COVID vaccine announcement, Trudeau visits Winnipeg : In The News for Sept. 1

The new shots under review by Health Canada, called bivalent vaccines, are designed to recognize specific mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron BA.1 subvariant.

The United Kingdom approved Moderna’s bivalent vaccine two weeks ago, and the United States Food and Drug Administration gave Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s Omicron-fighting shots the green light earlier this week.

Canada has already purchased 12 million doses of Moderna’s version of the Omicron vaccine, which includes converting some existing orders for the original Moderna vaccine so that the newly-adapted version will be delivered instead.

Health officials have organized a technical briefing this morning, and Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos is expected to speak to the importance of getting a booster shot this afternoon.

Duclos has already signalled that a swift rollout of the vaccines will be important to fend off another potentially large wave of infections in the fall.

The Omicron variant arrived in Canada in late 2021 and has spread aggressively ever since. Subvariants of Omicron are now by far the most common strains of the virus.

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Also this …

The trial of an RCMP employee accused of breaching Canada’s secrecy law has been delayed a year after a new defence lawyer took on his case.

An eight-week judge and jury trial for Cameron Jay Ortis had been slated to begin next week.

Ortis was taken into custody Sept. 12, 2019, for allegedly revealing secrets to an unnamed recipient and planning to give additional classified information to an unspecified foreign entity.

The former head of the RCMP’s National Intelligence Co-ordination Centre is charged with violating the Security of Information Act.

Ortis, 50, had been represented by Ian Carter, but Carter was appointed as an Ontario Superior Court judge earlier this year.

The Public Prosecution Service of Canada says the trial was adjourned at the request of Jon Doody, the new lawyer for Ortis, and will now begin Oct. 2, 2023.

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And this too …

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to visit Winnipeg today and meet with Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson.

Stefanson’s Progressive Conservatives have been working with the federal government on several fronts, including a recent agreement to upgrade the rail line to Churchill in the province’s north.

However, there are also points of contention.

Stefanson has asked the federal government to temporarily suspend its carbon tax in order to help people deal with inflation.

She has also criticized the federal government’s plan to cut fertilizer emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.

While in Winnipeg, Trudeau is also scheduled to meet with students at the Université de Saint-Boniface and parents at a children’s centre.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

DETROIT _ About two in 10 U.S. adults say they or someone close to them has had a personal experience with gun violence, according to a recent poll that shows Black and Hispanic adults are especially likely to have had their lives touched by gun violence.

The poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 54 per cent of Black Americans and 27 per cent of Hispanic Americans reported that they or a close friend or family member experienced gun violence in the last five years, compared with of 13 per cent of white Americans. Overall, 21 per cent of U.S. adults reported a personal tie to gun violence, such as being threatened by a gun or being a victim of a shooting.

The survey was conducted after a stretch of mass shootings across the U.S., from a grocery store in New York, an elementary school in Texas and a Fourth of July parade in Illinois _ along with a smattering of incidents of gun violence in cities across the U.S. that don’t always make national news but leave local communities on edge.

Professor Jens Ludwig, who is director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, said the one in five people with a friend or family member who was a victim of violence was a “strikingly high number.”

It shows that those who experience gun violence “aren’t the only victims,” he said.

Ludwig compared the way gun violence affects entire communities to the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the people who died or became very ill from COVID-19 weren’t the only ones affected; kids were kept home from school, businesses closed, and people couldn’t see loved ones.

The same is true with gun violence, Ludwig said. “People are changing the way they live,” he said.

While most Americans say they feel gun violence has increased countrywide and in their states, 59 per cent of Black Americans and 45 per cent of Hispanics said that gun violence is on the rise in their communities, compared with 34 per cent of white Americans. Similarly, people living in urban areas are more likely to say gun violence is rising in their communities than those in suburban or rural areas, 51 per cent to 39 per cent to 27 per cent.

That is in line with recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data has shown a spike in gun violence since the pandemic, with gun-related homicides increasing across the country in large and small metro areas and in rural areas. The data found Black people are disproportionately impacted by gun violence and are more likely to be the victims of gun crimes or homicides.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka _ The International Monetary Fund said Thursday it has reached a staff-level agreement with Sri Lanka to provide $2.9 billion over four years to help salvage the country from its economic crisis.

An IMF team visiting Sri Lanka said in a statement that the preliminary agreement is subject to approval from the agency’s management and executive board “contingent on the implementation by the authorities of prior actions, and on receiving financing assurances from Sri Lanka’s official creditors and making a good-faith effort to reach a collaborative agreement with private creditors.”

Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in recent memory with acute shortages of essentials like fuel, medicines and food because of serious foreign currency shortages.

The island nation has suspended repayment of nearly $7 billion in foreign debt due for this year. The country’s total foreign debt amounts to more than $51 billion of which $ 28 billion has to be repaid by 2028.

The IMF said Sri Lanka’s economy is expected to contract by 8.7 per cent and inflation has exceeded 60 per cent.

“Against this backdrop, the authorities’ program, supported by the Fund, would aim to stabilize the economy, protect the livelihoods of the Sri Lankan people, and prepare the ground for economic recovery and promoting sustainable and inclusive growth,” it said.

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On this day in 1995 …

Paul Bernardo was convicted of first-degree murder in the sex-slayings of Ontario schoolgirls Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. A jury also found him guilty of seven other charges, including kidnapping and sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison.

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In entertainment …

Avril Lavigne tapped into her trademark teenage angst on Wednesday as she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Napanee, Ont.-native became the latest entertainment industry personality to receive a star on a stretch of sidewalk that runs down Hollywood Boulevard.

The career benchmark came as the 37-year-old toasts the 20th anniversary of her debut album “Let Go,” which launched her career with the single “Complicated” and memorable hits “Sk8er Boi” and “I’m With You.”

Lavigne’s public ceremony was attended by Colson Baker, better known as singer Machine Gun Kelly, who told his tour mate she was “an inspiration for a generation of kids” like himself.

The pop-punk singer opened her speech by revealing a blown-up photograph of her 16-year-old self at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The photo showed the adolescent aspiring singer laying across the sidewalk beside one of the celebrity stars while dressed in a hoodie emblazoned with “skateboarding is not a crime.”

The eight-time Grammy nominee proclaimed she was channelling “good luck and good vibes” as she slipped into what appeared to be the same hoodie.

“Today I love making music more than ever. I feel so inspired,” she said, thanking her family and her fiance Derek Smith, who performs as rapper Mod Sun.

Lavigne said she hopes her star will inspire the next small-town 16-year-old who “comes to Hollywood one day full of hopes and dreams.”

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Did you see this?

A University of Calgary scientist is hoping his three-year study will be able to determine whether the planet Mars was ever capable of supporting life.

Ben Tutolo began his research earlier this year and is using data from the Curiosity rover that has been exploring the Red Planet for the past decade.

The Canadian Space Agency, as part of the NASA-led Mars Science Laboratory mission, is funding the research.

Tutolo says the mission is to determine if the ancient environment on Mars was ultimately able to be inhabited by living organisms.

He says the rover is equipped with multiple analyzers that can determine the chemistry and mineralogy, and has been sending a steady stream of data.

Tutolo says the geological evidence also shows that the oldest rocks in the crater are from a river-fed lake that contained water, but was saturated with magnesium sulphate.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 1, 2022.

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

COVID vaccine announcement, Trudeau visits Winnipeg : In The News for Sept. 1

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