Yukon government directs gold mining firm to devise water treatment plan after spill

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israelis again poured into the streets for another large protest over the government’s failure to secure the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, while hospital and local authorities said Israeli air raids in the territory killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday.

Health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak. The drive, launched after the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children during a war that has destroyed Gaza’s health care system and much of its infrastructure. The third phase of vaccinations will be in the north.

Israel kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it received the bodies of nine people killed in two air raids. One hit a residential building, killing four people and wounding at least 10, while five people were killed in a strike on a house in western Nuseirat.

Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital, said a woman and her two children were killed in a strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij.

In northern Gaza, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government. Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas command post embedded in a former school compound.

The war began when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people, primarily civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding more than 100 hostages. Israeli authorities estimate about a third are dead.

Anger again led large crowds of Israelis into the streets Saturday night, a week after one of the largest demonstrations of the war following the discovery of another six dead hostages in Gaza.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry says more than 94,000 people have been wounded.

Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank. A dayslong military operation in Jenin left dozens of dead. “They (Israeli forces) besieged the area and brought in bulldozers. As you see, they destroyed the whole area,” said a resident, Mahmoud Al Razi.

A day after an American protester was shot and killed in the West Bank, her family urged President Joe Biden to order an independent investigation, saying that “given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate.” Their statement called the 26-year-old recent university graduate a “ray of sunshine” and an advocate for human dignity.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who also holds Turkish nationality, was shot in the head, two Palestinian doctors said. She had been demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Witnesses said she was shot during a moment of calm following earlier clashes.

The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity.”

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have left more than 690 Palestinians dead since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.

Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out negotiations by issuing new demands. Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by Biden in July.

Along the border with Lebanon, near-daily clashes continued between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

An Israeli drone strike hit a Lebanese Civil Defense team fighting a fire in the town of Froun, killing three volunteers and wounding two others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. The blaze was sparked by a previous Israeli strike, the statement said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Israel’s military said some 45 rockets were fired at northern Israel in several barrages, many targeting the Mount Meron area but falling in open areas. Several rockets fell in Shlomi and around the city of Safed. There were no injuries. The military later said its jets struck Hezbollah military infrastructure and a rocket launcher in the area of Qabrikha in southern Lebanon.

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Magdy reported from Cairo and Jeffery from Ramallah, West Bank. Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.

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MONTREAL – Quebecers who want to arrange a medically assisted death before their condition leaves them unable to grant consent can do so as of next month, the province announced Saturday as it unveiled details of a plan to grant such requests without waiting for Ottawa to update the country’s criminal code.

Quebec’s government said last month it would stop waiting for the federal government to implement the requested amendments and forge ahead with plans to grant early MAID requests. On Saturday, the province announced such requests could be granted as of Oct. 30.

“The issue of advance requests for medical assistance in dying is widely agreed upon in Quebec,” Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said in a press release.

Seniors Minister Sonia Bélanger called the province a leader in upholding “patients’ right to die with dignity.”

The government said it has asked the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions to respect the conditions laid out in the province’s act respecting end-of-life care when it comes to pressing criminal charges.

In response, the Director’s office issued its own release immediately after the government, saying it would instruct criminal and penal prosecutors that “it would not be in the public interest” to authorize criminal prosecutions for deaths occurring in a context of MAID so long as the care is provided in compliance with the act.

Quebec previously said it would wait to grant early requests until the federal government modified the Criminal Code in order to better protect health-care workers from facing charges related to ending a patient’s life, but last month it announced it wouldn’t wait any longer.

Quebec adopted a law in June 2023 permitting people with serious and incurable illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease to ask for MAID while they have the capacity to provide consent, with the procedure being carried out after their condition has worsened.

The Criminal Code says that “immediately before” a health-care worker administers a medically assisted death, they must “give the person an opportunity to withdraw their request and ensure that the person gives express consent to receive medical assistance in dying.”

There are exceptions, but for the consent requirement to be waived, a person seeking MAID must fulfil several criteria, including that they “entered into an arrangement in writing” specifying the day on which they wanted to die.

Under the Quebec law, a patient’s advance request is made with the help of a health professional and must describe in detail the symptoms that will trigger medical aid in dying after they have lost the ability to consent.

In February 2023, Parliament’s special joint committee on MAID released a report recommending that the federal government amend the Criminal Code to allow for advance requests following a diagnosis of a serious and incurable medical condition, or “disorder leading to incapacity.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 7, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

TORONTO (AP) — A few hours before the film about his life, “Unstoppable,” was to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Anthony Robles, sitting alongside the actor who plays him, Jharrel Jerome, was remembering the moment he won the NCAA wrestling national title.

