immigrantscanada.com

Independent topical source of current affairs, opinion and issues, featuring stories making news in Canada from immigrants, newcomers, minorities & ethnic communities' point of view and interests.

bymike adams: After 16 seasons battling it out on the basketball court with some of the best professional athletes in the world, the former Indiana Pacer understands just how much the human body can withstand before it starts to break, according to NOW Magazine. Throughout his career, Harrington endured a number of injuries, some of which threatened to bring his game to an end. ByMike Adams Published on May 15, 2020 Share Tweet Comment Al Harrington is no stranger to pain. But it was only after he discovered the healing benefits of cannabidiol CBD that his attitude toward recovery changed. These operations produce a variety of medical marijuana products, such as live resins and CBD cream, for both athletes and the average citizen living with chronic pain. Harrington has since spun his appreciation for cannabis into an entrepreneurial slam dunk with his companies Viola Extracts and Harrington Wellness. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

carbon price: Yet their constitutional challenge failed, according to National Observer. And though they bray at redoubled volume about an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, odds are low that they will succeed there either. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe was supported in court by premiers Doug Ford of Ontario, Blaine Higgs of New Brunswick, and Jason Kenney of Alberta; all bellowed that they were going to win. The Saskatchewan Court's decision was split. This 3-2 split is not what it seems. Three judges found that the law creating the federal carbon price is fully constitutional under Parliament's power to make laws for Peace, Order and Good Government, or POGG. The other two judges dissented, finding it unconstitutional. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

hospital system: Still, it acknowledged that VA Secretary Robert Wilkie had wrongly asserted publicly without evidence that the drug had shown benefit on younger veterans, according to CTV. The VA, the nation's largest hospital system, also agreed more study was needed on the safety and effectiveness of the drug and suggested its use was now limited to extenuating circumstances, such as last-ditch efforts to save a coronavirus-stricken patient's life. In responses provided to Congress and obtained by The Associated Press, the VA said never encouraged or discouraged its government-run hospitals in any way to use the drug hydroxychloroquine on patients even as President Donald Trump heavily touted it for months without scientific evidence. In the first week of May, 17 patients had received the drug for COVID-19, according to VA data obtained by The Associated Press. VA has not endorsed nor discouraged the use of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients and has left those decisions to providers and their patients, the VA said. The department declined to say how many patients had been treated with hydroxychloroquine for the coronavirus since the start of the virus outbreak in January, but a recent analysis of VA hospital data showed that hundreds of veterans had taken it by early April. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

video referencing: In 2018, he ran for mayor of Mississauga, Canada's sixth largest city, and finished in second place with 13.5 percent of the vote, according to National Observer. He has also created videos targeting Muslim leaders in government including Liberal MP Iqra Khalid and worked with Rebel Media. Kevin Johnston is a 47-year-old man who runs the Freedom Report a network of sites that frequently shared anti-Muslim views. Full disclosure he has also made a video referencing this reporter. That same year he was charged with a hate crime after a lengthy investigation into numerous incidents reported to police involving him and the information he spreads on his social media. In 2017, he offered a 1,000 prize to anyone who could send him a video of Muslim students praying in high schools, so he could put a stop to it. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

border restrictions: Or he would stay with Safari and their two Canadian-born children -- ages four and nine -- in Windsor, where she works as a hotel guest services superviser and a personal trainer, according to CTV. Newsletter sign-up Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox Darden has been living a cross-border life throughout his relationship with Safari, easily travelling back and forth between the nearby cities each week. Either he would hunker down just across the way in Detroit, where he works at a casino and has family, including his mother and his 18-year-old daughter. But with border restrictions in place, he stayed with Safari and their two young kids who need him the most right now. It's definitely not easy seeing families torn apart, Safari says. Plus, his teenage daughter in Detroit would be better able to understand the situation. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

