 Several Canadian provinces dropped pandemic restrictions this week as truckers rallying against vaccine mandates continue to create gridlock in Ottawa, Ontario. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Québec, and Prince Edward Island all abandoned a number of measures this week, though Alberta's opposition leader accused the province's premier Jason Kenney of bending to the will of the blockade. Ontario, Canada's largest province by population, maintained that it has no plans to drop requirements for masks and vaccination passports to enter most public places. More: - Canadian trucker groups and big-rig operators have denounced the protests in Ottawa and elsewhere in the nation, particularly as symbols of hate have appeared at the "Freedom Convoy," including swastikas.
- 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, and the U.S. also requires truckers to be vaccinated before crossing the border, so it would make little difference to their jobs if Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau changed his country's rules.
- Kenney apologized on Wednesday for earlier comparing the treatment of the unvaccinated today to the way people with AIDS were treated in the 1980s.
- Police in Ottawa are working to cut off supplies of fuel and food to the blockade in an effort to break up the rally, which has stretched for nearly two weeks.
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 Rudy Giuliani, acting as an attorney for former President Trump, asked a Republican prosecutor in Michigan to take possession of his county's voting machines and hand them over to the Trump campaign in the weeks after the 2020 election. Giuliani reportedly made the request to Antrim County prosecutor James Rossiter following a clerical error that initially showed Joe Biden as beating Donald Trump in a typically Republican district. The mistake was quickly corrected, but many Republicans seized on the mishap as evidence of widespread voter fraud favoring Biden. Rossiter told Giuliani he did not have the power to seize the voting machines. More: - News of the call from Giuliani to Rossiter, first reported by The Washington Post, is the latest example of a Trump team member attempting to seize voting machines or use federal agencies to try to make the case for fraud.
- Experts said Giuliani would have known, as an experienced attorney, that a prosecutor would not have been able to comply with his request.
- The inaccurate vote tallies in Antrim County, Michigan, were found to be the result of an official failing to update the machines that count ballots. The error was spotted and corrected, and Trump won the county by more than 3,000 votes. Biden won the state of Michigan by more than 150,000 votes.
- False claims about voter fraud in Antrim were referenced in a draft of a never-issued executive order that would have commanded the Department of Defense to seize voting machines.
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 Russia will start a 10-day round of military exercises in Belarus on Thursday, a show of strength that could heighten tensions in the ongoing standoff at the Ukrainian border. Senior Russian military officials arrived in Belarus on Wednesday, ahead of what the Kremlin said would be the largest joint military drill in history, in order to confront "unprecedented security threats." NATO says it expects 30,000 Russian troops to participate in the drills. More: - Russia denies it has plans to invade Ukraine, but the military drills are further aggravating tensions in Eastern Europe, where 100,000 Russian troops remain positioned at the Russia-Ukraine border.
- The exercises, which the Kremlin is calling Allied Resolve 2022, constitute the largest Russian deployment to Belarus since the Cold War, when it was a Soviet republic.
- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is keen to work with Russia amid the current crisis after Russia backed Lukashenko during mass protests demanding his resignation in 2020.
- Ukraine will conduct its own drills starting Thursday, largely using drones and antitank weapons provided by the U.S. and other NATO member nations.
- Negotiations this week between Russia and western leaders produced no breakthrough, and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to demand an end to the eastward expansion of NATO.
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 GOOD NEWS: Dollywood will pay for 100% of the tuition, fees, and textbooks for employees who want to further their education, the theme park's operating partner said. Herschend Enterprises will allow all seasonal, part-time, and full-time employees to enroll in the education program starting on their first day of work, though they'll have to study something like business administration, marketing, or finance at one of the company's "30 learning partners." Herschend is calling the project GROW U, and it will launch on Feb. 24, available to any of the company's 11,000 employees across several theme parks.
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 Barry Diller's IAC group is ending the print circulation of six magazines it acquired last year: EatingWell, Entertainment Weekly, Health, InStyle, Parents, and People en Español. The publications, which are controlled by Dotdash Meredith, will now exist only as digital brands, as part of a media collective that reaches 175 million online readers every month. More: - About 200 jobs will be lost because of the move, according to Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel, less than 5% of its total staff.
- Dotdash Meredith does, however, plan to further invest in the 19 print magazines it still owns, including People and Better Homes & Gardens, with things like enhanced paper quality.
- The company already owns major online publications, including Allrecipes and Serious Eats.
- IAC acquired Dotdash, formerly About.com, from The New York Times in 2012 for $300M.
- Dotdash acquired Meredith Corp. in 2021 in a deal worth $2.7B.
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 Olympic medalists in the team figure skating event at the Beijing Winter Games have yet to receive their medals, reportedly due to a member of the gold-winning Russian team receiving a positive drug test. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) would only call the delay a "situation" requiring a "legal consultation." The group did say, however, that "athletes that have won medals" were involved. More: - The event took place between Friday and Monday, with medals originally scheduled to be distributed on Tuesday.
- The Russian Olympic Committee won gold, the U.S. won silver, and Japan won bronze.
- Russian athletes have been competing under the "Russian Olympic Committee" banner for several years following an investigation that revealed a state-sponsored doping program, which Russian officials have denied.
- Any nullification of results will likely lead to an appeal, further delaying the presentation of medals.
- During the event, 15-year-old Russian Kamila Valieva became the first female figure skater to ever land a quad jump at an Olympics.
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- A Florida Senate committee has moved forward a controversial bill that would ban school districts from encouraging classroom discussions about gender identity or sexual orientation.
- Apple is expanding existing benefits to both full- and part-time employees in its retail locations, including paid sick days, vacation, and parental leave.
- U.S. regulators approved a merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery on Wednesday, paving the way for a $43B deal that will create an entertainment conglomerate that will be called "Warner Bros. Discovery," owned by AT&T.
- The widow of Ol' Dirty Bastard is suing the Wu-Tang Clan for what she says are years of unpaid royalties.
- Microsoft has established what it's calling Open App Store Principles in an effort to show that it will promote competition in its app stores.
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 |  | Jonathan Harris is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles. |  | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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