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

OTTAWA – On Friday night, the common phrase to describe the Ottawa Senators 2-1 loss to the New York Rangers was that the Ottawa squad got “goalied” after New York’s star netminder Igor Shesterkin stopped 40 shots.

It was a role-reversal for the Senators one night later as backup netminder Anton Forsberg recorded a shutout against the Seattle Kraken — for the second straight season — as Ottawa topped the Seattle Kraken 3-0.

“Always nice to have a shutout, but obviously always super nice to see the bounce back we had tonight from yesterday,” said Forsberg, who stopped 22 shots in the victory.

“It was a tough loss yesterday. Played real well. And we came in here again, worked real hard, and it was impressive.”

This marked Forsberg’s second shutout of the season after a 31-save effort against the Utah Hockey Club. He’s now made six starts in 2024 after Linus Ullmark, who signed a four-year, $33-million (US) contract with Ottawa before the start of the 2024 campaign, missed a handful of games with a strain injury.

Forsberg said he’s been working hard on his positioning alongside Ullmark and new Senators’ goalie coach Justin Peters and the work is paying off.

“I’ve tried to be eager and listen. You can never learn too much,” Forsberg said.

Forsberg is only NHL goalie this season to have posted two shutouts.

“I’m happy for him,” said Ottawa coach Travis Green about Forsberg’s Saturday performance. “He probably wasn’t happy with his game after Linus got hurt. He’s really found his groove. And he had another great game tonight.”

The Senators’ Saturday night effort was, according to captain Brady Tkachuk, the team’s finest hour of the season.

Tkachuk scored his team-leading seventh goal of the game in the second period.

“Tonight, I feel like that was the best 60-minute effort that we’ve had as a team so far this year,” he said. “And that’s been our expectation now I’m excited about looking to build off that.”

Adam Gaudette opening the scoring in the first period with a backhanded chip-in after a coach’s challenge overturned an initial no-goal ruling. Green is now 3-for-3 on the season with successful challenges.

Gaudette has scored six goals in his last five games and was tied for the team lead in goals before Tkachuk — who has recorded seven points in his last four games — netted one of his own.

Tim Stützle added an empty netter with just over two minutes remaining to put the game out of reach.

Tkachuk said he was frustrated to have seen the Senators play as detailed a game as they did against the Rangers but still come up short. But despite the squad feeling the effects of a back-to-back — they arrived after midnight after the loss in New York — mentally they were dialed in.

“We probably weren’t as sharp as we were last night but there are some nights when your structure and details … you have to rely on that to win some games especially when you’re playing back-to-back. You’ll probably need to spend a little time in your own zone, and we did, but we defended really well tonight,” Green said.

“We played a game last night and lost a game we probably deserved better. I was happy for our group tonight and the way they came out.”

With the team seemingly starting to run out of gas in the third, Forsberg made a nifty save on Kraken captain Jordan Eberle, going post-to-post to keep the shutout intact. The pressure was on, but Forsberg said he saw his team make stops in front of him and witnessed a team that “skated hard” and “forechecked hard.”

Add it all up, and it’s another win for a team that is eager to take the next step.

“It was a fun game to play,” Forsberg said. “We are a young team, but … everyone is hungry. We know how it is. Everyone is really motivated to make the hard push for the playoffs here.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 2, 2024.

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RED DEER, Alta. – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith received a dominating 91.5 per cent vote of support from her United Conservative Party members in a scheduled leadership review vote on Saturday.

That number is far higher than the 54 per cent Smith got when she won the party leadership in 2022. That same year, her predecessor, Jason Kenney, received 51 per cent and soon after resigned.

“I’m truly humbled and honoured by the overwhelming support of our party members in my leadership,” Smith said as thousands roared their approval and gave her a standing ovation almost a minute long.

“I want to thank all of you for everything that you’ve done to grow our movement and to make it stronger.

“Our party is more united than it has ever been.”

About 6,000 members signed up for the meeting, and the party said 4,663 voted to approve to Smith.

While there is no mandated minimum level needed in such a vote, Smith said earlier Saturday she was hoping to beat 54 per cent.

Past conservative Alberta premiers Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford received 77 per cent in their leadership votes before being ousted later in caucus controversies.

