Israel appears to have been behind drone strike on Iranian factory -US official

Eyewitness footage said to show moment of explosion at military industry factory in Isfahan

Sat, January 28, 2023 
By Parisa Hafezi and Phil Stewart

DUBAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Israel appears to have been behind an overnight drone attack on a military factory in Iran, a U.S. official said on Sunday.

Iran claimed to have intercepted drones that struck a military industry target near the central city of Isfahan, and said there were no casualties or serious damage.

The extent of damage could not be independently ascertained. Iranian state media released footage showing a flash in the sky and emergency vehicles at the scene.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military declined to comment. Arch-foe Israel has long said it is willing to strike Iranian targets if diplomacy fails to curb Tehran's nuclear or missile programmes, but it has a policy of withholding comment on specific incidents.

Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said no U.S. military forces were involved in strikes in Iran, but declined to comment further.

That U.S. officials were pointing to an Israeli role in the attack was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing several unidentified sources. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters it did appear that Israel was involved. Several other U.S. officials declined to comment, beyond saying that Washington played no role.

Tehran did not formally ascribe blame for what Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called a "cowardly" attack aimed at creating "insecurity" in Iran. But state TV broadcast comments by a lawmaker, Hossein Mirzaie, saying there was "strong speculation" Israel was behind it.

The attack came amid tension between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear activity and its supply of arms - including long-range "suicide drones" - for Russia's war in Ukraine, as well as months of anti-government demonstrations at home.

The extent of the damage could not be independently confirmed. Iran's Defence Ministry said the explosion caused only minor damage and no casualties.

"Such actions will not impact our experts' determination to progress in our peaceful nuclear work," Amirabdollahian told reporters in televised remarks.

An Israeli strike on Iran would be the first under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since he returned to office last month at the helm of the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

In Ukraine, which accuses Iran of supplying hundreds of drones to Russia to attack civilian targets in Ukrainian cities far from the front, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy linked the incident directly to the war there.

"Explosive night in Iran," Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted. "Did warn you."

Iran has acknowledged sending drones to Russia but says they were sent before Moscow's invasion of Ukraine last year. Moscow denies its forces use Iranian drones in Ukraine, although many have been shot down and recovered there.

'MINOR DAMAGE'

"Around 23:30 (2000 GMT) on Saturday night, an unsuccessful attack was carried out using micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) on one of the ministry's workshop sites," the Defence Ministry said in a statement carried by state TV.

It said one drone was shot down "and the other two were caught in defence traps and blew up. It caused only minor damage to the roof of a workshop building. There were no casualties."

A military official in the region said given the location of the strike in central Iran and the size of the drones, it was likely that the attack was staged from within Iran's borders.

Separately, IRNA reported early on Sunday a massive fire at a motor oil factory in an industrial zone near the northwestern city of Tabriz. It later said oil leakage caused that blaze, citing a local official.

Iran has accused Israel in the past of planning attacks using agents inside Iranian territory. In July, Tehran said it had arrested a sabotage team made up of Kurdish militants working for Israel who planned to blow up a "sensitive" defence industry centre in Isfahan.

Several Iranian nuclear sites are located in Isfahan province, including Natanz, centrepiece of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, which Iran accuses Israel of sabotaging in 2021. There have been a number of explosions and fires around Iranian military, nuclear and industrial sites in recent years.

Talks between Iran and world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal have stalled since September. Under the pact, abandoned by Washington in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, Tehran agreed to limit nuclear work in return for easing of sanctions.

Iran's clerical rulers have also faced internal turmoil in recent months, with a crackdown on widespread anti-establishment demonstrations spurred by the death in custody of a woman held for allegedly violating its strict Islamic dress code.

(Writing by Parisa HafeziEditing by Peter Graff)

‘We’ll fight until the end’: a journey through the centre of Peru’s uprising

Tom Phillips in Sicuani

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 30 January 2023

Photograph: Michael Bednar/Getty Images

One by one, the rebel campesinos clambered up to the improvised podium they had built atop a 6ft earth barricade, to declare their determination to topple the president of Peru.

