A Rail Strike and a Plastic Ban Start the Week: In The News for June 20, 2022

Steve Martin of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers confirmed in a text that workers were legally on strike as of 11 a.m. local time on Saturday. The IBEW gave a 72-hour strike notice Wednesday morning.

While CN did not confirm that workers had gone on strike, spokesman Jonathan Abecassis says the company has implemented an “operational contingency plan,” adding that operations are continuing “safely and at normal levels.” The Montreal-based company says it continues to encourage the union to resolve sticking points on wages and benefits through binding arbitration.

The Canadian rail giant went through an eight-day strike by more than 3,000 workers represented by Teamsters Canada in November 2019 that halted shipments and disrupted industries across the country. CN hauls more than 300 million tonnes of commodities and consumer goods across the continent each year.

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Also this …

Canadians will need to find alternatives for plastic straws and grocery bags by the end of the year as the federal government puts the final motions in place to ban some single-use plastics.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and several other ministers and Liberal MPs will lay out the plastics ban in a series of events across the country today. Guilbeault is also expected to discuss plans to mandate a minimum amount of recycled content in other plastic items as the government seeks to create a bigger market for recycled plastic in Canada.

The draft regulations to ban six plastic items were published in December and the government has to have at least a six-month-long phase-in period once the final regulations are published this month.

Only six specific manufactured plastic items will be affected by the initial ban after the government determined they were hard to recycle but have easy alternatives.

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And this …

New research concludes allowing young hockey players to bodycheck at an early age doesn’t protect them from injury as they move into older, harder-hitting leagues.
In fact, University of Calgary researcher Paul Eliason (ell-EYE-uh-suhn) says kids who are already used to bodychecking by the age of 15 suffer injuries at a rate more than twice as high as players that age who are new to it.
Eliason’s paper is published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
He says he undertook the study to examine arguments that kids who learn early how to give and take an on-ice hit are safer than those who don’t.

What we are watching in the U.S. …

Members of the U-S House committee investigating the Capitol riot say they may subpoena former Vice President Mike Pence.

California Democratic Representative Adam Schiff says the committee is “not taking anything off the table in terms of witnesses who have not yet testified.” He describes a Pence subpoena as “certainly a possibility.” For example, the committee has been able to document most of Trump’s end of his call to Pence on the morning of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when the then-president made his final plea for Pence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory when Pence presided over the Electoral College count in Congress. Members have not yet documented directly what Pence said in response.

The news about possibly issuing a subpoena for Pence comes as the committee, made up of mostly Democrats and a pair of Republicans, is waiting to hear from Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, about her role in the illegal plot to overturn the 2020 election. This past January, Justice Thomas was the lone member of the court who supported a bid by Trump to withhold documents from the committee.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

Extensive flooding across the northern parts of Bangladesh has left millions of people struggling to find safe drinking water and food.

Officials say more than a dozen people have also died in different parts of the country since the monsoon began last week. The country’s flood warning centre is warning that the flooding may worsen in the affected regions over the next 24 hours.

Last month, a pre-monsoon flash flood triggered by a rush of water from upstream in India’s northeastern states hit Bangladesh’s northern and northeastern regions, destroying crops and damaging homes and roads.

Bangladesh is a low-lying nation of 160 million people and is prone to natural disasters.

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This as well …

Prince William, once a towheaded schoolboy, is set to celebrate his 40th birthday on Tuesday by assuming an increasingly central role in the royal family as he prepares for his eventual accession to the throne.

That was clear two weeks ago when William took center stage at the extravaganza concert marking Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne, lauding his grandmother as an environmental trailblazer as he delivered a call to action on climate change.

And experts say get ready to see more of this, as the 96-year-old queen, slowed by age and health problems, gradually hands over more responsibilities to her son and heir, Prince Charles. That in turn gives William, his eldest son, a more important role to play and more opportunities to put the stamp on a new generation of the monarchy.

Royal expert Pauline Maclaran says William has been very keen to kind of show how he will treat things differently. His charities and causes — from mental health to the environment — have given hints of what sort of monarch he might one day be.

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On this day in 1967 …

Boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted and was sentenced to five years in prison. (Ali’s conviction was ultimately overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court).

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Monday, June 20, 2022

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

A Rail Strike and a Plastic Ban Start the Week: In The News for June 20, 2022

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