Five episodes of South Park have been banned from HBO Max for depicting Islamic prophet Muhammad, reminding fans that virtually every other religion is considered fair game for making fun of — except for Islam.
South Park, which started in 1997, has five episodes that depict Muhammad: “Super Best Friends,” “Cartoon Wars Part I & II,” “200,” and “201,” all of which are missing from the HBO Max lineup, notes Screen Rant.
Passengers travelling through Terminal 3 at Toronto Pearson International Airport are reporting serious baggage delays as the airport struggles to catch up from a broken luggage belt.
Images from the terminal show a sea of unclaimed bags sitting in the baggage area.
One viewer who sent CP24 video of the bags said workers described the situation as “beyond disaster.”
Pearson airport is having a flea market! pic.twitter.com/ihmIHiBAuf
— stephen.patrick (@stephen_kr) December 26, 2022
Turkey on Monday summoned France’s ambassador over “anti-Turkey propaganda” that it alleged French officials did little to stop following the killing of three Kurds in Paris.
Friday’s shooting was followed by days of protests by Kurdish groups and their supporters in the French capital.
Some of the protesters waved flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – designated as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its Western allies.
Others held banners with slogans accusing Turkey of being a killer state and connected to the shooting.
There’s a new venture taking place in a large, nondescript warehouse in Kingston, Ont.: Lithium-ion battery recycling. And it could be an important component of Canada’s net-zero future.
The facility, owned by Canadian startup Li-Cycle, houses stacks of depleted lithium-ion batteries that not long ago would have been destined for a landfill. The company is giving them new life — recycling the batteries that power most electric vehicles, phones and laptops.
… Starting in 2023, Li-Cycle will send the black mass to a new facility it is building in Rochester, N.Y., where it can separate the black mass into valuable battery-grade materials to be used to make new EV batteries. Li-Cycle says the plant will be the first source of recycled battery-grade lithium carbonate production in North America.
Kochar said his company can recover 95 per cent of those critical minerals needed to make new EV batteries, and the process can happen repeatedly.
Ontario plunging into energy storage as electricity supply crunch looms
Ontario is staring down an electricity supply crunch and amid a rush to secure more power, it is plunging into the world of energy storage — a relatively unknown solution for the grid that experts say could also change energy use at home.
Beyond the sprawling nuclear plants and waterfalls that generate most of the province’s electricity sit the batteries, the underground caverns storing compressed air to generate electricity, and the spinning flywheels waiting to store energy at times of low demand and inject it back into the system when needed.
Both these articles on the CBC site read like Green-Scam Tech Advetorials passing as journalism.
The platform suppressed true information from doctors and public-health experts that was at odds with U.S. government policy.
I had always thought a primary job of the press was to be skeptical of power—especially the power of the government. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, I and so many others found that the legacy media had shown itself to largely operate as a messaging platform for our public health institutions. Those institutions operated in near total lockstep, in part by purging internal dissidents and discrediting outside experts.
Twitter became an essential alternative. It was a place where those with public health expertise and perspectives at odds with official policy could air their views—and where curious citizens could find such information. This often included other countries’ responses to Covid that differed dramatically from our own.
Melvyn Bragg once challenged the wild director Ken Russell to make a film so offensive even Russell would have it banned. He obliged
If your Christmas cheer is ever crying out for a short, sharp course-correction, look no further than Ken Russell’s last completed film, merrily entitled A Kitten for Hitler. This eight-minute-long skit, which Russell made for about £10,000, premiered on the website Comedybox.tv in July 2007 – the same year in which the 80-year-old Russell had briefly shown up on Celebrity Big Brother, but walked out of the house after an altercation with Jade Goody.
This story isn’t over – and neither is the story of the COVID cover-up.
Last week, a bombshell intelligence report on the origins of COVID-19 was released by House Republicans with the explosive discovery that the United States government funded genetic manipulation of coronaviruses, not only at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but at a Chinese Military research facility.
While the U.S. routinely, and rightly, lectures China on being more transparent and cooperating more on the COVID investigation, we don’t expect much. Admitting mistakes or failure under a totalitarian regime often has terminal consequences.
Nearly half of Canadians want there to be a federal election in 2023, according to a new poll from Ipsos.
While the deadline for the federal election is 2025, the NDP has agreed to keep the Liberal minority government in power until then as long as it abides by the terms of the governance deal struck between the two parties earlier this year.