“Brothers and sisters, right now our Peru needs us more than ever,” Nilda Mendoza Coronel, a 35-year-old farmer, told hundreds of strikers who had gathered under a ferocious morning sun.

“We’ll fight until the very end, carajo!” Mendoza bellowed through a megaphone. “No one will stop our struggle!”


Another speaker, Aparicio Meléndez, urged the crowd in the Andean town of Sicuani to ignore reports that army troops were en route to extinguish their revolt.

“We’ll stay here until they’ve spent their very last bullet,” the 55-year-old grazier vowed as he looked out on the protest blocking the 940-mile highway through the Peruvian Andes.

A two-word rallying cry had been painted on to the tarmac behind the barricade: “People’s insurgency.”

Residents block roads, in Sicuani-Canchis, Cusco province, Peru. Photograph: Aldair Mejia/EPA

Sicuani is at the heart of the seven-week-old insurrection against Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, and the country’s political establishment that began in early December after its leftist president, Pedro Castillo, was unseated and arrested after being accused of trying to stage a coup.

Strange and violent political winds have been buffeting Latin America and the Caribbean of late, with a far-right uprising in Brazil, political and social meltdown in Haiti, and protests after the arrest of one of Bolivia’s most prominent opposition leaders. But nowhere has the turmoil been more widespread or deadly than in Peru, where at least 58 lives have been lost since Castillo’s dramatic demise.

Huge swaths of South America’s fourth most populous country have been paralysed by protests and roadblocks since Castillo’s downfall, as his supporters – and those outraged at the government’s deadly response – hit the streets to demand Boluarte’s resignation, fresh elections and justice for the dozens allegedly killed by security forces.Interactive

The Guardian travelled through the most affected region, between the Andean cities of Cusco and Juliaca – where 17 people were killed in the worst day of violence – to hear the voices of the mutiny against the Peruvian government.

Related: ‘We feel betrayed’: Peruvians on anti-government protests

The gruelling 210-mile journey took three days and involved navigating scores of checkpoints guarded by campesino protesters, as well as hundreds of barricades made from boulders, tree trunks, dilapidated vehicles, glass and scrap metal.

Beyond the roadblocks, it was also a journey through the profound social inequality, grinding poverty and discrimination that lie behind the explosion of rural anger against what many protesters call the corrupt, self-serving and largely white political establishment in the capital, Lima.

“It’s as if we aren’t humans … It’s as if we are worth nothing,” said Raúl Constantino Samillán Sanga, whose 30-year-old brother was gunned down in Juliaca during clashes between police and protesters. “The whole of the Andes is now saying we’ve had enough – this must change.”

The trip through the centre of Peru’s political earthquake began in Cusco, once the capital of the Inca empire and, today, the South American country’s most important tourist destination, with nearly 3 million visitors each year.

Demonstrators arrive from surrounding communities and gather at Túpac Amaru square in Cusco, Peru. Photograph: Michael Bednar/Getty Images

The tourists have vanished since the uprising began, with Cusco’s airport repeatedly shut down by authorities and the nearby Machu Picchu closed earlier this month.

“Everyone’s on edge and worried and a bit scared too,” said Hannah Jenkinson, a British fashion designer who runs a boutique in Cusco’s now largely deserted historic centre.

A few streets away, hundreds of demonstrators marched towards the plaza where in the 18th century the Indigenous leader Túpac Amaru was quartered and beheaded after rebelling against Spanish rule.

“She’s going down! She’s going down! The murderer’s going down!” the crowds chanted of Boluarte as they surged through Cusco’s cobbled streets waving Peru’s red and white flag.

Twenty-five miles south-east of Cusco, past pre-Incan ruins and eucalyptus-dotted mountains, lay the village of Villahermosa – the location of the first major roadblock along Peru’s Route 3S highway.Interactive

Dozens of villagers, including elderly women clutching traditional huaraca whips woven from alpaca fleece, had blocked the road with tree trunks and tyres to express their fury at decades of government neglect and the recent wave of killings, most of which have been blamed on security forces.

