5 million bees fall off truck near Toronto and drivers are asked to close windows

Aug 15, 2023

https://arab.news/w6eue

TORONTO: Police west of Toronto on Wednesday warned drivers to keep their car windows closed after a truck spilled crates carrying five million bees onto a road. Halton Regional Police said they received a call around 6:15 a.m. reporting the bee crates had come loose from a truck and spilled onto Guelph Line, north of Dundas Street, in Burlington, Ontario, just west of Toronto. It was “quite the scene,” Const. Ryan Anderson said. “Crates were literally on the road and swarms of bees were flying around,” he said. “The initial beekeeper that was on scene was apparently stung a few times.” The scene prompted police to warn drivers to close their windows as they passed by and for pedestrians to avoid the area. About an hour after police put out a notice on social media, several beekeepers were in touch with police offering to help. Six or seven beekeepers eventually arrived at the scene, Anderson said. By around 9:15 a.m., police said most of the five million bees had been safely collected and the crates were being hauled away. Some crates had been left behind for the uncollected bees to return to them on their own. A colony of honeybees in summer has around 50,000 to 80,000 bees, according to the Canadian Honey Council, a national association of beekeepers.

SANTIAGO: A 42-year-old lawyer who was stolen at birth during the rule of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and raised in the United States has traveled thousands of miles to South America to meet his biological mother for the first time. “She didn’t know about me because they took me at birth and told her I was dead,” Jimmy Lippert Thyden said in a TikTok video while on the plane to meet his mother for the first time. “When she asked for my body, they told her they had disposed of it.” “So we’ve never held each other, we’ve never hugged.”

Walking down a street in mother’s hometown of Valdivia some 740km (460 miles) south of the Chilean capital, with a bouquet of flowers in hand, Lippert Thyden tearfully hugged Maria Angelica Gonzalez, his biological mother, and told her he loved her. He traveled to Chile with his wife and two daughters, who met their grandmother for the first time. Lippert Thyden reconnected with his family thanks to a DNA tracing via MyHeritage.com and Nos Buscamos, a Chilean non-governmental organization which helps reconnect people separated during the 17-year dictatorship. Thousands of people were disappeared and tens of thousands tortured during Pinochet’s rule, which ended in 1990. Nos Buscamos founder Constanza del Rio created the organization after failing to find information about her own biological family. The NGO says it has managed to help some 400 people reconnect to their family. “This case is one of hundreds or thousands of cases of child trafficking during the dictatorship and democracy,” del Rio said. “These children were declared as dead and sold to foreigners for $10,000 or $15,000.”

LUSAKA: Five Egyptians and six Zambians appeared in court Monday after a mystery plane landed in Lusaka with 130 kilos of “suspected” gold, nearly six million dollars and weapons on board. Drug and law enforcement authorities said 11 suspects, including a senior Zambian police officer, had been arrested and charged with “espionage,” in the capital. The suspects arrived at a magistrate’s court late Monday afternoon, an AFP correspondent reported. Authorities in the southern African country seized 127 kilos (280 pounds) of “suspected gold,” a handful of firearms, 126 rounds of ammunition and almost $5.7 million when the plane landed in Lusaka two weeks ago. The Drug Enforcement Commission said the chartered aircraft was transporting “dangerous goods.” Court papers seen by AFP list a former Egyptian military person and businessman as well as a Zambian police officer among the suspects. The story, much of which remains unclear, has continued making waves in Egypt. An independent Egyptian journalist who was arrested in Cairo following reports accusing officials of involvement in smuggling cash, weapons and gold, was later released. However, Egyptian state media had claimed the aircraft in question was privately owned and that it had only transited through Cairo. The suspects could face up to 30 years in jail under Zambian law.

TORONTO: For Tagreed Elhassan it’s the feeling of the wind in her face. Cycling gives her a sense of independence and a way to exercise. She learned the basics growing up in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and now a program in her new home of Toronto has taught the 24-year-old Eritrean refugee how to steer and basic bike mechanics, giving her the confidence to teach others. “I learned it here,” she said, sitting in a park in Toronto’s east end. “Small things that grow into something big.”

A biking club called 'Hijabs and Helmets' is bringing people together in Toronto, particularly Muslim women who are new to the city and to bicycles https://t.co/mAPdJ8tG2N pic.twitter.com/usAGG3LSgs

Hijabs and Helmets aims to provide education and a welcoming environment toward people new to cycling and the city — especially to Muslim women who may come from backgrounds where cycling was not the norm.

