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Biden to huddle with top donors as 2024 effort kicks off

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses will fete about 150 of the Democratic Party’s top donors in Washington Friday evening as they lay the groundwork for their reelection campaign, which is expected to need to raise well over $1 billion.The summit is not a fundraiser and it was not clear how many of the attendees had yet cut checks to Biden’s campaign. Rather, it is billed as a strategy session for high-dollar donors and fundraisers who will tap their networks to help fund Biden’s campaign over the next 18 months. In addition to a Friday evening dinner, top Biden advisers and his campaign co-chairs will brief attendees Saturday on the campaign’s strategy ahead of the 2024 race to “fund winning campaigns from the top of the ticket on down,” the campaign said.Some Democratic lawmakers, including governors who have proven to be prolific party fundraisers — Wes Moore of Maryland, Phil Murphy of New Jersey and...

Queen Elizabeth’s coronation lifted Britain’s post-war gloom

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

LONDON (AP) — In 1953, London was still recovering from World War II. The city was pockmarked with bomb damage, food supplies were tight and life was dull for children who had never eaten anything so exotic as a banana.But the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II helped lift the gloom.Central London buzzed with activity as workers built temporary stands along the 5-mile route of the queen’s procession. Giant crowns were suspended from arches that soared over The Mall approaching Buckingham Palace, and shopkeepers filled their windows with colorful banners and coronation-themed products.With Elizabeth’s son, King Charles III, set to be crowned on May 6, people are recalling his mother’s coronation 70 years ago, which was the last time the British public witnessed the ritual. “The whole of London was sort of a cauldron of people rushing to the area to look at what was happening,” said James Wilkinson, then an 11-year-old member of the Westminster Abbey choir, which sang during...

Conrad Black says he’s regained the Canadian citizenship he renounced in 2001

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

Conrad Black says he has regained his Canadian citizenship, more than 20 years after he renounced it following a well-publicized fight with then-prime minister Jean Chrétien over accepting a British peerage. Black provided The Canadian Press with a copy of an opinion piece he says is to be published Saturday by the National Post, the newspaper he founded and regularly contributes to, saying he received his Canadian passport this week. “My status in this country was for some years a matter of some controversy and curiosity. These disagreeable memories made the arrival of my Canadian passport by special delivery at my home this week a particularly welcome event,” Black wrote. The former media mogul was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice in 2007 and spent time in a Florida federal prison for what prosecutors alleged was a scheme to siphon millions of dollars from the sale of newspapers owned by Hollinger Inc., where he was chief executive and chairman. The Montre...

Champagne vows to take action if telecoms don’t reach deal for TTC cell service

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

Canada’s industry minister vowed to step in if Canada’s major telecom providers don’t reach an agreement to ensure wireless service is available for all riders on Toronto’s subway system.Speaking at a press conference in Montreal on Friday, François-Philippe Champagne said he’s not shy about “pushing the telcos to do what’s right for Canadians.”“Because some of them, they listen to me — they tend to do that when I speak about them — if they don’t come to an arrangement together that would serve Canadians, that would increase the coverage, that would increase the 911 services in the subway system in Toronto, we’ll take action and we’ll make sure that we do what’s right for Canadians,” Champagne said.Last week, the minister penned a letter to the executives of Bell Canada, Telus Communications Inc., Quebecor Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. calling on the major carriers to reach a deal that would allow any company to access the TTC’s wireless network a...

Agency clarifies frack waste ban in Delaware River watershed

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

An environmental group that accused regulators of weakening a ban on the dumping of fracking wastewater in the Delaware River watershed has dropped its federal lawsuit, saying its most pressing concerns have been addressed.Damascus Citizens for Sustainability sued the Delaware River Basin Commission in January, about a month after regulators voted to ban the disposal of drilling wastewater in a vast watershed that includes portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware. The lawsuit said regulators had quietly issued “extra-regulatory exemptions” after the vote that could have paved the way for the road spreading of contaminated fracking wastewater from so-called “conventional” well sites. Conventional wells are traditional vertical wells. Most new natural gas wells are drilled into deeper, “unconventional” rock formations like Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale. Energy companies use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to stimulate production in both types of wells and must r...

