“Born to fly”: Indian pilot blazes trail for women in aviation

Nearly one in every eight pilots in India is a woman, more than double the figure of the United States.

Zoya Agarwal is an Indian pilot. When she settled on her dream twenty years ago, she had no role models, and no sense that women had access to a career on the flight deck. India is now the country with the highest rate of female aviators.

 

© AFP

Top Democrat urges US block on weapons sales to Riyadh


Mon, October 10, 2022 


A powerful US senator called Monday for Washington to freeze all cooperation with Saudi Arabia over its decision to "underwrite" Russia's war in Ukraine by slashing oil production.

Riyadh, Moscow and other top oil producers agreed last week to a deep cut in production to boost crude prices, in a move denounced by the United States as a concession to Moscow that would hurt the global economy.

"There simply is no room to play both sides of this conflict -- either you support the rest of the free world in trying to stop a war criminal from violently wiping off an entire country off of the map, or you support him," Bob Menendez, who chairs the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia chose the latter in a terrible decision driven by economic self-interest."

The 13-nation, Saudi-led OPEC cartel and its 10 allies headed by Russia agreed to reduce output by two million barrels a day from November -- raising fears that oil prices could soar.

Saudi Arabia said OPEC's priority was "to maintain a sustainable oil market" but its move drew a swift rebuke from the Washington, which is leading efforts to isolate major energy producer Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

"The United States must immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend US personnel and interests," Menendez said.

"As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine. Enough is enough."

An outspoken critic of Riyadh, Menendez has been at the forefront of the campaign to sanction Saudi royalty over the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which US intelligence concluded was ordered by de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman.

He is the latest in a string of lawmakers calling for a rethink on the US-Saudi relationship but is able to wield considerably more influence than most in his drive to impose increased scrutiny on arms sales.

When former president Donald Trump issued an emergency declaration to bypass Congress in approving a weapons deal with Riyadh in 2019, Menendez jammed up the process by refusing to acknowledge the White House's notification of the sale until he had received answers about his concerns about use of US-made weaponry in Yemen.

"I am horrified by Russia's depraved and desperate escalation against civilian infrastructure across Ukraine -- including in Kyiv," he said.

"I pledge to use all means at my disposal to accelerate support for the people of Ukraine and to starve Russia's war machine."

A top Senate Democrat threatens to block US cooperation with Saudi Arabia as MBS deepens ties with Putin

John Haltiwanger
Mon, October 10, 2022 

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on October 14, 2019.Alexey Nikolsky/Getty Images

Sen. Bob Menendez threatened to block cooperation with Saudi Arabia.

Menendez ripped into the kingdom over an OPEC+ decision to cut oil production.

He effectively accused the Saudis of fueling Russia's war machine amid Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey on Monday called on the US to "freeze" cooperation with Saudi Arabia over the recent decision by OPEC+ to cut oil production to boost prices, effectively accusing the nation of fueling Russia's war machine amid Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned Russia over strikes that hit cities and vital infrastructure across Ukraine, including Kyiv. The strikes on Monday marked the first time the Ukrainian capital had been targeted in months and represented a significant escalation in the war.

"I am horrified by Russia's depraved and desperate escalation against civilian infrastructure across Ukraine," Menendez said in a statement, pledging to use all the means at his disposal to "accelerate support for the people of Ukraine and to starve Russia's war machine."

Menendez went on to excoriate Saudi Arabia, OPEC's leading member, accusing it of helping "underwrite Putin's war through the OPEC+ cartel." OPEC+ is a group of 23 oil-exporting countries that includes Russia.

"There is simply no room to play both sides of this conflict — either you support the rest of the free world in trying to stop a war criminal from violently wiping off an entire country off the map, or you support him. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia chose the latter in a terrible decision driven by economic self-interest," Menendez said.

Russia's war in Ukraine has fomented a global energy crisis. Generally, Russia is a major supplier of oil and natural gas to the EU, but Western sanctions have targeted Russia's energy industry in an effort to cut off an important revenue stream. That said, Russia continues to sell its energy to other countries, such as India and China.

The US tried and failed to convince OPEC+ not to cut oil production, hoping to prevent Russia from gaining additional revenue from a spike in oil prices. The Biden administration slammed OPEC+ over the decision. "It's clear that OPEC+ is aligning with Russia with today's announcement," White House spokesperson Karin Jean-Pierre said last week.

Menendez in his statement said the US must "immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend US personnel and interests."

The New Jersey Democrat went on to say he would not "green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine," adding, "Enough is enough."

Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia have been on shaky ground for years, largely since the brutal 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi government. Last year, the Biden administration released a declassified intelligence report that explicitly implicated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — often referred to as MBS — in Khashoggi's killing. Khashoggi, a Saudi national, was a Washington Post columnist at the time of his death.

Khashoggi's killing prompted a wave of backlash in the US, with congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling for the US to reassess relations with the Saudis. Former President Donald Trump stood in the way of efforts to punish the Saudis for Khashoggi's killing.

On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" over Khashoggi's murder. But as president, he's faced criticism for his approach to relations with the kingdom. Biden said he would move to end US support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, but his administration continued arms sales to the kingdom. The president was the target of especially fierce criticism for meeting with MBS in July. Biden sought to convince the Saudi ruler to increase oil production, but was unsuccessful.

'Our home': Lesotho's last cave dwellers


Claire DOYEN
Mon, October 10, 2022 


Inside a dimly-lit mud dwelling nestled within a rocky mountain in the southern African kingdom of Lesotho, Mamotonosi Ntefane, 67, dusts off an animal skin.

