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Book Review: A brilliant new story collection by Jolene McIlwain awaits in ‘Sidle Creek’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

“Sidle Creek,” by Jolene McIlwain (Melville House)Lately, the news out of rural Appalachia has not been good: a train derailment, toxic chemicals, the opioid epidemic, deaths of despair. In contrast to all of that, Jolene McIlwain has written a stunning new collection of short fiction that presents a region known for hunting, fishing, fracking and Rolling Rock beer in all of its tender and terrifying complexity.In the title story, a father places warm stones from Sidle Creek on his daughter’s belly to relieve the debilitating cramps of endometriosis. A retired math professor in “The Fractal Geometry of Grief” builds a glass shelter on his wooded property to protect a doe he fell in love with after his wife’s death. In “Loosed” a man small “in position, stature and intelligence” earns money staging cockfights, then dogfights, and then, in a horrifying twist, fights between his four young sons because those are the most exciting of all to the rich, powerful men who bet on them.A strik...

IMF: Sri Lanka’s crisis-hit economy likely to resume growth in 2024 after contracting 3% this year

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s crisis-hit economy is expected to resume growing in 2024 after contracting 3% this year, an International Monetary Fund official said Monday.Krishna Srinivasan, the IMF’s director for Asia and Pacific, said expected economic growth of 1.5% next year hinges critically on the economic reform program Sri Lanka has agreed to undertake, including challenging reforms in five identified areas.“It is now essential to continue the reform momentum under strong ownership by the authorities and the Sri Lankan people, more broadly,” he said.Sri Lanka nearly exhausted its foreign currency holdings last year and the island nation announced that it was suspending repayment of foreign loans. The crisis resulted in severe shortages of essentials such as medicines, fuel, cooking gas and food, leading to angry protests that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.The IMF approved a nearly $3 billion rescue program in March whic...

Pacific Island leaders urge world to put aside differences in combating impact of climate change

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Pacific Island leaders criticized rich countries on Monday for not doing enough to control climate change despite being responsible for much of the problem, and for making money off of loans provided to vulnerable nations to mitigate the effects.Leaders and representatives from Pacific Island nations demanded at a U.N. climate change conference in Bangkok that the world make more effort to put aside differences in combating the environmental impact, especially as their countries emerge from the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.Prime Minister Mark Brown of the Cook Islands said the finance model for combatting climate change — giving out loans to reduce the impact — is “not the way to go” for countries in his region with such small populations that produce “inconsequential amounts of carbon emissions” but suffer the most from the effects.He encouraged a shift toward grants or interest-free loans to help ease the financial burden on poorer countries.“All we...

European human rights summit to step up aid for Ukraine to counter Russian invasion

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

BRUSSELS (AP) — At the conclusion of their previous Council of Europe summit, the 46 member states solemnly declared they “bear witness to unprecedented pan-European unity.”Fast-forward 18 years, to the day, on Tuesday, and the same institution, Europe’s pre-eminent human rights organization, faces a massive war on its continent, forcing it to gather as many of its leaders as possible in Reykjavik, Iceland, to deal with the epochal crisis in Ukraine, one of its member states. Perhaps more heed should have been paid to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s ominous warning at the 2005 summit in Warsaw that “Russia was, is and will be a major European nation.” Neither Lavrov, nor any Russian government official, will be flying to Europe’s far-flung island nation, since the Council expelled Russia over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The two-day summit will seek to reinforce a sense of common purpose and the defense of Ukraine stands out like a beacon. ...

K’atl’oodeeche First Nation, Hay River, N.W.T., order evacuations as wildfire spreads

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

HAY RIVER, N.W.T. — A First Nation reserve and nearby town in the southern Northwest Territories have been evacuated as a wildfire spreads in the area. K’atl’odeeche First Nation issued an evacuation order Sunday afternoon advising residents to register at the evacuation centre in nearby Hay River.The Town of Hay River then issued an evacuation order at 11 p.m. Sunday, directing residents to travel to Yellowknife, roughly 480 kilometres away.In an update early today, N.W.T. Fire said it was highly likely the wildfire had breached the K’atl’odeeche First Nation Reserve and jumped the river to the western part of the Town of Hay River.It said this was likely caused by winds carrying embers from the fire.Roughly 3,500 residents from Hay River and the K’atl’odeeche First Nation were ordered to leave last May as the area experienced its worst flooding on record.In October, the Northwest Territories government said it estimated flooding caused more than...

