WHO says viral illness in China is not yet a global health emergency

Human rights museum responds to reopening backlash

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights reopened to fully vaccinated members of the public this week, drawing cries of discrimination from those who have chosen not to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

While the some of the backlash has been “disturbing,” museum CEO Isha Khan said the conflict has opened room for a conversation about human rights during the pandemic.

“We made the decision to open in compliance with that law, really because we’re a public institution and we saw it as our responsibility to open as soon as we could to the public — within the restrictions as they currently are,” Khan said Thursday.

“But it’s really important to us, as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights we have a mandate for human rights education, that we’re trying to ground the conversation in human rights principles.”

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison dead at 88

NEW YORK - Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, a pioneer and reigning giant of modern literature whose imaginative power in "Beloved," ''Song of Solomon" and other works transformed American letters by dramatizing the pursuit of freedom within the boundaries of race, has died at age 88.

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced that Morrison died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. Morrison's family issued a statement through Knopf saying she died after a brief illness.

"Toni Morrison passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends," the family announced. "The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing."

Few authors rose in such rapid, spectacular style. She was nearly 40 when her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," was published. By her early 60s, after just six novels, she had become the first black woman to receive the Nobel literature prize, praised in 1993 by the Swedish academy for her "visionary force" and for her delving into "language itself, a language she wants to liberate" from categories of black and white. In 2012, Barack Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Walkout creates chaos at St. James Smitty’s

Gordon Sharpe wanted to eat a meal at the St. James Smitty’s Wednesday, but he got a helping of bad news instead.

He saw several workers walk out of the restaurant, at 1017 St. James St.

“(The waiter) came back about 10 minutes later and stood over the table, looking a little distraught and said, ‘I’m quitting right now and so is everybody else,’” Sharpe said. “He said, ‘This is my last time serving you,’ and he was quite choked up.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, adding that the managers scrambled to serve patrons.

SNC planned U.S. move if no deal: documents

OTTAWA - SNC-Lavalin warned federal prosecutors last fall about a possible plan to split the company in two, move its offices to the United States and eliminate its Canadian workforce if it didn't get a deal to avoid criminal prosecution, newly obtained documents show.

The documents, part of a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Canadian Press, describe something called "Plan B" — what Montreal-based SNC might have to do if it can't convince the government to grant a so-called remediation agreement to avoid criminal proceedings in a fraud and corruption case related to projects in Libya.

Under that plan, SNC would move its Montreal headquarters and corporate offices in Ontario and Quebec to the U.S. within a year, cutting its workforce to just 3,500 from 8,717, before eventually winding up its Canadian operations.

“The government of Canada needs to weigh the public interest impact of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin," the presentation reads.

Olympics Overnight: Canada reclaims gold in women’s hockey, Thompson wins silver in ski cross, and Kamila Valieva struggles in women’s free skate

Here’s what you missed overnight at Day 13 of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.