The provincial government announced on Monday that it will be ending the order to limit gas for non-essential drivers in BC.
The announcement was made by Emergency Management BC and Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth.
The order to restrict gas for non-essential drivers came into effect on November 19 and extended on November 29, with plans to keep the order in place until December 14. The Trans Mountain pipeline restarted last week, following the precautionary shutdown caused by heavy rains and flooding in BC.
“On a positive note, I can confirm today that the fuel restriction order in place since November 19, will be lifted tomorrow, December 14,” Farnworth said.
“This measure has been effective in maintaining a steady supply of gas for public use while ensuring our essential service vehicles have priority access to what they need to do to make sure everything is looked after.”‘
Farnworth also shared his thanks for all the British Columbians who abided by the 30-litre rule, adding that all residents “stepped up.”
“The people of British Columbia stepped up,” he added. “Every one of you played your part and for that, I want to thank you. On behalf of the emergency responders, the people who’ve been moving to keep our supply routes open, and most importantly the people who have been impacted by the floods.”
BC’s Provincial State of Emergency, however, has been extended for an additional two weeks, until December 28.
Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2021, a year that saw his electric car company become the most valuable carmaker in the world and his rocket company soar to the edge of space with an all-civilian crew.
Musk is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX, and leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company. Tesla's market value soared to more than $1 trillion US this year, making it more valuable than Ford Motor and General Motors combined.
Tesla produces hundreds of thousands of cars every year and has managed to avert supply chain issues more effectively than many of its rivals, while pushing many young consumers to switch to electric cars and legacy automakers to shift focus to EV vehicles.
"For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year," the magazine's editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, said.
Elon Musk (<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a>) is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TIMEPOY?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TIMEPOY</a> <a href="https://t.co/8Y5BhIldNs">https://t.co/8Y5BhIldNs</a> <a href="https://t.co/B6h6rndjIh">pic.twitter.com/B6h6rndjIh</a>
"Even Elon Musk's spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate his historic first solo transatlantic airplane flight over the Atlantic."
From hosting Saturday Night Live to dropping tweets on cryptocurrencies and meme stocks that have triggered massive movements in their value, Musk has dominated the headlines and amassed more than 66 million followers on Twitter.
Some of his tweets have also attracted regulatory scrutiny in the past.
According to the magazine, the Person of the Year signifies somebody "who affected the news or our lives the most, for better, or worse."
Time magazine named the teenage pop singer Olivia Rodrigo as its Entertainer of the Year, American gymnast Simone Biles Athlete of the Year and vaccine scientists were named Heroes of the Year.
Vaccine scientists are TIME's 2021 Heroes of the Year <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TIMEPOY?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TIMEPOY</a> <a href="https://t.co/8qAiVzxRPP">https://t.co/8qAiVzxRPP</a> <a href="https://t.co/pxee2faWdL">pic.twitter.com/pxee2faWdL</a>
Eric Caire, Quebec’s minister of digital transformation, said the province has since been working to identify which websites are at risk, one by one, before putting them back online.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Amid warnings from Ottawa of a global online security issue, Quebec said Sunday that it has shut down almost 4,000 government websites as a preventative measure after receiving a cyberattack threat.
At a news conference, Quebec’s minister of digital transformation said the province was made aware of the threat on Friday and has since been working to identify which websites are at risk, one by one, before putting them back online.
“We’re kind of looking for a needle in a haystack,” Eric Caire said, in Quebec City, “Not knowing which websites use the [affected] software, we decided to shut them all.”
He added, “Once we make sure the system is operational, it gets back online.”
Mr. Caire said the provincial vaccine passport system was never at risk, saying it doesn’t require the software that has been the focus of attention.
Defence Minister Anita Anand said the federal government is aware of a “vulnerability” in a software product called Apache, “which has the potential to be used by bad actors in limited and targeted attacks.”
Ms. Anand said in a statement Sunday that the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security is calling on Canadian organizations of all types to pay attention to this “critical, internet vulnerability affecting organizations across the globe.”
The centre leads the government’s response to cybersecurity events, combining expertise from Public Safety Canada, Shared Services Canada and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) to work with private and public sectors.
Asked for more details on the reference to Canadian organizations of all types, the CSE said Sunday that it was referring to small, medium and large organizations/enterprises, but did not provide any further details.
The Canada Revenue Agency said Sunday that it became aware on Friday of a security vulnerability.
“As a precaution, we proactively decided to take our online services offline while we work to secure our systems against potential threats,” said the statement.
The CRA said it is committed to protecting the personal and tax information of Canadians by taking appropriate steps to safeguard sensitive information online.
However, the agency said there is no indication that its systems have been compromised, or that there has been unauthorized access to taxpayer information because of this vulnerability.
“We understand that this interruption may be inconvenient to some Canadians. Our services will be available as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank Canadians for their patience as we work to resolve the situation,” said the statement.
Another high-profile federal institution also recently faced cyber-intrusion issues. On Dec. 2, a representative for the Governor-General disclosed that there was unauthorized access into an internal computer network. The Office of the Governor-General said it was working with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security on both an investigation and action to strengthen its network.
With reports from The Canadian Press.
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Much of southern Ontario basked in temperatures reaching into the mid-to-high teens on Saturday, but with a sting in the tail: Powerful winds in the 70-100 km/h range that began ramping up in the afternoon and will remain gusty overnight.
Those are extreme winds, and they had a major effect on communities Saturday: numerous trees have been reported down, causing major power outages. Almost 150,000 Hydro One customers were without power as of 8 p.m. Saturday.
Those winds also whipped up the waters of the Great Lakes into some serious waves, with authorities warning people to stay away from the lakeshores, and the storm surge triggered flooding in some coastal areas.
Below is a selection of how the storm's aftermath is playing out on Twitter.
