'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
Tokyo reported 3,177 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, setting an all-time high and exceeding 3,000 for the first time days after the start of the Olympics.
The new cases exceeded the earlier record of 2,848 set the previous day and brought the total for the Japanese capital to 206,745 since the pandemic began early last year.
Tokyo has been under a fourth state of emergency since July 12 ahead of the Olympics, which began last Friday despite widespread public opposition and concern that they could further worsen the outbreak.
Experts say Tokyo's surge is being propelled by the new, more contagious Delta variant of the virus and there is no evidence of the disease being transmitted from Olympics participants to the general public.
Nationwide, Japan reported 7,630 cases on Tuesday for a total of 882,823.
Japan has kept its cases and deaths lower than many other countries, but its vaccination campaign started very late in comparison to other large nations and there is fear that rising cases could overwhelm hospitals.
Japan's seven-day rolling average of cases is now about 4 per 100,000 people compared to 18.5 in the United States, 48 in Britain and 2.8 in India, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Japan's vaccine minister, Taro Kono, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that there is no evidence of the coronavirus spreading from Olympic participants to Japan's population.
"I don't think there have been any cases related to the Olympic Games. So we aren't worried about that issue," he said.
Experts expressed alarm about cases continuing to rise despite the state of emergency.
"A sense of crisis should be shared across Japanese society" to slow infections, Dr. Shigeru Omi, a top government medical adviser, said after a taskforce meeting Wednesday.
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike urged younger people on Wednesday to cooperate with measures to bring down the number of infections and get vaccinated, saying their activities are key to slowing the surge during the Olympics.
Koike noted that the majority of the elderly have been fully vaccinated and infections among them have largely decreased, while mostly unvaccinated younger people are now dominating new cases.
"Younger people's activity holds the key (to slowing the infections), and we need your cooperation," Koike said. "Please make sure to avoid nonessential outings and observe basic anti-infection measures, and I would like younger people to get vaccinated."
As of Wednesday, 26.3% of the Japanese population has been fully vaccinated. The percentage of the elderly who are fully vaccinated is 70%, or 24.8 million people.
Vaccination prospects for younger people have improved, and some can get their shots organized by work places and colleges, while others still wait based on seniority. But there are also concerns over hesitancy among the young, with surveys showing many have doubts, in part due to false rumors about side effects.
Younger people have been blamed for roaming downtown areas after the requested closing hours for eateries and stores and spreading the virus. The state of emergency, which is to continue through the Olympics, mainly focuses on requiring establishments to stop serving alcohol and shorten their hours. Measures for the public are only requests and are increasingly ignored.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has also urged people to avoid nonessential outings and says there is no need to consider a suspension of the Games, which are being held with no fans in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures -- Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama.
The governors of the three areas, alarmed by Tokyo's surging cases, said on Wednesday they plan to ask Suga to place their prefectures under the state of emergency too.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
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.