And the Rest of It

We may never know the true motive:

A knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a woman and killed two other people at a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday, while a gunman was shot dead by police in a separate incident.

At around 9 a.m., a man armed with a knife entered the church and slit the throat of the sexton, beheaded an elderly woman, and badly wounded a third woman, according to a police source.

The sexton and the elderly woman died on the spot, the third woman managed to make it out of the church into a nearby cafe, where she died, Estrosi told reporters. None of the victims has so far been named. “The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained. He is on his way to hospital, he is alive,” Nice’s mayor Christian Estrosi told reporters.

“Enough is enough,” he added. “It’s time now for Franc eto exonerate itself from the laws of peace in order to definitively wipe out Islamo-fascism from our territory.”

 

France is well beyond that point, Monsieur Etrosi.

 

 

India doesn't have the hesitance or the naivety Canada does when it comes to China:

Two days of meetings by the top US and Indian diplomatic and defense chiefs in New Delhi underscored a desire for growing military cooperation driven by mutual distrust of China. 

Deadly clashes between Indian and Chinese troops over a disputed border region have given the Pentagon fresh fuel to draw Delhi closer, as it seeks a coalition to counter what the US sees as the rapid expansion of China's military presence across the Indo-Pacific region.

In two days of talks on Monday and Tuesday, couched as the third annual 2+2 discussions, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper agreed to share with India geospatial satellite and sensor intelligence. 

They laid the groundwork for more military exchanges and cooperation on cybersecurity and space, as well as increasing arms sales, the US particularly pressing India to buy US F-18 fighter jets for its navy.

 

Also - why hasn't she been sent to the US yet?:

A border officer who assisted in the three-hour detention and examination of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou before her arrest at Vancouver’s airport two years ago says collecting phone passcodes is routine during secondary examinations of foreign nationals.

 

Wow. People totally have a handle on this coronavirus: 

Sinai wasn’t the only lab in that position. Hospital and public health labs submitted a budget proposal outlining the anticipated surge and the money needed to deal with it sometime in either late spring or early summer, said one source with deep knowledge of the system. But it wasn’t approved until after the second wave hit in the autumn. “Heels were dragged,” the source said. “And that’s awful. Because it’s not a light switch. You don’t just say, ‘Great, I’ve got the money. I can increase the diagnostic testing capacity.’ It doesn’t work like that. It takes about two to three months.”

The province has since taken steps to cut the number of tests coming in, but the backlog, while it lasted, took a brutal toll on Ontario’s COVID fight. “As recently as two weeks ago, we were getting less than 20 per cent of positive cases reported to us within 24 hours from the labs, and less than 50 per cent of cases reported to us within two days,” said City Councillor Joe Cressy, who chairs the Toronto Board of Health.

At that speed of return, the testing system was all but cosmetic. It was like giving a virus that doesn’t need any kind of edge a 50-metre head start in a 100-metre dash. “To put it simply, the combination of insufficient testing, coupled with delays in lab reporting, significantly constrained our ability to do contact tracing and our collective ability to prevent a significant second wave,” Cressy said.