Ford won't commit to repeal wage cap to address ER nurse staffing shortages
Wed, August 3, 2022
STRATFORD, ONT. — Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Wednesday he's doing everything in his power to add more health-care workers to the system, but indicated that won't include repealing wage restraint legislation or increasing a retention bonus for nurses.
Ford hadn't held a news conference in Ontario since late June and took questions for the first time on the hospital crisis that's seen several emergency rooms close for hours or even days at a time due to staff shortages.
The premier largely stuck to a message that most high-urgency patients are getting timely care and surgeries are being completed at close to pre-pandemic rates. The government is trying to add more staff to the system, he said, including a target of hiring 5,000 more nurses and trying to speed up accreditation for internationally trained nurses.
"I appreciate the front-line health care workers, they work their backs off, day in and day out," Ford said after an unrelated announcement in southwestern Ontario.
"They're exhausted. I get it. And you know, we couldn't function without the great work that they do, the nurses, the (personal support workers), the doctors. Do we need more people? One hundred per cent we need more people. Are we willing to get more people? We're doing everything in our power to get more people on board."
The NDP and the head of the Ontario Nurses' Association accused Ford of "downplaying" the crisis in hospitals.
The University Health Network in downtown Toronto issued an alert this week saying its cardio-vascular, cardiac and medical-surgical intensive care units have either reached their total bed capacity or do not have enough staff to keep all beds open safely.
Several hospitals said last week that they were reducing service in certain areas over the long weekend due to staff shortages. The Listowel Wingham Hospital Alliance also announced Wednesday that the emergency department at its Wingham hospital site would close from Saturday at 5 p.m. to Sunday at 7 a.m.
Nursing groups, hospital executives, other health-care professionals and advocates have said that burnout after being on the COVID-19 front lines for more than two years and not being properly compensated have caused people to leave the profession in droves.
Many nurses point to Bill 124 as a major source of concern, saying that the legislation that capped wage increases for public sector workers to one per cent a year for three years has devalued their work.
Ford noted that the provisions expire and won't apply to their next contract negotiations, but didn't say that he would repeal it, adding that the government has offered nurses a $5,000 bonus.
"I also want to mention that they got the largest increase in the entire country," he said when asked if he would scrap Bill 124.
"It's a big thank you. When we gave you the $5,000 — you can call it retention, you can call it thank you — I appreciate the great work they do."
When asked if he would commit to paying them more, Ford said no one thinks the world of nurses and other health-care workers more than he does.
Ford also said jurisdictions across the country are facing the same problems when it comes to strained health-care systems and called on the federal government to increase health transfers to the provinces and territories.
Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association, said nurses need actual wage increases, not one-time payments. Even though the provisions of Bill 124 will expire, she said if it is repealed, nurses could renegotiate their wages in their current contracts.
She said it is good the government is looking to add more internationally trained nurses to the system, but Ford needs to repeal Bill 124 in order to retain enough existing nurses to help them.
"He can bring in all the internationally trained nurses he wants, but if you don't have nurses there to support them, we're going to have a huge issue," she said.
NDP health critic France Gelinas said Ford needs to scrap Bill 124 immediately.
"This morning, I was horrified to hear Ford downplaying the crisis in Ontario’s hospitals," she said in a statement.
"He doesn’t want to hear desperate pleas from health care workers, and doesn’t want to see the anguish patients are living through, because he doesn’t want to pay health-care workers what they’re worth."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 3, 2022.
Holly McKenzie-Sutter, The Canadian Press
Crews ignite planned burns in effort to contain B.C. wildfires; blaze near Penticton grows by 52%
Wed, August 3, 2022
B.C. Wildfire Service crews monitor small-scale fires they have lit as planned ignitions beside Highway 3A north of Keremeos, B.C., near a wildfire just 21 kilometres from Penticton. (Submitted by B.C. Wildfire Service - image credit)
Crews are literally fighting fire with fire in the southern Okanagan as the B.C. Wildfire Service takes advantage of cooler weather to try to contain a blaze that has forced hundreds from their homes.
