Author: Press Room

With about two weeks left of winter, Alberta’s wildfire season – and funding for fire preparedness – have already begun. The province’s wildfire season officially begins on March 1 and runs until Oct. 31. According to provincial numbers, Alberta kicked off the season with 10 active wildfires, down from 60 at the same time last year.This week’s Alberta budget had $7.5 billion allocated over three years for municipal infrastructure support, which included $47 million for wildfire management for communities. Broken down, it includes $22 million for wildfire enhancements, $19 million for a facility upgrade program and $6 million for management…

This is going to hurt.The pragmatist in Sydney coach Dean Cox is never one to waste time with pretence.”I said that to the players. Pre-Christmas, I said, this is going to be clunky,” Cox told AAP.”It’s going to not feel right at times. We’re going to get exposed, and I don’t know when it’ll all gel.”Figuring out how to guide an AFL team after a heartbreaking grand final loss as a first-year coach can be a bit like that.Even more so when the team had also been belted in a grand final only two years previously, and have lost four…

BERLIN: German election winner Friedrich Merz’s conservatives and outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) held “open and constructive” talks towards forming a coalition, a joint statement said on Friday (Feb 28) without giving details. Parliamentary arithmetic means the centre-left SPD is the most likely ally to help Merz’s conservatives form a new governing majority, but there is ill-feeling between the parties after a bruising election campaign. Investors are watching what price the SPD will demand to join a government and whether parties will agree to a massive new defence fund and reforms to borrowing limits known as the “debt…

Firefly says it is the first private company to make a ‘fully successful’ soft landing on the moon.Firefly Aerospace, a United States-based private space company, has successfully landed its Blue Ghost spacecraft on the moon for a two-week research mission amid a race between a handful of private firms. The touchdown took place at 3:35am US East Coast time (08:35 GMT) on Sunday in the Mare Crisium region, a prominent lunar basin visible from Earth. Firefly becomes the second private firm to achieve a moon landing with the company declaring itself the first to make a “fully successful” soft landing.…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked “emergency authorities” to bypass Congress and send $4 billion in weapons to Israel, the second time in a month that the Trump administration has skirted the process of congressional approval for sending arms to the country.Mr. Rubio did not explain in a statement announcing the decision on Saturday why he was using an emergency authority. He said only that the Trump administration would “continue to use all available tools to fulfill America’s longstanding commitment to Israel’s security, including means to counter security threats.”State Department officials told the two congressional committees in the House…

A senior military leader of the terrorist organization Hurras al-Din, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, was killed in a precision airstrike in Syria carried out by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces, according to a press release.Muhammed Yusuf Ziya Talay was killed in an airstrike that CENTCOM says is part of its efforts to “disrupt and degrade” terrorists’ plans to harm civilians or military personnel from the U.S. and its allies. CENTCOM announced on March 1 that it had killed Muhammed Yusuf Ziya Talay, a senior leader of Al-Qaeda affiliate Hurras al-Din. (CENTCOM)TRUMP CONGRATULATES US MILITARY AFTER AIRSTRIKE THAT KILLED OFFICIAL OF AL-QAEDA…

Recent measures by the federal government to strengthen its border security and answer complaints by U.S. President Donald Trump are a good start but don’t go far enough in solving long-standing issues, former border agents from both Canada and the U.S. say. Ottawa has invested over $1 billion in new equipment and security measures to combat drug trafficking and irregular migration in a bid to avert sweeping tariffs from Trump, who has tied his trade threat to concerns about fentanyl in particular. The tariffs are set to go ahead on Tuesday, Trump said last week after suggesting Canada has not…

In a first test of the Trump administration’s ability to respond to an infectious disease emergency, its top health official has shied away from one of the government’s most important tools, experts said on Sunday: loudly and directly encouraging parents to get their children vaccinated.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, was widely criticized as minimizing the measles outbreak in West Texas at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. In a social media post on Friday, he took a new tact, saying that the outbreak was a “top priority” for his department, Health and Human Services.He noted various ways in which…

On a recent weekday morning in La Mirada, a suburb outside Los Angeles, Steve Olive, 58, walked among hundreds of carpet rolls in red, green and lavender in a white, sun-drenched, 36,000-square-foot warehouse.Laid out on the floor was a 150-foot stretch of rug, delivered by truck from Georgia a few days before, in the custom shade of Academy Red that is only available for the Oscars.Mr. Olive himself may not be famous, but celebrities have strolled the plush craftsmanship of his carpet for nearly three decades.His company, Event Carpet Pros, has supplied carpets for the Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammys and…

When “Moby Dick” opens at the Metropolitan Opera this week, audiences will experience a deeply American story of unchecked ambition, fomented grievances and a self-destructive desire for revenge.Based on Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, the opera delivers an economical and resolute retelling of the fateful tale of the Pequod, a ship in pursuit of a vengeful white whale. The libretto, by Gene Scheer, hits the book’s main conflicts without losing track of the action. The score, by Jake Heggie, is graceful and propulsive. The opera’s ending is certain and clear.It’s probably fair to say that more people know the story of…