Orla Mining signs deal to buy Musselwhite gold mine in Ontario from Newmont

TORONTO – Manulife Financial Corp. says chief executive Roy Gori will retire in May and be replaced by Phil Witherington, who is currently serving as chief executive of Manulife Asia.

The insurer says Gori will officially retire as chief executive on May 8, 2025, but will continue as an adviser to the company until Aug. 31, 2025.

Gori joined Manulife in 2015 as chief executive for the company’s business in Asia and was appointed chief executive of the overall company in 2017.

Manulife board chair Don Lindsay says the company is well-positioned for sustained future growth because of Gori’s disciplined focus on execution and the tremendous team and culture he’s built.

Manulife says Witherington served as chief financial officer of the company for five years before he took over running the insurer’s business in Asia.

Witherington is expected to continue in his current job as he works with Gori on transition planning and will name a successor in the coming months.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.

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OTTAWA – Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the annual pace of housing starts in October rose eight per cent compared with September.

The national housing agency said the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts was 240,761 units in October, up from 223,391 in September.

The increase came as the annual pace of urban housing starts rose six per cent to 223,111 units.

The annual pace of multi-unit urban starts such as apartments, condominiums and townhouses gained seven per cent at 175,705, while the rate of single-detached urban starts increased one per cent at 47,406 units.

The annual pace of rural starts was estimated at 17,650.

CMHC chief economist Bob Dugan said the Prairies, Quebec and Atlantic provinces have seen higher activity this year, while Ontario and B.C. recorded declines.

“Despite these results, we remain well below what is required to restore affordability in Canada’s urban centres,” Dugan said in a news release on Monday.

Actual year-to-date housing starts between January and October 2024 were up 12 per cent in Montreal from the same period last year, while in Vancouver, actual starts were down 18 per cent after a record high year in 2023.

In Toronto, actual year-to-date housing starts were down 21 per cent from 2023.

CMHC said the six-month moving average of the annual rate of housing starts was flat in October at 243,522 units.

TD economist Rishi Sondhi said October’s “healthy” level of starts “sets homebuilding off on the right foot in terms of its contribution to overall economic growth in the fourth quarter.”

But the outlook for housing starts remains “soft,” he said, even when considering October’s gains.

“This is largely due to the outsized weakness expected for Ontario, which will bring down the national figures,” Sondhi said in a note, adding starts in Ontario over the past 12 months have fallen to levels last seen in 2020.

“Pre-sales activity remains exceedingly weak in the GTA, pointing to more of the same through 2025. This is the key factor underpinning our forecast that starts will decline next year, even with homebuilding likely to hold up better in other parts of the country.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.

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About one in five Americans – and a virtually identical share of Republicans and Democrats – regularly get their news from digital influencers who are more likely to be found on the social media platform X, according to a report released Monday by the Pew Research Center.

The findings, drawn from a survey of more than 10,000 U.S. adults and an analysis of social media posts posted this summer by influencers, provide an indication of how Americans consumed the news during the height of the U.S. presidential campaign that President-elect Donald Trump ultimately won.

The study examined accounts run by people who post and talk regularly about current events – including through podcasts and newsletters – and have more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X or TikTok. They include people across the political spectrum, such as the progressive podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen and conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, as well as non-partisan personalities like Chris Cillizza, a former CNN analyst who now runs his own newsletter.

The report found that news influencers posted mostly about politics and the election, followed by social issues like race and abortion and international events, such as the Israel-Hamas war. Most of them – 63% – are men and the majority – 77% – have no affiliation, or background, with a media organization. Pew said about half of the influencers it sampled did not express a clear political orientation. From the ones that did, slightly more of them identified as conservative than as liberal.

During the campaign, both parties and presidential campaigns had courted influencers, including creators who weren’t very political, to compete for voters who are increasingly getting most of their news from non-traditional sources.

The Republican and Democratic national conventions had credentialed influencers to cover their events this past summer. Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with Alex Cooper for her “Call Her Daddy” podcast and talked a little Bay Area basketball with the fellows on “All the Smoke.” Meanwhile, Trump hung out with the bros on the “Bussin’ With the Boys,” “Flagrant” and the popular podcaster Joe Rogan as part of a series of appearances targeting young male voters.

“These influencers have really reached new levels of attention and prominence this year amid the presidential election,” Galen Stocking, senior computational social scientist at Pew Research Center, said in a statement. “We thought it was really important to look at who is behind some of the most popular accounts – the ones that aren’t news organizations, but actual people.”

Even though 85% of news influencers have a presence on X, many of them also have homes on other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

Racial minorities, young adults and adults with a lower income were more likely to get their news from news influencers, according to the report. Most of the people surveyed by Pew said news influencers have helped them better understand current events, while roughly a quarter say what they hear has not made much of a difference. A small share — 9% — say influencers have confused them more.

Media analysts have long been concerned about how influencers – most of whom don’t have to abide by editorial standards – could fuel misinformation, or even be used by America’s adversaries to churn out content that fits their interests. On social media, though, some influencers have positioned themselves as figures presenting neglected points of view.

Pew, which is doing the study as part of an initiative funded by the Knight Foundation, said 70% of the survey respondents believe the news they get from influencers is somewhat different than what they hear elsewhere. Roughly a quarter said it was “extremely or very different.”

The report found TikTok is the only one of the major platforms where influencers who identify as right-leaning do not outnumber those who are more liberal. Pew said news influencers on the short-form video app were more likely than those on other sites to show support for LGBTQ+ rights or identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. The platform also had the smallest gender gap for news influencers.

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AP media writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

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