As fear grows around the rise of cyclosporiasis cases in the United States, Quebec farmers are feeling the hit.

Demand for lettuce is dropping, leaving farmers with a surplus of product.

“Currently the lettuce that is being sold to our grocery stores and to our retailers is under the price of production, which means that when the grower is selling their lettuce, they’ve lost money,” Catherine Lessard, deputy manager of the Quebec Produce Growers’ Association, told Global News.

Approximately half of lettuce grown in Quebec is exported to the U.S, but stock is not being purchased.

“Americans stopped buying lettuce because, well, they were afraid,” Lessard said.

Some retailers have even stopped putting lettuce on their shelves.

“So all this lettuce, half of the production is staying here, has no market,” Lessard said.

Some farmers are operating at a loss, selling their product for cheaper, but Lessard said there are fears that some fields will not be harvested.

“Lettuce has to be harvested by hand. So it’s very expensive. It’s about half of the cost of production of lettuce,” she said.

Fears surrounding lettuce began to rise when American authorities linked multiple outbreaks of cyclosporiasis to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms Mexico.

More than 11,000 people in 15 states have fallen ill and two deaths have been connected to the outbreak.

An investigation is underway to determine the root cause, but in the past, contaminated irrigation water has been to blame.

But experts say Canadian-grown produce is safe to eat.

“If it’s grown in Canada, it’s safe and I hope you will eat it,” Lessard said.

Canada also has strict food safety measures to prevent contaminated produce from hitting grocery store shelves.

“Canada is one of the only countries who actually test for cyclospora contamination in the imported fresh products,” Nathalie Grandvaux, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Montreal, told Global News.

She said while cases of cyclosporiasis have increased in Quebec this year, an outbreak like the one seen in the U.S. is nearly impossible.

“Most of them have been linked to people coming back from travelling. So that suggests that the contamination is broad,” Grandvaux said.

There are currently no cyclospora outbreaks being investigated in Canada.

Lessard said many farmers have other crops they can rely on so the true financial toll is not yet known.

“It’s really hard to say what will be the end effect for our growers, we’ll have to see at the end of the season,” she said.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

A coalition of road safety groups is calling on Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Examiner to investigate, and recommend steps to address, the dangers posed to pedestrians and cyclists by pickup trucks and large SUVs.

C.R.A.S.H. — otherwise known as the Coalition to Reduce Auto Size Hazards — has some two dozen members nationwide. In Nova Scotia, that includes the Ecology Action Centre, Vision Zero Kjipuktuk-Halifax and the Halifax Cycling Coalition.

The letter to the medical examiner comes on the heels of a fatal “dooring” incident involving Dalhousie professor Dr. Nouman Ali, last month.

This was followed by a pedestrian-vehicle collision involving an SUV on Nantucket Avenue in Halifax on Aug. 5 that sent a 54-year-old woman to hospital.

“It’s just another unfortunate reminder that oversized vehicles take up a lot of space,” says Ashleigh Boers, community programs associate director with the Ecology Action Centre.

“There’s far less visibility, far more blind spots for drivers as well.”

But collisions like these are preventable, Boers says — especially when they involve large trucks and SUVs.

Sara Kirk was Dr. Ali’s colleague at Dalhousie University. She is also a member of Vision Zero Kjipuktuk-Halifax, which advocates for road safety in the Halifax Regional Municipality.

“ designed to look ferocious and fierce and macho,” Kirk says. “And they’re also marketed more broadly than just for work vehicles too.”

According to Boers, between 2000 and 2018, there was about an 11-per cent increase in the front-end vehicle height, and a 24 per cent increase in overall weight.

And just as the hood heights of these vehicles grow, so too do the number of fatal pedestrian motor vehicle accidents.

“We know for every 10-centimetre increase in the hood-height of these vehicles it leads to a 22 per cent increase in pedestrian injuries and fatalities,” Kirk says.

But it’s not only poor front-end visibility causing issues.

“The chance of being killed if struck by one of these larger vehicles is 3.4 times that of the chance being killed if you are struck by a conventional-sized car,” explains Chris Waters, C.R.A.S.H.’s national coordinator and law professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario.

And according to Kirk, the weight of these vehicles equally contributes to the risk.

“My colleague Dr. Ali was struck by the door of a pickup truck,” Kirk says. “The heavier weight of the doors of these pickup trucks is one of the problems that we have.”

But there are things that can be done at all levels of government.

C.R.A.S.H. is calling for the federal government to introduce vehicle warning regulations.

It also wants provincial politicians to consider differentiating vehicle licensing for larger recreational trucks and SUVs.

As for municipal leaders, they can introduce heavier parking fines for larger vehicles as a deterrent, Waters says.

Despite Nova Scotia taking the lead on this national appeal, the coalition is hoping other Maritime advocacy groups join the fight.

“It would be great to have a partner in New Brunswick as well,” says Waters. “We’re putting families at risk across the country with the unchecked rise of these oversized vehicles, and we need to really give it some deep thought.”

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

For the past few months, Kyle Bauder has been working on an app.

It’s called Zelse —a fun way to explore Edmonton and see different landmarks.

“It’s basically getting people to get off the couch, go get involved in their community, go do things,” Bauder said.

Users can go on missions and earn points.

