In 2006, Canadian downhill mountain bike racer Danika Schroeter found out the hard way what happens to female athletes when they protest against unfair policies in sports.
Standing on the podium following a race won by transgender biker Michelle Dumaresq — Canadian women’s champion in 2003, 2004 and 2006, amongst other triumphs — Schroeter received her silver medal in silence, but everyone present could see the Sharpie-drawn message on her t-shirt: “100% Pure Woman CHAMP 2006.”
It’s been more than two months since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government will announce “in the coming weeks” its decision on whether to ban Chinese telecom giant Huawei from Canada’s 5G network. But as Ottawa drags its feet on a decision, reports on Huawei’s alleged espionage activities continue to mount.
Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s graduate school of public and international affairs, says the decision to ban Huawei is a no-brainer, considering the “overwhelming evidence” that Huawei equipment has been used to spy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) around the world.
US President Joe Biden’s willingness to appease Russia over its aggressive conduct towards Ukraine is threatening to create deep divisions within the NATO alliance — a result that would doubtless delight Russian President Vladimir Putin. NATO was created specifically as a collective defense against potential Russian aggression.
With an estimated 100,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border, Western leaders have sought to present a united front to dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.
There is mounting concern among Western intelligence services, which is also shared by the Ukrainian government, that the presence of a well-armed Russian battlegroup close to the Ukrainian border indicates that Moscow could launch a full-scale invasion as soon as next month.
Six people, including four women, have been killed in Syria’s Al Hol camp for displaced persons by ISIS in December, a British-based war monitor group said on Sunday.
The camp, which is controlled by the Kurdish-led autonomous administration in north-eastern Syria, houses about 62,000 displaced persons, including relatives of ISIS fighters.
I’m fine with them turning on each other.
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 12,000 military service members refusing the COVID-19 vaccine are seeking religious exemptions, and so far they are having zero success.
That total lack of approvals is creating new tensions within the military, even as the vast majority of the armed forces have gotten vaccinated.
The services, urgently trying to keep the coronavirus pandemic in check by getting troops vaccinated, are now besieged with exemption requests they are unlikely to approve. Meanwhile, troops claiming religious reasons for avoiding the shots are perplexed because exemptions are theoretically available, yet seem impossible to obtain.
TORONTO (AP) — Quebec announced Monday that it is closing bars, cinemas, gyms and spas because of a record number of coronavirus cases in the Canadian province. Sporting events will be closed to spectators.
Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé also said restaurants must close by 10 p.m. nightly.
The new measures come on top of last week’s decision to restrict restaurants and bars to 50% capacity.
Last week Vox published a piece which argued we all needed to take a break from capitalism because the world is ending. The author of that piece, Anna North, also described present reality as “the apocalypse.” That seemed a bit overwrought to me but today Freddie deBoer argues it’s just one example of a recent trend. He also points to this recent piece at the Atlantic titled “I’m Starting to Give Up on Post-pandemic Life.”
Photos of beheadings, extremist propaganda and violent hate speech related to Islamic State and the Taliban were shared for months within Facebook groups over the past year despite the social networking giant’s claims it had increased efforts to remove such content.
The posts — some tagged as “insightful” and “engaging” via new Facebook tools to promote community interactions — championed the Islamic extremists’ violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, including videos of suicide bombings and calls to attack rivals across the region and in the West, according to a review of social media activity between April and December. At least one of the groups contained more than 100,000 members.
This is hilarious. BCF’s fan page constantly has photos hidden by FB because they may upset “community members.”
Hold the caviar and put the mink back in the closet.
Davos is dead, again. The glitzy and eagerly awaited World Economic Forum annual meeting scheduled for the Swiss mountain resort on Jan. 17-21 has been shelved for the second year in a row, replaced by a series of online discussions.
Alec Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, were pulled over by police in the Hamptons Saturday — two days after investigators issued a search warrant for the embattled actor’s cellphone, photos show.
Baldwin, 63, was photographed sitting inside the car while Hilaria, 37, spoke with a cop on the side of the road before pulling out her phone and showing the screen.
El Shafee Elsheikh has alleged he was tortured into confessing to crimes.
A British former member of the Islamic State has sought to minimize his role in the captivity of journalists and aid workers, several of whom were killed. But in 2018, court records show he told Department of Defense investigators he was intimately involved in ransom negotiations and privy to details of some hostages’ deaths.
El Shafee Elsheikh, who is facing a January trial in Alexandria federal court, is accused of being part of a notorious quartet of ISIS hostage-takers, known as “The Beatles” because of their British accents.
The man who beheaded some of those hostages in horrific propaganda videos, Mohammed Emwazi, died in a drone strike in 2015. Conspirator Alexanda Kotey has pleaded guilty in Alexandria federal court. A third is imprisoned in Turkey. Elsheikh’s trial will be the first and possibly last time much of the evidence against the group is aired in public.
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s main nurses’ union warned Monday that exhaustion and surging coronavirus cases among medical staff are pushing them to the breaking point, adding to pressure on the government for new restrictions to curb record numbers of infections driven by the omicron variant.
The warning throws into stark relief the unpalatable choice Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces: wreck holiday plans for millions for a second year running, or face a potential tidal wave of cases and disruption.
Many governments in Europe and the U.S. are confronting similar dilemmas over how hard to come down in the face of omicron, which appears more transmissible than the previous delta variant that itself led to surges in many parts of the world. Early evidence suggests omicron may also produce less serious illness — though scientists caution it is too soon to say — and that it could better evade vaccine protection.
Pfizer Inc. funded presentations to Canadian health professionals earlier this year that claimed rival COVID-19 vaccines could cause cancer and were inappropriate for immunocompromised people, claims that experts say were not true.
The federal Conservatives say they will not launch a bid to resurrect a parliamentary committee that probed Canada-China relations for more than eighteen months.
In December, 2019, Conservative MP Erin O’Toole, before he became leader of his party, spearheaded a motion in the Commons to establish the special Committee on Canada-China relations. It was created over the objections of the governing Liberals and with the support of the Bloc Québécois and NDP.
At the time, Mr. O’Toole as the party’s foreign-affairs critic said: “The challenge of the China relationship is the foreign-policy challenge that Canada will face over the next generation.”
Seems odd for a party that claims China interfered in the last election costing the conservatives seats. I guess he doesn’t want to upset the China vote.
