A vacant north-end Halifax building that was previously described as an "immediate safety risk" by a fire inspector caught fire early Sunday morning.

The site that once housed Bloomfield School in Halifax’s North End was the scene of a 3-alarm fire early Sunday morning. Fire crews were called to the property on Agricola Street around 1:35 a.m. and found a blaze on the first floor and in the basement of one of the wings of the former school.

Because the building had been abandoned for some time, crews needed to remove barricades and boards from windows to gain access. According to Halifax Fire and Emergency, due to the condition of the fire upon arrival, firefighters adopted defensive positions to contain the blaze within the portion of the building facing Agricola Street.

In total, 49 firefighters responded, along with several pieces of equipment, including two aerial ladders. HRFE reported that the fire was brought under control around 5:45 a.m. One building at the site was destroyed, but the fire did not spread to other sections of the former school.

Halifax Regional Police closed several streets in the immediate area, including Robie Street between Almon and May Streets, and Agricola Street between Almon and McCully Streets. These closures were expected to remain in place for some time.

As of Sunday morning, no injuries had been reported, and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

A northern Nova Scotia museum that will house Mi'kmaw artifacts has had its opening pushed back a year, as the project has faced escalating costs and had to strip back its design.

Colin Chabassol, who is competing in five different sports, says the games have been life-changing. He says he would recommend applying to anyone who is eligible to compete.

Jacob Smith, who is also known as My Best Friend Jacob, will mentor an aspiring producer in the province about working in the music industry.

After a lifetime of focusing on others and believing she wasn’t quite smart enough, 56-year-old Colleen Sharpe is finally chasing the university degree she dreamed of.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — On a recent Sunday, Tracy Quinn drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to assess damage wrought upon the coastline by the Palisades Fire.

The water line was darkened by ash. Burnt remnants of washing machines and dryers and metal appliances were strewn about the shoreline. Sludge carpeted the water’s edge. Waves during high tide lapped onto charred homes, pulling debris and potentially toxic ash into the ocean as they receded.

“It was just heartbreaking,” said Quinn, president and CEO of the environmental group Heal the Bay, whose team has reported ash and debris some 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the Palisades burn area west of Los Angeles.

As crews work to remove potentially hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous materials from the Los Angeles wildfires, researchers and officials are trying to understand how the fires on land have impacted the sea. The Palisades and Eaton fires scorched thousands of homes, businesses, cars and electronics, turning everyday items into hazardous ash made of pesticides, asbestos, plastics, lead, heavy metals and more.

Since much of it could end up in the Pacific Ocean, there are concerns and many unknowns about how the fires could affect life under the sea.

“We haven’t seen a concentration of homes and buildings burned so close to the water,” Quinn said.

Fire debris and potentially toxic ash could make the water unsafe for surfers and swimmers, especially after rainfall that can transport chemicals, trash and other hazards into the sea. Longer term, scientists worry if and how charred urban contaminants will affect the food supply.

The atmospheric river and mudslides that pummeled the Los Angeles region last week exacerbated some of those fears.

When the fires broke out in January, one of Mara Dias’ first concerns was ocean water contamination. Strong winds were carrying smoke and ash far beyond the blazes before settling at sea, said the water quality manager for the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental nonprofit.

Scientists on board a research vessel during the fires detected ash and waste on the water as far as 100 miles (161 kilometers) offshore, said marine ecologist Julie Dinasquet with the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Things like twigs and shard. They described the smell as electronics burning, she recalled, “not like a nice campfire.”

Runoff from rains also are a huge and immediate concern. Rainfall picks up contaminants and trash while flushing toward the sea through a network of drains and rivers. That runoff could contain “a lot of nutrients, nitrogen and phosphate that end up in the ash of the burn material that can get into the water,” said Dias, as well as “heavy metals, something called PAHs, which are given off when you burn different types of fuel.”

Mudslides and debris flows in the Palisades Fire burn zone also can dump more hazardous waste into the ocean. After fires, the soil in burn scars is less able to absorb rainfall and can develop a layer that repels water from the remains of seared organic material. When there is less organic material to hold the soil in place, the risks of mudslides and debris flows increase.

Los Angeles County officials, with help from other agencies, have set thousands of feet of concrete barriers, sandbags, silt socks and more to prevent debris from reaching beaches. The LA County Board of Supervisors also recently passed a motion seeking state and federal help to expand beach clean ups, prepare for storm runoff and test ocean water for potential toxins and chemicals, among other things.

Beyond the usual samples, state water officials and others are testing for total and dissolved metals such as arsenic, lead and aluminum and volatile organic compounds.

They also are sampling for microplastics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, that are harmful to human and aquatic life, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a group of man-made chemicals shown to cause cancer in animals and other serious health effects. Now banned from being manufactured, they were used in products like pigments, paints and electrical equipment.

County public health officials said chemical tests of water samples last month did not raise health concerns, so they downgraded one beach closure to an ocean water advisory. Beachgoers were still advised to stay out of the water.

Dinasquet and colleagues are working to understand how far potentially toxic ash and debris dispersed across the ocean, how deep and how fast they sunk and, over time, where it ends up.

Forest fires can deposit important nutrients like iron and nitrogen into the ocean ecosystem, boosting the growth of phytoplankton, which can create a positive, cascading effect across the ecosystem. But the potentially toxic ash from urban coastal fires could have dire consequences, Dinasquet said.

“Reports are already showing that there was a lot of lead and asbestos in the ash,” she added. “This is really bad for people so its probably also very bad for the marine organisms.”

A huge concern is whether toxic contaminants from the fire will enter the food chain. Researchers plan to take tissue fragments from fish for signs of heavy metals and contaminants. But they say it will take a while to understand how a massive urban fire will affect the larger ecosystem and our food supply.

Dias noted the ocean has long taken in pollution from land, but with fires and other disasters, “everything is compounded and the situation is even more dire.”

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

Dorany Pineda, The Associated Press

The Mooseheads fell to the Wildcats after travelling up to the Avenir Centre on Saturday evening, losing 3-1 in Jacob Steinman’s return to Moncton.

The teams exchanged goals in the opening frame. Moncton struck first just 14 seconds into the game as Markus Vidicek capitalized on a rebound off Maxime Côté’s chance in close to give the Wildcats the early lead. The Mooseheads answered back 7:32 into the first as Will Bent redirected a pass from Carlos Handel past the pad of Wildcats netminder Rudy Guimond.

The second period remained scoreless but 9:06 into the third period Caleb Desnoyers found Adam Fortier-Gendron off the draw, who fired it past Steinman to regain the lead for the Wildcats. Côté scored the insurance marker for the Wildcats burying a feed by Juraj Pekarcik.

With the loss the Herd fall to 17-28-7 while the Wildcats remain atop the standings of the QMJHL, improving to 40-9-2.

Maxime Côté earned first star for the Wildcats tallying a goal and assist in the Wildcats win. Second star went to Mooseheads netminder Jacob Steinman after making 48 saves against his old club, while third star went to former Moosehead Markus Vidicek.

Halifax will be back in action Monday, Feb 17th, as they host the Wildcats at the Scotiabank Centre. Puck drop is at 2 p.m., and you can catch all the action here on 95.7 NewsRadio.

As Nova Scotia continues to dig itself out of the most recent winter storm, another one is fast approaching.

Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement saying snow, ice pellets, freezing rain and strong winds are expected.

The mixed precipitation can cause adverse weather conditions and first responders are asking people to stay off the roads for all non-essential travel.

Similar conditions are expected to the most recent storm that hit the province late last week.

Between 11 a.m. on Feb. 13 and 11 a.m. Feb. 14, Nova Scotia RCMP responded to 26 collisions. Nine of these collisions resulted in injuries and one was fatal.

At 3 p.m. Saturday, many of the roads in and around Halifax are partially covered while roads in the north of Cape Breton have significant snow cover. Road conditions, including closures can be monitored online.

Halifax may not be one of the cities hardest hit by the lingering threat of U.S. tariffs, but 58 per cent of the municipality’s exports still make their way across the southern border.

The latest report comes from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, detailing the state of vulnerability for the top 41 cities across the country, 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs go into effect.

Of those 41, Halifax is listed as 35th, one of the cities feeling a lower impact. This is in part due to the eastern province’s trade relationship with Europe.

“Near the bottom of the list are cities that are less exposed to the tariffs because they trade less intensively with the U.S. and/or have more diversified trade patterns,” the report reads.

In 2024, Halifax accounted for $845.2 million of goods exports to the U.S. accounting for two per cent of the municipality’s GDP.

While Halifax may not be hit particularly hard, Saint John in the neighbouring province of New Brunswick is predicted to feel the most impact.

Saint John is home to the largest crude oil refinery in Canada, processing over 320 thousand barrels per day. More than 80 per cent of this refined oil is exported to the United States. New Brunswick also exports many forestry and seafood products.

Nearly $11,000 million of goods exports to the U.S. came from Saint John in 2024, making up 96.3 per cent of the municipality’s total exports.

Fredricton, NB and Moncton, NB ranked 18th and 30th respectively.

A search for a missing snowmobiler is underway in the Cape Breton Highlands, but high winds and blowing snow are complicating rescue efforts. 

Sidney Rafuse and Gerald Freckleton had a plan: they were going to rob a bank. As they say, that’s where the money is.

