American Airlines fined US$50M over mishandling of disabled passengers and wheelchairs

American Airlines fined US$50M over mishandling of disabled passengers and wheelchairsThe U.S. government fined American Airlines $50 million for failing to provide wheelchair assistance to passengers with disabilities and damaging thousands of wheelchairs over a five-year period.

SailGP Canada 2025 Season

The Canada SailGP Team has been acquired by Canadian biotech entrepreneur Dr Greg Bailey, SailGP can confirm.

The news follows months of speculation about the team’s future and secures Canada’s place on the 2024/25 Season start line.

The Canada SailGP Team has been acquired by Canadian biotech entrepreneur Dr Greg Bailey, SailGP can confirm.

The news follows months of speculation about the team’s future and secures Canada’s place on the 2024/25 Season start line.SailGP managing director Andrew Thompson described the sale as ‘another milestone’ for the league.

“SailGP continues to attract interest from a range of different investors and ownership groups. In many ways, this transaction validates the business model - a professional sports team has acquired new ownership and in doing so, retains position in the league; to my knowledge that’s not happened in sailing before.”

Season opening SailGP Dubai event to feature newbies Mubadala Brazil and Red Bull Italy teams

Season opening SailGP Dubai event to feature newbies Mubadala Brazil and Red Bull Italy teams

For the opening SailGP event of the season, the Emirates Dubai Sail Grand Prix presented by P&O Marinas, 23-24 November 2024, the global racing championship will comprise of eleven F50 race teams.

Racing for the first time will be the new Italy SailGP Team – Red Bull Italy SailGP Team – Led by SailGP legend Jimmy Spithill as CEO.

Proposed Red Bull Italy SailGP Team:

• Ruggero Tita – Double Olympic Gold Medalist and team driver
• Giulia Fava – Two-time World bronze medalist and strategist
• Andrea Tesei – World Champion and flight controlle
• Kyle Langford – Three-time SailGP Champion
• Alex Sinclair – Former Australia teammate and grinder
• Grinders Matteo Gelon and Enrico Voltolini

• Also expected to race in Dubia will be the Mubadala Brazil SailGP Team

  If they make it to the start line this will be their  for the first time, led by double Olympic Gold Medalist Martine Grael, the first woman to ever drive for a SailGP team.

  The Brazil team is . . . driver Martine Grael and grinders Marco Grael and Mateus Isaac , former Kiwi flight controller Andy Maloney, former France wing trimmer Leigh McMillan and strategist Richard Mason.

  Teams racing in the Emirates Dubai Sail Grand Prix 2024:

  Spain,
  New Zealand,
  Australia,
  ROCKWOOL Denmark,
  Emirates GBR,
  United States,
  Switzerland,
  Canada,
  Germany
  And the two new teams, Mubadala Brazil and Red Bull Italy.

“Staying Canadian”

“Staying Canadian”

Canadian Party of Quebec heads to Stanstead

By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

The Canadian Party of Quebec (CaPQ) is set to hold an event titled “Staying Canadian” at the Stanstead Legion Branch #005 on Nov. 24, from 2 to 4 p.m. Hosted at 15 Rue Maple, the event aims to provide a platform for discussing the party’s vision and plans regarding Canadian unity and Quebec’s future. Organizers hope to encourage community engagement and dialogue.

Tara Robertson, who initiated the event, emphasized her independent role in bringing the CaPQ to Stanstead. “I’m not part of the party; I just wanted them to come here and share what they’re about,” she explained in a recent short interview.

Her interest in the party grew after attending earlier events in Montreal and Bromont this year. “I liked their presentation and what they stand for, particularly their agenda on staying Canadian,” Robertson said. She voiced concerns about Quebec’s political future, referencing the Parti Québécois’s push for another referendum on sovereignty. “This is the only party addressing it before a referendum and holding the federal government accountable for protecting us as Canadians,” she added.

Robertson encourages local residents to take advantage of the opportunity to engage with the party’s representatives in person. “They have a real interesting agenda. I highly recommend you come, have a listen, and ask all the questions you want,” she urged.

