier, they would treat anyone who felt unwell, but now they only provide treatment to those who are in an emergency,” 32-year-old Dildar Begum said.

Hundreds of thousands have lived in Bangladesh for decades and about 70,000 crossed the border from Myanmar in 2024. During fighting with the military junta, the opposition force known as the Arakan Army effectively took over the Rakhine state where Rohingya were displaced and took shelter in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh says Rohingya refugees must return to Myanmar, which has been accused in an international court of genocide against Rohingya.

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Alam reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Shafiqur Rahman And Julhas Alam, The Associated Press

The Saint John Sea Dogs defeated the Halifax Mooseheads 3-1 on Saturday night, as the two clubs continue to battle for a spot in the playoffs.

The first period ended tied, as Saint John struck first as Matthew Krayer took advantage of a scrum in front of the net to fire a shot past Steinman. Liam Kilfoil tied the game on the next play, knocking a cross-ice pass from Quinn Kennedy into the Sea Dogs net.

In the third period the Sea Dogs took control, Matteo Mann breaking the tie halfway through the period, sniping a shot past Steinman. Zach Morin added an empty netter to claim the victory for Saint John and take an important two points from the Herd.

With the loss, the Mooseheads fall to 18-32-9 while the Sea Dogs improve to 21-39-0

Halifax goaltender Jacob Steinman earned first star, making 31 saves in the loss. Saint John goaltender Eric Young was awarded second star and third star went to Sea Dogs forward Matteo Mann

The Herd will be back in action on Wednesday, Mar 12th, as they make the journey across the Confederation Bridge to face off against the Charlottetown Islanders at the Eastlink Centre. Puck drop is at 7 p.m., and you can catch all the action here on 95.7 NewsRadio

WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s premier says he has spoken with the family of an Indigenous woman murdered by a serial killer, and he hopes the confirmation that her remains have been found during a search at a Winnipeg landfill helps them move forward.

“For so long now, years now, her journey to the next phase with her family being able to grieve her, lay her to rest, have a funeral or however they want to remember (her), has been on hold and disrupted and made the subject of so much public scrutiny,” Wab Kinew told reporters at an event Saturday at an Indigenous resource centre.

“To me, it’s about a grieving family and healing for them.”

A statement from the Manitoba government late Friday confirmed that remains found during a search of the Prairie Green landfill were those of 39-year-old Morgan Harris.

The government statement said another set of remains was part of the recovery, and more information would be provided as facts are confirmed.

The search of the landfill for Harris, as well as another victim, Marcedes Myran, began in December and has been contentious, but Kinew said in the end government did the right thing by moving forward with it.

“I feel that Manitobans and Canadians have shown their true nature. It wasn’t easy to get to this point, but at the end of the day we did come together to do right by these families,” Kinew said.

Jeremy Skibicki was convicted last year of first-degree murder in the slayings of Harris, Myran and two other Indigenous women.

In a statement posted on social media on Saturday, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak offered condolences to Harris’ family, saying the victims of Skibicki were entitled to respect and dignity in death.

“For the three long years, these families have carried an unimaginable burden, fighting for the recovery of their loved ones. They should never have had to fight this hard,” Woodhouse Nepinak said.

Families of the women and Indigenous leaders in the province advocated for years for a search of the landfill, taking their fight to Parliament Hill and the Manitoba legislature.

Police refused to search the site over safety concerns. The Progressive Conservative government at the time also said it wouldn’t support a search, and during the 2023 provincial election campaign the party touted that decision.

Kinew pledged there would be a search and, after his NDP were elected, the province and the federal government put up $20 million to fund one.

Ross Gardner, a crime scene consultant in the United States, had told The Canadian Press two years ago that a search could succeed but would require a monumental effort due to the passage of time and the compacting process at the landfill.

Gardner commended the searchers on Saturday, and noted the confirmation of Harris’ remains indicates that whatever strategy they’re using is working.

“Now they’ve got an area they can at least concentrate on. That is intelligence in and of itself that, hey, we’re in the right ballpark,” Gardner said in an interview.

The murder trial heard that Harris, a member of Long Plain First Nation, had been living in Winnipeg before she was last seen on May 1, 2022.

It heard Skibicki targeted the women at homeless shelters in Winnipeg and disposed of their bodies in garbage bins in his neighbourhood.

The remains of Rebecca Contois were found in a garbage bin and at a different landfill. Those of an unidentified woman Indigenous grassroots community members named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, have not been found and police have not said where they might be.

Winnipeg’s former police chief, Danny Smyth, retired in September. His successor, Gene Bowers, was announced on Friday and he said in a statement that the department’s thoughts go out to the families of the victims, as well as “all families who are awaiting word on their missing loved ones.”

“On Monday, March 10, 2025, my appointment as Chief of Police will take effect, and I intend to action my vision for the Winnipeg Police Service to become leaders in reconciliation,” Bowers said in the statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2025.

— By Rob Drinkwater in Edmonton, with files from Brittany Hobson.

The Canadian Press

Nova Scotia's newest member of the Senate is former Liberal MLA Tony Ince. He was one of five people appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday.

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge has awarded nearly $2 million in damages as part of a civil lawsuit after concluding an FBI agent was negligent when he fatally shot a kidnapped Texas man during a botched rescue attempt in 2018.

The family of 47-year-old Ulises Valladares filed a lawsuit in Houston federal court alleging their loved one had been helpless as he was bound and blindfolded when FBI agent Gavin Lappe shot him shot in January 2018 as authorities entered a home where the man was being held.

The FBI agent had told investigators he only fired when he thought a kidnapper had grabbed his rifle after the agent broke a window to get inside and didn’t know he was shooting Valladares, who had lived in suburban Houston.

But in a 10-page judgment issued on Monday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt in Houston found that Lappe “was negligent, even grossly negligent, in his response” during the rescue attempt, and he was the sole cause of Valladares’ death.