Juvenal Luna Jara, 22, said he had joined the rebellion one week earlier, incensed that so many protesters had been killed in Peru’s long-neglected rural south, which was at the centre of the brutal 12-year war waged by the Shining Path guerrilla group. As he saw it, the majority of lives were lost in such regions because provincianos (country folk) were considered second-class citizens, or worse. “It’s as if they were killing dogs,” he fumed.

Hours earlier, Boluarte had implored protesters to accept a nationwide truce. But there was no hint of compromise in Villahermosa as farmers gathered to vent their rage at the president’s role in the ousting of Castillo, a former union leader who was born into poverty and was propelled into the presidency in 2021 by impoverished rural voters in places such as this.

“If there’s no solution, the struggle will go on,” the villagers roared before the Guardian’s vehicle was allowed to continue its journey.

In village after village along the boulder-strewn highway, the message was the same, as disillusioned and downtrodden farmers gathered by their blockades to offer impassioned speeches about the state of their nation and how their resource-rich mining region had been milked for profits that were never seen.

Dina Quispe wept as she denounced how Peruvian authorities had branded the protesters narco-funded terrucos (terrorists) and met their call for political change with repression and bloodshed.

“We have been humiliated and forgotten,” said the 41-year-old saleswoman from the community of Checyuyoc. “They are killing our brothers with bullets.”

Through her tears, Quispe voiced disgust that she shared a first name withPeru’s first female president. Boluarte has become a lightning rod for far deeper disillusionment with the broken politics of a country that has had seven presidents in the last six years and where a quarter of the population struggle to properly feed themselves.

Quispe said to reporters: “Please, take this voice of protest from deepest and humble Peru [to the world].”

A group of protesters block the Panamericana Sur highway, the most important highway in the country. Photograph: Aldair Mejia/EPA

A few miles away in Sicuani, a town now almost completely cut off from the outside world by the roadblocks, hundreds of Quechua women wearing sombreros, pollera skirts and dazzling quilts were on the march.

“We are fighting for our future and the future of our children and our grandchildren,” said Roxana Chahuanco, 40, as locals prepared to debate their next move after the government announced it would deploy troops to clear the roads.

There, Mendoza Coronel evoked the Indigenous martyrs Túpac Amaru and his wife, Micaela Bastidas, as she urged locals to intensify their peasant rebellion against the “corrupt” Lima elites. “They look down on us because we are the children of campesinos and for being men of the fields,” she said.

At the next village, a cow’s skull had been placed on a pole above a barricade fashioned from two heaps of rubble and earth. “It’s Dina,” joked one of the women policing the checkpoint.

From Sicuani, the highway climbed even higher into the Andes towards the spectacular 4,300-metre border with the department of Puno, where Aymara Indigenous communities are also in revolt against the new government.

Boluarte further infuriated the region’s inhabitants last week when she told foreign journalists “Puno isn’t Peru” – a declaration the president subsequently claimed had been misunderstood.

“We are Peruvians,” said one woman guarding a roadblock outside the town of Ayaviri. “It was in Puno that the Inca empire was born.”

Aerial view of relatives and friends of the victims of clashes with the Peruvian police in the main plaza of the Andean city of Juliaca, southern Peru.. Photograph: Juan Carlos Cisneros/AFP/Getty Images

After Ayaviri, the highway descended towards Puno’s largest city, Juliaca, a dilapidated and edgy mining and smuggling hub, where anti-government protests continue to rage as local families mourn their dead.

Behind a metal door decorated with a black ribbon of mourning sat María Ysabel Samillan Sanga, who lost her younger brother one Monday in early January.

Marco Antonio Samillán Sanga was a medical student who had been working as a volunteer medic in Juliaca when protesters tried to storm the city’s airport and security forces responded with live ammunition.