With a focus on in-person attendance, the event promises to be an engaging discussion about the province’s future and its place in Canada. For more information, contact info@particanadienquebec.ca or visit www.canadianpartyquebec.ca.

1787 Continental Congress

By Diana HubbellASSOCIATE EDITOR, PLACESAs we enter what feels like the 800th year of this American election season, I can’t help but find myself thinking back to the guys who started it all. We’ve spent a lot of energy and legislative manpower attempting to decipher and interpret the language the Founding Fathers used—and how they intended it to apply to technologies and concepts that didn’t exist in their era.And while there’s no denying that many of these men were ahead of their time in some ways, I question our tendency to put them on pedestals, be they literal marble ones or Tony Award–winning Broadway shows. Great thinkers they may have been, but they were also just people.What’s more, they may have been a little drunk.On September 14, 1787, just days before signing the Constitution, George Washington and his pals wracked up a bar tab at Philadelphia’s City Tavern worth the equivalent of $15,600 today. For 55 guests, the damage included 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 12 bottles of whiskey, seven large bowls of punch, eight bottles of cider, 22 bottles of porter, and 12 bottles of beer.A number of participants in the 1787 Continental Congress drank rather heavily. Photo: Stocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy Stock PhotoOne can only speculate that this must have been a larger than usual celebration, especially since the bar bill includes a number of broken glasses. But the total still stands at two bottles of wine per person, plus beer, whiskey, and several glasses of punch—enough to knock most people today flat.Brian Abrams, author of Party Like a President: True Tales of Inebriation, Lechery, and Mischief From the Oval Office, says it’s important to remember that consumption habits were generally different during the late 18th century. It was still common at the time to start the day with a small beer (usually around 3 percent ABV). “John Adams would drink a tanker of his cider every morning with his breakfast,” Abrams says.Part of that was a coping mechanism for the physical and mental hardships of a rather difficult period in history. “As far as why all these old guys were drinking all the time, people's bodies were riddled with all sorts of incurable diseases,” Abrams says. “Everyone's walking around with whooping cough or typhoid, or they have splinters with tetanus in them, or bullets lodged in their bodies. These were not things that doctors could cure, so people just drank.”Some of the Founding Fathers drank and ate more extravagantly than others. “[Jefferson] allocated more than $16,500 to wine during his first two terms, and $50 a day for food,” Abrams says. According to an economist Abrams consulted at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that works out to the equivalent of $300,000 to $350,000 for wine.Although Jefferson’s Republican Party had a populist reputation in contrast to his Federalist counterparts, that didn’t stop him from drinking and dining like a French monarch. “[His cellar] was stocked with partridges, wild ducks, venison, squab, goose, pâté, rabbit, squirrel, crabs, and oysters,” Abrams says. Dinners were often eight courses, albeit with less stuffy table settings than was customary for the upper crust at the time.“It was a friendly atmosphere,” Abrams says. “It was about ideas and discussions. It gave off a vibe where he didn't seem stiff like those Federalists. But the truth is, they were all…I guess today we would call them all one-percenters.”Appropriately, then, some of the Founding Fathers looked down upon the drinking habits of the lower classes. At the time, rum and whiskey distilling was on the rise.In a letter in 1790, then treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton described spirits as “pernicious luxuries” and wrote, “The consumption of ardent spirits particularly, no doubt very much on account of their cheapness, is carried to an extreme, which is truly to be regretted, as well in regard to the health and the morals, as to the [economy] of the community.”Both to make a dent in the fledgling nation’s lingering Revolutionary War debts and curb the drinking habits of its population, Hamilton suggested slapping a tax on domestically distilling spirits. It provoked immediate outrage in 1791 in western Pennsylvania, where many farmers straight-up refused to pay it.George Washington sent a militia to quell the Whiskey Rebellion. Photo: MET/BOT / Alamy Stock PhotoBy 1794, hundreds of “whiskey rebels” were starting violent protests, including burning down a house. The Whiskey Rebellion, as it became known, got so out of hand that George Washington himself had to take a militia of over 12,000 men down to Pennsylvania to quell it.Just three years later though, Washington himself got into the whiskey business. In 1799, his distillery at Mount Vernon produced 11,000 gallons of whiskey. And while it’s unlikely he was the biggest boozer at his now infamous pre-Constitutional bender, we know he liked a tipple.As Abrams writes in his book, “Washington and [French major-general François-Jean de] Chastellux bonded over booze,” helping to strengthen the alliance despite linguistic and cultural barriers. By the end of the Revolutionary War, Washington, who previously had mostly stuck to American beer and rum, had developed a taste for fine French wines.Certainly, no one would advise drinking the quantities of liquor that were socially acceptable to consume in Washington’s time. But if you’re curious, you could always try a version of their poison of choice. According to Abrams, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association said Washington’s home-distilled firewater had a “pretty sharp taste”—not encouraging.George Washington had his own whiskey distillery. Photo: B Christopher / Alamy Stock PhotoMore promising is the cocktail that he carried while wandering in the woods. “He kept a canteen of this brandy-flavored beverage while he surveyed the Allegheny Mountains in September of 1784,” Abrams says. Sweet, tart, and very strong, it would have kept our nation’s first president both fortified and a little buzzed as he traipsed through the wilderness.Given that the messy, conflict-riddled business of making this government in the first place drove the Continental Congress to drink, it feels appropriate to have a glass of something stiff on Election Day (just, you know, not so many that you trash a Philadelphia tavern).If you’re feeling a bit anxious and exhausted by our democratic process, here are two easy things you can do right now: First, go register to vote if you haven’t already. Second, go make Martha Washington’s spiced, spiked sour cherry “bounce.” It needs to mellow for a full two weeks, meaning you’ll have a jar of liquid courage in your refrigerator when November 5 comes.