Elon Musk must still have his tweets approved by Tesla lawyer, federal appeals court rules

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk cannot back out of a settlement with securities regulators that was reached after his 2018 tweets claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private caused the electric vehicle maker’s share price to jump and led to a temporary halt in trading, an appeals court ruled Monday.The summary order by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan was released just days after a three-judge panel heard lawyers’ arguments in the case.Musk had challenged a lower court judge’s ruling last year requiring him to abide by the deal on the grounds that circumstances have changed and because the decree contains a “prior restraint” that Musk contends violates the First Amendment.The settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission required that his tweets be approved first by a Tesla attorney. It also called for Musk and Tesla to pay civil fines over the tweets in which Musk said he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share.The fu...

April’s national home sales up 11.3% from March, supply at 20-year low: CREA

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

National home sales jumped by 11.3 per cent between March and April as the real estate market picked up again, but supply remained at a 20 year-low, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Monday.Seasonally-adjusted sales for the month totalled 38,164 compared with 34,277 in March.The actual number of homes sold last month amounted to 44,059, down 19.5 per cent from a year prior. The year-over-year sales decline was markedly smaller than the drops reported in recent months, the association said, attributing the return of sales to home prices, which many feel have bottomed out in recent months as interest rates climbed eight times over the last year.“It wasn’t all that surprising to see buyers jumping off the sidelines and back into the market in April,” Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist said in a press release. “Supply, on the other hand, has been sluggish, hence the price gains from March to April seen all over the country.”The seasonally-adjusted number of new ...

S&P/TSX composite higher in late-morning trading, U.S. stock markets mixed

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

TORONTO — Strength in the base metal and energy sectors helped lead Canada’s main stock index higher in late-morning trading, while U.S. stock markets were mixed.The S&P/TSX composite index was up 61.02 points at 20,480.64.In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 6.56 points at 33,294.06. The S&P 500 index was up 3.97 points at 4,128.05, while the Nasdaq composite was up 47.70 points at 12,332.44.The Canadian dollar traded for 74.09 cents US compared with 73.89 cents US on Friday.The June crude contract was up US$1.35 at US$71.39 per barrel and the June natural gas contract was up 10 cents at US$2.37 per mmBTU.The June gold contract was up 20 cents at US$2,020.00 an ounce and the July copper contract was up two cents at US$3.75 a pound.This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2023.Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD=X)The Canadian Press

Justice minister planning to introduce bail reforms this week

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

OTTAWA — Justice Minister David Lametti and the federal government are expected to bring forward legislation to enact bail reform as early as tomorrow. Lametti has said he will make “targeted reforms” to the Criminal Code after the provinces and territories publicly raised concerns about repeat offenders. The federal government says the reforms will aim to deal with repeat violent offenders and offences involving firearms and other dangerous weapons.The premiers have asked for a “reverse onus” system for some offences, which would require a person seeking bail to prove why they should not stay behind bars.Calls for action have grown after several high-profile crimes, including the shooting death of an Ontario Provincial Police officer in February, which police say was committed by a man who had been released on bail. The federal Conservatives and law enforcement leaders have also put pressure on the Liberals to make bail more restrictive.This report by The Ca...

Convicted child rapist, former Baltimore Catholic school teacher dies in prison

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:08:45 GMT

BALTIMORE (AP) — A convicted child rapist, whose crimes were recently highlighted in an extensive state report on sex abuse and coverups within the Archdiocese of Baltimore, died last week in prison, according to Maryland’s corrections agency.John Merzbacher, 81, was serving four life sentences after his 1995 rape conviction for committing sexual abuse while he was a teacher at a Catholic middle school in Baltimore in the 1970s. He died Friday of natural causes in the infirmary at Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover, Maryland, state corrections officials said.Merzbacher’s crimes have received renewed attention in recent weeks with the release of a report by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which spent years investigating child sexual abuse in the archdiocese. It found more than 150 priests and others associated with the Baltimore archdiocese sexually abused over 600 children for decades, often with impunity.The report, which paints a damning picture of the nation’s o...