The post Part 1: ‘A coupla suckers’ appeared first on Halifax Examiner.

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles is set to make campaign stops in Thunder Bay today, fresh off an election debate held specifically to discuss northern issues.

Stiles is expected to visit a local market and doughnut shop before making an announcement at an education centre.

Neither Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford nor Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie have public events scheduled today.

Green Leader Mike Schreiner is set to make an announcement in Huntsville this morning before attending a winter carnival and canvassing in Gravenhurst.

The four party leaders were in North Bay on Friday to debate issues such as northern infrastructure, road safety and an addictions crisis that has hit many communities hard.

The leaders are scheduled to debate each other again on Monday in Toronto.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2025.

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — David Wilson and Jackie Eckholm dreamt of attending Winterlude and skating on the Rideau Canal after their last visit to Ottawa nine years ago.

When the Chicago couple saw on the news in January that the city’s iconic Rideau Canal Skateway had been opened to the public, they immediately booked their trip to Canada’s capital.

Eckholm said she and Wilson — who were walking down Sparks St. on Friday morning looking at the ice sculptures set up for Ottawa’s annual winter festival — have loved spending time in a “winter wonderland.” She said they skated, had drinks at the Château Laurier, rode the O-Train and checked out the Royal Canadian Mint.

“We landed Wednesday night, woke up for the big storm and that was awesome because Midwestern winters are wimpy these last few years,” said Eckholm, who loves Canada and joked that she secretly hopes Canada annexes the U.S.

Wimpy would have been the word to describe the last two winters in Ottawa too, when temperatures never plunged low enough, for long enough, for winter activities to abound. The canal skating rink never opened at all in 2023, a historic first, and in 2024 was open for only a handful of days on a very narrow portion, with poor skating conditions.

The ice sculptures as often as not were insulated under tarps trying to keep them from melting, and most did not make it through the entirety of Winterlude intact.

But Mother Nature in 2025 has delivered what the city needed for its winter festival fun.

Winterlude typically sees around 600,000 visitors each year over the three weekends, and around a third of them come from out of town, says the federal Department of Canadian Heritage.

The festival, which runs until Feb. 17, has two official sites — on Sparks St. and at “Snowflake Kingdom” in Gatineau. At the sites, visitors can try maple syrup taffy, see light shows and ride slides.

It takes over 600 volunteers to run the event. About 100 of them spend their shifts dressed as Ice Hog, the event’s mascot.

Ines Akué, a spokesperson for Canadian Heritage, said 2025 has seen a return of the “buzz and excitement” surrounding the festival.

“With the weather co-operating and the iconic Rideau Canal Skateway being open, visitors came out en masse to our two official sites to enjoy events and activities that celebrated winter and showcased Canadian artistic and cultural diversity,” Akué said in an email.

The Rideau Canal Skateway — a key component of an Ottawa winter — has been enjoying its busiest season since 2019, said the National Capital Commission.

NCC spokesperson Maryam El- Akhrass said the organization has counted over 755,000 canal visits since the skateway opened on Jan. 11. The 7.8-kilometre skateway fully opened to the public on Jan. 18.

“We expect our millionth visit to happen next week,” El- Akhrass said, adding that consistently cold temperatures have helped ice conditions.

In 2018-19, the skateway was open for 59 days and was visited almost 1.5 million times.

Jenny Zhao, who was on the canal Friday morning, said she gets out to skate on the canal whenever she can.

“It’s just so, so much fun and so enjoyable,” said Zhao. “In the winter … when the sun is out, you see the people smiling.”

Jérôme Miousse, director of public affairs for Ottawa Tourism, said Winterlude has been particularly busy this year.

“This year, the first two weekends of Winterlude combined saw higher hotel demand compared to 2024, with the first weekend nearly matching the same weekend in 2020, a record year,” Miousse said. “As for the third weekend, we are cautiously optimistic about achieving a high occupancy rate, weather permitting.”

Geneviève Latulippe, CEO of Outaouais Tourism, said Winterlude is a “magical” event.

“The team behind the event works very hard to diversify the program, year after year, so that there is something for all tastes and temperatures,” Latulippe said.

The last weekend of Winterlude is coinciding with Flag Day celebrations.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2025.

Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Pierre Poilievre is set to address Conservative party supporters this afternoon at a rally in downtown Ottawa.

The event is being branded as a “Canada First” rally and the party is asking people to wear red and white to honour the Canadian flag on its 60th anniversary.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and his repeated claims that he wants to annex Canada have prompted a sudden rise in Canadian patriotism.

At the same time, the combination of Trump taking over the White House and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepping down has led to a revival for the Liberals, with some polls putting them even with the Tories.

The Conservatives have been focusing their latest attacks on frontrunner Mark Carney.

In a new ad, the party says Carney is “just the man to help” Trump take Canadian jobs and says if Carney wins the Liberal leadership, “Canada loses.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2025.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press

As “Saturday Night Live” marks its 50th anniversary, The Canadian Press looks back on some of the sketch comedy show’s most notable Canadian musical performances.

Musical guest: Alessia Cara

Songs: “Scars to Your Beautiful” and “River of Tears”

Host: Kristen Stewart

Date: Feb. 4, 2017

THE SHOW: Alec Baldwin cold-opened the show with his impression of U.S. President Donald Trump just a few weeks after his first inauguration. Melissa McCarthy appeared as then-press secretary Sean Spicer for the first time, and Stewart poked at the president’s petty social media quibbles by digging up his old tweets about her and “Twilight” co-star Robert Pattinson. “She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again,” one Trump tweet read, in part. “He can do much better.”

BACKSTAGE: Walking into NBC’s famed 8H studio in New York was a dream come true for Cara, who had often spoken about wanting to be on “SNL.” At age 20, and still a year away from winning the best new artist Grammy, she was mingling with her comic idols. They included cast member Kate McKinnon who spotted Cara and her mom, waltzed over in her bathrobe, and set her head on Cara’s mom’s shoulder. “Are you Demi Lovato?” she asked jokingly, aware that mom wasn’t a pop star in her own right. “(It) feels like I dreamt this moment, but it’s very real,” Cara said with a smile. “She’s so funny, and that was the most random moment.”

THE REHEARSAL: Cara performed her hit single “Scars to Your Beautiful” and “River of Tears,” a deep cut from the deluxe edition of her 2016 debut album. Playing a relatively unknown track — and a ballad no less — was first suggested to Cara by her manager as a calculated risk that might pay off. “We wanted to do something raw and real,” Cara said.

LIVE ON AIR: “Scars to Your Beautiful” went off without a hitch, but she faced an unanticipated snag when she returned for “River of Tears.” As she moved along with the song and its piano accompaniment, she accidentally knocked her mic pack off, disconnecting her in-ear monitors. “I couldn’t hear myself at all — on live TV,” Cara said. “I remember thinking, ‘This is either going to sound absolutely terrible, or best case scenario, nobody will notice.” Cara pushed ahead and finished the song without a fumble. “Thank God I didn’t lose my pitch,” she said. “But I remember that being the most scary moment of my life.”

THE LEGACY: The now 28-year-old said she’ll always remember her experience at “SNL.” It taught her about the unpredictability of live performances, and that sometimes calculated risks pay off. “In that phase in my life and career, there were a lot of voices and opinions on who you should be and what you should be doing,” she said. “We were trying to be defiant of all of that — just be yourself, go out there and sing your song with no effects. Just do you.” She kept one souvenir from the show. “I have the cue card,” she said. It reads: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Alessia Cara.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2025.

David Friend, The Canadian Press

Edith MacDonald-Brown painted between the ages of 12 and 27. A new exhibit at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax features nine of her 13 known works. The gallery's director hopes the exhibit leads to more research on her life and potentially unearthing other unknown works of art.

Nova Scotia has had a ban on uranium exploration and mining for almost 45 years, but that could end soon. How did we get here? And what's next?

The city's budget committee approved both the $97.9-million Halifax Fire & Emergency budget and the $15.8-million community safety budget on Friday, after two days of discussion.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s vice-president on Saturday ordered a probe into the killing of a university student after a protest gathering at Tehran University, state media reported.

A report by the official IRNA news agency said First Vice-president Mohammad Reza Aref ordered security officials to probe the case “immediately.”

The move came a day after angry students gathered in protest at a Tehran University dormitory seeking more safety measures. The protest briefly turned violent and police deployed forces to the gate of the dorm, according to videos on social media. The Associated Press could not independently verify the footage.

Protesters, chanting “Shame on you,” demanded more safety measures at the dorm and its neighborhood, complaining about occasional robberies.

On Wednesday, 19-year-old business administration student Amir Mohammad Khaleghi was stabbed by two unknown robbers who stole his backpack in front of the dorm. Khaleghi died in the hospital.

Peace returned to the dorm late Friday after authorities vowed to pursue the case with a “special” order.

Though the protest was not politically motivated, such events can ignite unrest as Iranian people under U.S. economic sanctions are dealing with the high price of meeting their daily needs, as well as widespread mismanagement.

Iranian universities have a history of protest over the past decades.

Most recently, in 2022, universities were major sites of protest over the death of a 22-year old woman, Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after she was detained by the morality police for allegedly not wearing the Muslim headscarf correctly.

