Thursday, August 19, 2021

Nearly 95,000 COVID-19 cases reported among health-care workers in Canada

By Saba Aziz Global News

Posted August 18, 2021 10:01 pm

Updated August 19, 2021

WATCH ABOVE: Numbers released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information reveal

nearly 95,000 COVID-19 cases have been reported in Canadian health-care workers since

the start of the pandemic. Kim Smith has a closer look at Alberta's numbers.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to take a toll on Canada’s health-care workers, with nearly 95,000 cases and 43 deaths reported since the start of the pandemic.

The latest figures, as of June 15, 2021, were released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) on Thursday.

Data collected by CIHI showed a 43 per cent jump in case

care staff across the country since January. But the share of cases out of Canada’s total tally among the general population has continued to decline — reaching roughly seven per cent — amid greater vaccination coverage, CIHI reported.

“It’s been a significant impact on health-care workers who provide care to Canadians and we’re seeing that in a number of aspects, including the total COVID-19 cases and deaths that have been experienced,” said Lynn McNeely, manager of health workforce information at CIHI.

Beside the physical impact, McNeely said the pandemic has also presented mental health challenges for health-care workers grappling with long hours and COVID-19 fatigue.

“There’s no doubt health-care workers have been working tirelessly for the past year and a half under some really challenging conditions,” she told Global News.

Nearly 95,000 COVID-19 cases reported among health-care workers in Canada - image — Graphic by James Hawkins/Global News

Personal support workers (PSWs) were at the greatest risk of contracting the disease compared with physicians and nurses, data from Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia showed.

Because PSWs tend to work on a part-time basis at multiple facilities, that puts them at an increased risk of exposure, McNeely said.

Of all the provinces, Quebec was the hardest hit, reporting 45,320 cases and 13 deaths among the health-care workers. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, came in second place with 23,557 infections and 17 deaths.

With the country in the midst of a fourth wave of COVID-19 fuelled by the highly transmissible Delta variant, there is a greater push to make vaccinations mandatory for health-care workers.

In Quebec, health-care workers will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 1, Premier Francois Legault said Tuesday.

The Ontario government will also be requiring hospitals and home and community care service providers in the province to enact COVID-19 vaccine policies by Sept. 7. Individuals will need to provide proof of full COVID-19 vaccination, a medical reason for not having COVID-19 vaccines, or they will need to complete a COVID-19 vaccine educational session, the province said in a statement.

Meanwhile, on Aug. 12, British Columbia became the first province to order people working in long-term care and assisted living to get fully vaccinated as a condition of employment.

2:01Quebec health care workers voice concerns with mandatory vaccines

Quebec health care workers voice concerns with mandatory vaccines

Staffing concerns

While the COVID-19 pandemic saw an increase in the overall supply of selected health-care professionals last year, staffing shortages remain a major concern for provinces — prompting hospitals to postpone surgeries, close emergency beds and offer incentives.

Nurse practitioners made the biggest gains with a roughly eight per cent increase followed by physiotherapists and licensed practical nurses, the CIHI report showed.

Nearly 6,000 nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and pharmacists re-entered the workforce to provide COVID-19 support across the country.

“Canada’s supply of health-care workers increased as a result of workers who returned to help respond to the pandemic, as well as new entrants to the professions,” CIHI said in its report.

“Despite the increase in supply and the ability to call on those not working in profession-specific roles, health-care worker infections and exposure to the virus contributed to shortages.”

2:01Alberta Health Services updates staffing shortages after surgeries cancelled

Alberta Health Services updates staffing shortages after surgeries cancelled

With increasing pressure on the country’s health-care system and backlog created by the pandemic, McNeely stressed the need to provide mental health support to the staff.

According to a Statistics Canada survey released in February 2021, 77 per cent of health-care workers who worked in direct contact with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 reported worsening mental health compared with before the pandemic.

It’s an area that will need attention in the months and years ahead, said McNeely.

“We’re going to have to continue to monitor and closely watch that burnout, as well as staff shortages among those who have been dealing with — not only through work, but through their own personal lives — the impact of the pandemic.”

