By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press

TORONTO (AP) — A complete shutdown of Air Canada is looming if the union representing the flight attendants of the country’s dominant air carrier and the airline fail to reach an agreement by early Saturday.

More than 10,000 flight attendants are poised to walk off the job around 1 a.m. EST on Saturday, followed by a company-imposed lockout. It threatens to impact about 130,000 travelers a day.

The Canadian carrier said it expects to call off 500 flights by the end of Friday ahead of the deadline. It already started canceling flights on Thursday in expectation of the massive work stoppage that could impact hundreds of thousands of travelers.

A full grounding could affect some 25,000 Canadians a day abroad who may become stranded.

“We strongly urge the parties to work with federal mediators and get a deal done. Time is precious and Canadians are counting on you,” Federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu said in a statement Friday.

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By midday Friday, Air Canada had called off 87 domestic flights and 176 international flights that were scheduled to depart on Friday and Saturday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. On Thursday, when the airline said it was beginning it’s “phased wind down” of most operations, 18 domestic flights and four international flights were canceled.

Canadian Union of Public Employees, or CUPE, which represents the flight attendants, refused to voluntarily submit to arbitration. “The appropriate course of action is for Air Canada to return to the table and resume good faith bargaining,” it said in a statement.

The union, which represents about 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants, and the airline say disagreements over key issues, including pay raises, have brought contract talks to a standstill.

How long the planes will be grounded remains to be seen.

Air Canada Chief Operating Officer Mark Nasr said the decision to lock out the union members even if it meant halting flights would help facilitate an orderly restart, “which under the best circumstances will take a full week to complete.”

Air Canada and CUPE have been in contract talks for about eight months, but they have yet to reach a tentative deal.

The union put it to a vote at the end of July and 99.7% approved a strike. On Wednesday, it gave Air Canada a 72-hour strike notice. The airline responded with a so-called lockout notice, saying it would prevent the flight attendants from working on Saturday.

The union said it rejected a proposal from the airline to enter a binding arbitration process that would have prevented flight attendants from walking off the job, saying it prefers to negotiate a deal that its members can then vote on.

By BRITTANY PETERSON, Associated Press

DENVER (AP) — Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will again live with less water from the Colorado River as drought lingers in the West, federal officials announced Friday.

The Colorado River is a critical lifeline to seven U.S. states, 30 Native American tribes, and two Mexican states. The cuts are based on projections for levels at federal reservoirs — chief among them Lake Powell and Lake Mead — released every August by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Arizona will again go without 18% of its total Colorado River allocation, while Mexico loses 5%. The reduction for Nevada — which receives far less water than Arizona, California or Mexico — will stay at 7%. California won’t face any cuts because it has senior water rights and is the last to lose in times of shortage.

Decades of overuse and the effects of long-term drought worsened by climate change means there’s far more demand for water than what actually flows through the river. Low reservoir levels at Lake Mead have triggered mandatory cutbacks every year since 2022, with the deepest cuts in 2023, which hit farmers in Arizona the hardest.

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Meanwhile, the states are working to reach agreement by next year on new long-term rules to govern the river in dry years. The Trump administration gave a mid-November deadline for states to reach a preliminary agreement, or risk federal intervention. Negotiations have faced delays as states push back against how much water they should each give up.

The original 1922 Colorado River Compact was calculated based on an amount of water that doesn’t exist in today’s climate. That leaves the Upper Basin states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah to share far less water after the required amount is sent to the to the “Lower Basin” states of Nevada, Arizona and California. Lots of water is also lost to evaporation and leaky infrastructure.

Fairly splitting the river’s water in the era of climate change has been vexing for years, with all of the major users hesitant to give anything up as they anticipate a drier future. There has to be enough water in the reservoirs to reach the tunnels that usher water downstream, and key infrastructure like the Hoover Dam rely on certain water levels in Lake Mead to generate electricity.

Mandatory cuts and emergency water releases are “reactive,” said John Berggren, a regional policy manager at Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit focused on climate change.

“If we are going to be able to have a sustainable Colorado River and not just be responding to crisis after crisis, we need large amounts of flexibility built into this new set of guidelines,” he said.

