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Robert E. Lee statue that prompted deadly protest in Virginia melted down

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was a focal point of a deadly white nationalist protest in 2017 has been melted down and will be repurposed into new works of art.The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, a Charlottesville-based Black history museum, said Thursday that the statue had been destroyed.The Charlottesville City Council voted in 2021 to donate the statue to the heritage center, after it proposed a Swords into Plowshares project that would melt the statue and repurpose it into “public art that expresses the City’s values of inclusivity and racial justice,” according to the proposal submitted to the city.The statue was taken down in 2021 after years of debate and delay.Protests over the plan to remove the statue morphed into the violent “Unite the Right” rally in 2017. It was during that rally that James Alex Fields Jr., an avowed Hitler admirer, intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32...

A new cure for sickle cell disease may be coming. Health advisers will review it next week

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

The only cure for painful sickle cell disease today is a bone marrow transplant. But soon there may be a new cure that attacks the disorder at its genetic source. On Tuesday, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration will review a gene therapy for the inherited blood disorder, which in the U.S. mostly affects Black people. Issues they will consider include whether more research is needed into possible unintended consequences of the treatment.If approved by the FDA, it would be the first gene therapy on the U.S. market based on CRISPR, the gene editing tool that won its inventors the Nobel Prize in 2020.The agency is expected to decide on the treatment in early December, before taking up a different sickle cell gene therapy later that month.Dr. Allison King, who cares for children and young adults with sickle cell disease, said she’s enthusiastic about the possibility of new treatments.“Anything that can help relieve somebody with this condition of the pain and the multiple ...

3 teens were shot and wounded outside a west Baltimore high school as students were arriving

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

BALTIMORE (AP) — Three teenagers were wounded in a shooting outside a west Baltimore high school around the time classes were starting Friday morning, officials said.The shooting adds to a recent uptick in youth violence plaguing the city this year, including several instances of Baltimore public school students being shot on or near high school campuses. That trend has persisted even as gun violence overall has declined over the past several months.The victims in Friday’s shooting at Carver Vocational Technical High School all received non-life threatening injuries, Baltimore Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Jones said during a news conference at the scene.“There was a possible fray and then there was the discharge of a weapon,” Jones said.In the aftermath of the shooting, which was reported just before 8 a.m., frantic parents gathered outside the school. Many commiserated with each other while waiting for their children to be dismissed, saying the trauma of yet another shooting in...

S&P/TSX composite down Friday morning, U.S. stock markets mixed

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

TORONTO — Losses in the energy, financial and utilities sectors helped lead Canada’s main stock index lower in late-morning trading on Friday, while U.S. stock markets were mixed.The S&P/TSX composite index was down 81.42 points at 18,793.89.In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 71.23 points at 32,713.07. The S&P 500 index was up 15.63 points at 4,152.86, while the Nasdaq composite was up 173.48 points at 12,769.08.The Canadian dollar traded for 72.17 cents US compared with 72.33 cents US on Thursday.The December crude oil contract was up 86 cents at US$84.07 per barrel and the December natural gas contract was up nine cents at US$3.57 per mmBTU.The December gold contract was down US$6.70 at US$1,990.70 an ounce and the December copper contract was up six cents at US$3.65 a pound.This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 27, 2023.Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)The Canadian Press

Outdoor gear retailer MEC names COO Peter Hlynsky as new CEO

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

VANCOUVER — Mountain Equipment Company says Peter Hlynsky is the retailer’s new chief executive.Hlynsky joined the Vancouver-based outdoor gear company in 2020, serving as its chief financial officer and then chief operating officer.He takes over from Eric Claus, who led the company in the wake of it filing for creditor protection and being sold to U.S.-based private investment firm Kingswood Capital Management.Hlynsky says he doesn’t expect to radically change the business but will continue with the supply chain overhaul the company has been working on for several years.He says the overhaul will be apparent to customers this holiday shopping season because the retailer has worked with vendors to lower prices by ordering twice as much product but selling it at half the price.Hlynsky says that model generates more sales because it gets product moving through the system and allows the company to quickly ready itself for the next season.This report by The Canadian Press was...

