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Alleged drunk driver found slumped over wheel near Canada’s Wonderland

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

York Regional Police are praising the recognition of a concerned citizen after they called 9-1-1 when they discovered a man slumped over his steering wheel in a ditch near Canada’s Wonderland in Vaughan.Officers were called just after 6:30 a.m. on Monday, with the citizen reporting a vehicle in a ditch in the Jane Street and Canada’s Wonderland Drive area.Police quickly arrived at the scene and found the driver of an SUV driving erratically in the area. It’s alleged that an officer approached the suspect, told him he was under arrest and asked him to shut off the vehicle.As a second officer arrived, the male suspect drove out of the ditch and fled the scene.After the responding officers attempted to block off the driver from swerving into traffic on Jane Street, investigators said two officers were assaulted and suffered minor injuries when the suspect was taken into custody.“Impaired driving continues to be an unacceptable and avoidable problem on our roads,...

Stampede in Yemen’s capital kills at least 78, official says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — People stampeded at an event to distribute financial aid in Yemen’s capital late Wednesday, and at least 78 people were killed and dozens more suffered injuries, a Houthi official said.The crush took place in the Old City in the center of Sanaa when hundreds of poor people gathered at an event organized by merchants, according to the Houthi-run Interior Ministry.The ministry’s spokesman, Brig. Abdel-Khaleq al-Aghri, blamed the disaster on the “random distribution” of funds without coordination with local authorities.Dozens of casualties were taken to nearby hospitals. Motaher al-Marouni, a senior health official in Sanaa, gave the death tally and said at least 13 were seriously injured, according the Houthi’s Al-Masirah satellite TV channel.The rebels quickly sealed off the school where the event was organized and barred people, including journalists, from approaching. Eyewitnesses, Abdel-Rahman Ahmed and Yahia Mohsen, said armed Houthis shot in the air in ...

Vancouver police officer tells inquest he punched Myles Gray as hard as he could

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

BURNABY, B.C. — A Vancouver police officer told a British Columbia coroner’s jury that he punched Myles Gray in the head as hard as he could several times because he didn’t think anything else would work to subdue the man, other than shooting him.Const. Kory Folkestad testified on the third day of the inquest into Gray’s death in August 2015 following a beating by several officers that left him with injuries including a fractured eye socket, a crushed voice box and a ruptured testicle.Folkestad’s partner, Const. Eric Birzneck, later testified that he had initially talked to Gray in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, but Gray’s demeanour changed.Gray put his head down and “he started coming at me,” Birzneck told the inquest.That’s when Birzneck deployed pepper spray, he said, and the struggle to wrestle Gray to the ground and apply handcuffs ensued.Gray displayed “surges of incredible strength” as the officers tried to...

Mexico finds 8 sacrificial victims at Gulf coast pyramid

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Archaeologists in Mexico said Wednesday they have found 13 buried sets of human remains, eight of which appear to be young men who were apparently decapitated as part of a ceremony to consecrate a temple. Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said the skeletal remains may be as much as 2,000 years old. Ceremonial offerings of hundreds of beads, arrowheads and rings made of shells were with the remains. They were found at a Mayan ruin site known as Moral-Reforma in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. The site apparently functioned as a stop on a river trade route connecting the Mayan kingdoms of the Yucatan and Central America with other cultures on the Gulf coast. The institute said the remains of the eight sacrificial victims appear to have been hacked up and dispersed in an area at the foot of the pyramidal temple, because the bones were found scattered.Another group of bones was found at the same site that might come from hundreds of years later....

Teen admits guilt to felonies in Vegas school teacher attack

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas teenager pleaded guilty as an adult Wednesday to felony charges that a prosecutor said could get him decades in prison for attacking a high school teacher and leaving her unconscious in a classroom a year ago. The incident, which included allegations of sexual assault, left the teacher hospitalized with multiple injuries and focused attention on a sharp rise in violence at the time in the sprawling Clark County School District, the nation’s fifth-largest.The Associated Press is not naming the defendant due to his age. Now 17, he pleaded guilty to attempted murder, attempted sexual assault and battery with a deadly weapon causing substantial bodily harm. His pleas avoided trial in Clark County District Court.Public defenders who represented the boy did not immediately respond to email messages form AP.The prosecutor, Chief Deputy Clark County District Attorney William Rowles, confirmed the plea agreement. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he inten...

