In the News

French President Emmanuel Macron is accused of using divisive, vulgar language when he said he wanted to make life difficult for people who refuse coronavirus vaccinations. “I really want to piss them off, and we'll carry on doing this - to the end,” he said. Critics said his language was unworthy of a leader three months ahead of an election and MPs immediately halted debate on proposed law which would bar the unvaccinated from much of public life.

The northern Chinese city of Xi’an, under a tight coronavirus lockdown for the past two weeks, is reported to have seen a reduction in the number of new cases among its 13 million residents. The National Health Commission said Jan. 5 that there had been only 35 new cases compared with 95 the day before and that there has been a steady decline since daily cases topped 100.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry of Haiti was the target of an unsuccessful attempted assassination last weekend as he participated in an independence day celebration. The security situation has deteriorated significantly since the killing of President Jovenel Moïse last July and Henry has promised to crack down on gangs blamed for a wave of kidnappings and seizing control of much of the gasoline distribution around the country.

A virtual meeting of NATO foreign ministers is scheduled for Jan. 7 to assess the situation in Ukraine. The extraordinary meeting of the 30 alliance members kicks off a week of intense diplomacy over troop buildups along the Ukrainian border with Russian and U.S. officials meeting in Geneva Jan. 12 followed by talks in Vienna of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported Jan. 4 that the country’s 100 highest-paid corporate executives averaged $10.9 million in compensation in 2020, up some $95,000 or 0.87 per cent from 2019. CCPA Senior Economist David Macdonald combined base salaries, cash bonuses and stock options in calculating the averages. David Klein, CEO of the Ontario-based cannabis company Canopy Growth, reportedly topped the latest ranking at just over $45 million.

Families of Canadian victims of Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752, which was shot down by Iran's Revolutionary Guard two years ago, have been awarded $107 million in damages by an Ontario court. However, their lawyer admits that getting Iran to pay will be difficult because most of Iran’s foreign assets are believed to be held outside Canada.

Canada has lost its first dispute under the new North American trade agreement as a tribunal agreed with a U.S. complaint that Canada broke a promise to allow slightly more dairy imports by imposing complicated rules. The U.S. says Canada now has several weeks to comply with the ruling but “the end goal is not to put retaliatory tariffs in place.”

The two largest U.S. telecoms, AT&T and Verizon, are delaying their rollout of 5G infrastructure near airports until Jan. 19, averting feared widespread disruptions to air travel and shipping as well as a potential legal battle. The chief concern is potential interference with some aircraft altimeters but AT&T said Jan. 3 that “aviation safety and 5G can coexist and we are confident further collaboration and technical assessment will allay any issues.”

Charles M. Lieber, a Harvard University professor and government-funded nanotechnology researcher, has been found guilty by a U.S. federal court of lying to the Department of Defense and other authorities about his ties to China. The jury finding is seen as a victory for the Justice Department amidst a crackdown on academic espionage. Lieber was arrested in January 2020 and evidence against him included a contract paying him $50,000 a month for work with the Wuhan Institute of Technology.

As the coronavirus evolved over the past two years, misinformation has erupted into a pandemic of its own and Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer, Dr. Robert Strang blames it mainly on U.S. social media platforms. Much of it attributable to former President Donald Trump’s penchant for tailoring information to suit his agenda. “That set a precedent and allowed that to happen,” Strang says. “All the stuff that I see here has very direct routes back to the U.S.”

The Quebec government has imposed its second curfew since the coronavirus pandemic began, banning people from being outside their homes overnight and from holding indoor gatherings. Other limits include the closing of restaurant dining areas, limits on religious gatherings and the suspension of indoor sports. An immediate publish pushback resulted in Montreal police issuing tickets and arresting one woman for assault.

Police in Amsterdam have had to deal with thousands of demonstrators who gathered in the Dutch capital to protest coronavirus lockdowns and vaccinations. An emergency order by Mayor Femke Halsema ordered the city’s central Museum Square cleared Dec. 2 after a mostly unmasked mob violated a ban on public gatherings during the latest pandemic wave of infections.

An agreement-in-principle with First Nations groups would see half of a $40-billion federal commitment earmarked for adults who went through the child welfare system with the other half directed toward reforms.

The UN World Food Programme suspended operations in Sudan’s North Darfur state today following raids on its warehouses in the capital this week. “This theft has robbed nearly two million people of the food and nutrition support they so desperately need,” said WFP Executive Director David Beasley. “Not only is this a tremendous setback to our operations across the country, but it endangers our staff.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said today that his country will move to “eliminate unacceptable threats” and take “all necessary measures to ensure a strategic balance” if the U.S. and NATO don’t respond to security demands. He also said his ministry would not allow “endless discussions” as tensions simmer between Moscow and Western powers over Ukraine.

International Memorial, one of Russia's oldest human rights groups, has been ordered shut down by the Supreme Court. The organization, which had focused on Soviet-era persecution, imprisonment and executions of innocent persons had been censured previously but the court now has labelled it a “public threat” financially supported by foreign interests.