He had done something that was, by any measure, extraordinary. Robles was born without his right leg. Through grit and determination, Robles had risen to be the best 125-pound wrestler in the country. But the last thing on his mind at that moment was Hollywood.

“I was sitting there showering off after the match,” Robles says. “I was excited and then I was like, ‘I gotta find a job. I gotta start getting my resume together.’ I never got into any of this for the attention.”

“Unstoppable,” which premiered Friday night in Toronto, was one of the most-anticipated premieres of the festival partly because of outside drama. The film is produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and co-stars Jennifer Lopez as Robles’ mom, Judy. But if all the talk going in was about who would turn up between Affleck and Lopez (Lopez did), the talk after the movie belonged to Robles and Jerome.

The film, directed by the Oscar-winning editor William Goldenberg (“Argo,” “Heat”) and which Amazon MGM will release in December, is in many ways a conventional sports drama, with an uplifting message and terrific supporting performances from Lopez, Don Cheadle, Michael Peña and Bobby Cannavale. But it also, rather than building toward one big challenge, takes a more naturalistic path. Robles, as played by Jerome, doesn’t face a hurdle or two. He faces continual adversity, at home and on the mat.

“That’s honestly how I felt going through my life,” says Robles, who redshirted as a freshman at Arizona State University. “I was constantly fighting something, whether it was on the mat against a flesh-and-blood opponent or it was in my family or the world. There was always something I was fighting against. All those things, that frustration got channeled inside me. But wrestling was my outlet.”

While many real-life stories include some involvement from the subject, “Unstoppable” went several steps further. Robles, a producer on the film, also serves as Jerome’s stunt double. For the wrestling scenes, Jerome and Robles, both in costume, would take turns performing the moves on the mat. Goldenberg would later mix the two together, using visual effects to remove Jerome’s leg.

“I signed on to the movie and then I was like: How am I going to do the wrestling?” says Goldenberg. “I watched so many hours of him wrestling. I thought, there’s no way I can do this without him doubling himself. He moves in a way that I just thought no one could ever master.”

Jerome, the talented 26-year-old actor of “Moonlight” and “I’m a Virgo,” first met Robles in 2020. Robles wanted to meet in a gym.

“You can imagine how I feel. I’m barely in the gym and this is the guy I gotta play. I think it was a test,” says Jerome, laughing. “I remember the pressure of meeting him was so intense for me. But once you get to meet him and know him, all that pressure goes out the window.”

After the two had gotten started, the pandemic shut down development on the film, and “Unstoppable” didn’t reassemble until several years later. But that also gave Jerome and Robles more time to get to know each other.

“Missing my leg, he’d see how I interact with people,” says Robles. “People would just look at me because I’m a little bit different, how that motivated me. That was something that I couldn’t really explain with words. Him just seeing it and being around it, he could feel it after a while.”

Jerome trained intensely not just as a wrestler but to match Robles’ poise. After training with Robles, he would work with a movement coach to capture how Robles, who uses crutches to get around, walked and carried himself. When it came time to wrestle in the film, Jerome says they were like a tag team.

“As an actor, you always have somebody walking around who looks like you, your body double or stunt double,” says Jerome. “But I have the guy I’m playing, so it was a weird mind bend for me.”

Robles, 36, who’s married and has a young son, now coaches wrestling at his old high school in Mesa, Arizona. But stepping back on the mat, in gymnasiums decorated to look just like those he experienced his greatest triumphs in, was surreal.

“I got the butterfly feelings like I was really wrestling,” Robles says. “That for me was fun, being able to train for something again.”

Robles’ high school coach taught him, as a wrestler, to focus on his strengths and camouflage his weaknesses. On that mat, that meant dropping to his knee to wrestle from a neutral position, allowing him to use his hands to move around. His upper body strength is extreme, as is his grip strength from always being on crutches. “It’s kind of like I’m working out 24/7,” he says.

But much of “Unstoppable” focuses on Robles’ relationship with his mother. Robles’ strength, he says, comes from family and faith.

“My mom has always been my hero from day one. Being born missing my leg, immediately everyone thinks about what I’m not going to be able to accomplish in my life or how this is going to hold me back,” Robles says. “I was blessed to have a mom who chose not to have that mentality, and not allow me to have that mentality growing up. She called it a challenge. She said: You don’t let your challenge become an excuse.”

Now, Robles looks at “Unstoppable” as part of his legacy. He’ll show it to his son when he’s a little older.

“Going through this whole process of filming this movie, meeting Jharrel and talking about things, I kind of feel like I’m at the point now where I’m done fighting,” Robles says. “I’m just blessed to be on the journey.”