Her household is among a handful of families who still inhabit the Kome Caves, a heritage site in the north of the country, first occupied about 200 years ago by local tribes seeking shelter from conflict and cannibalism.

"Life is good, we grow our own vegetables, I can pray anytime I want," Ntefane, a rosary around her neck, tells AFP.

More than 1,800 metres above sea level, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the capital Maseru, the settlement is surrounded by barren pastures, where shepherds draped in long woollen blankets graze cattle in the morning mist.

Thin white smoke billows from outside the caves as "papa", a traditional corn porridge, boils in a black cast iron pot over a wood fire.

The cave is divided into several round houses propped against the basalt rock.


Open passages just high enough for a person to walk through serve as doorways. Walls and floors are made of a mix of mud and manure that require regular upkeep.

Inside are basic items including pots, plastic buckets to store water and a cowhide for a bed.

"There's no electricity and no fridge but this is our home, it's our history," says 44-year-old Kabelo Kome who is descended from the first people to settle the caves, after whom the place is named.

- Hideout -

The caves became a hideout for members of the Basia and Bataung tribes in the 19th century, when conflict and a severe drought ravaged the region.

Christian missionaries travelling the area at the time reported some groups resorted to cannibalism to survive, as livestock and grain reserves dwindled.

It was in this period that Lesotho emerged as a single entity, as the Sotho, the region's largest ethnic group, united to fight Zulu raiders and European settlers.

Today, most of the country's two million people live off subsistence farming.

Inhabitants of the Kome Caves grow corn, sorghum and beans and raise chickens and cattle.

The elderly receive a state allowance, while others make money showing their homes to tourists.

Some like Mamatsaseng Khutsoane, a 66-year-old former teacher, have moved to a nearby village with greater creature comforts.

"I come here to eat, or with my grandchildren," she says.

There is mobile phone coverage, but no fixed internet or running water.

"None of that here," scoffs Ntefane, as she stands outside her home, gazing at the mountains, while cow bells ring in the distance.

cld/ub/gw/smw

UK Supreme Court to consider if Scottish Parliament can hold second independence referendum


Mon, October 10, 2022 


The question of whether the Scottish Parliament can unilaterally declare a second referendum on independence will be heard at the UK Supreme Court from today.

The case concerns proposed legislation at the Scottish Parliament called the Scottish Independence Referendum Bill.

Nicola Sturgeon says an independence vote could be held as soon as next October.

Judges have been asked to decide whether the Bill relates to "reserved matters" - meaning it is the responsibility of Westminster, not Holyrood.

Ms Sturgeon asked the Lord Advocate, Scotland's chief law officer, to refer the Bill to the Supreme Court when she published the legislation in June.

This was in order to head off any legal challenge from her opponents, with the first minister saying she wanted an "indisputably lawful" referendum to take place.

The UK government, represented in the court by the Advocate General, is opposed to a second referendum.

The Advocate General has argued in written submissions that a referendum plainly relates to reserved matters and is outside Holyrood's legislative competence.

He has also asked the court to rule on whether it has jurisdiction to hear the case, saying the Bill has not yet been introduced to the Scottish Parliament.

At the weekend, the first minister spoke to journalists about the upcoming case while attending the SNP conference in Aberdeen.

Asked if she was confident the Supreme Court will grant Holyrood the ability to hold a second referendum, Ms Sturgeon said: "I am very hopeful and optimistic of that.

"But anybody who knows anything about court hearings would know that there's not a lot of point trying to second-guess a court or speculate about the court's outcome."

Read more:
Scottish independence will create partnership of equals - Sturgeon

World failing to address 'dangerous' inequality after Covid: Oxfam

Mon, 10 October 2022


The world has mostly failed to address a "dangerous" increase in inequality in the wake of the Covid pandemic, anti-poverty campaigners Oxfam said Tuesday.

The charity revealed the findings of its "Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index" (CRI) study, examining actions and policies of governments to tackle inequality in the first two years of Covid.

"Covid-19 has increased inequality worldwide, as the poorest were hit hardest by both the disease and its profound economic impacts," stated the report, which is compiled every two years.

"Yet the CRI 2022 Index shows clearly that most of the world's governments failed to mitigate this dangerous rise in inequality."

The charity assessed 161 governments from 2020 to 2022, after what it called "the biggest global health emergency in a century".

Half of the nations covered cut their spending on social protection and 70 percent slashed education.

The pandemic slashed consumer spending due to lockdowns, in turn slashing taxation revenues.

However, 143 nations out of the 161 failed to increase taxation on the wealthy -- and 11 chose to cut their taxes.

The study added that a small group of governments bucked this trend and took "clear actions" to fight inequality.

This minority put "the rest of the world to shame", it said.

Oxfam also found that two-thirds of countries failed to increase their minimum wage in line with gross domestic product.

And it ranked them in an index based on their actions and policies on three areas: social spending, taxation, and labour.

Norway topped the index as the best performing nation when it comes to tackling inequality.

It was followed by Germany, Australia, Belgium and then Canada. France was ranked 12th while Britain stood at 14th.

- 'Wake-up call' -

The UN and campaigners have previously decried the unequal distribution of vaccines from richer Western countries to lower-income ones, particularly in Africa, putting lives at risk.

Oxfam delivered a withering criticism of most nations, arguing that the pandemic should have been a "wake-up call" to act on poverty in general.

"The explosion of the Covid-19 pandemic and the health, social, and economic crises that ensued have supercharged poverty and inequality," the charity's report concluded.