The 30-year-old student was shot through the heart as he attended to a boy who had inhaled teargas – one of at least 17 people to die in Juliaca that day. “It was a massacre,” said his sister. “There is no other word for it.”

Samillán Sanga wept as she remembered how her brother had worked his way out of extreme poverty and into medical school. He had dreamed of becoming a neurosurgeon and creating health programmes for Puno’s rural poor.

“Right now, I feel like I’m being obliged to live … If it was up to me, I’d die too because there are days I just cannot cope with this pain,” she said, tears coursing down her cheeks.

Samillán Sanga also saw prejudice and discrimination at the root of her brother’s death and Peru’s uprising. “We have feelings. We are humans. We feel. We cry. We have emotions. And we are in pain,” said her brother, Raúl Constantino.

The family said they feared government reprisals for speaking out but would not be silenced. “I hope someone reads this and thinks: how is the Samillán Sanga family?” said María Ysabel. “Because the truth is we have been shattered. My family will never be the same again.”

Related: Violent protests in Peru evoke memories of darkest days of civil war

Peruvians place little trust in political class to solve crisis: experts

Gonzalo RUIZ
Sun, 29 January 2023 


With a political class that is widely mistrusted and seen as weak and out of touch, Peruvians have grown increasingly disillusioned that a solution to weeks of violent unrest is at hand, experts told AFP.

The national Congress is due to debate again on Monday a proposal to bring forward elections slated for April 2024 in a bid to break a political deadlock that has seen 48 deaths over seven weeks of near-daily protests.

Parliament rejected such a move on Saturday, however, and analysts doubt this time will be different.

"This is a toxic Congress. It is rejected by 88 percent of the population, according to polls," said Alonso Cardenas, a public policy specialist in Lima.

Cardenas said Congress has been widely discredited -- branded by one civil association as "the most corrupt" institution in the country.

"Congress, like almost all the political class in Peru, lives with its back to the country. It doesn't understand" the people, said Roger Santa Cruz of the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University in Lima.

In the early hours of Saturday, following seven hours of debate, lawmakers voted against bringing forward elections from April 2024 to October this year.

That proposal, from opposition politician Hernando Guerra Garcia, came after beleaguered president Dina Boluarte said Friday that she had told her ministers to suggest December as a possible date for a general election.

Protesters have kept pressure on the authorities since December 7, the day ousted president Pedro Castillo was arrested after attempting to dissolve parliament and rule by decree. Demonstrators want immediate elections, Boluarte's resignation and dissolution of Congress.

Castillo's supporters, many of them peasants and Indigenous peoples from the countryside, have blocked roads, causing fuel and food shortages in some areas; forced some airport closures, and clashed with security forces in Lima and other cities.

- Political calculation -

According to Santa Cruz, there is good reason for many legislators to reject snap elections, particularly rivals to Guerra Garcia's Popular Force party, led by Keiko Fujimori, who narrowly lost the 2021 election to Castillo.

"Popular Force has bases all over the country. It is better equipped to run a short campaign. Theirs is a political calculation," said Santa Cruz.

In the recent vote, Guerra Garcia's proposal was defeated by Popular Force's own right-wing allies in opposition, Popular Renewal and Advance Country.

Boluarte is from the same left-wing party as Castillo -- she was his vice president before his arrest -- but her support since then has come from the conservative opposition.

Now "the alliance that supports Boluarte is cracking," said Cardenas.

Experts say leftist politicians also deserve some blame for the current crisis by putting factional ambitions ahead of the country's needs.

The left has demanded a referendum on rewriting the constitution as a condition for supporting advanced elections, but that has little support elsewhere.

"The left knows that its proposal will never be supported by the right," said Cardenas, who believes the issue is being used as leverage to negotiate minor benefits.

"These are pretty mediocre reasons" to effectively hold the country hostage, he added.

Congress is fractured into at least 10 political forces, with no strong leaders or dominant personalities, the experts say.

Boluarte's resignation would not end the crisis, Cardenas and Santa Cruz said, as there is no experienced, unifying figure to replace her.