Fire information officer Marg Drysdale told a news conference Wednesday that crews were conducting controlled burns on the southeastern flank of a wildfire burning southwest of Penticton, which the B.C. Wildfire Service says grew by more than 50 per cent on Wednesday.
That blaze, the Keremeos Creek wildfire, now covers an estimated 42 square kilometres.
An aerial ignition was planned for the region as crews burned off trees and bush not far from Highway 3A, which was closed briefly on Tuesday as flames moved closer.
"It will be highly visible,'' Drysdale said of the planned burn aimed at creating containment lines around the flames.
Days of searing heat and low humidity helped fuel the wildfire after it was sparked July 29, but Drysdale said winds Wednesday were "not much of a factor'' and "pretty flat,'' while the heat was "a couple of degrees cooler,'' at higher elevations.
Environment Canada was calling for temperatures to drop by almost 10 degrees in the Penticton area from the low 30s recorded Wednesday to expected highs of no more than 23 C on Thursday and Friday.
The Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen confirmed 479 properties, including the Apex Resort village west of Keremeos, remained evacuated, while residents of another 324 properties in the area were on evacuation alert.
Two hundred and fifty-two firefighters were assigned to the wildfire, said Drysdale, backed by 10 helicopters and four pieces of heavy equipment, with additional heavy equipment set to be assigned in the coming days.
The south Okanagan fire is among six now listed by the wildfire service as either highly visible or a threat to public safety, up from just two so-called "wildfires of note'' a day earlier.
The blazes newly identified as "fires of note'' include a 10-square-kilometre fire northwest of Cache Creek in the Kamloops Fire Centre and another that had burned roughly two square kilometres northwest of Kamloops.
There are also two in the Southeast Fire Centre, one covering nearly 17 square kilometres between Kaslo and New Denver and the other south of Cranbrook, which was sparked Aug. 1 and had burned five square kilometres by Wednesday.
The wildfire service warned that activity on that suspected lightning-caused blaze was expected to pick up late in the day as winds increased and a cold front moved in.
Conair Group Inc. confirmed by email that one of its planes was involved in a forced landing while battling the Cranbrook-area wildfire Tuesday.
"We are happy to report that following the forced landing of our Fire Boss Airtanker yesterday, the pilot was able to walk away from the aircraft to a suitable helicopter landing site for a flight back to Cranbrook,'' said Conair communications manager Shannon De Wit.
Conair is working with the BC Wildfire Service, Transportation Safety Board and Transport Canada on the investigation,'' she said and continues to provide contracted aerial firefighting to the wildfire service.
The wildfire service said roughly three-quarters of B.C.'s active wildfires were caused by lightning, while 11 per cent are linked to human activity.
One unoccupied cabin has been destroyed southwest of Penticton, and numerous structures were lost in the early days of the wildfire west of Lytton, but there are no reports of losses related to any other wildfires in B.C.
B.C. Wildfire Service
B.C.'s wildfires of note
Across B.C., 154 new wildfires broke out in the past week — many sparked by thousands of lightning strikes on the weekend, according to the wildfire service's dashboard. Nearly half of the new fires were sparked in the Kamloops Fire Centre region.
Another significant wildfire in the Interior, the 37-square-kilometre Nohomin Creek fire northwest of Lytton, is still growing "steadily" in steep, rocky terrain.
Three other fires have been upgraded to fires of note, meaning they are highly visible or pose a potential threat to public safety:
The Connell Ridge fire around 15 kilometres south of Cranbrook, about five square kilometres in size.
The Watching Creek fire around 16 kilometres northwest of Kamloops, nearly two square kilometres in size.
The Maria Creek fire around 30 kilometres northwest of Cache Creek, about 10 square kilometres in size.
The Briggs Creek fire around 12 kilometres west of Kaslo, about 17 square kilometres in size.