"The world witnessed sharp increases in poverty for the first time in decades, while the wealth of the richest people and corporate profits soared.

"The pandemic should therefore have been a wake-up call to national and global leaders to introduce policies to tackle inequality aggressively but as this report has shown, with some notable exceptions, governments have shamefully continued with 'inequality as usual'."

And it called upon governments around the world to refrain from austerity measures that would worsen the lot of the poor.

"Governments all over the world, supported by international financial institutions and global funding, need to implement policies which will reduce inequality and protect the incomes of the poor from recession and inflation," it said.

rfj/phz/pvh

Nursing shortage forces emergency room closures across Canada

Burnout from the COVID-19 pandemic, abuse from patients and salary discontent have seen nursing staff quitting their jobs in droves

By AFP
October 11, 2022

Canada is facing an acute shortage of nurses. Photo: AFP/ file

OTTAWA: An acute nursing shortage is clogging or even closing hospital emergency rooms across Canada, pushing an already stressed national health system to the brink with potentially severe consequences for patient care.

Burnout from the COVID-19 pandemic, abuse from patients and salary discontent have seen nursing staff quitting their jobs in droves, and experts say the situation is only likely to worsen.

The impact on emergency care is such that Ottawa police recently had to take a shooting victim to hospital in their squad car, rather than wait for an ambulance, and an elderly woman who fell and broke her hip was forced to wait six hours for help from paramedics based 100 kilometers (62 miles) away.

Over the summer and into the fall, staffing shortages meant dozens of emergency rooms were forced to close - sometimes for a night or a weekend, sometimes longer.

Wait times to see an ER doctor have soared to 12, 16, 20 hours -- or more.

"They're numb, deflated and feeling hopeless," said Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association. Herself a nurse for 20 years, she described the situation as "critical."

Amelie Inard, 32, was taken to an ER in Montreal this week, in extreme pain and peeing blood.

The place was packed, and an overwrought nurse told her to describe her condition "in one sentence, really quickly, because of how busy they were," Inard said.

She eventually left in frustration, without seeing a doctor.

Hospital workloads are rising, Hoy said, along with patients' exasperation over extended wait times, leading to a spiking of violence against nurses.

Several nurses told AFP they had been punched, scratched or spat on, and had trays, dishes and feces thrown at them.
'Crazy conditions'

In the capital Ottawa, ambulances were unavailable on more than 1,000 occasions from January to July, as paramedics were stuck waiting to unload patients at crowded ERs.

A hospital in Peterborough, east of Toronto, in the past week was forced to treat patients on gurneys in the parking lot because its ER was full, said Hoy.

In Manitoba, doctor Merril Pauls said there had been "multiple times throughout the summer when we had to shut down beds in the emergency room" at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre because of the nursing shortage.

On one recent Sunday, he said, "We had too many people coming in and had no place to put them. We literally were double-bunking critical patients in a resuscitation bay.

"Our nurses are really working in crazy conditions."

It's a "really significant phenomenon going on across the country," the doctor added, and it's "getting worse."
High turnover

A recent survey by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the country's largest labor union, found that 87% of nurses have considered leaving their job "because of the thankless and grueling working conditions."

"Even new graduates are quitting," Hoy said.

Federal health minister Jean-Yves Duclos has vowed to make it easier for foreign credentials to be recognized. That could help 11,000 internationally trained doctors and nurses get jobs in their field in Canada.

But that won't be nearly enough, with 34,400 nursing positions now vacant, according to government data.

Compounding the problem, many Canadians - like Inard - don't have a family doctor and turn to emergency rooms for care.

"It's just so difficult to find a family doctor," she said.

And a frequent shortage of regular hospital beds often means long waits to transfer patients out of ERs to wards.

Ontario passed a bill at the end of September permitting transfers of patients awaiting long-term care to facilities up to 150 kilometers away.

Provincial Health Minister Sylvia Jones said it would "ease pressures on crowded emergency departments."

But critics say it could force frail, elderly people into care homes far from their loved ones.

For now, almost everyone needing treatment is eventually seen. But delays can pose long-term consequences for patients' health.

"If a stroke patient doesn't get access to a clot-busting medicine fast, brain cells will die and the patient will end up being more disabled than they would have been," Pauls said.

Serious infections can be deadly if not treated in time. So, too, can cancers and other diseases, he added.

Pauls recalled routinely telling discharged patients "to come back if things get worse."

"But now they laugh at us. They say: 'You're crazy. There's no way I'm going to go through this again."

Emergency room at Ontario hospital closing until December due to staff shortage

South Bruce Grey Health Centre says the Chesley hospital emergency room is closing today with a scheduled reopening date of Dec. 2.

By Holly McKenzie-Sutter

The Canadian Press
Fri., Oct. 7, 2022

A rural Ontario hospital is closing its emergency department until December due what the health-care organization running it calls a “critical shortage of nurses” and a series of off-and-on closures that have become unsustainable.

The Chesley hospital emergency room closed on Friday, with a scheduled reopening date of Dec. 2. Other areas of the hospital like diagnostic imaging services, the inpatient unit and community lab collection will remain operational.

The decision to close the ER for two months follows a series of short-notice, temporary closures that the South Bruce Grey Health Centre said are “not a sustainable approach for our staff or the communities we serve.”

“A further reduction in service is necessary for the safety of our patients and staff,” the organization that runs the hospital said in a news release.

During the closure, the organization said it will consider the future of its service offerings that can be “safely provided” across its four hospital sites southern Grey and Bruce counties in southwestern Ontario, northwest of Toronto, given that health staffing in the province is expected to “remain a challenge for the foreseeable future.”

