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CN Rail unveils new continental shipping service in bid to match rival’s vast network

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

MONTREAL — Canadian National Railway Co. announced a new North American container shipping service Monday, upping its financial forecast for the year on the heels of record first-quarter revenues brought on by a bumper grain crop and higher oil prices.Dubbed Falcon Premium, the intermodal service marks an agreement between CN, Union Pacific Railroad and GMXT, a Mexican railroad operator and metals miner. It connects CN’s tracks, which stretch from Vancouver to Halifax, with the UPR line in Chicago and GMXT terminals several hundred kilometres north of Mexico City.In a bid to match rival CP Rail’s recent merger with Kansas City Southern, the deal also aims to nab customers south of the border from trucking companies with clients in auto parts, food, appliances and temperature-controlled products.“How do we convert the Mexico business over from the road to intermodal?” asked chief marketing officer Doug MacDonald. “We need a consistent, quick transit time...

Smith declines to disavow comments urging out-of-pocket payments for health care

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

EDMONTON — Premier Danielle Smith is declining to say whether she stands by or disavows earlier comments she made proposing Albertans pay out-of-pocket for medically insured services as a way to keep the health-care system sustainable.Smith has declined four times over the past nine days to say whether she stands by a policy paper she wrote in 2021, which urges Albertans to pay for some services covered by medicare, including visits to a family doctor.Smith’s United Conservative Party government has committed to not delisting any current medically insured services or having Albertans pay for services or prescriptions currently covered by medicare.Smith, when asked today by reporters where she stands on Albertans paying out of pocket, pointed to a long-term health funding deal the province recently signed with Ottawa that includes a commitment to the principles of medicare.Asked three times on her radio call-in show last week whether she stands by her policy paper, Smith said she is ...

Democracy, values give West an edge in race for green technology, Trudeau says

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

OTTAWA — Democracies like Canada can be “reliable suppliers” of goods that espouse both environmental sustainability and the rule of law, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday.Trudeau spent the day at various events with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was in Canada for an official visit.If global companies make their imports contingent on environmental responsibility and barring slave labour, they will turn to goods produced in countries like Canada, Trudeau said. That would also allow Canada to become a global leader in industries like lithium mining.“Democracies can also be those reliable suppliers of what actually matters,” Trudeau said.His comments come as Canada and its allies seek to establish more reliable supply chains with each other and reduce dependence on countries like Russia and China, who may seek to exploit that dependence to influence foreign politics.Trudeau said investors like the stability of countries with strong social...

DuPont ordered to pay $16M in Texas plant leak that killed 4

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

HOUSTON (AP) — A chemical company was ordered to pay $16 million and sentenced to two years of probation for its role in a poisonous gas leak that killed four workers at a Houston-area plant nearly a decade ago, federal prosecutors announced Monday.The employees at the now-closed DuPont chemical plant in LaPorte, Texas, died in November 2014 when a chemical used in the manufacturing of insecticide and fungicide, methyl mercaptan, was released.U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani, who is based in Houston, said the deaths were the result of “DuPont’s criminal negligence.”“The sentence imposed today sends a clear message of my office’s dedication to holding managers at industrial facilities, and the corporations that own and operate those facilities, accountable for violations of … laws meant to protect the safety of workers and nearby communities,” Hamdani said.During a court hearing Monday, DuPont, along with Kenneth Sandel, who ran the unit at the plant where the employees who die...

‘I was on fire’: Dad shot by neighbor while protecting girl

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

GASTONIA, N.C (AP) — As the bullet pierced his lung and liver, the only thing Jamie White could think about was getting his 6-year-old daughter to safety. A neighbor had opened fire after children went to retrieve a basketball from his yard.“I was worried about my babies,” White told the Gaston Gazette. “I was already hit. I was losing breath. I was on fire. I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it.”Recovering at home Monday, White says every movement hurts — but he feels lucky he and his family are alive. His wife was also wounded and his daughter was hit by bullet fragments that lodged in her cheek. The neighbor has since been arrested. The violence was the latest in a string of recent shootings sparked by seemingly trivial circumstances.It seemed like a normal spring evening before the shootings. White, a supervisor at a chemical cleaning company, was grilling and his daughter was playing with other children down the street. They live near Gastonia, a city of roughly 80,000...