- Years of turmoil -

Peru is no stranger to political instability. Since 2018, it has been led by no fewer than six presidents who span the political spectrum.

Adding fuel to an unstable fire is a legislature that, experts say, seems more focused on squabbling than problem-solving.

Castillo, for his part, found himself in Congress's crosshairs almost from the day he took over.

Even if elections are now advanced to this year, political scientists say they have little faith that a stable future will follow.

"The political solution would have to come from political reform," said Cardenas, adding that change would have to come from the same politicians who are so widely mistrusted today.

str/pb/dga/bc/bbk/st

CAQ PEAU FINE

Quebec government wants Amira Elghawaby to resign as federal representative to combat Islamophobia, just days into her new job

Mon, January 30, 2023 

Amira Elghawaby is a human rights advocate and was just appointed as the representative to combat Islamophobia. (CBC News) (Simon Gohier/CBC - image credit)

The Quebec government is calling on the federal government to withdraw its support of Amira Elghawaby, the new representative to combat Islamophobia, only four days after she was first appointed.

This comes a day after her attendance at the sixth commemoration of the deadly mosque attack in Quebec City, honouring the six men who were killed in 2017 when a gunman opened fire just before 8 p.m. in the Islamic Cultural Centre in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood.

Since her appointment on Thursday, the journalist and human rights activist has been pressured to clarify her position on Quebec's secularism law.

In 2019 she wrote a column for the Ottawa Citizen where she denounced the "anti-muslim sentiment" that surrounded the adoption of Bill 21 — which bans public servants from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs.

Courtesy of Quebec City

Jean-François Roberge, CAQ minister responsible for the French language, said Eghawaby has not properly apologized for her comments about Quebec. She "seems to be overcome by an anti-Quebec sentiment," said Roberge.

"All she did was try to justify her hateful comments. That doesn't fly. She must resign and if she doesn't, the government must remove her immediately."

In an interview with CBC's Quebec AM, Elghawaby said she has nothing to apologize for.

"The article in question actually provides the context in it," said Elghawaby.

"It was never meant to suggest that my opinion is that the majority of Quebeckers are Islamophobic. I don't believe so. I was merely analyzing the polling numbers … [an] opinion piece is meant to cause people to think, to talk, to reflect."

WATCH | NDP leader says it's time to get to work fighting Islamophobia:

Elghawaby was present for the evening ceremony at the mosque alongside Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and the minister of housing and diversity and inclusion, Ahmed Hussen.

Premier François Legault did not attend.

Boufeldja Benabdallah, co-founder and former president of the mosque, thanked politicians for their presence while pointing to the premier's absence at a ceremony which included reflections on the problem of Islamophobia.

"We have just one thing to ask of you," said Benabdallah, referring to Genevieve Guilbault, CAQ deputy premier. "Talk to Mr. Francois Legault and tell him: 'You have to come.'"

Rachel Watts/CBC

Guilbault took to the podium and said Legault wished he could be there.

On Monday, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet requested an "urgent meeting" with Elghawaby, saying her actions were "more divisive than unifying."

The Parti Québécois is not calling for Elghawaby's resignation, but Joël Arseneau, the Parti Québécois transportation critic, says they are questioning Trudeau's decision.

"She's made several declarations showing prejudice against Quebec society and we don't think it's a good start for someone who wants to bring people together," said Arseneau.

Jamie Lee Curtis says 'people lost their minds' when she posed topless at age 50

Erin Donnelly
Sun, January 29, 2023 

Jamie Lee Curtis says her 2008 topless cover caused a stir. 

(Photo: REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni)

On Saturday night, actress Jamie Lee Curtis was honored with the Career Achievement Award from AARP The Magazine. But it's not the first time the publication — which shines a spotlight on people aged 50 and older — has shown the star some love.

In an Instagram post shared ahead of the magazine's annual Movies for Grownups Awards, Curtis, 64, reflected on appearing topless on the cover of its May/June 2008 issue. Then 50, the Halloween star posed naked in a swimming pool for the Andrew Eccles-lensed shoot, causing quite a stir.

