“China eats weird animals disease”

The “Atlas of Civil Society” report is full of examples of restricted freedoms: overcrowded prisons in the Philippines, arrested journalists in Zimbabwe, threatened human rights defenders in Mexico. For the fourth time, the organizations Bread for the World and Civicus published a comprehensive report on the situation of civil society organizations and their members in almost 200 countries.

“2019 was a year of protests,” said Dagmar Pruin, chairperson of Bread for the World. “Worldwide, people took to the streets. And this mobilization continued in 2020, for example in the US, or in Belarus.”

Ontario is reporting 2,941 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 45,800 tests completed. Locally, there are 924 new cases in Toronto, 565 in Peel, 254 in York Region, 171 in Durham and 149 in Hamilton.

— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) May 5, 2021

When will the Canada-U.S. border reopen?

Travel across the Canada-U.S. border could resume by late summer or fall, according to the cautious estimates of some experts, but they say the process will be complicated.

The border has been closed to non-essential travel like tourism and recreation since March 2020, and the closure agreement between Ottawa and Washington is expected to be renewed on May 21.

The agreement makes exceptions, for example, on compassionate grounds like attending a funeral, or to apply for refugee status, and enforcement has been less than absolute.

The COVID restrictions from the Biden administration have become so onerous and illogical that even left-wing media outlets have begun to take notice. At the top of her 2:00 p.m. ET hour show on Tuesday, MSNBC anchor Katy Tur read from a New York magazine article openly mocking “irrational” Centers for Disease Control rules demanding children wear masks at all times outdoors while attending summer camp.

More than 500 air passengers fined for defying hotel quarantine rules after landing in Vancouver and Toronto

The federal government has doled out hundreds of fines since Feb. 22 — typically for $3,000 each — to air passengers who refused to quarantine in a designated hotel upon arrival in Canada.

Even so, the government couldn’t provide CBC News with a total number of people who’ve violated its rule that passengers entering Canada be tested for COVID-19, then quarantine in a hotel while waiting for their results.

And when CBC tried to track down the total number of hotel quarantine violators, it found no evidence of fines being issued to passengers who landed in Calgary or Montreal — two of the four cities, along with Vancouver and Toronto, where international flights are allowed to land during the pandemic.

Like golfers everywhere, I was cheered by my colleague Kelly McParland’s defence of our game against woke charges that it is elitist. “In defence of golf as a middle-class sport,” his piece was called, and, thanks to the miracle of the internet, it really was read by golfers everywhere. And there are golfers everywhere, even in Communist China, where an estimated 20 million play, despite an official ban on golf course development by that country’s wide-awoke authorities.

EDMONTON — The trial for an Alberta pastor accused of leading church services in violation of public-health orders entered its second day on Tuesday.

Lawyers for GraceLife Pastor James Coates, 41, continued their arguments this morning in Edmonton provincial court.

They argued the province’s public health rules restricting attendance at venues, including churches, violated charter rights around freedom of gathering, expression and religion.

Canada needs more help with COVID-19, prominent U.S. vaccine expert urges White House

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert and a familiar face to cable news viewers in both countries, says the U.S. has more than enough capacity to expand its largely successful vaccination efforts beyond its borders, including in Canada.

In an interview Monday with The Canadian Press, Hotez said he had assumed — like a lot of Americans — that Canada had essentially been keeping pace with the U.S. in terms of getting its citizens the protection they need.

Then he looked at the numbers.

“I was really astonished — only about a third of the country has received a single dose, and essentially no one’s gotten fully vaccinated,” said Hotez, who is dean of the school of tropical medicine at Baylor University in Houston.