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FBI agents raided the office and business of a Mississippi prosecutor, but no one is saying why

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The FBI on Wednesday raided a local prosecutor’s office and business in Mississippi’s capital city, although officials declined to say whether Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens is suspected of wrongdoing.

FBI agents spent hours searching a cigar bar owned by Owens in downtown Jackson. They also removed items from his office in the Hinds County Courthouse.

Marshay Lawson, the spokesperson for the FBI’s office in Jackson, said the reason for the search remains secret.

“The FBI is executing federal search warrants at multiple locations,” Lawson said. “The affidavit in support of the search warrants has been sealed by the court and so I am prohibited from commenting further.”

Owens also didn’t say what the raid was about.

“This morning, FBI agents came to our offices,” the second-term district attorney said in a statement. “We are fully cooperating with their efforts. The Hinds County District Attorney’s Office is fully functioning and continues its work on behalf of the citizens of Hinds County.”

Owens is listed as the manager and sole member of the company that owns the Downtown Cigar Co., which agents also searched. The business also has a state permit to act as a bar selling alcohol.

WAPT-TV reports that while the searches at Owens’ office and business were ongoing, two FBI agents also visited Jackson City Hall and spoke to the chief of staff for Mayor Chokwe Lumumba. The City Hall is across the street from the Hinds County Courthouse, where Owens has his office.

Before first being elected as district attorney in 2019, Owens had been the lead attorney in Mississippi for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal-leaning group known for bringing lawsuits over issues including civil rights. Owens ran as a criminal justice reformer, saying he would focus on prosecuting violent crime while looking for alternatives to jail and prison for nonviolent offenders.

But Jackson has been challenged by the nation’s highest murder rate, by some accounts, and Owens received more funding from Republican lawmakers to hire more prosecutors. Republicans have expanded the state-run Capitol Police controlled by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to patrol all of Jackson and created a state-run court with judges that are appointed rather than elected.

Many Democrats have said those moves represent a white takeover of an overwhelming Black city and that more resources should be used for crime prevention. The law was upheld in federal

Has the Loblaw boycott boosted business for independent grocers?

While some Canadians pledged to boycott Loblaw-owned stores for the month of May, the boycott is being extended by organizers “indefinitely.”

Published May 22, 2024 • Last updated 4 days ago • 5 minute read

Alfonso Curcio has owned Farmer’s Pick on Prince of Wales Drive since 1992. He said he’s seen a spike in grocery sales since the boycott started — but “not as much as you’d think.” Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

While a nationwide boycott of Loblaw-owned grocery stores is extended by its organizers, some independent grocers in Ottawa have noticed a boost in sales.

Organized in an 80,0000-member group on the social media platform Reddit, some Canadians pledged to boycott Loblaw-owned stores for the month of May, due to mounting frustrations with higher food prices and a lack of competition in the grocery sector.

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This week, the group announced the boycott would continue indefinitely.

“Over the coming months, boycott organizers will focus on empowering consumers through education on key topics and engaging in advocacy efforts to garner political attention and raise awareness via social media challenges,” a social media post reads.

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What business leaders can learn from Hollywood bad guy (and Canadian political royalty) Kiefer Sutherland

Jordan Strauss/The Associated Press

Canada has produced plenty of megastars, but only one who’s descended from both political and acting royalty. Sutherland and his growl of a voice have been bona fide stars through five decades—particularly impressive considering the actor’s signature roles have been, er, somewhat complicated (including, most recently, Capt. Queeg in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial). One thing’s for sure: Sutherland’s legacy will never grow old, and it’ll never die.

Go hard or go home

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Sutherland was one of the hottest stars in Hollywood, starring in films like The Lost Boys, Young Guns and A Few Good Men, and engaged to the hottest actress: his Flatliners co-star Julia Roberts. After she ran off with his best friend, Sutherland — who’d raised horses and owned a cattle ranch — joined the rodeo, travelling around with legit cowboys. Eventually, he became a champion roper (look it up — it’s wild). As his friend Lou Diamond Phillips once said: “Kiefer doesn’t just stick his toe in. He goes all the way in.”

Follow your gut

When Sutherland got the script for 24, he loved it—but he didn’t think anyone else would. He dove in anyway, and the groundbreaking show debuted just a couple of months after 9/11. Sutherland’s portrayal of counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer resonated with scared and angry Americans, making “Previously on 24…” the most anticipated words on TV. The show ran for nine seasons and propelled Sutherland back into the spotlight for a whole new generation of fans.

