Jays move Varsho to 60-day injured list after shoulder surgery; Martinez reinstated

CALGARY – Reid Carruthers seeks a three-peat in curling’s quirky PointsBet Invitational that’s become an unofficial season kickoff because of money, field and visibility.

The five-day televised tournament starting Wednesday at Calgary’s WinSport Arena features the top 10 men’s and women’s teams in Canada among the 32 entries. The men’s and women’s victors Sunday each earn a total of $50,000 in prize money.

Winnipeg’s Carruthers was the men’s champ in both the inaugural PointsBet in Fredericton in 2022, and in Oakville, Ont., last year.

What makes Curling Canada’s cashspiel quirky is the single-elimination format, the tiebreaking draw to the button instead of an extra end, and junior, university, college and club teams mixing with curling’s elite.

“I categorize this as still a new event,” Carruthers said. “It is a slightly different format with it being single-elimination, draw to the button for the win, no extra end.

“It’s a little bit different, but a big prize purse. First time for all the teams to be on TV (this season). To have an early-season challenge like the PointsBet, it’s an awesome opportunity to set the tone for the season for your team.”

World and Canadian women’s champion Rachel Homan is the defending PointsBet women’s champion.

The skip sees the event as a combination of high stakes — one loss and you’re out — and a lighter schedule than Grand Slams or the national championship Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

“Playoffs right away is just a different way of thinking about it,” Homan said. “You start with playoffs and you don’t get any practice games.

“It’s something different, something fun, not too physically demanding or exhausting (since) it’s just one game a day and one of the days you don’t play.”

The PointsBet also provides the first glimpse of revamped lineups.

Carruthers has a new vice for the third time in as many years. Catlin Schneider, who skipped B.C. in the 2024 national men’s championship, joined Carruthers after Brad Jacobs’ departure.

“We’re still learning each other in the house,” Carruthers said. “From a technical standpoint, he throws the rock very similar to us.

“Figuring out how to get the most out of each other is something that we’re working on and it will take a little bit of time and conversation about what we need to do to be consistently one of the best teams in Canada.”

Jacobs took over a formidable lineup of Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert from Brendan Bottcher. The No. 2 men’s team in Canada joins reigning national champion Brad Gushue, Brier runner-up Mike McEwen and Matt Dunstone in Calgary’s field.

Those four teams have berths in the 2025 Montana’s Brier in Kelowna, B.C. locked in.

Chelsea Carey took over as the No. 2 women’s team in Canada from the retired Jennifer Jones.

She and PointsBet combatants Homan, Kaitlyn Lawes and four-time Canadian champion Kerri Einarson, are pre-qualified for the 2025 Tournament of Hearts in Thunder Bay, Ont.

The recently crowned men’s and women’s national under-25 champions, as well as the 2024 under-21, university and college champions get a taste of curling’s big leagues in Calgary.

“Some of these teams don’t get opportunities in an arena under big pressure and lights,” Carruthers said. “You can only get better by exposing yourself to those moments and those games.”

Homan’s first game on Wednesday is against women’s college champion Gabby Wood of Edmonton. Einarson opens Thursday against Canadian women’s under-21 champion Allyson MacNutt of Halifax.

Einarson’s second Shannon Birchard is out of the lineup with a knee injury and will be replaced by Laura Walker in Calgary.

Krysten Karwacki continues as Einarson’s lead while Briane Harris awaits the outcome of a doping appeal for what she has said is inadvertent ingestion of a banned substance.

Carruthers starts defence of his men’s title Thursday against Quebec’s Felix Asselin, who added 2006 Canadian champion and world silver medallist Jean-Michel Menard to his lineup this season.

Top seed Gushue faces men’s club champion Dan Sherrard of Beaumont, Alta., on Wednesday. Jacobs starts Thursday against men’s college champion Jacob Dobson of Toronto.

Curling Canada provides each team with $5,000 for travel and accommodation. A first-round win is worth $3,000, a quarterfinal victory $6,000, a semifinal win $12,000, plus another $24,000 for the title.

— With files from Gregory Strong

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2024.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday with a call for the world to do more to combat climate change. He mentioned the fires ravaging the rainforest back home — but not the fact they’re adding to criticism of his administration’s own environmental stewardship.

Brazil’s Amazon saw 38,000 blazes last month, the most for any August since 2010, according to data from the country’s space institute. September is on track to repeat that ignoble feat. Smoke has been choking residents of many cities, including metropolis Sao Paulo that’s thousands of miles away. Lula has cast these fires as the result of drought and criminals, and proposed harsher punishments for environmental offenders.

“The Amazon is going through the worst drought in 45 years. Forest fires spreading across the country have already devoured 5 million hectares (19,300 square miles) in August alone,” he said in New York. “My government does not outsource responsibility nor abdicate its sovereignty. We have already done a lot, but we know that much more needs to be done.”

But enforcement has been hampered by a six-month strike at environmental regulator Ibama that ended in August — three months after his administration was aware of significantly heightened risk of fires amid the historic drought.

At the same time, members of his Cabinet have presented conflicting views of environmental and energy policies. And Lula’s rhetoric about tapping oil reserves near the mouth of the Amazon River has worried environmentalists who want Brazil to drive a global transition to clean energy. This month, he promised to pave a road in the Amazon experts say will drive deforestation.

When Lula was last president, between 2003 and 2010, he repeatedly spoke about climate change, holding up Brazil as a beacon of conservation for the future and blaming rich countries for polluting the planet while failing to help developing nations maintain their forests. He campaigned in 2022 while presenting himself as an environmental alternative to his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose rhetoric stoked destruction in the Amazon. Once in office, Lula’s administration significantly reduced illegal Amazon deforestation in its first year.