The program was created three years ago to meet a community need, said Menna Badawi, a community health worker at Access Alliance Multicultural Health & Community Services and program lead for Hijabs and Helmets. It gets most of its funding from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns Toronto sports teams including the Maple Leafs ice hockey team and the Raptors basketball team. The group realized “there was a gap in services for Muslim women in the community ... who are interested in cycling and kind of don’t know where to go,” Badawi said.

Badawi, who has been part of an all-women Muslim running club, said she understood the feeling. “As a Muslim hijabi I did find there was a gap in recreational sports for women who look like me,” she said. The group serves Toronto’s Taylor Creek area, which has a high proportion of newcomers, Badawi said. Elhassan said she got involved in the program last year with her sisters. Soon she felt comfortable enough to bike to the supermarket, bags balanced on handlebars. The deliberate inclusion of hijab-wearing women “means a lot,” Elhassan said. “I felt like, oh, we are recognized.”

GAZA CITY: The vintage beige Mercedes would be eye-catching anywhere in the world, but it is especially so on the streets of impoverished Gaza City. Munir Al-Shandi, 42, is among a handful of vintage car enthusiasts in the Gaza Strip, defying a punishing Israeli siege imposed on the Palestinian coastal enclave to pursue a passionate hobby. As he drives a 1929 Mercedes-Benz Gazelle, which he restored, through Gaza’s cratered roads, young children run after him in excitement, reaching out to touch the car’s pristine bodywork. “Everyone in the street is amazed and asks to take pictures,” Shandi, a mechanic, told AFP as he showcased the replica of the vintage car he had assembled in his workshop. “The restoration would have been faster and the quality and shape better if the materials had been available.” Around 2.3 million Palestinians live in the territory, which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since the Islamist group Hamas seized power there in 2007. There is a ban on importing a range of goods, including car parts, as Israel claims these may be used in producing explosives to be used against it. Israel says that its land, air, and sea blockade of Gaza is necessary to protect it from rocket and other attacks from Hamas. But such obstacles have not stopped Shandi, and the Gazelle is not the only vintage vehicle he has rebuilt. He is also the proud owner of a 1946 Armstrong Siddeley Hurricane, which he has restored. Shandi began work on the Gazelle in 2015 at his workshop in eastern Gaza City. He used locally available items as much as possible, although he also had to rely on friends outside Gaza to procure some spare parts. His friends brought the parts in through the Rafah crossing on Gaza’s border with Egypt, he said. “I brought in through friends of mine in the UAE some spare parts for the car, and they in turn imported them from America, but they took eight months to arrive,” he said. The restoration took a whole year. Shandi said his passion developed as a child, and at 15 he began working in a garage. He left Gaza in 2003 for the United Arab Emirates, where he worked with a company specializing in old and vintage cars that gave him a wealth of experience. In 2009, he returned to the Gaza Strip, where he opened his workshop and poured any profits into his hobby — restoring vintage cars. With its red leather and wooden interior, Shandi’s Mercedes has only fueled his passion for classic cars of the past. Two years ago, he found his next project — the wreck of a British Armstrong Siddeley Hurricane, a luxury vehicle that was produced between 1946 and 1953. “The car has its original engine. I tried to match it with its original shape by using certain parts from other cars or close to them, and I modified them,” Shandi said. In his workshop hang the frames of a 1960 German Audi and a 1951 American Ford, as well as a 1975 Swedish Saab. He is determined to restore all three vehicles. Shandi said a number of people have contacted him to offer vast sums for the restored cars, but he turned them down. “This is a hobby,” he said. “The cars are not for sale, although many people abroad have contacted me and asked to buy them.” Even if he did want to sell, “getting them out of the Strip would be impossible because of the blockade.” Several years ago, Shandi applied for a permit to work in Israel, but was denied. The increased income would have allowed him to restore more vehicles, he added. His dream is to take part in an “international exhibition” for vintage cars, but that may have to wait.

OTTAWA: Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, an avid cyclist who says she does not own a car, was fined C$273 ($200) for speeding in her home province of Alberta, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. Freeland was caught driving 132 km/hr (82 mph) between the towns of Grande Prairie and Peace River and has paid the ticket in full, her spokesperson Katherine Cuplinskas said. The news was first broken by the Counter Signal website. Cuplinskas did not say when the incident occurred and what the speed limit had been on that stretch of road. The maximum speed limit on Alberta highways is 110 km/hr. Freeland is a legislator who represents a parliamentary constituency in central Toronto, Canada’s largest city, and is often photographed on her bike. “A fact that still shocks my dad is that I don’t actually own a car,” she told reporters last month. “I walk, I take the subway. My kids walk and ride their bikes and take the subway – it’s actually healthier for our family,” she said.