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Vehicle sales posted biggest annual jump last year since 1997: DesRosiers

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

TORONTO — Auto sales jumped 11.8 per cent in 2023 compared with the year before as vehicle supply continued to improve, according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.The report says it was the biggest year-over-year increase in sales since 1997.DesRosiers says improved vehicle supply and pent-up demand from so-called lost sales during the pandemic in the second half of the year helped boost sales activity despite higher interest rates and economic worries.Sales for the month of December also came in strong across all provinces with an increase of 10.7 per cent year-over-year, marking 14 consecutive months of growth, the report says.DesRosiers adds the fourth quarter saw sales rise 17.2 per cent compared with the fourth quarter of 2022.Andrew King, managing partner at DesRosiers, says sales of light trucks reached a record share of 85.8 per cent last year as consumers preferred bigger vehicles over passenger cars.This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 3, 2024.The...

Judge raises mental health concern about man held in New Year’s Eve weekend gunfire near Vegas Strip

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A California man accused of firing dozens of gunshots from upper floors of a condominium-hotel near the Las Vegas Strip the morning before New Year’s Eve had his bail set at $500,000 on Wednesday.Jon Roger Letzkus appears to be mentally unstable and “what he is alleged to have done in our community is incredibly dangerous,” Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melissa Saragosa said, citing reports to the court following his arrest.Standing before the judge in shackles, Letzkus, 45, told Saragosa that he “more or less” understood the more than 70 felony charges against him.Police said no one was found injured by gunfire but nearby buildings were damaged a little before 6 a.m. Sunday at Signature Towers — a three-building complex that is part of the MGM Grand resort east of Las Vegas Boulevard. Police said Letzkus was found and arrested almost five hours later.Prosecutor Erika Mendoza told the judge on Wednesday that Letzkus admitted firing shots and that the un...

What to do with your tree after Christmas

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

As the holiday season winds down, many of us will be taking our Christmas trees to the curb. But instead of sending them off to the landfill, there’s a few ways you can extend their usefulness throughout the year.Gardening expert Carson Arthur explains that brining a real Christmas tree into your home is different from simply cutting a tree down in the wild.“These are grown on farms, so trees, boughs, planters, garlands, they’re all properly grown crops that farmers in Canada actually supply. So that’s a good thing. But what we do with them afterwards is a bit of the problem,” he says.As per Earth.org, if disposed off with a wood chipper or a bonfire, a tree has an average carbon footprint of 3.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2). If it ends up in a landfill, that number goes up four times to 16kgs.Arthur says that’s not only bad for the environment, but a huge waste as well.“When we put it at the end of the road or we put it into the garbage, that̵...

A look at killings of militant leaders believed targeted by Israel

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Hamas and Hezbollah have accused Israel of carrying out an airstrike that killed a top Hamas leader in Beirut.While Israel has not claimed responsibility, Tuesday’s airstrike had the hallmarks of an Israeli attack.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have repeatedly threatened to kill Hamas leaders following the group’s deadly Oct. 7 cross-border attack that sparked the war in Gaza. Israel also has a long history of assassinating its enemies, many carried out with precision airstrikes. A look at some of those targeted killings:December 2023Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, is killed in a drone attack outside of Damascus. Iran blames Israel.2019An Israeli airstrike hits the home of Bahaa Abu el-Atta, a senior Islamic Jihad commander in the Gaza Strip, killing him and his wife. 2012Ahmad Jabari, head of Hamas’ armed wing, is killed when an airstrike targets his car...

B.C. school district fined for failing to address student’s anxiety

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

VANCOUVER — An unnamed school district in British Columbia has been ordered by the province’s human rights tribunal to pay $5,000 to a student for failing to accommodate her anxiety disorder.Tribunal vice-chair Devyn Cousineau says in a decision released last month that the school district “failed to take reasonable steps to investigate and address the female student’s anxiety over her transition from elementary school to high school.The ruling says the unidentified student had been diagnosed since kindergarten with anxiety and has been on medication since Grade 7 when she made the move to high school in fall 2018.The tribunal judgment says the student was transitioning from a unique language arts program in elementary school into regular language classes in high school, where her anxiety levels escalated with more difficult material and an “unsupportive” teacher who allegedly laughed at her mistakes.The family filed the human rights complaint in 2020, ...

