Charest climate plan, Canada’s role in Musk’s Twitter bid : In The News for April 26

The plan, which was shared with The Canadian Press, proposes to scrap what it calls the “Trudeau consumer carbon tax,” and instead only make industrial emitters pay a carbon price.

Heavy emitters are already being charged a carbon price under the Liberals’ national program or through one designed by the provinces, which premiers were more willing to accept than making consumers pay extra for goods like fuel.

Charest says his plan would cut the federal portion of the H-S-T for green purchases like electric vehicles as a way to encourage Canadians to reduce their carbon footprint.

How far leadership candidates are willing to go to slash greenhouse-gas emissions is one of the questions they face as many party members rally to see the Liberals’ consumer carbon price scrapped.

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Also this …

Twitter’s board has accepted Elon Musk’s US$44-billion bid to take over the social media platform on Monday.

The blockbuster offer made by the controversial Tesla and SpaceX leader, who has Canadian citizenship, will see Musk pay US$54.20 per share, a 38 per cent premium to the closing price of Twitter’s stock on April 1.

Beyond Musk’s citizenship, Canada has another role in the deal. Royal Bank of Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce are two of the 12 banks offering Musk financing for the bid.

A commitment letter filed by Musk’s X Holdings III LLC. shows RBC offered US$750 million and CIBC has pledged US$400 million.

Just after Musk’s bid was accepted, the billionaire tweeted he plans to “make Twitter better than ever” by making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans.

Musk has vowed to transform the company by taking it private, reducing content moderation and launching a long-requested edit button on Twitter.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

WASHINGTON _ The Biden administration is seeking the Supreme Court’s go-ahead to end a controversial Trump-era immigration program that forces some people seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico for their hearings.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in the administration’s appeal of lower-court rulings that required immigration officials to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy that the administration “has twice determined is not in the interests of the United States,” according to court filings.

Texas and Missouri, which sued to keep the program in place, said it has helped reduce the flow of people into the U.S. at the southern border. “Many raise meritless immigration claims, including asylum claims, in the hope that they will be released into the United States,” the states told the Supreme Court in a filing.

About 70,000 people were enrolled in the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, after President Donald Trump launched it in 2019 and made it a centrepiece of efforts to deter asylum seekers.

President Joe Biden suspended it on his first day in office and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ended it in June 2021. In October, DHS produced additional justifications for the policy’s demise, to no avail in the courts.

The program resumed in December, but barely 3,000 migrants had enrolled by the end of March, during a period when authorities stopped migrants about 700,000 times at the border.

The heart of the legal fight is whether the program is discretionary and can be ended, as the administration argues, or is essentially the only way to comply with what the states say is a congressional command not to release the immigrants at issue in the case into the United States.

Without adequate detention facilities in the U.S., Texas and Missouri argue that the administration’s only option is to make the immigrants wait in Mexico until their asylum hearings.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

KYIV, Ukraine _ Four people died and nine more were wounded on Monday in the Russian shelling of the Donetsk region, the region’s governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Tuesday.

Two of the victims were children: a nine-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, Kyrylenko said in the messaging app Telegram.

Governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said the Russians have shelled civilians 17 times over the past 24 hours, with the cities of Popasna, Lysychansk and Girske suffering the most.

“Popasna withstood four powerful artillery attacks, and Lysychansk withstood two. There is damage to two houses in Lysychansk, two in Popasna, at least one in Girske. We are checking the information about the victims,” Haidai said Tuesday on Telegram.

Rocket strikes were also reported in the Zaporizhzhia region Tuesday morning by local officials.

Meanwhile, the British Defense Ministry said Tuesday that Russian forces had taken the Ukrainian city of Kreminna in the Lukansk region after days of street-to-street fighting.

“The city of Kreminna has reportedly fallen and heavy fighting is reported south of Izium as Russian forces attempt to advance toward the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north and east,” the British military said in a tweet. It did not say how it knew the city, 575 kilometres southeast of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, had fallen.

The Ukrainian government did not immediately comment.

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On this day in 1918 …

Women in Nova Scotia were granted the right to vote.

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In entertainment …

Toronto-based tutor Mattea Roach held onto her now 15 game winning streak last night — the eighth longest in “Jeopardy!” history — putting her one win closer to ascending through the ranks of the quiz show’s all-time greats.

The 23-year-old, who grew up in Halifax, needs to secure 19 victories to tie with David Madden and Jason Zuffranieri on the list of most consecutive wins.

Roach has racked up US$352,781 heading into tonight’s episode, amounting to the 10th highest winnings of anyone in the show’s regular-season history.

She’s also earned a spot in the show’s Tournament of Champions, which is set to air in the fall.

Her cousin, Carol Baan, says Roach has also won the mantle of “Canada’s sweetheart” as she makes her country and her family in Nova Scotia proud with her smarts and on-air charm.

“Even up to the 14th game, she still kind of looks like that kid in the candy store that just can’t believe it herself,” Baan said by phone from Ingonish on Cape Breton ahead of Roach’s 15th episode Monday evening.

“People are really endeared to her … It’s just so nice to see somebody so genuine and comfortable and totally happy with her success.”

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Did you see this?

WASHINGTON _ Ukraine’s war with Russia will be top of mind Tuesday when Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly meets by video link with her U.S. counterpart.

Joly and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will discuss the ongoing multilateral effort to push back against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Word of the meeting came shortly after Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met in person in Kyiv with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Blinken says the global effort to support Ukraine _ involving more than 30 countries, including Canada _ is showing “real results,” which is more than can be said for Putin. He says Russia is failing in its effort to rob Ukraine of its sovereignty.

Later this week, Defence Minister Anita Anand will be in D.C. for her own set of in-person meetings with Austin at the Pentagon.

It will be Anand’s first official visit to the U.S. capital as defence minister. She’ll be joined by deputy minister Bill Matthews, Communications Security Establishment Chief Shelly Bruce and Gen. Wayne Eyre, Canada’s chief of defence staff.

Anand and Austin are expected to address support for Ukraine, as well as modernizing Norad. Updating the bilateral aerospace defence system has taken on new urgency given Putin’s invasion.

Joly’s meeting with Blinken will “reaffirm Canada-U.S. co-operation on shared security priorities,” spokesperson Adrien Blanchard said in a statement. Those include “our support to Ukraine, co-operation with NATO allies and the global impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2022.

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Charest climate plan, Canada’s role in Musk’s Twitter bid : In The News for April 26

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