Georgia detains second opposition leader within days as ruling party faces more protests

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Georgian police on Friday detained a second opposition leader within days as protests continue in the South Caucasus country against the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Lawyers for Nika Melia, one of the figureheads for Georgia's pro-Western Coalition for Change, said his car was stopped by police on Thursday. Soon after, he was bundled away by a large group of people in civilian clothing.

According to Georgia’s interior ministry, Melia has been detained on charges of verbally insulting a law enforcement officer.

The arrest came a week after that of Zurab Japaridze, another leader of the pro-Western, liberal coalition of parties that support European Union integration and want a restoration of democratic standards.

Every Floridian should have a plan for this year’s hurricane season, DeSantis says

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Two days away from the start of hurricane season, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s top emergency manager joked Friday that they didn't want to encounter each other again until the storm season ends in late November. Forecasts suggest that’s unlikely.

While the upcoming season, which starts Sunday, isn't expected to be as topsy-turvy as last season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there's a 60% chance it will be above normal, a 30% chance near normal and just a 10% chance it will be quieter than average. Relentless storms, including Debby, Helene and Milton, which landed in Florida last year, made for the third-costliest hurricane season on record last year.

“You just have to prepare and plan that we are going to have impacts,” DeSantis said at a news conference in front of shelves of generators at a Home Depot store in Jupiter, Florida. “If you plan and it doesn't happen, you're never going to have regrets. If you don't plan and it happens, you're going to immediately be saying, ‘Why didn’t I do this?'”

Ahead of any hurricanes headed toward the peninsula, Floridians should be prepared to have seven days of food, water and supplies for their households, including pets. If they need to evacuate, they don't have to travel hundreds of miles when traveling just a few miles inland to a hotel or shelter works, officials said.

Hamas says it is still reviewing a US proposal for a Gaza ceasefire

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas said Friday it was still reviewing a U.S. proposal for a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where 27 people were killed in new Israeli airstrikes, according to hospital officials.

The ceasefire plan, which has been approved by Israeli officials, won a cool initial reaction Thursday from the militant group. But President Donald Trump said Friday negotiators were nearing a deal.

“They’re very close to an agreement on Gaza, and we’ll let you know about it during the day or maybe tomorrow,” Trump told reporters in Washington. Late in the evening, asked if he was confident Hamas would approve the deal, he told reporters: “They’re in a big mess. I think they want to get out of it.”

U.S. negotiators have not publicized the terms of the proposal. But a Hamas official and an Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Thursday that it called for a 60-day pause in fighting, guarantees of serious negotiations leading to a long-term truce and assurances that Israel will not resume hostilities after the release of hostages, as it did in March.

A Palestinian describes 15 minutes of terror trying to get food in the new Gaza distribution system

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Shehada Hijazi woke at dawn. It was his best chance, he thought, to get his hands on a package of food at a new distribution site run by a U.S.- and Israeli-backed foundation in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of others, equally desperate to feed their hungry families, had the same idea.

By the time Hijazi walked the 7 kilometers (4 miles) to the southern tip of the territory, a militarized zone that has been evacuated of its residents, it was chaos. People pushed and shoved for hours as they restlessly waited outside the site, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, earth berms and checkpoints. When it opened, the crowd charged, rushing toward hundreds of boxes left stacked on the ground on wooden pallets.

Hijazi described what he called 15 minutes of terror Thursday at the center run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the private contractor that Israel says will replace the U.N. in feeding Gaza's more than 2 million people.

Israeli soldiers opened fire in an attempt to control the crowd, he and other witnesses said. His 23-year-old cousin was shot in the foot. They quickly abandoned hope of getting any food and ran for their lives.

Swiss president pledges aid for Alpine villagers left homeless after glacier collapse

GENEVA (AP) — Switzerland's president on Friday said evacuees from an Alpine village whose homes and businesses were destroyed by a landslide caused by a glacier collapse were “not alone," and the government was calculating ways to help.

Karin Keller-Sutter spoke after a helicopter flight to see for herself the damage to the village of Blatten that was largely destroyed on Wednesday as an estimated 10 millions of tons of mud, ice and rock thundered down from the Birch glacier overhead.

“The force with which the mountain here wiped out an entire village is indescribable,” Keller-Sutter said. “I’d like to tell you all that you’re not alone. The whole of Switzerland is with you, and not just (people) in Switzerland.”

Officials limited access to the area and warned that waters from the Lonza River, which has been dammed up by deposits stacked tens of meters high over a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) swath of valley, had pooled into a lake. The future course of those waters could not yet be predicted precisely.

