Half of Canadians were infected with Omicron in only five months: report

Half of the Canadian population — more than 17 million people — were infected with Omicron in only five months starting in December 2021, a report by the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF) says.


Spectators take in the view of the Toronto Pride Parade on Sunday June 26, 2022. A new report revealed that the highest level of Omicron infection was found in young adults, aged 17 to 24.

The results are based on population seropositivity — “the proportion of people with antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in their blood,” the report explained — using data from 21 studies that CITF reviewed. The report showed that prior to Omicron, just seven per cent of Canadians had antibodies from being infected by the virus. The proportion rose by 45 per cent from December 2021 to May 2022.

That’s an average of around 100,000 infections per day, said CITF Executive Director Dr. Tim Evans in a statement.


© COVID-19 Immunity Task ForceThis figure provided by the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force shows infection-acquired seropositivity for all Canadian provinces for all age groups, combined.

“Omicron has been a tsunami,” he said, adding that new sublineages of the virus have been spreading since then, pushing the percentage of Canadians who have been infected “well above” 50 per cent.


The analysis of the studies also found that Canadians of all ages and from all provinces were affected by the virus. Around 50 to 60 per cent of those in western and central provinces showed signs of being previously infected by the end of May, compared to Atlantic Canada, at over 35 per cent. No data was available from the three territories, the report said.


© COVID-19 Immunity Task ForceThis figure provided by the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force shows infection-acquired seropositivity estimates by province.

The highest level of infection was found in young adults, aged 17 to 24, based off of donations made to Canadian Blood Services. Sixty five per cent of them had antibodies at the end of May, the report revealed. Twenty-five to 39-year-olds followed closely behind, at 57 per cent. Other age groups were still affected, but the percentage declined as the age increased. Only 31 per cent of Canadians who were 60 and older had antibodies in their blood.


© COVID-19 Immunity Task ForceThis figure provided by the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force shows infection-acquired seropositivity estimates by median age.

“Millions of Canadians now have hybrid immunity from a combination of COVID-19 vaccines and an infection,” said CITF Co-Chair Dr. David Naylor. “Unfortunately, emerging evidence suggests that most of these individuals remain at risk of re-infection with viruses in the Omicron lineage.”

Even though vaccines are helpful against infection, there are still millions of adults who haven’t had a third shot, he added. This comes after federal health officials urged Canadians to get boosted last week.

The report, which was funded by the Government of Canada, differentiated between antibodies that occurred naturally as a reaction to being infected by the virus and antibodies created by the vaccine. They were thus able to determine which antibodies were a sign of past infection “to track the magnitude of the Omicron wave.”

Harry Rakowski: New vaccine technologies offer hope for evading new waves and protecting the vulnerable

Canadians should get boosted against COVID, urge federal health officials

IRAN HAS THE RIGHT TO NUCLEAR POWER

Iran claims it can «make a nuclear bomb» but reiterates peaceful intentions of its program

The head of Iran's Strategic Council on Strategic Relations, Kamal Jarazi, considered one of the closest elements to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has declared that his country has the technology to make a nuclear bomb, but instead has decided to go for a peaceful program despite the suspicions of the United States and the Western community.


© Provided by News 360Archive - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visits nuclear facilities - -/Iranian Presidency via ZUMA Pr / DPA

Jarazi has made these comments to Al Jazeera channel at a time when the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and the international community is practically suspended.

The United States withdrew three years later under the Trump administration and reimposed US sanctions that weighed on the Islamic republic until the deal was signed. Since then, Tehran has resumed its uranium enrichment operations.

"It is no secret," Jarazi declared, that "Iran has the technical capabilities to make an atomic bomb, but it has decided not to do so," before again pointing to the United States as the main culprit in blocking the talks in Vienna to revive the agreement.

"There are no guarantees from the US regarding the preservation of the nuclear agreement, and that eliminates the possibility of any pact," explained the senior Iranian official, who also accused the UN nuclear agency of lacking impartiality. "If it were fair and independent, it would have been easy to resolve differences," he commented.

On the other hand, Jarazi defended the Iranian military operations around Israel as a defense mechanism against the Hebrew state, "which is going through a moment of weakness" before warning that "any attempt by countries allied with Israel to attack Iran will be answered not only against them, but directly against Israel".

UNLIKE ISRAEL AND INDIA, IRAN IS A SIGNATOR TO THE NON PROLIFERATION ACCORDS

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: US War On Capitalism In Iran 

NUKING THE TARSANDS
Canada's oilsands look into use of nuclear power as 'net zero changes everything'


CALGARY — The pressing global need to slash emissions in the face of a growing climate crisis is driving renewed interest in nuclear power — and few places more so than in Canada's oilsands.

