An El Nino-less summer is coming. Here's what that could mean for Canada
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Matt Hancock, the U.K’s scandal-prone former health secretary, sought an unlikely form of redemption Sunday: attempting to win “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here” — a gruelling, often gruesome reality show set in the Australian jungle.
Hancock led Britain’s response to COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic, telling people to stay away from others to protect the health service — then got caught breaking his government’s own rules when video emerged of him kissing and groping an aide he was having an affair with.
He was forced to resign when The Sun newspaper published the CCTV images. This time, though, he knew the camera was on, and behaved in ways many might find even more distasteful: eating the raw nether parts of camels, cows and sheep, among other things.
“I'm a Celebrity...” sends a group of famous people, often C-list celebrities, to the Australian rainforest, subjects them to trials involving spiders and snakes, and they are eliminated one by one based on a public vote.
While many Britons have been disgusted by Hancock's appearance, blaming him for apparent failings in the government’s early response to the pandemic, viewers upended expectations by voting Hancock through to Sunday evening’s final. He finished third. Former England soccer star Jill Scott won the competition and actor Owen Warner finished second.
The former health chief outlasted Culture Club singer Boy George and former rugby player Mike Tindall, whose wife, Zara, is the niece of King Charles III. Tindall body tackled Hancock in another of the show’s tasks, and has been poking fun at the former health secretary's politicking.
“He clearly wants to win,” said Tindall, adding that Hancock was constantly aiming his T-shirt with voting number at the camera. “Once a politician, always a politician. Always polling for votes.”
Fellow politicians have been less enthusiastic than the show-voting public. When it was announced that Hancock would appear, he was slated by fellow lawmakers, including many from his own party, and he was suspended as a Conservative member of parliament.
His success seems to have done nothing to ease their ire. Speaking to Sky News Sunday, Cabinet minister Mark Harper said: “I don’t think serving members of Parliament should be taking part in reality television programs.
“However well they do on them, I still think they should be doing the job for which they are paid a good salary — which is representing their constituents.”
Announcing that he was going to “step up," Australian comedian Adam Hills, host of comedy current affairs show “The Last Leg," went to Hancock's constituency in eastern England last weekend and met with locals to hear their problems.
“I reckon I can do a better job in a week than he has done thus far,” Hills said on the show.
Still, a political comeback for Hancock is not out of the question. Conservative lawmaker Nadine Dorries was suspended in 2012 for appearing on the same show. Nine years later, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed her to his Cabinet.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
The federal New Democrats are calling out Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party for trying to block the bill that could pave the way for millions of Canadians to access birth control and diabetes coverage.
Defence lawyers of Jeremy Skibicki have admitted in court the accused killed four Indigenous women, but argues he is not criminally responsible for the deaths by way of mental disorder – this latest development has triggered a judge-alone trial rather than a jury trial.
A daily spoonful of olive oil could lower your risk of dying from dementia, according to a new study by Harvard scientists.
An Ontario MPP was asked again to leave the Ontario legislature on Monday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that was banned by the Speaker last month due to its political symbolism.
H5N1 or avian flu is decimating wildlife around the world and is now spreading among cattle in the United States, sparking concerns about 'pandemic potential' for humans. Now a health expert is urging Canada to scale up surveillance north of the border.
Democratic Institutions Minister Dominic LeBlanc will be tabling legislation on Monday aimed at countering foreign interference in Canada. Federal officials have scheduled a technical briefing on the incoming bill for Monday afternoon.
Polish prosecutors have discontinued an investigation into human skeletons found at a site where German dictator Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders spent time during the Second World War because the advanced state of decay made it impossible to determine the cause of death, a spokesman said Monday.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.