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Cross-country rallies against ‘gender ideology’ in schools meet with counter-protests

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

Thousands of people gathered in cities across Canada on Wednesday for competing protests, yelling and chanting at each other about the way schools instruct sexuality and gender identity and how teachers refer to transgender youth.Protesters accused schools of exposing young students to “gender ideology,” and said parents have the right to know whether their children are questioning their gender identity. Counter-demonstrators, meanwhile, accused protesters of importing United States culture wars into the country and trying to deny students important lessons about inclusion and respect for gender-diverse people.“Trans people — they exist in society, and they deserve inclusion, just like everyone else,” said activist Celeste Trianon, who helped lead a counter-protest in downtown Montreal, where police inserted themselves between the two factions outside the offices of Premier François Legault. “We need to talk to people, teach them the right vocabulary, t...

Jeep maker Stellantis makes a new contract offer as auto workers prepare to expand their strike

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

General Motors and Stellantis announced fresh layoffs Wednesday that they blamed on damage from the United Auto Workers strike, but Stellantis also gave the union a new contract proposal in hopes of ending the six-day walkout. It was not clear whether the Stellantis offer would persuade the union not to expand its strike. The union’s president vows to announce new strike targets on Friday unless there is “serious progress” toward agreements with GM, Stellantis and Ford.Neither Stellantis nor the union would give details about the company’s latest offer.So far UAW workers are striking at just three factories — one for each company, including a GM assembly plant near St. Louis. GM said that shutdown caused it to idle an assembly plant in Kansas with about 2,000 workers because “there is no work available” — the plant depends on parts stamped in the St. Louis-area facility.GM said it does not expect to restart the Kansas plant until the strike ends, and it won’t...

Revolving door redux: The DEA’s recently departed No. 2 returns to a Big Pharma consulting firm

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington’s revolving door kept spinning this week as the Drug Enforcement Administration’s recently departed second-in-command returned for a new stint with the high-powered consulting firm where he previously advised Purdue Pharma and a drug distributor fighting sanctions over a deluge of suspicious painkiller shipments. Louis Milione retired from the DEA a second time this summer amid reporting by The Associated Press on potential conflicts caused by his prior consulting for the pharmaceutical industry. Less than three months later, Milione again landed a plum job at Guidepost Solutions, a New York-based firm hired by some of the same companies he had been tasked with regulating when he returned to the DEA in 2021 as Administrator Anne Milgram’s top deputy.Milione had spent four years at Guidepost prior to his return, leveraging his extensive experience and contacts from a 21-year DEA career. “Should we say Welcome Back?” Guidepost quipped in a social media pos...

Canada Post breaking law by gathering info from envelopes, parcels: privacy watchdog

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

OTTAWA — The federal privacy watchdog says Canada Post is breaking the law by gleaning information from the outsides of envelopes and packages to help build marketing lists that it rents to businesses.The office of privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne says information collected for the marketing program includes data about where individuals live and what type of online shopping they do, based on who sends them packages. The commissioner found Canada Post had not obtained authorization from individuals to indirectly collect such personal information.In a report on his office’s investigation, Dufresne says this amounts to a violation of section 5 of the Privacy Act.The commissioner recommended Canada Post stop using and disclosing personal information in this way until it can seek and obtain consent from Canadians.Dufresne’s report says the post office disagreed with his conclusion and declined to take the corrective action.The investigation findings were tabled in Parli...

Stock market today: Wall Street slumps after Fed warns rates may stay higher through 2024

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks slumped Wednesday after the Federal Reserve said it may not cut interest rates next year by as much as it earlier thought, regardless of how much Wall Street wants it. The S&P 500 was 0.8% lower in late trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 37 points, or 0.1%, at 34,479, as of 3:45 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% lower.The Fed held its main interest rate at its highest level in more than two decades, as was widely expected. Officials also indicated they may raise the federal funds rate once again this year, as the Fed tries to get inflation back down to its target of 2%, though Fed Chair Jerome Powell said it’s close to hitting the peak, if not there already.Perhaps more importantly for the market, Fed officials also suggested they may cut rates next year by only half a percentage point. Three months ago, they were penciling in a full percentage point of cuts in 2024. That could be a big negative for Wall Street...