Canada's oilsands l

While the idea of using nuclear power to replace the fossil fuels burned in oilsands production has been bandied about for years, some experts say the reality could be just a decade or so away. On paper, at least, there is more potential to deploy small modular reactor (SMR) technology in the oilsands region of Alberta than anywhere else in the country.

“Without a doubt the oilsands is the biggest market for small modular reactors in Canada," said John Gorman, president and chief executive of the Canadian Nuclear Association. "It's something that some companies are very actively looking at."

Small modular reactors are a type of nuclear design that is far smaller than a traditional nuclear reactor. Generating between 10 and 300 MW of energy, SMRs are fully scalable and are designed to be built economically in factory conditions, rather than on site like a large-scale conventional reactor.

While SMRs are not yet commercially available, the technology is getting close. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that nearly 100 SMRs could be operating around the world by 2030. In Canada, four provinces — New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta — have agreed to collaborate on the advancement of SMRs as a clean energy option, and Canadian researchers are working on new materials and designs that could make SMRs practical in a large range of new uses.

Proponents say SMRs could potentially be used not only to provide clean electricity to smaller electricity grids, like those in rural areas, but also to provide heat for natural resource industries. In the oilsands, operators use massive amounts of high-temperature heat to produce the steam needed to extract bitumen from sand — and they get that heat by burning natural gas.

In total, the oil and gas industry is responsible for 30 per cent of Canada's natural gas consumption, which means confronting the industry's fossil fuel usage will be key if Canada is to meet its climate commitments.

The oilsands industry itself — through an organization called Pathways Alliance, which is made up of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc., ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial Oil Ltd., MEG Energy Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. — has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from oilsands production by 22 million tonnes annually by 2030, and reaching a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

To help get there, the Pathways Alliance has proposed a major carbon capture and storage transportation line that would capture CO2 from oilsands facilities and transport it to a storage facility near Cold Lake, Alta. That project alone could deliver about 10 million tonnes of emissions reductions per year and could be up and running by the end of the decade.


But Pathways has also formed a committee to formally explore nuclear as an alternative to natural gas in oilsands production.

"Absolutely, we are looking at SMRs as a low or no-emission source of the high temperature heat we need," said Martha Hall Findlay, chief climate officer for Suncor Energy Inc. "But it has to be economically viable. It has to make sense."

Findlay said the industry will need clarity around what level of government financial support, if any, will be available for SMRs. There are also questions around the regulatory process, given the energy sector's frustrating experience in recent years getting large-scale projects approved.

"It's Canada — it takes a really long time to build anything," she said. "But if we want to see implementation by 2030, or into the early 2030s, we have to be doing this stuff now. We have to be looking at it now."

Dan Wicklum, president and CEO of non-profit advisory group The Transition Accelerator and the former CEO of the Canadian Oilsands Innovation Alliance, said the energy industry has formally evaluated the nuclear opportunity in the past and discarded it, largely because of cost.

But he said the industry's new target of net-zero emissions "changes everything."

"We can no longer just do the things we were going to do to reduce emissions. Optionality has fallen off the table for us," Wicklum said. "In an emissions elimination paradigm, there's no question that nuclear is being taken very seriously."

However, Wicklum added that for any large-scale emissions reductions projects to get off the ground, governments and industry will have to come to an agreement about whose responsibility it is to pay for them.

"Industry is looking to the federal government to say, 'make it worth our while', he said. "They want more taxpayer dollars. They've essentially said there's not enough public support right now for them to act. And because of that, I think, the feasibility of SMRs — as well as carbon capture and storage, and so on — is completely in question."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2022.

Companies in this story: (TSX:TKTK)

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

Several people arrested in Iran for protesting against the drying up of the great lake Urmia

Iranian police arrested several people Sunday for "security threats" during a protest over the drying of the large Urmia Lake, once considered the largest in the entire region, amid several months of sporadic demonstrations against the authorities' water policy.


© Provided by News 360File image of Lake Namak, Iran. - 

ROUZBEH FOULADI / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO

The lake, in the mountains of northwestern Iran, began drying up in 1995 due to drought and constant water abstraction for agriculture and dams, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

More than six million people, between the cities of Tabriz and Urmia, depend on agriculture on the shores of the lake.

The arrests were announced by West Azerbaijan provincial police chief Rahim Jahanbakhsh, who has accused "many evil and hostile elements, who had no other aim than to destroy public property and disturb the security of the population," according to the state news agency IRNA.

On Saturday, and according to the semi-official Iranian news agency FARS, dozens of people rallied in the lake towns to criticize the Iranian authorities to the cry of "Parliament has killed the lake."