Deadly Kentucky flooding highlights how U.S. infrastructure may be no match for climate change
David Knowles
·Senior Editor
Wed, August 3, 2022
The extreme rainfall and flash flooding that killed at least 37 people in Eastern Kentucky this week, washing away houses and cars and turning streets into raging rivers, is one more example of how climate change is poised to overwhelm infrastructure across the United States in the years to come.
"We have dozens of bridges that are out — making it hard to get to people, making it hard to supply people with water," Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said on Sunday. "We have entire water systems down that we are working hard to get up."
With the electricity knocked out in many areas that set rainfall records, residents who survived the flooding were left to swelter without air conditioning amid the latest heat wave to hit the area this summer.
Janey Camp, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, told Yahoo News that the combination of climate change and the nation's aging and neglected infrastructure are putting millions of people at risk of severe flooding.
“Nobody’s immune. I think Kentucky shows us that. It doesn’t matter if you’re in an urban area like Nashville or if you’re in rural Appalachia," Camp said, adding, "We’re seeing more of these intense precipitation events, where there’s a lot of water dumped on an area in a short amount of time. And the infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle that amount of precipitation."
On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the Biden administration would make just over $1 billion in grants available for states to harden infrastructure against threats like flooding and extreme heat.
“In recent days, deadly floods have swept through Missouri and Kentucky, washing away entire neighborhoods, leaving at least 35 dead, including babies, children," Harris said of the still-rising death toll. "As has been reported, four children from one family. So, the devastation is real. The harm is real. The impact is real.”
Camp said that action, the funding of which came from the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Law, was overdue.
"We have a lot of aging infrastructure, especially when you think about storm water. A lot of communities don’t even have their own department for managing storm water, it kind of falls to public works or the water department," Camp said. "Only in recent years, the past decade or so, have we really started thinking more about storm water. Now we’re being hit with these extreme storm events where the stormwater infrastructure, or any infrastructure put in place to help convey water away from an area, is being exceeded.”
Climate scientists have shown that for every degree Celsius of warming, the Earth's atmosphere holds 7% more moisture. When conditions are right, that moisture can unload in the form of extreme precipitation events like the ones that dumped 12 inches of rain in Eastern Kentucky last week and another foot of rain days later in Illinois. In fact, three so-called 1,000-year rain events hit the nation's midsection in a matter of days this past week.
“It’s almost as if you need to be hit by something, unfortunately, before the community wakes up and starts doing things differently,” Camp said, adding, "We can look at trends. We can look at the down-scale climate data and say, ‘Hey, some of these things are starting to happen more.’ What we are seeing in a lot of areas, especially in the Southeast, is more precipitation. We’re starting to see these extreme weather events happen now. A lot of people want to say, ‘Well, it’s a one-in-1,000 year event, it’s an anomaly, but we’re seeing these happen more frequently.”
A car destroyed by flooding in Central Appalachia in Kentucky on July 30, 2022. (Wang Changzheng/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Cities and towns across the country are required by FEMA to formulate hazard mitigation plans, and many do so using Hazus, the department's computer tool, which is described as providing "data for estimating risk from earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and hurricanes."
While that's a good start at assessing risk, Camp said, the problem is that many communities don't examine the worst-case models that climate change is making much more commonplace.
“In all reality, nobody’s running a 1,000-year event in their analysis. They’re running a 100-year event and maybe a 500-year event, to check the box and meet FEMA regulations for their hazard mitigation plan," Camp said. “We need to quit looking at the past and start looking to the future. And that’s challenging in a lot of communities, because they don’t have a lot of resources or expertise to do that.”
Indeed, communities like the ones ravaged in Appalachia didn't have the budget to upgrade infrastructure to meet the threat of climate change. But if the Biden administration's allocation of $1 billion in grant funding for infrastructure upgrades sounds like too much money, experts say far more money will be needed. As if to bolster that point, initial damage estimates for the recent flooding in Kentucky have been quoted at $1 billion.
