2020-30

Friday September 18, 2020

September 18, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday September 18, 2020

Ontario rolls back gathering limits in some areas as 293 new COVID-19 cases reported

June 9, 2020

Ontario is rolling back gathering limits in some areas of the province and also implementing new fines for people who host and attend large gatherings during the pandemic, Premier Doug Ford announced Thursday.

This comes as the province reported 293 new cases of COVID-19. Infections in Ontario have been on an upswing since mid-August.

Ford said that starting Friday in Toronto, Ottawa and Peel region, gatherings are now limited to 25 people outdoors and 10 indoors. Those new caps don’t extend to places such as restaurants, movie theatres, banquet halls, gyms and convention centres.

May 29, 2020

Ford said that the new gathering limits don’t apply to those areas or to schools, because those places have “really strict protocols in place.”

“We’re comparing apples and oranges here,” Ford said. Instead, the new measures are meant to discourage things like parties.

The premier said the province is also instituting a minimum fine of $10,000 for the organizers of illegal social gatherings, as well as a $750 fine for people who show up to them.

“We will throw the book at you if you break the rules,” Ford said. 

“They must be a few fries short of a happy meal, these people.” (CBC) 

Meanwhile, In response to “ridiculous”  lineups of people waiting to be assessed for COVID-19, Premier Doug Ford said on Tuesday that Ontario residents may soon be able to get tested at local pharmacies. This also prompted Mayor John Tory to call for hours at assessment centres to be extended. (Blog TO) 

 

Thursday September 17, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 17, 2020

U.S. calls off tariffs on Canadian aluminum — for now

The United States hit the pause button on tariffs on Canadian aluminum today, agreeing to withdraw current penalties — at least until after the presidential election in November.

November 21, 2019

The move came right as Canada was set to impose a wide range of retaliatory measures that would have hit some politically inconvenient targets for President Donald Trump as he seeks re-election.

Ottawa was planning to reveal its targets for retaliation at 3 p.m. ET today. Shortly after noon, however, the U.S. abruptly declared it would drop its recently imposed 10 per cent import tax on Canadian aluminum — and revisit the issue every month.

That doesn’t mean the conflict is over. In making the announcement, the U.S. unilaterally set monthly targets for the volume of aluminum imports it will accept from Canada without a tariff.

Those targets set by the U.S. take effect in September. The U.S. said it will monitor export volumes six weeks after the end of every month — which punts the issue to mid-November, right after the Nov. 3 presidential election.

May 24, 2019

A Washington trade expert who worked in the Obama White House said it appears the Trump administration wanted to postpone a politically risky fight.

According to Canadian officials, the list of retaliatory tariffs Canada was preparing to impose Tuesday would have struck the very Ohio washing-machine plant where Trump announced his levy on cross-border aluminum.

“I think the threat the Canadian government made of retaliation was credible,” said Chad Bown, a trade official in the Obama White House and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“[It had] the potential to hurt some of President Trump’s voters.”

The federal government welcomed the U.S. decision — but warned it’s still prepared to impose retaliatory measures if necessary. (CBC) 

 

Wednesday September 16, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 16, 2020

Wildfires and weather extremes: It’s not coincidence, it’s climate change

Right on the heels of arguably the West Coast’s most intense heat wave in modern history comes the most ferocious flare-up of catastrophic wildfires in recent memory. Meanwhile, just a few hundred miles east, a 60-degree temperature drop over just 18 hours in Wyoming and Colorado was accompanied by an extremely rare late-summer dumping of up to 2 feet of snow.

July 14, 2020

It’s not coincidence, it’s climate change. 

These kinds of dystopian weather events, happening often at the same time, are exactly what scientists have been warning about for decades. While extreme weather is a part of the natural cycle, the recent uptick in the ferocity and frequency of these extremes, scientists say, is evidence of an acceleration of climate impacts, some of which were underestimated by climate computer models.

“This is yet another example of where uncertainty is not our friend,” says Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State. “As we learn more, we are finding that many climate change impacts, including these sorts of extreme weather events, are playing out faster and with greater magnitude than our models predicted.”

July 21, 2020

On Wednesday NOAA released its latest State of the Climate Report, which finds that just during the month of August the U.S. was hit by four different billion-dollar disasters: two hurricanes, huge wildfires and an extraordinary Midwest derecho.

Just one such extreme event can strain emergency resources — a situation West Coast firefighters find themselves in now. However, in two dramatic cases this summer, the nation was hit simultaneously with concurrent catastrophes, some of which had no precedent in modern history. It’s a concept scientists call compound events, and it is necessary to factor these confluences into future projections to properly estimate risk, response and resources.

In mid-August the West suffered through an extended heat wave which saw Death Valley surge to 130 degrees, the hottest temperature ever reliably measured on Earth. The tinderbox conditions caused by the heat, along with a rare lightning outbreak, sparked the first round of major wildfires in California this season, escalating into three of the four largest fires in state history. At about the same time a powerful derecho caused billions of dollars in damage in Iowa and Illinois, and Hurricane Laura plowed into the Gulf Coast of Louisiana as a Category 4 with 150 mph winds and 16 feet of storm surge. (Continued: CBS News) 

 

Tuesday September 15, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 15, 2020

In ‘Hoax,’ Brian Stelter Ventures Where No Author Has Gone Before

Aside from a vague sense that time is now divided into “before the pandemic” and “during the pandemic,” it’s hard to have perspective on the events of the past six months. Brian Stelter’s “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth” is among the first books to explore where we are now — and it’s certainly the first to examine how the president’s preferred news source played a role in the dissemination of misinformation about coronavirus.