Column: Hoping for the best isn’t enough for our future

Salmon Arm took on a orange-yellow-brown hue due to the smoke and ash in the air from nearby wildfires on Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. (Lachlan Labere-Salmon Arm Observer)

In Plain View by Lachlan Labere

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

I’m hearing this a lot as we try to get through one of the hottest, driest, smoke-filled wildfire seasons (aka summer) in recent memory.

Amid this, we’ve learned we’re being thrown into another federal election.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s seeking a new mandate from Canadians.

Whoever is elected to lead the country, let’s hope they give more weight to preparing for the worst.

As I write this column, the wildfire smoke-filled sky has turned a discomforting orange-yellow-brown hue. It’s 30 C and the outside air quality index (AQI) rating is 203. Good air quality has an AQI rating from 0 to 50.

I expect, for many, concern around air quality is secondary to the cause: the 270 wildfires burning in the province (as of Aug. 15). A priority for the BC Wildfire Service (BCWS) was the 62,273-hectare White Rock Lake wildfire.

Mark Healey, the BCWS incident commander for the White Rock Lake fire, recently said this has been the most volatile season he’s ever seen, calling it not a wildfire season, but a catastrophic event.

Let that set in. He’s not talking about one specific incident, one particular fire. He’s talking about the summer as a whole, no doubt starting with the “heat dome” in late June that shattered temperature records and was linked to the death of more than 700 people in B.C. Other wildfire related tragedies have occurred since, including the losses at Lytton and destruction at Monte Lake.

Wildfires are currently ravaging other parts of the country and the world. The fire situation in Greece has been referred to as a “natural disaster of unprecedented proportion.” In total, wildfires burning in Siberia are said to be greater in size than all the other wildfires currently burning on the earth combined.

Though wildfires have occurred historically, this year’s in particular are said to have been exacerbated by human-caused global warming. In a recent report, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints a bleak picture, warning extreme weather will be more frequent. In addition to taking immediate action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the IPCC said we also need to invest in climate adaptation. You know, prepare for the worst.

I don’t expect going to the polls ranks high right now among British Columbians. But it is an opportunity to make sure politicians know what needs to be done. Taking action as recommended by the IPCC likely won’t stop wildfires from happening in coming years, but it’s better to do something with hope for the future, than do nothing and hope for the best.

Loggers free to fight fires

Photo: Jordan Neufeld

The White Rock Lake fire

The B.C. forestry sector has been fighting wildfires since early July, according to both industry and the BC Wildfire Service, despite what a leaked document circulating online suggests.

The provincial government is responding to leaked meeting minutes, detailing a call on July 12 between BCWS and several forestry companies that suggests B.C. was in desperate need of resources to fight fires at the time.

“Need every available resource. All BCWS people are working,” said the minutes, which first surfaced in an independent documentary on those who disobeyed evacuation orders in Paxton Valley to fight the White Rock Lake fire.

“Will rent fire equipment from industry if you are not using it,” the minutes continue. “Very limited air support available.”

At the meeting, BCWS discussed with forestry companies that there were no additional resources available in neighbouring jurisdictions due to severe fire seasons elsewhere, so industry help was needed.

What isn’t mentioned in the meeting minutes — which have sparked outrage among those who allege bureaucracy is strangling the wildfire service — is forestry companies had already been actively fighting fires for at least a week at that time.

BCWS director of fire centre operations Rob Schweitzer told Castanet Thursday the meeting was a routine one held every few months between the province and forest industry. He says he told industry at the meeting that provincial resources would be focused on protecting communities and infrastructure, and B.C. could use help fighting backcountry blazes impacting timber.

Schweitzer said forestry companies had been fighting fires since the “beginning of July.” That is corroborated by Tolko, which told Castanet News Wednesday night they have been actively fighting fires since July 5.

“I'm happy to say this group of either major licensees or independent contractors across the province have literally stopped their operations for the last six, seven weeks, and have come to support the wildfire effort both in the backcountry, as well as in and around the communities that they live and work,” Schweitzer said, adding some companies have lost equipment on the fire lines.