The protests that followed Amini’s death started first with the chant “Women, Life, Freedom.” However, the protesters’ cries soon grew into open calls of revolt against the incumbent theocracy. The monthslong nationwide protests, which shook the establishment, ended in early 2023 after a security crackdown during which more than 500 people were killed and over 22,000 detained.

In 1999, student protests in Tehran over the government’s closing of a reformist newspaper and a subsequent security force crackdown saw several people killed, hundreds wounded and more arrested.

The Associated Press

TORONTO — Decades later, Mark McKinney says the pressure of writing comedy sketches for “Saturday Night Live” still haunts him.

The Ottawa-born comedian says he occasionally wakes in a panic reliving the deadline stress he felt long ago — back when it would be “four o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday when you don’t have an ending for your sketch,” McKinney chuckles from Toronto.

“That’s when the PTSD sets in.”

He’ll be attending festivities in New York this weekend to celebrate the show’s 50th anniversary.

While many know McKinney from Canadian absurdist comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall — or as the current star of CTV’s “Mark McKinney Needs a Hobby” — he was also a writer for “SNL” in 1985 and rejoined the show as a cast member from 1995 to 1997.

He recalls the show’s breakneck pace as “a grind,” and his offbeat humour didn’t always fit its broader, crowd-pleasing style.

McKinney describes it as “surreal” when Lorne Michaels scouted him and fellow Kids member Bruce McCulloch for the eleventh season, when Michaels returned from a five-year hiatus. Alongside new writers, Michaels hired a fresh cast, including Randy Quaid, Robert Downey Jr., and Joan Cusack.

“I was working at a Second Cup, barely making rent in Toronto, and then three weeks later I’m giving notes to Madonna on one of my sketches and having Al Franken kick me under the table saying, ‘Don’t give Madonna notes,’” he says.

Madonna was the season’s first musical guest and “at the height of her fame,” McKinney recalls. “She’d just married Sean Penn, so I remember going to work with helicopters around 30 Rock and security being really tight.”

His material often landed in the show’s final sketch, typically reserved for the night’s weirder, more experimental fare. One such sketch he and McCulloch wrote for Madonna never made it to air.

It saw the pop megastar seducing a paper boy, played by “SNL” cast member Anthony Michael Hall, who was 17 at the time.

“It was Anthony Michael Hall telling Madonna he couldn’t come around, he couldn’t deliver her newspapers anymore because she had to stop dragging him into her bedroom. And it was Madonna admitting she had a long string of paper boys.”

Hall refused to do the skit.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to play teens anymore,’” recalls McKinney.

That was his first taste of disappointment at “SNL.”

“We had the set already built. It got nixed on a Friday morning and I remember watching them cart out the set. That’s how I found out.”

McKinney eventually grew accustomed to his sketches getting rejected. He and McCulloch found an outlet in returning to Toronto on occasional weekends to perform live with Kids in the Hall.

“I think because ‘SNL’ can be a place where your favourite sketches don’t get picked, we would come back to Kids in the Hall and just write up a storm and do the stuff we wanted to do. So in a weird way, there was a threat of us (breaking up), but it was ultimately a great year for the troupe.”

Michaels later caught one of their sets in Toronto, leading to a development deal for their CBC series, which he produced. McKinney and McCulloch left “SNL” to focus on the new show, which debuted in 1989.

“We got to do our own show autonomously because when you have Lorne Michaels as your producer, you get some creative protection that you might not otherwise have,” McKinney says.

Years later, when “Kids in the Hall” wrapped, McKinney says he was the lone member eager for a sixth season. That’s when Michaels invited him back to “SNL” as a cast member.

While McKinney felt like a “mismatch” his second time around, he has no regrets.

“I kept trying to do ‘Kids in the Hall’-type sketches on ‘SNL,’ which is a fundamentally different show. I didn’t really think through what I was doing,” he says.

“But I had a blast. How can you not? Every Saturday at 11:30 when that theme kicks in, it’s like, wow, goosebumps every time.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2025.

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press

HONG KONG (AP) — Panda craze has once again gripped Hong Kong as residents compete to name the territory’s first locally-born giant panda cubs who just turned six months old.

The competition to name the twin cubs, born Aug. 15, launched Saturday following a celebratory ceremony attended by Hong Kong leader John Lee and other officials at Ocean Park, the theme park that houses the twins, their parents and two other giant pandas that arrived from mainland China last year. Residents can submit their suggestions via the park’s website.

Lee said the southern Chinese city now has the largest number of pandas in captivity outside of mainland China, and the cubs’ names would be announced in the first half of this year.

The pair, currently identified as the “Elder Sister” and the “Little Brother,” will make their public debut on Sunday and meet visitors for five hours daily. Those who want to enjoy time with the cubs outside regular visiting hours, before the park opens, can pay 1,500 Hong Kong dollars (about $190).

During a media preview session on Saturday, the male cub laid on a swing playing with a tree stick before a carer placed him on a slide. The female cub explored the enclosure before climbing onto a tree.

The panda carers said the female cub seemed more active than her male twin. She loves climbing the tree inside the enclosure and resting there while her brother likes to wander around and play with the plants. The male cub has been marked with two purple food-coloring spots on its back to distinguish it from his sister.

The birth of the baby pandas last year made their mother Ying Ying the world’s oldest first-time panda mom.

Their popularity on social media also raised hopes for the city’s tourism boost. Officials have encouraged businesses to capitalize on the panda craze to seize opportunities in what some lawmakers have dubbed the “panda economy.”

Ocean Park’s chairman Paulo Pong told reporters on Saturday that the park already saw income increases over the Christmas period and Lunar New Year holiday, alongside an uptake in overseas tourists, after the newly arrived pandas from mainland China started to greet the public.

“We’re turning the page and we believe the pandas are definitely helping the income of the park,” he said.

But caring for pandas in captivity is expensive. Ocean Park recorded a deficit of 71.6 million Hong Kong dollars ($9.2 million) last financial year, and in 2020 required a government relief fund to stay afloat. Observers are watching if taking care of six pandas will add to its burden or give it a chance to revive its business.

Pong said raising pandas was about animal conservation and education, instead of “just a money exercise.”

Pandas are considered China’s unofficial national mascot. The country’s giant panda loan program with overseas zoos has long been seen as a tool of Beijing’s soft-power diplomacy.

Kanis Leung, The Associated Press

Watch Amy Smith's interview with Mia Fournier White, the woman behind the What Were You Wearing exhibit.

From local chocolate shops offering a special treat to roses being handed out to strangers at Halifax Shopping Centre. Molly MacNaughton reports.

Aaron Rowe of Hammonds Plains made the best of a slippery situation with free ice time. Watch his interview with Amy Smith.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order formally creating a National Energy Dominance Council and directed it to move quickly to drive up already record-setting domestic oil and gas production.

Trump’s administration also announced it has granted conditional export authorization for a huge liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana, the first approval of new LNG exports since former President Joe Biden paused consideration of them a year ago.

And Trump said he has directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to undo Biden’s ban on future offshore oil drilling on the East and West coasts. Biden’s last-minute action last month “viciously took out” more than 625 million acres offshore that could contribute to the nation’s “net worth,” Trump said.

Trump also vowed to revive a canceled pipeline that would carry natural gas from Pennsylvania to New York, saying it could slash energy prices in the Northeast by as much as 70%.

Taken together, the actions underscored Trump’s commitment to increase U.S. energy production, particularly fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas, and remove regulatory barriers that may slow that down. Trump said the United States is blessed with “liquid gold” and has urged energy companies to sell more oil and gas to allies in Europe and around the globe.

“We’re going to make more money than anybody’s ever made with energy,” Trump said at an event Friday in the Oval Office. The United States has “clean energy, very clean beautiful energy,” he said. We’re lucky to have it. I call it liquid gold under our feet. And we’re going to utilize it.”

The new council, to be headed by Burgum, will be granted sweeping authority over federal agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, with a mandate to cut bureaucratic red tape, enhance private sector investments and focus on innovation instead of “totally unnecessary regulation,” Trump said.

Trump also said he would roll back efficiency standards for dishwashers and other appliances. And Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said he would work with Congress to repeal a waiver Biden’s EPA granted allowing California to impose strict air pollution standards on cars and trucks.

Biden said in January 2024 that he was delaying consideration of new natural gas export terminals in the United States, even as gas shipments to Europe and Asia have soared since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden’s election year decision aligned him with environmentalists who fear the huge increase in LNG exports is locking in potentially catastrophic planet-warming emissions, even as the Democratic president pledged to cut climate pollution in half by 2030.

But the move infuriated the oil and gas industry and Republicans, who called it a betrayal and a “broken promise” to U.S. allies who depend on LNG imports for home heating and other needs.

Trump has repeatedly called to undo Biden’s action, and an executive order he signed on the first day of his new term lifted the delay. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, appearing with Trump at the White House, said he granted a conditional approval to Commonwealth LNG in Louisiana. The company has said it will export 9.5 million tons of LNG per year at a new facility in Cameron Parish, Louisiana.

By signing the conditional export approval, Wright said he was “unpausing the pause in action” imposed by Biden.

“Exporting American LNG strengthens the U.S. economy and supports American jobs while bolstering energy security around the world, and I am proud to be working with President Trump to get American energy exports back on track,” Wright said.

Commonwealth LNG, owned by Kimmeridge Texas Gas, hailed the administration’s actions, saying in a statement that they “demonstrate that President Trump is prioritizing the American energy industry.”

