OTTAWA — The three provinces most dependent on heating oil account for almost nine in 10 of the households that have applied for a federal grant to replace an oil furnace with an electric heat pump.

But Ottawa’s move last fall to make the program even more appealing on the East Coast doesn’t appear to have caused an immediate spike in interest.

Data provided by Natural Resources Canada show 12,572 applications were received for the oil to heat pump program since it launched on March 31,

When New Hampshire voters cast their ballots in Tuesday’s , many will do so using scanners that are at least 15 years old — with some potentially dating back to Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Election experts say the aging AccuVote ballot tabulators in use across roughly half the state’s towns and cities don’t pose additional security risks. The concern is their age.

With a dwindling supply of replacement parts, breakdowns could create Election Day headaches for local election officials, who might be forced to count ballots by

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A panel of Nevada Supreme Court justices won’t reconsider former “Dances With Wolves” actor Nathan Chasing Horse’s request to dismiss a sprawling indictment that accuses him of leading a cult, taking underage wives and sexually abusing Indigenous women and girls.

“Rehearing denied,” two of three justices who heard oral arguments last November said in a terse order dated Tuesday. Justice Douglas Herndon dissented. Chasing Horse still can seek a hearing before the full seven-member court.

The state high

details a myriad of failures by police who responded to the shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas, when children waited desperately for over an hour before officers stormed a classroom to take the gunman down.

which was launched just days after the provides a damning look at the missteps by police after a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School. It was not a criminal investigation but one of the most exhaustive reviews of law enforcement’s failure to stop the attack. Nineteen students and two teachers died in the shooting.

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BERLIN (AP) — The German parliament on Thursday approved legislation that is of unsuccessful asylum-seekers as Chancellor Olaf Scholz seeks to defuse migration as a political problem.

The legislation foresees increasing the maximum length of pre-deportation custody from 10 to 28 days and specifically facilitating the deportation of people who are members of a criminal organization.

It also authorizes residential searches for documentation that enables officials to firmly establish a person’s identity, as well as remove authorities’ obligation to give advance notice of deportations in some

NEW YORK (AP) — An estimated 320 journalists around the world were imprisoned because of their work toward the end of 2023, according to a report issued Thursday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which called it a disturbing attempt to smother independent voices.

That’s the second-highest number of jailed journalists since the committee began its annual census in 1992. It’s down from 367 in 2022, due primarily to the release of many in

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York midwife who gave nearly 1,500 children homeopathic pellets instead of required vaccinations has been fined $300,000, the state’s health department announced this week.

Jeanette Breen, who operates Baldwin Midwifery on Long Island, administered the pellets as an alternative to vaccinations and then falsified their immunization records, the agency said Wednesday.

The scheme, which goes back least to the 2019-2020 school year, involved

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia, a capital for electric vehicle production, needs to increase its supply of electricity produced without burning fossil fuels in order to meet industries’ demand for clean energy, told world business leaders Thursday.

Speaking as part of a panel focused on electric vehicles at the in Davos, Switzerland, the Republican governor highlighted the construction of the Georgia Power’s at Plant Vogtle, near Augusta — the country’s first new reactors in decades.

“We’ve done as much as anybody in the

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A donkey cart carrying a suspected improvised bomb blew up at a checkpoint on the Kenya-Somalia border Thursday, killing one Kenyan police officer and critically wounding four others, authorities said.

A Kenyan police report seen by The Associated Press said the cart pulled by two donkeys and ridden by one man passed the Somali checkpoint of Bula Hawa and entered Kenyan territory, where it was stopped by officers to check the load.

The rider jumped off and ran back into Somalia moments before the cart exploded