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At least nine women and girls killed in domestic homicides in Canada during pandemic
The outrage has been muted, the response often misdirected, but the killings, which occurred between April 1 and May 4, span the country, from Hammonds Plains, N.S., to Sundre, Alta. The ages of the women also range. A 24-year-old in Calgary. A 33-year-old expectant mother in Brockville, Ont. A 55-year-old woman and her teenage daughter in Strathcona County, Alta. Molly Hayes investigates.
At least three of the men who killed these women also then killed themselves. Others were charged with their murders. One alleged killer is still missing and wanted by police. The nine deaths were tracked by Battered Women’s Support Services and confirmed through local media reports by The Globe and Mail.
Ottawa announces one-time payment for seniors to offset COVID-19 expenses
A one-time tax-free payment of $300 will be given to seniors eligible for the Old Age Security pension and an additional $200 will be given to those eligible for the Guaranteed Income Supplement, Seniors Minister Deb Schulte said yesterday.
Ms. Schulte also said that there would be an expansion of the New Horizons for Seniors program with an investment of $20-million to help organizations offering community-based projects designed to reduce isolation and improve quality of life for seniors.
In other news, the Canada-U.S. border is expected to stay closed to nonessential travel until June 21 to safeguard citizens in both countries from the spread of COVID-19.
Nonessential travel across the border was first restricted to all on March 21 for a 30-day period in an effort to stem the transmission of novel coronavirus. The restriction was extended until May 21 and sources say U.S. and Canadian officials are in talks that will see the border closing extended for another month.
Interferon emerges as potential treatment for COVID-19
A class of drugs called interferons may be stepping into the spotlight thanks to encouraging results from two clinical trials and a call from a key Canadian expert to test the treatment on a larger scale.
Both of the newly reported trials involved small numbers of patients, and scientists stress that more work is needed to determine whether the effects they see are real. Other trials are now under way and, as a further layer of complexity, the studies make use of different types of interferon. Ivan Semeniuk reports.
Coronavirus medics from Canada leave Italy as saviours and honorary citizens
This week, the Samaritan’s Purse field hospital in Cremona, Lombardy, is being dismantled, sanitized and packed up. On the weekend, the charity’s DC-8 cargo plane will collect the equipment and the exhausted team members from nearby Verona and fly them back to their home base in North Carolina. The hospital team members, who were mostly from Canada, the United States and Britain, arrived with their own equipment, including ventilators and water purifiers, to ensure they would not drain resources from the deluged Cremona hospital. They leave as heroes. Eric Reguly reports.
A concert played by cellist Andrea Nocerino of Cremona, Italy for the Canadian emergency hospital.Bev Kauffeldt,/The Globe and Mail
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On China
Dominic Barton, Canada’s ambassador to Beijing, says China is alienating foreign countries and injuring its goodwill abroad at a time when its diplomats have adopted a heavy-handed approach around the world. Barton also backs a “rigorous review” of the World Health Organization once the worst of the pandemic is over.
Mr. Barton told a private session of the Canadian International Council last week that China’s conduct is damaging its own global “soft power,” undermining its international influence and ability to persuade other countries to see things Beijing’s way.
Meanwhile, Chinese government officials and supporters are increasingly resorting to “threats, bullying and harassment” to intimidate and silence activists in Canada, including those raising concerns about democracy and civil rights in Hong Kong and Beijing’s mistreatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners, a new report says.
A coalition of human-rights groups led by Amnesty International Canada says a timid response by Ottawa to this foreign interference is exacerbating the problem.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Tim Hortons strikes partnership with Tencent to speed up Chinese expansion
Tims Coffee House, as Tim Hortons is known in China, has partnered with Tencent, one of the world’s biggest tech companies, in hopes of speeding its expansion. Tencent will invest nearly $20-million in the Canadian coffee brand in China.
The agreement creates a relationship between Tims and a Chinese corporate giant that operates the ubiquitous WeChat messaging app and a cellphone payments platform that has become one of the most common ways to move money in China. Tencent is also an important contributor to China’s authoritarian regime, censoring speech on WeChat.
