News

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As the Federal Election enters its third week, some local tomfoolery threatens to upend the Bay of Quinte riding battle between Conservative incumbent Ryan Williams and Liberal candidate Chris Malette. In a press release issued late Saturday, candidate Chris Malette says someone has purchased several website addresses featuring his name, like “chrismalette.ca” and ‘votechrismalette.ca.” People clicking on those websites were directed to Conservative candidate Ryan Williams’s official website. Malette says he reached out to Williams and his campaign team and was assured that they had nothing to do with the misdirections. In a public statement, Williams and his campaign denied any involvement with the website redirection, and said they were making a formal complaint to Elections Canada about the issue. Since the writ was dropped, two Liberal and five Conservative candidates have had to withdraw from the race and all parties are hoping to have their candidates locked down in advance of the end of candidate nominations – today at 2pm.

Asian stock markets opened lower on Sunday evening, as the ‘Liberation Day’ sell off continues to pick up steam on the back of the Trump Trade war. Investors didn’t receive the news over the weekend they were wishing for that the Trump administration was having successful negotiations with countries to lower tariff rates and instead the initial unilateral 10% tariff went into effect Saturday. The president and his key advisors played down the sell-off, with Trump saying last evening about the market sell-off: “I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.” And “We have a trillion-dollar trade deficit with China, hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China. And unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal.” Stocks were set to open sharply lower today, putting the S&P 500 on the precipice of a bear market — a decline of 20% from its peak and an ominous sign for investors and perhaps the broader economy. Dow futures were down 1,500 points, or 4%. S&P 500 futures fell 4.3%, while Nasdaq futures tumbled 4.7%. At last look, the Canadian dollar is sitting at about 70 cents to the greenback, having pulled back from last week’s high of 71 cents.

Hydro One says the number of customers without power has dropped to 69,000 as the utility makes progress on the prolonged ice storm outages. Sunday’s total is down by about 33,000 from Saturday. The provincial utility says weather is favourable and its helicopters and drones are back in the air to help survey the damage. Over a million Ontario homes and businesses experienced outages since the last weekend’s ice storm and subsequent days of high winds and heavy rain. A regional breakdown issued by Hydro One suggests the area in and around Kawartha Lakes has the most customers still without power at about 20,000. Local maps show that all the power in the region is back up.

Finally, Pope Francis has made a surprise appearance in St Peter’s Square during a special jubilee mass for the sick and health workers, marking his first public appearance at the Vatican since his discharge from hospital two weeks ago. The pontiff waved at the crowd that stood and applauded as he appeared unannounced, assisted in a wheelchair to the front of the altar in the square. “Good Sunday to everyone,’’ Francis said, speaking into a microphone, which he tapped to make sure it was working on a second attempt. “Thank you very much.”

Sports

Let’s start with hockey. The Great Eight, Alexander Ovechkin, has taken over the top spot as the all-time NHL goal scorer putting his 895th home in the second period against Ilya Sorokin of the New York Islanders. Ovechkin had never scored on Sorokin before, making his countryman the 183rd different goaltender he has beaten. “Thank you to Sorokin to let me score 895,” Ovechkin said. “I love you, brother.” Unfortunately for the Caps, they lost the game 4-1.

Toronto FC was in action last night, having travelled to Miami to face the Lionel Messis. Toronto opened the scoring late in the first half with a creeper by Federico Bernadeschi, before the man, myth and legend Lionel Messi put one home in first half injury time to tie the game.

The Formula One circus travelled to Japan this weekend for the Japanese Grand Prix. After a couple of action-packed days where the track caught fire thanks to a combination of hot cars and dry grass, the race day itself was as dull as sushi rice. Max Verstappen won for Red Bull over McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

Now that we’re in April, the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournaments are drawing to a close. Tonight we’ll see Florida battle Houston for the men’s championship, while yesterday, the UConn Huskies spanked the South Carolina Gamecocks 82-59 to take the Women’s title.