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.
U.S. President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were fixing to help a local food kitchen prepare Thanksgiving meals for the needy before leaving town - like millions of other Americans - to resume their family tradition of spending the holiday on tiny Nantucket island in Massachusetts.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were joining the outing to DC Central Kitchen, which serves cooked-from-scratch meals alongside training for culinary jobs.
Jill Biden kicked off the holiday season at the White House on Monday when she received the official White House Christmas tree - an 18 1/2-foot (5.6 meter) Fraser fir cut from a North Carolina farm that she declared “magnificent.” The tree is destined for the Blue Room as the showstopper of Christmas at the White House - Biden's first as president.
The first lady also joined the president on a visit to the Army's Fort Bragg in North Carolina later Monday for an early Thanksgiving with service members and their families.
The Bidens were still dating when they first visited Nantucket, with Biden's sons, Beau and Hunter, in the mid-1970s. The couple was looking for a way out of the conundrum of choosing one of their families over the other to spend Thanksgiving with, the first lady wrote in her memoir.
Biden was a U.S. senator back then and his chief of staff suggested they go to Nantucket.
“And although neither Joe nor I had ever been, we decided that sounded as good as anywhere,” she wrote. So they packed a cooler with sandwiches and sodas, loaded the boys into the station wagon and drove six hours to the Cape, where a ferry chugged them over to the island.
Thanksgiving on “Nana-tucket” - as their grandchildren call the island in a play on their “Nana” nickname for their grandmother - became the family tradition for the next several decades, though with a few exceptions, the first lady wrote.
Last fall, Biden put tradition on hold over COVID-19 concerns, when people were being told to avoid traveling and gathering indoors in large groups for the holidays. Instead, the then-president-elect hunkered down for Thanksgiving with just his wife, their daughter and her husband.
Both the president and first lady since have received the main two-dose course of the Pfizer vaccine, as well as the third booster shot recommended by public health officials to provide more enduring protection against the coronavirus.
Some Biden family members were at the White House this week. Hunter, his wife, Melissa, and their toddler son, Beau, watched Monday as the official Christmas tree was delivered. Hunter's daughter, Finnegan, later was seen on one of the balconies, holding brother Beau and watching as their grandparents departed for North Carolina.
The White House has not said how Biden, who turned 79 last Saturday, plans to spend his time on Nantucket.
In her memoir, the first lady named a favorite restaurant where they would eat lunch and said they would gather on cobblestone Main Street on Friday evenings to see Santa Claus, watch the Christmas tree lighting ceremony and sing carols.
Biden also attends Catholic Mass every weekend.
Asked during her Tuesday briefing about the trip, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the president's decision to leave Washington for the holiday by saying that Thanksgiving “is a time to put politics aside, spend time with your loved ones and talk about what you're grateful for.”
She also noted that Biden is president wherever he is.
------
Jaffe reported from Fort Bragg, N.C. Associated Press writer Colleen Long contributed to this report
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.
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.
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.
An orca whale calf that has been stranded in a B.C. lagoon for weeks after her pregnant mother died swam out on her own early Friday morning.
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.
An Ontario man who took out a loan to pay for auto repairs said his car was repossessed after he missed two payments.
Devastating tornadoes tore across parts of eastern Nebraska and northeast Texas Friday as a multi-day severe thunderstorm event ramped up in the central United States, injuring at least three people.
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.
Donald Trump's defence team attacked the credibility Friday of the prosecution's first witness in his hush money case, seeking to discredit testimony detailing a scheme between Trump and a tabloid to bury negative stories to protect the Republican's 2016 presidential campaign.
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.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.