Hoyt wrote that Lappe fired at a silhouette in the window without knowing who he was shooting at and did so when there was no direct threat to him or another agent who was nearby.

The judgement by Hoyt was first reported by the Houston Landing website.

Lappe was protected against the lawsuit through qualified immunity. But the case was allowed to proceed against the federal government.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston and an attorney for Lappe did not immediately return emails seeking comment.

Hoyt awarded nearly $2 million in damages to Valladares’ mother and son.

Former Houston police Chief Art Acevedo had previously said the agent’s explanation for why he shot the hostage “is not supported” by evidence reviewed by police investigators.

The Associated Press

The repeated freeze-thaw cycle does more than just play with people’s emotions who are begging for the arrival of spring weather, it also makes the morning commute to work far less enjoyable and potentially more expensive.

Temperature fluctuations contribute to the creation of potholes, and some major ones have been popping up on streets across Halifax.

While there have been less potholes reported so far in 2025, compared to just January 2024, many residents have taken to social media complaining about the severity of the ones present.

“Priority one” potholes, those at least 25 centimetres in diameter and eight centimetres deep, must be repaired within seven to 30 days. But those service repair standards do not begin until April 1.

This weekend, however, the city is focusing its attention on certain potholes that have wrecked havoc for drivers over the past few months.

On March 8 and 9, between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., crews will be on scene repairing potholes in the following locations:

• Portland Street
• Pleasant Street
• Bedford Highway, including the Fairview overpass to Kearney Lake Road
• St. Margarets Bay Road from the Armdale Rotary to Albert Walker Drive
• Herring Cove Road from the Armdale Rotary to civic 700
• Agricola Street
• Willet Street from Dunbrack Street to Lacewood Drive
• Alma Crescent
• South Street and University Avenue intersection

Due to roadwork, traffic will be stop and go in these areas. The municipality encourages drivers to take alternative routes and give themselves extra travel time.

Potholes can be reported by calling 3-1-1 or online.

This is a story of insufferable loss.

The post Part 3: Foul Play appeared first on Halifax Examiner.

OTTAWA — It’s the last day before Liberals elect their next leader and the campaigns are making their final get-out-the-vote push as they seek to rally grassroots support from across the country.

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, former government House leader Karina Gould and former MP Frank Baylis are all running to lead their party into the next election.

The party will select a successor for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday and the winner could be sworn in as prime minister within a matter of days.

An internal memo from Freeland’s campaign manager Tom Allison obtained by The Canadian Press says the campaign is taking nothing for granted at a “pivotal” moment in the race.

It says the campaign is targeting ridings not traditionally held by the Liberals as part of its strategy to maximize Freeland’s vote efficiency.

The Carney team says it’s all-hands-on-deck to get out the vote and that their candidate has spent the past few days connecting with party faithful in Calgary, Montreal and Toronto.

Gould, meanwhile, spent the week hosting a series of virtual town halls in different regions across the country.

“Karina’s been working really hard this week to engage with voters all across the country both in person and virtually,” said campaign spokesperson Emily Jackson, who added Gould is working the phone every day.

Baylis’ supporters say they’re showcasing their candidate as much as possible in the final days of the short race. He was in Surrey, B.C. meeting with the Sikh community this past week.

“The fact that the campaign has been so short has made it difficult for us because the more time passes, the more people are discovering Frank and reaching out to us and showing us their support,” said Baylis spokesperson Justine McIntyre.

The campaigns are also working around a complicated voter identity verification process that has frustrated many party members.

The various campaigns are marshaling volunteers to help voters through the process, which uses the Canada Post Identity+ app and may require multiple attempts to register.

“We still have some supporters that are telling us that they’re having difficulty voting, their validation hasn’t gone through and so on,” said McIntyre, adding the campaign is trying to help “as many people as we can.”

“Throughout the campaign, our team of 1,400 volunteers has made over 200,000 calls to support Liberals as they completed the process, with the goal of having as many Liberals as possible be eligible to participate in this weekend’s vote,” Carney spokesperson Emily Williams said in an email.

Liberal party spokesperson Parker Lund said that as of late Friday, 157,000 members have had their identities verified and 134,000 have voted.

All the visible signs point to a Carney victory, with a large swath of cabinet backing him as he leads in polls and fundraising.

The latest Elections Canada fundraising data released on March 7 — the last data dump before the Sunday vote — shows Carney blasting ahead of the pack at $3.4 million in donations from 21,000 people, with no other candidate raising seven figures.

The publicly available data puts Gould just ahead of Freeland and Baylis, but all on roughly equal footing in the ballpark of $360,000.

Freeland’s camp has maintained that the public data doesn’t include funds the party held to cover the $350,000 entrance fee, and her returns include data gaps with days where nothing was recorded.

The internal memo from the Freeland campaign says she has “travelled to nearly every province, done nearly 70 interviews, led over 20 town halls, met with thousands of energized Liberals, and raised over $750,000 from thousands of Canadians.”

Jackson said Gould has raised close to $450,000 at this point — an amount that does not include funds raised and taken for the fee.

McIntyre said Baylis’ data is accurate but out of date since the campaign has raised more funds since the reporting period ended a week ago.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2025.

Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — As longtime Liberal MP Pam Damoff prepares to leave politics when the next federal election is called she is wistful but open about what is driving her to step away from a career she has had for more than a decade.

Vocal about the misogyny and threats she faced during her time in government, she wants public safety officials to take these threats more seriously.

“We’ve seen a shift in how people treat politicians, and I really worry that at some point, someone will be injured or killed,” Damoff said in an interview.

Damoff said harassment escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You have to have tough skin to be in politics that’s a given, but really it was after the pandemic and it really started to cross the line to be angry aggression, moving to where people sent me death threats,” she said.

She adds, “I have no regrets about running for office … the real issue is retention. Whether you’re on a construction site, in journalism, or in politics, we make better decisions when diverse voices are around the table.”