Since the Chapman review of the 2017 fire season, Schweitzer says BCWS has relied heavily on forestry companies to fight fires, particularly in the early stages of a wildfire when industry will attempt to hold the blaze prior to provincial resources arriving.

Schweitzer said logging companies manage those fires under “limited supervision,” which means “having our staff coming out there from time to time, just helping provide the objectives, making sure everything is being done safely.”

Schweitzer also pushed aside suggestions that the meeting minutes from July 12, which were generated by a forestry group, meant outside resources should have been requested sooner. The request for federal assistance went out on July 5, he said, and discussions were underway internally for a provincial state of emergency that would eventually be declared on July 20.

“What we felt leading up to the decision by government to actually declare [the state of emergency] was we were getting access to all available resources. The state of emergency wasn't going to give us any necessarily increase or benefit because of the partnerships that we had already formed with the forest industry, with fire departments and local governments across the province and with the federal government in getting that military assistance. So we were satisfied that we were seeing those resources coming, the resources that were available,” Schweitzer said.

Forestry companies free to fight fires

The White Rock Lake wildfire was discovered on July 13, the day after the meeting between Schweitzer and the forest industry. There have been allegations that BCWS told forest crews and ranchers to stand down and not fight the fire at its outbreak. Schweitzer says that is simply not true, and nobody was ever told to stand down.

“And in fact, as we've seen throughout this season, myself personally has worked with the cattlemen to actually lean on and utilize the ranching community for their local knowledge, their local equipment to actually assist us in some of the wildfires, the same thing with the forest industry,” he said.

BCWS has previously said their initial attack team was on site 30 minutes after the fire was started.

Schweitzer explained that forestry companies do not need to get approval from the provincial government to fight a new wildfire start, and in fact, they are legally required to attempt to suppress any new starts within one kilometre of their logging operations.

Tolko told Castanet this week their crews have been involved in fighting the White Rock Lake, Sugar, Morgan, Mabel, McKinley, Big Stick, Deka and Canim fires.

“Along with coordinating activities for contractors and providing services like danger tree assessments, Woodlands staff have provided equipment like dozers, excavators, bunchers, and skidders,” Tolko said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the BC Council of Forest Industries said its members have been working closely with the government to suppress fires.

Schweitzer, meanwhile, is asking residents in fire ravaged regions to look out for each other.

"There has been a lot of impact, the fire season’s not over, and really we do want to see that level of empathy across the province for one another and our crews that are doing their best on the fire line.”

WILDFIRE MEMO
‘This memo is damning’: Kamloops MLA outraged over lack of firefighting resources

The Newcomb brothers stayed behind and have been putting out

hot spots around the White Rock Lake wildfire near Monte Lake

(Image Credit: Dan Newcomb)

By Chad Klassen

Aug 19, 2021 | 11:04 AM

KAMLOOPS — The provincial government is facing some serious questions after a leaked memo pointed to an extreme fire season and a lack of resources that wouldn’t be able to keep up.

It forced residents Dan Newcomb and his brother David to feel they needed to stay behind and work tirelessly to put out hot spots. They are working near Monte Lake on the White Rock Lake wildfire.

“We are running around doing spot fires. It’s really good today. After the rain, it really settled things down, but after [the B.C. Wildfire Service] did the backburn — we’re on the northeast end of the guard up Ivor Road — there was a lot more spot fires. We’ve had a lot of guys running around with totes putting things out,” said Newcomb.

They’ve been there basically since the fire ignited July 13. They felt they had no choice but to stay behind with what they felt was a lack of firefighting resources.

“There was no support to begin with. It’s been said many times, but in Paxton Valley there was no structural support. No one came through,” Dan noted.

So it’s no surprise to the Newcomb brothers that a memo sounded the alarm bells about a shortage of personnel and a warning about an extreme fire season.

The memo is dated July 12 — a day before the White Rock Lake fire started. It was written by a member of the forest industry after a conference call that included the B.C. Wildfire Service.

Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone feels it contradicts what the provincial government has been saying about being prepared for the fire season.

“The government has been spreading misinformation about the level of resources that have been made available to the B.C. Wildfire Service,” said Stone. “This memo is damning. It clearly states that the B.C. Wildfire Service does not have the firefighters they need, the equipment they need, the air support they need.”

