More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
When U.S. President Joe Biden was preparing for his first audience with Queen Elizabeth II as a young senator, his mother -- an Irish American born with the surname Finnegan -- had a piece of advice.
"Don't you bow down to her," she told him in 1982, according to a memoir Biden published several years ago.
On Sunday, Biden met the Queen again. He did not bow.
Afterward, he described her as an "extremely gracious" woman who reminded him of the mother who offered him that advice 40 years ago.
"We had a great talk," he said.
Arriving to the interior quad of Windsor Castle in a dark Range Rover alongside his wife, Biden emerged wearing a signature pair of aviator sunglasses as he stood to chat briefly with the 95-year-old monarch.
Only after listening to the "Star Spangled Banner" did Biden remove his glasses to survey a cordon of red-suited, bearskin-hatted Grenadier Guardsmen. Biden and the Queen then walked inside the castle for their private talks. They could be heard in light conversation.
Biden is now the 12th sitting president to meet the Queen during her reign, joining a legacy of American leaders paying their respects to a global icon and living piece of history.
He and first lady Jill Biden met her at Windsor Castle, her home outside London. It was her first one-on-one engagement with a world leader since the coronavirus pandemic began. And it's among her first public engagements since her husband, Prince Philip, died at 99 earlier this year.
The meeting followed the end of Biden's first G7 summit, held on England's southwestern coast, which wrapped up Sunday afternoon. Biden has spent his first international trip aiming to revive American alliances with the world's richest democracies. After meeting the Queen, he'll head to Brussels where he will spend two days meeting with more U.S. allies at NATO headquarters and the European Union, before heading to Geneva to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"We've just wrapped up what has been an extraordinary and collaborative and productive meeting at the G7," Biden said at a news conference following the G7 and ahead of his meeting with the Queen. "Everyone at the table understood and understands the seriousness of the challenges we are up against and the responsibility of our proud democracies to stand up and deliver for the rest of the world."
His first encounter with the monarch this week came Friday evening, when she joined world leaders at a reception held at a biosphere in Cornwall. After posing for a photo, she took a light jab at the staged camaraderie.
"Are you supposed to be looking as if you're enjoying yourself?" she said.
Later she was pictured in friendly conversation with Biden and his wife outside the futuristic domes, her son Prince Charles and his wife Camilla clutching drinks in the background.
Sunday's occasion was more personal, with only Biden and his wife meeting the Queen in her home.
The President said the Queen wanted to know about Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Biden will meet on Wednesday, and Xi Jinping, the Chinese President.
Speaking at Heathrow Airport before departing the United Kingdom, Biden said he wished he could have spoken to the Queen for longer.
"She was very generous," Biden said. He said he did not think she'd be insulted if he said she "reminded me of my mother in terms of the look of her and the generosity."
Asked if he'd invited her to the White House, Biden said he had.
For Biden, the moment places him within a long roster of predecessors who also came to visit one of the world's most famous women. A student of history who has consumed biographies of past presidents, the moment provides a living link to the office he now holds.
The Queen also helps further Biden's efforts to inject wartime urgency into this week's G7 and NATO summits, including by renewing the Atlantic Charter signed by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the Second World War. The Queen served as an army mechanic in the war.
American presidents often find themselves charmed by the Queen after meeting her.
"The Queen has been a source of inspiration for me, like so many people around the world," President Barack Obama said during a visit to London in 2016, when Prince Philip drove him in a Range Rover from Marine One to the doors of Windsor Castle. "She is truly one of my favorite people."
Former president Donald Trump also held a special affection for Queen Elizabeth II, having watched his own mother -- born in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland -- rapt with attention viewing her coronation on television.
Unlike Trump or Obama, Biden is not an Anglophile. He's a proud Irish American who has (sometimes jokingly) made references to the long British rule over his ancestors' island. This week, he confronted Prime Minister Boris Johnson over issues related to Northern Ireland, concerned that Britain's exit from the European Union is jeopardizing the hard-won peace there.
And among the first things he did upon landing in the United Kingdom on Wednesday was to quote William Butler Yeats, the most famous 20th-century Irish poet, from his poem about the Easter 1916 uprising against British rule. He also quoted the American Declaration of Independence.
The Irish allegiances aside, Biden was unlikely to air his grievances when he sat down with the British monarch on Sunday afternoon.
"Joe and I are both looking forward to meeting the Queen. That's an exciting part of the visit for us," Jill Biden told reporters this week. "We've looked forward to this for weeks and now it's finally here. It's a beautiful beginning."
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”