mulroney government: The last great fight of Macdonald's life had been to sustain the National Policy and to block the Liberal Party's drive for a renewal of reciprocity or commercial union with the United States, according to Rabble. The 1988 federal election campaign pitted multinational and Canadian business on one side against trade unions, social movements and much of Canadian civil society on the other. It is ironic that the party's final electoral victory was in aid of the implementation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement that had been negotiated between the Mulroney government and the Reagan Administration. The Liberals and the NDP declared that, if elected, they would tear up the FTA; the Conservatives committed themselves to implementing the free trade deal if they were returned to office. Under the nation's first-past-the-post electoral system, however, the Conservatives won a majority of seats in the House of Commons and the Canada-U.S. FTA came into effect on January 1, 1989. In the election, between them, the Liberals and the NDP won 53 per cent of the votes cast by Canadians, while the Conservatives won 43 per cent of the popular vote. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

rwanda years: Josephat Gichuki, the tenant in this threadbare home, calls to ask if I have heard the news, according to Rabble. We talk now and again, our conversations mostly prompted by the slightest of wisps of news about Rwanda's octogenarian outlaw. Download PDFPrint Article May 16th, 2020 1 43 pm News of the arrest in Paris, France of Felicien Kabuga, the man long accused of funding the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda 26 years ago, has now reached a one bedroomed house in Pangani estate, Nakuru, Kenya. Today I can hear excitement underneath his drawl. I am very very happy. I ask to interview him on his thoughts and call back eight minutes later. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

albanian separatists: The 1998-1999 war left more than 10,000 people dead and 6,500 missing, according to CTV. Forensic scientists are still searching for hidden graves. At the time, an armed uprising by ethnic Albanian separatists had led to a bloody Serb crackdown, an international humanitarian crisis and a NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo, then a Serbian province. Hasani, 74, keeps four pictures always close to his heart, one for each of his missing sons. It's been almost 21 years, but their father has not lost hope of seeing them again. Fadil, then 32, Gazmend who was 24, Armend, age 20, and 15-year-old Hasan were seized on June 8, 1999, the day before Serbia signed a deal with NATO to withdraw from Kosovo. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

costume party: While conservation scientists have sounded the alarm for decades, for many politicians and many voters the concept of climate change remains too abstract and too obscure a possibility, for political strategists and corporations focused on short-term goals and actions that increase electability and/or profitability -- to take on with any real gusto, according to National Observer. And yet, even if countries don't appear prepared to tackle global warning, it hasn't stopped many of them from actively preparing for one of its major and dire consequences climate refugees. Perhaps nothing can better illustrate the mass denial that climate change seems to engender in the West than so much focus on a costume party for the rich while the world around us is burning. And according to author and journalist Todd Miller they're preparing for it in the worst way possible not by attempting to mitigate and tackle the root causes, but with increased militarization and tougher immigration policies. Author Todd Miller says countries are preparing for climate-driven migration with increased militarization and tougher immigration policies. Instead of coming together, the world is tragically turning more inward. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

family cooking: Scarborough has some wonderful food, and our student body at the Scarborough campus is just amazingly diverse, says Jeffrey Pilcher, a professor who adds that much of the work done through Culinaria is student-led, according to NOW Magazine. We just turn them loose to research the stuff they know their own family cooking, the restaurants they go to. Do the origins of biryani or the international migration of the pork bun sound like research you could sink your teeth into That's just some of the work being done at the University of Toronto, Scarborough UTSC 's Culinaria Research Centre, said to be the largest food studies research centre in North America. What they come back with is oftentimes really quite amazing. The growth of the program has also been driven by increasing student interest. A food studies minor program launched at UTSC in 2016, and Pilcher says a major will hopefully soon follow. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

photovoltaic panels: Those talking points include the assertion that solar power is wildly inefficient, something director Jeff Gibbs demonstrates by visiting a solar farm in Michigan where photovoltaic panels convert just under 8 percent of the energy in sunlight to electricity, according to National Observer. But that efficiency rating is, as the photovoltaic-focused publication PV Magazine puts it, from another solar era Today's typical silicon solar panels operate at around 22 percent efficiency. Following the release of Planet of the Humans, the controversial new climate change documentary executive produced by Michael Moore, fossil fuel backed climate denial groups are bashing wind and solar power with renewed vigor, regurgitating the film's flawed, ancient talking points about the supposed poor performance and unreliability of these energy sources. And a new crystalline material called perovskite could soon raise the solar efficiency bar much further. But even the best semiconductors only capture a fraction of the light that strikes them. Solar photovoltaic cells the individual units that form a solar panel, like the shingles on a roof are wafer-like devices made of materials called semiconductors that are capable of converting sunlight to electrical energy. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