Stone says it proves that Monte Lake and Paxton Valley residents were right to stay behind to fight the fire.

“People up there impacted have been made to feel like they’ve been irresponsible, that they don’t know what they’re talking about, that they’ve been making up stuff,” said Stone. “And it turns out that it’s actually the government — the Premier [John Horgan] and the Minister [Mike Farnworth] in particular — who have been doing exactly that.”

Stone says he hears from local contractors every week who have the equipment and are ready to help.

“Whether those are fire suppression systems, structural protection units, water curtain systems, similar to what saved, in part, Logan Lake,” said Stone.

Farnworth responded, “Over 1,000 contractors working on the fires in British Columbia, and to suggest the wildfire service has been leaving resouces idle in other provinces is simply false and not true.”

Meantime, the Newcomb brothers would love to be compensated for the equipment and water they’re using to keep the White Rock Lake fire from reigniting around Monte Lake.

BCWS has responded to the memo. We have reported on their response here.

Big Oil’s Foray Into Renewables Has Completely Changed The Market

By Irina Slav - Aug 19, 2021

That the oil and gas industry is problematic is perhaps too mild a way to put it. Fossil fuel producers have recently become the singular target of accusations and lawsuits from parties arguing that they are the only industry responsible for the effects of a changing climate. And now those same fossil fuel producers are coming after renewables. Big Oil is trying to green itself up, so it is bidding for wind farm construction tenders and buying other renewables assets. And in doing this, it is undermining the profit margins of renewable energy companies, Bloomberg’s Will Mathis recently wrote in an article.

There is a certain irony in the situation. Thanks to a surprisingly strong rebound in oil demand, Big Oil can afford to be generous with its wind and solar purchases and bids. On the other hand, devastating supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic have prompted price increases in a lot of commodities, including raw materials for solar panels, making the panels costlier as well.

Neither of these trends is Big Oil’s fault, and yet it is the industry benefiting from them. According to Mathis, however, it is Big Oil’s fault that Ørsted, for instance, reported lower financial results for the first half of the year.

According to the Danish turbine maker itself, however, the lower results were related to a 4-percent decline in electricity output, which was the result of lower average wind speeds in the period.

“Earnings from our offshore and onshore wind farms in operation were DKK 0.3 billion lower compared to the same period last year,” Ørsted said in its first-half report, released earlier this month. “The increased generation capacity from new wind farms in operation was more than offset by significantly lower wind speeds across our portfolio.”

Mathis also cited the other big Danish name in wind turbines, Vestas, as suffering from Big Oil’s foray into its turf. Vestas, however, blamed the effects of Covid-19 on its lower first-quarter results and then reported stronger results for the second quarter as demand for wind generation capacity continued strong.

Another company mentioned in the article that laments the entry of Big Oil into renewables is Siemens Gamesa. The company itself attributed its weaker performance earlier this year to “The sharp increase of raw material prices” as well as to “Increased estimates of ramp-up costs for the Siemens Gamesa 5.X platform, especially in Brazil.”

Now, there seems to be nothing easier than dumping the blame for everything that goes wrong in renewable energy onto Big Oil. When oil—and gas—is cheap, it is to blame for the lower uptake of EV and an overall feeling of discouragement in the adoption of wind and solar. When oil is expensive, it is expensive because of demand, and fills Big Oil’s coffers with cash that they can then use to encroach on renewable’s territory.

One would imagine that this is a reason for celebration—after all, with all that cash, Big Oil could do a lot to help the fast expansion of wind and solar generation capacity that the world is believed to need in order to avoid the worst of the climate change fallout. Yet, as Bloomberg’s Mathis notes, this intensifies competition in the space.

Competition should be the natural order of things, and rather than a reason for worry, it should be welcomed as a motivational push. This should be all the truer if the assertion Mathis makes—that “Green energy is now the cheapest source of electricity in most of the world”—reflects reality. Consumers are attracted to cheap things and willing to pay for a lot of them. This should be good for margins all around, even with Big Oil in the game.

