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How to adapt to climate change may be secondary at COP28, but it’s key to saving lives, experts say

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — As United Nations climate talks enter their second week, negotiators who are largely focused on how to curb climate change have another thing on their plates: how to adapt to the warming that’s already here.Discussions for what’s known as the Global Goal on Adaptation — a commitment made in the 2015 Paris Agreement to ramp up the world’s capacity to cope with climate-fueled extreme weather — are being overshadowed by negotiations on how the world is going to slash the use of fossil fuels, causing frustration among some climate campaigners in the most vulnerable countries.Officials and activists from climate-vulnerable nations are pushing for more money to help them deal with scorching temperatures, punishing droughts and deluges and strengthening storms made worse by global warming. Major fossil fuel-emitting countries need to pay vulnerable, developing countries being battered by these events, experts and officials say, to help t...

Live updates | Palestinians live in dire conditions in Gaza despite Israel’s safe zone

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

Israel has designated a safe zone in southern Gaza, but its widening air and ground offensive has left Palestinians packed together in dire humanitarian conditions. United Nations monitors said Thursday that a hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis received its first delivery of supplies since Nov. 29. Aid groups are severely limited by fighting and restrictions placed by the military. The United Nations estimates 1.9 million people have been displaced and new military evacuation orders are squeezing people into ever-smaller areas. Most lack food, water and medicine.Around 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the territory has surpassed 17,100, with more than 46,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but said 70% of the dead were women and children. Currently: — Palestinians try to survi...

In the news today: Jury to resume deliberations in B.C. murder trial

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today…Ibrahim Ali murder jury to resume deliberationsA jury is resuming deliberations today in the case of Ibrahim Ali, whose marathon first-degree murder trial in B.C. Supreme Court wrapped up Thursday.Ali is accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl in a Burnaby, B.C., park more than six years ago.The closing stages of the eight-month trial this week heard that Ali’s defence team had been receiving threats over the case, with lawyer Kevin McCullough reading out one that said his family faced “a violent and brutal death” before Christmas.Emails show universities’ debate on Israel, HamasDocuments obtained from Quebec’s largest universities through access to information requests show how they developed statements following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and some of the reaction to those statements. Emails between senior administrators at...

Canada Bread denies price-fixing scheme in court filing, points finger at Maple Leaf

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

The bread supplier that admitted to price-fixing earlier this year says in new court filings that any anti-competitive behaviour it participated in was at the direction and to the benefit of its then-majority owner Maple Leaf Foods.In a statement of defence for a class-action lawsuit alleging a bread price-fixing scheme, Canada Bread Co. Ltd. denied participating in a “lengthy, wide-ranging conspiracy” to fix the price of bread. It also denied profiting from the alleged conspiracy, or from the price increases it pleaded guilty to participating in as part of the Competition Bureau’s investigation. “To the extent that Canada Bread profited from any actionable anti-competitive behaviour, all of the material benefit accrued to Maple Leaf,” the company said its statement filed to Ontario Superior Court on Oct. 25. Allegations of improper pricing conduct at Canada Bread while Maple Leaf was a shareholder are “totally unfounded,” said Suzanne Hathaway, Maple Leaf’s senior vice-presid...

As fossil fuel execs descend on U.N. climate summit, some ask ‘what are COPs about?’

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

TORONTO — The world’s major climate negotiations risk turning into a trade show spectacle of unchecked corporate influence, some observers warn, as a record number of delegates representing fossil fuel interests descend on the United Nations climate change conference known as COP28. Hundreds of delegates with links to fossil fuel interests, including from Canada, are turning up at this year’s climate summit currently underway in Dubai, according to recent analyses by climate organizations and news agencies. Despite making up a small share of the more than 80,000 registered attendees, the fossil fuel industry’s presence at COP28 could water down action when the world risks careening past its emissions targets, said political economist Gordon Laxer.“It’s the political power and influence of Big Oil which is stopping real action,” said Laxer, a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta who researches the industry’s political influence. “There s...