August 7, 2020

“Fox’s longest-tenured medical analyst, Dr. Marc Siegel, told Hannity on March 6, ‘at worst, at worst, worst case scenario, it could be the flu,’” writes Stelter, who is CNN’s chief media correspondent, in the book’s prologue. “This was shockingly irresponsible stuff — and Fox executives knew it, because by the beginning of March, they were taking precautions that belied Siegel’s just-the-flu statement. The network canceled a big event for hundreds of advertisers, instituted deep cleanings of the office and began to put a work-from-home plan in place. Yet Fox’s stars kept sending mixed messages to millions of viewers.”

In a phone interview, Stelter explained how he became interested in the president’s relationship with Fox because “it’s the only story of the Trump years that’s left.” He said, “It’s not as if Trump is addicted to the best-researched, most in-depth, meticulously sourced material in the world. If he were, we’d all be better off, right?” The book was late — “I had blown through deadlines” — so, “come February and March, we realized that the pandemic was an essential part of the story because of Fox’s downplaying the disease and President Trump’s failures early on.”

January 24, 2017

“Hoax,” now in its second week on the hardcover nonfiction list, was originally called “Wingmen” because “Trump has wingmen, like Sean Hannity,” Stelter said. “My editor gets all the credit for the title. In this war on truth we are all living in, ‘hoax’ is a potent, malicious, ugly little word and Trump has been using it more every year. So has Fox.”

Stelter has been “over the moon” about the response to the book: “I keep hearing from readers who say ‘Hoax’ helps them understand their own family a little bit better. There are so many families that are divided by Fox and Trump. I think a lot of people have been surprised by just how deep and how corrupt the roots are — how there’s been collusion between Fox and Trump right in plain sight the whole time, and yet it’s not often recognized.” (NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/books/review/brian-stelter-hoax.html

Meanwhile, The president visited California after weeks of silence on its wildfires and blamed the crisis only on poor forest management, not climate change. “I don’t think science knows” what is happening, he said. (NYT) 

 

Saturday September 12, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday September 12, 2020

How will Covid-19 affect Christmas 2020?

October 29, 2019

Premier Doug Ford says that the thought of children heading out trick or treating next month amid a global pandemic makes him “nervous” but he is cautioning residents that a lot can still change between now and Halloween.

Speaking with reporters during his daily COVID-19 briefing on Thursday, Ford said that it is too early to make a decision about what will be done about Halloween in Ontario but he conceded that the idea of trick or treating does worry him.

“Let’s play it by ear and see what happens over the next month-and-a-half but it makes me nervous, kids going door-to-door with this. I would prefer not to,” he said. (CTV) 

Meanwhile, with the coronavirus pandemic having already led to so many of 2020’s planned events and celebrations being shelved, there’s now concern that it could also ruin Christmas, amid fresh restrictions being imposed on gatherings in England.

August 6, 2020

New rules banning gatherings of more than six people are set to come into force from September 14, with Chris Whitty warning that the rules won’t be changing in the next few weeks – which could potentially impact those festive family get-togethers and parties.

Although Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said he ‘hopes’ they can turn things around before Christmas, Dr Hilary Jones has warned that this year’s festive season will ‘not happen unless we change what we are doing’. 

So could Christmas really be cancelled courtesy of Covid this year – and just how much of an impact will the virus have on the festivities?

Like most of the other festivals which have taken place in the shadow of the pandemic – including Ramadan, Eid and Passover – Christmas will of course happen on December 25 this year as usual.

And while Covid might not stop you from putting up your tree, tucking into your turkey dinner, watching those festive movies or listening to Merry Christmas Everybody on a never-ending loop, there are other aspects of the festive season which will almost certainly feel the impact. 

Here’s what a Covid-19 Christmas might look like this year.

December 18, 2019

Festive celebrations in December are as big a part of Christmas as the big day itself – but these are likely to be under threat this year unless the rules on gatherings of more than six people are lifted before the festive season rolls around.

Have pantomimes been cancelled? Oh yes they have. Theatres across the UK have shelved plans for their usual festive pantos this year.

What about a trip to Santa’s grotto? Well that might be off the cards too – Harrods have said on their website, for example, that their traditional grotto won’t be happening this year (but that they will be announcing Covid-safe festive plans very soon)

December 18, 2018

That doesn’t mean grottos are off the cards completely – even if your little ones have to keep their distance and Santa has to don a face mask.

Dr Atkinson explained: ‘Santa’s Grotto will be a socially distanced affair. So sitting on Santa’s lap isn’t likely, because it is likely to put children, but moreover Santa, at increased risk of transmission.

The day itself dawns, and you’re normally looking forward to a big family gathering with everybody round the table for lunch before curling up in front of festive telly. But with gatherings restricted to six people – and the possibility that could extend beyond Christmas – could that trip to see the folks be out this year?

2021 may seem like a long way off still, but no sooner is Christmas done and dusted than New Year celebrations come along – but we can expect them to be a bit more muted than usual this year. (Metro UK)