Trial postponed for man charged with 2022 stabbing of author Salman Rushdie

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — The New Jersey man charged with stabbing “The Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie is allowed to seek material related to Rushdie’s upcoming memoir about the attack before standing trial, a judge ruled Wednesday.Jury selection in Hadi Matar’s attempted murder and assault trial was originally scheduled to start Jan. 8.Instead, the trial is on hold, since Matar’s lawyer argued Tuesday that the defendant is entitled by law to see the manuscript, due out in April 2024, and related material before standing trial. Written or recorded statements about the attack made by any witness are considered potential evidence, attorneys said.“It will not change the ultimate outcome,” Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said of the postponement.Matar, 26, who lived in Fairview, New Jersey, has been held without bail since prosecutors said he stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times after rushing the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where the aut...

Oklahoma’s next lethal injection delayed for 100 days for competency hearing

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The lethal injection of an Oklahoma man scheduled to be executed next month has been paused for 100 days so that a hearing can be held to determine if he’s mentally competent enough to be executed.The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals issued the stay of execution on Dec. 22 for James Ryder, 61. Ryder was scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Feb. 1 for his role in the 1999 slayings of a mother and son in Pittsburg County after a property dispute.“Having reviewed the evidence, we find the matter should be remanded to the District Court of Pittsburg County for a hearing to determine whether Ryder ‘has raised substantial doubt as to his competency to be executed,’” the appellate court wrote in its order.Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the court’s decision.Ryder’s attorneys have argued for years that he is incompetent and that his mental illness has become...

Penguins line up to be counted while tiger cub plays as London zookeepers perform annual census

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

LONDON (AP) — A sign directed the animals to line up to be counted and several of the 74 Humboldt penguins did just that, waiting patiently Wednesday to be tallied in the London Zoo’s annual census.Not all the animals were as obedient.Crispin, an endangered Sumatran tiger cub, treated a chalk board like cat nip, gnawing on it playfully in its powerful jaws while being counted with three others.Over two days, about 14,000 animals will be accounted for — everything from alpacas to zebras — as a requirement of the zoo’s license. Information from the count will be shared with zoos around the world to help manage breeding programs of endangered species.The count will note some of the new additions to its menagerie in the past year: a little two-toed sloth and 17 chicks hatched in its birdhouse that included six Socorro doves, which are extinct in the wild. “The keepers have got lots of tricks up their sleeve to be able to count these animals,” zoological operations manager Da...

Nebraska judge allows murder case to proceed against suspect in killing of small-town priest

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

BLAIR, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska judge agreed Wednesday that the fact that the suspect was found lying on top of a badly wounded priest covered in blood stains last month inside the home where the priest lived next door to his small-town church suggests that Kierre Williams was responsible for the killing.Washington County Judge Edward Matney ruled there was probable cause for the murder case against Williams, 43, to move forward. He will continue being held without bond until he is due back in court early next month to enter a plea to the murder and weapons charges he faces. His attorney has declined to discuss the case.Prosecutors have said there doesn’t appear to be any connection between Williams and the Rev. Stephen Gutgsell, who was fatally stabbed on Dec. 10 inside the rectory for St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in tiny Fort Calhoun. The one-story home was still wrapped in crime scene tape Wednesday nearly a month after the attack.The priest’s death came just fo...

Argentina arrests three men suspected of belonging to a terror cell

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Authorities in Argentina have arrested three men, including a Syrian national, in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas on suspicion of being part of a terror cell, the government announced Wednesday. Security Minister Patricia Bullrich did not disclose the identity of the men — who were detained over the weekend — but released images of the suspects with their faces blurred. In a statement issued hours before, the ministry said that one of those arrested was a Syrian national who carried passports from Venezuela and Colombia bearing his name. The nationalities of the other two men were not disclosed, but Bullrich said the men previously had used documents of various nationalities.“We do not know if their names are the real ones,” Bullrich told reporters.Bullrich said that authorities had been on high alert as Buenos Aires hosts the Pan-American Maccabi Games, bringing together thousands of Jewish athletes from different countries, and as the Israel-Hamas...