Montana transgender lawmaker silenced again as backers erupt

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Republican legislative leaders in Montana persisted in forbidding Democratic transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr from participating in debate for a second week as her supporters brought the House session to a halt Monday — chanting “Let her speak!” from the gallery before they were escorted out.In the initial moments after proceedings were paused Monday afternoon, Zephyr defiantly hoisted a non-functioning microphone into the air as her supporters interrupted proceedings for nearly half an hour after Republicans denied her requests to speak on a proposal that would have restricted when children could change the names and pronouns they use in school and required their parents’ consent.The interruption is the latest development in a three-day fight over Zephyr’s remarks against lawmakers who support a ban on gender-affirming care. Zephyr, who is transgender and a first-term Democrat representative from Missoula, hasn’t been allowed to speak on the stateh...

Passenger rights overhaul draws criticism from both sides — airlines and advocates

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

MONTREAL — Airlines say it goes too far. Advocates say not far enough.The proposed overhaul of Canada’s passenger rights charter earned mixed reviews Monday after Transport Minister Omar Alghabra laid out measures to tighten loopholes to traveller compensation and toughen penalties.If passed, the reforms will put the onus on airlines to show a flight disruption is caused by safety concerns or reasons outside their control, with specific examples to be drawn up by the Canadian Transportation Agency as a list of exceptions around compensation.“This means there will be no more loopholes where airlines can claim a disruption is caused by something outside of their control for a security reason when it’s not,” Alghabra told reporters in Ottawa.“And it will no longer be the passenger who will have to prove that he or she is entitled to compensation. It will now be the airline that will need to prove that it does not have to pay for it.”Currently, a pass...

US urges Russia’s Lavrov to see suffering of Whelan’s sister

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.S. brought the sister of an American imprisoned in Russia to the U.N. Security Council on Monday for a session being chaired by the Russian foreign minister, urging him to “look into her eyes and see her suffering.”U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to release Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted of espionage. His family and the U.S. government have called the charges baseless. Thomas-Greenfield also urged him to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested on March 29 and accused of trying to obtain classified information.She accused Russia of using them as “political bargaining chips” and urged Moscow “to cease this barbaric practice once and for all.”The U.S. ambassador told Lavrov to turn to the visitor’s gallery where Elizabeth Whelan was sitting and “look into her eyes and see her suffering.” “I want ...

Similarities in testimony from Vancouver officers at Myles Gray inquest

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

BURNABY, B.C. — Several patterns have emerged after the last few Vancouver police witnesses testified at a coroner’s inquest into the death of Myles Gray in August 2015.The 14 officers who have testified so far have used the same language to describe Gray’s behaviour as police struggled to restrain him, and many told the inquest they were so focused on their own actions, they don’t have clear and complete recollections of what others were doing to restrain the 33-year-old.Gray died shortly after a beating by several officers that left him with injuries including a fractured eye socket, a crushed voice box and ruptured testicles.At leastfive officers testified they followed a direction from their police union not to make handwritten notes in the hours after Gray’s death.All of them told the inquest they couldn’t recall who the union’s directive came from, although Det. Const. Nick Thompson testified last week that it was passed to him by a superior...

Oklahoma attorney general to recommend clemency for Glossip

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:54:39 GMT

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma’s new Attorney General Gentner Drummond plans to ask the state’s Pardon and Parole Board on Wednesday to recommend sparing the life of death row inmate Richard Glossip, a highly unusual move for the state’s top prosecutor’s office that typically urges the board to reject clemency.In a letter dated Monday to the five-member board, Drummond wrote that he has serious concerns about the fairness of Glossip’s trial and cited two independent reviews of the case that recommended Glossip be granted a new trial.“I am not aware of an Oklahoma Attorney General ever supporting a clemency application for a death row inmate,” Drummond wrote. “In every previous case that has come before this board, the state has maintained full confidence in the integrity of the conviction. That is simply not the case in this matter due to the material evidence that was not disclosed to the jury.”Drummond previously asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Ap...