prevention measures: Local health coordinator Abu Toha Bhuiyan said the two refugees had been put into isolation, and authorities stepped up prevention measures and were scaling up testing, according to CTV. Newsletter sign-up Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox In early April authorities imposed a complete lockdown on the surrounding Cox's Bazar district after a number of cases, restricting all traffic in and out of the camps. Health experts have been warning for some time that the virus could race through the sprawling, unsanitary camps that have been home to the refugees since they fled a military offensive in Myanmar more than two years ago. Bangladesh authorities also forced aid organisations to slash their camp presence by 80 percent. The first coronavirus case was confirmed in Bangladesh in early March, and the pandemic has since worsened with at least 283 people dead and nearly 19,000 infected -- figures some experts say are highly under-reported. Rights groups and activists have expressed concerns that the camps are hotspots of misinformation about the pandemic because of an internet ban imposed last September. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

rap song: A Little Late with Lilly Singh debuted last September and airs on NBC and on Global in Canada, according to CTV. It made the Indian-Canadian actress-comedian-writer the first woman of colour to host a daily late-night show on a major broadcast network. The 31-year-old revealed the news in a video on her You Tube account, where she first rose to fame under the pseudonym Superwoman. In announcing season 2 on her You Tube page, Singh performed a humorous rap song and thanked her supporters while in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. I had to learn a new world of things I didn't know, and my new home was so outside my comfort zone, Singh raps in the video posted Wednesday. The post also sees her connecting with friends and fans, and donating to various causes, via video conferencing and physical distancing measures in Los Angeles where she now lives. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

coronavirus pandemic: The court's major clash over presidential accountability could affect the 2020 presidential campaign, especially if a high court ruling leads to the release of personal financial information before Election Day, according to CTV. The justices heard arguments in two cases by telephone Tuesday that stretched into the early afternoon. But the court seemed less clear about exactly how to handle subpoenas from Congress and the Manhattan district attorney for Trump's tax, bank and financial records. The court, where six justices are age 65 or older, has been meeting by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic. The justices will meet by phone before the end of the week to take a preliminary vote on how those cases should come out. There was no apparent consensus about whether to ratify lower court rulings that the subpoenas to Trump's accountant and banks are valid and should be enforced. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

creek: I invited artists to create works that spoke to this vision, according to Georgia Asian. Squamish Nation carver Wes Nahanee contributed a small woodblock. Do I dare say goodbye Lee Maracle from Goodbye Snauq In 2010, I organized a mapping workshop for the False Creek Watershed Society to call attention to what existed ecologically in this region not long ago and what we could imagine for our common future. The map of present-day False Creek inspired him to shape a salmon along the shoreline, but the landmass on the east side and the salmon's head were absent. In 1916, Vancouver's government initiated a project that brought countless wheelbarrows of soil excavated from the Grandview Cut to fill in the Flats. Nahanee's headless salmon was recalling the False Creek Flats the eastern third of the waterway which had been an intensely rich coastal wetland for millennia. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

grade classroom: King's assassination sent shockwaves across the United States, according to Georgia Asian. The very next day, in the small town of Riceville, Iowa, the topic was brought up in Jane Elliott's Grade 3 classroom. On May 23, Elliott will be talking about racism and prejudice at Vancouver's John Oliver Secondary a clip of Indecently 1 of 2 2 of 2On the night of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when a single shot from James Earl Ray's rifle ended his life. Elliott was anxious to talk to her third graders about King's death, but when she heard them use racist remarks to discuss his work, she knew she had to intervene. Over the next few days, Elliott transformed her classroom into a social laboratory. I knew it was time to deal with this in a concrete way, not just talk about it, Elliott would later tell ABC reporters. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

novel coronavirus: Savoie said one particularly shrewd move by the government of Premier Blaine Higgs was creating an all-party COVID-19 committee, which he said prevented any infighting or cheap shots, according to CTV. Nobody could point fingers because they were all on the same committee, sworn to secrecy, and they became part of the process. Savoie, the Canada Research Chair in public administration and governance at the University of Moncton, said in a recent interview that the Tory minority government was quick to take measures to address the novel coronavirus. I think it served the government extremely well and served the province well, he said. They jumped on it quite early. If you look at the data 120 cases and no deaths. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

