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Canadian government denies teenage surfing prodigy’s bid for citizenship

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

The 16-year-old Brooks was born in Texas and grew up in Hawaii but has Canadian ties through her father, Jeff, who is a dual American-Canadian citizen. Brooks, who won a silver medal at the ISA World Surfing Games in El Salvador in June, had hoped to secure her citizenship and represent Canada at next year’s Paris Olympics. But the delay in citizenship means she has had to miss the Pan American Games in Chile, which offers the winner an Olympic berth.The last opportunity to qualify for the Olympics is at the ISA World Championships in Puerto Rico in February.In a letter explaining its decision not to grant citizenship, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says Brooks is “not stateless, will not face special and unusual hardship if you are not granted Canadian citizenship and that you have not provided services of an exceptional value to Canada.”Surf Canada says Jeff Brooks intends to appeal the decision to Federal Court.Brooks is considered by many a favouri...

19-year-old from Niagara Falls charged for uploading child porn to Facebook, social media

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

A 19-year-old from Niagara Falls, Ont. is facing charges for allegedly uploading child pornography to various social media websites, including Facebook.Niagara Regional Police investigators with the Internet Child Exploitation Unit opened a case in July 2023 concerning the criminal content. Authorities executed a search warrant at a Niagara Falls, Ont. residence this month and arrested a suspect. He was identified as 19-year-old Richard Stapells of Niagara Falls, Ont. He’s facing several charges, including two counts of possessing child pornography, making child pornography accessible and accessing child pornography. The accused was held in custody pending a bail hearing, which occurred on Friday. “Offenders who hide behind an anonymous account for the purpose of sexually exploiting children can be identified and will be held accountable for their actions,” a police spokesperson wrote in a news release.

No criminal charges in Tacoma, Washington, crash that killed 6 Arizonans

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — No one will face criminal charges following a two-car crash in Tacoma, Washington, that killed six Arizona residents in July, according to Pierce County prosecutors.A three-month Washington State Patrol investigation into the July 15 crash at the intersection of state Route 509 and Alexander Avenue determined the Arizona residents’ vehicle ran a red light when the crash occurred, the Tacoma News Tribune reported Thursday.The crash happened about 11 a.m., when a Kia Forte sedan holding seven people drove through the intersection and was hit by an eastbound driver in a BMW SUV, according to charging decision documents. The Kia hit a curb, rolled 70 feet (21 meters) and caught fire. Five of the Kia’s occupants were declared dead at the scene, and a sixth died later at St. Joseph Medical Center. A seventh occupant — a Phoenix man — survived with serious injuries but had no memory of the crash. The group had traveled to Tacoma to attend an Amway convention, fam...

Maui County police find additional remains, raising Lahaina wildfire death toll to 99

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — The death toll for the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century has increased by one, to 99, after Maui County police found additional remains.The remains were recovered on Oct. 12 in Lahaina, police spokesperson Alana Pico said in an email Friday. An autopsy and forensic examination verified that they were not from a previously recovered individual. So far police have identified the remains of 97 people from the Aug. 8 fire that wiped out much of Lahaina, a historic town on Maui’s west coast. The remains of two people have yet to be identified. Seven people are still missing. The wildfire started in a grassy area in Lahaina’s hills. Powerful winds related to a hurricane passing to Hawaii’s south carried embers from house to house and hampered firefighting efforts. More than 2,000 buildings were destroyed, and some 8,000 people were forced to move to hotels and other temporary shelter. The Associated Press

A tent camp for displaced Palestinians pops up in southern Gaza, reawakening old traumas

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — When the sun rose on Friday and the autumn heat baked the rotten debris on Gaza’s streets, Mohammed Elian emerged from the zipper hole of his new canvas home. He — and hundreds of other Palestinians displaced by the latest war between Israel and Hamas — have crowded into a squalid tent camp in southern Gaza, an image that has brought back memories of their greatest trauma.Last week after the Israeli military ordered Elian’s family, along with more than 1 million other Palestinians, to evacuate the north, the smartly dressed 35-year-old graphic designer from Gaza City ended up homeless in the city of Khan Younis, with few comforts but thin mattresses, solar-powered phone chargers and whatever clothes and pots he could squeeze into his friend’s car. With nowhere else to go, Elian, his wife and four kids landed in the sprawling tent camp that cropped up this week as United Nations shelters overflowed in Gaza, where most people are already refu...