TRUDEAUPHOBIA
Customers rally behind Charlottetown pub after barrage of online hateTue, August 2, 2022 
Lone Oak received negative backlash after posting photos of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit. (Laura Meader/CBC - image credit)A P.E.I. pub owner says the online love has outweighed the hate after a visit from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month sparked a barrage of abusive comments and negative reviews.Charlottetown's Lone Oak brew pub faced the backlash after posting on social media photos of Trudeau posing with staff. Last weekend, the pub's delivery van was vandalized, with its windshield smashed.Co-owner Jared Murphy said despite the vandalism, the pub has been busier than normal, and the support from customers has been overwhelming."People really showed up and that was amazing. We are so appreciative of that. You could just see the attitude shift in our staff and you know, it went from a sort of sombre few days to a very uplifted, positive vibe in our establishment."
Laura Meader/CBC
The pub removed the photos from its Facebook page when the negative comments began, but has since put them back up. The pub's online ratings, which also dropped initially, have also returned to normal, Murphy said.
Charlottetown police said they are investigating the incident.
In El Salvador, discrepancy over deaths and mass graves alarms critics
Wed, August 3, 2022
By Nelson Renteria
SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - In El Salvador, testimony from police officers and conflicting statistics on mass graves are leading critics to question if homicides in the Central American country are being fully reported as access to official information tightens.
Despite a group of police officers, prosecutors and forensic experts cross-checking statistics of homicides and mass graves, documents from separate institutions reviewed by Reuters show a discrepancy in reported deaths.
Documents from El Salvador's Institute of Legal Medicine, seen by Reuters, show authorities recovered 207 bodies from mass graves over two and a half years, between June 2019 and February 2022.
In contrast, documents from the Attorney General Office show 158 bodies recovered in over three years, between January 2019 and February 2022 – a difference of 49.
Human rights groups and family members of homicide victims say they are alarmed by this discrepancy. The confusion is partly caused by restrictions to previously public information across government agencies under President Nayib Bukele, they said.
When Reuters asked for additional data in June to understand the discrepancy, the Attorney General Office said information was now "sealed" for two years.
"Disclosing information results in criminal organizations interfering in our procedures by hiding, destroying or moving relevant evidence," the Attorney General Office responded to a request from Reuters. "It could also lead to them (criminals) threatening key witnesses to avoid being identified and thus harm efforts to dismantle criminal structures."
The police are also increasingly strict about sharing information.
"Anyone who leaks information could be sanctioned or transferred," a National Police officer told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The officer added that a superior instructed him to ignore a tip about a possible mass grave site from a detainee, which is one of the main ways authorities find clandestine cemeteries.
El Salvador's National Police told Reuters that they are no longer able to provide information on disappeared persons due to an agreement between the National Civil Police, the Supreme Court, the Institute of Legal Medicine, and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security. "Only the Attorney General Office can give information," said a source from the institution without giving further details.
After Bukele took office in mid-2019, the number of reported homicides in El Salvador dropped significantly, continuing a downward trend from an all-time high in 2015.
Bukele has denied claims that he made an alleged truce with the gangs, which Salvadoran prosecutors and local journalists have documented. After an apparent deal fell apart and the country's murder rate spiked, he launched an all-out war against the criminal groups.
Crime rates have dropped even more since March, when Bukele's government passed a measure suspending constitutional rights as part of a state of exception to make it easier to arrest people en masse without due process.
The move has brought widespread criticism of human rights violations, arbitrary detentions, physical assaults and at least 18 deaths, according to Amnesty International. Security forces have arrested more than 48,000 people for allegedly belonging to or collaborating with the gangs.
Authorities have also changed what counts as a homicide. The country's police no longer register police or civilian shooting suspects or robbers. They also exclude deaths in the country's ever-expanding prison population.
