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Are you there God? It’s me, Dwight. ‘Soul Boom’ is Rainn Wilson’s new book about spirituality.

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

Christopher Borrelli | Chicago TribuneRainn Wilson, former son of Wilmette and security guard at the Baha’i House of Worship on Sheridan Road, New Trier High School graduate, best known as Dwight Schrute on “The Office,” can bet what you’re thinking. He can see the eye rolls from California. He begins his new book expecting some skepticism: Why, in the name of Scranton, should you read a book by Rainn Wilson on the importance of spirituality in contemporary life?As celebrity left turns go, it’s not Bruce Willis playing harmonica, or Gal Gadot trying to raise the spirits of mankind by singing “Imagine” on YouTube. But it does stop one short.As does this:By the time you’ve finished reading “Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution,” Wilson sheds all hesitations and proposes nothing less the fundamentals of a new faith.As far as I know, not even James Franco planted the roots of an entire religion.That’s not to suggest Wilson is a dabbler on the topic of spirituality. “Soul Boom” ...

Union, fed sign deal to staff military heating plants after shutdowns during strike

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

OTTAWA — The Defence Department says the government has reached a deal with striking workers to get heating plants at several military bases running again.The Union of National Defence Employees is part of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, and its members have been on strike since Wednesday.National president June Winger says the government failed to consider heating and wastewater plant workers as essential during the strike, leading to a shortage of staff.Winger says central heating plants at bases in Petawawa, Ont., Winnipeg and Halifax shut down, as did the wastewater plant in Winnipeg. There was concern the heating plant at Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., may also stop running due to a lack of staff.A spokesperson for the Department of National Defence says the Treasury Board and union have now signed an agreement to add more essential staff to heating plants across the country.Winger says that while heating plants are shut down, bases will lose everything from c...

Measuring Canada’s defence commitment in terms of dollars a ‘bad mistake’: ambassador

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

CLEVELAND — It’s an all-too-common “bad mistake” to judge Canada’s commitment to global military security solely on the basis of how much money it spends on defence, President Joe Biden’s envoy to Ottawa said Friday. David Cohen refused to comment on a Washington Post report this week that said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had privately told NATO officials Canada would never hit the military alliance’s spending target of two per cent of GDP.But he had a lot to say about whether Canada deserves its long-standing reputation as miserly when it comes to devoting resources to the Canadian Armed Forces. “I think it would be a bad mistake — and I frankly think that too many people are making this mistake … that somehow we need to assess Canada’s commitment to defence by one metric,” Cohen said. “I don’t think that’s right.” Cohen was the keynote speaker Friday among several past and present U.S. ambassadors, tra...

Stock market today: Stocks close quiet week with small gains

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

Stocks capped a listless day of trading Friday with slight gains for the major stock indexes, closing out a quiet week on Wall Street highlighted by a batch of mostly mixed corporate earnings reports.The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq composite all gained 0.1% after drifting between small gains and losses for most of the day. The indexes each posted a slight loss for the week.Health care companies and a range of consumer product makers gained ground, tempering losses in banks, technology stocks and elsewhere. Truist Financial and KeyCorp, two of the larger regional banks, were among the biggest decliners in the S&P 500. Truist fell 6% and KeyCorp ended 3.7% lower.Bond yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which influences mortgage rates and other loans, rose to 3.56% from 3.54% late Thursday.Trading was muted as investors focused on the latest corporate earnings reports and forecasts in a bid to get a better sense of how companie...

Swiss billionaire’s fund helped push against ‘dark money’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

A fund controlled by a Swiss billionaire who has steered tens of millions of dollars to liberal causes also donated as much as $50,000 to the nonpartisan group Common Cause to advocate for a federal ban on donations like his.David Vance, a spokesman for Common Cause, which advocates for limiting big money in politics, confirmed that the group received a donation from the Berger Action Fund, founded by Hansjörg Wyss. The fund has enabled Wyss, who lives in Wyoming but remains a Swiss citizen, to donate enormous amounts of money to liberal causes without running afoul of the United States’ ban on foreign citizens contributing to political campaigns.Vance said the donation last year was between $25,000 and $50,000, adding that Common Cause normally reports the range of donations rather than precise dollar amounts. That’s a small fraction of the nearly $28 million in grants Common Cause reported receiving in 2022.The grant also pales in comparison to Berger’s overall c...

