HellsBelle

Grand Chief Greg Desjarlais of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations says no referendum can overturn the treaty that encompasses most of central Alberta.

"We're tired of seeing the government pass these bills where you don't see two sentences of Indigenous inclusion, and that has to stop," Desjarlais told the media at an anti-separatist rally on the steps of the Alberta Legislature building in Edmonton, amiskwaciwaskahikan, on Thursday.

About 600 people were at the demonstration, many with flags and signs protesting Alberta's separation from Canada and the controversial Bill 54, proposed by Premier Danielle Smith's government.

"I think we're tired of being pushed around," Desjarlais said.

Tesla last November ended an unusual policy that prohibited U.S. leasing customers from buying their cars at lease-end.

The policy started in 2019, when Tesla announced that customers could lease its mass-market Model 3 sedans but would have to return them, at the end of the lease, for use in Tesla's planned "robotaxi" network.

"Next year, for sure," he added, "we'll have over 1 million robotaxis on the road."

None of that would prove true. Despite repeated promises, the robotaxis never came. Tesla instead found an unusually lucrative way to make money by flipping many of the off-lease cars to new buyers, according to four people familiar with Tesla's retail operations.

Rather than storing the used cars – a fast-depreciating asset – Tesla started adding features to them through software upgrades. It then sold the vehicles to new customers who would pay thousands more than lease-end buyers would have, the people said.

When the Trump administration asks the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants and visa holders, its legal theory will rest on a reinterpretation of a critical phrase of the Constitution. But when you plug their preferred meaning back into the historical context in which the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause was enacted, the results are nonsensical. In other words, the crux of the government’s argument simply makes no sense.

The first sentence of the 14th Amendment, passed by Congress a year after the Civil War, is the Citizenship Clause: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” When President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his administration that would deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants and visa holders, he premised it on the idea that undocumented immigrants and visa holders are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. This is the phrase the government is asking the courts to reinterpret into a fictional absurdity.

Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday approved enhanced legal protections for police officers, changes that Republicans said show support for law enforcement but Democrats called “a green light to kill Black folks.”

The Alabama Legislature gave final approval to the legislation that sets legal standards for the use of force and provides for an immunity hearing. The bill states that an officer “shall be justified” in the use of physical force as long as it is not constitutionally excessive force or “recklessly” outside of the officer’s discretionary authority.

Republicans, who called the legislation the “Back The Blue” bill said it is needed to provide a clear legal framework and show support for law enforcement officers faced with making split-second decisions.

Sales at retail stores and restaurants rose just 0.1% in April from March, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That is much lower than the previous month’s 1.7% gain, which reflected a surge in car sales as consumers sought to get ahead of President Trump’s 25% duty on auto imports that went into effect this month.

Last month’s tiny increase after the March surge makes it harder to get a clear read on consumer spending trends and reflects the ongoing turmoil and uncertainty in the economy in the wake of Trump’s stop-and-go tariff policies. Many publicly-traded companies have withdrawn or held off on the traditional practice of forecasting their revenues and earnings for the rest of this year because the economic landscape has become so chaotic.

Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on a visit to Albania that the return hub concept was a “pretty important innovation” that could more effectively tackle migrant inflows. He did not name the countries he was in discussions with or offer more details.

Albania already has a five-year agreement with Italy to shelter up to 36,000 migrants annually while Rome fast-tracks their asylum requests. Under the deal, Italy would take back any migrants whose requests have been rejected, and they will likely be repatriated. Children and pregnant women aren’t covered by the plan.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said the agreement with Italy was a “one off” issue and that Tirana had turned down several requests for the same deals with other countries.

More than half of Robyn Denholm’s cash haul came from sales in the first four months this year as Tesla stock fell by one-third, according to filings reviewed by The Associated Press. In total, she unloaded hundreds of thousands of shares — more than half her holdings as dictated by a pre-arranged selling plan filed with regulators as Musk began embracing right-wing politics.

Denholm filed that plan on July 25, the day Musk endorsed Trump for president.

Denholm’s profits were likely outsized, too. That is because many of the shares she sold had been acquired through so-called options granted to her by Tesla years earlier that, given recent stock prices, allowed her to buy at a deep discount, according to data from research provider FactSet. Nearly a million shares acquired through options were bought for $25, less than a tenth of the market price for much of the last nine months.

The International Criminal Court ’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.

The Hague-based court’s American staffers have been told that if they travel to the U.S. they risk arrest.

Some nongovernmental organizations have stopped working with the ICC and the leaders of one won’t even reply to emails from court officials.

Those are just some of the hurdles facing court staff since U.S. President Donald Trump in February slapped sanctions on its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, according to interviews with current and former ICC officials, international lawyers and human rights advocates.

The newly proposed constitutional amendment would go back to voters in November 2026, or sooner, if Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe calls a special election before then.

Republican senators used a series of rare procedural moves to cut off discussion by opposing Democrats before passing the proposed abortion-rights revision by a 21-11 vote. The measure passed the Republican-led House last month.

Immediately after vote, protestors erupted with chants of “Stop the ban!” and were ushered out of the Senate chamber.

Badar Khan Suri will go home to his family in Virginia while he awaits the outcome of his petition against the Trump administration for wrongful arrest and detention in violation of the First Amendment and other constitutional rights. He is also facing deportation proceedings in an immigration court in Texas.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Khan Suri told reporters after his release from a detention facility in Alvarado, near Dallas. “It took two months, but I’m extremely thankful that finally I’m free.”

Immigration authorities have detained college students from across the country — many of whom participated in campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war — since the first days of the Trump administration. Khan Suri is the latest to win release from custody, along with Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, and Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University.

Speaking from a Seattle hospital, Anton Tselykh, 38, confirmed investigators’ theory that an anchor, called a piton, that he and his companions were using Saturday evening to rappel down the Early Winters Spires in the North Cascade Range had ripped out of the rock.

Tselykh was in satisfactory condition Wednesday morning at Harborview Medical Center, meaning he was not in the intensive care unit, Susan Gregg, media relations director for UW Medicine, said in an email.

One climber was rappelling off the piton — a metal spike pounded into rock cracks or ice that climbers anchor their ropes to — and the three others were tied into it and waiting to descend, said Cristina Woodworth, who leads the sheriff’s search and rescue team and spoke with Tselykh by phone.

Neskantaga First Nation Chief Gary Quisess is only six weeks into his first term, and is facing simultaneous crises in his community and in Thunder Bay. But he left home and travelled to Queen’s Park today to call out what he describes as “genocide” buried in new provincial environmental legislation.

Ontario’s proposed Bill 5, the Protect Ontario By Unleashing Our Economy Act, would allow the province to designate “special economic zones” that would qualify to bypass environmental regulations and speed up development. It is expected to be in force as early as September, and Premier Doug Ford intends to name the proposed Ring of Fire mineral development as the first such site.

Critics say the law would gut protections for endangered species, remove environmental protections, and trample Indigenous rights. Environmental Defence calls the legislation “an attack on civil liberties and treaty rights.”