The party’s bylaws require one leadership review every three years, meaning Smith likely won’t face such a review again until after the next provincial election in 2027, if she seeks a second term.

Earlier Saturday, in a speech to party members as voting began, Smith said everyone is not going to agree on everything all the time but they need to avoid destructive infighting and stay true to their conservative principles.

While there were concerns that some party members were making a concerted effort to oust Smith over perceived broken campaign promises, many members and Smith’s own cabinet donned buttons and T-shirts urging the rank and file to back her.

Political scientists had said they didn’t expect Smith’s leadership would be in jeopardy and said the question moving forward is whether or not Smith and her cabinet would stick to party members’ policy wishes.

Smith told the cheering crowd she will stay the course.

“Together we will vigorously protect the rights and freedoms of Albertans and Alberta parents and children. Together we will build health and education systems that are among the best in the world,” she said.

In recent months, Smith has toured the province speaking to party faithful while introducing policies that critics said were aimed at keeping the party’s restless social-conservative flank from voting against her in the review.

This week, her government introduced bills aimed at putting in rules around youth using preferred pronouns or names at school, along with restrictions on transgender surgery and transgender athletes competing in female amateur sports.

She also announced a renewed legal fight against the federal carbon levy and introduced a bill to revamp Alberta’s Bill of Rights to give residents the right to refuse medical treatments, including vaccines.

Alongside the leadership vote, party members voted Saturday on a number of policy resolutions put forward by constituency associations.

The first policy party members approved Saturday was actually a drafted re-write of the Alberta Bill of Rights amendments Smith’s government put forward.

The party-approved draft was advanced by a group of UCP members from southern Alberta who say the amendments put forward by Smith don’t go far enough.

Darrell Komick, a party member from Calgary, told the audience that rights should be collected like hockey cards.

“I’d encourage everyone who’s a conservative to accumulate as many rights as possible by voting yes,” he said.

“Because you never really know the value of the hockey card until that moment in time which you need it.”

One policy, approved handily by the membership, is to have the Alberta government do away with diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices, professional development programs and “other training” for provincial employees.

One party member speaking in favour of the resolution said the hiring practice leads to a toxic workplace. “Use of public funds for (diversity, equity and inclusion) must stop,” he said.

Members also overwhelmingly approved a motion asking the government to ban transgender women from using women’s washrooms, change rooms and shelters. Michelle Bataluk, a party member from Edmonton, said the policy “shouldn’t be a controversial belief at all.”

“The inclusion of non-biological females in these spaces and categories is both a violation to our privacy … and it poses several safety risks,” said Bataluk.

Members also overwhelmingly approved a motion to limit all government forms and documents to two gender options.

Another policy that received support from most of the room was to have the Alberta government abandon net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets, while also removing carbon dioxide’s designation as a pollutant and have it instead recognized as “a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.”

Party member Christopher Bell from the Chestermere-Strathmore constituency association said he supported the policy, because if carbon dioxide is considered a “foundational nutrient” there would be no need for net-zero goals.

The policies are non-binding, so Smith’s UCP government is not required to act on every successful motion.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 2, 2024.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Abortion and reproductive rights have been central to the races for president and governor in North Carolina, a battleground state that has more moderate abortion restrictions than elsewhere across the South.

That’s been even truer in the fight for a seat on the state Supreme Court that abortion rights supporters say will play an important role in determining whether Republicans can enact even more restrictions. Registered Republicans currently hold five of seven seats and could expand that majority even further in Tuesday’s election.

Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat who is running for reelection, is focusing heavily on the issue and touts her support for reproductive rights. Her first television ad featured images of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, who prefers to restrict abortions earlier than the current 12 weeks. She says her GOP rival for the court could be a deciding vote on the bench for such restrictions.

“This is an issue that is landing in front of state Supreme Courts, and it is one that is very salient to voters now,” Riggs said in an interview.

Her Republican opponent, Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, said Riggs is saying too much about an issue that could come before the court.

“I think it’s an inappropriate manner, a clear violation of our judicial standards, our code of conduct,” he said.

The North Carolina race emphasizes how much abortion is fueling expensive campaigns for Supreme Courts in several states this year. Groups on the right and left are spending heavily to reshape courts that could play deciding roles in legal fights over abortion, reproductive rights, voting rights, redistricting and other hot-button issues for years to come.