sound: Nobody knows exactly how one of Montreal's signature cultural events got started, according to an ethnologist who has studied the festival and says it could be celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, according to National Observer. But while Monique Provost says there are several theories, she admits it's hard to know where the truth lies. Named for the drum beats that characterize its soundtrack, the bohemian gathering has become a must-visit for tourists as well as locals, who dance, play or lie on picnic blankets to the sound of dozens of beating drums. According to some who have spoken to Provost, the event began in 1979 when Don Hill, a now-deceased street musician, plastered signs around town looking for 100 people who played the djembe, a goblet-shaped West African hand drum, for a drum circle on Mount Royal. While Provost credits Hill, she notes that the mountain in the middle of Montreal had already been a site for intercultural drum exchanges before he arrived. What people are reading Canada wants to extend U.S. travel ban'Alberta didn't contain it' COVID-19 outbreak at oilsands camp has spread across the country Court overturns Ford government's decision to cancel partially built wind farm Hill's ensuing hundred drummers workshop drew curious crowds and formed the basis of the signature Montreal event, according to Provost, who wrote her doctoral thesis on the history of djembe in Quebec. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

world war: But if Sturges's earlier The Magnificent Seven bound itself just a bit too tightly to the structure of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, The Great Escape builds its own distinct style and thematic preoccupations, even as its influences remain clear, according to Rabble. The absence of brutal ground warfare in The Great Escape reflects Struges's personal experience during World War The director served as a captain in the Army Air Corps and spent a large portion of his time shooting documentaries and instructional films for the military. The filmmaker's treatment of the massive POW escape from a camp in Nazi-occupied Poland alludes to a similar and iconic sequence from Grand Illusion Illusion, Jean Renoir's no less furious and eloquent articulation of the faux civility of warfare. In The Great Escape, the filmmaker largely evades the action and horror of war, instead focusing on an immense creative process the building of the tunnels that will help a group of prisoners, led by Royal Air Force squadron leader Roger Big X Bartlett Richard Attenborough get out from under the Luftwaffe. This tactic allows for members of the uniformly excellent cast to highlight their personalities through their respective characters' varied areas of expertise, from James Garner's fast-talking and resourceful Scrounger to Steve McQueen's incorrigible Cooler King to Donald Pleasance's mild-mannered Forger. Each member of the dedicated team of soldiers, who come from various Allied Forces, provides a skill that helps the effort to build the tunnels, conceal the activity, and ultimately execute the thrilling escape. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

maturity level: Anna Banerji, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, explains that whether or not a child should wear a face mask depends partly on their age and maturity level, according to CTV. Older children, she says, are more likely to understand the reason behind wearing a mask, and should consider doing so when going out in public. Dr. This is not likely to be the case for younger children, she says, who may have a harder time putting and keeping a mask on even if they're over the age of two. Probably what they're going to end up doing is spend more time fiddling with it. Complete coverage at newsletter sign-up Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox I think for younger kids, like a two, three or four-year-old good luck in keeping a mask on, she told CTVNews.ca over the phone on Friday. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

media posts: A New South Wales Liberal candidate has disavowed social media posts that expressed support for repealing the right of gay couples to adopt, and warning against Muslim immigration, according to Rabble. Allan Green, the Liberal candidate for Greenway in Sydney's west, said the posts which were made when he was a candidate for the Christian Democratic Party did not reflect his personal views. Updated at 12.00am EDTFacebook Twitter 11.52pm EDT 23 52 Naaman Zhou Oh, one more post, because I missed this from Naaman Zhou. In 2012, Green shared a letter written by a Christian pastor to the Sydney Morning Herald that said the Islamic community has grown to 800,000 in Australia . Our national leaders must exercise foresight and act now to keep Australia the way we know it; otherwise who is to say what the result will be in the years to come when the Islamic community has achieved a population growth into millions of residents, the letter said. The checklist listed values such as stopping taxpayer funding of obscene homosexual Mardi Gras repealing homosexual adoption and refusing homosexual fostering and repealing the same-sex & defacto relationship register . Only the CDP was awarded ticks for all these boxes with the Liberal party given question marks or crosses. In a post from 2015, Green shared a Christian values checklist from the CDP during the 2015 state election. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