Wright’s approval is subject to a final order by the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but the company said it was confident the panel would approve the project this summer.

Commonwealth anticipates reaching a final investment decision in September, with the first LNG production expected in early 2029, said CEO Farhad Ahrabi.

Biden, in blocking new offshore oil drilling two weeks before his term expired, said he was using authority under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea. The order does not affect large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico — where most U.S. offshore drilling occurs — but would protect coastlines along California, Florida and other states from future drilling.

Biden’s action, which protects more than 625 million acres of federal waters, could be difficult for Trump to unwind, since it would likely require an act of Congress to repeal. The 72-year-old law that Biden cited allows the president to withdraw portions of the outer continental shelf from mineral leasing, including leasing to drill for oil and gas, if the areas are deemed too sensitive to drill.

“The amount of money that (Biden) took off our balance sheet was incalculable,” Trump said Friday. “He just wiped it out. That’s a major part of the ocean and he just gave it away, he took it away.”

Trump said he was confident the order could be undone “in a very legal procedure,” adding: “now it’s back in our balance sheet.”

Matthew Daly, The Associated Press

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The Associated Press

A group of companies with licences to fish for highly lucrative juvenile eels along Maritime rivers turned once again to the courts on Friday in their bitter dispute with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans over decisions it has made in the fishery.

KRAGUJEVAC, Serbia (AP) — Protesting university students were greeted with euphoria Friday as they arrived in a central Serbian town ahead of a big rally this weekend, part of a months-long demonstration against corruption in the Balkan country.

Thousands of people filled the streets in Kragujevac on Friday evening to await the students, many with children and pets. The crowds waved flags and balloons, lit flares and blew whistles in a festive atmosphere.

“It’s a unique feeling. This is once in a lifetime,” said Lena Stanisic, a student from Serbia’s capital Belgrade. “It can’t compare to anything else.”

A small red carpet was placed on the pavement for the students who received flowers and medals for their effort.

Hundreds of students set off on marches to Kragujevac from various points this week with some running or cycling. The town of some 170,000 people is located about 100 kilometers (60 miles,) south of Belgrade,

The cyclists were the first to arrive with the crowd bursting in jubilation.

University students have been at the forefront of massive anti-graft protests in Serbia in the wake of a fatal collapse of a concrete canopy at a train station in the northern city of Novi Sad in November that killed 15 people.

Many in Serbia blame the crash on government corruption during renovation work on the station building. Almost daily street protests since Nov. 1 have rattled the populist President Aleksandar Vucic’s firm grip on power.

Eearlier on Friday, locals at the central Serbian village of Luznice set up stalls filled with homemade delicacies, roast pork and other refreshments as they waited for the students to pass through on their way to Kragujevac.

“We are here to support all young people, our friends,” said Ivan Karic. “We want changes. That’s it. We don’t want lies any more.”

The students’ determination, youth and creativity have struck a cord among ordinary people who are widely disillusioned with politicians and have lost faith that substantial changes are possible in the country.

“The majority of people in Serbia support the students’ requests,” said Stevan Lazic, another resident of Luzice who came out to greet the marching crowd.

Among the students’ demands are full disclosure regarding the canopy collapse and punishment for attackers on protesters in the past weeks.

The rally in Kragujevac is expected to draw tens of thousands of people on Saturday for a gathering that also marks the national Statehood Day.

The students chose the date and the town, which in 1835 was where Serbia, still part of the Ottoman empire at the time, declared a constitution that aimed to limit the powers of its rulers.

Vucic plans a parallel rally with his supporters in Sremska Mitrovica, a small town northwest of Belgrade. He has announced a declaration against an alleged separatist movement threatening Serbia’s unity.

In the past three months, the president has shifted from accusing the students of working for foreign powers to offering concessions and claiming he has fulfilled each of their demands.

Vucic has said he wants Serbia to join the European Union but he has faced accusations of rampant government corruption and stifling of democratic freedoms while in power.

Ivana Bzganovic, The Associated Press

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is preparing to launch his 2026 bid for Ohio governor on Feb. 24 in his native Cincinnati, with ensuing announcements held over two days in the Columbus, Toledo and Cleveland areas, The Associated Press has learned.

The 39-year-old biotech entrepreneur, a 2024 presidential candidate who left President Donald Trump’s government efficiency initiative last month, will kick off his closely watched campaign at Cincinnati’s CTL Aerospace Inc. He’ll then head to New Albany, outside Columbus, to deliver remarks at Axium Packaging later that evening, according to a person close to the campaign who sought anonymity to discuss the unannounced details.

On Feb. 25, Ramaswamy plans events at Glass City Center in Toledo and The Local Bar in Strongsville, a suburb of Cleveland.

Ramaswamy will enter a GOP primary to succeed term-limited Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine that’s already been joined by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Heather Hill, a former member of the state Martin Luther King Commission. Former Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, long viewed as a frontrunner in that contest, dropped out of the running last month after being appointed to the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Vice President JD Vance, a friend of Ramaswamy’s since the two attended Yale Law School.

Former Ohio Health Director Dr. Amy Acton is running on the Democratic side.

As Ramaswamy seeks to overcome a lack of political or government experience, he has already secured the endorsements of two sitting Republican statewide officials: Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Treasurer Robert Sprague.

The person close to the campaign said Ramaswamy is also scheduled to speak at 30 county Republican dinners this spring. Those events will take place from March 3 through May 22.

The Associated Press

Crocodiles, monkeys, tigers, zebras and dozens of other taxidermy animals will move to new homes after concerns about arsenic exposure forced the closure of the South Dakota museum where they had been displayed for decades.

The Delbridge Museum of Natural History at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls closed in August 2023 after testing showed potentially hazardous levels of arsenic present in 80% of the specimens of the Brockhouse Collection.

The decision raised concerns that the 152 specimens, some dating back to the 1940s, would no longer be displayed. But after a search, the Sioux Falls City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution for donating the mounts to several institutions. Under the deal, 117 specimens will go to the University of Notre Dame Museum of Biodiversity, 33 to the Atlanta-based Oddities Museum Inc., and two to the Institute for Natural History Arts Inc. in New Jersey.

The move “ensures that none of the collection will be disposed of, and all items will be put to good use by reputable natural history institutions,” Sioux Falls Director of Parks & Recreation Don Kearney told the council.

The arsenic doesn’t mean the animals can’t be displayed with proper measures in places, said Denise DePaolo, the zoo’s marketing director. The museum doesn’t have sufficient barriers to keep people from touching the specimens, which became a liability issue, she said.

The mounts’ recipients will display the animals where they can’t be touched — likely behind glass — and have experts and equipment to care for the aging taxidermy, DePaolo said.

Sioux Falls businessman and hunter Henry Brockhouse built and displayed the animal collection for years in his hardware store until he died in 1978. Subsequent owners donated the collection to the city, which displayed the menagerie at the museum for nearly 40 years. After testing revealed the arsenic, the museum was closed until officials could sort out the collection’s future, which included passing state legislation last year to help.

Some residents were upset about the irreplaceable collection leaving their town. Council Member Curt Soehl said, “There is no path forward to keep it in Sioux Falls. Pains me to say that. It’s going to be sad for me to let that go.”

Council Member Miranda Basye said, “With as much memory and as much legacy as I think is really wrapped up into this collection and the story of it being in Sioux Falls, I think the right place for it is with these other institutions that are going to care for it, that are going to give it a long-term life.”

The gifting agreements state that the recipients will take the animals as is, and the mounts are theirs forever, City Attorney Dave Pfeifle said.

___

Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota.

Jack Dura, The Associated Press

It could be another messy one on Sunday as Environment Canada issues a special weather statement for the Halifax area.

The national forecaster said snow, ice pellets, freezing rain and strong winds are expected.

“Precipitation will begin as snow Sunday morning over southwestern parts of Nova Scotia and spread across the province throughout the day,” the statement said. “The snow will transition to ice pellets and freezing rain Sunday evening with a changeover to rain expected overnight Sunday or early Monday morning.”

Environment Canada said similar events in the past have led to power outages, tree damage, traffic delays and hazardous driving conditions.

Residents are asked to keep an eye on the forecast throughout the weekend as warnings may be issued as Sunday draws closer.

For anyone who’s been searching for signs of love in this world, there was proof of it this Valentine’s Day on the Eiffel Tower, where a couple embraced in a kiss that was 674 steps above the avenues of Paris.

But love was also on display in far less iconic locales: A couple kissed on a park bench in Budapest, Romania. Florists made bouquets in a flower shop in Lagos, Nigeria. Heart-shaped plaques were tied to a tree branch at a shrine in Tokyo.

Associated Press photographers on Friday captured moments of the holiday around the world.

In Germany, people walked across the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, where an estimated 500,000 “love locks” were attached, the padlocks engraved with inscriptions of lovers. In Erbstetten on the Swabian Alb, a wedding couple was made of bales of straw.

In Rome, flowers were placed next to “St. Valentine Skull” in the Santa Maria in Cosmedin Basilica. On Thursday, visitors admired the statue “Paolina Borghese as Venus Victorious” during an event at the Galleria Borghese museum.