States are considering a so-called natural flow approach to managing the river — where the Lower Basin would receive a certain percentage of the average natural flow from the prior few years.

The Lower Basin states have helped stave off deeper cuts by coming up with voluntary conservation plans. In the last few years, Arizona, Nevada and California have saved nearly half of what they use annually through programs largely funded during former President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Absent all of those measures, the river would be in a very bad place,” said J.B. Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River Board of California and a board member for the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest user of the river’s water. Still, he knows California, like others, will have to give up more in the ongoing negotiations.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

By JIM MUSTIAN, JACK BROOK and HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal grand jury indicted New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell on Friday after a long corruption investigation.

Cantrell’s lawyer, Eddie Castaing, confirmed to The Associated Press that an indictment was returned, and her name was read aloud by a federal magistrate judge as a defendant. The charges weren’t immediately known.

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The indictment is the culmination of a long-running federal investigation into Cantrell, the first female mayor in the city’s 300-year history.

Cantrell, who is term-limited, will leave office in January. The Democrat has clashed with City Council members during a turbulent second term and survived a recall effort in 2022.

She hasn’t sent out a message on her official feed on X, formerly known as Twitter, since July 15, when she touted that the city was experiencing historical declines in crime.

As Cantrell heads into her final months in office, she’s alienated former confidants and supporters, and her civic profile has receded. Her early achievements were eclipsed by self-inflicted wounds and bitter feuds with a hostile city council, political observers say. The mayor’s role has weakened following voter-approved changes to the city’s charter meant to curb her authority.

Cantrell and her remaining allies allege that she’s been unfairly targeted as Black woman and held to a different standard than male officials, her executive powers sabotaged. Earlier this year, Cantrell said she’s faced “very disrespectful, insulting, in some cases kind of unimaginable” treatment.

Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.

By MELISSA GOLDIN, Associated Press

Don’t splurge just yet.

Rumors spread online Friday that the U.S. government will soon be issuing stimulus checks to taxpayers in certain income brackets.

But Congress has not passed legislation to authorize such payments, and, according to the IRS, no new stimulus checks will be distributed in the coming weeks.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department have approved $1,390 stimulus checks that will be distributed to low- and middle-income taxpayers by the end of the summer.

THE FACTS: This is false. Taxpayers will not receive new stimulus checks of any amount this summer, an IRS official said. Stimulus checks, also known as economic impact payments, are authorized by Congress through legislation and distributed by the Treasury Department. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri last month introduced a bill that would send tax rebates to qualified taxpayers using revenue from tariffs instituted by President Donald Trump. Hawley’s bill has not passed the Senate or the House.

The IRS announced early this year that it would distribute about $2.4 billion to taxpayers who failed to claim on their 2021 tax returns a Recovery Rebate Credit — a refundable credit for individuals who did not receive one or more COVID-19 stimulus checks. The maximum amount was $1,400 per individual.

Those who hadn’t already filed their 2021 tax return would have needed to file it by April 15 to claim the credit. The IRS official said there is no new credit that taxpayers can claim.

Past stimulus checks have been authorized through legislation passed by Congress. For example, payments during the coronavirus pandemic were made by possible by three bills: the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act; the COVID-related Tax Relief Act; and the American Rescue Plan Act.

In 2008, stimulus checks were authorized in response to the Great Recession through the Economic Stimulus Act.

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The Treasury Department, which includes the Internal Revenue Service, distributed stimulus payments during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession. The Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, formed in 2012, played a role as well during the former crisis.

Hawley in July introduced the American Worker Rebate Act, which would share tariff revenue with qualified Americans through tax rebates. The proposed rebates would amount to at minimum $600 per individual, with additional payments for qualifying children. Rebates could increase if tariff revenue is higher than expected. Taxpayers with an adjusted annual gross income above a certain amount — $75,000 for those filing individually — would receive a reduced rebate.

Hawley said Americans “deserve a tax rebate.”

“Like President Trump proposed, my legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country,” Hawley said in a press release.

Neither the Senate nor the House had passed the American Worker Rebate Act as of Friday. It was read twice by the Senate on July 28, the day it was introduced, and referred to the Committee on Finance.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.