French intelligence points to Palestinian rocket, not Israeli airstrike, for Gaza hospital blast

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

PARIS (AP) — An assessment by French military intelligence indicates the most likely cause of the deadly explosion at Gaza City’s al-Ahli hospital was a Palestinian rocket that carried an explosive charge of about 5 kilograms (11 pounds) and possibly misfired, a senior French military official said Friday.Several rockets in the arsenal of the Palestinian militant group Hamas carry explosive charges of about that weight, including an Iranian-made rocket and another that is Palestinian-made, the intelligence official said.None of their intelligence pointed to an Israeli strike, the official said.The official spoke on condition of anonymity, but was cleared to discuss the assessment by President Emmanuel Macron in what was described as an attempt to be transparent about the French intelligence findings. The assessment was based on classified information, satellite imagery, intelligence shared by other countries and open-source information, the official said.The size of the blast crater...

Gaza has long been a powder keg. Here’s a look at the history of the embattled region

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Gaza has long been a powder keg, and it exploded after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7 and began killing and abducting people.More than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians — were killed in the Hamas attack, and the Israeli army says about 200 hostages were taken into Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. Nearly half Gaza’s population — the vast majority of whom are already refugees — have been displaced. Israel has imposed a complete siege on Gaza, preventing the entrance of food, water and fuel — a move that has created a catastrophic humanitarian situation. As the Israeli military gears up for a ground invasion and pledges to topple Hamas, the futures of Gaza and its 2.3 million Palestinians look uncertain. Here’s a look at the history of the Gaza Strip:1948 – 1967: EGYPTBefore the war surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948, present-d...

Oklahoma attorney general sues to stop US’s first public religious school

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond on Friday sued to stop a state board from establishing and funding what would be the nation’s first religious public charter school after the board ignored Drummond’s warning that it would violate both the state and U.S. constitutions.Drummond filed the lawsuit with the Oklahoma Supreme Court against the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board after three of the board’s members this week signed a contract for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.“Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups,” the lawsuit states.The school board voted 3-2 in June to approve the Catholic Archdiocese’s application to establ...

Georgia Medicaid program with work requirement has enrolled only 1,343 residents in 3 months

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s new health plan for low-income adults has enrolled only 1,343 people through the end of September about three months after launching, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.The Georgia Department of Community Health has projected up to 100,000 people could eventually benefit from Georgia Pathways to Coverage. But the nation’s only Medicaid program that makes recipients meet a work requirement is off to a very slow start.“We will continue working to educate Georgians about Pathways’ innovative, first-of-its-kind opportunity and enroll more individuals in the months to come,” Kemp’s office said in a statement.The program’s creeping progress reflects fundamental flaws as compared to Medicaid expansions in other states, including the extra burden of submitting and verifying work hours, experts say. And some critics note it’s happening just as the state, as part of a federally mandated review, is kicking tens of thousands of pe...

Ohio embraced the ‘science of reading.’ Now a popular reading program is suing

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:25:55 GMT

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The battle over how to teach reading has landed in court. With momentum shifting in favor of research-backed strategies known as the “science of reading,” states and some school districts have been ditching once popular programs amid concerns that they aren’t effective. A legal fight in Ohio centers on a state ban of material that uses a common technique called three-cueing. It involves encouraging students to draw on meaning, sentence structure and visual clues to identify words, asking questions like: “What is going to happen next?,” “What is the first letter of the word?” or “What clues do the pictures offer?”The technique is a key part of the Reading Recovery program used in more than 2,400 U.S. elementary schools. The Reading Recovery Council of North America filed a lawsuit earlier this month, saying lawmakers infringed on the powers of state and local education boards by using a budget bill to ban three-cueing. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, blaste...