Darpan News Desk The Canadian Press, 22 May, 2020 06:24 PM
UPDATE: Conflicting reports on the number of casualties in the Pakistan plane crash. Pakistan's civil aviation authorities latest figures have shifted from the initial 107 to 91 pssengers killed along with 7 crew members. Local press in Pakistan are reporting 3 survived the crash.
A Pakistan International Airlines plane with 107 people on board has crashed in Karachi. The plane came down on houses in the Model Colony area in the city. Airbus A320 was traveling from Lahore. Mayor Wasim Akhtar at least 5 or 6 houses were destroyed in the crash. The crash occurred on the eve of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr.
While researchers across the planet race to find a vaccine for COVID-19, a new poll suggests Canadians are divided over whether getting it should be mandatory or voluntary — setting up a potentially prickly public health debate if a vaccine becomes available. The federal government has committed tens of millions of dollars to help find or create a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness that has infected at least 48,000 Canadians and killed more than 2,700.
Canada's national police force wants a digital tool to harvest data from a sweeping variety of online sources, including the darkest reaches of the internet, to provide early information on threats such as disease outbreaks and mass shootings. The software would allow an RCMP officer to quickly mine data about a person's internet activities, from an emoji posting on Facebook to an illicit firearm purchase on the so-called darknet.
Canada's first-ever virtual House of Commons kicked off this afternoon with almost 90 per cent of MPs dialed in to start. The House of Commons special committee on COVID-19 is meeting via videoconference this afternoon. Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said in his opening statement that he could see that 297 of the 338 MPs were online at that moment.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his mother was doing fine Tuesday after a fire at her downtown Montreal apartment sent her to hospital. Margaret Trudeau, 71, was transported to hospital after the fire that broke out on the patio of the building just before midnight Monday.
Thousands more people are expected to contract COVID-19 and hundreds will likely die in the coming week, according to government projections, despite the progress the country has made in fighting the pandemic. Canada's case rate is now doubling every 16 days rather than three to five days seen about three weeks ago, Dr. Theresa Tam, the country's top public health officer, said on Thursday.
HSBC Bank Canada reported a drop in its first-quarter profit compared with a year ago as it took a charge related to bad loans it expects due to the downturn in the economy. The bank says it earned a profit attributable to common shareholders of $54 million or 11 cents per share for the quarter ended March 31. That's compared with a profit of $158 million or 32 cents per share in the first three months of 2019.