Know your part

Sutherland made his name as a villain, starting in 1986 with Ace in Stand By Me and peaking in the 1996 thriller An Eye For an Eye, a portrayal so ugly that people refused to remain in his presence. Even 24′s Bauer crosses the line into bad-guy territory, having zero qualms about torture in the service of the greater good. But no story shines without an antagonist, and Sutherland came to accept that he was damn good at being one, saying: “My rationalization as an actor is, if those characters aren’t kind of awful, then the good part of this story can’t be told.”

Family matters

Though Sutherland left Toronto for Hollywood at 18, he’s fiercely proud of his Canadian roots — including his actor parents, Shirley Douglas and Donald Sutherland,

Construction labour shortage weighs on Alberta businesses as growth accelerates

Alberta’s population boom is increasing pressure on the construction sector to build the infrastructure to accommodate growth and business owners say they’re already feeling the labour crunch.

A shortfall of workers in skilled trades is an issue across Canada, but with Alberta adding more than 200,000 new residents last year, the industry needs to find a way to keep up with more road and bridge repairs, new housing development and major infrastructure work.

“It’s literally the No. 1 issue on everyone’s mind,” said Independent Contractors and Businesses Association Alberta president Mike Martens.

“From the sewage lines underneath the water treatment plants to the roads, bridges, hospitals — all these things that really create the amazing life we have in North America is old infrastructure,” he said.

“We’ve taken it for granted, and now it’s needing fixing, and we don’t have the people available to fix it.”

Industry group BuildForce Canada forecasts Alberta will need to replace almost a quarter of its 2023 labour force within a decade.

While the province’s younger population relative to some other parts of Canada should help make it easier to close the gap, factoring in growth means there could still be a shortfall of 22,000 workers by 2033.

Statistics Canada data shows Alberta’s construction job vacancy rate jumped to 6.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2023. In comparison, in the five years leading up to the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the province’s construction job vacancy rates never exceeded 3.5 per cent.

Gary Zeitner is senior vice president of Edmonton-based civil construction firm Abalone Group of Companies. (Madeline Smith/CBC)

Gary Zeitner is senior vice president at Abalone Group of Companies, a civil construction firm. The company employs heavy equipment operators that do the excavation and grading work to prepare for the next stage of construction — it’s the bedrock of virtually any infrastructure project, whether that’s a new residential subdivision or an industrial project.

“We do not bid on all of the opportunities that are out there, and the reason is entirely about our labour force,” Zeitner said.

“We have an asset base of equipment that would allow us to do much more work than we’ve done in the last five years, but we simply can’t get the labour force that would be able to make use of all of that equipment.”

Operating the excavators and other equipment involved in the

There isn’t enough business to justify rail line across Cape Breton, study finds

An engineer who helped author a 2023 study into the viability of a rail line across Cape Breton says there aren’t enough businesses on the island that need to ship by train to justify fixing up the crumbling rail bed, bridges and tracks.

Dan MacDonald, of DMDE Engineering, said officials wanted to do a study to demonstrate the need for a functioning rail line without a container terminal project.

To do that, the rail company has said it needs to run at least 10,000 rail cars across Cape Breton Island every year.

At a public meeting in Sydney on Monday night hosted by the Scotia Rail Development Society on Monday evening, MacDonald said the study found existing companies could use just under 3,000 cars and a statistical analysis of trucking in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador found there could be demand for another 3,000 to 6,000 rail cars.

“We’re close,” he said. “We got to 9,300, and I think we’re only one big carrier or one big user of the railway to put that over the top and to develop the economic plan that would make it viable.”

MacDonald said later in an interview the study officially found a range of 6,000 to 9,000 cars annually was possible.

“We think that once we have the rail here, you build it and they will come, that you’ll get closer to the [9,300],” he said.

“I guess the 93 is a bit optimistic, but it’s in the range and that’s the number we’ve been quoting.”

‘We have to tell people what a great port we have’

MacDonald also said officials believe if they can find one more large rail user, they would have the numbers to convince the railway company that a line in Cape Breton would be viable.

He said they are looking out west to Saskatchewan to find a large shipper willing to use a new East Coast port.

“The Cape Breton Partnership has put in an application to Nova Scotia’s Department of Economics to get funding to try and develop this business case, to see about potash, to see about canola, to see about grain,” he said.

“This is just ideas we have here, and we need to market our port and our railway here. We have to tell people what a great port we have.”

The Cape Breton Partnership is an economic development agency based in Sydney,