While just over half of the Canadian population identifies as female, data from Equal Voice, a registered charity advocating for gender parity in Canadian politics, shows that fewer than one in three elected officials at the federal level are female.

A 2023 study by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities showed about the same number of municipally elected politicians were women, though women accounted for only one in five mayors.

Equal Voice data shows that at the provincial level, women’s representation averages 38 per cent, varying from above 50 per cent in British Columbia to below 25 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In last month’s provincial election in Ontario, only 32.2 per cent of the 768 candidates were women. When the results were tallied 43 women were elected, accounting for 34 per cent of the province’s seats.

Lindsay Brumwell, Interim Executive Director at Equal Voice, said women accounted for between 32 and 39 per cent in the last three provincial elections in Ontario.

While the province has yet to reach gender parity, she highlighted the importance of surpassing the 30 per cent threshold, referencing corporate data that suggests progress accelerates once that milestone is reached.

“I don’t want to say that things are great, because they’re not,” Brumwell says. “But I also don’t want to diminish the fact that we’re starting to hit important milestones. Now, we hope to move to the next level.”

Former Liberal environment minister Catherine McKenna made the decision to step away in 2021, echoing sentiments similar to Damoff.

“I was just a normal person, I went into politics, I wasn’t even a climate activist, I had done human rights work and work internationally, and I was a lawyer, but I didn’t expect this,” she says.”

“And suddenly I came in and I was immediately hit with both climate denial and misogyny all in one.”

McKenna was initially targeted mainly online with varying misogynist slurs and threats of assault, but it eventually moved into the real world, with encounters sometimes while she was with her children. The problem got bad enough she was assigned a security detail at times.

She points to social media as a key driver of online hate and calls for platform accountability.

“For International Women’s Day, great, celebrate women, but actually do more by actually holding social media companies to account because they’re driving hate and they’re driving women out of politics.”

The Liberal leadership race on March 9 could mark a historic moment, as two women are among the four people in the running.

If elected, Karina Gould or Chrystia Freeland would become Canada’s second female prime minister, following Kim Campbell.

In an interview with The Canadian Press Gould acknowledged that harassment has worsened, particularly on social media and through threats to her constituency office.

“It takes a big toll on your mental health and sense of security,” she said.

Like Damoff, she cited the pandemic as an igniting factor, saying it is a “very different environment in Canadian politics than it was pre-pandemic.”

“I think we’re all still recovering from the collective trauma that was the pandemic, and some people, deal with that in more constructive ways, and other people, use that anger and frustration, and take it out on other people,” she said.

Following a wave of departures of female politicians in 2022, historian Alexandre Dumas was commissioned to study the trend for the Women’s Committee of the Cercle des ex-parlementaires de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec.

His report, “Why Do Women Leave Politics?” compiled insights from 21 women who had left politics, many of whom felt their skills were underutilized.

“They wanted to be useful,” explains Marie Malavoy, president of the Women’s Committee of the Cercle des ex-parlementaires de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec.

“They wanted to have their skills and competences well utilized, and if you feel that for four years, well, at the end of the time you, you just ask yourself, am I in the right place for me?”

While there are challenges, McKenna and Gould both said it’s critical to have women’s voices at the table.

“This isn’t just about women in politics, but the health of our democracy.” McKenna said.

“The key is to recognize that you have something to offer and your voice matters, and it’s important for you to be in those spaces, because half the population are women, and, it’s important for us to take up that space, be in that space, and make sure that our voices are heard” said Gould.

Gould emphasized the importance of mentorship and support.

“My philosophy has always been, you open the door and then you hold it open for the next generation, but then you reach through and pull the next generation forward as well.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2025.

Jesmeen Gill, The Canadian Press

<!– Photo: b2eb9b981a45466fd4ed65de1b9e7c2f8715065e8f11f4211a3e3daf36243d2d.jpg, Caption:

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety Pam Damoff rises during Question Period, Friday, November 18, 2022 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

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When COVID-19 hit, millions of Canadians were either told to work remotely or temporarily laid off as governments ordered lockdowns to protect public health.

Not Arlick Leslie.

While others were setting up a home office or applying for income assistance, he continued to work at a Walmart warehouse in Mississauga, Ont. The non-compliance clerk was one of many workers deemed “essential,” heralded by politicians for their service at a time when even shopping for groceries felt like a risk.

“We had to be out there … facing the elements,” said Leslie.

Many workers, including Leslie, didn’t feel like their treatment matched the important role they were playing. Losing an hourly “hero pay” bump after just a couple of months added to a growing pile of frustrations over wages and scheduling for Leslie and his co-workers.

As time went on, Leslie and his co-workers saw unionized workers at places like Ontario’s liquor wholesaler fighting — and winning gains — at the bargaining table, earning back some of what they felt they had lost since 2020.

“We’ve seen the (unionized) workers speaking up for what they think they deserve,” Leslie said.

“So we’re like, ‘you know what? Why not give this a shot?'”

Workers at the warehouse unionized through Unifor last September, and are now negotiating the terms of their first collective agreement.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent runaway inflation that eroded workers’ purchasing power, spurred what experts call a rise in union militancy, where workers drew harder-than-ever lines with employers on issues like wages and working conditions. The result: many workers won significant wage gains and some unionized at notoriously hard-to-organize companies, buoyed by elevated levels of public support.

“We’ve seen it with postal workers, we’ve seen it with dock workers, we’ve seen it with retail workers, we’ve seen it with production workers,” said Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.

“It’s a pretty universal phenomenon that workers are recognizing their worth and are willing to push for more, and they’re willing to walk the picket line to get more.”

Health, safety and hero status

The so-called hero pay was emblematic of workers in areas like transportation, health care, long-term care and retail becoming “the ones that we relied upon the most,” said Bruske.

But in some sectors, the hero pay was short-lived. For example, Canada’s three major grocers removed their hourly bonuses in June 2020 (Empire reinstated some bonuses for workers in locked-down areas that December).

“While we appreciated them in the short term, it was almost performative,” said Bruske.