And in a different take on the tradition of giving flowers to one’s Valentine, in Cambodia’s southern Phnom Penh, villagers made flowers from corn husks in Tnout Chum Village. While back to the traditional, a florist arranged a rose bouquet outside a flower shop in Hanoi, Vietnam.

The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — When Jagged Edge first formed in their teens, they realized the sum of their group would be greater than its individual parts — an understanding that’s been the main ingredient of their success for nearly three decades.

One of the most iconic groups of modern R&B, Jagged Edge — Richard Wingo, Kyle Norman, lead singers (and identical twins) Brian and Brandon Casey — is back Friday with their 11th studio album, “All Original Parts: Vol. 1.” The title of the 15-track project points to the group’s solidarity: They’ve never broken up or switched original members.

“The love is actually genuinely real. We really care about each other’s well-being,” Wingo said. “I guess a lot of groups, they really didn’t have that. Love will keep you together.”

The “Where the Party At” artists say “Vol. 1” is the first of three they plan to release this year. But the men behind classic songs like “Promise” and “He Can’t Love You” say while the sonics and even subject matter of R&B have changed since their first hit single in 1997, they’re still committed to telling stories about romance and relationships.

“It’s almost like love ain’t cool no more. Well, I don’t believe that. We don’t feel like that,” said Brian Casey. “Love is always going to be cool.”

Their 1999 song “Let’s Get Married,” after all, is still nearly impossible to avoid at weddings — the original, a ceremony mainstay, and the remix packing dance floors during receptions.

Launching a tour in March celebrating the 25th anniversary of their double platinum “J.E. Heartbreak” album, the legendary group spoke with The Associated Press about sacrifice, creating timeless hits, and their musical impact. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

AP: Most groups seem to break up at some point. What’s allowed you to stay together?

BRIAN CASEY: That’s the benefit of us being actually four guys who really mess with each other. … We’ll split a couple dollars here and there when we got to, to keep this together. We’ll take the hits to keep giving the fans what they said they fell in love with. … What we’re able to do in turn is worth that split. It’s worth that sacrifice.

AP: R&B has drastically changed since you came on the scene with “I Gotta Be.” How have you navigated the changes?

BRANDON CASEY: Number one: staying true to Jagged Edge. That’s the first thing because that’s the vehicle, right? So, we never want to go too far from what our fans love us from. But we’re actually musicians, so it’s hard to just stay in one little place. … Our sound is as eclectic as it’s ever been.

AP: When you look over the longevity of your career, your love songs are timeless. What do you remember about first entering the industry?

BRIAN CASEY: We came up in an era of “Bump n’ Grind,” “Freek’n You” and “Freak Me,” those are the biggest songs of all time at that time, it seemed like. So, we knew it would be a conscious decision for us to be the age that we were making songs talking about things like getting married. But we’ve never been afraid of that challenge, number one. So, I think of that. But I also think of how taking that route allowed us to be in the same room with some of our heroes who now looked at us as peers. And that was meeting Luther Vandross, meeting Prince, and them having positive things to say about our music.

AP: Do you all feel you get the credit and recognition you deserve?

BRANDON CASEY: We get asked things like that a lot. So, I guess it starts to make us think, “Do we?” It’s been such a layered experience, right? It’s so many things to be proud of.

We don’t have nothing that we’ve built without our fans. And for us, that’s the most important, most heartwarming, gratifying thing, that it’s somebody who loves you for what you do. … We’re one of the few groups who get onstage and them girls scream like we’re taking our clothes off, and we never take no clothes off. They scream like we got routines — we don’t do none of that, right? We always come in the arena like, “This is just us. This is who we are.” And they love us for that. And it’s no feeling that is even close.

AP: Do you understand the impact your songs have had on fans and music?

BRIAN CASEY: I don’t know that you can ever understand it while you’re still in the middle of it. … But I will say, when you meet certain people, it’s heartwarming and it gives you a sense of what that impact is, you know what I mean? And it’s not until you get to talk to people who are looking at it from the outside-in that you realize, “Man, we did an all right job.”

___

Follow Associated Press entertainment journalist Gary Gerard Hamilton at @GaryGHamilton on all his social media platforms.

Gary Gerard Hamilton, The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Maneet Chauhan delicately sprinkled saffron onto her gushtaba goat meatballs as the live audience began the final countdown. She and competitor Antonia Lofaso scrambled to finish their dishes on the season five finale of Food Network’s “Tournament of Champions.”

As the timer buzzed, Chauhan tossed a mixing bowl onto the cluttered counter, throwing her hands up in surrender to the clock. She and Lofaso embraced, neither breaking a sweat.

History was on the line for Chauhan, a highly decorated Indian American chef famous for her mastery of spices, who was hoping to become the first two-time “Tournament of Champions” winner.

Chauhan would prevail, and in the process help the show extend its own history streak. “ToC” as it is known, is the only cooking competition series that includes people of all genders where no man has ever won, let alone made it as a top-two finalist.

As the show readies to air its qualifying episodes for its sixth season starting Sunday and its full season on March 2, it remains to be seen whether women continue to dominate. But as viewers and chefs have noticed the trend, the show’s unique format is seen as both the reason and proof of what woman chefs have been saying for years.

“This is the UFC of culinary. That’s what I was trying to create,” said Guy Fieri, who conceived of the show and pitched it for years. “I’m a fan of giving people a platform. There are other culinary competitions out there, but they’re a little more drama-oriented. I want to cut the (BS) and just see the best of the best going through the most.”

Fieri, host of “Guy’s Grocery Games” and “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” saw an opening for a no-frills, professional Food Network cooking competition that “Iron Chef America” once occupied. “ToC” debuted in March 2020, just as the pandemic started.

The show has chefs from all corners of the country compete one-on-one until only two finalists are left. In every match, the chefs are at the mercy of a creation Fieri calls “the Randomizer,” a spinning, five-category board inspired by the “Wheel of Fortune” wheel.

The categories include a required protein, produce ingredient, specialized equipment, cooking style and time limit. Requirements have ranged from cooking grasshoppers in paella style to combining mussels and cabbage.

Dishes are blind-judged from a private trailer away from the studio where they’ve been cooked.

Many players are relatively unknown outside the culinary world, which makes for high-stakes battles when they’re pitted against household names and big television personalities. This held true for Brooke Williamson, the first “ToC” winner.

“I’ve done my best over the years to go in with a game plan and some familiarity with what I will be facing,” said Williamson. “Generally, that goes out the window the moment that clock starts or the moment the ingredients are revealed.”

In a remarkable series of events, Williamson, the self-proclaimed underdog, swept through her competitors, beating well-known Food Network stars Jet Tila and Lofaso. In the finale, she pulled off a huge upset, defeating renowned Food Network personality Amanda Freitag by one point.

“I didn’t know her. Holy (expletive). She just knocked it out,” Fieri said of his initial reaction to Williamson’s victory. At that moment, he knew “ToC” was different.

And the surprises didn’t end there. Season after season, lesser-known talents gave Food Network titans and Iron Chefs a run for their money.

And above all, one fact remained clear: only women were making it to the finale.

According to Fieri, who pushed for blind judging, the judges cannot, under any circumstances, know who is cooking in the competition at any point. Judges are sequestered in private trailers far from the kitchen and competitors until it’s time for them to taste.

Tiffani Faison, a James Beard Award-winning restaurateur who won “ToC” season three, feels blind judging plays a clear role in the outcome of “ToC.”

“It completely removes implicit bias,” said Faison. “There’s no one in front of you that looks a certain way, that speaks a certain way, that wants to tell you about what this dish means to them or where it’s from. It (is) just the food.”

In the U.S., only 23.3% of chefs and head cooks in 2023 were women, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only 6% of Michelin-starred restaurants worldwide are run by women, as reported by Chef’s Pencil.

“For the longest time, as women chefs, we’ve been trying to say, ‘Judge us on our food, not on who we are.’ And that’s exactly what’s happening on this show,” said Chauhan, who beat out 40 male chefs for the executive chef position at Vermilion in Chicago at age 23.

Chauhan was no stranger to having to prove her skills in kitchens dominated by men. She was the only woman among 70 male students at her hotel management school in Manipal, India, and she graduated at the top of her class.

“I think that part of the reason why women do so well on “ToC” is because we are a little bit more focused,” said “ToC” season four winner Mei Lin, who grew up in family-owned restaurants and felt pressure to prove herself in kitchens run by men. “We’re a lot more organized in the kitchen. We just put our heads down and work, and that’s really all it is.”

Chauhan said “the Randomizer” forces contestants to multitask, a skill she believes women are raised to excel in.

“I think women are very thoughtful about how they enter a situation like ‘ToC,’ especially having been put in a position to have to prove themselves throughout their career,” she said.

“What really makes a big difference is when there are young girls who look like me, who reach out to me and say, ’You can do it. I’m going to push myself, and I’ll do it too.”

Akira Olivia Kumamoto, The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Americans looking to buy a newly built home this spring are likely to get a helping hand with their mortgage rate and other costs.

Many homebuilders are offering buyers valuable incentives like paying down their mortgage rate, covering closing costs or even throwing in “flex dollars” that home shoppers can put toward upgrades or other costs.

While the sales strategy isn’t new, builders are under pressure this year to ramp up such incentives because they’re facing a tough spring homebuying season.

Stubbornly high mortgage rates, more competition from existing homes on the market and the realization that years of rising home prices have pushed affordability to the limit for many prospective buyers gives builders little opportunity to ease off the costly incentives.

