Author: Carlton Simpson

WASHINGTON — The Navy earlier this month completed a service life extension for the Los Angeles-class submarine Alexandria (SSN-757), extending its life by three years out to September 2025, the service said this week. Earlier this month the Navy said that the sub “undocked and departed the West-coast’s only U.S. Navy-operated floating dry-dock, ARCO (ARMD-5) April 5, following a seven-month maintenance period.” That maintenance period also included the three-year service life extension, Naval Sea Systems Command, the agency responsible for managing the service’s submarine maintenance schedule, told Breaking Defense. The Navy for several years now has been evaluating each of…

The Biden administration has been asking Ottawa to consider reimposing visa requirements for Mexican nationals visiting Canada, CBC News has learned. At issue is the sharp increase in illegal crossings from Canada into the United States: Mexicans don’t need a visa to travel to Canada, while the U.S. requires a visa for Mexicans to enter. American border officials say some Mexican nationals are using Canada’s visa-free rule to fly into the country and then cross south illegally into America. The Conservative government under Stephen Harper created a visa requirement in 2009 for Mexicans to stem the flow of asylum claims…

Watch any sport nowadays, and you will be treated to instant replays that give you a detailed – often slow-motion – view of important moments. Watch the news, and you may find yourself feeling like you are similarly watching the past on playback. But these replays – of high inflation, soaring public debt, a brutal ground war in Europe, a new cold war and the rise of potentially destructive technologies – are far from instant, and the stakes are much higher. Readers might recall that I predicted rising inflation and slower growth as early as spring 2021. The former US Treasury secretary Larry…

This week as we continue to celebrate Women’s History Month, I thought it would be appropriate to look at gender equality and progress. Then, as I was sorting through some of my books, I found an article that I had written and presented at the Academy of Economics and Finance conference and published in their Proceedings in 2002, on the status of women in sub-Saharan Africa. The article begins with a quote from the 1997 United Nations Human Development Report, “If development is not engendered; it is endangered.” Women have made much progress since then, but by all measures, not…

(9/3 – 125) Kazakhstan is gearing up for snap elections of the lower house of parliament on March 19, and there is a sense of anticipation in the air. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who came to power in 2019, called for snap elections in the wake of the deadly street protests in January 2022. The elections are part of the president’s ambitious reform agenda, Jana Kazakhstan (New Kazakhstan), which aims to usher in a new era of political liberalization. The parliamentary elections are stage two of Tokayev’s program, following his re-election winning 80 percent of the votes last November. The coming…

The sum of $18,353 is the sum collected by Maude-Aimée LeBlanc last weekend for her 3rd place at thirteen under par during the Epson classic in Arizona, which turned out to be her first competitive outing since the fall. last. Maude-Aimée remained in Arizona, where she is playing her first 2023 LPGA tournament on Thursday. We have to admit that it bodes well. Bye Bye! The Dell Championship, the only meeting of the year at the PGA in hole play, on the program this week, is that of farewell. The event will not return. Let go this time the LIV…

After the completion of a two-week search operation, the last of the debris from the Chinese “spy” balloon is heading to an FBI laboratory in the southeastern US state of Virginia for analysis, according to the US military’s Northern Command. The US and Canada have called off searches for three unidentified objects that were shot down last weekend, as investigators begin analysing the last of the debris collected from first Chinese “spy” balloon shot down at the start of the month. The US military said late on Friday that, alongside federal agencies and Canadian partners, they had used a variety…

About 90 Canadian navy sailors will soon be getting to know Port-au-Prince Bay as part of a two-ship deployment announced Thursday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Bahamas. Two Kingston-class coastal defence vessels, typically manned by a mix of regular force and reservists, will anchor off Haiti’s mountainous capital city. Other than that, though, there was limited visible progress to solving Haiti’s multifaceted crisis at the 50th anniversary summit of the Caribbean community of nations CARICOM in Nassau, Bahamas. Meanwhile there were reminders that Haiti itself remains deeply divided over foreign intervention, and that any outside force might not…

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (Department) is announcing awards of more than $188 million across 170 grantees in over 30 states to increase access to school-based mental health services and to strengthen the pipeline of mental health professionals in high-needs districts. With funding provided by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), these investments help advance the President’s Mental Health Strategy, which directly implements his Unity Agenda priority to tackle the mental health crisis in our school communities. These grants will enable communities to hire approximately 5,400 school-based mental health professionals and train an estimated 5,500 more to build a…

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has held a telephone conversation with President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Thursday, during which the heads of state discussed humanitarian ties between the countries, Tokayev’s press service reports. “At the initiative of the Ukrainian side, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The leaders discussed humanitarian issues between Kazakhstan and Ukraine,” the message reads.source: interfax