B-C provincial health officer Doctor Bonnie Henry is scheduled to provide an update this afternoon on the province's respiratory illness season.
It's Henry's first update of 2024 and she'll be joined by Health Minister Adrian Dix.
The most recent information from the province's centre for disease control says that in late December Influenza A and R-S-V cases were on the rise.
The centre said at the time that COVID-19 numbers were remaining stable or decreasing since early November.
Vancouver police have conducted a series of raids of retail outlets as part of an investigation into the illegal sale of illicit psychedelic drugs including psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms. Officers searched three storefronts in Marpole, Mount Pleasant, and Strathcona, seizing a variety of controlled substances police believe were being bought and sold in bulk quantities to walk-in customers.
Mounties on Vancouver Island say thieves are making off with batteries from railway control boxes, causing an estimated 800-thousand dollars in damages and replacement costs. Police say the island-wide problem stretches from Langford to Comox Valley and multiple thefts have occurred between August to October.
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says the central bank held its key interest rate at five per cent in part because of the effect a wave of upcoming mortgage renewals is expected to have on the economy. Macklem appeared before a Senate committee alongside senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers on Wednesday following the Bank of Canada's most recent interest rate decision and monetary policy report.
The Conservatives moved on Wednesday to make carbon pricing the ballot box question in the next election, seizing on the public's anxiety about affordability and seeing a crack in the Liberals' carbon-price armour. "A carbon tax election," Leader Pierre Poilievre proposed in a speech to his caucus in Ottawa.
The Conservative party is maintaining a steady lead over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals, a new poll suggests, at a time when Canadians are reporting limited trust in their institutions. Pierre Poilievre's Tories are 14 percentage points ahead of the governing party, according to the survey by polling firm Leger. Forty per cent of respondents said they would vote Conservative, 26 per cent Liberal and 17 per cent NDP if an election were held that day.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 8,805, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, 130 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them civilians slain in the initial Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. In addition, around 240 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.