The great debate and doctor politics; In-The-News for Oct. 7

The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh and the Greens’ Elizabeth May appear to be fighting for third place, both looking to pick up seats especially on the West Coast.

The Bloc Quebecois’ Yves-Francois Blanchet has little to gain or lose in front of a national audience primarily of English-speakers, while the People’s Party’s Maxime Bernier is counting on the national debates to introduce himself as a populist alternative to the major parties.

This is the first of two debates taking place this week in a theatre at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que, with a French-language version coming Thursday.

Voters go the polls on Oct. 21.

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Also this …

VANCOUVER – A group of doctors that’s calling on all federal political parties to take action on climate change now has support from four major organizations including the Canadian Medical Association — and 19 more groups are joining the effort this week.

Family doctor Melissa Lem is on the board of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and says health professionals are increasingly advocating for a commitment from parties to limit global warming while others push for better policies on issues including gun violence.

Lem’s environmental association has met with representatives of all the major federal political parties, except for the Conservatives who formally declined discussions.

She says health professionals are on the front lines treating multiple harms based on government policies and they’re combining their scientific knowledge with activism in an effort to improve their patients’ health.

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What you may have missed …

Inuit are hoping to use the alphabet to help keep their far-flung people together.

Canada’s national Inuit organization recently decided on a standard way to write their language that could be understood from Inuvik in the northern corner of the Northwest Territories to Nain on the east edge of Labrador. The new orthography replaces a patchwork of nine different, often mutually unintelligible scripts.

“We’ve never done this before,” said Natan Obed of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. “It’s the first time we’re exercising our own self-determination to implement our own writing system.”

Before European contact, Inuktut was an entirely oral language. Nobody needed to read or write anything down until the 1700s, when missionaries, government workers and businessmen started showing up.

Those groups all worked out different ways of translating the sounds of spoken Inuktut into symbols on a page, which they then taught to the Inuit.

The orthographic hodge-podge has not only made it harder for Inuit kids to get educational material in their own language, it makes it harder to communicate between the Inuvialuit in the west, the Nunatsiavut in the east and all the groups in between.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

WASHINGTON – The disclosure of a second whistleblower threatens to undermine arguments made by U.S. President Donald Trump and his allies that a whistleblower complaint was improperly filed because it was largely based on secondhand information.

Attorney Mark Zaid told The Associated Press in a text message Sunday that the second whistleblower, who also works in intelligence, has spoken to the intelligence community’s internal watchdog. This person hasn’t filed a complaint but does have “firsthand knowledge that supported” the original whistleblower.

Trump has rejected the accusations he did anything improper.

The original whistleblower, a CIA officer, filed a formal complaint with the inspector general on Aug. 12 that triggered the impeachment inquiry being led by House Democrats.

The complaint alleged Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 election.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

BEIRUT – U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces in Syria say American troops have begun withdrawing from areas along Turkey’s border.

This comes hours after the White House said U.S. forces in northeastern Syria will move aside and clear the way for an expected Turkish assault — essentially abandoning Kurdish fighters who fought alongside American forces in the yearslong battle to defeat the Islamic State group.

The Syrian Democratic Forces say the move comes as Turkey is preparing to attack Kurdish-held areas in northeast Syria.

The statement warns the Turkish invasion would be a blow to the fight against IS militants.

The Kurdish Hawar news agency and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also say American troops were evacuating positions near the towns of Ras al-Ayn and Tal Abyad on Monday.

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The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

The great debate and doctor politics; In-The-News for Oct. 7

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