Trump likely won’t attend trial over rape claim, lawyer says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump is unlikely to attend a civil trial next week over columnist E. Jean Carroll’s claim that he raped her in a department store dressing room, the former president’s lawyer signaled Wednesday.While not completely ruling out Trump’s presence at the trial, attorney Joe Tacopina asked the presiding judge to tell jurors that the Republican’s absence from the courtroom was intended to avoid logistical burdens that New York City and the court system would face if Trump were present.Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday. Tacopina said jurors should be told that Trump’s “presence is excused unless and until he is called by either party to testify.”Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had instructed attorneys for both Trump and Carroll to say by Thursday whether their clients would be present for the trial.Carroll, who said in a 2019 memoir that Trump raped her in the 1990s during a chance encounter at Manhattan’s luxury Bergdorf Goodman ...

Senator says several cabinet ministers knew she was issuing travel docs to Afghans

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

OTTAWA — A Manitoba senator who denies falsifying travel documents says several cabinet ministers were aware of her choice to send letters to Afghans to help them flee as the Taliban took over the country, and that no one told her to stop.The Globe and Mail reports that 150 Afghans who received letters from Sen. Marilou McPhedran are now stranded in an Albanian hotel room, unable to come to Canada as refugees because the government deems their documents inauthentic.McPhedran told the House of Commons immigration committee today that then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan and Maryam Monsef, women and gender equity minister at the time, knew she was planning to send documents to Afghan refugees to help them get out of the country in 2021.She said she believes former foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau and Marco Mendicino, who was then immigration minister, also knew.“It’s very clear that there are communications about getting out as many of these facilitation letters as pos...

Vital Metals pauses construction of Saskatoon critical minerals facility

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

REGINA — Canada’s only rare earths mining company is pausing all construction at its Saskatoon processing facility. Vital Metals says the pause will allow the company to conserve cash and seek other sources of funding to potentially build a sustainable business model for the facility. The company planned to complete a calcine circuit that would produce a rare earths oxide product for potential sale to a third party. It says it has been unable to secure such sales on commercially satisfactory terms.The company, which mines a deposit in the Northwest Territories, says it intends to retain Saskatoon employees as it conducts a strategic review of the project. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau toured the facility in January to promote critical minerals as being key for clean energy technologies. This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2023.The Canadian Press

Chicago Mayor-elect Johnson pledges ‘smart’ fight on crime

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Chicago’s mayor-elect on Wednesday attempted to dispel the often-contentious relationship between the nation’s third-largest city and the rest of the state, telling a joint session of the General Assembly, “There’s more than enough for everybody in the state of Illinois.”Brandon Johnson, whose victory in the mayor’s race this month provided a welcome boost for progressives, played to his fellow Democrats, who hold supermajorities in both the House and Senate. He extolled the “Blue Wall” they’ve built and pledged to “be a partner in this incredible, progressive body that has delivered for people across the state.”Pounded later by reporters’ questions about reducing crime in Chicago, he promised to be “smart” as well as “tough,” putting resources into youth employment and other preventive measures as well as enforcement. But his primary message was one of collaboration. “They told us that if something is good for Chicago, th...

Violins of Hope: How 2 violin makers keep history alive through restoring instruments

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:39:25 GMT

CHICAGO — For two decades, a father and son duo have quietly collected and repaired over 70 violins used by victims and survivors of the Holocaust."I opened the violin," Amnon Weinstein said, recalling one of the violins he has helped restore. "I remember black powder all on the inside from the crematorium and horrible places."Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein work on the violins in their workshops based in Tel Aviv and Istanbul, and this week, decades of painstaking work made its way to Chicago. Velvet-lined cases containing string instruments that once nestled under the chins of people who used them to help tell their own stories through music, arrived in unassuming cardboard boxes, ripe to be played and for those stories to be told once more."It was a teary moment," said Ilene Uhlmann, Director of Community Engagement at JCC Chicago. "Each one has an amazingly inspirational story, and they tell stories of hope, resilience and resistance." Mundelein PD and Working Bikes, bringing smi...