WINNIPEG — The provincial government is being urged to call an inquest into the deaths of two people who had donated plasma at for-profit collection centres in Winnipeg.

Health Canada has promised to investigate the deaths, which occurred in October and January at two Grifols Plasma Donation Centres in Winnipeg.

However, the Manitoba Health Coalition said Health Canada licenses Grifols and it has a conflict of interest.

“We want as independent and (thorough) an investigation as possible for the loved ones of these Manitobans who died, to get real answers and so that harm like this doesn’t happen in the future,” coalition executive director Noah Schulz said at a news conference Friday.

OTTAWA — A Republican congressman in Washington has introduced a new bill taking aim at Canada’s Online Streaming Act.

The bill would trigger an investigation of the streaming legislation by the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Rep. Lloyd Smucker’s office said in a news release.

The statement said if the trade representative finds the implementation of the streaming bill discriminates against or burdens American commerce, the USTR would be directed to take “necessary retaliatory action.”

Under the Online Streaming Act, the federal broadcast regulator has ordered large foreign platforms to make a five per cent contribution toward Canadian content.

WASHINGTON — Edward Warner says every day has felt like a nightmare since his Canadian wife and her seven-year-old daughter were taken into custody at a United States border patrol checkpoint in Texas last week.

He told The Canadian Press he was travelling home from a baby shower Saturday with his spouse Tania Warner and her daughter Ayla Lucas, who has autism, and had to stop at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Sarita.

They’d gone through the checkpoint many times before without any issues.

“We had all our documents with us,” he said. “She had her work visa, her Texas state driver’s licence and her passport with her.”

VANCOUVER — Sandbags, dikes, and stacks of giants rocks appear to be doing their job holding back the Chilliwack River from flooding parts of Fraser Valley in British Columbia after days of rain soaked southern parts of the province.

A local state of emergency has been declared in the Fraser Valley for the Chilliwack area, where evacuation alerts covered just under 40 homes on Friday.

The Fraser Valley Regional District said in a statement that the prolonged rainfall has raised the potential harms to people, property, infrastructure and the environment.

District director Patti MacAhonic said efforts to shore up the rise of the river are starting to pay off.

NEW YORK — Another climb for oil prices shook stock markets on Friday, as hopes collapsed for a possible cut to interest rates this year by the Federal Reserve.

The S&P 500 fell 1.5 per cent to close its fourth straight losing week, its longest such streak in a year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 443 points, or one per cent, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled two per cent.

The market’s losses deepened after oil prices erased an early dip and accelerated in the afternoon. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 3.3 per cent to settle at US$112.19 per barrel. Benchmark U.S. crude gained 2.3 per cent to US$98.32 per barrel.

Stocks also bent under the weight of leaping yields in the bond market. Higher yields make mortgage rates and other borrowing more expensive for U.S. households and companies, slowing the economy, and they grind down on prices for all kinds of investments. Treasury yields have been jumping on worries the war with Iran will cause a long-term spike in oil and natural gas prices that drives up inflation.

NEW YORK — CBS News said Friday it will shut down its storied radio news service after nearly 100 years of operation, ending an era and blaming challenging economic times as the world moves on to digital sources and podcasts. Said longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather: “It’s another piece of America that is gone.”

When it went on the air in September 1927, the service was the precursor to the entire network, giving a youthful William S. Paley a start in the business. Famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s rooftop reports during the Nazi bombing of London during the Second World War kept Americans listening anxiously.

Today, CBS News Radio provides material to an estimated 700 stations across the country and is known best for its top-of-the-hour news roundups. The service will end on May 22, the network said Friday.

“Radio is woven into the fabric of CBS News and that’s always going to be part of our history,” CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said in delivering the news to the staff. “I want you to know that we did everything we could, including before I joined the company, to try and find a viable solution to sustain the radio operation.”

TORONTO — The Ontario government’s push to cap resale ticket prices for events across the province might not be much help to fans.

Experts worry the proposed legislation the government announced Friday will be unenforceable, drive up the original price of tickets and lure people into riskier transactions.

The province positioned the move as a way to tamp down on resellers who profit off fans by selling tickets to the hottest shows and games for several times their original price, but it’s “purely symbolism,” said David Clement, the North American affairs manager with the Consumer Choice Center.

“It actually doesn’t help consumers because it means that it caps prices in the regulated market and regulated platforms like Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek, but it doesn’t cap prices outside in the unregulated market,” he said.