The demonstrations are reminiscent of those that took place in November last year in the city of Isfahan, in the center of the country, against water shortages between drought and the diversion of the Zayandeh river to other localities.

The authorities blamed the drought on the lack of water in the region (some 400 km south of Tehran), but activists quoted by the Bloomberg news agency denounce years of waste and negligence, such as the construction of steel mills whose operation has ended up draining the water from the river.

Suu Kyi denies election fraud charges against her during Burmese retrial


Burma's former 'de facto' leader Aung San Suu Kyi has denied election fraud charges against her during a retrial inside prison in the Burmese capital Naipyidó.

 Protests in favor of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. - 

Daniel Ceng Shou-Yi/ZUMA Wire/dp / DPA

Suu Kyi, who has been in the prison since June awaiting trial, has denied charges under Article 130 of the Penal Code and allegations that she influenced the Election Commission to win the November 2020 elections.

Sources close to the matter have indicated in statements to 'The Irrawaddy' newspaper that former President Win Myint and several former senior government officials have also been charged in the framework of the trial.

However, the same sources confirmed that Suu Kyi "has assured that she did not influence the commission's decision and that she acted legally". Myint has also denied the charges.

The Burma Army took control of the country on February 1, 2021 after a coup d'état claiming that there had been electoral fraud during the elections. The junta subsequently annulled the results.

The junta has filed more than a dozen charges against Suu Kyi, who if found guilty could be sentenced to more than 150 years in prison. The 77-year-old politician has already been convicted of corruption, inciting an uprising and violating restrictions imposed to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. For now she has been sentenced to eleven years in prison.

On June 22 she was transferred to a prison and placed in solitary confinement, which has raised controversy and sparked criticism because of her state of health and advanced age.

 News 360

Russian journalist who protested Ukraine operation on TV detained

Russian police on Sunday detained journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who in March interrupted a live TV broadcast to denounce the military action in Ukraine, her lawyer said.

© -Images of her first protest, in March, went around the world

No official statement has been made, but her detention comes a few days after 44-year-old Ovsyannikova demonstrated alone near the Kremlin holding a placard criticising Russia's intervention in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin.

"Marina has been detained," her entourage said in a message posted on the journalist's Telegram account. "There is no information on where she is."

The message included three photos of her being led by two police officers to a white van, after apparently having been stopped while cycling.

Her lawyer, Dmitri Zakhvatov, confirmed her arrest to the Ria-Novosti news agency, saying he did not know where Ovsyannikova had been taken.

"I assume that it is linked one way or another to her act of protest," he added.

In March Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One television, barged onto the set of its flagship Vremya (Time) evening news programme, holding a poster reading "No War" in English.


On Friday, Ovsyannikova posted photos of herself on Telegram showing her near the Kremlin and carrying a protest placard raising the deaths of children and denouncing Putin as a "killer".

Declarations of this kind expose her to criminal prosecution for publishing "false information" about and "denigrating" the army, offences that can carry heavy prison sentences.

Ovsyannikova became internationally famous overnight in March when she staged her live TV protest. Pictures of her interrupting the broadcast went around the world.

She was briefly detained and then released with a fine, but while a number of international observers praised her protest, it was not universally acclaimed by Russia's opposition.

Some critics said that she had spent years working for a channel, Pervy Kanal, which they said was effectively a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.

In the months following her March protest, Ovsyannikova spent some time abroad, including a brief period working for the German newspaper Die Welt.

In early July, she announced that she was returning to Russia to settle a dispute over the custody of her children.

bur/jj/pvh

Saharawi Army launches «massive attack» on Moroccan troops

The Saharawi Liberation Army launched on Saturday a "massive missile attack" against several locations where Moroccan troops were located, in the north and southeast of Western Sahara.


Demonstration 'Free Sahara', in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Madrid. - Fernando Sánchez - Europa Press

The Saharawi Army commandos have "neutralized a number of points" military belonging to Morocco, so that in the last day, "at least five Moroccan entrenchments have been hit" and "two other warning points of the wall were neutralized", reported the portal EC Saharaui.

According to the war report issued by the Ministry of National Defense, to which the above-mentioned media has had access, the Saharawi army units have caused "innumerable losses of lives and equipment among the ranks of the Moroccan army".

According to reports from the Ministry of Defense, in recent days the Western Sahara has an open offensive in Mahbes, in the northwest, a locality occupied by Morocco and close to the border with Mauritania and Algeria.

It is in the territories of Mahbes that the most bombings have been recorded these days. However, the Saharawi forces have launched an offensive against the region of Farsia in the north and Guelta Zemmur in the center.