The news release also noted that the hospital has been relying on agency nurses to fill shifts, but that solution is costly and not ideal. It said agency nurses are “not committed to our hospital sites,” and are paid more than staff nurses, making them feel undervalued.

 

A rural Ontario hospital is closing its emergency department until December due to a shortage of nurses.


“SBGHC would much rather be putting the extra cost spent on agency nurses into the pockets of our own staff, who have worked tirelessly to support our organization and our communities. The unfortunate reality is that without using agency nurses at this time, the organization would be looking at additional closures and reductions in service,” the release said.

Recruitment has been difficult, it added, but the “pool of available nurses is very limited” as hospitals across Ontario contend with staff shortages of their own.

The shutdown follows a spate of temporary emergency room closures at hospitals across Ontario over the last several months due to lack of staff, particularly nurses.

Rural hospitals have been hit harder by the problem. All of South Bruce Grey Health Centre’s hospitals are serve rural communities in Chesley, Durham, Kincardine and Walkerton. The organization’s website said it serves approximately 44,000 people, as well as thousands of season residents and tourists.

The organization has scheduled a community information session for Oct. 18 with staff and physicians.

A union representing Ontario nurses said people should demand action from their elected representatives in light of the Chesley closure announcement.

The Ontario Nurses’ Association said “announcements of ER closures are becoming all too common and ... they must not be accepted so casually by the government.”

France Gélinas, health critic for the provincial New Democrats, also called on the Progressive Conservative government to take immediate action to recruit and retain health-care workers, saying closing an ER can have “dire consequences, especially in a rural community.”

In a statement, she said the province should scrap a bill that caps nurses’ annual wage increases, raise wages to keep and attract workers and increase hospital budgets.

“We need to incentivize health-care workers and treat them with the respect they are owed,” Gélinas said.

A spokeswoman for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones pointed to previously announced spending on health-care recruitment and emergency department support.

Hannah Jensen said the government is planning to add up to 6,000 nurses and personal support workers in the next phase of its plan, with the goal of freeing up hospital beds and expanding models of care to avoid unnecessary emergency department visits.

“Our plan will support the healthcare system to address the urgent pressures of today while preparing for a potential fall and winter surge so our province and economy can stay open,” she said in an emailed statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 7, 2022.

‘Disaster Mode’: Emergency Rooms Across Canada Close Amid Crisis

A nationwide shortage of nurses has caused dozens of emergency rooms across Canada to close temporarily and forced some patients to wait days for a bed.

The Montfort Hospital, which mainly serves Ottawa’s French-speaking community, is one of several Ontario hospitals that temporarily closed its emergency department.

Credit...Ian Austen/The New York Times

By Vjosa Isai
Published Sept. 15, 2022

One night in March, an understaffed hospital in Red Lake, a tiny town in northwestern Ontario, took the drastic step of shutting down its emergency department. Road signs bearing the ‘H’ symbol to guide drivers along the 60-mile route toward the hospital were covered up. The next hospital was more than two hours away.

Sue LeBeau, the chief executive of Red Lake Margaret Cochenour Memorial Hospital, took a picture of the covered hospital road sign. “This is something that moved me to tears when I saw it,” she said.

It was the first unplanned emergency room closure in Ontario since 2006, and it signaled a growing crisis, not just in one province, but across Canada. Since then, dozens of emergency rooms across the country have been forced to close, usually for a night, but sometimes for a weekend, because they don’t have enough workers.

A shortage of nurses — who have been driven away from the profession by unsafe working conditions, wage dissatisfaction, and burnout from the pandemic — has pushed Canadian hospitals to the brink.

With an underfunded public health system, Canada already has some of the longest health care wait times in the world, but now those have grown even longer, with patients reporting spending multiple days before being admitted to a hospital.

Nurses’ unions and other medical organizations are pushing for provincial governments, which administer health care in Canada, to declare the situation a “state of emergency” and direct more funding to address it.

“I don’t use those words lightly,” said Dr. Paul Parks, president of the emergency medicine section of the Alberta Medical Association, an advocacy group representing about 14,000 physicians in the western Canadian province.

An ambulance crew walking out of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto in January, during a spike in Covid-19 cases in the country.

Credit...Cole Burston/Reuters

“It is really a disaster mode because the definition of disaster in medicine is that the demand outstrips the ability to supply the care,” he said. “That’s what’s happening every day in our hospitals across the country.”

The United States and other countries, including England, are grappling with similar issues. Some U.S. states have tried raising nurses’ wages and Oregon called in 1,500 National Guard to help overwhelmed staff, in desperate attempts to fill the gap.

In Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, the shortage of nurses has recently forced 16 emergency departments to close, according to Ontario Health, the agency that oversees health care administration in the province.

The lack of health care workers means it takes longer for doctors to transfer acutely ill patients to hospitals with more resources and those doctors are waiting longer to find a bed, said Christine Moon, a spokeswoman for CritiCall, a 24-hour consultation line for Ontario doctors, in an email.

It’s a scene playing out across Canada. In British Columbia, a province where almost one million people do not have a family doctor, there were about a dozen emergency room closures in rural communities in August.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the emergency room at one community hospital in a region of more than 300,000 people closed from July 1 until August 29.

In Saskatchewan, the union representing nurses in the province said the emergency room at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon was 200 percent over capacity in late August because of the nurse shortage. The situation was much the same when Tasha Jiricka, a 24-year-old with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, arrived there by ambulance earlier that month.

