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Liberals pledge revamp of forced-labour bill, possible enforcement rules surprise MP

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

OTTAWA — The Trudeau government is revamping its approach to modern-day slavery, promising new legislation that caught off guard the Liberal MP who has been steering a bill on forced labour through Parliament.“There is a limited lifespan to this Parliament,” Toronto MP John McKay said in an interview.McKay has been stickhandling Bill S-211, which would update Canada’s laws of forced labour and child labour in supply chains.The bill is nearing its final phase before becoming law as soon as this month. It would require Canadian firms and government departments to scrutinize supply chains, with the aim of protecting workers.Firms would have to check that none of their products or components are made in sweatshops employing children or people forced to work excessive hours for free or for paltry pay, and issue reports.The bill was first tabled in the upper chamber by Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne, whose office did not respond to an interview request.Miville-Dechêne has pr...

Budget watchdog troubled by spin around latest report on carbon pricing

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

OTTAWA — Canada’s Parliamentary budget officer said he is troubled by what he describes as the selective use of facts from his new financial analysis of carbon pricing. Yves Giroux said the report has to be put into context alongside the costs of all other climate policies, including doing nothing.“There will be costs no matter what we do,” Giroux said in an interview with The Canadian Press.Giroux opened a political firestorm last week with a new report which concluded carbon price rebates are worth more than the direct cost of the carbon price for 80 per cent of families. But he said when the carbon price’s economic impact on job growth and incomes is factored in, 80 per cent of families in most provinces might end up with less money.The Liberals, who campaigned successfully on carbon pricing in both 2019 and 2021, jumped on the first point to insist the strategy makes life more affordable.The Conservatives, who have campaigned heavily on scrapping carbon p...

Ask Amy: Retired teachers not fans of loan forgiveness

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

Dear Amy: I belong to a group of nine women who are all retired teachers of various ages. We have met monthly for 35 years.We started this group because, although we worked for the same school district, several moved to different schools, and this was a way for us to stay connected.In the past we have been respectful, loving, and supportive toward each other. Lately I have not been feeling the love, and I am devastated.At our last meeting I announced, very proudly, that my daughter (also an educator) received loan forgiveness of $52,000.My daughter has two master’s degrees and has been working with children for 20 years. She has paid promptly on her loans for 10 years now, and this debt forgiveness is truly a blessing.When I mentioned this news — my goodness, you would have thought I told them she’d robbed a bank!All but one person (who I had told earlier and was very supportive), expressed their opinions about the loan forgiveness program and how they were against their tax d...

Horoscopes April 8, 2023: Patricia Arquette, choose personal growth

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY: Taylor Kitsch, 42; Patricia Arquette, 55; Robin Wright, 57; John Schneider, 63.Robin Wright (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP) Happy Birthday: You have high expectations. Monitor what’s possible, and consider the best way to take advantage of an offer without taking on more than you can handle emotionally or financially. Set a budget you can afford and make it clear to anyone trying to talk you into something. Choose personal growth over boosting up someone else. Your numbers are 7, 18, 26, 28, 37, 42, 45.ARIES (March 21-April 19): Take nothing for granted. Do for yourself and be clear regarding what you are willing and able to do for others. Expand your interests, learn something new and refuse to let anyone talk you out of your hard-earned cash. Don’t share personal information. 2 starsTAURUS (April 20-May 20): Formulate a plan, share your strategy with people you want to help or know you can count on, and proceed. A change in the way...

Bridge: April 8, 2023

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

“Simple Saturday” columns focus on basic technique and logical thinking.It may be well to put all your eggs in one basket, then keep an eye on the basket. But if yours tends to leak, you may need an extra basket.Today’s North-South bid easily to 3NT. South’s jump to 2NT promised a balanced 18 to 20 points, and North had an easy raise. West led the deuce of spades. When East played low to prevent dummy’s king from becoming an entry, South’s queen won.DOWN ONESouth next led the jack and a second diamond to dummy’s king. When no ace appeared, he gave up on the diamonds and led a club to finesse with his jack, losing. He won only two tricks in each suit: down one.South’s play wasn’t eggsactly best. He should lead a diamond to dummy’s ten at Trick Two, then try a club to his eight. If West won with the nine or ten and, say, shifted to a heart, South could win and lead a diamond to dummy. He would be safe if a defender held A-x o...