“They’re running into more competition, fewer buyers and increased costs to sell a home,” said Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda.

And dialing back incentives may not be easy, as home shoppers have now come to expect them.

“We should anticipate that builder incentives are here to stay,” Wolf said. “I don’t see a world where they don’t need them, unless interest rates came down, and most signs point to higher-for-longer with interest rates.”

Elevated mortgage rates and rising prices have kept many prospective home shoppers on the sidelines, especially first-time buyers who don’t have equity from an existing home to put toward a purchase. While mortgage rates have eased in recent weeks, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage has been hovering around 7% since November after climbing from a 2-year low of just over 6% in September, according to Freddie Mac.

Builders have increasingly relied on buyer incentives to mitigate the impact of higher borrowing costs on home shoppers as the average rate on a 30-year mortgage more than doubled in recent years from its pandemic-era historic low of 2.65%. Many builders have also lowered prices.

The share of homebuilders that offer sales incentives has ranged between 60% and 64% since June, while between 30% and 33% have lowered prices, according to surveys by the National Association of Home Builders.

The use of buyer incentives helped drive sales of new homes higher last year, while the resale home market remained in a deep slump. Sales of newly built single-family homes rose 2.6% last year to around 1.02 million units, the highest level since 2021, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in 2024 to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

While mortgage buydowns and other incentives can help builders entice buyers, their cost eats into their profit margins. The average operating margin for 12 of the largest homebuilders, including D.R. Horton, PulteGroup and Lennar, was 15.08% in the fourth-quarter, according to data compiled by FactSet. That’s down from an average of 16.3% in the same period a year earlier.

The concern now is that builders will have to maintain, if not boost, buyer incentives to continue mitigating the impact of high mortgage rates at a time when home shoppers have a wider selection to choose from. Last month, active listings — a tally that encompasses all homes on the market except those pending a finalized sale — were up 25% from a year earlier, according to Realtor.com.

Rising construction costs and uncertainty over the impact that the Trump administration’s trade and immigration policies may have on building materials and labor costs, respectively, are also fueling worries on Wall Street about how well builder profit margins will hold up this year.

“We expect order growth to come at the expense of margins for homebuilders,” analysts at BofA Securities wrote in a recent research note. They also said they expect a “challenging environment for homebuilders to persist” through the first half of this year.

Concern over builders’ profit margins has weighed on the stocks, with many homebuilders off to a downbeat start this year after lagging the overall stock market in 2024.

D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest builder by closings, is down around 7.5% this year. Lennar is down 5.6% and NVR is off 10.2%.

The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF, which tracks a variety of building products companies, is up 1.4%. By comparison, the S&P 500 is up about 4%.

Alex Veiga, The Associated Press

On Jan. 29, an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter collided as the plane prepared to land at Washington D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. Both plunged into the Potomac River, killing all 67 people aboard.

Since then, much of the attention has focused on the helicopter’s altitude, and whether it may have been flying too high. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is handling the investigation, plans to brief reporters Friday on their probe.

The collision was the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. since 2001, when a jet slammed into a New York City neighborhood just after takeoff, killing all 260 people on board and five more on the ground.

Air travel remains overwhelmingly safe in the U.S., but there have been a string of incidents in recent weeks, including a fiery explosion on Jan. 31 when a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven people. Last week, a small commuter aircraft crashed off western Alaska, killing 10 people.

The crash

American Airlines Flight 5342 was coming in from Wichita, Kansas, carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, as it approached Reagan National to land on a clear Wednesday night. Nearby, a U.S. Army Black Hawk with three soldiers on board was on a training exercise, practicing emergency evacuation routes that would be used to ferry out key government officials in case of an attack or catastrophe.

A few minutes before the twin-engine jet was to land, air traffic controllers asked if it could use a shorter runway. The pilots agreed, and flight-tracking sites show the plane adjusted its approach.

Shortly before the collision, a controller got an alert that the plane and Black Hawk were converging and asked the helicopter if it had the plane in sight. The military pilot said yes and asked for “visual separation” with the jet — allowing it to fly closer than otherwise may have been allowed if the pilots didn’t see the plane. Controllers approved the request.

Roughly 20 seconds later, the aircraft collided.

The investigation

Since the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board has recovered all the flight data recorders and pulled the wreckage of both aircraft from the Potomac.

It will take more than a year to get the final NTSB report on the crash, but officials have been providing regular updates as investigators learn more and they plan to publish a preliminary report in the coming weeks.

Almost immediately after the crash, President Donald Trump publicly faulted the helicopter, which had a flight ceiling of 200 feet (61 meters), for flying too high. He also blamed federal diversity and inclusion efforts, particularly regarding air traffic controllers. When pressed by reporters, the president could not back up those claims. A few days later, Trump placed the blame on what he called an “obsolete” air traffic control system.

Army officials have said the Black Hawk crew was highly experienced and familiar with the crowded skies around Washington.

Altitude data was not fully clear in the early days of the investigation, with conflicting numbers from the plane’s flight data recorder and the control tower.

At the time, however, investigators were still working to recover information from the helicopter’s black box, which had been waterlogged after plunging into the river, and to refine other data.

Investigators also said that about a second before impact, the jet’s flight recorder showed a change in its angle, though they did not say whether that indicated the pilots were trying to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid the crash.

The victims

The Army identified the Black Hawk crew as Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach of Durham, North Carolina; Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia; and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland. O’Hara was the crew chief and Eaves and Lobach were pilots.

Among the jet’s passengers were several members of the Skating Club of Boston returning from a development camp for elite junior skaters that followed the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.

The victims also included a group of hunters returning from a guided trip in Kansas, four members of a steamfitters’ local union in suburban Maryland, nine students and parents from Fairfax County, Virginia, schools and two Chinese nationals.

The Associated Press

Environmental charges relating to a highway-twinning project on the South Shore have been withdrawn by prosecutors.

Ukraine’s nuclear ghosts were raised again on Friday after a drone armed with a warhead hit the protective outer shell of the plant at Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident.

The strike, which Kyiv blamed on Moscow, did not breach the plant’s inner containment shell and radiation levels did not increase, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Russia denied involvement, and accused Ukraine of waging a false flag attack. Their competing claims could not be independently verified.

What’s at stake?

The timing is sensitive as the incident comes against the backdrop of the Munich Security Conference, a gathering of world leaders meant to hash out paths to ending the nearly three-year war.

Both Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations, claiming the other is trying to derail President Donald Trump’s efforts to help broker a peace deal.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the U.N. watchdog, the IAEA, said Friday’s incident was deeply concerning and underlines the persistent risks to nuclear safety during the ongoing war.

“There is no room for complacency, and the IAEA remains on high alert,” he said in a statement. “I once again call for maximum military restraint around Ukraine’s nuclear sites.”

How dangerous can it be?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a Russian drone slammed into the shell covering the remains of Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 — the same one that exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing radioactive fallout over much of Europe.

The 2-billion euro ($2.1 billion) structure, built in 2019, enclosed the original concrete shelter that was built over what was left of the exploded reactor.

Made of metal and designed to prevent any radioactive release from the exploded reactor, the outer shell is meant to protect it from any external hazards.

Experts have said the drone didn’t threaten the integrity of the original concrete shelter, which can withstand a much heavier impact.

Three other nuclear reactors at Chernobyl have been shut down long ago, but the plant houses spent fuel and contaminated equipment awaiting to be dismantled during a long decommissioning process.

Some parts of the Russia-captured Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is Europe’s biggest, have been repeatedly struck by drones — attacks Russia and Ukraine blamed on each other — but none have led to radioactive threats.

Still, a slew of attacks earlier this week prompted the cancellation of a planned rotation of IAEA monitors at the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Russian troops occupied Chernobyl in the opening weeks of the war, raising fears that they could cause damage and trigger a radioactive accident. Since the Russians’ withdrawal in late March 2022, Ukraine has mounted a drive to install further protections at the defunct site, including anti-drone systems and anti-tank barriers.

What about other risks?

The nearly three years of fighting have seen repeated power cuts to the critical cooling system at Chernobyl, as well as at Ukraine’s four active nuclear plants, causing fears that spent nuclear fuel could overheat.

The cuts often follow shelling or drone strikes on nearby power lines, disrupting supply.

Nuclear safety experts have told The Associated Press that internal radioactive decay continues for thousands of years inside fuel rods after they have been used to generate power, giving off heat. Because of this, the rods are put in cooling pools, where they are cooled by both water and an electric-powered heat exchange pump.

The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority and others estimate that a power outage at Chernobyl would not lead to a risky radiation incident for at least a couple of weeks. This is because the fuel storage ponds are very deep, and it would take a long time for the water inside them to boil down, even if the cooling pumps were to stop.

Still, a lack of electricity would blind the IAEA’s radiation monitoring systems, installed to boost security.

And even if experts say a drone or missile strike is unlikely to trigger a major radioactive release, at least not without giving authorities time to take action, a power shutoff or the deliberate targeting of nuclear plants during the war can still cause significant panic and undermine peace efforts.

The Associated Press

"This year’s t-shirt isn’t just a piece of clothing—it’s a celebration of unity, resilience, and brilliance of the African Nova Scotian community," Halifax Public Libraries said.

