News
In local news, residents in the Picton area received a public notice this week regarding input to updated flood plan mapping in the area. Now input from the broader County population is being sought.
Quinte Conservation wants residents to express concern and provide comments on the province’s plan to merge 36 conservation authorities into seven regional ones and create a new agency to oversee them.
The province passed Bill 68, ‘Plan to Protect Ontario Act’, which will establish a new provincial agency to oversee the activities of conservation authorities and will have the power to direct regional strategic planning, and financial and operational matters.
Quinte Conservation, along with six other conservation authorities, are to form the Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Conservation Authority – an area covering 48 municipalities and 16,000 km2, stretching east-west from Napanee to Whitby, and north-south from the Kawarthas to Prince Edward County.
Currently the community-based environmental protection agency currently serves 18 municipalities in about 6,000 km2 of the watersheds of Prince Edward County, the Moira, Napanee and Salmon rivers. Concerns are that the amalgamation will impact local services and the long-standing relationship between the Conservation Agency and municipalities will suffer.
UNEMPLOYMENT
Statistics Canada released it unemployment report for November today. Canada’s unemployment rate dropped to 6.5 per cent and the economy gained 54,000 jobs last month. This is the second month in a row that the rate has dropped form 7.1% in September.
Most of the jobs added to the economy were part time and largely driven by employment gains among young people between the ages of 15 to 24. Another positive note is that average hourly wages grew 3.6 per cent, or $1.27, to $37.00 an hour.
INTERNET
If you are experience issues with some internet platforms today, don’t keep rebooting your devices – it is not your fault.
Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare said that an outage that took place this morning that brought down several global websites, including LinkedIn, X and Zoom.
This is the second such crash to affect the company in less than three weeks.
While Cloudflare said that the recent issue had been resolved, it was investigating issues related to application programming interfaces or API, that allow software systems to communicate with each other. One thing the company was sure of was that the outage was not due to a cyber-attack, but likely due to firewall issues.
NETFLIX
In entertainment news Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Brothers Discovery’s TV, film studios and streaming division for $72 billion US. The deal that would hand control of one of Hollywood’s most prized and oldest assets to the streaming pioneer, has upended the media industry. Warner Brothers is the owner of of marquee franchises including Game of Thrones, DC Comics and the Harry Potter
Today’s announcement follows a weeks-long bidding war between Netflix and Paramount Sundance. Netflix seized the lead with a $28-a-share offer that eclipsed Paramount’s nearly $24 bid for the whole of Warner Bros. Discovery, including the cable TV assets slated for a spinoff.
Yesterday Warner Bros. Discovery shares closed at $24.50, giving it a market value of $61 billion.
And finally, size does matter. The arena in Milan for the upcoming Olympics is still under construction without a known backup plan. At issue is the size of the ice surface that is apparently smaller that even NHL standards. An Olympic ice surface is supposed to be 200 x 100 ft, compared to NHL of 200 x 85 or International of 197 x 95 due to metric conversions.
The NHL is considering not allowing their players to participate if the ice surface is too small, creating a more dangerous environment for such a fast paced game. Just imagine hte best hockey players in the works playing on an ice surface smaller than used by the Wellington Dukes. If this happens it will be the third Olympics in a row without NHL players.
That was your County-FM News. Sports is next
Sports
Here is your County FM Sports
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JUNIOR HOCKEY
In local junior hockey, the Wellington Dukes have two home games on tap this weekend. Tonight, the Dukes welcome the Haliburton Huskies to the County. That game gets underway at 7:30. Then on Sunday, it is an afternoon 1:30 start as Wellington looks to tame the Aurora Tigers.
NHL
Still on the ice, there are two Canadian teams in action tonight in the NHL. The Winnipeg Jets will be at home to the Buffalo Sabres. Further out west. The Utah Mammoth head to Vancouver to face the Canucks.
With a third of the season gone, all the Canadian teams in the Western Conference are struggling. Winnipeg is in 11th spot with Edmonton just behind in 12th. Vancouver holds down the 14th spot, while Calgary ids dead last in 16th.
Things are a little better in the Eastern Conference, Montreal and Ottawa arein the 7th and 9th spots respectively. Toronto is further back in 14th.
Luckily the season does end right now or only Les Canadiens would be in the playoffs.
F1
Out on the track, F1 heads into its last race of the year this weekend. It will desert environments to close out the season at the Abu Dhabi Yas Marina Circuit.
The driver’s championship is down to the finale. McLaren’s Lando Norris needs to finish third or better to seal the championship. He holds a 14 point lead over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and 18 points over fellow teammate Oscar Piastri.
There were two practice sessions this morning and Lando Norris was fastest overall, just ahead of Verastappen. The final practice session and qualifying go tomorrow morning at 5:30 and 9:00 am respectively. The final race for all the marbles goes at 8:00 AM Sunday.
