And the Rest of It

Much to talk about:

A federal agency budgeted $56,000 for videos, flyers and webinars to counter what it called “disinformation” by media and patient groups over drug price controls. Staff vowed to “push back more aggressively,” according to Access To Information records disclosed by Conservative MP Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard): “Industry has been sucking Canada for decades.”

 

Friends help friends.

While no one was looking:

Air Force Captain Kimberly Fawcett, who lost her leg and her only child in a horrific car crash while preparing for her deployment to Afghanistan, has won her long-running battle with the military over disability compensation.

After 15 years of Canadian Forces officers denying on-duty disability compensation for the 24-year service veteran — arguing her activation of the military’s pre-deployment childcare plan for her nine-month-old son in 2006 was not a part of military duty — the Veterans Review and Appeal Board Canada overruled it.

 

I'll just leave this right here:

"Why are we still fighting certain veterans groups in court? Because they're asking for more than we are able to give right now," Trudeau said, answering a question from a veteran, who said he lost his leg to an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan, during a town hall meeting on Thursday evening in Edmonton.

 

The seemingly never-ending coup in Burma: 

Myanmar pro-democracy supporters took to the streets on Tuesday in several districts, as fighting between the army and anti-junta militias raged in border areas, four months after the military ousted an elected government in a coup.

Despite a ferocious crackdown by security forces, Myanmar’s military is still struggling to impose order after arresting Aung San Suu Kyi and senior leaders of her party, sparking nationwide protests and paralyzing strikes.

 

We don't have to trade with China:

Malaysia's air force said Tuesday that 16 Chinese military jets flew in a tactical formation over the South China Sea and nearly infringed on the country's airspace, calling it a threat to Malaysia's sovereignty.

The air force said its radar picked up the jets flying in an “in-trail” formation near Malaysian airspace in eastern Sarawak state on Borneo on Monday.

It said the jets then headed near Malaysian-administered Luconia Shoals, a rich fishing ground in the disputed South China Sea before moving nearly 60 nautical miles (110 kilometers) off the coast of Sarawak. After attempts to engage the jets failed, the air force said it sent planes to identify them.

It found the planes were Ilyushin il-76 and Xian Y-20 strategic transporters flying at altitudes between 23,000 and 27,000 feet.

The air force said it reported the flights to the Foreign Ministry.

“This incident is a serious threat to national sovereignty and flight safety due to the air traffic density over the airways,” it said in a statement.

Oh, that's what they always say!:

Iran has failed to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites, a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog showed on Monday, possibly setting up a fresh diplomatic clash between Tehran and the West that could derail wider nuclear talks.

 

But ... but ... the grandmothers!:

Mask use was associated with slowed COVID-19 spread, but only during periods of low case growth. A new study suggests state mask mandates didn't help slow COVID-19 transmission. The pre-publication study found "qualitatively comparable courses of viral spread" among states with early, late, and no mask mandates.

Mask use—defined as "the percentage of people who always wear masks in public settings"—was associated with slower spread during low-transmission periods. But it was not associated with slower spread during high-transmission periods.

Going into the study, lead author Damian D. Guerra, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Louisville, and co-author Daniel J. Guerra, of VerEvMed, "hypothesized that statewide mask mandates and mask use are associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates." To test this hypothesis, they compared COVID-19 case growth in the 33 states that imposed statewide mask mandates on or before August 2, 2020, with those that imposed mask mandates after this date and those that didn't have mask mandates at all, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

Their results don't tell us that mask wearing was useless—many people wore masks in public regardless of mandates, many businesses required them regardless of mandates, and many people and businesses ignored them or only sometimes complied. In addition, not all face coverings are created equal, and many people who wore them didn't do so in an optimal way. It's hard to say how much any of that helped or hurt. A lot of COVID-19 spread occurred between family members and in places where mask mandates didn't apply and mask wearing wasn't common. That may not have varied much between states regardless of whether they had mandates and/or generally high public mask usage.

However, the study does add to evidence that mandating mask use may have made little difference. "Case growth was not significantly different between mandate and non-mandate states at low or high transmission rates," they found.

 

 

Are there any hashtags for this?:

Starting next June, a group of about 600 inmates from the concentration camps will be used to lay the tracks on the section between Lake Baikal and the Amur River in Siberia. The sending of the first contingent of "forced labourers" to the service of the RŽD state railways was decided yesterday.

The use of prisoners for public work, where particularly heavy labour is required, has been under discussion for several months in the government and at various levels of administration. This is due to the serious decrease in migrant workers from Central Asian countries, especially Kyrgyz and Tajiks, due to anti-Covid measures and the widespread economic crisis, which makes Russia less attractive for seasonal foreign workers.

The Siberian leg of the railroad construction has been entrusted to the semi-public company Promstroj, which will be given the contingent with a contract granted by the federal FSIN correctional centre on the work of two groups, one of 150 and one of 430 people for general labour, cement workers and metal workers.

The company refused to comment on the n4ews to reporters. The head of the FSIN, Aleksandr Kalašnikov, instead publicly supported the initiative, stating that "it will not be like the Gulag of the past: it will be absolutely new and dignified working conditions".