U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent confirms limited steps toward a $250 bill featuring Donald Trump

Mother of baby whose remains were found in wooded area has died: Halifax police.

The baby was not with her, which prompted an extensive search for the newborn. The infant’s remains were eventually found in a wooded area off Old Coach Road in Goodwood, N.S., Sunday afternoon.

Police said Thursday afternoon the woman died in hospital on Wednesday.

Halifax Regional Police Const. Martin Cromwell told reporters police were not able to speak with the mother before she died.

“It’s an already complex investigation and, from an investigative perspective, it would definitely make it even that more challenging and complex,” said Cromwell.

The Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service will determine the cause and manner of her death.

The Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service continues to investigate the cause and manner of the infant’s death as well.

Crown attorney Paul Carver said Thursday that the “very preliminary findings” for the baby’s autopsy are in, but he couldn’t comment on them. Police also wouldn’t comment on the autopsy.

“Due to the complexity of this incident, it may take an extended period of time to determine the results for both the infant and the mother,” said Halifax police.

“Police extend condolences to the woman and infant’s loved ones and to all those grieving in the community.”
Couple charged in case remains in custody

Two people charged in the case will remain in custody for another three-and-a-half weeks.

Sukhpreet Singh, 23, and his wife, Ramandeep Kaur, 26, have each been charged with the following offences:

concealing the body of a child;
indignity to a dead body;
obstruction of a peace officer; and
obstruction of justice.

According to court documents, Singh and Kaur are accused of lying to police, which led to the obstruction charges.

The documents state the concealing and indignity charges are related to the fact that police found the infant’s remains in a wooded area.

PM Carney says Canada has started negotiations to buy Saab’s GlobalEye military surveillance planes. While Saab is a #Swedish firm, the choice bolsters Canadian companies. Read more in the Canada Daily newsletter.

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#Iranians are back online after a monthslong shutdown but still face heavy restrictions.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment’s notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86 per cent of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40 per cent.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It’s too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.
An unprecedented shutdown

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war’s steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn’t believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.
A slow return to service

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Iran claimed the shutdown was a wartime necessity

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

Amir-hussein Radjy, The Associated Press

U.S. President Donald Trump increased the refugee admissions ceiling by 10,000 for this year to allow more white South Africans to come into the country, a signed presidential determination reviewed by Reuters showed.

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U.S. military strikes Iranian #boats, #missile launch sites: #CENTCOM

#US and #Israeli jets struck a number of Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, local media reported, hours after President Donald Trump had suggested negotiations with #Tehran over an interim deal were progressing.