With intense stomach pains and unable to eat or drink, Ms. Jiricka was assessed by nurses who thought she should be admitted, but for three days there were no open beds in the 407-bed hospital. She sat in the emergency waiting room, in pain, until one became available

“Honestly, the only thing that got me through were the other people who were waiting,” said Ms. Jiricka in a phone interview from her hospital bed.

An emergency room at the Humber River Hospital in Toronto in January during a surge in Covid-19 cases.

Credit...Carlos Osorio/Reuters

“We have a work force that is exhausted, demoralized, and looking at the door after toiling through the pandemic, suffering real wage cuts and working in an environment that is often unsafe for them,” Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, said at a news conference in August.

To help address the crisis, the nation’s health authorities are trying to attract nurses from abroad and retain current or recently retired staff.

Jean-Yves Duclos, Canada’s health minister, announced last month that he was reinstating the position of chief nursing officer, a person who helps shape national policy, and a role that the government scrapped a decade ago.

“We need to support our nurses, make sure they are heard and that their challenges are met with solutions,” he said at a news conference alongside Leigh Chapman, a nurse and researcher who was appointed to the position.

Canada spends more on health care than all but four countries. Last year, the federal government provided 42 billion Canadian dollars for health care through a funding arrangement that increases by at least three percent per year to each of the country’s 13 provinces and territories.

But provincial leaders say that’s lower than the five percent yearly increase in the costs associated with delivering health care and are pressing the federal government to boost annual funding by at least 28 billion Canadian dollars.

Although provincial governments have ultimate control over financing for health care, including the power to raise taxes, their leaders say they can’t afford it.

In Ontario, the provincial government capped wage increases for most public sector employees in 2019, citing budget issues. Unions representing health care workers there blame the staffing shortage on the cap and the chronic underfunding of health care.

“Frankly, we need to make working in hospital better paid and safer,” Mr. Hurley, the hospitals’ union president, said, calling for financial incentives to increase the hiring and retention of experienced nurses and the addition of more full-time positions that would include insurance benefits. About 30 percent of Canada’s nursing jobs are part-time, according to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

In Toronto, severe staffing shortages prompted the University Health Network, a group of five facilities that are home to some of Canada’s foremost health researchers, to issue a critical care bed alert, a warning to other emergency facilities that a hospital would not be able to readily accept transfers of critically-ill patients, said Dr. Kevin Smith, chief executive of the hospital system.

The warning typically lasts a day or so but at the health network’s Toronto General Hospital, the alert was in effect between July 22 and Sept. 2.

“Increasingly, I think many of us realize we are not going to, in the short term, train our way out of this,” said Dr. Smith. “We can’t produce nurses quickly, with the exception, possibly, of some foreign graduates.”

That’s an option that some provinces are turning to. Ontario’s health minister, Sylvia Jones, directed licensing authorities to “make every effort” to register health professionals who were internationally trained “as expeditiously as possible,” according to letters sent last month to those authorities.

Even before the pandemic, emergency departments were among the most dangerous work environments in hospitals.

Health care workers experience workplace violence at four times the rate of other workers, and half of those incidents happen in the emergency room, according to a 2021 statement by the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians.

That violence, coupled with the increased level of risk that nurses are shouldering by serving more patients with less help even as the pandemic endures, has accelerated burnout.

“I think we’re just going to keep losing people because at a certain point, you don’t keep working in that environment,” said Dr. Carolyn Snider, the chief of emergency medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital, one of two trauma centers in downtown Toronto. “That is my biggest worry.”

In a 2019 parliamentary committee report on the issue of workplace violence, health care workers said that fewer staff led to more violence because patients and family members become frustrated with the lack of attention.

It’s something Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association, hears about regularly from the members of her union: punching, spitting, kicking, and two stabbings in the last six months, she said.

“Nursing is the backbone, and the heartbeat of health care,” she said. “Unless health care touches you, you don’t think about it.”

Vjosa Isai reports for The Times from Toronto. @lavjosa

From the Andes to Los Angeles: air crashes that rocked the sports world

AFP - Yesterday 

The 1972 Andes plane crash involving Uruguay's Old Christians rugby team, made famous by the fact that some of the survivors ate the remains of other victims, is just one of several aviation disasters to hit the sporting world since the dawn of air travel.


A ceremony in honor of the victims and survivors of the Chapecoense air disaster takes place in Santa Catarina, Brazil in November 2017© NELSON ALMEIDA

Here are 10 others:

- 1949: Italy's Grande Torino -

A plane carrying famed Italian football club Grande Torino crashed on its way back from Portugal on May 4, 1949, killing all 31 passengers and crew. A reported one million people poured into the streets of Turin to bid farewell to their heroes. Grande Torino were named Italian champions for the fifth time in a row. The crash had a devastating impact on the Italian national squad, which was dominated by Torino players.



Manchester United footballers and journalists before their fateful journey to Munich in 1958© -

- 1958: England's Manchester United -

Eight members of Manchester United's celebrated "Busby Babes" team were among 23 people who died when their plane crashed after attempting to take off in poor conditions in Munich on February 6, 1958.

England superstar Duncan Edwards was among those killed, while Sir Bobby Charlton -- who went on to win the World Cup with England -- was hurt. Manager Matt Busby recovered from serious injuries and rebuilt United into a force that would win the European Cup a decade later, in 1968.

- 1961: US figure skating team -

The entire 18-member team died when their plane crashed in Belgium on February 15, 1961, on their way to compete at the World Championships in the former Czechoslovakia. Three members of a skating family were among the victims: US ladies champion Laurence Owens, 16, her sister Maribel, 20, and their mother and coach Maribel Vinson-Owen, an Olympic bronze medalist.