In the early months of the pandemic, amid constantly shifting public health measures and supply chain disruptions, many unionized employers looked to defer bargaining, said Lesley Prince, director of organizing at United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, especially in sectors massively affected by closures like hospitality.

“There was so much uncertainty that most companies just wanted to sort of maintain the status quo, because they didn’t know when things were going to reopen and start operating on a full-time basis again,” said Prince.

As the months wore on, companies were dealing with supply chain disruptions stemming from COVID-19 as well as geopolitical tensions and extreme weather, said Pascal Chan, vice-president of strategic policy and supply chains for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce: “There have been no shortage of disruptions.”

Justin Gniposky, who was a national representative in Unifor’s organizing department when the pandemic hit, believes some companies took advantage of the circumstances and sought concessionary deals.

Uncertainty and mass unemployment muted workers’ resistance in 2020 and 2021, said Stephanie Ross, an associate professor at McMaster University’s labour studies school.

But unions had more leverage as inflation spiked, labour tightened and profits stabilized in some sectors

“I think that the pandemic brought to the forefront a new set of issues for the labour movement to confront in workplaces and in public policy, and I think that it also … created the conditions that brought forth a wave of militancy that we haven’t seen in several decades,” said Ross.

“You can’t eat hero status.”

In response to concerns raised by the unionizing workers at Walmart, spokesperson Stephanie Fusco emphasized pay premiums and bonuses the company enacted in 2020, as well as more recent wage increases. (Unionized workers didn’t get the latest round of raises; the company says their wages will be decided through negotiations. Unifor has alleged the raise is an anti-union tactic, which Walmart denies.)

“We take health and safety concerns seriously and work to promptly address them,” Fusco said in a statement.

Bargaining for deals

Unions tried to channel workers’ frustration into negotiations, said Gniposky, now Unifor’s director of organizing.

In 2022 and 2023 Unifor led a series of “aggressive” bargaining rounds, Gniposky said, such as with the Detroit Three automakers. Workers at Stellantis, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors got double-digit wage gains and improvements to various benefits after a short-lived strike. The deals followed pandemic-related supply-chain disruptions amid major pushes to invest in the electric vehicle transition.

Metro grocery workers in the Toronto area made headlines during a month-long strike in 2023, eventually reaching a deal that essentially brought back their lost pandemic pay.

Public-sector workers also took to the streets, including tens of thousands of federal government employees in 2023.

“There was a moment from late 2022 onward, where unions had more relative power to make those gains, to go on strike, and more public support than we had seen for many, many years for those kinds of disruptions,” said Ross, the McMaster labour specialist.

But workers still faced pushback from their employers and, in some cases, governments. Last year the federal government intervened in several high-profile private-sector labour disputes.

Business groups say major labour disruptions, like the month-long strike by Canada Post last year, as well as recent stoppages at ports and railways, cost the economy billions of dollars, disrupt the flow of important commodities and jeopardize the livelihoods of small business owners.

In some cases, industry called on the government to step in.

Recent high-profile work stoppages have not only hurt employers and the economy but also Canada’s reputation as a trading partner, said Chan, with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“These are getting a lot of attention internationally,” he said.

Some on the industry side, like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’ Dan Kelly, believe the government has tipped the scales too far toward unionized workers in recent years through legislative changes.

This, plus a tight labour market coming out of the pandemic, empowered workers — including non-unionized employees — to ask for “higher than normal” pay increases, Kelly said.

Breakthroughs in organizing

One group of workers in particular made headlines across North America for unionizing: employees at large chains, including multinational companies such as Starbucks, Walmart and Amazon.

Unifor began organizing at B.C. Amazon warehouses in 2023, and has filed to unionize one of them. The union is currently embroiled in a complaint against Amazon, alleging it tried to dilute and tamp down union support, which the retailer denies.

UFCW, meanwhile, saw success at chains like Indigo and PetSmart.

But Ross, with McMaster, said unions have had a hard time truly moving the needle at these corporate giants.

The first unionized Amazon warehouse in Canada was in Quebec. After it lost a bid to challenge the certification, Amazon announced earlier this year it would close all of its Quebec warehouses, a decision the Confédération des syndicats nationaux is seeking to overturn.

Digital updates

In addition to galvanizing workers, the pandemic also spurred long-overdue technological changes that make it easier to unionize, said Gniposky. For example, digital union cards are now widespread, meaning workers can sign cards from anywhere. Votes are also usually electronic, resulting in a higher turnout.

Ross said the pressures of the past few years have “created a different mood in the labour movement than we’ve seen for a long time.”

“But … the question of whether or not the lessons from this last five years are going to be learned in ways that enhance the power of the labour movement to make economic and political gains for workers is, I think, still an open question,” she said.

The next four years of the Donald Trump presidency could prove to be another opportunity, Gniposky said, as challenging times can build solidarity.

“The fire is still lit,” he said.

“This is an opportunity and we’ve got to take advantage of it.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2025.

Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — A new poll suggests few Canadians are open to President Donald Trump’s repeated pitches for Canada to become a U.S. state, though interest in it rises among Conservative supporters and those living in Alberta.

The Leger poll, released this week, says just nine per cent of Canadians want Canada to become the 51st state, while 85 per cent do not.

The rejection appears clear across all regions, political parties and age groups.

Support for the idea is highest in Alberta, at 15 per cent, and lowest in Atlantic Canada at just three per cent, with fewer than one-in-10 people in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia wanting it.

About 18 per cent of Conservative supporters said they want Canada to become a U.S. state, while 97 per cent of Liberal and NDP voters, and 94 per cent of Bloc supporters said they would not want that.

The poll suggests a similar level of disdain among Canadians when asked if they would like to become American citizens, with 12 per cent saying yes to that question, and 82 per cent saying no.

Albertans again were most inclined to say yes to this question, at 21 per cent, and Atlantic Canadians the least, at four per cent.

