Day 10 on campaign trail, sea stars nearing extinction : In The News for Aug. 25

In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what’s on the radar of our editors for the morning of Aug. 25 …

What we are watching in Canada …

Party leaders are in British Columbia and Ontario as the federal election campaign enters its tenth day.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau will make a housing announcement this morning in Surrey, B.C., a day after he promised hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, grants and tax incentives to address the housing affordability crisis, which has grown since he came to office in 2015.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole starts his day with an announcement in Brantford, Ontario. He then moves on to Hamilton for an evening event with supporters.

N-D-P Leader Jagmeet Singh spends the day in Windsor, Ontario. He’ll first make an announcement on affordability, followed by a campaign announcement with the mayor of Windsor, and mainstreeting with Windsor-Essex candidates in the afternoon.

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Also this …

A new study finds warming waters caused by climate change are pushing sea stars close to extinction along parts of the North American coast.

The research published by the Royal Society says sea stars in the waters off British Columbia that died off in the billions about a decade ago are not recovering as expected. 

Sara Hamilton, the study’s lead author and a Ph-D student at Oregon State University, says parts of British Columbia still have some populations of sea stars but it’s unclear if they’ll survive. 

She says the starfish develop a wasting disease that can kill them within 48 hours and may be caused by a virus or bacteria that thrives in warm waters.

Sea stars are important in ocean habitat because they keep sea urchins in check, which can decimate kelp forests that are important habitat for marine wildlife.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. President Joe Biden is sticking to his Aug. 31 deadline for finishing a U.S.-led evacuation of Americans, at-risk Afghans and others, saying the longer troops remain at Kabul’s airport, the greater the risk of attacks by terror groups. 

The decision opens him up to criticism for caving to the Taliban, who say they will not permit the evacuation to go on longer, and to the prospect that some people who want to leave will be left behind. 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, meanwhile, said Tuesday that the major industrialized nations will not recognize a Taliban government unless it guarantees people can leave the country. 

Biden’s decision defies allied leaders who want to give the evacuation more time and opens him to criticism that he caved to Taliban deadline demands.

“Every day we’re on the ground is another day that we know ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both us and allied forces and innocent civilians,” Biden said at the White House, referring to the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate, which is known for staging suicide attacks on civilians.

He said the Taliban are co-operating and security is holding despite a number of violent incidents. “But it’s a tenuous situation,” he said, adding, “We run a serious risk of it breaking down as time goes on.”

The United States in recent days has ramped up its airlift amid new reports of rights abuses that fuel concern about the fate of thousands of people who fear retribution from the Taliban and are trying to flee the country. The Pentagon said 21,600 people had been evacuated in the 24 hours that ended Tuesday morning, and Biden said an additional 12,000 had been flown out in the 12 hours that followed. Those include flights operated by the U.S. military as well as other charter flights.

In Kabul, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference the U.S. must stick to its self-imposed deadline, saying “after that we won’t let Afghans be taken out” on evacuation flights. He also said the Taliban would bar Afghans from accessing roads to the airport, while allowing foreigners to pass in order to prevent large crowds from massing.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

LES CAYES, Haiti — More than a week after Haiti’s devastating 7.2-magnitude earthquake, a dilemma has emerged for the region’s limited health care services: how to turn over hospital beds when discharged patients have no place to go. 

Jertha Ylet, 25, was brought to Les Cayes’ General Hospital on the day of the earthquake. A surgeon put a metal rod in her lower left leg. 

Days later she was cleared for discharge. But with her home in Camp Perrin collapsed, Ylet had nowhere to go and no desire to leave. 

 Ylet had not been out of bed, much less tried to walk, since she arrived. Her five-year-old daughter, Younaika, who was not injured, shared her bed and spent her days playing with other children around the ward.

“I said to the doctor, ‘I don’t have any place to go,’” Ylet said. “I told them everything. The doctor doesn’t understand.”

The hospital is still receiving patients from more remote areas and needs the beds.

In the first days after the quake, the hospital was overwhelmed with patients. The injured lay on patios and breezeways awaiting care. Now there are still people in those areas, but they are discharged patients or people who were never admitted at all, who have been drawn by the donations of food, water and clothing that arrive at the hospital daily.

“We have a lot patients who have been discharged, but are still hanging out in the yard,” said hospital director Peterson Gede. “The fact they know they will receive food and water … they don’t have any intention to leave.”

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On this day in 1986 …

Wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen began the cross-Canada portion of his round-the-world journey. Only $172,000 had been donated for spinal cord research when he reached Canada’s most eastern point, Cape Spear, Nfld. But an outpouring of support from Canadians allowed him to reach his goal of $10 million by the time he returned home to Williams Lake, B.C., on April 2, 1987. Hansen, a world-class competitor in wheelchair sports, was inspired by his friend Terry Fox, an amputee whose run across Canada for cancer research was stopped after he developed cancer again. Hansen left Vancouver on March 21, 1985. He travelled through 34 countries, including the United States, Britain, China, the Soviet Union and Australia. His journey lasted 792 days, 467 of which were spent on the road.

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In entertainment …

LOS ANGELES — The Doobie Brothers are celebrating their 50th anniversary in their 51st year, heading out on a delayed tour and hoping they can keep doing what their big hits call for: taking it to the streets and letting audiences listen to the music.

The pandemic prompted the Doobies to postpone their anniversary tour, and they had to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without a live ceremony. 

They began the belated tour Sunday but Michael McDonald, the group’s primary singer and songwriter in the late 1970s, says it’s a “crapshoot” whether they’ll be able to finish.

2020 ought to have been a banner year for the band, with an anniversary tour that united its two eras — the original Tom Johnston-led version of the early 1970s, and the more R&B Michael McDonald-led version of the late 1970s.

They also got an invite to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that many fans felt was decades overdue. 

Johnston says they had everything going and it got dumped on by the pandemic.

He says after a virtual induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “it was a year of every day’s Thursday and nothing ever changes. It was pretty much a lost year.” 

They’re trying to make up for it with the tour that finally launched on Sunday in Des Moines, Iowa, and runs through late October, with previously scrapped dates rebooked for the summer of 2022.

The tour comes as a new album drops in October.

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ICYMI …

A man’s bid to reverse the revocation of his personalized licence plate bearing his surname, “Grabher” has been dismissed by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.

Lawyers for Lorne Grabher argued that his right to freedom of expression had been violated, but in an unanimous ruling on Tuesday the Appeal Court said the trial judge was right to rule that Grabher’s plate was not an area to which freedom of expression applied.

The “GRABHER” licence plate could in fact be interpreted as a call to gender-based violence, Justice Cindy A. Bourgeois wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel.

Grabher’s Nova Scotia plate, which he had for nearly 30 years, was recalled by the province’s Registrar of Motor Vehicles in December 2016 after it received a complaint the sign promoted hatred toward women.

The lower court judge, Justice Darlene Jamieson, ruled that licence plates are not typically viewed as “public places” with a history of free expression, a sentiment the Court of Appeal agreed with.

Under provincial regulations, Nova Scotia’s registrar can refuse to issue personalized licence plates if the proposed combination of characters expresses or implies a word, phrase or idea that could be considered offensive or in poor taste.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 25, 2021

The Canadian Press