Time’s up for some short-term rentals in B.C., as new housing rules transform scene

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

VICTORIA — Nancy Paine’s short-term rental business is dead in the water.As co-founder and CEO of Victoria-based Superhost, Paine said she had been at the forefront of the Airbnb revolution for seven years, acting as a “liaison” for homeowners needing help with the logistics of running a listing on the accommodation site.At the peak of business, her staff managed 65 properties, welcoming thousands of guests from around the world to what Condé Nast Traveller magazine recently rated as the “best city in the world.”“I have such great relationships with my homeowners,” Paine said. But Paine said that will all come to an end next spring when British Columbia enacts a law restricting short-term rentals to a homeowner’s principal residence. It’s among new housing regulations being rolled out over two years, with the government saying it wants to stop short-term rentals “taking away homes people need.”“I expect business volumes to really plumm...

Quebec unions representing 420,000 public sector workers start weeklong strike

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

MONTREAL — Unions representing 420,000 Quebec public sector workers are beginning a weeklong strike today.The workers, including teachers, education support staff and lab technicians, are members of a group of unions that calls itself the “common front.”The temporary strike comes after the common front rejected the government’s most recent contract offer, which includes a salary increase of 12.7 per cent over five years. It is the group’s third temporary strike since early November, and the unions say it will be the last before they launch an unlimited strike.Around 66,000 teachers who are members of a different union have been on strike since Nov. 23, while 80,000 nurses and other health-care workers will begin a four-day strike Monday.Quebec Premier François Legault said Thursday he’s willing to offer the workers more money but wants unions to make concessions on management issues, such as the transfer of nurses between health facilities.This report b...

B.C. jury to resume deliberations in Ibrahim Ali’s murder trial

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

VANCOUVER — A jury is resuming deliberations today in the case of Ibrahim Ali, whose marathon first-degree murder trial in B.C. Supreme Court wrapped up Thursday.Ali is accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl in a Burnaby, B.C., park more than six years ago.The closing stages of the eight-month trial this week heard that Ali’s defence team had been receiving threats over the case, with lawyer Kevin McCullough reading out one that said his family faced “a violent and brutal death” before Christmas.Those claims were heard Tuesday without the jurors present and can only now be reported after they retired to consider their verdict late Thursday.In his instructions to the jury, Justice Lance Bernard told jurors the case against Ali is circumstantial, requiring them to infer that Ali raped and strangled the girl in Burnaby’s Central Park in July 2017.Bernard said Ali’s lawyers argued in the alternative that there could be an “innocent explanation”...

Nunavut TV channel, The Weather Network deliver forecasts in Inuktut languages

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

Inuit Nunangat, the four regions comprising the Inuit homeland in Canada, is home to some of the country’s harshest climates. With the area’s severe, cold winters and short, cool summers, weather has been intrinsically connected to Inuit ways of life, reflected in clothing, sewing or hunting patterns. Inuit communities have had to adjust their ways of living as climate change affects their land, water and weather systems. With this in mind, independent broadcaster Uvagut TV set out to develop hourly weather broadcasts in Inuktut in partnership with The Weather Network. “Our weather is changing so rapidly that we don’t know if there’s going to be a blizzard or if the ice is safe to travel across,” said Lucy Tulugarjuk, executive director of Uvagut TV. “It’s a serious matter. It can be life and death.”In 2021, Nunavut Independent Television Network, an Inuit-owned non-profit, started Uvagut TV, meaning “Our TV,” becomin...

‘Silence isn’t neutral’: Emails show debate in Quebec universities on Israel, Hamas

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:06 GMT

MONTREAL — Five days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Université de Montréal rector Daniel Jutras was under growing pressure to say more about the conflict.Shortly after midnight on Oct. 12, he sent an email to colleagues saying that as other universities took public positions on the war, it was becoming increasingly difficult for the school to not follow suit. “I believe you’re right: silence isn’t neutral,” Sophie Langois, the university’s communications director, wrote back the next morning. “Especially after we took strong positions following the Paris terrorist attacks and the beginning of the war in Ukraine.” Documents obtained by The Canadian Press from Quebec universities show the debates within the institutions in preparing statements on the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and in navigating the emotionally fraught tensions between the Jewish and Arab diasporas in the province. The emails reveal the pressures, internally a...