The poll sampled more than 1,500 Canadian adults from Feb. 28 to March 2. Because the poll was conducted online, it can’t be assigned a margin of error.

Men were more open to the idea of becoming U.S. citizens, at 17 per cent, compared with seven per cent of women. Respondents over the age of 55 were least likely to want a U.S. citizenship, at six per cent, compared with 17 per cent of those between 18 and 34 years old and 16 per cent of respondents between 35 and 54.

Conservative respondents were much more interested in becoming American citizens (21 per cent) than Liberal and NDP respondents (5 per cent each).

Trump’s 51st state jabs began last fall shortly after he won the presidential election and have only escalated since, including as he pursues an increasingly punitive tariff agenda against Canada which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said is designed to destroy Canada’s economy to “make it easier to annex us.”

The Leger poll suggests that over three quarters of Canadians (78 per cent) have an “unfavourable” view of Trump, compared to 12 per cent who have a favourable view of the president and six per cent who say they don’t know enough about him to have an opinion.

Asked if they were in favour of the Canadian government responding with dollar-for-dollar tariffs to U.S. tariffs, 70 per cent said they were, while 18 per cent were opposed. Men (74 per cent) were more likely than women (66 per cent) to be in favour of it.

Asked about changes to their consumer behaviour over the past few weeks, with about two-thirds of respondents said they had decreased their purchases of American products in stores or online, and more than half cutting back on American fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s and Starbucks.

Just under half of respondents said they had decreased their purchases at American retail chains like Walmart and Costco.

Liberal, NDP and Bloc respondents were more likely than Conservatives to say they had changed their spending habits.

Seven in 10 respondents have increased their purchases of local Canadian products in recent weeks.

Twenty per cent of respondents who subscribe to a U.S. entertainment platform, like Netflix or Prime Video, said they had cancelled their subscription. Thirty per cent of respondents who had a trip planned to the U.S. said they cancelled it.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

— With files from Nick Murray and Kelly Geraldine Malone.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2025.

Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — The Liberals will choose a new leader Sunday, marking the end of Justin Trudeau’s decade as prime minister.

He will step down officially in the days to come. On Tuesday, Trudeau said he will have a conversation with the incoming leader to determine exactly when that will happen.

“It should happen reasonably quickly, but there’s a lot of things to do in a transition like this, particularly in this complicated time in the world,” Trudeau said.

Here’s a look at what comes next.

The handover

First, Trudeau needs to formally resign as prime minister. He’ll meet with Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and, on his advice, Simon will invite the new Liberal leader to form a government.

That could happen right away, said David Zussman, an adjunct professor in the school of public administration at the University of Victoria who has written a book about political transitions. Or it could take days, or weeks.

“Justin Trudeau could, in fact, be sitting in his seat in the House of Commons when the House comes back at the end of March,” he said.

But that seems unlikely.

On Thursday, Trudeau insisted he does not plan to stay on in a caretaker role during the next election.

The new leader is likely to want to get started soon, Zussman said.

Forming a government

The new leader needs to name a cabinet and set a date to swear them in.

Trudeau’s cabinet has 37 members. Some ministers could stay on, or there could be new faces around the table from the Liberal caucus.

Michael Wernick, the former clerk of the privy council, said the new leader has “what the hockey coaches call a short bench” because so many Liberal MPs have decided not to run in the next election.

He suggested a smaller cabinet is likely, with some ministers carrying more than one portfolio.

Zussman said keeping some of the same ministers makes things simple for the public service.

New ministers need to be vetted and set up with things like security and secure phones, drivers and cars.

And everyone has to get up to speed on their files — quickly — because an election is coming in the next six months.

Naming a team

Another team needs to be named quickly: the Prime Minister’s Office staff and key advisers.

New people coming into top staff jobs need security clearances and briefings to get up to speed.

And at least part of the new leader’s inner circle will have to have eyes on the next election, which the leader could call at any point once the cabinet is named.

The Trump effect

Cabinet ministers like Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and Public Safety Minister David McGuinty have been leading Canada’s push to convince U.S. President Donald Trump that tariffs are a terrible idea.

The new leader has to decide whether it’s prudent to keep some of these key players in their roles and maintain the contacts they’ve made with counterparts across the border, or whether it’s better to show they’re not — as the Conservatives have charged — “just like Justin.”

Trump’s ever-changing trade policy and foreign policy make this “the most unique set of circumstances I’ve ever observed,” Zussman said.

That will affect the next leader’s cabinet choices and the timing of the next election.

Could Parliament come back?

When Trudeau announced his plans to resign in January, he prorogued Parliament until March 24.

The fall sitting of the House of Commons that ended in December was dominated by a Conservative filibuster that prevented almost all House business from getting done.

The Opposition launched a number of attempts to oust the minority Liberals with non-confidence motions, and the government pushed through only a few pieces of legislation with the help of the NDP.

Returning to the House of Commons to deliver a throne speech and deal with issues of supply would mean the new Liberal government would face confidence votes right away.

The new leader inherits a minority government with no supply-and-confidence deal and an opposition that’s eager to boot the Liberals out.

The Conservatives want the Liberals to reopen Parliament to debate the response to Trump’s tariffs. But the Tories are not promising to hold off on an election if that happens.

When he was asked on Feb. 5 if forcing an election now would be a responsible choice, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said it’s “the only responsible course of action.”

The New Democrats, however, have said they are willing to work with the Liberals in a limited way. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he wants legislation passed to support Canadian workers affected by tariffs and “an election is secondary to that.”

The NDP and Liberals together hold enough seats to pass legislation and defeat motions of non-confidence, but the NDP would want to see specific measures.

Wernick said the new prime minister could work out a deal with other parties to get some things done in a short sitting before heading into an election, but “that requires a level of maturity” beyond what we’ve seen in recent months.

“We can go very quickly into an election right after the swearing-in of a new cabinet,” Zussman said. “That may be a strategic advantage (for the new leader).”

Going to the polls

An election call could come before March 24.