Many survivors of Myanmar’s devastating quake in March still live in leaky tents

BANGKOK (AP) — Two months after a deadly earthquake ravaged much of central and northeastern Myanmar, recovery is just inching along, with huge numbers of people living in temporary shelters while facing the heavy rainfall and strong winds of monsoon season.

The 7.7 magnitude March 28 quake caused significant damage to six regions and states, including the capital Naypyitaw and Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city. The confirmed death toll from the disaster has reached 3,740, with 5,104 injured, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Friday.

Bodies are still being found

As the task of rebuilding grinds along, the grim work of recovering the dead is continuing.

Winds push smoke from Canadian wildfires south into US and worsen air quality

Air quality in some parts of the United States is worsening as smoke from dozens of wildfires in Canada travels south, pushed by winds high in the atmosphere.

Through parts of Minnesota and into Wisconsin, the air quality is deemed unhealthy for people and animals sensitive to pollution and other airborne particles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's AirNow page.

As of Friday afternoon, the interactive air quality map showed a strip of orange moving northwest to southeast across Wisconsin. Most of the state showed moderate air quality as did all of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Eastern Iowa and northwestern Illinois also showed moderate air quality on the AirNow map.

Over the next day or so, particulates from the burning trees, leaves and other vegetation could reach further south into Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas, said Patrick Ayd, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Duluth, Minnesota.

Army Corps analysis finds Great Lakes pipeline tunnel would have sweeping environmental impacts

Building an underground tunnel for an aging Enbridge oil pipeline that stretches across a Great Lakes channel could destroy wetlands and harm bat habitats but would eliminate the chances of a boat anchor rupturing the line and causing a catastrophic spill, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Friday in a long-awaited draft analysis of the proposed project's environmental impacts.

The analysis moves the corps a step closer to approving the tunnel for Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac. The tunnel was proposed in 2018 at a cost of $500 million but has been bogged down by legal challenges. The corps fast-tracked the project in April after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies in January to identify energy projects for expedited emergency permitting.

A final environmental assessment is expected by autumn, with a permitting decision to follow later this year. The agency initially planned to issue a permitting decision in early 2026.

With that permit in hand, Enbridge would only need permission from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy before it could begin constructing the tunnel. That's far from a given, though.

Evacuee describes ‘surreal’ speed of B.C. wildfire that quadrupled in size

DAWSON CREEK - Shelley Calliou of the Kelly Lake Cree Nation said it was "surreal" how fast a wildfire threatening the community in northeast British Columbia moved.

She said she was told by the RCMP at 6 p.m. Thursday that she had a two-hour window to evacuate, with the Kiskatinaw River fire 18 kilometres southwest of the unincorporated community of Kelly Lake.

"Within those two hours, it moved 10 kilometres. It's fast-moving," said Calliou on Friday from Dawson Creek, B.C., where she said about 70 people had fled, about 80 kilometres north.

The fire that prompted the evacuation order for Kelly Lake and nearby areas on Thursday quadrupled in size overnight, as firefighters warned of "intensifying conditions" in the parched northeast of the province where most fire activity is concentrated.

Nova Scotia NDP says province too secretive, must release environmental racism report

HALIFAX - Nova Scotia’s Opposition NDP called on Premier Tim Houston's government Friday to release a report about the province's long history of environmental racism, saying it’s a matter of accountability.

An eight-member panel was expected to submit its report to Houston's government in December 2023.

Justice Minister Becky Druhan, who is also responsible for the Office of Equity and Anti-Racism, did not answer Thursday when pressed by reporters to explain why the government is sitting on the report.

Druhan also wouldn’t answer when asked whether she had seen the panel’s recommendations, saying its work predated her appointment as minister.

Chief says infrastructure drive could trigger another Idle No More protest movement

OTTAWA - A First Nations chief is warning that Canada is "staring down the barrel" of another wave of protests like the Idle No More movement if governments pursue "national interest" projects without their input and consent.

Anishinabek Nation Regional Chief Scott McLeod has joined Indigenous leaders from across the country who say they're alarmed by government efforts to accelerate infrastructure development.

The federal government is developing a "national interest" bill to fast-track nation-building projects with a streamlined regulatory approval process as a substitute for reviews under the Impact Assessment Act.

A handful of First Nations leaders told The Canadian Press Friday they were sent a letter Monday outlining the federal government's plans.

1 dead and several injured when storm rips through Kentucky community, authorities say

SPRINGFIELD, Ky. (AP) — The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia on Friday, hours after a harsh storm hit a remote area of central Kentucky, killing one person and injuring seven others.

