“China eats weird animals disease”

OTTAWA — The Ontario government says it has successfully petitioned a court to freeze access to millions of dollars donated through online fundraising platform GiveSendGo to the truckers convoy protesting COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa and at several border crossings.

A spokeswoman for Premier Doug Ford says Ontario’s attorney general brought the application to the Superior Court of Justice seeking an order that would prohibit anyone from distributing donations made through the website’s “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “Adopt-a-Trucker” campaign pages.

Michigan governor calls on Canada to put an end to border protest

Michigan’s governor is calling on Canada to stop a border protest snarling one of the country’s busiest trade routes.

Flag-waving protesters opposed to COVID-19 measures are blocking Canada-bound traffic from crossing the Ambassador Bridge.

The protest on the Canadian side of the bridge that links Windsor, Ont., and Detroit began on Monday.

U.S. politician uses blockade at Canada-U.S. border to argue for Buy American

A U.S. lawmaker has seized on blockades at the Canada-U.S. border to argue for more Buy American-style policies and for less reliance on buying goods from Canada.

The call from Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin comes as the protest at a vital Windsor-Detroit crossing has slowed commercial cargo delivery and hit car plants, with several companies stopping production.

“Michiganders have been saying for decades that when our manufacturing is outsourced too much, we end up paying the price,” Slotkin wrote in a series of tweets Wednesday night.

The theory that Covid leaked from a laboratory was given fresh momentum last night after scientists studying soil samples in Antarctica stumbled upon traces of the virus that may have been manipulated in a Chinese research facility.

Rare coronavirus mutations from a sample processed in Shanghai at the beginning of the pandemic were found along with genetic material from hamsters and monkeys, which suggest the virus was being experimented on using either the animals themselves or their cells.

h/t RM

As the Loud Truckist Noise in Ottawa carried on this week it was perhaps understandable that certain of the civic leaders in the nation’s capital and quite a few otherwise respectable members of the Canadian establishment would become a bit unhinged. By now, the rest of us should be sufficiently entertained by the flights of rhetoric that have been coming from all quarters about what it all means, and what to do about it, to come to some decision about whose shouts we like the most.

Frustrations and conflicts tied to the trucker convoy in Ottawa are spilling over onto new fronts Thursday, with police reporting “a concerted effort to flood” 911 lines, protesters mobilizing at the local airport and hackers taking aim at city council.

Earlier in the day, city officials had warned of traffic disruptions at the city’s international airport as the trucker convoy encamped across the city enters its 14th day, and some members appeared to be encircling the airport.

Hundreds of the GoFundMe donations to the Ottawa convoy protest came from donors who said they were located outside of Canada, according to an analysis of data collected by CBC News.

The analysis of a sample of more than 6,600 comments made on the GoFundMe crowdfunding page before it was shut down shows that 573 donations amounting to more than $33,378 came from people who said they were located abroad.

More than half of those donors — 322 — said they were located in the United States. Collectively, American donors contributed $21,101, or 63.2 per cent of the money donated by people who said they were located outside of Canada.

Truckers and supporters said Wednesday they are proud to have their children with them at the protests that have shut down parts of Ottawa for nearly two weeks, saying they are there for their children’s futures.

Even on a relatively quiet morning, children could be seen Wednesday amid the giant trucks that have been parked throughout downtown for 13 days — crawling through the makeshift playground set up on Wellington Street, walking through the crowds on Parliament Hill, being pulled in wagons and pushed in strollers. During the weekend, there were bouncy castles and games of street hockey.