Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley sign multi-year deals with Toronto Raptors

FREDERICTON – The leader of New Brunswick’s Progressive Conservatives is promising to make financial literacy part of the school curriculum if his party wins the Oct. 21 election.

Blaine Higgs, who is seeking a third term in office as premier, said today he wants all students to enter adulthood with a better understanding of how money works.

The new curriculum would teach students about budgeting, bank accounts, interest rates, inflation, mortgages, leases, loans and RRSPs, among other things.

Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Susan Holt pledged that, if elected to govern, her party would overhaul the province’s approach to mental health and addiction care by adding community outreach workers to deliver frontline support.

She says these frontline workers would help school psychologists, which she said are in short supply.

Later in the day, Green Party Leader David Coon said a Green government would impose a 2.5 per cent rent cap as part of a broader plan to increase the supply of affordable housing.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans can once again order free COVID-19 tests sent straight to their homes.

The U.S. government reopened the program on Thursday, allowing any household to order up to four at-home COVID nasal swab kits through the website, covidtests.gov. The tests will begin shipping, via the United States Postal Service, as soon as next week.

The website has been reopened on the heels of a summer COVID-19 virus wave and heading into the fall and winter respiratory virus season, with health officials urging Americans to get an updated COVID-19 booster and their yearly flu shot.

U.S. regulators approved an updated COVID-19 vaccine that is designed to combat the recent virus strains and, they hope, forthcoming winter ones, too. Vaccine uptake is waning, however. Most Americans have some immunity from prior infections or vaccinations, but under a quarter of U.S. adults took last fall’s COVID-19 shot.

Using the swab, people can detect current virus strains ahead of the fall and winter respiratory virus season and the holidays. Over-the-counter COVID-19 at-home tests typically cost around $11, as of last year. Insurers are no longer required to cover the cost of the tests.

Since COVID-19 first began its spread in 2020, U.S. taxpayers have poured billions of dollars into developing and purchasing COVID-19 tests as well as vaccines. The Biden administration has given out 1.8 billion COVID-19 tests, including half distributed to households by mail. It’s unclear how many tests the government still has on hand.

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Toronto-Dominion Bank has named new co-heads of its U.S. commercial banking business.

TD says Andy Bregenzer and Jill Gateman will jointly lead the operations.

The bank says the appointments follow the announcement earlier this year of Chris Giamo’s retirement.

Bregenzer will focus on leading all aspects of the regional commercial bank, including small business.

Gateman will lead TD’s national commercial banking effort in the U.S., including middle market, sponsor-backed finance and TD’s other specialty lending lines of business.

TD, which is working to resolve investigations into failures in its anti-money laundering program in the U.S., announced last week that chief executive Bharat Masrani would retire next year and be replaced by Raymond Chun.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

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