Guelta Zemmur is a territory protected and guarded by Moroccan forces because of the wealth of resources in the area, mainly fishing and phosphates.

The Saharawi media recall that the war continues "for the twentieth consecutive month, extending to a total of 170 areas, due to the violation of the cease-fire in November 2020, by which the conflict was resumed.

The president of the self-proclaimed Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Gali, published in November two years ago a presidential decree announcing the end of the commitment to the cease-fire signed between the Polisario Front and Morocco in 1991.

The origin of the dispute lay in a road built by Morocco to facilitate transit to Mauritania, although the Polisario considered it an illegal infrastructure under the 1991 cease-fire agreement.

FORMER SPANISH COLONY 

The Spanish colony of the Sahara was occupied in 1975 by Morocco and Mauritania following the Tripartite Agreements, signed on November 14, 1975, which ceded sovereignty of the Spanish Sahara to these two countries.

After a brief war, the Polisario Front expelled Mauritania and signed peace and mutual recognition with its militias at the gates of Nouakchott, but Morocco consolidated its control over the territory and thousands of Saharawis fled the savage repression.

In 1991 a cease-fire was signed between the two parties, which committed to a referendum on self-determination organized by the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, but since then disputes over the census for the vote - Morocco wants Moroccan settlers to vote - have prevented the referendum.

Peru’s president questions the media and the use of surveys

The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, has again questioned the media and the use of polls, while assuring that so far the press "has not found a single piece of evidence" of corruption against him.

© Provided by News 360

Peru's President Pedro Castillo speaks before Congress during the motion of censure against him. - ---/Presidencia Peru/dpa

Thus, he has assured that he does not believe in opinion polls or newspapers and has expressed that "the time has come to take away the milk bottle from those traditional political drones to give it to the people" and has accused them of thinking "what is going to be the headline to attack the Government".

"Do you believe in the polls? Do you believe in the press? Do you believe in those newspapers? The time has come to believe in the people themselves. Only the people save the people, no matter who it hurts," he said, according to information from the newspaper 'El Comercio'.

Castillo criticized the attacks that his relatives have received, an allusion to his niece Yenifer Paredes, who is facing a preliminary investigation for the alleged crime of influence peddling.

In this sense, he insisted that in eleven months no evidence has been found against him and stressed that the Government seeks to "strengthen democracy". "We have gone through more bloody struggles, where we have continued battling with peasants, with workers, with teachers, with transporters asking for vindications? And some people think that here we are going to bend despite the fact that they mess with everything, with your children, with your parents, with your family", he stressed.

"Eleven months and they can't find a single piece of evidence, and I am ashamed of those corrosive voices that are Machiavellianly scheming", he asserted.

High-flying experiment: Do stem cells grow better in space?


Researcher Dhruv Sareen’s own stem cells are now orbiting the Earth. The mission? To test whether they’ll grow better in zero gravity.


© Provided by The Canadian PressHigh-flying experiment: Do stem cells grow better in space?

Scientists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles are trying to find new ways to produce huge batches of a type of stem cell that can generate nearly any other type of cell in the body — and potentially be used to make treatments for many diseases. The cells arrived over the weekend at the International Space Station on a supply ship.

“I don’t think I would be able to pay whatever it costs now" to take a private ride to space, Sareen said. “At least a part of me in cells can go up!"

The experiment is the latest research project that involves shooting stem cells into space. Some, like this one, aim to overcome the terrestrial difficulty of mass producing the cells. Others explore how space travel impacts the cells in the body. And some help better understand diseases such as cancer.


“By pushing the boundaries like this, it’s knowledge and it’s science and it’s learning,” said Clive Svendsen, executive director of Cedars-Sinai’s Regenerative Medicine Institute.

Six earlier projects from the U.S., China and Italy sent up various types of stem cells — including his team’s study of the effects of microgravity on cell-level heart function, said Dr. Joseph Wu of Stanford University, who directs the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. Wu helped coordinate a series of programs on space-based stem cell research last year.

Earthly applications of much of this research may be a little ways off.

At this point, the only stem cell-based products approved by the Food and Drug Administration contain blood-forming stem cells from umbilical cord blood for patients with blood disorders such as certain cases of lymphoma. There are no approved therapies using the kind of stem cells being sent to space or others derived from them, said Jeffrey Millman, a biomedical engineering expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

But clinical trials underway involving stem cells target conditions such as macular degeneration, Parkinson’s disease and heart attack damage. And Millman is involved in research that could lead to a new approach for treating Type 1 diabetes.

Scientists see great promise in stem cells.