EU summit turns its eyes away from Ukraine despite a commitment to stay the course with Zelenskyy

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

BRUSSELS (AP) — It was a good thing Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy had his videoconference address to the European Union summit pre-slotted for the opening session.Immediately afterward, EU leaders switched off and went to the order of the day — the Israel-Hamas war. They didn’t come back to the issue of Russia’s war in Ukraine again before Friday’s closing day of the summit.After dominating summit after summit since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the timing alone, anecdotal as it was, underscored a deeper reality: Zelenskyy will be facing tougher times to get all the attention and political, economic and military aid that Ukraine wants.Not only in Europe too, since the new U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has shown little interest in providing additional money from Congress to support Ukraine and also said that now is the moment “we must stand with our important ally in the Middle East and that’s Israel.”And it̵...

Ontario plans to expand midwives’ prescribing power

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

Ontario is planning to expand the list of drugs that midwives can prescribe and administer, including allowing them to prescribe birth control.But while midwives say the updates are good and will help them more effectively serve their clients, not being limited to a list of medications would be even better.The College of Midwives of Ontario has been working with the province for years to expand the list, but the registrar and CEO says that due to advances in medicine, a list can be out of date almost as soon as it is published.The president of the Association of Ontario Midwives says it would be more beneficial if they were allowed to order the full range of tests and medications used in pregnancy and post-partum care.A spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones says the ministry is reviewing further scope of practice changes and is rolling them out based on advice from health-care partners.The proposal, which is open to public comment on the province’s regulatory registry ...

Federal government posts $4.3 billion deficit between April and August this year

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

OTTAWA — The federal government posted a budgetary deficit of $4.3 billion from April to August.In its monthly fiscal monitor, the Finance Department says this compares to a surplus of $3.9 billion during the same period of the 2022-23 fiscal year. Government revenues increased $2.4 billion, or 1.4 per cent, largely due to higher interest revenues and other non-tax revenues.Program expenses excluding net actuarial losses increased $7.4 billion, or 4.8 per cent. Public debt charges grew by $4.1 billion, or 27.7 per cent, largely due to higher interest rates. Net actuarial losses decreased by $0.9 billion, or 22.7 per cent, compared to the same period last year. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 27, 2023.The Canadian Press

Christian right cheers new House speaker, conservative evangelical Mike Johnson, as one of their own

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

Evangelical Christian conservatives have long had allies in top Republican leadership in Congress. But never before have they had one so thoroughly embedded in their movement as new House Speaker Mike Johnson, a longtime culture warrior in the courthouse, in the classroom and in Congress.Religious conservatives cheered Johnson’s election Wednesday, after which he brought his Bible to the rostrum before taking the oath of office. “The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority … each of you, all of us,” he said.“Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’” Johnson said Thursday in a Fox News interview. “I said, ’Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”But progressive faith leaders are sounding the alarm about Johnson’s opposition to LGBTQ rights and his rallying of Republicans around former President Donald Trump’s legal effort to overturn t...

Cruise, GM’s robotaxi service, suspends all driverless operations nationwide

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:24:32 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Cruise, the autonomous vehicle unit owned by General Motors, is suspending driverless operations nationwide days after regulators in California found that its driverless cars posed a danger to public safety. The California Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the license for Cruise, which recently began transporting passengers throughout San Francisco, this week.Cruise is also being investigated by U.S. regulators after receiving reports of potential risks to pedestrians and passengers.“We have decided to proactively pause driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust,” Cruise wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday night.The choice to suspend its driverless services isn’t related to any new on-road incidents, Cruise added. Human-supervised operations of Cruise’s autonomous vehicles, or AVs,...