Word Game: April 8, 2023

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

TODAY’S WORD — NEAREST (NEAREST: NEAR-est: At or within a short distance.)Average mark 40 wordsTime limit 60 minutesCan you find 58 or more words in NEAREST? The list will be published Monday.YESTERDAY’S WORD — SAINTLY sail saint salt salty sanity satin satiny silt silty slain slant slanty slat slay slit snail snit stain stay alit anti antsy inlay inly nail nastily nasty tail tansy tiny lain laity last lint linty liny list litanyTo purchase the Word Game book, visit WordGameBooks.com. Order it now for just $5 while supplies last!RULES OF THE GAME:1. Words must be of four or more letters.2. Words that acquire four letters by the addition of “s,” such as “bats” or “dies,” are not allowed.3. Additional words made by adding a “d” or an “s” may not be used. For example, if “bake” is used, “baked” or “bakes” are not allowed, but “bake” and “baking” are admissible.4. Proper nouns, slang words, or vulgar or sexually explicit words are not allowed.Contact Word Game cr...

Twitter Deploys Classic Musk Tactics to Hunt Down Leaker

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

Twitter last month submitted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to GitHub — a web service designed to host user-uploaded source code — demanding that certain content be taken down because it was allegedly “[p]roprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.” Twitter subsequently filed a declaration in federal court supporting its request for a DMCA subpoena, the ostensible aim of which was “to identify the alleged infringer or infringers who posted Twitter’s source code on systems operated by GitHub without Twitter’s authorization.”However, Twitter appears to have revised its DMCA notice, essentially a claim of copyright infringement, the same day it was filed to request not only information about the uploader, but also “any related upload / download / access history (and any contact info, IP addresses, or other session info related to same), and any associated logs related to this repo or any forks thereof.” In other words, Twitter is now seeking infor...

2 Woodbridge teenagers charged in shooting that left 15-year-old injured

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

The sheriff’s office in Stafford County, Virginia, has arrested and charged two 17-year-old boys from Woodbridge in a shooting that left another teenager injured on Thursday.In a news release, deputies said the two suspects traveled to Stafford where they got into a fight with a 15-year-old boy. The fight escalated into a shooting, leaving the 15-year-old with a serious gunshot wound to his back and one of the 17-year-old suspects with a bullet wound to his leg.Around 4 p.m. on Thursday, deputies located the injured 15-year-old boy at the Park Ridge Community Pool on Parkway Boulevard. He was flown to a hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening, injuries.Deputies said the teen was still being treated for his injuries on Friday.By the time deputies arrived, the two Woodbridge teens had fled the scene and discarded their guns. Deputies with the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office later found three firearms in the woods after searching for around three hours.Deputies and...

US Supreme Court justice defends ‘family trips’ with Republican megadonor

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday defended the luxury vacations that he accepted from a Republican megadonor for more than two decades and kept secret from the public. His brief statement came in response to a ProPublica report that revealed the lavish trips that Thomas took with Harlan Crow, a Texas real estate billionaire.“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,” Thomas said in the statement. “I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”Thomas said he and his wife have joined Crow and his wife “on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.”He also pointed to recent changes that tightened the regulations governing judges’ annual finan...

Leaked military documents on Ukraine battlefield operations circulated as early as March

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:47 GMT

A tranche of leaked documents that detail plans about Ukraine’s spring military offensive circulated online as early as March — a month earlier than previously reported, according to researchers with Bellingcat and a review of social media postings.The batch includes more pages than originally known and also outlines sensitive information about other global hotspots.The Ukraine-specific documents, photographed and distributed on myriad social media sites, outline everything from Ukraine’s readiness and training capabilities to death tolls on the battlefield. They date from the end of February to the end of March — around the same time as senior American generals hosted the Ukrainian military at a U.S. base in Germany to wargame the spring operation.The materials that circulated in early March were uploaded on a Discord, an encrypted messaging app. They appear to be photos of slide deck printouts that were folded up and then smoothed out again. They have since been pos...