Mississippi OKs more state policing in mostly Black city

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi’s Republican governor signed a bill on Friday to expand the territory of a state-run police department inside the majority-Black capital city of Jackson, and the new law is expected to face a court challenge from the NAACP. The legislation was passed by a majority-white and Republican-controlled state House and Senate. Jackson is governed by Democrats and about 83% of residents are Black, the largest percentage of any major U.S. city.NAACP national president Derrick Johnson, who lives in Jackson, said the law would treat Black people as “second-class citizens” by stomping on rights of local self-government. He said at a community meeting on April 6 in Jackson that the NAACP intends to sue the state.“They’re only imposing this on the city of Jackson,” Johnson said. “No other jurisdiction in the state of Mississippi will have this type of oversight and taking of local authority. That is a direct violation of equal protection.”Gov. Tate Ree...

Black bear attacks 74-year-old woman in Connecticut

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

A 74-year-old Connecticut woman suffered bites to her arms and legs Friday when she was attacked by a black bear while out walking her dog on a leash in the Hartford suburb of Avon, state environmental officials said. The woman was taken to a nearby hospital with injuries that weren’t life-threatening, officials said.The 12-year-old female bear was located a short time later by authorities, who killed the animal, which will be tested for rabies. The bear had been tagged as part of the state’s bear tracking program.This was the first bear-on-human attack this year in the state. There were two last year, including one in October in which a 10-year-old boy in Morris was mauled in a backyard. Jenny Dickson, the director of the wildlife division of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said the bear was in the area with three yearling cubs, but it is unclear why it attacked.“It could have been just the general reaction bears have to dogs, whether they’r...

Colorado says it won’t enforce ‘abortion reversal’ ban

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

DENVER (AP) — Colorado is promising not to enforce its new ban on unproven treatments to reverse medication abortions until state regulators go through a process to determine if they should be allowed.The move came in response to a lawsuit filed by a Catholic clinic challenging the ban when it was signed into law last week along with two other bills aimed at making Colorado a safe haven for abortion as well as gender-affirming procedures and medications. Hours after the bill signing, a federal judge temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the ban against Bella Health and Wellness, which said it had a patient whose current treatment would be interrupted if the new law was enforced. It claims the ban violates their First Amendment right to free speech and religious exercise.In court filings Thursday responding to U.S. District Daniel Domenico’s temporary restraining order, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser revealed that the state’s medical and nursing boards had m...

Tech, industrial stocks help lift S&P/TSX composite, U.S. stock markets up slightly

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

TORONTO — Strength in technology and industrial stocks helped Canada’s main stock index creep higher on Friday, while U.S. stock markets rose slightly on the final day of trading for the week.The S&P/TSX composite index was up 62.46 points at 20,693.15.In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 22.34 points at 33,808.96. The S&P 500 index was up 3.73 points at 4,133.52, while the Nasdaq composite was up 12.90 points at 12,072.46.The Canadian dollar traded for 73.85 cents US, according to XE.com, compared with 74.24 cents US on Thursday.The June crude contract was up 50 cents at US$77.87 per barrel and the June natural gas contract was down two cents at US$2.41 per mmBTU.The June gold contract was down US$28.60 at US$1,990.50 an ounce and the May copper contract was down five cents at US$3.98 a pound.This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2023.Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD=X)The Canadian Press

Coroner says Montreal police used unnecessary force, lacked training in man’s death

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:47 GMT

MONTREAL — A coroner’s report into the 2017 death of a man killed by Montreal police says arresting officers used unnecessary force and lacked proper training in de-escalation tactics.Coroner Luc Malouin says in his report released today on the death of Koray Kevin Celik that police were unprepared when they arrived at his home on March 6, 2017, in the Montreal neighbourhood of Île-Bizard.His parents called police because they wanted to prevent Celik, 28, from driving a car while intoxicated.Responding officers tried to subdue Celik with force, and his parents said they witnessed police repeatedly beat their son with their feet and knees before the unarmed man stopped breathing.Malouin says the force used by police was unnecessary and that none of them had received training in de-escalation tactics or in strategies to deal with people in crisis.The coroner says the City of Montreal since 2019 requires its officers to receive de-escalation training.This report by The Canadian P...