Imperial targeting mid-to-late decade for its Cold Lake carbon capture project

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

CALGARY — Imperial Oil Ltd. could begin injecting and storing harmful CO2 emissions from its Cold Lake operations by the middle of this decade — well before the completion of a massive carbon capture and storage transportation line that has been proposed for the Canadian oilsands, the company said Friday.Imperial — which on Friday reported it earned $1.25 billion in its first quarter, up from $1.17 billion in the same quarter a year earlier — is a member of the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of oilsands companies that has committed to spending $16.5 billion on a massive carbon capture and storage network to be built in northern Alberta.The project is the centrepiece of the oilsands majors’ joint commitment to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from production by 2050. It would involve the construction of a 400-kilometre pipeline that would transport captured CO2 from more than 20 oilsands facilities and move it to a proposed hub in the Cold Lake area of Alberta for safe ...

New this week: Ed Sheeran, Watergate and Pete Davidson

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music and video game platforms this week.NEW MOVIES TO STREAM— In “A Man Called Otto,” Tom Hanks stars as a despondent and ornery widower whose suicide plans keep getting foiled by the needs of his neighbors. When it played in theaters in December, the Sony Pictures release proved the rare adult-oriented success at the box office, and grossed more than $100 million globally. Marc Forster’s adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s bestseller and remake of the 2016 Swedish film “A Man Called Ove” arrives Saturday, May 6, on Netflix. In my review, I wrote that Hanks’ role “interestingly, if not always entirely successfully, caters to his strengths while tweaking his familiar screen presence.” — A new series on the Criterion Channel pegs the 1980s as the birth of Asian American cinema. The 12 collected films — mostly products of the independent film movement...

Application for jury to see photo of Myles Gray’s injuries made too late: coroner

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

BURNABY, B.C. — The British Columbia coroner presiding over the inquest into the death of Myles Gray says the jury won’t be allowed to see a photo of the man’s injuries because the application was made too late. Coroner Larry Marzinzik says his view on admitting photos would have been “very different” had the lawyer for Gray’s family, Ian Donaldson, brought it up earlier.Gray, who was 33 years old, died in August 2015 after a beating by police that left him with injuries including ruptured testicles and fractures in his eye socket, nose, voice box and rib.The 10-day inquest is expected to finish today, and there was no application for photos to be admitted before testimony from officers involved in the struggle to restrain Gray or first responders who tried to revive him. Marzinzik says there is no longer an opportunity for witnesses to provide context of the photo to the jury, and evidence of the injuries Gray sustained have been well-documented throug...

Online desserts shop in Henry Farm community offers fusion of French and Japanese pastries

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

The online bakery ito Desserts and Gifts, based in the Henry Farm community near Don Mills Road and Sheppard Avenue East, offers a combination of French and Japanese pastries.The mini cake business was started by husband and wife duo, Fangchen Huang and Nami Tamai, because they noticed a gap in this market when it came to patisserie-grade mini cakes.The name ‘Ito’ comes from the Japanese word ‘thread’ and they are hoping to thread these treats into the community.“We were working from home during COVID times and remember complaining to Nami that I really missed the snacks and tea from the office and I wish I could have the same at home,” says Huang.“So Nami got to work, she developed and tested recipes that could endure being frozen in the freezer for months and we leveraged the very powerful shock, frozen freezer to achieve the best results.”Tamai is no stranger to making these sweet treats. She was a pastry chef for over 10 years, starting ...

'Little hero': Boy stops Michigan school bus with ill driver

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:40:54 GMT

WARREN, Mich. (AP) — A boy grabbed the steering wheel on a school bus and hit the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a safe stop on a busy Detroit-area road after the driver had passed out, authorities said.“Someone call 911. Now!" seventh-grader Dillon Reeves shouted to dozens of other middle-school kids on the bus Wednesday.Dillon was hailed as a hero: He stopped the bus as it was veering toward oncoming traffic.“In my 35-plus years of education, this was an extraordinary act of courage and maturity on his part,” said Robert Livernois, superintendent of Warren Consolidated Schools.The incident was recorded on a video camera just above the driver. The video shows the driver fanning herself with a baseball cap and informing the transportation office that she needs to pull over. Gap to cut 1,800 jobs, joining growing list of corporate layoffs Seconds later, Dillon jumped into action, hitting the brake pedal and clutching the steering wheel.“I don't know that it could have go...