International News:
Fourteen students and three school staff, have been killed in a school shooting by a 19-year-old former student at a high school in Parkland, Florida on the Feb. 16. The FBI issued a statement saying that they had failed in acting on a tip about the shooter that was received on the Jan. 5, saying that established protocols for handling the tip were not followed.
An Iranian drone on a reconnaissance flight in Israeli air space was shot down by an Israeli Apache helicopter, prompting Israeli F-16s to engage in a retaliatory strike on the Iranian drone base of origin. A F-16 was shot down by Syrian and Iranian air defenses, crashing in Israel, prompting Israel to attack and destroy 10 Syrian and Iranian targets.
Seventy-one people, six crew and 65 passengers, have died 40 km from their departure point in a plane crash on a Saratov Airlines flight from Moscow to Orsk, near the border of Kazakhstan. Black box data points to pilot failure in pre-takeoff procedures leading to different speed measurements, which combined with panic to lead to a deadly crash.
Israeli police have recommended that Prime Minister Netanyahu should be indicted in two corruption cases; the Israeli Attorney General now decides if charges should proceed. The first indictment involves Netanyahu receiving the equivalent of C$350,000 in gifts from two businessmen and the second indictment involves political favours being exchanged for positive media coverage.
Jacob Zuma has resigned as President of South Africa after intense pressure from his ruling African National Congress party following numerous corruption allegations. New president, Cyril Ramaphosa, addressed lawmakers in a State of the Nation address promising to do away with Zuma’s cabinet ministers, to fight corruption and provide a million new internships for youths.
National News:
Canada has won six gold medals, five silver medals and six bronze medals so far in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, putting Canada in third place behind Norway and Germany with 17 medals.
The takeover of Canadian construction company Aecon Group Inc. by a Chinese state-owned company has been pushed back pending a federal government ordered national security review of the takeover. The national security review likely comes as a result of Aceon’s work in nuclear construction and refurbishment or possibly the Chinese company’s role in the construction of islands in the South China Sea.
Colten Boushie’s family, as well as a large number of Indigenous activists, have called for reforms to the justice system in the wake of the Stanley trial and what they say was a racist process of jury selection. In response, Prime Minister Trudeau announced a series of formal talks with all of Canada’s Indigenous peoples on fundamentally reforming the judicial system.
A bill in the Senate, agreed upon by Liberal and Conservative Senators, will push the starting date for marijuana sales back from July 1 to sometime in August. The push-back is a win for the Conservatives who are pleased to have more time for the legalization legislation to be amended, however its proponents argue that this delay will allow illegal cannabis use to continue and for its profits to flow into criminal hands.
The first Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership debate took place on Feb. 15, with the four candidates chalking off on issues such as tax cuts, sex-ed and marijuana privatization. Patrick Brown, former Ontario PC leader who stepped down due to sexual misconduct has reoffered for leadership, however his candidacy will likely not be approved by the party.
Local News:
A Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge threw out the South Shore’s Regional School Board’s motion to close Petite Riviere Elementary School after parents fought back against the closing. The future of the school and the South Shore’s Regional School Board are in question once again after the provincial government’s implementation of the Glaze report.
The Nova Scotia Teacher’s Union (NSTU) will hold a strike mandate vote on Feb. 20 in an attempt to deter the provincial government from implementing the Glaze report’s controversial 22 recommendations. If teachers decide to vote on a strike mandate, the NSTU executive will decide what job action will be taken.
A group of Atlantic Canadian companies have won a portion of $950 million the federal government has decided to invest in a series of superclusters across the country. The group of companies is going to invest on a dollar for dollar basis with the government in pursuing projects which use emerging technologies to find solutions to problems extracting resources from the ocean..
Education Minister Zach Churchill says that the provincial government is giving principals and vice-principals one year to decide whether to stay in their jobs and be pushed out of the NSTU or to stay in the NSTU and return to the classroom as a teacher. Churchill was greeted by two dozen protesting teachers in Sydney Mines on Feb. 15, saying what the government is doing isn’t good and that they hope the government will listen to them.
In the course of an emergency hearing on halting Abdoul Abdi’s deportation hearing, the judge decided to reserve his decision on the case, saying that he will rule before March 7. Abdi’s Immigration and Refugee Board hearing is scheduled for March 7, and his lawyer said at the hearing that Abdi “doesn’t want to be spending his time going through bureaucratic processes to try to regain a status that he should have had in the first place.”