"People lost their MINDS that I was TOPLESS!" Curtis, who just scored for her first Oscar nomination for her supporting turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once, shared. "A perfect statement about how weird people are about older people having any sexuality whatsoever."



Curtis's post drew support from the likes of Naomi Watts and her former Freaky Friday co-star, Lindsay Lohan. Supermodel Paulina Porizkova, no stranger to provocative photo shoots that challenge conventional thinking about aging, commented, "Yup. Apparently, older women should give that up."

Curtis has been unapologetic about aging on her own terms. In the 2008 issue, the True Lies star spoke about letting her hair — now silver, nearly 15 years later — go gray and learning to love the mature version of herself.

"I want to be older," she told the magazine. "I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. I feel way better now than I did when I was 20. I'm stronger, I'm smarter in every way, I'm so much less crazy than I was then."

In more recent years, the Trading Places actress has spoken out about society's obsession with plastic surgery — which she has admitted trying and hating — and using filters to look younger.

"I've also been an advocate for not f***ing with your face," she said during an appearance on the U.K. talk show Lorraine in 2021. "And the term 'anti-aging.' What? What are you talking about? We're all going to f****ing age. We’re all gonna die. Why do you want to look 17 when you're 70? I want to look 70 when I'm 70!"

Last year Curtis shared that she is focusing more on acceptance and less on vanity.

"When I brush my teeth, of course, I look in the mirror," she said during a talk at the Radically Reframing Aging Summit. "When I pluck my eyebrows, of course, I look in a mirror. But when I get out of a shower, I just don't stare at my now 63-year-old body in the mirror. I'm not denying what I look like, of course I've seen what I look like. I am trying to live in acceptance. If I look in the mirror, it's harder for me to be in acceptance. I’m more critical. Whereas, if I just don't look, I'm not so worried about it."

Speaking at the Movies for Grownups Awards this weekend, Curtis expressed her appreciation for aging.

"At the end of the day, what I love most about grownups is that we are more alike than different — grownups suit up and show up each day, regardless of the way our cards were dealt," she said in her acceptance speech. "It's the beauty of grownups and I'm honored to be considered one because it's a badge of honor that I wear proudly on my face, on my body, in my mind and in my soul."

Michelle Yeoh opens up about being a film star at 60: 'The older you get, they see you by your age'

Erin Donnelly
January 8, 2023

Michelle Yeoh opens up about aging, infertility and her morning routine. 

(Photo: REUTERS/David Swanson)

Life at 60 is pretty good for Michelle Yeoh, who is generating Oscar buzz with her lead role in Everything Everywhere All at Once. ("Your loss, bro," she shot back when former co-star Jackie Chan texted to say that he'd been offered the plum part, originally intended for a man, first.)

But in a new interview with Seth Doane for CBS Sunday Morning, the Malaysian actress admitted that she was surprised to be cast "at this point in my career."

"The older you get, they see you by your age rather than see you by your capability," the martial arts-trained star explained.

Yeoh choked up when she recalled the "joyful" validation of the film's writers and directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (a.k.a. "the Daniels"), trusting her with a role that was not only physically demanding but also required the ability to navigate both comedic and dramatic moments.

The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress grew emotional as she spoke to Doane about how meaningful it is "when someone gives you the opportunity to show what you're capable of."

That validation was unexpected for Yeoh, given her fears about seeing her "spectacular career" grind to a stop with every birthday.

"You don't want it to just slow down or end because you have gotten to a certain age," she said. "And you start getting scripts where the guy, the hero, is still in his 50s, 60s ... some even more. And they get to go on the adventure with your daughter. And then you go, like, 'No, c'mon guys, give me a chance.' Because I feel that I am still able to do all that."

Yeoh also opened up about stepping back from the film business after getting married to producer Dickson Poon in 1988, with the intention of devoting herself to motherhood. But when she learned that she "couldn't have kids," the Tomorrow Never Dies star left the marriage, explaining, "I knew that this was a family who needed kids." All the same, making that choice was "devastating."

