Police arrest 20-year-old man, 17-year-old boy in weekend shooting at Jewish school

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A video purporting to show dozens of North Korean recruits lining up to collect Russian military fatigues and gear aims to intimidate Ukrainian forces and marks a new chapter in the 2 1/2-year war with the introduction of another country into the battlefield, Ukrainian officials said.

The video, which was obtained by Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, which operates under the Culture and Information Ministry, is said to show North Korean soldiers standing in line to pick up bags, clothes and other apparel from Russian servicemen. The Associated Press could not verify the video independently.

“We received this video from our own sources. We cannot provide additional verification from the sources who provided it to us due to security concerns,” said Ihor Solovey, head of the center.

“The video clearly shows North Korean citizens being given Russian uniforms under the direction of the Russian military,” he said. “For Ukraine, this video is important because it is the first video evidence that shows North Korea participating in the war on the side of Russia. Now not only with weapons and shells but also with personnel.”

The center claims the footage was shot by a Russian soldier in recent days. The location is unknown.

It comes after the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said in local media reports that about 11,000 North Korean infantrymen were currently training in eastern Russia. He predicted they would be ready to join fighting by November. At least 2,600 would be sent to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion in August, he was quoted as saying.

“The emergence of any number of new soldiers is a problem because we will simply need new, additional weapons to destroy them all,” Solovey told AP. “The dissemination of this video is important as a signal to the world community that with two countries officially at war against Ukraine, we will need more support to repel this aggression.”

The presence of North Korean soldiers in Ukraine, if true, would be another proof of intensified military ties between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Last summer, they signed a strategic partnership treaty that commits both countries to provide military assistance. North Korean weapons have already been used in the Ukraine war.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

WINNIPEG – The Manitoba government will look at proactively releasing more information about its out-of-province travel expenses, Premier Wab Kinew said Friday.

It’s a move that would bring Manitoba in line with the federal government and some other provinces.

Currently, the government posts travel expenses of the premier and other cabinet ministers on its website. But unlike the federal government and provinces such as Saskatchewan and Alberta, Manitoba does not post the expenses of senior staff or bureaucrats that accompany a minister.

The government recently posted a total of $6,649 dollars for a trip to a United Nations conference in March by Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the province’s freedom of information law show three other people accompanied the minister — Fontaine’s director of ministerial affairs and two members of Gender Equity Manitoba, a branch of the Families department — for a total of $23,105.

Getting information through freedom of information can be cumbersome when ministers or staff from different departments travel, as requests must be filed with each department. Getting a response to a request can take months.

Kinew, who became premier a year ago, said he was surprised by what he called an “ad hoc” system of disclosing expenses. He said he will look at including staff and bureaucrat travel expenses.

“We are standardizing things and we are going to ensure that there is a regular, systematic approach to delivering on these disclosures,” Kinew said.

“And so I think that … (we’ll) have a discussion about what that would mean potentially and what’s the art of the possible there.”

Kinew’s office recently posted $1,684 in expenses for a March trip to Toronto, which included a speech to the Economic Club of Canada and attendance at an international mining conference. The listing doesn’t include expenses of senior political staff who accompanied the premier.

In Saskatchewan, recent online travel disclosures include a trip to India for Premier Scott Moe over six days in February. It lists the names of an adviser and a deputy minister who went along, for a total of $37,397. It also includes, unlike Manitoba, a detailed list of the trip’s objectives and people the premier met with.

The federal government lists ministerial travel expenses and has a separate searchable database for senior officials including minister’s press secretaries.

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

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Ontario Big City Mayors are asking the province to review mental-health laws and whether to expand the scope of involuntary treatment for people who are addicted to drugs and live on the streets.

The organization that represents 29 mayors of cities with more than 100,000 people say they are taking no position on treatment given without consent — a practice British Columbia’s government recently committed to expanding.

But they say they want to spark a discussion with the provincial government, noting homelessness has risen across Ontario since the COVID-19 pandemic, in communities big and small.

Encampments have popped up in recent years throughout the province, while the cost of both purchasing and renting housing has increased significantly.

Toxic overdose deaths are also up, and the mayors are demanding immediate action from both the province and the federal government.

Last year, nearly 2,600 Ontarians died due to opioids, a 50 per cent increase from 2019, with fentanyl and its derivatives especially affecting users in the homeless population.

“For those suffering from mental health and addictions in this province, there are not proper facilities that have capacity to give everyone who requires the care they need to get that care in a timely fashion,” said Josh Morgan, the mayor of London, Ont.

“That is an absolute crisis across this province and something that we know we need the government to move on.”

The mayors said Friday they would like the province to “urgently review” two laws, the Mental Health Act and the Health Care Consent Act, which allow for short periods of involuntary hospital admissions.

“The scope of the mental-health crisis that we’ve seen and how widespread it is was never necessarily contemplated when those acts were written,” Morgan said.

“So our ask to immediately review and update those acts in consultation with proper medical and health-care professionals, as well as municipalities and those impacted by the challenges faced on our streets, is a reasonable ask — to say, ‘Is that sort of treatment, or compulsory, or however you want to call it, mandatory treatment, the right thing to do?'”

Neither Health Minister Sylvia Jones nor Associate Minister of Mental Health Michael Tibollo has ruled out expanding involuntary treatment, but both say they prefer treatment to be voluntary.

They have also both said they are working on increasing the number of treatment beds.

In its upcoming legislative sitting, Premier Doug Ford’s government promised to legislate new rules to eliminate 10 existing supervised consumption sites that are within 200 metres of schools and daycares, and do away with needle exchange programs.

Instead, the province has said it will shift to an abstinence-based model, with plans to launch new “homelessness and addiction recovery treatment hubs” next year, plus create 375 highly supportive housing units at a cost of $378 million.

The province’s fundamental shift has sparked outrage among homeless people, advocates and health-care workers.

Alex Nuttall, the mayor of Barrie, Ont., was among several city leaders who were calling on mayors to take a collective position and outright ask for mandatory involuntary treatment laws from the province.

He said he’s happy with their softened position.

“When I sit there and make calls for the city of Barrie asking for more mandatory treatment and rehabilitation, I don’t know what those lines look like in terms of where those lines need to be created, what the pathways are into it, what the pathways are out of it,” he said Friday.

“And what you’re seeing here in this motion is a call for the provincial government to determine whether they need to strengthen what already exists in terms of mandatory care in this province.”

Encampments and open drug use have become a huge issue for the mayors, who launched a “solve the crisis” campaign earlier this year to spur the province to do more to help homeless people and beleaguered businesses.

There are 1,400 encampments across Ontario, the mayors say.

Among other asks, the mayors would like to see both provincial and federal governments join any court cases that may end up restricting the ability of municipalities to regulate and prohibit encampments.

They are calling for a vast expansion of residential and community-based treatment programs. The mayors also want reforms to the justice system to allow for referrals to rehabilitation centres for some offences rather than punitive measures such as incarceration.

They also want the federal government to spend the $250 million for municipalities it announced in the spring, as part of a promised national encampment strategy.

Cam Guthrie, the mayor of Guelph, Ont., said he is exasperated and fed up.

“We have an encampment and opioid addictions and mental-health crisis in our province and we should not be at another podium again asking for help,” he said.

“So we need the help of the province and we need it urgently, we need it now.”

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