In Kentucky, Washington County Judge-executive Timothy Graves said two or three houses were destroyed and downed trees temporarily blocked roads.

“We were fortunate this was located in a remote part of the county,” Graves said.

Gov. Andy Beshear canceled a visit planned for Friday to Pulaski and Laurel counties, which were hit by a tornado earlier this month. That storm left 19 dead in the state. Officials were responding to reports of a possible tornado in Washington County, he said in a social media post.

Hudbay Minerals staff evacuate Flin Flon, Man., due to wildfires

TORONTO - Hudbay Minerals Inc. says its non-essential staff in the Flin Flon, Man., area are evacuating because of wildfires in the region.

The company says it hasn't been actively mining at its Flin Flon site since 2022, but it still runs care and maintenance work and also has services there to support its Snow Lake operation.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba have declared provincewide states of emergency to deal with the wildfires that, in Manitoba, has forced 17,000 residents to evacuate including 6,000 in and around the northwest city of Flin Flon.

Hudbay says the evacuation order because of wildfires will likely affect production at Snow Lake because a large portion of its staff live in Flin Flon, which sits about 200 kilometres west, but it still expects to reach its guidance for the year.

Syria’s only female minister says lifting of economic sanctions offers hope for recovery

DAMASCUS (AP) — The lifting of economic sanctions on Syria will allow the government to begin work on daunting tasks that include fighting corruption and bringing millions of refugees home, Hind Kabawat, the minister of social affairs and labor, told The Associated Press on Friday.

Kabawat is the only woman and the only Christian in the 23-member cabinet formed in March to steer the country during a transitional period after the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December. Her portfolio will be one of the most important as the country begins rebuilding after nearly 14 years of civil war.

She said moves by the U.S. and the European Union in the past week to at least temporarily lift most of the sanctions that had been imposed on Syria over decades will allow that work to get started.

Before, she said, “we would talk, we would make plans, but nothing could happen on the ground because sanctions were holding everything up and restricting our work.” With the lifting of sanctions they can now move to “implementation.”

Flin Flon, Man., virtually deserted, thousands more evacuees expected as fires rage

WINNIPEG - Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says thousands more evacuees are expected and the city of Flin Flon is virtually deserted as wildfires continue to rage in his province.

Kinew told a Friday news conference that the mayor, councillors, health-care staff and other officials have had to depart Flin Flon.

"The only folks remaining on the ground are firefighters and folks in the office of the fire commissioner and RCMP, who are there to battle the blaze," Kinew said.

"We do expect some very, very challenging conditions in Flin Flon and in the surrounding community."

Floods kill at least 111 as northern Nigeria battles climate change, dry spells and heavy rainfall

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Torrents of predawn rain unleashed flooding that killed at least 111 people in a market town where northern Nigerian farmers sell their wares to traders from the south, officials said Friday, predicting the death toll would grow.

The Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency did not immediately say how much rain fell after midnight Thursday in the town of Mokwa in the state of Niger more than 180 miles (300 kilometers) west of Abuja, the capital of Africa's most populous nation.

Communities in northern Nigeria have been experiencing prolonged dry spells worsened by climate change and excessive rainfall that leads to severe flooding during the brief wet season.

In videos and photos on social media, floodwaters covered neighborhoods and homes were submerged, with their roofs barely visible above the brown colored waters. Waist-deep in water, residents tried to salvage what they could, or rescue others.

Live updates: Hamas considers Gaza ceasefire proposal as Israeli strikes kill at least 27

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 27 people in the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said Friday, while Hamas was reviewing a new Israeli-approved ceasefire proposal after giving it an initial cool response.

President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy had expressed optimism this week about brokering an agreement that could halt the Israel-Hamas war, allow more aid into Gaza, and return more of the 58 hostages still held by Hamas, around a third of whom are alive.

Experts say a nearly three-month Israeli blockade of Gaza — slightly eased in recent days — has pushed the population of roughly 2 million Palestinians to the brink of famine.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally. The war began with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which left around 1,200 dead.

Residents, advocates say trust issues, strict rules, red tape keep encampments up

Tents, tarps, and makeshift shelters line the beaten path along the Assiniboine River near Balmoral Street in West Broadway — a community hidden in plain sight.

Inquiry must be called to get answers on sand mine scandal

It’s pretty clear by now that an inquiry should be called into the Sio Silica scandal.

Ethics Commissioner Jeffrey Schnoor released his long-awaited report into the matter this week. He found that former premier Heather Stefanson, then deputy premier Cliff Cullen and then economic development minister Jeff Wharton, violated the province’s Conflict of Interest Act by attempting to approve a licence for a controversial silica sand mining project after their government was defeated in the Oct. 3, 2023 provincial election.