offer advice: In October 2001, then energy minister Richard Neufeld appointed a three-member scientific review panel, chaired by former University of Victoria president David Strong, according to Georgia Asian. Its mandate was to offer advice in four areas related to offshore oil and gas exploration, including whether any specific government actions should be taken prior to removing the provincial moratorium. Shortly after taking office in 2001, it appointed a six-member B.C. Liberal caucus subcommittee, which included future energy minister Blair Lekstrom, to seek public input on lifting a provincial moratorium on offshore drilling. The B.C. moratorium had been announced by the Social Credit government in 1989. Tankers carrying crude oil from Alaska travel west of Haida Gwaii and Vancouver Island and enter Juan de Fuca Strait on their way to Washington-state oil refineries. This came 17 years after the federal government announced a moratorium on offshore drilling and on crude-oil tanker traffic passing through Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait, and Queen Charlotte Sound. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

piece features: Brighton Rock also boasts lots of quasi-documentary location filming, bringing to mind a contemporary film like Jules Dassin's more resolutely urban The Naked City, according to Rabble. The opening set piece features a chase through Brighton's byways, as the tight-knit gang led by Pinkie Brown Richard Attenborough attempts to corner reporter Fred Hale Alan Wheatley whose expos on rigged slot machines got their former leader killed. The film's formal construction adds considerably to its overall effectiveness The confluence of Harry Waxman's moody monochrome cinematography and Peter Graham Scott's razor-stropped editing ensures the film comes across as exhilaratingly as the amusement park rides that figure in the titular seaside resort. The pursuit ends on a dark ride on the pier, where Pinkie proceeds to push Hale to his death. The one major character introduced later is poignantly impressionable Rose Carol Marsh a waitress at the upscale restaurant that down-market Pinkie patronizes in order to retrieve some potentially incriminating evidence. The sequence isn't just a masterpiece of machine-tooled assemblage, from the stolen street shots to the impressionistic depiction of Hale's demise, but it also succinctly establishes most of the main characters and their interrelations. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

passengers download: Passengers were allowed to enter the stations only if they were asymptomatic and cleared thermal screening, according to CTV. They are required to maintain social distancing on board and are given hand sanitizers when they enter and leave. Special trains departed from several large cities, including New Delhi and Mumbai. Indian Railways also is requiring that passengers download a government-run contact tracing smartphone app before boarding the train. Newsletter sign-up Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox Thousands of passengers waited in long, serpentine queues outside New Delhi's railway station, the hub of India's rail network. Critics say the Aarogya Setu app endangers civil liberties in how it uses location services and centralizes data collection. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

cannabis economy: ByBill Weinberg Published on May 11, 2019 Share Tweet2 Comments It won lurid headlines when three Illinois residents were arrested by the FBI in Humboldt County last month in an alleged plot to rip off a local cannabis grower to the tune of 3 million, according to NOW Magazine. The case goes to trial in federal court in San Francisco this month. It's a case that crystalizes the xenophobic stigma still attached to Northern California's cannabis economy. Although none of the three have actually been charged with kidnapping, that is word being bandied about in reportage based on the claims of an informant. As you might expect, attorneys for the accused tell a very different story. The accused co-consiprators allegedly discussed plans to abduct a courier for the target and make him suffer until he gave up the location of his boss' stash of cash and cannabis. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

saudi citizens: Despite efforts to diversify the economy, the kingdom continues to rely heavily on oil for revenue, according to CTV. Brent crude now hovers around 30 a barrel, far below the range Saudi Arabia needs to balance its budget. Saudi citizens will also lose a bonus cost-of-living allowance that had been in place since 2018, according to the country's finance minister. The kingdom has also lost revenue from the suspension of Muslim pilgrimages to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which were closed to visitors due to the virus. The United Arab Emirates said Monday it currently had no similar plans to raise taxes. Newsletter sign-up Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox The new measures are the most drastic yet by a major Gulf Arab oil producer since oil prices plunged by more than half in March, signalling that neighbouring countries may also seek to impose higher taxes on residents this year. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.