Unfortunately, the “cheapest source of electricity” adage does not reflect reality to the extent that the authors who use it would like. It is a fact that the costs of wind and solar farms have declined dramatically over the last decade or so as technology improved and raw material costs fell due to abundant supply.

However, it is worth noting that both technologies are strongly reliant on government subsidies. China didn’t cancel wind and solar subsidies because it felt like it a couple of years ago. It canceled them because it could no longer afford to support those projects.

Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies, on the other hand, can afford to pay millions upon millions to beat competitors for new renewable energy projects. They are highly motivated, with shareholders, governments, and environmentalists looking over their shoulders at how they are tackling their carbon footprints. And however blasphemous it may sound to the ideologically inclined, they are partnering with renewables companies.

The thing about business is that it is not driven by ideology. Business is driven by the need to turn in a profit. Orsed, Vestas, and Siemens Gamesa know this, as do BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies. The influx of competitors in the wind and solar space is bound to sooner or later result in partnerships of mutual benefit. This would help Big Oil morph into Big Energy. Like it or not, it would be the natural way.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Geologists dig into Grand Canyon's mysterious gap in time

by University of Colorado at Boulder

A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder reveals the complex history behind one of the Grand Canyon's most well-known geologic features: A mysterious and missing gap of time in the canyon's rock record that covers hundreds of millions of years.

The research comes closer to solving a puzzle, called the "Great Unconformity," that has perplexed geologists since it was first described nearly 150 years ago.

Think of the red bluffs and cliffs of the Grand Canyon as Earth's history textbook, explained Barra Peak, lead author of the new study and a graduate student in geological sciences at CU Boulder. If you scale down the canyon's rock faces, you can jump back almost 2 billion years into the planet's past. But that textbook is also missing pages: In some areas, more than 1 billion years' worth of rocks have disappeared from the Grand Canyon without a trace.

Geologists want to know why.

"The Great Unconformity is one of the first well-documented geologic features in North America," Peak said. "But until recently, we didn't have a lot of constraints on when or how it occurred."

Now, she and her colleagues think they may be narrowing in on an answer in a paper published this month in the journal Geology. The team reports that a series of small yet violent faulting events may have rocked the region during the breakup of an ancient supercontinent called Rodinia. The resulting havoc likely tore up the earth around the canyon, causing rocks and sediment to wash away and into the ocean.

The team's findings could help scientists fill in missing pieces of what happened during this critical period for the Grand Canyon—today one of North America's foremost natural wonders.

"We have new analytical methods in our lab that allow us to decipher the history in the missing window of time across the Great Unconformity," said Rebecca Flowers, coauthor of the new study and a professor of geological sciences. "We are doing this in the Grand Canyon and at other Great Unconformity localities across North America."

Beautiful lines

It's a mystery that goes back a long way. John Wesley Powell, the namesake of today's Lake Powell, first saw the Great Unconformity during his famed 1869 expedition by boat down the rapids of the Colorado River.

Peak, who completed a similar research rafting trip through the Grand Canyon in spring 2021, said that the feature is stark enough that you can see it from the river.

"There are beautiful lines," Peak said. "At the bottom, you can see very clearly that there are rocks that have been pushed together. Their layers are vertical. Then there there's a cutoff, and above that you have these beautiful horizontal layers that form the buttes and peaks that you associate with the Grand Canyon."

The difference between those two types of rocks is significant. In the western part of the canyon toward Lake Mead, the basement stone is 1.4 to 1.8 billion years old. The rocks sitting on top, however, are just 520 million years old. Since Powell's voyage, scientists have seen evidence of similar periods of lost time at sites around North America.

"There's more than a billion years that's gone," Peak said. "It's also a billion years during an interesting part of Earth's history where the planet is transitioning from an older setting to the modern Earth we know today."

A continent splits

To explore the transition, Peak and her colleagues employed a method called "thermochronology," which tracks the history of heat in stone. Peak explained that, when geologic formations are buried deep underground, the pressure building on top of them can cause them to get toasty. That heat, in turn, leaves a trace in the chemistry of minerals in those formations.