Rafael Nadal’s last 2024 Davis Cup Finals

 The 2024 Davis Cup Final 8 kicks off today in Malaga, Spain, running through Nov. 24. Often considered the men’s World Cup of the tennis world, this year’s competition marks the final tournament for 22-time Grand Slam singles champion Rafael Nadal. Retiring on his home turf, Nadal will be teaming up with fellow Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz with hopes of winning one last trophy for their country. Spain hasn’t won the Davis Cup since 2019. But Nadal and Alcaraz aren’t the only major tennis stars on the court this week. Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul, Ben Shelton, Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek are competing for the U.S., and world No. 1 Jannik Sinner leads Italy’s team.

The Davis Cup Final 8 will follow a knockout-style tournament format in the quarterfinals this week. The semis begin on Friday. The final will be held on Sunday, Nov. 24. Are you ready to tune in to the 2024 Davis Cup — and potentially Rafael Nadal’s last match? Here’s what you need to know and how to watch the Davis Cup tennis tournament this week.

Fix iPhone 14 Plus' for free - Quality Control

New Apple repair program will fix iPhone 14 Plus' rear camera issue for freeApple has determined that "a very small percentage" of iPhone 14 Plus models are having rear camera issues, and it has launched a service program to repair them for free. If your phone isn't showing a preview when you use its rear camera, then you may be eligible to get your phone fixed at no cost — you can also contact Apple to get a refund if you'd already paid for a repair. The affected devices were manufactured between April 10, 2023 and April 28, 2024, around half a year after the model started shipping in 2022. You can check your device's serial number on the official repair program page to know if your device is included. To get it fixed, you can bring your phone to an Apple Authorized Service Provider or to an Apple retail store after making an appointment. You can also contact Apple Support if you want to mail your device to a repair center. The program covers repairs for all eligible phones for three years after the original date of purchase, so you may want to keep it in mind in case your unit starts exhibiting the issue in the future. Apple says it may "restrict or limit repair" to the unit's original region of purchase, though, so you'll have to check with the company if you bought your iPhone while traveling outside your country.