Ontario is temporarily moving schools online, closing indoor dining and gyms and pausing non-urgent medical procedures amid record-high COVID-19 case counts.
Troubled by the number of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients showing up at his hospital, the French doctor logged on to Facebook and uploaded a video urging people to get vaccinated. He was soon swarmed by dozens, then hundreds, then more than 1,000 hateful messages from an anti-vaccine extremist group known as V_V. The group, active in France and Italy, has harassed doctors and public health officials, vandalized government offices and tried to disrupt vaccine clinics. Alarmed by the abuse of its p
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.
Eleven Nova Scotians died from COVID-19 the week of Aug. 9-15, the province's updated COVID-19 dashboard showed Thursday. There were an average of 206 daily COVID-19 cases during that time, a decrease from 249 the previous week. Five deaths from COVID-19 were reported last week. New hospital admissions due to COVID-19 were 40, down from 46 a week ago. Nova Scotia Health reported Thursday that: 50 patients are in hospital being treated for COVID-19, seven of whom are in intensive care. 127 patien
The World Health Organization's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has suggested that racism is behind a lack of international attention being paid to the plight of civilians in Ethiopia's war-shattered Tigray region. Calling it the "worst humanitarian crisis in the world", with 6 million people unable to access basic services, Tedros questioned in an emotional appeal why the situation is not getting the same attention as the Ukraine conflict. "Maybe the reason is the colour of the skin of the people," Tedros, who is from Tigray, told a virtual media briefing on Wednesday.
A doctor in eastern Ontario charged with first-degree murder in the death of an elderly patient last year is now facing three new first-degree murder charges. Dr. Brian Nadler was arrested Wednesday. All three of the latest alleged victims were under Nadler's care.
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
MONTREAL — The owner of a western Quebec copper smelter says it will adhere to the government's new requirements and reduce arsenic emissions to five times the provincial norm by 2027. The smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., is owned by Switzerland-based Glencore and is currently certified to emit 100 nanograms of arsenic per cubic metre of air — 33 times the provincewide standard. Glencore's operations in the town more than 600 kilometres northwest of Montreal have been a cause for serious concern
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
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Estonia’s foreign minister on Thursday defended his country’s decision to bar Russian tourists, saying they are shirking their “moral responsibility” to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and its “genocidal war” in Ukraine. The small Baltic country, which shares a 300-kilometer (190-mile) border with Russia, stopped issuing tourist visas to Russians months ago, and as of Thursday no longer accepts those previously issued. “Our idea is to give a signal t
China has issued its first national drought alert of the year as authorities battle forest fires and mobilise specialist teams to protect crops from scorching temperatures across the Yangtze river basin. The national 'yellow alert', issued late on Thursday, comes after regions from Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the Yangtze delta have experienced weeks of extreme heat, with government officials repeatedly citing global climate change as the cause. In one of the Yangtze's important flood basins in central China's Jiangxi province, the Poyang Lake has now shrunk to a quarter of its normal size for this time of year, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday.
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Wildfires raging in the forests of eastern Algeria have killed at least 37 people and wounded 161 others, the civil protection department of the North African country said Thursday. Most of the victims were reported in the wilaya, or region, of El Tarf, near the northern Algeria-Tunisian border, where 34 people were found dead. The death toll included a family of five found in their home and eight people on a public bus whose driver was surprised by flames while traveling
New Zealand police are investigating the suspected murder of two children whose remains were found in suitcases bought at an online auction for an unclaimed locker last week. Police launched a homicide inquiry in Auckland last week after the remains were found by a family going through the contents of a storage locker they had purchased unseen. The two children were aged between 5 and 10 years and had been dead for some time, police said in a statement on Thursday.
B.C. Liberal leader Kevin Falcon has removed longtime MLA John Rustad from the party caucus after Rustad boosted a social media post casting doubt on climate change science and urging people to "celebrate CO2." In posts on both Facebook and Twitter, Rustad, the MLA for the Nechako Lakes riding west of Prince George, shared a graphic and post arguing that people had been "hoodwinked" by climate change science and they should be glad CO2 is being emitted into the atmosphere. In response, Kevin Fal
EDMONTON — A United Nations body that monitors some of the world's greatest natural glories is in Canada again to assess government responses to ongoing threats to the country's largest national park, including plans to release treated oilsands tailings into its watershed. In a series of meetings beginning Thursday, UNESCO investigators are to determine whether Wood Buffalo National Park should be on the list of World Heritage Sites In Danger — a move the agency has already deemed "likely." "Can
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
Canadian inflation is not likely to return to the central bank's 2% target until 2024 after possibly peaking in June, as less volatile items like wages and rent displace energy as key sources of price pressure, analysts say. In a bid to return inflation to target, since March the Bank of Canada (BoC) has raised its benchmark interest rate by 225 basis points to 2.50%, including a full-percentage-point move in its last policy decision in July, the biggest single hike by a G7 country in this economic cycle. A slow grind back to target could make the central bank less willing to pivot to interest rate cuts next year if the economy moves into recession as some analysts expect.
The beach on Île Notre-Dame in Jean-Drapeau Park will be closed until further notice because of an E. coli contamination, Quebec's Environment Ministry said Thursday morning. It has yet to say whether the closure of the Jean-Doré beach could continue into what's expected to be a hot weekend for the city. Temperatures will reach a high of 30 C starting Friday, and are anticipated to stay in that range until Sunday, Environment Canada says. Other beaches in the Montreal area, like Cap-Saint-Jacque
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday greeted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an in the western city of Lviv, ahead of a meeting with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. (August 18)
Robert Brown never thought he'd be living like this — all of his possessions crammed into an old, 30-foot motorhome, moving from place to place in search of some place to rent or park his RV. Brown and his partner Mathie Franchuck moved to Vernon, B.C., one month ago on a promise of a place to park their RV on private land, which didn't pan out, Brown said. Now, they are among a growing number of people living in motorhomes and vans on streets in the north Okanagan city. "It's embarrassing. You
TORONTO — Ontario's nursing college is proposing to register potentially thousands of internationally trained nurses on a temporary basis. Health Minister Sylvia Jones recently directed the College of Nurses of Ontario to develop plans to more quickly register internationally educated professionals within two weeks, amid a nurse staffing shortage that has led to temporary emergency room closures. The college provided its response to the ministry today, and said there are 5,970 active internation
