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Flooding on major highway, transit hub in Toronto amid torrential rain

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TORONTO – Torrential rain that pummeled Toronto flooded a major highway, several thoroughfares and a key transit hub on Tuesday, while leaving large parts of the city without power.

Part of the Don Valley Parkway, which runs from the north part of the city into downtown, was closed due to flooding, with stretches of the highway awash with brown water. Toronto Fire Services said they rescued two people from flooding on the highway – one from inside their vehicle and another from the roof of their car – and later rescued another 12 people from flooding further down the highway.

Fire crews were also responding to an “extremely high” number of rescues related to flooding and elevator entrapments, the service said.

At the heart of the downtown core, there was flooding at Union station, a key transit terminus. Water was seen pooling on the floor of a main concourse and stores at the station were closed. Parts of the underground PATH network, which has retail and restaurants and connects to Union, were also closed due to flooding.

Subway trains were not stopping at Union, the Toronto Transit Commission said, while several transit buses and streetcars were making detours on their regular routes across the city due to localized flooding. GO Transit, which operates regional trains and buses across the Greater Toronto Area, reported several cancellations and delays out of Union.

Billy Bishop Airport, which is located on the Toronto Islands minutes from downtown, said its pedestrian tunnel had been closed due to flooding, with passengers directed to take the ferry over to the airport. The airport said some flights had been affected and urged passengers to check their flight status with their airlines.

Toronto Hydro said it was responding to “widespread outages” affecting large areas throughout the city. “We’re currently working with Hydro One to restore power. We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding,” it wrote on X.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said the city was working to deal with the fallout from the massive downpour, noting that emergency services had not been affected.

She urged people to stay away from lakes and shorelines due to flooding, adding that she had seen images of cars abandoned on washed out roadways. Chow also noted that parts of city hall had experienced some flooding.

Long-term work is needed to deal with such weather events in the future, she said.

“We really seriously have to deal with climate change because these kinds of days are going to be a lot more frequent,” she told reporters, adding that there would be a review of preventative measures for flooding procedures in light of Tuesday’s storm.

The flooding points to greater budget issues with the city’s aging infrastructure, the mayor said. While the city is “grateful” for the estimated $2 billion saved by uploading the repair costs of the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway to the province, it needs more funds to make significant repairs, Chow said.

“We are $26 billion short over 10 years to fix the old infrastructure,” she said. “So I do what I can to prevent buildings from leaking or basements from flooding, all of those things.”

On Lakeshore Boulevard in Toronto, where water was seen pooling on a closed-off section of the road, several people turned back on a pedestrian path as they encountered shin-deep water. Some, however, waded through while workers in yellow vests collected garbage from the roadside.

Andrea Hatt was rolling a suitcase along Lakeshore Boulevard trying to get from her hotel to Union Station to catch a train home to Burlington, Ont. Flooding on the road meant her route was blocked.

“I don’t know where we’re going to go now to get to the GO Train,” she said.

“I feel like it came so quick and there was really not a lot of warning about it, you know. We knew it was going to rain but it wasn’t supposed to be like this kind of rain.”

Hatt said she loved visiting Toronto and had a great time in the city but now was focused on making it out safely.

“I wanna go home,” she said.

David Lai was also on the sidewalk alongside Lakeshore Boulevard and said he had ventured out after the power went out in his downtown condo.

“It was pretty crazy,” he said of the rainstorm.

At one car dealership near the DVP, rows of vehicles were seen sitting in brown water that came up to their headlights. In the city’s financial district, water was seen in the lobby of one large office tower as workers stood outside.

Flooding was also disrupting life in many other parts of the Greater Toronto Area, with the provincial police warning of flooding on parts of highways and local police forces urging caution.

In Peel Region, west of Toronto, Mississauga Fire said a creek beside a nursing home had overflowed, causing extensive flooding. Fire crews and paramedics were on scene to help patients.

Local police had said they had reports of manhole covers lifting due to the volume of rain and were urging residents to use caution when driving.

The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority issued a flood warning and said that shorelines, rivers and streams in the Greater Toronto Area should be considered dangerous.

Environment Canada had issued rainfall warnings for the Greater Toronto Area and much of southern Ontario as a mix of heavy rain and thunderstorms moved across the region.

It had warned that there could be rainfall amounts of up to 125 millimetres for parts of the Greater Toronto Area, and Hamilton could see up to 50 millimetres.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2024.

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Teen smoking and other tobacco use drop to lowest level in 25 years, CDC reports

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NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.

There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.

“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”

A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.

The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.

Use of other products has been dropping, too.

Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.

Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.

The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.

Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.

Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,

Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Alabama man arrested in SEC social media account hack that led the price of bitcoin to spike

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WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.

Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”

But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.

Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.

Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”

An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.

The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Tech firms remove social media accounts of a Russian drone factory after an AP investigation

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Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.

Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”

But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.

In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.

The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.

The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.

In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”

Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.

It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.

TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.

The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.

Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.

The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.

Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.

Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.

In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”

According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.

Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.

Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”

That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.

TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.

Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.

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