Canada will face the challenge of keeping all its provinces together in 2026 as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she will hold a referendum on the province’s separation from Canadanext year if a petition manages to get the required number of signatures. “Should Ottawa, for whatever reason, continue to attack our province as they have done over the last decade, ultimately that will be for Albertans to decide,” she said.“I will accept their judgement.” The demand for separating from Canada intensified after the Liberal Party won the election last week.Danielle said she didn’t want to presume that a referendum will certainly take place but she said she will honor the voting process. Smith said her government has no plans to put the question of Alberta separating from Canada to Albertans, but her government is taking steps to demand respect from Ottawa. “I do not support Alberta separating from Canada,” Smith said. “I personally still have hope that there is a path forward for a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada. So I am going to do everything within my power to negotiate a fair deal for Alberta with the new Prime Minister.” “In the months ahead, there will be many who will try to sow fear and anger among us. Those who would like to see Alberta divided,” Smith said.

Will Alberta get separated from Canada?

Alberta introduced legislation which would cut the threshold required to trigger a provincial referendum, if passed. Under the proposed bill, a petition would need signatures from 10 per cent of the eligible voters in a previous general election — down from 20 per cent of total registered voters. Applicants would also get 120 days, rather than 90, to collect the required 177,000 signatures to open a referendum vote.She said there has always been frustration in Alberta against Ottawa and that frustration has only increased in recent years. “It’s always ebbed and flowed, but that has always been in the background in Alberta electoral politics and it just happened to have flared up right now,” she said.

Saw Chit Thu’s ties to Myanmar’s military rulers, evidenced by an honorary title for “outstanding performance” conferred on him by junta chief General Min Aung Hlaing in November 2022, have helped him build his position. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The United States imposed sanctions on Monday (May 5, 2025) on a Myanmar warlord, his two sons and the militia he leads for facilitating cyber scams, human trafficking and cross-border smuggling, the Treasury Department said.

The Treasury said the warlord, Saw Chit Thu, is a central figure in a network of illicit and highly lucrative cyberscam operations targeting Americans. Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked by criminal gangs across Southeast Asia in recent years and forced to work in the scam operations, according to the United Nations.

The move puts financial sanctions on Saw Chit Thu, the Karen National Army that he heads, and his two sons, Saw Htoo Eh Moo and Saw Chit Chit, the department said in a statement, freezing any U.S. assets they may hold and generally barring Americans from doing business with them.

Britain and the European Union have already imposed sanctions on Saw Chit Thu.

Saw Chit Thu and his militia could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Karen National Army is headquartered in Shwe Kokko, a so-called “Special Economic Zone” along the Thai-Myanmar border, where the militia leases land and provides security for compounds where trafficked individuals are forced into scamming strangers online, the statement said.

“Cyber scam operations, such as those run by the KNA, generate billions in revenue for criminal kingpins and their associates, while depriving victims of their hard-earned savings and sense of security,” said Deputy Secretary Michael Faulkender.

Saw Chit Thu’s ties to Myanmar’s military rulers, evidenced by an honorary title for “outstanding performance” conferred on him by junta chief General Min Aung Hlaing in November 2022, have helped him build his position.

Washington has imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Myanmar’s junta and its sources of income since the military toppled the elected government of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, igniting a spiraling civil war.

Monday’s (May 5, 2025) sanctions were the first Myanmar-related sanctions imposed since President Donald Trump took office in January.

The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network last week proposed banning Cambodian financial firm Huione Group from the U.S. financial system over its alleged role in laundering illicit funds from cyber heists and online scams.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee won’t be so quick to force spellers into a lightning-round tiebreaker to decide a champion this year, a shift that follows criticism of the abrupt ending to last year’s competition. Scripps has eliminated its requirement that the tiebreaker known as a “spell-off” be used when the bee finals are nearing the end of their two-hour broadcast window and a champion has not been decided. Instead, judges will have more discretion to let the bee play out, even if it runs into overtime. “We don’t have those constraints in place that will force us into a spell-off situation based on time. It takes a lot of pressure off of that moment,” Corrie Loeffler, the bee’s executive director, told The Associated Press. “We can keep going with regular competition, rather than saying, ‘It’s 9:50, we’re going to a spell-off.'” Last year, the top two spellers were tossed into the spell-off without even competing head-to-head in the traditional spelling bee format, a move that rankled former champions and other bee aficionados. Bruhat Soma, who said afterward that he practiced the tiebreaker every day for six months, easily defeated Faizan Zaki. Faizan returns for another crack at the title in this year’s bee, which begins May 27.“Once you reach a certain point in the finals, the drama is really in watching the spellers take on the dictionary word by word,” said Scott Remer, a prolific spelling coach who works with Faizan. “Traditionally, the idea behind the spelling bee has been that you use the information you’re given, you gather the clues, you process the information, you think about the word, and then you take all of that synthesis of information and you provide a spelling.The spell-off obviously tests a different set of skills.” The spell-off was first used in 2022. Harini Logan beat Vikram Raju during that contest, but only after the pair had a traditional, lengthy duel in which each misspelled four words. Dev Shah didn’t need a spell-off to win two years ago, and he was outspoken about the 2024 edition, saying, “I don’t think it was a good bee.” There was no tiebreaker throughout most of the 2010s, and the bee had co-champions in three straight years from 2014-16. Then came the infamous 2019 bee, which ended in an eight-way tie when Scripps ran out of words difficult enough to challenge an unusually strong group of competitors. The 2020 bee was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it returned the next year under new leaders who made it clear they wanted a sole champion. Another rule change has already proven popular among the spelling community: the return of a written test during the preliminary rounds. Spellers who spell one word correctly and get one multiple-choice vocabulary question right on stage will then sit for a 40-question written test at the end of the first day. Results of that test will be used to pare the field to about 100 quarterfinalists – and Scripps will also use the test scores to gauge the strength of the remaining spellers and inform the difficulty of words used in subsequent rounds. Current and former spellers say the written test is a fairer way to move the competition along than doing everything at the microphone during lengthy rounds with wild variations in word difficulty. “I think having a written test as well as oral rounds allows for a better snapshot of a speller’s holistic skills,” Shah said. During the 2010s, a written test reduced the field to about 50 spellers, making it even higher-stakes. Scripps editorial director Molly Becker believes this version, with a “gentler cut,” strikes the right balance. “We’ve heard from spellers that we like the fairness of the test because they’re all being examined on the same exact words,” Becker said. “Also, the primary driver for bringing back the test is that the program can continue to grow with the number of spellers.”