But now, his calls for an awakening to the need for collective environmental action may have been heard differently, according to Brazilian political consultant Thomas Traumann.

“Lula has always attended international gatherings with a lot to say, with many calling him a champion on the environment. This time that won’t ring true,” Traumann said before Lula’s speech. “We can’t say his administration is to blame for all these fires. There’s a lot of support for them at the local level. But some of this would never have taken place if the Ibama strike hadn’t gone for so long.”

Lula announced on Friday that anyone caught setting fires in forests will pay fines of up to $1,800 per hectare. He also announced additional spending of up to 500 million reais ($90 million) to fight fires nationwide. Earlier Tuesday, he met U.N Secretary-General António Guterres to discuss next year’s COP-30 climate summit in the Amazon city of Belem. And speaking to global leaders at the General Assembly, Lula held fast to his defiant tone on climate change, seeking to hold developed nations to account.

“The planet cannot make demands of the next generation and is fed up with climate deals that are not fulfilled. It is tired of neglected carbon emission reduction goals,” he said. “Beyond facing the challenge of climate change, we are also fighting those who profit from environmental degradation.”

His call for reduced emissions stood in contrast to comments from Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira at an oil conference in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, saying Brazil will explore offshore oil reserves near the Amazon.

“We cannot and will not give up on knowing the country’s true oil potential,” he said. “As long as there is demand for gas and for oil, Brazil will follow that market.”

Environmentalist Tica Minami said during a protest outside the oil conference that Lula’s administration “has sent conflicting signals in its policies.”

“It is not only the executive branch; Brazil’s government as a whole that needs to prioritize protection,” she said. “Our government needs to be courageous and do what needs to be done for the environment and its people. But companies also have a lot of responsibility. They are the ones profiting from the destruction of the environment.”

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See more of AP’s coverage of the U.N. General Assembly at

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Some drivers who bought their vehicle within the past couple of years when auto prices were hovering around record highs are now facing the reality that they’re underwater with their car loans.

“We saw some rare (price) appreciation during the time that consumers were purchasing these high-priced cars,” Daniel Ross of Canadian Black Book said of the auto market during the pandemic years.

Global supply chain disruptions stemming from the pandemic left the auto market with low inventory — and coupled with high consumer demand — auto prices surged, Ross said.

Some of those issues have since begun to normalize, allowing prices to ease, but it’s left some consumers owing more on their auto loan than the car is now currently worth. It’s referred to as negative equity, or being underwater.

As with the vast majority of vehicles, they’re a depreciating asset, so for those who purchased their car when prices were high, their “vehicle will continue to lose lots of value because it was probably overpriced at that time,” Ross said.

On average, people who were underwater saw the negative equity in their cars climb to a record high of US$6,255 in the second quarter this year, compared with US$4,487 in the second quarter of 2022, a July report from auto retail platform Edmunds showed.

Trade-ins with negative equity also jumped, Edmunds said in its report.

“If you’re in a negative equity position, it’s not easy to get out of that,” Ross said.

For drivers who are in this situation, it’s better to drive that car into the ground and just keep paying off the loan, he said.

“It’s wisest to work with the devil, so to speak, as opposed to getting into something else — a new scenario,” such as trading in or buying a new vehicle.

Halifax-based financial planner and Aergo Financial Planning founder Ben Mayhewsaid negativeequityis usually resolved when left to itself.

When a driver stays the course — keeps the car and pays down the loan — the value of the loan will cross the car’s value and balance out at some point, Mayhew said.

But if a driver must get out of the negative equity situation, Mayhew suggested refinancing the loan at a lower rate. Many people got into higher interest rate loans during the big supply crunch and rising interest rates, he said.

“It will be beneficial to both refinance to a lower rate as well as to a shorter term … to reduce that financial strain,” Mayhew said.

Delinquencies were rising in the second quarter of 2024 for both non-bank and bank loans, an Equifax report showed. Missed payments on bank loans for vehicles were at their highest since 2019 while the 90-day balance delinquency rate for non-bank loans was up 26.8 per cent from a year ago.

If refinancing is off the table, car owners could look into paying down the loan faster and narrowing the loan-to-equity gap, though Mayhew said that can be challenging as many people are also contending with the high cost of living.

Although not ideal, Mayhew said drivers can consider trading in their vehicles with negative equity for another car and roll the current debt into the new loan.

“The thing to be careful about is that we don’t want to have a perpetual cycle,” Mayhew warned. He added the payment plan of the new vehicle shouldn’t only be based on what the driver can afford.

Instead, a driver should be aware of the price of the car, the negative equity that’s getting rolled into it and how that’s going to look — not just today but over the life of the loan and the vehicle, Mayhew said. He suggested going for older vehicles that have already passed the steep depreciation curve.

“Being underwater on a new car when driving off the lot is definitely a tough spot to be in,” he said.

It’s better to buy a new car with as big of a down payment as possible to avoid piling interest costs on a depreciating asset — and save the rolling negative equity trouble.

Mohamed Bouchama, a consultant with non-profit Car Help Canada, suggests not falling for tempting leasing and financing advertisements to avoid the risk of being underwater.

“If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it, buy something cheaper,” he said.

Bouchama said the golden rule to avoid negative equity is to not go over a five-year term for financing, or a three- or four-year term for leasing, and to budget with other related costs in mind, such as gas, insurance and maintenance.

“When you buy a car, make sure you can afford it,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2024.