"It is life," she told Doane. "Now I have godchildren — beautiful godchildren. They are like my extended family."

She's also found love with French motor racing executive Jean Todt, her romantic partner since 2004.

And while Yeoh's days these days are a whirlwind of red carpets and award shows, they all start the same: with stretches in bed and a meditation apology of sorts to the body she's about to use in another daring stunt.

"Please forgive me. I'm sorry. Thank you. I love you," Yeoh tells herself in an on-camera demonstration of her morning routine. "This body takes a lot of bumps and bruises, so that is my way of saying thank you to it."

HEALTHCARE STAFFING SHORTAGES PLAGUE NORTH AMERICA

Staffing shortage forces postponement of 150 elective surgeries at Whitehorse hospital

Mon, January 30, 2023 

The Whitehorse General Hospital in winter. About 150 elective surgeries have been cancelled in February and March. (Paul Tukker/CBC - image credit)

Dozens of Yukoners preparing for surgery at Whitehorse General Hospital have had their plans delayed.

The Yukon Hospital Corporation announced last week it's postponing roughly 150 elective surgeries due to staff shortages. Those surgeries were scheduled between Feb. 13 and March 31.

James Low, the corporation's director of medical staff services, said normally the hospital has 13 staffers in the operating room. Right now, only half the staff needed are available.

"Unfortunately we're in this environment where we're heavily reliant on agency or travel staff," Low said.

The cancellations represent about one third of the surgeries that normally would happen at the hospital in the same time frame.

"We're not reducing or deferring everything in this period," Low said. "We're just bringing the level down to a place where we have adequate staffing to support that service."

Low said the cancellations will not affect emergency or urgent care, and that the cancellations are a direct result of medical staff shortages being felt across Canada.

"Hospitals and health providers across the country are sort of experiencing the same challenges with respect to health human resources and the Yukon unfortunately is no different."

This is not the first time elective surgeries have been delayed at the hospital. Low first told CBC News last June that some non-urgent surgeries were being delayed.

Low said the corporation has upped its recruiting tactics — for example, turning to social media to lure professionals North.

He said it's also working with Yukon University to find longer term solutions. One idea is to create a "bridging program" for licensed practical nurses so they can become registered nurses.

As for patients affected, their surgeries have been delayed but not scrapped.

Low said most are expected to be rebooked in April or May.

Who is Canada's greatest prime minister? New poll shows we can't seem to agree

If you asked history experts, the results would be wildly different

Elianna Lev
Tue, January 24, 2023 
Canadians would have a challenging time coming up with our own version of Mount Rushmore, as a new poll shows that there’s no clear consensus on who we think our greatest prime minister is.

But some history experts stress that most Canadians aren’t fluent in the historical reign of prime ministers or their major accomplishments, which is reflected in in the results of the poll.

The online survey, conducted by Pollara Strategic Insights, randomly selected 4,020 Canadians 18 years of age and older. Participants either identified themselves as history buffs or not.

A new poll asked more than 4,000 Canadians who they think is the greatest prime minister in history.

When it came to the question of who is the greatest Canadian Prime Minister, 40 per cent of participants said they didn’t know.

Pierre Trudeau received 11 per cent of the vote, while Stephen Harper followed closely behind with 10 per cent.

Among the 60 per cent of "decided" voters, Trudeau received 18 per cent, followed by Harper with 16 per cent and John A. Macdonald with 11 per cent.

No strong feelings

Dan Arnold, Chief Strategy Officer with Pollara Strategic Insights, says the topic of Canada's best-ever PM is one that hasn’t seen much public opinion polling in recent years. And given the frequency of polls that examine how people feel about the current prime minister, it’s important to give Canadians a chance to reflect. And the results were surprising.

“While the intent was to find out how Canadians feel about the former leaders of our country, we found that a lot of Canadians don’t have strong feelings about it,” he tells Yahoo Canada News.