Experts say the campaigns show how the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning constitutional abortion protections that had been in place for half a century has transformed races for state high courts.

“What Dobbs did was made clear to both political stakeholders and the public that these state courts that hadn’t got a lot of attention are actually going to be really important and they’re going to be deciding some of the biggest cases that people might have expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center, which has tracked spending on state court races.

Thirty-three states are holding elections for 82 Supreme Court seats this year. The 2024 election cycle follows record-breaking spending for judicial races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania last year.

Groups on the left have ramped up their spending on state courts considerably this year. The American Civil Liberties Union has spent $5.4 million on court races in Montana, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio. Planned Parenthood and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee earlier this year announced they were collectively spending $5 million, focusing on court races in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

“We have never invested this heavily in state Supreme Courts before,” said Katie Rodihan, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes. “This is really a groundbreaking move for us, and I expect this will be the norm for us moving forward.”

The targets include Ohio, where Republicans hold a 4-3 majority on the court. Democrats are defending two seats on the court, while a third is open, and Democratic victories in all three races are considered a longshot in the Republican-leaning state.

Control of the court could be key if the state appeals a judge’s ruling that struck down the most far-reaching of the state’s abortion restrictions. The ruling said the law banning most abortions once cardiac activity is detected — as early as six weeks into pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant — violated a constitutional amendment approved by voters last year that protected reproductive rights.

Two seats are up for election on Michigan’s court, where Democratic-backed justices hold a 4-3 majority. Court races are technically nonpartisan, but candidates are nominated at party conventions. Republicans would need to win both seats to flip the court in their favor.

Justice Kyra Harris Bolden is defending the seat she was appointed to two years ago by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Bolden was the first Black woman to sit on Michigan’s bench. She faces Republican-backed circuit court Judge Patrick O’Grady for the remaining four years of the eight-year term.

Republican state Rep. Andrew Fink is competing against University of Michigan law professor Kimberly Anne Thomas, who was nominated by Democrats, for the other open seat that is being vacated by a Republican-backed justice.

Michigan voters already have locked abortion rights in the state constitution, though groups backing Bolden and Thomas are framing the races as crucial to defending those rights, with one group’s ad warning that “the Michigan state Supreme Court can still take abortion rights away.”

The most heated races are for two seats on the Montana Supreme Court, which has come under fire from GOP lawmakers over rulings against laws that would have restricted abortion access or made it more difficult to vote.

Former U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerry Lynch is running against county attorney Cory Swanson for chief justice, while state judge Katherine Bidegaray is running against state judge Dan Wilson for another open seat on the court.

Progressive groups have been backing Lynch and Bidegaray. Both said in an ACLU questionnaire that they agreed with the reasoning and holding of a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling that the constitutional right to privacy includes the right to obtain a pre-viability abortion.

Groups on the right have been painting them both as too liberal and echoing national Republicans’ rhetoric, with text messages invoking the debate over transgender athletes on women’s sports teams.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, a longtime player in state court races, said its Judicial Fairness Initiative planned to spend seven figures in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

The group’s ads are focusing on issues other than abortion. In one touting three Republicans running for Ohio’s court, the group shows images of President Donald Trump along with images related to immigration.

A super PAC backed by conservative donor and shipping executive Richard Uihlein also has given to groups involved in state Supreme Court races in Montana and Ohio.

Progressive groups are even focusing attention on longshot states such as Texas, where Republicans hold all the seats on the Supreme Court. They’re trying to unseat three GOP justices who were part of unanimous rulings rejecting challenges to the state’s abortion ban.

One group, Find Out PAC, has been running digital ads in San Antonio, Dallas and Houston criticizing justices Jimmy Blacklock, John Devine and Jane Bland. In its ad, the group accuses the three of “playing doctor from the bench.”

In North Carolina, Riggs’ campaigning on abortion rights has prompted complaints from Republicans who say she’s stepping outside the bounds of judicial ethics. But Riggs said she’s not saying how she would rule in any case and is merely sharing her values with voters.

“I’m going to keep talking about my values because, at the core, our democracy works best when people cast informed votes,” she said.

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Associated Press writers Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, and Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana, contributed to this report.