Peel school board focused on replenishing after library ‘weeding’ process criticized

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

A school board west of Toronto says it is focused on replenishing resources in its libraries while reviewing training after its so-called “weeding process” was criticized.Last week, Education Minister Stephen Lecce wrote to the Peel District School Board asking it to halt the weeding process – which assesses and removes older books – after concerns were raised that some books were being removed simply because they were published before 2008, based on new equity-focused board guidelines.In response to the concerns, the board said last week that older books, regardless of publication date, were allowed to remain in school libraries so long as they were “accurate, relevant to the student population, inclusive, not harmful, and support the current curriculum.”The board’s director of education also said the board had not given teacher librarians direction to remove all books with a publication date older than 2008.Students and a group of Peel Region residents called on ...

Ray Epps, Trump supporter targeted by Jan. 6 conspiracy theory, pleads guilty to Capitol riot charge

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ray Epps, a onetime Donald Trump supporter who was the target of a right-wing conspiracy theory about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack that forced him into hiding, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a misdemeanor charge for his role in the U.S. Capitol riot.Epps, appearing remotely for a hearing in Washington’s federal courthouse, entered his plea on a charge of disorderly conduct on restricted grounds a day after the case was filed in the Justice Department’s massive Jan. 6 prosecution. The judge scheduled his sentencing for Dec. 20. After the riot, he became the focus of a conspiracy theory — echoed by right-wing news outlets — that he was a secret government agent who incited the Capitol attack. Driven from his Arizona home, the former Marine and ex-member of the Oath Keepers extremist group filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News Channel this year, saying the network was to blame for spreading the baseless claims that led to death threats and bullet casings...

Poilievre introduces housing bill, plan focuses on getting cities to build more homes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has introduced a private member’s bill in the House of Commons that outlines a plan to address the national housing crisis. The bill, which is unlikely to pass, centres around using federal infrastructure and transit spending to push cities to build more homes.It proposes requiring cities to increase home building by 15 per cent each year to receive their usual infrastructure spending. Cities that fail to meet that target will see a decrease in the federal dollars they receive, while those who exceed it will get additional money. The bill also proposes removing GST charges off rental developments that offer below-market rent prices, which stands in contrast with the Liberals’ plan to remove the tax off all rental developments. Other tenets of the plan include selling off 15 per cent of federal buildings and land for housing development, and going after the Canada Mortgage Housing Corp. for delayed approvals and missed home-bu...

From Centre Ice Conservatives to Canadian Future, a new federal party takes shape

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

OTTAWA — The interim leader of Canada’s newest federal party says he wants it to be an option for people who are tired of both the governing Liberals and the “rage farming” coming from the Conservatives. New Brunswick Independent MLA Dominic Cardy made the comment as the group Centre Ice Canadians announced its plans today to form a new party called Canadian Future. Cardy says the group, which had first been called Centre Ice Conservatives, decided to change its name after months of consultation on the idea of launching a new party.A group of moderate Tories used the group as a vehicle to push for change during last year’s Conservative leadership race, arguing their party should focus on topics such as affordability rather than issues arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic.Poilievre won a resounding first-ballot victory in that contest, in part by appealing directly to those who opposed mask and vaccine mandates, as well as people who supported the “Freed...

House Republicans clash with Attorney General Garland, accusing him of favoring Hunter Biden

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:26:28 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans clashed with Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, accusing him and the Justice Department of the “weaponization” of the department’s work in favor of President Joe Biden ‘s son Hunter.Garland’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee was his first in two years and came at an unprecedented moment in the department’s history: He’s overseeing two cases against Donald Trump, the first former president to face criminal charges, and another against the sitting president’s son.Republicans on the committee — led by chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio — set the tone with accusations that the Justice Department is favoring the Biden family while targeting his likely 2024 opponent, Trump.“There’s one investigation protecting President Biden. There’s another one attacking President Trump,” Jordan declared. “The Justice Department’s got both sides of the equation covered.”Garland — carefully and deliberately — defended the country’s...