- 1969: Rocky Marciano -

American boxing legend Rocky Marciano was killed when his jet crashed into a tree as it was coming in to land in the US state of Iowa, on August 31, 1969. Marciano, 45 when he died, was world heavyweight champion between 1952 and 1956 and retired undefeated with a 49-0 record.


- 1987: Peru's oldest football team -

A Peruvian navy plane carrying 43 people, including players and staff from Alianza Lima, the country's oldest football team, plunged into the ocean off Lima on December 8, 1987.

The airliner was returning to the capital from the jungle city of Pucallpa when the pilot reported problems with the landing gear. He survived and was recovered after floating for hours in choppy seas.

- 1993: Zambian football team -

On April 27, 1993, an aircraft carrying Zambia's national football team crashed into the sea shortly after take off from Gabon, en route to play Senegal in a World Cup qualifier, killing all 25 people on board. The team was recognized as one of the strongest ever fielded by the African nation, having thrashed Italy 4-0 at the 1988 Olympic Games. A report into the crash, issued a decade later, blamed pilot error and an engine problem.

- 2011: Russian ice hockey team -

A plane carrying top-tier Russian ice hockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crashed due to pilot error after taking off for their first game of the season in the Belarus capital, Minsk on September 7, 2011. All of the players were killed.

- 2016: Brazilian footballers -

A plane carrying Brazil's Chapecoense football team ran out of fuel and crashed in the Andes near Medellin, Colombia, on November 28, 2016.

Seventy-one of the 77 people on board were killed, including 16 of the 19 players. Chapecoense were en route to play the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final against Colombia's Atletico Nacional.

- 2019: Emiliano Sala -

Premier League team Cardiff City's record new signing, Argentina-born striker Emiliano Sala, died when a light aircraft he was travelling in crashed over the English Channel in January 2019.

- 2020: Kobe Bryant -

Basketball legend Kobe Bryant was killed along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people when their helicopter crashed in foggy conditions on a hill outside Los Angeles on January 26, 2020.

Five-time NBA champion Bryant, 41, became the face of basketball during a glittering two decades with the Los Angeles Lakers. He is considered one of the greatest players ever.

MISSED A COUPLE 

RUSSIA

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl: The team that disappeared - Sportsnet.ca

CANADA

Flights, fate and football: Remembering Flight 180 - CFL.ca

The Andes crash and cannibalism tale that stunned the world 50 years ago

Mon, 10 October 2022 


On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying an amateur Uruguayan rugby team, along with relatives and supporters, to an away match in Chile crashed in the Andes with 45 people on board.

Sixteen young men managed to survive for 72 days, at sub-zero temperatures and with very little food, before two of them found help after a 10-day trek across the mountains in waist-deep snow.

The so-called "Miracle of the Andes" gained global notoriety when the survivors, who were devout Catholics, admitted they had eaten parts of their dead companions' bodies to stay alive.

AFP reporters in Chile and Uruguay covered the dramatic events, which were recounted in "Alive", a best-selling book that was later made into a movie.

Here is how it unfolded:

- The crash -

On the evening of October 13, 1973, a chartered military plane carrying the Old Christians rugby team from the Argentinian city of Mendoza to the Chilean capital Santiago disappears from radars near the Chilean city of Curico.

Aircraft from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay search for the plane but fail to spot the white fuselage against the snow.

After eight days, the search is called off.

- 'Come rescue us' -

Two months later, on December 22, 1972, the world is stunned by news that there are survivors, two of whom, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, made it out of the mountains on foot to find help.

"They spot a muleteer while following a river that winds around the foot of the mountains. Exhausted, they throw a stone across the water to him, with a message scrawled on a piece of paper attached to it, and then began praying while waiting to be rescued," AFP reported.

The message reads: "I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days... In the plane, there are 14 injured people. We have to get out of here quickly, and we don't know how. We don't have any food. We are weak. When will you come and fetch us? Please, we cannot even walk. Where are we?"

The muleteer arranges for them to be rescued and help also comes quickly for their severely malnourished companions, who are plucked from the mountain by helicopter over two days.

- Donkey grass -

The men relate the plane getting lost in the mountains and then clipping a ridge before barreling down a glacier and landing in a snow bank, killing 13 people, including the pilot and co-pilot, and injuring several others who died later.

They describe the scramble to survive at an altitude of nearly 4,000 meters, living in the fuselage and scrounging in the snow for roots and an herb nicknamed "donkey grass" after their food supplies ran out.

They also recount the deaths of several survivors in an avalanche.

"We are witnessing a miracle the likes of which the world has never seen," Cesar Charlone, Uruguay's charge d'affaires in Chile declares.

- Last Supper -

By December 24, rumors are swirling that the men resorted to cannibalism to avoid starving, which is confirmed two days later by the head of the Chilean rescue operation.

Chile's La Segunda newspaper cites an unnamed survivor as saying: "We took the terrible decision: in order to survive we would have to overcome all hurdles, whether religious or biological."

On December 29, the survivors issue a joint statement in Montevideo declaring that, after their food ran out: "We said to ourselves: if Jesus, during the Last Supper, shared his body and blood among the apostles, are we not to understand that we should do the same?"

The men, who are acclaimed as heroes, are absolved of any wrongdoing by the Catholic Church in Uruguay and Pope John Paul II and return to their daily lives.

