One dead & 40 injured at Medusa Festival in Spain

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s temporary rent cap and a loophole that allows landlords to avoid it were the targets of the provincial New Democrats on Thursday, as they promised to protect tenants from evictions and excessive hikes if elected Nov. 26.

An NDP government would ban fixed-term leases, establish rent control, and immediately slash the province’s temporary rent cap in half to 2.5 per cent, leader Claudia Chender said on the fifth day of the provincial election campaign.

“For too many people, the cost of rent is driving people out of the communities they love,” she said. “These protections will save renters money, keep our communities affordable, and most importantly help people plan their futures.”

Chender criticized the Progressive Conservative government’s record on housing, saying the average one-bedroom apartment in the province costs $2,000 a month, while rent overall has increased by 18 per cent in the last year.

The government’s decision to extend the temporary cap on rent increases to the end of 2027 is insufficient, she said, because landlords can use fixed-term leases to jack up the rent higher.

A fixed-term lease does not automatically renew when its term ends, after which landlords can raise the rent as much as they want if they rent to someone new. Critics of fixed-term leases say they encourage landlords to evict tenants in order to raise the rent past the cap.

Though there’s no way to know exactly how many renters in Nova Scotia are on fixed-term leases — that type of residency data is not tracked — Chender told reporters that at every door her party has knocked on, residents have cited anxiety over affording and keeping a place to live.

Meanwhile, a separate affordability issue was the focus of Liberal Leader Zach Churchill on Thursday, as he announced his party would cut provincial income taxes by raising the basic personal exemption amount to $15,705 — at a cost to the government of $348 million.

Churchill said something has to be done to reduce taxes in the province, which he said are among the highest in Canada at a time when people are struggling with the cost of living.

“We know that over the last three years Nova Scotia has gone from being one of the most affordable places to live in our country to one of the most expensive,” he said. “This has created a real affordability crisis for seniors, for families and for young people.”

The existing exemption is $8,744, and for people making less than $25,000 a year, the province gives an “adjustment,” which increases the basic personal amount by $3,000; the adjustment decreases gradually and ends for people earning more than $75,000.

Churchill said a Liberal government would double the adjustment for people who earn less than $75,000, at a cost of $55 million per year.

The Liberal leader said his party will respect its promise to cut income taxes — and respect its pledge made in February to cut the harmonized sales tax by two points — even if doing so will lead to a “short-term” budget deficit.

Earlier this week, the Progressive Conservatives pledged a tax cut that would increase the basic personal exemption to $11,744, while just prior to the election call the party promised a one percentage point cut to the HST — commitments Churchill characterized as “half measures.”

In an interview Thursday, Tory Leader Tim Houston scoffed at his opponent’s suggestion.

“We are putting a plan forward that is reasonable that we can do while maintaining a level of services,” Houston said. “Mr. Churchill can just say whatever he wants, I have to be reasonable.”

Houston travelled to Sydney, N.S., on Thursday where he announced his party would establish a provincially run travel nurse team to help areas with nursing shortages.

Houston said the team would eliminate the need to hire travel nurses from private companies, and would be composed of Nova Scotia Health employees who will have access to the same pay and benefits as other nurses in the public system.

The program would begin as a pilot project by the end of the year, involving a 30-member team of nurses who would staff hospital emergency departments at an estimated cost of $5.3 million.

“We have to be smart and systematic as we roll it out,” Houston said. “There will probably be some learning and we will take that and if we need to modify it (the program) we will.”

At dissolution, the Progressive Conservatives held 34 seats in the 55-seat legislature, the Liberals held 14 seats, the NDP had six and there was one Independent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2024.

— With files by Cassidy McMackon in Halifax.

LONDON (AP) — A British ban on protesting outside abortion clinics went into effect on Thursday, though it left a question mark over whether anti-abortion demonstrators who pray silently will be breaking the law.

The law, which applies to England and Wales, bars protests within 150 meters (164 yards) of clinics. Scotland and Northern Ireland, which make their own health policies, recently enacted similar bans.

The new rules make it an offense to obstruct someone using abortion services, “intentionally or recklessly” influence their decision, or cause “harassment, alarm or distress.” Offenders face a fine, with no upper limit.