Several European countries and the U.S. are reporting their highest daily increases in confirmed COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, notably due to the more aggressive Omicron variant. More than 440,000 new cases were recorded in the U.S. Dec. 27 and England, France, Italy, Greece and Portugal also had record counts.

Jan. 10 has been set for talks between U.S. and Russian officials about their military activities amidst rising tensions over Ukraine. The U.S. administration says these talks are expected to be followed Jan. 13 by a broader meeting between Russia and NATO.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban says Hungary plans to stick with controversial immigration legislation despite a European Union ruling that Hungarian law breaches EU law by criminalizing lawyers and activists who help asylum seekers. It also prevents asylum seekers from applying for status if they arrive from a country where their lives are deemed not to be at risk.

Japan has approved a supplementary budget equivalent to some US$317 billion which includes additional funding for missile defense systems and other military technologies in the current fiscal year. However, the funding largely is meant for additional coronavirus measures as well as funding to support families and the country’s tourism industry.

The Belgian government announced Dec. 23 that it has an agreement in principle with a power utility to permanently shut down seven nuclear reactors at two sites by 2025. There have been regional concerns due to a series of temporary shutdowns in recent years at the reactors, some of which date to the 1970s, and the plan now is to start closing them down in 2022 with decommissioning and demolition by 2045.

Canadian health authorities reported 14,995 COVID-19 cases Dec. 22, a record since the pandemic began. It comes amid a steady rise which was 11,690 new cases the day before and 10,665 two days earlier. Data also show that the seven-day average is at a record 10,488 and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Theresa Tam said “modelling shows that by the beginning of January we could have very high number of cases, which underscores the need to act urgently now to reduce the acceleration.”

As the Omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to spread across the country in a fifth wave of the pandemic, threatening to overload health care facilities again, provinces and some cities are hunkering down with pre-Christmas prevention measures that include renewed quarantine and testing requirements as well as tighter limits on public and private gatherings.

Prince Edward Island announced today that it is putting in place additional coronavirus controls in place, including reinstatement of quarantine for anyone arriving from out of the province. They must self-isolate for four days after undergoing two rapid tests on arrival and two more on the second and fourth day of quarantine, after which can leave if both are negative. If a traveller opts to isolate with others, the entire group or family must isolate.

The International Air Transport Association reports that the number of unruly passenger incidents, most involving passengers who refused to heed coronavirus masking rules, doubled in 2020 and the trend evidently has continued this year. Of more than5,400 reports in the U.S. so far, nearly 4,000 involved anti-maskers while in Canada, 1,093 incidents involving masks had been reported to the end of October.

Contrary to reports last week that they were released by their Haitian kidnappers after two months in captivity, a group of U.S.-based missionaries – including a Canadian and children – managed to escape during the night.

The Canada Revenue Agency has been told by Taxpayers Ombudsman François Boileau that it must do a better job informing clients of their options when they are impacted fiancially by the coronavirus pandemic. “More can be done,” he says in his latest report. “Although the CRA provides information on solutions for hardship, it is not readily available” and the result is that calls for intervention by his office have doubled, mainly related to COVID-19 benefits.

The International Energy Agency said rising thermal coal consumption by power plants in China, India and the U.S. could mean record global demand once final figures for 2021 are available. The UN agency says coal-fired generation is projected at 10,350 terawatt-hours, up nine per cent from 2020 due to economic recovery which has “pushed up electricity demand much faster than low-carbon supplies can keep up.”

Toronto-based Dominion Voting Systems is being permitted to move forward in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News over the network’s allegations of voting inaccuracies in the 2020 U.S. election. The ruling by a Delaware Superior Court judge enables Dominion to continue seeking access to gather evidence for the suit and possibly get sworn statements from network executives.

Nuclear reactors are seen as a key factor in the global effort to combat global warming by curbing greenhouse gas emissions but memories of reactor accidents in Japan, Ukraine and he U.S. continue to fuel skepticism and fear. Coupled with upfront capital costs and the advent of wind and solar power sources, which also have critics, are deterring potential investment.

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace says it’s “unlikely” that NATO allies would deploy troops to defend Ukraine against a Russia invasion. “We shouldn’t kid people we would,” he says, and “the Ukrainians are aware of that” because their country is not a NATO member. As Russia insists that troops buildups along its borers with Ukraine are not a prelude to invasion, Wallace says Britain remains diplomatically “shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine.”

As the federal government advises Canadians to avoid non-essential travel and reinstates mandatory rapid-testing for returning travellers as the coronavirus Omicron variant spreads, policies vary across the country with individual jurisdictions implementing additional restrictions and quarantine requirements.

A Canadian and 11 other members of a U.S.-based missionary group of 17 kidnapped by a gang in Haiti two months ago have been freed. The remaining five had been released earlier.

Canadians are being urged by the federal government to avoid non-essential foreign travel as the global spread of the coronavirus Omicron variant accelerates. “Now is not the time to travel,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Dec. 15, stressing that the advice applies to everyone, regardless of their vaccination status, because they could “contract the virus or get stranded abroad.”