But as murder rates fell before the state of exception, the number of unexplained disappearances surged from 595 in 2020 to 1,191 in 2021, according to the Attorney office.
Human rights campaigners say the rise in the number of missing people could make the homicide figures look lower than they are.
"When the authorities seal these types of cases (disappearances) or try to hide finding clandestine graves, what they are creating is a fake security situation for the population," said Hector Carrillo, a lawyer at human rights group the Foundation of Studies for the Application of Law (FESPAD).
(Reporting by Nelson Renteria and Sarah Kinosian; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing Diego Ore, Stephen Eisenhammer and Lisa Shumaker)
Lula's advantage over Bolsonaro in Brazil's October elections narrows -poll
Lula is seen with 44% voter support in a first-round vote to Bolsonaro's 32%
Wed, August 3, 2022
Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends an annual meeting of the Brazilian scientific community at the university of Brasilia
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva maintains a lead against incumbent right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro ahead of October's presidential election but is losing the strong lead he had in January, a Genial/Quaest poll released on Wednesday showed.
Lula is seen with 44% voter support in a first-round vote to Bolsonaro's 32%, a 12-point lead that has fallen from 14 points in the previous poll.
In an expected run-off, Lula, a former president, is seen winning with a narrower 14 percentage point gap - taking 51% of the vote versus 37% for Bolsonaro, the Genial/Quaest poll said.
The Genial/Quaest poll also showed that the negative view of Bolsonaro's government fell to 43%, down from the 47% seen in July, while the percentage of those who see the government in a positive light increased one percentage point to 27%.
For 40% of respondents, the country's economic situation remains the biggest issue the nation faces, a smaller percentage if compared to the 44% seen in July.
Pollster Quaest interviewed 2,000 voters in person between July 28 and July 31. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
(Reporting by Alexandre Caverni; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
French PM announces the creation of new LGBTQ ambassador job
Thu, August 4, 2022
PARIS (AP) — French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Thursday announced the creation of a new position of ambassador for LGBTQ rights in efforts to fight discrimination across the world.
Borne spoke while visiting an LGBTQ center in Orleans, central France, on the 40th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in the country.
Borne said an ambassador will be named by the end of the year and will notably be in charge of pushing for universal decriminalization of homosexuality and trans identity.
She also announced the creation of a 3 million-euro ($3.05 million) fund to finance ten new LGBT+ centers, in addition to the 35 already existing in France.
Borne’s announcements followed criticism of the government after one minister made comments seen as stigmatizing homosexuality and LGBTQ people.
Asked about her opposition to France’s 2013 law authorizing gay marriage and adoption, the minister, Caroline Cayeux, said: “I have a lot of friends among all those people. ” The remarks last month shocked many LGBTQ people and activists against discrimination and abuse, and provoked calls for her resignation.
On Thursday, Borne said that “the President of the Republic’s approach, my approach, the government’s approach is not ambiguous: we will continue to fight to make progress on the rights of the LGBTQ."
Borne added that the minister “made unfortunate comments, she apologized.”
The Associated Press
Women to row same distance as men for first time in 204-year-old St. John's regatta
Thu, August 4, 2022
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — History will be made today at a 204-year-old rowing race in St. John's as four women's teams tackle a course that has historically been reserved for men.
The four teams will row in the new women's long course category at the Royal St. John’s Regatta, racing to one end of Quidi Vidi Lake and back for a total of 2.45 kilometres.
Traditionally, the women rowed half that distance, turning around in the centre of the lake, while only the men rowed the longer track.
Siobhan Duff was part of 10-time championship-winning crew that began advocating for equality in the course lengths in the late 1980s.
She said in a recent interview that she's happy to see the change, but that she wished it had come about when she was still rowing.
The regatta was supposed to held yesterday, but it was delayed until today due to high winds.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 4, 2022.
The Canadian Press
Probably Not Space Debris: Mystery Remains over Metallic Orb Found in Tree
Ed Browne
A popular Mexican weather reporter has stirred attention on social media after he posted photographs on Facebook of a large sphere that he said had fallen out of the sky and into a tree near the city of Veracruz.
