In The News for Nov. 10: Do Canadian airports have enough airport security screeners?

But his testimony was interrupted when the lawyer examining him suffered a medical emergency, leading to first responders being called.

Di Tommaso’s testimony is expected to be followed by senior Alberta civil servant Marlin Degrand, who will be asked to speak about protests near the border in that province.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history on Feb. 14, arguing its temporary and extraordinary powers were needed to end blockades in Ottawa and at border crossings.

The Public Order Emergency Commission is examining the Liberal government’s decision to invoke the act and holding hearings in Ottawa until Nov. 25.

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Also this …

Unions representing airport security screeners across Canada say despite efforts to hire more workers, turnover for new hires is high.

The government agency responsible for security staff has hired more than 2,000 new screeners through its third-party contractors since the spring, which saw major delays and cancellations at Canadian airports.

David Lipton with the United Steelworkers union, which represents about 2,000 airport security screeners at 41 airports, said only about a third of the screeners hired in the past few months have stayed on, with the rest either quitting, leaving during the training period or not showing up to training. Other unions reported similar turnover levels for recent new hires.

For example, Lipton said the Ottawa airport needs between 350 and 380 workers to be adequately staffed, though security employer GardaWorld disputed this, saying their target is below 350. Right now, Ottawa has around 270, up from around 200 earlier this year, Lipton said.

Lipton said inflation has made current wages for security screening less attractive, making it harder to retain workers. But he added working conditions are also driving people away as with fewer workers, the shifts are longer and more stressful.

However, the government and security employers say they’re adequately staffed for holiday traffic.

Thousands of security screeners are currently in bargaining with their employers, who are contracted by the transport agency.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

MIAMI _ Hurricane Nicole made landfall early Thursday along the east coast of Florida. The storm was already battering a large area of the storm-weary state with strong winds, dangerous storm surge and heavy rain, officials said.

The rare November hurricane had already led officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations that included former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Authorities warned that Nicole’s storm surge could further erode many beaches hit by hurricane Ian in September. The sprawling storm is then forecast to head into Georgia and the Carolinas later Thursday and Friday, dumping heavy rain across the region.

Nicole was a Category 1 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 120 kph early Thursday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. It was centred about 25 kilometres east-southeast of Fort Pierce and was moving toward the west-northwest near 22 km/h.

Tropical storm force winds extended as far as 780 kilometres from the centre in some directions. Nicole’s centre is expected to move across central and northern Florida into southern Georgia on Thursday and into the evening, and into the Carolinas on Friday before moving towards Atlantic Canada over the weekend.

A few tornadoes will be possible through early Thursday across east-central to northeast Florida, the weather service said. Flash and urban flooding will be possible, along with renewed river rises on the St. Johns River, across the Florida Peninsula on Thursday. Heavy rainfall from this system will spread northward across portions of the southeast, eastern Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, and New England through Saturday.

Large swells generated by Nicole will affect the northwestern Bahamas, the east coast of Florida, and much of the southeastern United States coast over the next few days.

Nicole is expected to weaken while moving across Florida and the southeastern United States through Friday, and it is likely to become a post-tropical cyclone by Friday afternoon.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Protests in Iran raged on streets into Thursday with demonstrators remembering a bloody crackdown in the country’s southeast, even as the nation’s intelligence minister and army chief renewed threats against local dissent and the broader world.

Meanwhile, a top official in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard claimed it had “achieved” having so-called hypersonic missiles, without providing any evidence.

The protests in Iran, sparked by the Sept. 16 death of a 22-year-old woman after her detention by the country’s morality police, have grown into one of the largest sustained challenges to the nation’s theocracy since the chaotic months after its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

At least 328 people have been killed and 14,825 others arrested in the unrest, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that’s been monitoring the protests over their 54 days. Iran’s government for weeks has remained silent on casualty figures while state media counterfactually claims security forces have killed no one.

As demonstrators now return to the streets to mark 40th-day remembrances for those slain earlier _ commemorations common in Iran and the wider Middle East _ the protests may turn into cyclical confrontations between an increasingly disillusioned public and security forces that turn to greater violence to suppress them.

Online videos emerging from Iran, despite government efforts to suppress the internet, appeared to show demonstrations in Tehran, the capital, as well as cities elsewhere in the country. Near Isfahan, video showed clouds of tear gas. Shouts of “Death to the Dictator” could be heard _ a common chant in the protests targeting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It wasn’t immediately clear if there were injuries or arrests in this round of protests, though Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency acknowledged the demonstrations near Isfahan. They commemorated the Sept. 30 crackdown in Zahedan, a city in Iran’s restive Sistan and Baluchestan province, in which activists say security forces killed nearly 100 people in the deadliest violence to strike amid the demonstrations.

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On this day in 1975 …

The iron-ore carrier “Edmund Fitzgerald” sank in a storm on Lake Superior with the loss of 29 crewmen. The 222-metre-long ship battled 7.5 metre waves and record 125 km/h winds before sinking. The tragedy was commemorated in a song, “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald,” by Gordon Lightfoot.

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In entertainment …

ATLANTA _ Jane Fonda says the work of the Georgia-based non-profit organization she founded to prevent teenage pregnancies has become “far more important” in the months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion it guaranteed to women in the United States.

The activist and Oscar winner has been an outspoken critic of the court’s decision, previously calling it “unconscionable.”

While a post-Roe world will be harder on girls because they are the ones who would have to carry a baby, the work to fight teen pregnancy must also focus on adolescent boys, said Fonda, who was in Atlanta for a fundraiser Thursday to celebrate the 27th anniversary of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential.

“We have to help our boys understand that they don’t have to get a girl pregnant to be men, that being a real man means taking care of yourself, respecting your body and the body of your partner,” Fonda said. “Things are much, much harder for boys and girls now and, so, teaching them skills around their reproductive health, how to stay healthy, how to stay pregnancy-free, how to say no, how to have agency over their body, these things are more important than ever.”

Fonda, 84, founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995 when she lived in Atlanta and when Georgia had the highest teenage birth rate in the United States.

In 2012, the organization changed its name and expanded its mission beyond teenage pregnancy prevention to include nutrition and physical activity. The group says its programs now reach more than 60,000 young people every year.

“We have to educate them about how their bodies work so that they will know how to protect themselves,” Fonda said. “We have to help young people see that they have a future that will be productive, that they can work for _ towards, that they can reach towards _ and getting in trouble when they’re a teenager and having a baby when you’re very young will make reaching for that future that much harder.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the birth rate for 15- to 19-year-olds in the United States in 2020 was down eight per cent from the previous year and down 75 per cent from its peak in 1991.

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Did you see this?

The Canadian War Museum says it has acquired three more Victoria Crosses awarded to Canadians during the First World War.

The British empire’s highest military decorations were awarded to 2nd Lt. Edmund De Wind, Sgt. Thomas William Holmes and Pte. James Peter Robertson for extreme bravery and valour.

Peter Harris is Robertson’s great-nephew and says the story of his great-uncle Peter’s exploits at Passchendaele are well-known by his family.

Robertson single-handedly took out a German machine-gun nest in November 1917, then led his unit to their objective before he was killed saving a comrade.

Harris says he hopes more Canadians will be able to learn about his great-uncle’s heroism and sacrifice now that his Victoria Cross is with the museum.

The museum now has 36 of the 73 Victoria Crosses awarded to Canadians in the First World War, including seven of nine awarded at Passchendaele.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2022

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

In The News for Nov. 10: Do Canadian airports have enough airport security screeners?

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