Canessa became a cardiologist and in 2020 again helped save lives by building ventilators for Covid-19 patients.

"When I saw that around the world people were dying from a lack of air, it reminded me of the mountain, when I saw my friends who couldn't breathe anymore, and I said: No, this can't happen to me again," he told AFP.

'Alive': Uruguay plane crash survivors savor life 50 years on

Mariëtte Le Roux and Gabriela Vaz

Mon, 10 October 2022 

The first night was the worst, Roy Harley recalls of the ten weeks he and other survivors of a plane crash 50 years ago managed to cling to life on an Andean glacier without food or shelter, and very little reason for hope.

Of the plane's 45 occupants, 16 made it home from the 72-day ordeal that became known as the "Miracle of the Andes."

The only way to survive was to eat the flesh of the dead. But for Harley, a retired engineer now aged 70, that was not the worst of the nightmare made famous by the 1993 film "Alive."

After the initial shock of their plane crashing into the Andes mountains on that fateful Friday the 13th of October 1972, Harley and 31 other survivors found themselves in the pitch dark in minus 30 degrees Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit) at an altitude of some 3,500 meters.

Many of them not yet 20 -- the plane was flying an amateur Uruguayan rugby team and family members to a match in Chile -- none were dressed for the cold.

Several were badly injured.

Those who could squeezed into what remained of the fuselage between dead bodies and the screams of the wounded.

"That night, I experienced hell," Harley told AFP.

"At my feet was a boy who was missing a part of his face and... choking on blood.

"I didn't have the courage to reach out to him, to hold his hand, to comfort him. I was afraid. I was very afraid."

By morning, four more were dead, and so started a seemingly relentless torment that would eventually whittle the number of survivors down to 16.

- 'No words' -

There were too many dark moments to list.

"I don't have words to describe how cold it was," said Harley's former rugby teammate, fellow survivor and friend Carlos Paez, 68. "We were so cold, it was so difficult, that I have no words to describe it."

Many times they thought it was the end.

On Day 10, the survivors heard on the plane radio that the search for them had been called off.

"One of the most painful things was... to realize that the world was going on without us," said Paez, who today travels the world as a motivational speaker.

But it was also the jolt the survivors needed to take matters into their own hands and start trying to find a way off the glacier, he recalled.

Another tribulation was having to broach the topic of anthropophagy -- the eating of human flesh.

There was barely any food on the plane that was to have made a short flight from Mendoza in Argentina, where it had a stopover, to Santiago, Chile.

There was no sustenance to be found anywhere in the desolate, ice-covered landscape, and soon the survivors were starving.

A majority voted "yes" to eating their dead friends.

"We had tried to eat leather, we tried to eat cigarettes, we tried to eat toothpaste," Harley recalled at Paez's home in Montevideo.

"We were dying. When you have this choice: to die or to use the only thing you have... we did what we did in order to live."

On Day 16, disaster struck yet again.

An avalanche buried the mangled fuselage, the survivors' only shelter, as they slept.

Eight were killed, leaving only 19 of the original 32 crash survivors. Three more would die in the coming days.

"The avalanche was as if God had stabbed us in the back," said Paez.

- 'We are lucky' -

Displaying incredible ingenuity and tenacity, the survivors learnt, with no tools, to use plane debris to fashion bonnets, mittens, snow shoes, quilts and dark glasses against snow blindness.

They found a way to melt ice and snow for drinking water in spite of the sub-zero temperatures.

And finally, help did arrive.

In a last, desperate effort that almost cost them their lives, survivors Roberto Canessa and Fernando Parrado walked for 10 days into the unknown, hostile terrain, guided by nothing but instinct.

Finally, they came to a river and spotted men on horseback on the other side.

Over the noise of the water they could not make themselves heard, but the next day one of the men was back with a piece of paper wrapped around a stone that he threw to the pair.

On it, Parrado wrote a plea for help that started with the words: "I come from a plane that fell in the mountains."

The next day, the first helicopters came.

When he had boarded the ill-fated Uruguay Air Force plane for Chile, Harley weighed 84 kilograms. By the time he was rescued, there were a mere 37 kilograms on his 1.8-meter (5.9-foot) frame.

On average, the survivors lost 29 kilograms, according to Andes 1972 Museum records.

Harley and Paez insist they are not victims; their tale is one of resilience and teamwork.

"An extraordinary story starring ordinary people," said Paez.

"In the end, life triumphed."

mlr/jh

Block 'busted': India's Bollywood faces horror show at box office

AFP - Yesterday 

India's Bollywood film industry, long part of the cultural fabric of the movie-mad country of 1.4 billion people, is facing its biggest-ever crisis as streaming services and non-Hindi language rivals steal its sparkle.


© Punit PARANJPE

The South Asian giant churns out on average around 1,600 films each year, more than any other country, traditionally headlined by glitzy Bollywood, with fans worshipping movie stars like gods and crowds thronging premieres.

But now cinemas have fallen quiet, even in Bollywood's nerve centre of Mumbai, with box-office receipts plunging since Covid curbs were lifted.

"This is the worst crisis ever faced," veteran Mumbai theatre owner Manoj Desai told AFP. Some screenings were cancelled as the "public was not there".

The usually bankable megastar Akshay Kumar had three back-to-back films tank. Fellow A-lister Aamir Khan, the face of some of India's most successful films, failed to entice audiences with the "Forrest Gump" remake "Laal Singh Chaddha".