That means all parties need to nominate candidates in 343 ridings. The Liberals, at last count, had about 160 people nominated.

The campaign will last between 37 and 51 days, with the vote landing on a Monday.

“The parties will be enormously distracted during an election campaign,” Zussman said.

“However, it seems to me that we’re going to be negotiating non-stop for as long as Trump is in power. He keeps changing the rules every day, so I don’t know when a good time is.”

It’s important to note that Canada will still have a government that can respond to tariffs and talk to the Trump administration during an election. The cabinet stays in place in caretaker mode, though it’s unable to pass new laws.

“I think a lot of Canadians think that somehow when Parliament is prorogued, we have no government, or when we have an election we have no government,” Wernick said. “There’s no break in Canadian government.”

A brief history lesson

The last time we had a handover of prime ministers within the same party was in 2003, when Paul Martin won the Liberal leadership race.

Martin had resigned as Jean Chrétien’s finance minister in 2002 after a series of disagreements between the two.

Chrétien announced his plans to resign in 2003 and the Liberals chose Martin as their new leader in November that year. Chrétien prorogued Parliament until Jan. 12, 2004 to allow for a transition.

On Dec. 12, 2003, Martin was officially appointed prime minister and sworn into office, along with his cabinet.

The next federal election was held in June 2004 and Martin’s Liberals won a minority government.

Wernick said the transition between former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper and Trudeau took 16 calendar days.

Canadian transitions are relatively brisk, he said, especially compared to other countries.

In the U.S., elections happen in early November and the inauguration is in late January. Germany, whose government was defeated in December, will have a new government in place in late April.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2025.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press

The East Coast Prison Justice Society, PATH Legal and the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia are calling for an end to the deployment of police for wellness checks after the deaths of two people in the span of less than a week in Halifax last month.

The beech leaf-mining weevil isn't very big at only two millimetres in length. But Acadia University biology professor Kirk Hillier it shouldn't be underestimated because of its size. The tiny green-and-gold invasive species can take down 36-metre trees in just a few years.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — TV footage on Saturday showed South Korea’s impeached Yoon Suk Yeol coming out of prison.

Yoon waved his hand and deeply bowed to his supporters after he came out of a detention center in Seoul, a day after a Seoul court canceled his arrest to allow him to stand trial for his rebellion charge without being physically detained.

Yoon was arrested and indicted by prosecutors in January over his Dec. 3 martial law decree that plunged the country into huge political turmoil.

The Associated Press

This is a collection of photos chosen by AP photo editors.

The Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A towering figure in cinema for decades, retired actor Gene Hackman spent his final years in seclusion with his wife, living with heart disease and Alzheimer’s, authorities said Friday.

An investigation into the deaths of Hackman and his wife, 65-year-old Betsy Arakawa, paint a tragic picture of the 95-year-old Oscar-winner’s last days before he succumbed to heart disease, one week after Arakawa died from a rare disease called hantavirus.

Here are some takeaways:

Hackman may not have realized his wife died a week earlier

“Mr. Hackman showed evidence of advanced Alzheimer’s disease,” New Mexico chief medical investigator Dr. Heather Jarrell said. “He was in a very poor state of health. He had significant heart disease, and I think ultimately that’s what resulted in his death.”

All signs point to their deaths coming a week apart, Jarrell said, adding, “It’s quite possible he was not aware she was deceased.”

Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, said he believes Hackman was severely impaired because of Alzheimer’s disease and unable to deal with his wife’s death in the last week of his life.

Couple lived a secluded life and were not found for days

When Hackman and Arakawa were found, the bodies were decomposing with some mummification, a consequence of body type and climate in Santa Fe’s especially dry air at an elevation of nearly 7,200 feet (2,200 meters).

Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza described the couple as a “very private family,” which presented difficulties in determining a timeline in their deaths. Hackman had no food in his stomach when he died, meaning he hadn’t eaten recently, but he wasn’t dehydrated, Jarrell said.

Investigators have not found any indication Hackman tried to contact anyone after Arakawa died, Mendoza said.

“All of us that knew him should have been checking on him,” said Stuart Ashman, co-owner of Artes de Cuba gallery. He cherished his encounters with Hackman at a local Pilates exercise studio, where they used to swap stories.

“I had no idea. … It’s just really sad,” Ashman said. “And that she died a week before him. My God.”

Hantavirus believed to be the cause of Arakawa’s death

Arakawa likely died Feb. 11 from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare disease spread by infected rodent droppings. She had gone out that day to run errands and stopped at a grocery store, pharmacy and pet store before returning to their home in a gated neighborhood.

How Arakawa contacted hantavirus is unknown, but signs of rodents were found by investigators in some of the buildings on the couple’s property, authorities said. Jarrell said it’s possible Arakawa was showing symptoms of the virus, similar to flu symptoms, before she died.

The virus can cause a severe and sometimes deadly lung infection. While hantavirus is found throughout the world, most cases in the U.S. have been found in western states.

Hackman had retired from a celebrated acting career

Hackman’s long career included roles as villains, heroes and antiheroes in dozens of dramas, comedies and action films. Aside from appearances at awards shows, he was rarely seen on the Hollywood social circuit. Hackman and Arakawa eschewed fame and made Santa Fe their home decades ago, like many other artists.

He met Arakawa, a classical pianist, at a California gym in the mid-1980s. They moved to Santa Fe by the end of the decade. Their Pueblo revival home sits on a hill with views of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

In his first decades in New Mexico, Hackman was often seen around the state capital and served on the board of trustees for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum from 1997 to 2004. Hackman kept a tight circle of friends and didn’t go out much, but he was sometimes spotted downtown.

The Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A death row inmate in Louisiana who is scheduled to become the first person in the state to be executed using nitrogen gas has asked for his capital punishment to be carried out using a more “humane” method.

Attorneys for Jessie Hoffman Jr. argued against the capital punishment method of nitrogen hypoxia in a Baton Rouge federal court on Friday.