U.S. Supreme Court divided over Trump’s bid to shield his financial records
In a major showdown over presidential powers, U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared divided yesterday over President Donald Trump’s bid to prevent congressional Democrats from obtaining his financial records but seemed more open toward a New York prosecutor’s attempt to secure similar records.
There is a possibility the court will not simply allow or disallow enforcement of the subpoenas but rather impose tighter standards for issuing subpoenas for the personal records of a sitting president and send the matter back to lower courts to reconsider. This course of action could delay an ultimate decision on releasing the records until after the election.
MORNING MARKETS
Fear of coronavirus second wave stalks world markets: Global stocks and oil prices fell on Wednesday as fears about a second wave of coronavirus infections gripped financial markets. Just before 6 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 1.15 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 fell 1.51 per cent and 1.84 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.27 per cent. Japan’s Nikkei lost 0.49 per cent. New York futures were slightly higher. The Canadian dollar was trading at 71.28 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
In the Dirty 30s, FDR helped revive Canada. Now, it may be up to Biden
Lawrence Martin: “Mr. Biden is putting together plans for a massive economic overhaul to respond to the coronavirus cataclysm. As one headline put it, he’s proposing “an FDR-sized presidency.” Indeed, the economic collapse calls for nothing less than a channelling of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932.”
As economies begin to reopen, setbacks abound
Gary Mason: “The complexity involved in bringing communities out of lockdown with a virus still on the loose is almost unfathomable. You lower your guard too much and you instantly have a giant problem on your hands.”
Having forced companies into dependency, the government dictates terms for their rescue
Andrew Coyne: “The companies’ futures, and their workers’ jobs, are to be held hostage to a political agenda that has nothing to do with either.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
Brian GableBrian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
Greetings from Isolation collects quarantine works from dozens of Canadian filmmakers
Canadian film-industry veteran Stacey Donen has launched Greetings from Isolation, a website collecting dozens of short films tackling the current pandemic. The project – part cinematic experiment, part art-therapy for filmmakers trapped at home – includes new works from such acclaimed homegrown filmmakers as Anita Doron (The Breadwinner), Igor Drljaca (The Waiting Room), Sadaf Foroughi (Ava), Ann Marie Fleming (Window Horses) and Larry Kent (Bitter Ash).
The shorts can be found, for free, at GreetingsFromIsolation.com, most running two to five minutes in length and ranging in genre from documentary to visual essay to fiction. Barry Hertz reports.
MOMENT IN TIME: MAY 13, 1955
ONE-TIME USE ONLY WITH STORY SLUGGED NW-MIT-MANTLE-0512 -- Here's Yankee slugger Mickey Mantle toting lumber in both hands after literally hitting roundtrippers left and right. He drove in all the Yankee runs with three homers and a single in four trips to the plate to help the Bombers down the Detroit Tigers, 5-2, May 13, 1955. Mickey slammed the first two homers left handed and the third right handed. They came with one on in the first and with the bases empty in the fifth and eighth innings.Bettmann / Getty Images
Mickey Mantle was one of baseball’s great power hitters, but on this date in 1955, in a windy Friday afternoon home game against the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees star outdid himself, slugging three home runs, two as a switch hitter. Mantle was usually a right-handed hitter, but against Detroit starter Steve Gromek, Mantle batted left – an advantage over a right-handed pitcher, which Gromek was. First inning. Crack! A monumental shot into the remote right-centre-field bleachers, maybe 425 feet. Fifth inning. Crack! At least 420 feet, again into the right-centre-field bleachers. By the eighth inning, the Tigers had pulled Gromek in favour of left-hander Bob Miller, so Mantle hit from his usual spot as a right-hander. Advantage, Mantle; another crack! Deep, deep, a homer bigger than even the other two, with more speed and arc, 455 feet, into the same bleachers. His power hitting made a mockery of the deep outfield of Yankee Stadium’s legendary Death Valley, so named because hits that would have been home runs elsewhere usually went there to die. There were only 7,177 spectators in the Bronx when Mantle homered from both sides of the plate that day. He also singled, going 4-for-4 and driving in all five runs as New York won 5-2. – Philip King
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