Arnold says that could be a reflection of Canadian’s grasp of the country’s political history. It could also suggest Canadians don’t think about it much, or at least enough to feel confident on deciding on who’s the best leader.

When reading through the names of the PMs who are on the list, no one stands out as a definitive winner on the list.

“In the States, there’s Mt. Rushmore and a few names that rise to the top as being the consensus of the greatest presidents in U.S. history,” Arnold says. “Here, it’s more of a wide rage of preferences and names that sort of make up the top of this list.”

Favouring the local boy or political party

What isn’t surprising is the range of response based on people's geography. Quebec favoured Brian Mulroney (17 per cent). Albertans ranked Harper in top place (20 per cent).

“If you go back to the early days of our country, elections often show very different results in different parts of the country,” Arnold says.

Stephen Azzi, a professor of political management at Carleton University, concurs.

“There’s a preference for a local boy or girl,” he says.

Azzi says the results of this type of poll would be extremely different if only historical experts were surveyed. When reviewing this poll, along with others done by Gallup and Angus Reid over the last few decades, it appears Canadians like PMs who are striking, confrontational and quotable.

“They like a dramatic figure and this is why you see (Pierre) Trudeau doing so well,” he says. “In the '80s when they did this sort of poll, Diefenbaker used to poll well. Trudeau and Diefenbaker have very little in common, aside from charisma and a flair for dramatics.”

Finally, he agrees with Arnold and the results of that poll that show most Canadians aren’t all that well-versed in political history.

“It’s natural that the more recent prime ministers will do better than people like Mackenzie King, Wilfrid Laurier or Robert Borden,” he says.

There’s a preference for a local boy or girl.

Charisma over accomplishments

Matthew Hayday, professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Guelph, points out that the list is missing some of the longest serving PMs, like Laurier, who was PM for 15 years.

“There is a definite recency bias in terms of who people know,” he says. “The only person who isn’t a PM in the last 40 years on that list is John A. Macdonald, probably because he is the first prime minister who was involved in so many controversies around issues of commemoration, so his defenders are rallying to him as the ‘nation maker.’”

In 2016, Azzi, along with Norman Hillmer, polled historians on who they felt was the greatest Prime Minister for Macleans magazine. The results were much different. For one, personality barely factors in.

“Mackenzie King, who was the black hole of charisma, topped our last survey,” he says. “Experts are very focused on achievements.”

Someone like Diefenbaker, a dramatic figure who voiced the views of many Canadians, didn’t place as well amongst the experts because his record of accomplishments was much more modest. He also exacerbated relations between English and French Canada, which impacted his results in the poll. However, someone like King, who devoted his life to national unity, ranked higher.

Azzi notes that the Pollara poll doesn’t consider these aspects in their rankings.

“You could argue that someone like Trudeau was a divisive figure, and yet he tops the poll,” he says.

'Let's take the candy out of this': Viewers accuse M&M's of 'melting' in the face Fox News critics after Maya Rudolph hire

The company's move to discontinue its multicolour candies as spokespeople is a cop-out  critics say

People have accused M&M of pulling this publicity stunt to distract the public from the child slavery lawsuit M&M is facing.
Abhya Adlakha
·Editor, Yahoo News Canada
Wed, January 25, 2023

M&M's is getting slammed on Twitter after it announced on Monday that it's discontinuing its multi-coloured cast of candy spokespeople. Instead, its replacement would be the Saturday Night Live actress Maya Rudolph.
  
"We have decided to take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies," M&M's Twitter statement reads. "In their place, we are proud to introduce a spokesperson America can agree on: the beloved Maya Rudolph. We are confident Ms. Rudolph will champion the power of fun to create a world where everyone feels they belong."

This move comes shortly after M&M's popular spokescandies—like the all-new purple cast member—was criticized by conservatives like Fox News' Tucker Carlson. 

People have accused M&M of pulling this publicity stunt as a way of caving to critics like Carlson and also to distract the public from the child slavery lawsuit M&M is facing.

Viewers react, M&M slammed