© EkaterinaZakharova/GettyA stock photo shows a metal ball against a gray background. A metallic-looking spherical object reportedly fell out of the sky and landed in a tree in Mexico on July 31 according to a weather reporter.
No one knows what the orb is, with experts saying it is unlikely to be bits of space junk from terrestrial launches.
On August 1, Isidro Cano Luna, who runs popular social media accounts in which he makes videos on weather in Mexico, released photos of the strange object dated to July 31. Though dark and blurry, the photos appear to show how the sphere, which also appears to have at least one antenna-like pole sticking out of it, landed on top of a tree, according to Luna's description.
On Facebook, where Luna has 123,000 followers, the posts gained thousands of likes and shares.
"It is [a] round shape and appears to be very hard plastic or an alloy of various metals," Luna wrote, translated from Spanish.
He said people should steer clear of the site as "it may have radioactivity" and that the orb may contain "valuable information," so should only be opened by
He added that he considered the object to possibly be a piece of debris from "the Chinese rocket that was out of control"—probably a reference to the Chinese Long March 5B rocket that made headlines last week after experts predicted its 25-ton booster stage would make an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere and possibly cause debris to hit the ground.
Debris possibly related to this rocket booster was indeed found on Monday this week, but it was found in southeast Asia, far from Mexico.
In a later post, Luna said Mexican defense officials would have to investigate the sphere and in a follow-up said that "highly trained staff" were reported to have taken the object away from the tree and removed it from the area.
According to a report from Mexico news outlet Diario de Xalapa on June 5 this year, Luna now produces meteorological reports for his social media followers after a professional career providing services to the federal government. He reportedly trained at the Tacubaya Meteorological Observatory in Mexico City.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Newsweek he had doubts about the reports of the sphere being related to space debris.
"I am suspicious of this," he said. "It doesn't immediately look like space debris;
and the timing is suspicious. It can't be from the Chinese rocket—wrong part of the world—but could be a copycat hoax. I'd need a much better photo to say anything for sure."
One strange characteristic of the sphere is that, based on the photos posted by Luna at least, there do not appear to be any scorch marks suggestive of atmospheric re-entry.
Martin Sweening, distinguished professor of space engineering at the Surrey Space Centre in the U.K., told Newsweek: "[It's] a bit difficult to say from the picture—I have enhanced it somewhat and it looks like a fuel tank of some sort with a feeder pipe.
"It may be either a titanium tank from a spent rocket stage but it doesn't look discoloured from the heat of re-entry, neither is it damaged from a high speed landing. It may have nothing to do with the Chinese rocket stage."
In any case Luna's post has predictably sparked chatter of aliens and UFOs. One person in the comment section of one of Luna's Facebook posts wrote, translated from Spanish: "Please let us know if some green creatures come out please... just in case."
The story was shared on alien discussion forum Godlike Productions and also received over 1,800 upvotes on the 'UFOs' subreddit, where users speculated about its origins—some with skepticism. "Hydrazine tank maybe," wrote one user, implying a space debris explanation. "God, please let this be an alien," said another.
Feds, province pump more money into rail line to Churchill, Man.
Wed, August 3, 2022
The federal and Manitoba governments are putting up more money to support a rail line through northern Manitoba.
The two governments are promising a combined $147 million over two years to fund upgrades and the ongoing operation of the Hudson Bay Railway.
The rail line brings people and goods to several northern communities and is the only land link to Churchill, a town on the coast of Hudson Bay.
The railway was owned by a U.S.-based company until a consortium that includes First Nation communities took over ownership with federal help.
The federal government provided $117 million to the new owners in 2018 and another $40 million last year.
The railway has been prone to disruptions in part due to the remote boggy terrain it runs through, and had stopped operating under its previous owners.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 3, 2022
The Canadian Press