The post Meet the man behind the Halifax Public Libraries T-shirt design for African Heritage Month 2025 appeared first on Halifax Examiner.

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Thirteen people suspected of illegally importing and disposing of hazardous waste have been arrested in Croatia, the European Union’s law enforcement agency said Friday.

The main suspects, two Croatian nationals, are considered high-value targets by Europol, said an agency statement. They are believed to have orchestrated the illegal hazardous waste imports from Italy, Slovenia and Germany to Croatia.

Rather than being properly treated, the waste was simply dumped and buried, Europol said. The statement added that at least 35,000 tons (38,580 U.S. tons) of waste were illegally disposed of resulting in a profit of at least 4 million euros ($4.2 million).

The waste was declared as recyclable plastic waste but was “legally considered dangerous waste,” Europol said. Croatian authorities believe the criminal network also illegally buried and dumped medical waste from Croatian companies, it said.

Croatian anti-corruption authorities said in a statement of their own Friday that they have launched an investigation into 10 people and four legal entities suspected of criminal conspiracy, crimes against the environment, tax evasion and money laundering. They said they will seek to keep seven people detained, the state-run HRT television said.

The Croatian office tasked with fighting organized crime and corruption said illegal waste disposal has inflicted damage on the environment, including changes in the land configuration that affected plant and tree growth, release of toxic particles in the soil and air and potential negative effect on people’s health.

Croatia has suffered “considerable ecological damage” and still unspecified material damage, the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime said in a statement.

Europol said the suspects abused the infrastructures of legal businesses. They would first offer lower prices for disposal and then falsify documentation to transport their cargo to Croatia, allegedly for recycling.

Waste trafficking enables criminal networks to obtain huge profits while often causing irreparable damage to the environment, the agency said.

The Associated Press

The discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at an Indian residential school in Canada in 2021 was just the catalyst for “Sugarcane.”

Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, the filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated documentary, spent years investigating the truth behind just one of the institutions. “Sugarcane,” now streaming on Hulu, paints a horrifying picture of the systemic abuses inflicted by the state-funded school and exposes for the first time a pattern of infanticide and babies born to Indigenous girls and fathered by priests.

In the year since it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, “Sugarcane” has screened at the White House, for Canadian Parliament and for over a dozen indigenous communities in North America, sparking a grassroots movement and reckoning to find the truth about the other schools. It also marks the first time that an Indigenous North American filmmaker has received an Oscar nomination.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died. Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations

Canada’s residential schools were based on similar facilities in the United States, where Catholic and Protestant denominations operated more than 150 boarding schools between the 19th and 20th centuries, according to researchers, that also were home to rampant abuse.

“It’s too often that we look everywhere else in the world to horrors and abuses happening, and that’s important, but Native issues are rarely the issue of the day, and we believe that they deserve to be,” Kassie said. “This story is the genocide that happened across North America, and we’ve never grappled with it. Native people have rarely been the focal point of that kind of countrywide dialogue. We hope that ’Sugarcane” helps to change that.”

The unexpectedly personal journey to “Sugarcane”

As an investigative journalist and documentarian, Kassie had spent a decade making films about human rights abuses all over the world, from Afghanistan to Niger, but she’d never turned her lens to her own country. When the news broke about the unmarked graves, she felt drawn to the story and reached out to NoiseCat to see if he’d want to help. They became friends as cub reporters in New York who just happened to share neighboring desks.

“In the years since, Julian had gone on to become an incredible writer and thinker and journalist focusing on indigenous life in North America. It felt like the natural fit,” she said.

While he was mulling it over, she went looking for a group to focus on and landed on St. Joseph’s Mission near the Sugarcane Reservation of Williams Lake in British Columbia. Unbeknownst to her, that was the school NoiseCat’s family attended. He’d heard stories about his father being born nearby and found in a dumpster. Over the course of making the film they’d discover that he was actually born in a dormitory and found in the school’s incinerator.

“It was a process for me to ultimately decide to tell the story in a personal and familial way,” said NoiseCat, who during the making of the film lived with his father for the first time since he was around 6 years old.

“It became very clear that he had these unaddressed questions from his birth and upbringing, and that I was in a position to help him ask those questions and in so doing, to address some of my own enduring pains and complications from his abandonment of me,” NoiseCat said. “The big thing, though, was going to the Vatican with the late Chief Rick Gilbert and witnessing his incredible bravery.”

The impact of “Sugarcane”

“We’ve just been incredibly fortunate that this film has had real impact,” NoiseCat said. “I was really scared that telling such a personal and sometimes painful story might be a harmful thing. But really, thankfully, it’s been a healing thing, not just for my family and our participants, but for Indian Country more broadly.”

Over the last year as the film has played at various festivals and for Indigenous communities on reservations, Kassie said that more survivors have been coming forward with their stories.

In October, former President Joe Biden also formally apologized to Native Americans for the “sin” of a government-run boarding school system that for decades forcibly separated children from their parents, calling it a “blot on American history.”

“This is the origin story of North America,” Kassie said. “It’s the story of how the land was taken by separating six generations of kids, indigenous kids from their families… (and) most people don’t know.”

Kassie noted that while “Sugarcane” is inspiring conversations within communities, it comes at a political moment where governments are not actively supporting continued investigation and accountability.

An historic Oscar nomination

In a film industry with deep roots in the Western genre and problematic, racist depictions of Native Americans as impediments to westward expansion, authentic representation of indigenous stories on screen is still in the early days. In 97 years of the Oscars, no Native American person has ever won a competitive acting prize. Lily Gladstone, who is an executive producer on “Sugarcane,” was passed over last year for best actress.

When the Oscar nomination came through for “Sugarcane,” they made sure they had their facts right before touting its own historic nature: NoiseCat was indeed the first indigenous North American filmmaker to get one.

“It’s really special,” he said. “And at the same time, it’s kind of shocking.”

“We hope the film shows that there’s still so much about this foundational story in North America that needs to be known and therefore needs to be investigated,” NoiseCat said. “This film should be seen not as an ending, but a beginning to a real grappling with this story.”

He added: “More broadly, there are so many painful, important, beautiful and sometimes even triumphant stories that come from Native people that come from Indian Country. It’s my hope that more Native stories and storytellers and films get recognized moving forward and get made.”

If “Sugarcane” is named the winner at the Oscars on March 2, NoiseCat promised it will be an acceptance speech to watch.

“We will make it a moment,” NoiseCat said. “If we win, I’m going to get up there, I’m going to say something, and we’re going to do it well too.”

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For more on this year’s Oscar race and show, including how to watch the nominees, visit https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards

Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press

This is a collection of photos chosen by AP photo editors.

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman was involved in a collision at sea with a merchant vessel near Port Said, Egypt, the Navy said.

The collision occurred late Wednesday while both ships were moving. It did not result in flooding or injuries aboard the carrier, and there was no damage to the ship’s propulsion systems, the Navy said Thursday in a statement.

None of the crew on the merchant ship, the Besiktas-M, were injured either, according to a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that had not yet been made public.

The Truman, which is based in Norfolk, Virginia, deployed in September to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It had just completed a port call in Souda Bay, Greece.

Tara Copp, The Associated Press

Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax is the latest post-secondary school in Nova Scotia to offer a condensed bachelor of education program to help address what the teachers' union calls a dire shortage of educators across the province.

NEW YORK (AP) — Legions of comedic talent have paraded through NBC’s Studio 8H, whether as cast members, writers or hosts of “Saturday Night Live.”

As the sketch show marks its 50th anniversary with a bevy of celebrations, its cast members and alumni look back on their favorite sketches and the enduring legacy of “Saturday Night Live.”

Fred Armisen, cast member 2002-2013, one-time host

FAVORITE SKETCH: “The Wizard of Oz”

“There’s a ‘Wizard of Oz’ one that we did that actually John Mulaney wrote, where there’s like this new footage of ‘Wizard of Oz,’ of a character that got cut out of a movie, and it’s a weather vane,” said Armisen, who played Weathervane alongside Anne Hathaway’s Dorothy. “Something about it, I just I really love that sketch.”

Chloe Fineman, cast member 2019-present

FAVORITE SKETCH: “Everything is amazing,” the current cast member said, but she seemed to hope the anniversary special would see a reprise of “The Californians.”

“All of it are sort of ‘pinch me’ moments and I feel like it’ll be even bigger than the 40th,” she said of the upcoming special.

Will Forte, cast member 2002-2010, one-time host

FAVORITE SKETCHES: “More Cowbell,” with Christopher Walken fixated on adding that signature sound to Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Forte named a few, but “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” was another favorite. Then, of course, there’s Adam Sandler’s classic “The Chanukah Song.”

“I hadn’t seen ‘The Chanukah Song’ in a long time. … It just happened to be on the other day,” said Forte, who was freshly reminded: “It’s so good.”

Seth Meyers, cast member 2001-2014, former head writer, one-time host

FAVORITE SKETCH: “More Cowbell,” perhaps a universal favorite.

“I think ‘Cowbell’ would work if English was your like 10th language. … I think that’s a safe pick,” he said. “It’s Will Ferrell at the height of his powers. … It’s an all-time host Christopher Walken doing a thing that only Christopher Walken could do.” (Of the last 12 months, Meyers is also partial to Nate Bargatze’s “Washington’s Dream” sketches.)

