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‘No-brainer’: Alberta panel hears callers urge split from Canada Pension Plan

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

EDMONTON — The panel hearing feedback on whether Alberta should quit the Canada Pension Plan heard multiple callers tell them Thursday it’s time to embrace a “no-brainer” provincial program.“I think it’s time we start looking after Albertans,” a caller identified as Gary from Sherwood Park told the panel led by former provincial treasurer Jim Dinning in its fourth telephone town hall.“We already send (away) billions of dollars in equalization payments. Here’s an opportunity for Albertans to be winners.”Caller Darlene said Alberta is taken for granted by Ottawa and that other provinces will oppose an Alberta pension plan out of self-interest.“Albertans should stand up for themselves,” she said.She said Premier Danielle Smith’s government has to do a better job of reassuring Albertans who are “scared of change.”Caller Keith said Albertans are paying in more than they are getting back, and that lower contributions and higher benefits from an Alberta plan are appealing.“It’s a no-braine...

Gang attack on Haitian hospital leads to a call for help and an unlikely triumph for police

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The bullets began piercing the windows of the hospital as women cradling young children ran from room to room searching for a safe place to hide while the heavily armed gang drew closer.The louder the gunfire grew, the more the women screamed until a hospital employee begged them to stay quiet and ordered them to lie on the ground. Mothers with babies and shaky hands forced one breast into their tiny mouths to keep them quiet, wondering if they would live through Wednesday’s attack on the Fontaine Hospital Center and the surrounding community in the Haitian slum of Cite Soleil.A couple of hours went by. The gunfire never ceased. Suddenly, an employee appeared, told them to get up and go to the front yard without making noise. Police were waiting with armored cars.“Get in! Get in! Get in! Get in quickly!” the employees shouted as women carrying children and babies stepped into buses and private ambulances that officers would escort out of Cite Soleil, a r...

Argentina’s Peronist machine is in high gear to shore up shaky votes before the presidential runoff

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

CIUDAD EVITA, Argentina (AP) — As Argentina heads for a presidential runoff election on Sunday, the decades-old populist movement known as Peronism is on shaky ground, its candidate having lost some traction even among longtime loyalists living in a suburb of the capital that is its literal and figurative embodiment.Built in the 1950s by Peronism’s founder, then-President Juan Domingo Perón, Ciudad Evita’s original boundaries were shaped like the profile of his wife, former first lady María Eva Duarte de Perón, better known as Evita. It provided workers not just large homes but also dignity, and its generations of inhabitants have been ardent supporters of a political movement that champions social justice and workers’ rights.But that support has been rattled by rising poverty and red-hot inflation that has punished society. Some Ciudad Evita residents are tempted to do the previously unthinkable: Vote against the Peronist candidate, Economy Minister Sergio Massa, on Sunday. That ha...

What’s streaming now: Dolly Parton rocks out, Godzilla stomps, ‘The Crown’ returns, ‘Rustin’ marches

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

Colman Domingo’s incredible performance in the civil rights biopic “Rustin” and Dolly Parton’s rock music album are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.Also among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are a series where Godzilla, King Kong and other monsters are real, the fifth Persona video game and return of “The Crown.”NEW MOVIES TO STREAM— A powerhouse performance by Colman Domingo fuels the Netflix drama “Rustin,” streaming Friday, about the civil rights pioneer and March on Washington architect Bayard Rustin. The film, directed by George C. Wolfe, chronicles the run-up to the indelible 1963 march where Rev. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. “Rustin,” the first narrative feature from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground, is a portrait of grassroots activism and of the often under-sung Rustin, an openly gay man combating i...

Biden and Mexico’s leader will meet in California. Fentanyl, migrants and Cuba are on the agenda

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, two strong allies who don’t always get along personally, will talk migration, fentanyl trafficking and Cuba relations on Friday. The two leaders are in San Francisco for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, where Biden has held a series of face-to-face meetings with other leaders, including China’s President Xi Jinping and the leaders of Japan and South Korea, as he seeks to reassure the region that the U.S. and China are competitors, not zero-sum rivals. Biden’s relationship with López Obrador is at times tense, in part because of Biden’s willingness to criticize Mexico on topics such as fentanyl production and the killing of journalists. And López Obrador isn’t afraid to snub the U.S. leader. He skipped a Los Angeles summit last year where leaders tackled the issue of migration because the U.S. didn’t invite Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuel...

