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In The News is a roundup of The Canadian Press articles designed to start the day. This is what’s on our editors’ radar for the morning of November 4th. . .
What we are in Canada about. . .
Statistics Canada is expected to get its latest reading on how the job market is faring today.
The company is due to submit its October Labour Force Survey this morning.
The report comes as economists worry about an imaginable recession.
The Bank of Canada has forecast that the economy will stagnate in the coming months with expansion close to zero.
The central bank raised its key interest rate by part of one percentage point last month to 3. 75% in a bid to curb stubbornly high inflation.
The Canadian economy added 21,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate fell to 5. 2% from 5. 4% in August as fewer people looked for work.
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Also this. . .
Prominent Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich is expected to continue her testimony in the public inquiry into the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act.
He faces cross-examination at the Emergency Law and Order Commission, which is assessing the government’s use of emergency powers amid the weeks-long protest in downtown Ottawa.
Lich told the inquiry on Thursday that he joined the convoy after failing to get a reaction from members of parliament he communicated with to end COVID-19 restrictions.
Jeremy MacKenzie, the founder of the online organization “Diagolon,” is also expected to testify at a video convention from a Saskatchewan jail.
The commission showed Thursday that MacKenzie, who faces charges unrelated to the convoy, will testify publicly despite his attempt to speak about the investigation under a publication ban.
Other protesters on the witness list today are Chris Deering, Maggie Hope Braun and Daniel Bulford, a former RCMP officer who was part of the Prime Minister’s security and resigned after refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
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And that too. . .
An independent official appointed to help indigenous communities investigate unmarked graves at former residential school sites said she was exploring features to investigate imaginable crimes.
Kimberly Murray says justice issues arise when she talks to survivors and leaders.
Murray is a former executive director of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spent seven years investigating the residential system.
She appointed her new role to help indigenous communities access residential school records and search for unmarked graves.
Murray says it’s clear that other people don’t accept the judicial formula for investigating and responding to those deaths as true, so he plans to seek outdoor recommendations on features that might come with a special court.
Ottawa has said in the past that it has no jurisdiction to appoint a special prosecutor, but has left the door open for Murray to listen to what he recommends.
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What we’re seeing in the U. S. :
HARTFORD, Conn. _ Infowars host Alex Jones faces the option of having more consequences on the amount he already owes for spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, as the punitive damages phase of his Connecticut lawsuit is scheduled to begin Friday in a lawsuit filed through the victims’ families.
Last month, a jury ordered Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, to pay nearly a billion dollars to the Sandy Hook families for the damages they suffered when he persuaded his audience that the 2012 shooting that killed 26 others was a hoax. through “crisis actors”.
The jury also said the punitive damages deserve to be awarded. That amount will be decided through Judge Barbara Bellis after evidentiary hearings scheduled for Friday and Monday.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers, in court filings, reported that punitive damages may total just $2. 75 billion in a hypothetical calculation, but did not ask for an express amount.
“Justice demands that the Court award punitive damages, punish and deter such misconduct,” attorneys Alinor Sterling, Christopher Mattei and Joshua Koskoff wrote in a motion. “Only a historic punitive award will serve those purposes. “
Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, argues that punitive damages should be minimal, in part because the billion-dollar award of compensatory damages is the functional equivalent of punitive damages because of its incredibly high amount.
“Few living defendants can pay this sum in damages,” Pattis wrote. “In fact, most defendants would be driven into bankruptcy, their livelihoods destroyed and their future reshaped in the bleak outlook of a judgment debtor suffering for decades with a debt that may not be satisfied. To regard this as anything more than punishment would be unfair.
Jones was found liable last year for damages to families for defamation, emotional misery and violation of Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act. While punitive damages are limited to attorneys’ fees for defamation and emotional misery, there are no punitive damages limits under the Unfair Trade Practices Act.
In a calculation in a court filing by the plaintiffs, they said Jones’ comments about Sandy Hook were viewed about 550 million times on his social media and Infowars accounts from 2012 to 2018. They said this resulted in 550 million unfair industry violations. Practices Act.
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What we look at in the rest of the world. . .
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran commemorated Friday’s 1979 takeover of the U. S. Embassy in Tehran as its theocracy faces nationwide protests over the death of a 22-year-old man arrested earlier by the country’s police.