All three ministers pushed to have a Class 2 licence under the Environment Act approved for Sio Silica, days before the new NDP government was sworn into office.

They did so even though they knew, or ought to have known, that it violated the “caretaker convention,” a longstanding constitutional principle in Canada that prohibits governments from making major policy decisions once a general election is called (unless it’s related to an urgent matter of public importance).

South Africa police minister says Trump ‘twisted’ facts to push baseless genocide claims

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa’s top law enforcement official said Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump wrongly claimed that a video he showed in the Oval Office was of burial sites for more than 1,000 white farmers and he “twisted” the facts to push a false narrative about mass killings of white people in his country.

Police Minister Senzo Mchunu was talking about a video clip that was played during the meeting between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday that showed an aerial view of a rural road with lines of white crosses erected on either side.

“Now this is very bad,” Trump said as he referred to the clip that was part of a longer video that was played in the meeting. “These are burial sites, right here. Burial sites, over a thousand, of white farmers, and those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning."

Mchunu said the crosses did not mark graves or burial sites, but were a temporary memorial put up in 2020 to protest the killings of all farmers across South Africa. They were put up during a funeral procession for a white couple who were killed in a robbery on their farm, Mchunu said.

Kashmir tourism bears the brunt after tourist massacre and India-Pakistan military strikes

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — There are hardly any tourists in the scenic Himalayan region of Kashmir. Most of the hotels and ornate pinewood houseboats are empty. Resorts in the snowclad mountains have fallen silent. Hundreds of cabs are parked and idle.

It’s the fallout of last month’s gun massacre that left 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, dead in Indian-controlled Kashmir followed by tit-for-tat military strikes by India and Pakistan, bringing the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of their third war over the region.

“There might be some tourist arrivals, but it counts almost negligible. It is almost a zero footfall right now,” said Yaseen Tuman, who operates multiple houseboats in the region’s main city of Srinagar. “There is a haunting silence now.”

Tens of thousands of panicked tourists left Kashmir within days after the rare killings of tourists on April 22 at a picture-perfect meadow in southern resort town of Pahalgam. Following the attack, authorities temporarily closed dozens of tourist resorts in the region, adding to fear and causing occupancy rates to plummet.

Lacina Dembélé: le chemin vers son identité

Arrivé à l’âge de quatre ans au Canada, après une étape par le Québec, Lacina Dembélé pose ses valises au Manitoba. Son chemin se passe sans accroc jusqu’à un retour dans son pays d’origine, la Côte d’Ivoire, qui bouscule sa vie et son identité.

C’est une histoire de famille qui a amené Lacina Dembélé au Canada en premier lieu. “J’ai grandi dans le petit village de Kolia, à environ sept heures de route d’Abidjan. Mes parents étaient séparés. Après quelques années auprès de ma grand-mère paternelle, j’ai déménagé chez ma tante à Abidjan pendant une année.

“Mon père était déjà au Canada parce qu’il avait fui le pays en raison de l’instabilité politique. Il m’a donc sponsorisé pour que je puisse le rejoindre.”

Les souvenirs de Lacina Dembélé de son enfance sont heureux. “C’était une nouvelle aventure pour moi. Je vivais mon premier hiver, j’ai des photos de moi avec ma première combinaison d’hiver avec un pantalon vert et un blouson bleu. Impossible de me perdre dans la neige. Quand je pense à mon enfance, j’étais tout le temps content parce qu’il y avait toujours quelque chose de nouveau.”

Rupert’s Land inhabitants blindsided by Canada’s purchase of their homeland in 1869

When the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) reached an agreement to sell Rupert’s Land to Canada in the spring of 1869, it came as a complete surprise to the people living in what is today Western Canada. They were neither consulted on the proposed annexation nor given any details about how it would affect their lives.

Nova Scotia group wants a court to declare a First Nation’s lobster fishery illegal

HALIFAX - A commercial lobster fishing group in southwestern Nova Scotia is seeking a court to have a lobster fishery run by a First Nations community declared illegal.

The United Fisheries Conservation Alliance says it also wants the court to define the scope and limits that should apply to a fishery operated by the Sipekne’katik First Nation in St. Mary’s Bay.

The group’s lawyer, Michel Samson, says a notice of action was filed Thursday with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.

Samson says the alliance is suing because a separate court case — filed by Sipekne’katik First Nation against the federal and Nova Scotia governments — was paused in order to mediate a resolution.