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Verstappen to regroup during F1 summer break with McLaren and Mercedes right on his tailpipe

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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — What a difference a year can make in Formula 1.

Yes, Max Verstappen is still on pace for yet another world title – it will be No. 4 in a row for the Dutchman unless Red Bull self-implodes.

But no longer is it a foregone conclusion that Verstappen will dominate the competition and, let’s face it, bore many fans looking for him to at least be made to sweat.

F1 instead has been lit up this summer as Red Bull’s speed advantage has evaporated thanks to huge improvements from more than one rival.

The four cars fielded by Mercedes and McLaren have emerged as threats to Verstappen, while Ferrari’s Prancing Horses are also right there. That has produced thrillingly unpredictable races like Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix where Verstappen finished fourth.

A week before that, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris made it a one-two at Budapest, while Verstappen finished fifth. The seven winners in 13 races after the Hungarian GP had already made this season the most competitive since 2012.

“It’s great. It’s really fantastic, I think, for the sport to be having such close teams and drivers,” said Lewis Hamilton, who was declared the winner in Belgium after Mercedes teammate George Russell was disqualified for his car being underweight.

“The pedigree of drivers at the top today are really elite and amazing,” the former seven-time world champion said.

Lost advantage

Last year, Verstappen recorded an eighth straight victory by finishing first at the Belgian GP and entered the summer break with a 125-point lead over teammate Sergio Pérez. Verstappen would go on to make it an F1 record 10 wins in a row and 19 wins in 22 races for the season. He won 15 races in 2022.

Verstappen appeared to be off to another title march this year after winning four of the first five races. But since then, he has just three wins in the last nine grand prix and has gone four consecutive races without a victory for the first time since 2020, before he became the dominant force in F1.

This time, Verstappen enters the summer break with a 78-point advantage over McLaren’s Lando Norris with 10 races to go. The season restarts at the Dutch GP on Aug. 25.

“We are looking forward to the summer break and having a bit of time to relax, but at the same time we are committed to being better and faster and are trying to find solutions as we go into the rest of the season,” Verstappen said after the race at Spa.

“We had a great start to the season, our last few races have been a bit more difficult, but we have been pushing to find a solution how to do that,” Verstappen said. “Next race is obviously my home race in Zandvoort. It will be a tough battle and it will be all about tire management, but it will be great to be in front of my home crowd again.”

Multiple threats

Mercedes enters the break on a high with three wins in the last four races. Hamilton snapped a long dry spell dating to 2021 when he won the British GP in early July. George Russell followed that up with a victory in Austria. They thought they had a one-two at Belgium, before Russell was disqualified.

That let Hamilton, who is bound for Ferrari next season, take his record win haul to 105 grand prix.

“We didn’t expect to be competing with the McLarens or the Red Bulls at this point in the season, you know, with how we started off,” Hamilton said. “So for us to now have closed up and be, it’s going to be one hell of a second half of the season for sure.”

McLaren has been considered the top rival to Verstappen since Norris got his first F1 win in Miami in May. Since then the two papaya cars have been runner-up five times in addition to their double in Hungary.

More good things are expected from the British outfit in the fall as McLaren is challenging Red Bull for the constructors’ title, where the Austrian team only has a 408-366 point advantage. That is due to the poor performances by Pérez, which has sparked speculation that he may be replaced despite his recent contract extension.

Ferrari is also expected to remain in the mix. Carlos Sainz, who is looking for a new seat for 2025, and Charles Leclerc have won races this season, even if they have lost a step to the other three leading teams.

___

AP auto racing:

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Suspicious deaths of two N.S. men were the result of homicide, suicide: RCMP

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Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.

The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.

Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.

They say the two men were members of the same family.

No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.

RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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Turning the tide: Quebec premier visits Cree Nation displaced by hydro project in 70s

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For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.

François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.

The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.

George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”

“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”

Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.

François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.

“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.

Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.

Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.

Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.

Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.

Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.

The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.

In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.

“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”

Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.

Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.

Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.

He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.

“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.



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Quebec premier visits Cree community displaced by hydro project in 1970s

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NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.

François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.

The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.

George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”

“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”

The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.

In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.

“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”

Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.

Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.

Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.

Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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