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French rugby players accused of rape in Argentina set off for Paris as closely watched case drags on

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Two French rugby players charged with aggravated sexual assault in Argentina headed back to France on Tuesday, nearly two months after their stunning arrest in the South American nation.

The French national team players, Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, wheeled their luggage through a frenzy of news cameras in the Buenos Aires International Airport ahead of their midnight Air France flight back to Paris. Addressing reporters from the departure hall, their lawyer hailed their flight home as a victory and described their experience in Argentina as “a horror movie that never should have existed.”

“This is a super, super important first step, it’s perhaps more important even than the dismissal because the authorization to leave the country means that the legal system of Mendoza trusted the work that we did,” attorney Rafael Cuneo Libarona said, referring to the courts in the western city where the alleged assault took place on July 7.

“I’m very happy to have defended boys with a high degree of innocence against the crude accusations that were made against them,” he said. The athletes have denied the allegations.

An Argentine court in Mendoza last month ordered their release from house arrest and, on Monday, authorized the 21-year-old athletes to return home even as their trial grinds on.

The harrowing testimony of a 39-year-old Argentine woman who alleged she was beaten, choked and repeatedly raped by the rugby players in their luxury hotel room has transfixed the professional rugby world and shined a light on what critics call a toxic male culture in elite sports.

The French Rugby Federation welcomed the court’s decision to let the athletes leave, saying it wanted to listen to the plaintiff but justice demands that the athletes enjoy the presumption of innocence.

The public prosecution in Mendoza, some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) west of Buenos Aires, imposed several post-release conditions. Auradou and Jegou agreed to attend hearings at the Argentine Consulate in France and return to Mendoza upon the court’s request.

Auradou and Jegou admit to having sex with the plaintiff — whom they met at a Mendoza nightclub following their team’s victory against Argentina’s Pumas — but insist the encounter was consensual.

The plaintiff says that the athletes took her back to their hotel room where they abused her and kept her against her will. Soon after she filed a criminal complaint, the players were taken into custody while their team traveled onto Uruguay to continue its regional test tour.

A judge in Mendoza approved the decision to allow Auradou and Jegou to return to France on Tuesday, rejecting the accuser’s request for the defendants to undergo further psychological tests.

On Aug. 12, a month after the arrest of Auradou and Jegou, the case against them appeared to crumble as the court ordered them freed from house arrest, highlighting a number of apparent contradictions in the plaintiff’s testimony that undermined the prosecution’s faith in its ability to present a viable case.

The plaintiff’s lawyers have requested the dismissal of the prosecution’s investigators to no avail, accusing them of lacking objectivity and failing to consider the case “from a gender perspective.”

The crime of aggravated sexual assault in Argentina carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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