The hearing occurred a week after Hoffman filed a lawsuit seeking to block his March 18 execution date, when nitrogen will be pumped into a mask strapped onto Hoffman, who was convicted of the 1996 execution-style murder of Mary Elliott in New Orleans.

Among their arguments, Hoffman’s attorneys said nitrogen hypoxia is cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution and infringes on Hoffman’s freedom to practice his religion, specifically Buddhist breathing and meditation exercises. They also argued the method, which involves an industrial, full-face mask, will ignite and worsen his diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and claustrophobia, causing mental torture.

The execution protocol lacks transparency, they argued, noting that under the policy Hoffman’s attorneys do not fall under the list of “required witnesses” to the execution.

Death by firing squad and medical-aid in dying, taking an oral solution of drugs mixed with apple juice, are alternative execution methods that would be more “humane,” Hoffman’s attorneys said.

The only execution methods for carrying out capital punishment listed in Louisiana law are nitrogen hypoxia, lethal injection and electrocution. For nearly two decades, the state has faced legal battles and challenges procuring drugs for lethal injection.

Attorneys for the state say nitrogen hypoxia has proven to be successful in Alabama, noting the method is seemingly painless and an approved method under Louisiana law.

Additionally, Republican officials including Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill say the state is long overdue in delivering justice that has been promised to the families of victims.

The last execution in Louisiana was 15 years ago, when the state used lethal injection to put to death Gerald Bordelon.

After Louisiana’s Republican-dominated Legislature added nitrogen hypoxia to the list of methods to carry out capital punishment last year, officials saw a path to resume executions.

Murrill told The Associated Press last month that she expects at least four people will be executed this year. There are 56 inmates on Louisiana’s death row.

Louisiana is following in the footsteps of Alabama, which has executed four people with nitrogen gas. If Hoffman’s capital punishment is carried out as scheduled, Louisiana will become the second state to use the method.

Officials say Louisiana’s execution protocol is nearly identical to Alabama, where an inmate is strapped to a gurney and forced to breathe pure nitrogen gas through a mask placed on their face, depriving them of oxygen.

Each inmate put to death using nitrogen in Alabama has appeared to shake and gasp to varying degrees during their executions, according to media witnesses, including the AP.

The reactions are involuntary movements associated with oxygen deprivation, state officials have said.

Sara Cline, The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — I’ve now watched through glass and bars as 11 men were put to death at a South Carolina prison. None of the previous 10 prepared me for watching the firing squad death of Brad Sigmon on Friday night.

I might now be unique among U.S. reporters: I’ve witnessed three different methods — nine lethal injections and an electric chair execution. I can still hear the thunk of the breaker falling 21 years later.

As a journalist you want to ready yourself for an assignment. You research a case. You read about the subject.

In the two weeks since I knew how Sigmon was going to die, I read up on firing squads and the damage that can be done by the bullets. I looked at the autopsy photos of the last man shot to death by the state, in Utah in 2010.

I also pored over the transcript of his trial, including how prosecutors said it took less than two minutes for Sigmon to strike his ex-girlfriend’s parents nine times each in the head with a baseball bat, going back and forth between them in different rooms of their Greenville County home in 2001 until they were dead.

But you don’t know everything when some of execution protocols are kept secret, and it’s impossible to know what to expect when you’ve never seen someone shot at close range right in front of you.

The firing squad is certainly faster — and more violent — than lethal injection. It’s a lot more tense, too. My heart started pounding a little after Sigmon’s lawyer read his final statement. The hood was put over Sigmon’s head, and an employee opened the black pull shade that shielded where the three prison system volunteer shooters were.

About two minutes later, they fired. There was no warning or countdown. The abrupt crack of the rifles startled me. And the white target with the red bullseye that had been on his chest, standing out against his black prison jumpsuit, disappeared instantly as Sigmon’s whole body flinched.

It reminded me of what happened to the prisoner 21 years ago when electricity jolted his body.

I tried to keep track, all at once, of the digital clock on the wall to my left, Sigmon to my right, the small, rectangular window with the shooters and the witnesses in front of me.

A jagged red spot about the size of a small fist appeared where Sigmon was shot. His chest moved two or three times. Outside of the rifle crack, there was no sound.

A doctor came out in less than a minute, and his examination took about a minute more. Sigmon was declared dead at 6:08 p.m.

Then we left through the same door we came in.

The sun was setting. The sky was a pretty pink and purple, a stark contrast to the death chamber’s florescent lights, gray firing squad chair and block walls that reminded me of a 1970s doctor’s office.

The death chamber is less than a five-minute drive from Correction Department headquarters along a busy suburban highway. I always look out the window on the drive back from each execution. There is a pasture with cows behind a fence on one side, and on the other, I can see in the distance the razor wire of the prison.

Armed prison employees were everywhere. We sat in vans outside the death chamber for what I guess was around 15 minutes, but I can’t say for certain because my watch, cellphone and everything else was taken away for security, save for a pad and a pen.

Over to my right, I saw the skinny, barred windows of South Carolina’s death row. There were 28 inmates there earlier Friday, and now there are 27.

That’s down from 31 last August. After a 13-year pause while South Carolina struggled to obtain the drugs for lethal injections, the state has resumed executions. Inmates may choose between injections, electrocution or the firing squad.

I witnessed Freddie Owens being put to death Sept. 20. He locked eyes with every witness in the room.

I saw Richard Moore die Nov. 1, looking serenely at the celling as his lawyer, who became close to him while fighting for his life over a decade, wept.

And I was there, too, when Marion Bowman Jr. died Jan. 31, a small smile on his face as he turned to his lawyer, then closed his eyes and waited.

I remember other executions too. I’ve seen family members of victims stare down a killer on the gurney. I’ve seen a mother shed tears as she watched her son die, almost close enough to touch if the glass and bars weren’t in the way.

Like that thunk of the breaker back in 2004, I won’t forget the crack of the rifles Friday and that target disappearing. Also etched in my mind: Sigmon talking or mouthing toward his lawyer, trying to let him know he was OK before the hood went on.