Cinemas have fallen quiet, even in Bollywood's nerve centre of Mumbai© Punit PARANJPE

Of the more than 50 Bollywood films released in the past year -- fewer than normal because of the pandemic -- just one-fifth have met or surpassed revenue targets, said media analyst Karan Taurani of Elara Capital. Pre-pandemic it was 50 percent.



Bollywood, like other movie industries, has been hurt by streaming's rise© Punit PARANJPE

In contrast, several Telugu-language aka Tollywood movies -- a south Indian competitor to Hindi-language Bollywood -- have soared to the top.

Embarrassingly, around half the box-office takings for Hindi-language films from January 2021 to August this year were dubbed southern offerings, said State Bank of India's chief economic adviser Soumya Kanti Ghosh in a recent report.

"Bollywood, after decades of storytelling... seems to be at an inflection point unlike any other disruption it has faced before," Ghosh wrote.

- 'Out-of-touch' -

Bollywood, like other movie industries, has been hurt by streaming's rise, which started before the pandemic but took off when millions of Indians were forced indoors.

Around half of India's population has access to the internet and streaming services, including international players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ Hotstar have 96 million subscriptions, according to a government estimate.

Some films released during the Covid shutdown went straight to these platforms, while others hit small screens just weeks after debuting in theatres.

With streaming monthly subscriptions lower or comparable to the cost of one ticket -- 100-200 rupees ($1.20-$2.50) at single-screen cinemas and higher at multiplexes -- price-sensitive audiences were avoiding theatres, analysts said.

Times have been so hard that INOX and PVR, two of India's biggest multiplex operators, announced their merger in March to "create scale".

Subscribers were meanwhile exposed to local and global streaming content, including southern Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada-language films that already had legions of devoted local fans.

"Regional cinema was not travelling beyond its borders. But now suddenly everyone was watching Malayalam cinema or Maharashtrian cinema and then you realise that... there are filmmakers who are telling more interesting stories," film critic Raja Sen said.

"Then they see a Hindi blockbuster coming out with a star which is just like a rethread of a story they've heard a million times, then they're not so impressed anymore."

Critics also accused Bollywood of making niche or elitist films that do not resonate in a country where 70 percent of the population lives outside cities.

Aamir Khan admitted during media interviews for "Laal Singh Chaddha" that Hindi filmmakers' "choice of what is relevant to them is perhaps not so relevant to a larger audience".

At the same time, Tollywood mega-smash hits "Pushpa: The Rise" and "RRR" highlighted the heroics of common people while treating audiences to larger-than-life visual spectacles with catchy song-and-dance routines.

Such formulas have long been a Bollywood mainstay but film critics say the southern challengers were doing it bigger and better.

"To get people to cinemas we need to create an experience for storytelling that cannot be replicated at home," multi-theatre operator and trade analyst Akshaye Rathi said.

"What we need to do is respect their time, money and effort. And whenever we do that, for a particular movie, they come out in big numbers."

- Wake-up call -

Ensuring box-office success by having a star as your protagonist was now no longer guaranteed, said Taurani, who described Bollywood's recent struggles as "alarming".

"I think audiences obviously want the star, but the audience wants the star to feature in a film which has got compelling content," he added.

Kumar -- nicknamed a "one-man industry" for being so prolific -- said he was going back to the drawing board.

"If my films are not working, it is our fault, it is my fault. I have to make the changes, I have to understand what the audience wants," the Indian Express reported Kumar as saying in August.

- Boycott -

Adding to Bollywood's woes have been repeated social media campaigns against certain films by Hindu right-wingers, including the "Forrest Gump" remake.

Most recently, there were calls for new release "Brahmastra" to be boycotted over star Ranbir Kapoor's beef-eating comments some years ago. Cows are considered sacred by Hindus.

But while creating unwelcome noise, analysts say there appeared to be no material impact on box-office returns. "Brahmastra" has in fact done well.

The real issue, movie-goers told AFP outside one cinema in Mumbai, was that many Bollywood films were simply not good enough.

"The story should be good (and) the content should be good, so that people want to watch," said student Preeti Sawant, 22.

"So that's why people are not coming to watch movies."

grk/stu/qan

Hong Kong leader says he 'laughs off' US sanctions

Mon, October 10, 2022


Hong Kong's leader laughed off US sanctions against him Tuesday as he defended his government's decision not to act against a superyacht reportedly owned by a Kremlin ally.

The Nord -- a $500 million luxury vessel linked to Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov -- arrived in the Chinese territory's waters last week.

Mordashov is among the oligarchs close to Russian President Vladimir Putin who have been targeted by Western sanctions following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

On Saturday the United States warned Hong Kong could damage its business hub reputation after the city said it would not enforce sanctions on the superyacht.

Hong Kong chief executive John Lee himself is one of multiple Chinese officials sanctioned by the United States in 2020 for their roles in cracking down on political freedoms in the city.

Banks and other companies risk losing access to the US-dominated global markets if they do business with sanctioned officials, with Lee's predecessor revealing she had to take most of her salary in cash as a result.

When asked about the impact of US sanctions against him on Tuesday, Lee told reporters: "It is a very barbaric act and I am not going to comment on the effect of such barbaric act."

"We will just laugh off the so-called sanctions."

Some sanctioned oligarchs have had their luxury yachts seized in places such as Spain and Fiji, but Hong Kong said Friday that while it implements UN sanctions, it cannot enforce those imposed "unilaterally" by countries or blocs.

Lee repeated that argument on Tuesday, describing US and European sanctions as having "no legal basis".

"We will comply with any UN resolution on sanctions because Hong Kong has the legal basis to enforce it," he said.

But he added: "We cannot and will not do anything that has no legal basis".