Iranian state television broadcast live counter-protests across the country, with some in Tehran showing symptoms of the triangle-shaped Iranian drones Russia is now employing to hit targets in its war against Ukraine. Women dressed in chadors waving the flag of the Islamic Republic, other protests in the country gave the impression of being smaller, with only a few dozen people participating.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was also scheduled to stand outside the former U. S. Embassy in Tehran to mark the commemoration. Protesters also erected effigies of French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Crowd banners and chants chanted, “Death to America. “Death to Israel!”
The protests that have rocked Iran for more than six weeks after Mahsa Amini’s death mark one of the most demanding situations facing the country’s devoted leaders since they took hold in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. At least three hundred protesters have been killed and 14,000 arrested since the riots began, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), an organization that oversees the crackdown on protesters.
Iran’s hardliners have long led government workers and others to the Nov. 4 protests, which resemble a carnival for academics and other participants on Taleqani Street in central Tehran.
This year, however, it has remained transparent that Iran’s theocracy hopes to energize its hard base. Some symptoms say “We are obedient to the leader,” referring to 83-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say. on all state issues in the country. The week-long protests have included chants calling for Khamenei’s death and the overthrow of the government.
The annual commemoration marks the time student protesters scaled the embassy fence on November 4, 1979, angered by then-President Jimmy Carter, allowing the mortally ill Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to obtain cancer treatment in the United States.
The academics temporarily appropriated the entire green enclosure. Some members fled and hid in the home of Canada’s ambassador to Iran before fleeing the country with the help of the CIA, a story dramatized in the 2012 film “Argo. “
The 444-day crisis has swept across the United States, as nighttime photographs of the hostages blindfolded have been broadcast on televisions across the country. Iran, through it all, let all the captives pass the day Carter left the job on Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day in 1981.
This enmity between Iran and the United States has been reduced and increased in the decades since. The United States and world powers reached a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 that drastically curtailed its program in exchange for lifting sanctions. However, then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018, sparking years of tensions since then.
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On this day in 1956. . .
Lester Pearson, then foreign minister, proposed a UN peacekeeping working group to facilitate the departure of the British and French from Egypt. The plan was approved by the United Nations General Assembly and Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957. The Prime Minister from 1963 to 1968.
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In entertainment. . .
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A lawyer for Harvey Weinstein said Thursday that changes in a massage therapist’s account of a 2010 sexual assault by the former movie mogul meant she fabricated details as she insisted the images about the trauma brought back more explicit memories.
Weinstein’s attorney, Mark Werksman, pointed to the passage of time in the stories she told police and prosecutors in 2019 and 2020, in her grand jury testimony last year and in her comments on the witness stand Wednesday, when she said Weinstein caught her in a bathroom. he masturbated in front of her and touched her breasts after hiring her for a massage in his Beverly Hills hotel room.
“Do you think your reminiscence is greater now than 3 years ago?”Werksman asked.
“Yes,” she replied. At some other point, he added, “My memories were blurred then, but now I’m everything. “
The woman said discussions about the attack with friends, authorities, a therapist and others gave her clarity and helped her deal with difficult main points she buried in her memory.
Werksman whether the talks represented an effort “to build consensus. “
The woman insisted no.
“The more I talked about it, the more I remembered the trauma I had for myself,” she said. “I blocked it for so long. “
Weinstein is charged with sexual assault under duress over the incident, one of 11 counts of sexual assault involving five women he is accused of at his trial in Los Angeles. He pleaded guilty and denied having sex without consent. He is already serving a 23-year sentence for a conviction in New York.
Werksman insisted on whether Weinstein touched her over or under clothing, suggesting her story was suspiciously replaced over time by skin-to-skin contact required by California law for sexual assault.
The woman, who goes through Jane Doe in court, testified Wednesday that she felt embarrassed and humiliated for allowing herself to be alone with Weinstein several more times, adding two other massages in which she said he engaged in similar unwanted sexual behavior.
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Did you see that?
An archaeologist working on the renovation of a shopping mall in Williams Lake, B. C. , says the existing task contrasts sharply with the mall’s part of the structure a century ago, when thirteen human skeletons were dumped.
Whitney Spearing of Sugar Cane Archaeology says they approached the Boitanio Mall 4 years ago to participate this time.
The town of Williams Lake is built on the most sensitive part of a First Nations people that has existed for centuries.
Spearing, who is also the rights and naming administrator for Williams Lake First Nation, says there wasn’t much respect for indigenous remains when it was first built in the 1970s.
The recovered skeletons were then taken to a truck and thrown onto an embankment.
In ongoing excavations, Spearing says they discovered a roasting hole, projectiles made from volcanic rocks and several other artifacts.
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The Canadian Press report first published on November 4, 2022.
The Canadian Press
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