WHY “SNL” ENDURES: To Meyers, who now hosts “Late Night” in Studio 8G, “Saturday Night Live” is like sports. It’s live. No one knows what’s going to happen.

“It’s so beautifully uneven. I’ve always said the worst show has something great and the best show has something terrible,” Meyers said. “And there’s no there’s no host that can guarantee consistency. … If you laid all the Alec Baldwin-hosted episodes out there, there’s a huge gap between the best one and the worst one. And there’s no real reason to explain that, other than just everybody sort of had a bad week.”

Bobby Moynihan, cast member 2008-2017

FAVORITE SKETCHES: “Haunted Elevator,” with Tom Hanks as the spooky-yet-goofy David S. Pumpkins; “Calculator Christmas Gift,” where Fred Armisen and John Malkovich have their odd holiday wish list fulfilled; “Tennis Talk with Time-Traveling Scott Joplin,” which is somehow exactly what it sounds like.

“David Pumpkins always comes to mind as just, like, the weirdest thing we ever got on. And I love the idea of future generations trying to figure it out, as well,” said Moynihan, who added that he was drawn to “amazing, weird sketches.”

John Mulaney, writer 2008-2013, six-time host

FAVORITE SKETCHES: “Toilet Death Ejector,” an infomercial flogging an “elegant” solution to avert the indignity of dying on the commode, and “Monkey Trial,” featuring, yes, a monkey but not one on trial — one presiding over it.

“Those are two quality Simon Rich premises executed,” said Mulaney, who wrote the former with frequent collaborators Rich and Marika Sawyer and the latter with Rich. Both sketches date to Mulaney’s hosting stints.

Laraine Newman, cast member 1975-1980

FAVORITE SKETCH: “Plato’s Cave” from the Not Ready for Prime Time Players era, where Steve Martin plays a beatnik, and “The Swan,” a parody of a 2000s reality show.

“I remember seeing there was a horrible reality show called ‘The Swan’ where they did this massive plastic surgery on people. And I think they did a parody of that with Amy Poehler and a bunch of other people. And it was the first time I’d seen her and I was like, ‘My God, this girl is so good,’” Newman said. “But as far as our show, I think that this one sketch called ‘Plato’s Cave’ or the beatnik sketch, is, I think, a really good representation of our show. And it’s the whole cast.”

WHY “SNL” ENDURES: There’s a long list of people responsible, she says, but atop that list? Show creator Lorne Michaels.

“The fact that the show has remained relevant is because of the approach that Lorne has, which is that he always has new people, whether they be writers or performers with new perspectives and original ideas and characters,” Newman said. “And that’s, I think, what moves the show along in terms of tone and relevance.”

Jason Sudeikis, writer 2003-2005, cast member 2005-2013, one-time host

FAVORITE SKETCH: “What’s Up With That?” a recurring series with Kenan Thompson as a game show host.

“Part of the reason I put it in there is because I feel very proud of the group, the generation I came up on and through the show … both on camera and behind the scenes,” Sudeikis said, noting the “real wild” cameos like Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

Kenan Thompson, cast member 2003-present

WHY “SNL” ENDURES: It has good people, and they know where the line is.

“We work with brilliant people. I think we all have a pretty solid sensibility, where we kind of know where the offense is and we work really hard trying not to tread in places that are uncomfortable or whatever without warrant,” the longtime cast member said. “But at the same time, I can’t please everybody and we’re still trying to like, like lighten the mood, if you will. So, you know, we’re doing that as long as we’re not like overly stepping — like if you step on a toe, you say, ‘I’m sorry. Excuse me.’ Then that should be OK. … We should be able to just move on and continue to explore or continue conversations that may or may not be uncomfortable. That’s kind of our job.”

Bowen Yang, writer 2018-2019, cast member 2019-present

WHY “SNL” ENDURES: At its heart, it’s a variety show.

“I think with a show like ‘SNL,’ we have the latitude to be a little variety show and give you different sensibilities and different parts of that, different perspectives. I love it,” the current cast member said. “It’s a very pluralistic place for comedy because it’s one of the last places where you can sort of have a grab bag of different kinds of stuff.”

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Pearson contributed reporting from Los Angeles. For more coverage of the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” visit https://apnews.com/hub/saturday-night-live.

John Carucci, Brooke Lefferts, Gina Abdy And Ryan Pearson, The Associated Press

Police say a car and a tractor-trailer collided near Linwood, N.S., on Thursday.

The Nova Scotia Legislature opens today for its first sitting since November's provincial election.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Hamas militants on Friday named three Israeli male hostages to be released at the weekend as part of a fragile ceasefire deal that had teetered in recent days amid a major dispute that raised the specter of fighting resuming in the devastated Gaza Strip.

Hamas and a forum representing families of hostages identified the three to be freed Saturday as Israeli-Argentinian Iair Horn, 46; Israeli-American Sagui Dekel Chen, 36; and Israeli-Russian Alexander (Sasha) Troufanov, 29. The trio were abducted from the same hard-hit kibbutz during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, which began on Jan. 21, Israel is to release more than 300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails in return for the hostages. The exchange will be the sixth swap since the ceasefire came into effect.

So far, 21 hostages and over 730 Palestinian prisoners have been freed during the first phase of the truce. But the ceasefire had appeared dangerously close to collapse in recent days.

Hamas had said it would delay the next hostage release after accusing Israel of not adhering to the terms of the deal by not allowing enough shelters, medical supplies, fuel and heavy equipment for clearing rubble into Gaza.

Israel, with the support of U.S. President Donald Trump, had retorted it would resume fighting Saturday unless hostages were freed – leaving it unclear whether it meant the three hostages as scheduled in the ceasefire deal, or all remaining hostages.

An Israeli government official on Friday confirmed Israel had received the list of hostages to be released. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Who are the hostages slated for release Saturday

Horn, Dekel Chen and Troufanov were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, where some 80 of roughly 400 residents were taken hostage during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

Horn was taken along with his brother, Eitan Horn, who had been staying with him at the time. Eitan remains in captivity.

Dekel Chen had been working on a bus renovation when militants stormed the kibbutz. His wife, Avital, who was seven months pregnant at the time, hid in a safe room with their two daughters. Avital has since given birth to a third daughter while her husband has been in captivity.

Troufanov was taken hostage along with his grandmother Irena Tati, mother Yelena (Lena) and girlfriend Sapir Cohen. The three women were released during a brief ceasefire in November 2023. Troufanov’s father was killed in the Oct. 7 attack.

Concern about remaining hostages’ condition

Of the 251 people abducted, 73 remain in Gaza, around half of whom are believed to be dead. Nearly all the remaining hostages are men, including Israeli soldiers.

Concern has been growing about the remaining hostages’ condition, particularly after the release of three last Saturday, who emerged looking emaciated and frail.

One of them, 65-year-old Keith Siegel, said in a video message addressed to Trump Friday that his captors had starved him and physically and emotionally tortured him.

He said the militants who held him for 484 days treated him worse as the 15-month war intensified, kicking him, spitting on him and holding him with no water or light. The statement marked one of the first accounts of Hamas captivity from a hostage released during the ceasefire.

“When I was in Gaza, I lived in constant fear…for my life and my personal safety,” he said.

Siegel, originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, implored Trump to use his “leadership and strength” to ensure the ceasefire holds and all hostages return home.

The truce faces a much bigger challenge in the coming weeks. The first phase is set to conclude at the beginning of March, and there have not yet been substantive negotiations over the second phase, in which Hamas would release all remaining hostages in return for an end to the war.

Trump’s plan raises uncertainty

Trump’s proposal to remove some 2 million Palestinians from Gaza and settle them in other countries has thrown the truce’s future into further doubt.

His plan has been welcomed by Israel, but vehemently rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries which have refused to accept any influx of refugees. Human rights groups say it could amount to a war crime under international law.

Trump has said Gaza’s population should be resettled elsewhere in the region, with wealthy Arab countries paying for it. He has suggested that once the fighting ends, Israel would transfer control of Gaza to the United States, which would then redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right allies are already calling for a resumption of the war after the first phase with the goal of implementing Trump’s plan and annihilating Hamas, which remains in control of the territory after surviving one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history.

Hamas may be unwilling to release any more hostages if it believes the war will resume. The captives are among the only bargaining chips it has left.

‘New war’ would likely be far worse

The war has killed over 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

Israel’s offensive has obliterated large parts of Gaza. At its height, the fighting had displaced 90% of the territory’s population of 2.3 million. Hundreds of thousands have returned to their homes since the ceasefire took hold, though many have found only rubble, buried human remains and unexploded ordnance.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, echoing Trump, said Wednesday that “all hell will break loose” if Hamas stops releasing hostages. He said a “new Gaza war” wouldn’t end until Hamas was defeated, which would allow for Trump’s vision of mass displacement to be carried out.

With far fewer hostages remaining in Gaza, Israel would have more freedom of action militarily.

It would also face far fewer constraints from the United States, its main military patron. The Biden administration, while providing crucial military and diplomatic support, had occasionally pressed Israel to allow in more aid and at one point suspended some weapons shipments. It had also said there should be no permanent displacement of its Palestinian population.

Trump has lifted restrictions on arms transfers, and his administration is pressing ahead with the sale of $7 billion worth of weapons approved under President Joe Biden.

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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Julia Frankel, The Associated Press