Turkey’s Erdogan to visit Germany as differences over the Israel-Hamas war widen

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected in Berlin on Friday on a short visit to Germany as the two countries’ stances on the war between Israel and Hamas are poles apart.Erdogan is due to meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany’s largely ceremonial president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Scholz invited Erdogan to visit in May following his re-election.Turkey is viewed as an awkward but essential partner in Germany, which is home to more than 3 million people with Turkish roots. It’s a NATO ally that also is important in efforts to control the flow of refugees and migrants to Europe, but there have been tensions in recent years over a variety of issues.This visit is overshadowed by a growing chasm between the two countries’ stance on events following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.Germany is a staunch ally of Israel and has opposed calls for a cease-fire, while pushing for aid to civilians in Gaza, advocating “humanitarian pauses” an...

DeSantis, Haley and Ramaswamy will meet in Iowa for a ‘family discussion’ on politics

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Republicans battling to be the alternative to former President Donald Trump will come together for what an influential Christian organization in Iowa is billing as a friendly conversation on politics and their world views. Three candidates — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — will appear at the roundtable “family discussion” in Des Moines Friday. Trump is not expected to attend, though he was invited. The field around Trump is winnowing with less than two months before the Iowa caucuses kick off the GOP nominating calendar. In a sign of the urgency the field faces, many of his rivals are going after each other more frequently with jabs that have often turned personal. This week, DeSantis and Ramaswamy both criticized Haley after she said Tuesday that social media companies should ban people from posting anonymously online.DeSantis posted on social media that the proposal was “dangerou...

Missouri’s voter ID law is back in court. Here’s a look at what it does

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — A trial for a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Missouri’s new photo identification requirement for voters is scheduled to begin Friday. Here is a look at the function of the law and why voting rights groups are suing:WHAT THE LAW DOESMissouri’s GOP-led Legislature last year capped off a nearly two-decade-long push by Republicans and passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification to cast a regular ballot. People without a government-issued photo ID can cast provisional ballots to be counted if they return later that day with a photo ID or if election officials verify their signatures. The law requires the state to provide a free photo identification card to those lacking one to vote.LEGAL CHALLENGESThe Missouri League of Women Voters, NAACP and two voters sued to overturn the law last year, arguing the change makes casting ballots unconstitutionally difficult for some voters.Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem, who also will...

Texas woman convicted and facing up to life in prison for killing pro cyclist Mo Wilson

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A woman convicted of murder in the shooting death of rising professional cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson faces up to life in prison in Texas when sentenced in a case that led investigators on a 43-day international search to find her.Kaitlin Armstrong, 35, was convicted Thursday. The jurors also will recommend a sentence and are expected to resume deliberating on Friday. Prosecutors said Armstrong gunned down the 25-year-old Wilson in a jealous rage in May 2022. Wilson, also known as “Mo,” had briefly dated Armstrong’s boyfriend several months earlier. Wilson went swimming and to a meal with him the day she was killed.Jurors deliberated for about two hours after two weeks of testimony before delivering their verdict.“From the day she was born, she had a force in her,” Wilson’s mother, Karen Wilson, told jurors Thursday at the start of the punishment phase of the trial. “She lived as if every day was her last day. And she lived it so fully. She never wasted any ...

Climate change in Texas science textbooks causes divisions on state’s education board

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:53:52 GMT

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — How science textbooks in Texas address climate change is at the center of a key vote expected Friday after some Republican education officials criticized books for being too negative toward fossil fuels in America’s biggest oil and gas state. The issue of which textbooks to approve has led to new divisions on the Texas State Board of Education, which over the years has faced other heated curriculum battles surrounding how evolution and U.S. history is taught to the more than 5 million students.Science standards adopted by the board’s conservative majority in 2021 do not mention creationism as an alternative to evolution. Those standards also describe human factors as contributors to climate change.But some Republicans on the 15-member board this week waved off current textbook options as too negative toward fossil fuels and for failing to include alternatives to evolution. One of Texas’ regulators of the oil and gas industry, Republican Wayne C...