I’ll likely be back at Broad River Correctional Institution on April 11. Two more men on death row are out of appeals, and the state Supreme Court appears ready to schedule their deaths at five-week intervals.

They would be the 12th and 13th men I’ve seen killed by the state of South Carolina. And when it is over, I will have witnessed more than a quarter of the state’s executions since the death penalty was reinstated.

___

Collins was one of three media witnesses for the firing squad execution of Brad Sigmon. He has been a witness to 11 South Carolina executions during his nearly 25-year career with The Associated Press.

Jeffrey Collins, The Associated Press

The Halifax Mooseheads claimed an important two points on Friday night, defeating the Saint John Sea Dogs 5-3 at TD Station.

Saint John took advantage of two early goals to end the first period with the lead. Matthew MacLean opened the scoring for the Sea Dogs while Ben Cross added another just minutes later. Quinn Kennedy answered back for the Herd sending a shot through the five hole of Saint John Goaltender Eric Young from the left wing faceoff circle with Mathieu Taillefer assisting on the play.

In a mirror of the first period, Halifax scored the first two goals of the second period. Quinn Kennedy added his second of the night on the powerplay after he fired a shot through the five-hole of Young off a pass from Brady Schultz. Antoine Fontaine scored his 13th of the season, off the assists from rookies Danny Walters and Amelio Santini. Saint John retaliated as Ben Cross tipped a shot past Steinman to tie the contest headed into the final frame.

Halifax started the third fast as Quinn Kennedy scored again on the powerplay to complete his first hat-trick as a member of the Mooseheads, assisted by Shawn Carrier and Brady Schultz. Carrier added another for the Herd. After leaving the penalty box, Carrier flew past the Sea Dogs’ defence and fired a shot past Young scoring the insurance marker to secure the win for the Herd.

Mooseheads forward Quinn Kennedy earned first star of the night after scoring the hat-trick. Second and third star went to Sea Dogs forwards Ben Cross and Olivier Groulx respectively.

With two assists in the game, Halifax captain Brady Schultz inches closer to tying the Mooseheads all-time points by a defenceman record currently held by Konrad Abeltshauser who earned 150 points during his time in Halifax. Schultz is currently three points away from tying the record with 147 points in his career with the Herd.

With the win, the Mooseheads improve to 18-31-9 while the Sea Dogs fall to 20-39-0

Halifax will be right back to action Saturday, Mar 8th as they host the Sea Dogs at the Scotiabank Centre in the second half of the weekends home and home series. Puck drop is at 7 p.m., and you can catch all the action here on 95.7 NewsRadio.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Jonah Paul, a California state employee, says he’s lucky if he gets home by 7 p.m. when he takes the train two days a week to his Sacramento office — a lengthy commute that’s about to become more frequent.

He is among thousands of state employees across the U.S. being pushed back to the office this year — a trend in states led by Democrats as well as Republicans. It’s happening in both California and Texas, which together have more than 350,000 public-sector workers.

The roll-back of remote work mirrors the Trump administration’s mandate for federal workers and moves by some of the nation’s largest corporations including Amazon, JP MorganChase and AT&T.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order this week cites concerns about productivity and collaboration. Starting July 1, state workers must be in the office at least four days a week, with exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

“The governor’s executive order kind of blindsided everybody,” said Paul, who is also president of the downtown Sacramento chapter of SEIU Local 1000, the state’s largest public sector union. “People have been really upset.”

There’s some evidence that rigid in-office requirements actually make workers less productive, but Republican governors in Missouri, Ohio and Indiana, among others, cited efficiency to justify this pivot away from pandemic-era flexibility.

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun issued his return-to-work mandate one week before President Trump’s executive order for the federal workforce.

In Texas, some state employees got emails this week telling them to return to the office full-time as soon as possible after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott instructed state agencies to end remote work.

“Any remote work policies must ensure taxpayer dollars are being utilized efficiently,” explained Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott. “With remote federal workers returning to the office where possible, it’s important that state agencies ensure they do the same.”

Other states vary. New York, which also has one of the country’s largest state workforces, allows each agency to set its own rules. And some legislatures, like Wisconsin, have introduced bills to require in-person work by law — an idea shot down by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

These return-to-office orders shouldn’t lead to massive quitting, but they usually result in top performers leaving first, and recruitment and retention suffer, according to economist Nicholas Bloom at Stanford University.

“States are going to have to increase salaries or fatten up the benefits package in other ways if they’re asking people to forgo this flexibility,” said Chris Tilly, a UCLA professor of urban planning who studies labor markets.

While many are anxious, others are already accustomed to the change. More than half of California’s 224,000 full-time employees, such as janitors and highway patrol officers, already report for duty in-person each workday.

Texas pivoted despite a legislative committee’s findings in February that remote work has had a positive impact, said Myko Gedutis, organizing coordinator of Texas State Employees Union CWA Local 6186. The survey found 80 out of 96 agencies reported improved recruitment and 46 saw improved productivity, while 40 agencies reported no improvement.

Texas state employee Rolf Straubhaar said many are concerned that people with medical needs won’t get exceptions.

“This can push out employees who, for medical reasons, need to work from home,” Straubhaar said.

Paul wakes up around 5 a.m. for the two-hour train ride from his home in Oakland to his employment development job in the state capital. His agency already staggers in-office days due to limited office space, and now his colleagues face more logistical challenges.

“There’s a physical space constraint that makes this order even more absurd,” Paul said. “It’s not really realistic to force everyone to come back.”

___

Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Nadia Lathan, The Associated Press

A number of industries in the area rely heavily on trade with the U.S., including the region's largest employer, Port Hawkesbury Paper. Watch Amy Smith's interview with Tanya Felix of the Strait Area Chamber of Commerce. of Commerce.

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RCMP are investigating a collision that killed a 51-year-old Hammonds Plains man in East Chester on Friday morning.