The buffer zone rule was passed 18 months ago as part of the previous Conservative government’s Public Order Act, but wrangling over whether it would apply to silent prayer protests, and a change in government in July, have delayed it taking effect.

The Crown Prosecution Service says silent prayer near an abortion clinic “will not necessarily commit a criminal offense,” and police say they will assess each case individually.

Anti-abortion campaigners and religious groups argue that banning silent-prayer protests would be an affront to freedom of religion. But pro-choice campaigners say silent anti-abortion demonstrators are often intimidating to women entering clinics.

“It’s difficult to see how anyone choosing to perform their prayers right outside an abortion clinic could argue they aren’t attempting to influence people — and there are countless testimonies from women who say this makes them feel distressed,” said Louise McCudden, U.K. head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, one of Britain’s biggest abortion providers.

In March 2023, lawmakers rejected a change to the legislation proposed by some conservative legislators that would have explicitly allowed silent prayer within the buffer zones. The final rules are a potentially messy compromise that is likely to be tested in court.

Crime and Policing Minister Diana Johnson said she was “confident that the safeguards we have put in place today will have a genuine impact in helping women feel safer and empowered to access the vital services they need.”

But Bishop John Sherrington of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said the government had “taken an unnecessary and disproportionate step backwards” on religious freedom.

“Religious freedom includes the right to manifest one’s private beliefs in public through witness, prayer and charitable outreach, including outside abortion facilities,” he said.

Abortion is not as divisive an issue in the U.K. as in the U.S., where women’s access to terminations has been rolled back, and banned in some states, since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022.

Abortion was partly legalized in Britain by the 1967 Abortion Act, which allows abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy if two doctors approve. Later abortions are allowed in some circumstances, including danger to the mother’s life.

But women who have abortions after 24 weeks in England and Wales can be prosecuted under the 1861 Offenses Against the Person Act. Last year a 45-year-old woman in England was sentenced to 28 months in prison for ordering abortion pills online to induce a miscarriage when she was 32 to 34 weeks pregnant. After an outcry, her sentence was reduced.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) — Google Maps is heading down a new road steered by artificial intelligence.

The shift announced Thursday will bring more of the revolutionary AI technology that Google already has been baking into its dominant search engine to the digital maps service that the internet company launched nearly 20 years ago as part of its efforts to expand into new frontiers.

Google Maps recently surpassed 2 billion monthly users worldwide for the first time, a milestone that illustrates how dependent people have become on the service’s directions during their daily commutes and excursions to new places. With the introduction of Google’s AI-powered Gemini technology, the maps are now being set up to become entertainment guides in addition to navigational tools.

Starting this week in the U.S. only, users will be able to converse with Google Maps to ask for tips on things to do around specific spots in a neighborhood or city and receive lists of restaurants, bars and other nearby attractions that include reviews that have been compiled through the years. The new features will also provide more detailed information about parking options near a designated destination along with walking directions for a user to check after departing the car.

“We are entering a new era of maps,” Miriam Daniel, general manager of Google Maps, told reporters Wednesday during a preview of the features presented in Palo Alto, California. “We are transforming how you navigate and explore the world.”

Google Maps also is trying to address complaints by introducing more detailed imagery that will make it easier to see which lane of the road to be situated in well ahead of having to make a turn.

In another AI twist, Google Maps is going to allow outside developers to tap into the language models underlying its Gemini technology to enable pose questions about specific destinations, such as apartments or restaurants, and get their queries answered within seconds. Google says this new feature, which initially will go through a testing phase, has undergone a fact-checking procedure that it calls “grounding.”

Google’s Waze maps, which focus exclusively on real-time driving directions, will use AI to offer a conversational way for its roughly 180 million monthly users to announce hazards in the road and other problems that could affect traveling times.

The decision to bring AI into a service that so many rely upon to get from one point to the next reflects Google’s growing confidence in its ability to prevent its Gemini technology from providing false or misleading information, also known as “hallucinations,” to users. Google’s AI has already been caught hallucinating in some of the summaries that began rolling in May, including advice to put glue on pizza and an assertion that the fourth U.S. president, James Madison, graduated from the University of Wisconsin, located in a city named after him.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.