That promise is tempered by a frustrating earthly problem: The planet’s gravity makes it tough to grow the vast quantities of cells necessary for future therapies that may require more than a billion per patient.

“With current technology right now, even if the FDA instantly approved any of these therapies, we don’t have the capacity to manufacture” what's needed, Millman said.

The issue? In large bioreactors, the cells need to be stirred vigorously or they clump or fall to the bottom of the tank, Millman said. The stress can cause most cells to die.

“In zero G, there’s no force on the cells, so they can just grow in a different way,” Svendsen said.

The Cedars-Sinai team has sent up what are called induced pluripotent stem cells. Many scientists consider them the perfect starting materials for all sorts of personalized, cell-based treatments. They carry a patient’s own DNA, and their versatility makes them similar to embryonic stem cells, only they are reprogrammed from adults' skin or blood cells.

For their experiment, which is being funded by NASA, a shoebox-sized container holds bags filled with spheres of cells and all of the pumps and solutions needed to keep them alive for four weeks. The cargo will also include neural stem cells originating from Svendsen. The scientists used stem cells derived from their own white blood cells because it was easy for them to give consent.

They will run the experiment remotely with a box of cells on Earth for comparison. They'll get the space experiment back in five weeks or so, when it returns in the same SpaceX capsule.

The work is designed to pave the way for more NASA-funded research. If they are able to figure out how to make billions of cells in orbit, Svendsen said, “the impact could be huge.”

A HIGH-FLYING FUTURE

During the same cargo launch, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, sent blood stem cells to the space station, a repeat of an experiment they did last year. They want to find out if low Earth orbit induces faster aging in the cells, leading to problems that set the stage for precancerous changes. One goal is to protect astronauts' health.

Afshin Beheshti, a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center, said scientists are just beginning to understand some of the risks of space travel.

“There’s more unknowns in space than there are knowns," he said. “Any new type of experiment is going to shed light on how the body responds to the space environment.”

Ultimately, Beheshti said, the research should yield more than practical, earthly solutions like new medicines. It will also help with far-off human aspirations, like living on other planets.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Laura Ungar, The Associated Press

Cats on a leash? The hot topic comes before Toronto council this week
Jane Stevenson - 

© Provided by Toronto Sun

Leashing Fluffy the cat is easier said than done in T.O.

Mayor John Tory has already indicated he’s opposed to a proposed Toronto City Council bylaw amendment — which comes before them starting Tuesday — that would ban cats from going outside without a leash because he thinks it’s both a low priority and unenforceable.

Shelley Carroll, the Councillor for Ward 17-Don Valley North, proposed the bylaw amendment that would nix the exception for cats in a section of the Toronto municipal code, which states that no animal sound be allowed to roam “at large” in the city.

“I think people don’t want free-roaming cats,” Carroll said at committee almost two weeks ago.

Carroll wasn’t available for further comment this week, but Nathalie Karvonen, the executive director of the Toronto Wildlife Centre, already spoke at committee in favour of Carroll’s amendment.

Karvonen says council has about 700 items before it so cat leashing might not come up until Wednesday or Thursday.

“We’re 150% for it. One (reason is) for the welfare of the cats themselves,” said Karvonen, pointing out that 90 other Canadian municipalities have a similar bylaw.

Karvonen says roaming cats are at risk of being hit by cars, attacked by other wildlife like coyotes, foxes and horned owls, more vulnerable to diseases and parasites and their life span is about a third that of an indoor one.

Further to that, Karvonen says the impact roaming cats have on wildlife is huge, pointing to a 2013 Environment Canada study that looked at songbird mortality across the country.

“(It) concluded that free-roaming cats were the No. 1 cause of songbird mortality and outnumbered every single other cause together including glass buildings, hydro lines and habitat loss,” she said.

“They concluded between 100 million and 300 million songbirds a year are being taken by free roaming cats.”

Cat rescue charity continues battle with Vaughan for licence to operate shelter

However, Phil Nichols, the CEO of the Toronto Humane Society, says those stats have been disputed and THS is against a ban on cats being outside without a leash.

“The accuracy of that information has never been fully established within the literature,” said Nichols pointing to a 2019 North American study about the decline of avian fauna published in Science Magazine that names habitat loss, pesticide use, insect diversity links to agricultural intensification, urbanization, and bird strikes “as far more prominent in declining avian life.

“So predation by cats is very unlikely to actually exceed all of the volume of all of those pieces.”

He adds: “Bylaws that restrict free roaming cats tend to be very costly, they’re very unlikely to be effective, and they’re against all current progressive shelter medicine mandates pretty much across North America. It sounds good in theory, but how you’re going to enforce that is beyond me.”