Living without government services isn’t necessarily cheaper or easier, but it sure beats putting up with municipal bureaucracies.
When our water was turned off one morning last January, we assumed it was due to the sinkhole slowly expanding across the width of our single-lane street in South Philadelphia. But we could only guess, as no one answered the phone at the Philadelphia Water Department, and the first city employee didn’t show up on our street until four hours after the taps died. When one of my elderly neighbors asked how long it would take to restore service, the city guy said his crews were swamped. It took 27 hours.
With spotlights shining into the house and construction equipment rattling our walls, my wife and I spent most of that night wondering where we could go for a reprieve with a 2-month-old in below-freezing weather. North Carolina was an obvious place.
A lot is broken now.
For the leafy Stockholm suburb of Nacka, it was a rude, pre-dawn awakening: wailing sirens, two Black Hawk helicopters clattering overhead and special forces in combat gear fast-roping through the windows of an imposing white villa – all at 6.01am.
The raid late last month by Sweden’s security service, police elite units and army, lasting little over a minute, targeted a Russian couple suspected of carrying out “illegal intelligence activities” against Sweden and the US for more than a decade.
It took place just days before the trial began in Stockholm of two Swedish brothers arrested last autumn and accused of selling secrets to Russia’s intelligence services.
Days after Sasha Suda abruptly resigned as director of the National Gallery of Canada last July, 16 prominent Canadians wrote Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez detailing the qualifications they felt were required of the next director. The implication was that Suda had few of them.
The bomb cyclone that has brought freezing temperatures and up to six feet of snow to North America has caused at least 50 deaths across the US and Canada.
The US recorded 46 fatalities and four more people died on Christmas Eve after a bus rolled over on icy roads in British Columbia, Canada.
The deep freeze is linked to 18 deaths in the state of New York, particularly in Buffalo where the ‘lake-effect’ – when frigid air moves over warmer lake waters and creates a freezing spray – has been lethal.
The aftermath of mass looting today in Buffalo, NY following a storm: pic.twitter.com/sJPVOYgtj9
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 26, 2022
Toronto and the GTA were spared the worst of it. I went for a visit to Hamilton on Christmas Eve day, the roads were clear and dry but the wind and cold were fierce.
Blizzard London Ontario Canada.
Dashcam footage captures moment of horrific crash on the 401 highway. pic.twitter.com/q2Uafl7MNu— (@72powpow) December 26, 2022
From Mauser
A government agency in Germany announced plans to remotely limit home heating and charging of electric cars under a new scheme.
Germany’s Federal Network Agency, a watchdog that regulates electricity and gas in the country, said the plan would allow the power grid operators to remotely limit people’s use of heat pumps and electric car chargers next winter without the user’s consent.
The plans, set to be in place by January 2024, will give energy grid operators the power to artificially curb electricity demand if consumption outstrips supply.
The sort of plan designed to be implemented only in a state of emergency … permanent emergency.
… Around 21,000 beds will be added to student residences in the 24 largest domestic markets by 2025, according to a report from real estate consultants Cushman & Wakefield, published earlier this year. At recent rates of admissions growth, that would cover just a portion of the incoming wave of students.
This pushes more students into the private rental market, where they compete with other residents for a limited number of housing units in supply-starved cities.
“It’s not just international students having trouble finding housing. That has an effect on the local market,” Mr. Usher said. “And it’s a tax that institutions are placing specifically on low-income families in those communities.”
Ms. Verma moved from Sydney to Halifax in the fall semester, as part of a required co-op term. Now she can’t find a room back in Sydney. She may commute – a one-way drive of five hours or so – to her final two classes.
“There is literally no space out there. I can’t even express how we are feeling. It’s really terrible,” she said.
Canada’s immigration policy is of no benefit to citizens, it is designed solely to provide the corporate class with the compliant bodies needed to depress wages and furnish a vote bloc for our corrupt politicians.
Roughly 15,000 people in Washington state woke up without power Christmas morning after three substations were vandalized in the early hours.
The vandalism began as early as 2:30 a.m. Sunday when a substation controlled by Puget Sound Energy was damaged and lost power. About 7,700 customers lost power, but had it restored by 5 a.m., according to a company spokesperson.
The vandalism comes as federal officials warn that the power grid is vulnerable to domestic terrorism. A US Homeland Security report warned that extremists have been developing “credible, specific plans” to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020.
