Category: News

To help the citizens of Lebanon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that an additional $25 million would be donated to help recover from the horrible explosion in Beirut. 

Last week, Trudeau’s government was criticized for only promising to help with $5 million in aid, but this brings Canada’s total contribution to $30 million. 

The funding is to help humanitarian aid groups “support emergency medical services and provide shelter, food, and other essential items for people impacted by the blast,” said Trudeau.

Read more HERE

Since the beginning of August, 8 flights arriving in Toronto from international destinations carried passengers with Covid-19. The federal government says the flights all carried people who tested positive for the coronavirus after arriving in Canada.

Click HERE for the list of international flights.

As students head back to school, all 5th graders and up will be required to wear face masks, says Quebec Education Minister Jean-François Roberge in his back-to-school plan.

The rule will apply to high school students as well as older elementary school students. People in vocational training or adult school will also be required to wear masks.

Read more HERE

Additional unemployment payments of $400 have been extended, Trump announced on Saturday, to help with the economic fallout due to Covid-19.

Prior to this, Congress had approved payments of $600 per week, but that ended on August 1st since then Congress has not been able to come to an agreement to extend these payments.

Some Republicans have voiced their opinion on how receiving a $600 payment on top of regular unemployment benefits gives people the ability not to go back to work and stay unemployed.

Read more HERE

There are millions of images of actor Tom Hanks on the internet. Still, none of them are like the images presented on Wednesday at the Black Hat computer security conference. 

 A researcher created plausible audio and pictures of Tom Hanks using open-source software and less than $100, to see how easily open-source software from artificial intelligence labs could be used in misinformation campaigns. A camera did not take the images; machine learning algorithms created them. 

 Philip Tully, a data scientist at FireEye, said: “People with not a lot of experience can take these machine-learning models and do pretty powerful things with them.”

Read more HERE

In an effort to help with the damage to the Indian Ocean Island from an oil spill, thousands of students, residents of Mauritius, and activists worked around the clock on Sunday. 

1000 tonnes of oil has leaked from the Japanese ship’s cargo. Workers have been trying to stop more oil from leaking, but new cracks have been reported in the ship’s hull due to high winds and rough seas. 

Prime Minister Pracind Jugnauth declared a state of emergency and said the spill ”represents a danger” for the city, which has already been impacted due to Covid-19.

Read more HERE

On Sunday, the Columbus Blue Jackets defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-0. Columbus will now face off against the Tampa Bay Lightning in a 16-slot playoff bracket. Frederik Andersen prevented 19 shots for the Leafs, who since 2004 have not won a post-season series.

Korpisalo began the first three games of the series before getting pulled with his team.

Read more HERE

After losing her job as a French program coordinator due to the Pandemic, Ashley found herself looking aggressively for a new job. The 25-year-old, with experience in sales, marketing, and coordination, sent her resume out and posted it on Indeed, Linked-in, and other career sites. Click HERE to see what happened to her next.

According to a new report, Burger King, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s were some of the fast-food chains that were tested, and contained toxic “forever chemicals.” Environmental advocacy groups found traces of toxic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) chemicals in the food packaging of McDonald’s Big Mac, French fries, and cookies, Wendy’s cookie bags, and Burger King’s Whopper.

The report that was released Thursday also found containers and other packaging supplies from Canadian salad franchise Freshii’s tested high for PFAS.

Read more HERE

As more parts of the economy were allowed to reopen in Canada, we have seen an increase in jobs with over 419,000 last month. That’s more than economists predicted. On Friday, data from Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey showed the unemployment rate is down to 10.9% in July.  In June, the jobless rate was 12.3%, and it hit a record of 13.7% in May.

Read more HERE