A section of Beirut's massive port grain silos, shredded in the 2020 explosion, collapsed in a huge cloud of dust on Sunday after a weekslong fire. (July 31)
Public Health is contact tracing to try to limit the spread of monkeypox in New Brunswick. The province's first confirmed case of the virus, announced last Friday, had not travelled out of New Brunswick, said Dr. Yves Léger, the deputy chief medical officer of health. This "reasonably" means the person got the virus either from a New Brunswick resident or somebody travelling in the province, Léger said in an interview Tuesday on Shift. To limit the spread of the virus, Public Health has been fol
Four times the tonnage of the original Open Arms rescue tugboat and with a capacity to carry up to 1,000 people, the Open Arms Uno made its first rescue on Wednesday, picking up 101 migrants stranded on a wooden boat off the Tunisian coast. "Sit down, if you don't sit down we don't continue," a crew member shouted to the excited migrants from a speed boat launched from the vessel operated by the Spanish charity Open Arms before all were taken aboard. One had jumped into the water to try to reach the speed boat, prompting it to briefly move away in a safety maneuver.
New car and truck sales in Alberta are still suffering from a number of factors, including low inventory, high interest rates and the state of economic uncertainty across the country. The number of new vehicles sold in Alberta decreased by four per cent on a year-over-year basis in June, according to a report by ATB Financial. But the situation is not unique to Alberta. Nationally, the number of vehicles sold was down 10 per cent in June compared with the same month last year. Rob Roach, deputy
Quebec's workplace health and safety board has ordered a food-processing company north of Montreal to reimburse two temporary foreign workers for charging them excess rent. The board told the company in July it had to pay the workers $3,800 each in housing costs it had deducted from their paycheques since May 2021. The workers say that last spring, the company asked them to sign a contract raising their rent from $225 to $300 per pay period. A number of the 48 temporary foreign workers from Mada
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin is fighting to keep his seat as a New Mexico county commissioner as he faces possible removal and disqualification from public office for his participation in last year’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Griffin was previously convicted of a misdemeanor for entering Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. He was sentenced to 14 days and given credit for time served. Three residents of Santa Fe and Los Alamos counties filed a lawsuit seeking
Musk has a history of being unconventional, posting irreverent tweets. Below are some other tweets by Musk - who has more than 103 million followers - which have taken investors, Twitter users, Twitter's board and the rest of his audience by surprise. May 13, 2022: "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users."
Ontario is seeing far fewer forest fires this year than the 10-year average, and only a fraction of what it experienced last summer, when fires tore through a record amount of land in the province, according to the provincial government. There have been 179 fires so far this year, with 2,416 hectares of land burned, Evan Lizotte, a fire information officer with the Ministry of Natural Resources, said in a recent interview. That's compared with the 10-year average of 669 fires and 174,196 hectare
A plan to kill off an invasive fish, along with all other fish species in New Brunswick's Miramichi Lake, can go ahead — for now. Last week, Court of Queen's Bench Judge Terrence Morrison issued an emergency injunction temporarily barring a group from using rotenone, a pesticide and piscicide, on the lake with the intent of killing off invasive smallmouth bass. That injunction expired at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, and a hearing in Woodstock Court of Queen's Bench that was supposed to include arguments
WASHINGTON (AP) — Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading reproductive health care provider and abortion rights advocacy organization, plans to spend a record $50 million ahead of November's midterm elections, pouring money into contests where access to abortion will be on the ballot. The effort, which breaks the group's previous $45 million spending record set in 2020, comes months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that created a constitutional right to hav
Security cameras are now installed at the Halifax Public Gardens after bark was stripped from about 30 trees last month. A municipal spokesperson says along with the cameras, there is also overnight security. Sometime between the evening of July 25 and the morning of July 26, the trees were attacked with an axe. Fourteen trees had bark removed in a ring around the trunk, also known as being girdled. Four trees that were severely damaged have been cut down. "Our sense of security in here is compl
QUEBEC — Premier François Legault said Tuesday the government would launch a "massive" vaccination booster campaign to get ahead of the next wave of COVID-19, which he said is expected after students return to class and people start spending more time indoors. All Quebecers over the age of 18 will be eligible to make an appointment for a booster by the end of the month, Legault told reporters in Quebec City alongside Health Minister Christian Dubé and public health director Dr. Luc Boileau. "Fal
WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after America's tumultuous and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, assessments of its impact are divided — and largely along partisan lines. Critics slam the August 2021 evacuation of more than 120,000 American citizens, Afghans and others as poorly planned and badly executed. They say the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces opened the door to a resurgence of al-Qaida and Islamic State militants in the country. And the exit, they say, signaled the United States' lack of c
The drum corps of Simon Fraser University's (SFU) Grade 1 pipe band has been named the best in the world, and the band ranked sixth overall after a remarkable showing at the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, last week. "Winning the best drum corps prize is no small feat," drummer Reid Maxwell told On the Coast guest Host Belle Puri on Tuesday. "It was a really humbling, tremendously humbling experience for me." Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band of Northern Ireland took home th
REGINA — Saskatchewan plans to send people to Alberta to get privatized surgeries, but the cost of travel won't be covered by the government. Health Minister Paul Merriman said the Saskatchewan Party government will begin paying a Calgary clinic this fall to perform 20 knee and hip surgeries a month for those on the province's surgical wait list. "If somebody does have the option to go to Calgary, they will incur the travel expenses back and forth, but they would have their surgery done consider
Some Island farmers say a looming increase in the price of dairy products is necessary to make up for skyrocketing costs. Dairy prices will be going up by 2.5 per cent starting Sept. 1 following an adjustment by the Canadian Dairy Commission. The Crown corporation that oversees supply management in Canada usually adjusts prices once a year in February, but farmers had called for an increase in June to account for rapidly rising costs. That's in addition to the 8.4 per cent increase at the beginn
LANGLEY, B.C. — The Greater Vancouver Zoo says a "small number" of its wolves are unaccounted for after the animals were believed to have been released as a result of "malicious intent," but there is no danger to the public. The zoo says on its website that a number of wolves were discovered outside their enclosure in the morning and it's working with the B.C. Conservation Officer Service to "contain" the animals, while the Langley RCMP investigate what appears to be a case of unlawful entry and
Environment Canada is continuing to issue heat warnings for Calgary and much of southern Alberta with daily high temperatures expected to reach 30 C for the rest of the week. Daytime temperatures in some parts of the province are forecast to range from 29 to 34 C. The heat should taper off Monday night and Tuesday before rising again on Wednesday, the agency said on its alerts page. As of 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, the heat warnings covered these areas: Calgary. Okotoks, High River, Claresholm. Drumh
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The day after Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Martha Walters fired all nine members of the state commission that oversees public defense, she said Tuesday that she was appointing four new commissioners and reappointing five commissioners from the previous group. Walters had fired the commission members out of frustration that hundreds of defendants charged with crimes and who cannot afford an attorney have been unable to obtain public defenders to represent them. “This c
CALGARY — The Crown asked for a sentence of 10 to 12 years Wednesday for a Calgary man who bilked clients out of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme. Arnold Breitkreutz, 74, was convicted on June 29 of fraud over $5,000 for what the Crown described as a multimillion-dollar scheme in which investors believed they were putting money into safe first mortgages. Court heard the money from his company, Base Financial, was instead loaned to an energy industry promoter and used in a risky oil play in