Using this approach, the researchers conducted a survey of samples of rock collected from throughout the Grand Canyon. They discovered that the history of this feature may be more convoluted than scientists have assumed. In particular, the western half of the canyon and its eastern portion (the part that tourists are most familiar with) may have undergone different geologic contortions throughout time.

"It's not a single block with the same temperature history," Peak said.

Roughly 700 million years ago, basement rock in the west seems to have risen to the surface. In the eastern half, however, that same stone was under kilometers of sediment.

The difference likely came down to the breakup of Rodinia, a gigantic land mass that began to pull apart at about the same time, Peak said. The researchers results suggest that this major upheaval may have torn at the eastern and western halves of the Grand Canyon in different ways and at slightly different times—producing the Great Unconformity in the process.

Peak and her colleagues are now looking at other sites of the Great Unconformity in North America to see how general this picture might be. For now, she's excited to watch geologic history play out in one of the country's most picturesque landscapes.

"There are just so many things there that aren't present anywhere else," she said. "It's a really amazing natural lab."

Researchers dig into case of geologic amnesia

More information: B.A. Peak et al, Zircon (U-Th)/He thermochronology reveals pre-Great Unconformity paleotopography in the Grand Canyon region, USA, Geology (2021). DOI: 10.1130/G49116.1

Journal information: Geology

Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder

Judge throws out Trump-era approvals for Alaska oil project

Mark Thiessen and Becky Bohrer
The Associated PressStaff
Thursday, August 19, 2021

Drilling operations at the Doyon Rig 19 at the Conoco-Phillips Carbon location in the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska. (Judy Patrick / AP)

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA -- A federal judge on Wednesday threw out Trump administration approvals for a large planned oil project on Alaska's North Slope, saying the federal review was flawed and didn't include mitigation measures for polar bears.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage vacated permits for ConocoPhillips' Willow Project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in a 110-page ruling.

The Trump administration approved the project in late 2020, and the Biden administration defended the project in court.

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Rebecca Boys, a ConocoPhillips' spokesperson, said the company would review Gleason's decision "and evaluate the options available regarding this project."

Spokespersons for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Interior Department said their agencies had no comment. The Bureau of Land Management conducted the environmental review of the project that Gleason found flawed.

Conservation groups and Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, described as a grassroots organization, had challenged the adequacy of the review process.

Karlin Itchoak, Alaska director for The Wilderness Society, in a statement called the ruling "a step toward protecting public lands and the people who would be most negatively impacted by the BLM's haphazard greenlighting of the Willow project."

In October 2020, then-U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed the government's record of decision that called for allowing ConocoPhillips to establish up to three drill sites, associated processing facilities and gravel roads and pipelines on the North Slope.

Two more drill sites and additional roads and pipelines proposed by ConocoPhillips could be considered later, the Interior Department said at the time.

Bernhardt had said the decision would make a "significant contribution to keeping oil flowing" through the trans-Alaska pipeline system "decades into the future" and provide revenues. The Bureau of Land Management said the project could produce up to 160,000 barrels of oil a day with about 590 million barrels over 30 years.

More than 1,000 jobs were expected during peak construction and more than 400 jobs during operations, the agency's then-state director said.

Gleason said the land management agency's exclusion of foreign greenhouse gas emissions in its environment review was "arbitrary and capricious."

She also ruled the agency acted contrary to law to the extent it developed its "alternatives analysis based on the view that ConocoPhillips has the right to extract all possible oil and gas on its leases."

Gleason voided a report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for lacking specifics around mitigation measures for polar bears. The agency had concluded that the project "was not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of polar bears and not likely to result in the adverse modification of polar bear critical habitat," according to the ruling.

The Bureau of Land Management's reliance on that report was also flawed, Gleason said in sending the case back to the appropriate agencies for further action.

Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska program director for the Defenders of Wildlife, called the decision "a win for our climate, for imperiled species like polar bears, and for the local residents whose concerns have been ignored." She urged the Biden administration to examine alternatives to the project.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in a statement, said the ruling "from a federal judge trying to shelve a major oil project on American soil does one thing: outsources production to dictatorships & terrorist organizations."

He called the decision "horrible."

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