Flooded. Storm surge went up the creeks and flooded this street. Crystal Beach. #ONStorm pic.twitter.com/3acvmGTuNQ
At the mouth of the Niagara River in Fort Erie. Some flooding and lots of branches. Power is on here. Hopefully it's on all over. #onstorm pic.twitter.com/1UktGU9Pbm
Seconds before it came on shore. Man did i book it to my truck!! #onstorm #onwx @weathernetwork @StormhunterTWN #ShareYourWeather @PortBurwellPP #portburwell @LakeErieNorth pic.twitter.com/XuxSpedpJS
High Winds downtown #Guelph, 2nd floor condo, patio furniture lifted off ground and flipped upside down. Secured all to porch. Crazy, Stay safe! #ONStorm pic.twitter.com/3AuNI0vOWC
The strong wind is wreaking havoc across the region.Stay alert and be safe.#onstorm Pictured is a tree that fell onto a townhouse on Columbia Ct, and a large commercial sign that toppled onto a parked car on Tecumseh Rd East. pic.twitter.com/YG1eBH5Nua
Getting really windy in #Mississauga now. Was securing the BBQ cover when I heard loud cracking sounds. Looked over in time to see part of a neighbour's tree break and fall into another yard. No one was hurt. Be careful out there. #onstorm #windstorm pic.twitter.com/6wfdB35pwF
Football star and TV celebrity Michael Strahan caught a ride to space with Jeff Bezos's rocket-launching company Saturday, sharing the trip with the daughter of America's first astronaut.
"TOUCHDOWN has a new meaning now!!!" he tweeted after landing.
Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket blasted off from West Texas, sending the capsule on a 10-minute flight with the two VIP guests and four paying customers. Their automated capsule soared to an altitude of 106 kilometres, providing a few minutes of weightlessness before parachuting into the desert. The booster also came back to land successfully.
It was five minutes and 187 kilometres shorter than Alan Shepard's Mercury flight from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on May 5, 1961.
His eldest daughter, Laura Shepard Churchley, took along a tiny piece of his Freedom 7 capsule, as well as mementos from his Apollo 14 moonshot. She also packed some golf balls; her dad hit a couple on the lunar surface.
A co-host of ABC's Good Morning America, Strahan bubbled over with excitement in updates for the show all week. He took along his Super Bowl ring and retired New York Giants jersey No. 92.
Bezos stashed a football on board that will go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
As soon as he emerged from the capsule, Strahan said he wanted to go again. But Bezos joked he'd have to buy his own ticket next time.
In a video he posted later, Strahan called the experience surreal and unbelievable: "Wow, that's all I can say. Wow."
A nod to 1st Shepard in space
At the launch facility near Van Horn, Texas, Bezos had "light this candle" painted on the launch tower's bridge, borrowing from Alan Shepard's famous gripe from inside Freedom 7 as the delays mounted: "Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?"
Shepard Churchley — who volunteered for Blue Origin's third passenger flight — borrowed her late father's phrase, yelling "Let's light this candle!" while awaiting takeoff. Fierce wind held up her flight for two days.
Parachutes carry the Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule to the ground after liftoff from the spaceport near Van Horn, Texas, on Saturday. (LM Otero/The Associated Press)
She heads the board of trustees for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
"I thought about Daddy coming down and thought, 'Gosh he didn't even get to enjoy any of what I'm getting to enjoy,'" Shepard Churchley said following touchdown. "He was working. He had to do it himself. I went up for the ride!"
Saturday's launch marks the last one this year by private U.S. companies as space tourism finally takes off. Virgin Galactic kicked it off in July, sending up its billionaire founder, Richard Branson, followed by Blue Origin and SpaceX. So many are flying that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration announced on Friday that it will no longer designate who is a commercial astronaut or give out wings.
Bezos, who founded Amazon six years before Blue Origin, was on his company's debut launch in July. The second, in October, included actor William Shatner — Captain James Kirk of TV's original Star Trek. The late Leonard Nimoy's daughter sent up a necklace with a "Vulcan Salute" charm on this flight, in honour of the show's original Mr. Spock.
Among the four space tourists paying unspecified millions each were the first parent-child combo, financier Lane Bess and his son Cameron. Also flying: Voyager Space chairman and CEO Dylan Taylor and investor Evan Dick.
GO Transit’s website was brought back online Saturday afternoon after it had been down to protect it from an ongoing cyber vulnerability on Friday, Metrolinx said.
The website was restored after it had was “updated to protect it from the latest cyber-vulnerability regarding web-based services around the globe,” a spokesperson told the Star.
“Metrolinx was informed by the Government of Canada about an ongoing cyber vulnerability regarding web-based services around the globe,” the transit agency said in a statement earlier.
The decision to take down the website was “out of an abundance of caution,” it said, adding there is no indication any customer, personal or financial files were compromised.
Customers of the service that covers the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas had been advised that ticket and planning services were available in different places, like the website Triplinx.
Metrolinx provided updates and information for people travelling to Hamilton for the Grey Cup game this weekend.
Canada Revenue Agency similarly took down its systems while it worked “to apply the appropriate security upgrades to our systems,” the agency tweeted Friday night.
“There is currently no indication that CRA systems have been compromised, or that there has been any unauthorized access to taxpayer information because of this vulnerability,” the agency added.
Statistics Canada’s data portal also seemed to be offline for similar reasons. The Star reached out to StatsCan regarding the outage and had yet to hear back.
These proactive measures came amid ongoing concerns about a serious computer weakness that makes business and government websites vulnerable to data breaches.
The weakness, located in an open-source software used to run websites, was recently exploited in the online game “Minecraft.”
Experts said the extreme ease with which the vulnerability lets an attacker access a web server — no password required — is what makes it so dangerous.
With files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press.
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