“Through the points you can level up, you can redeem the points,” Bauder explained.

“You can create your own missions so people can come up with missions in their city, like a little local spot they might have — they might be able to come up with a mission for that.”

In Edmonton, there are more than 20 missions to go on, including to the Alberta legislature, The Ship at West Edmonton Mall and the Talus Dome, to name a few.

Users verify their visits through picture submissions.

“You might see a location pop up and you might think, oh, I actually haven’t been to that before, or maybe I haven’t been there for a while, and maybe it’s fun to go out and see that site rather than thinking you’ve seen everything in Edmonton, for example,” Bauder said.

Bauder’s idea has expanded beyond the Edmonton area. He’s added 654 cities worldwide.

“I know there’s one guy in Norway, he’s starting it, so he’s going to let me know how that goes. I have a friend in Russia. I have a few friends around the world — so get some feedback and try it out,” Bauder said.

The app will soon be available in the Apple and Google Play stores.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The Winnipeg Humane Society had 500 animals come into care last month, 150 of them surrendered by owners who couldn’t afford their medical treatments.

“We are seeing more medical cases, or animals being surrendered for medical care, because the cost of veterinary care is very high right now,” says communications director Carly Peters.

“It would be the number one reason why people are surrendering their animals to us currently.”

With the cost of living already high, Peters says, a large, unexpected vet bill can be a disaster.

Another challenge is finding pet-friendly housing.

“Our intake team notices on the first of the month, we get an increase in calls about people wanting to surrender their animals,” says Peters.

Katie Powell, president of Save a Dog Network, sees the same trend.

“A couple days ago there was a lady, she was denied her place, didn’t have a place for her dog to go, and drove around all day looking for somewhere to take the dog.”

Powell mainly works in northern communities where there’s no access to vet care unless people pay for flights to a larger city. She says it’s a heartbreaking decision to give up an animal you can’t afford to treat.

“They watch their animals suffer without veterinary care. Small problems turn into big problems and dogs end up dying simply because there’s no veterinary care in these areas,” says Powell.

“So these owners have to make a difficult decision.”

Watch the video above for the full story.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

RCMP in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. are asking for the public’s help identifying a man accused of attempted child luring.

Investigators said on Wednesday, Aug. 5, at around 1:30 p.m., a six-year-old girl was playing at a park along Southpoint Boulevard when she was approached by a man driving a red truck who attempted to lure her into his vehicle.

However, police said the girl returned to her home and was unharmed.

A similar incident occurred a few days earlier when investigators said a nine-year-old boy was walking along a trail near Davis Street, sometime in the afternoon of July 30.

He was also approached by a man driving a red truck who tried to lure the boy into his vehicle.

However, police said the boy made his way to safety and was unharmed.

Both incidents took place near Ken Hodgkins Park in the Southfort neighbourhood of Fort Saskatchewan.

As they continue to investigate, police are asking anyone who has surveillance video of the area – including doorbell cameras, or dashcam footage – between the hours of 1:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. on Aug. 5, 2026, to please call the Fort Saskatchewan RCMP at 780-997-7900.

The area of interest to investigators includes Allard Way, Dittrich Avenue, Davis Street, Durrand Bend or Southpoint Boulevard.

Tips can also be provided anonymously by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS), online at www.P3Tips.com or by using the “P3 Tips” app available through the app store.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The number of drug-related deaths in Manitoba has been rising again over the last several months, according to the province’s chief medical examiner.

Dr. John Younes says the drug-related deaths peaked in late 2023 and early 2024, before coming down later in 2024 and plateauing in 2025. He says based on his observations so far this year, the number of those tragic deaths is climbing once again.

“It’s a national tragedy. And that’s not just Canada, it’s really the whole developed world,” Younes told Global News, adding drug-related deaths have essentially tripled in Manitoba in just a few years.

“And what I see is just the tip of the iceberg. For every death that we see, there’s probably eight or nine or 10 or more people out there who are struggling with addictions and at risk of overdosing.”

A report from the Public Health Agency of Canada lists three likely reasons as to why drug-related deaths started to decline in 2024, including better availability of naloxone, drug dealers changing how they mix the drugs and the fact that there may be fewer drug users because so many have already lost their lives to addiction.

Younes notes the impacts of the drug crisis go beyond overdoses.

“The scope of the problem is enormous, the burden on the province is enormous,” he said.

“It’s not even just the actual drug toxicity deaths that we see here. The behaviour that drug use is linked to also leads to increased deaths of other sorts, whether it be homicides, suicides, accidents while operating motor vehicles or other means, as well as increased burdens of deaths in young people due to natural disease that is propagated by chronic drug use.”

Since the drug crisis began spiralling out of control in the wake of the pandemic, Younes explains that about half of drug-related deaths in the province are due to stimulant drug toxicity, such as cocaine and methamphetamine, either from the drugs themselves or due to the drugs exacerbating underlying medical conditions.

The other half of drug-related deaths in Manitoba is from ‘down,’ a potent combination of dangerous drugs. It first started as a combination of meth and fentanyl, but has since evolved drastically.

“Now down preparation you might get on the street might have two or three fentanyl analogues or drugs that are like fentanyl, methamphetamine, maybe cocaine, and then the big change in the last two or three years is the addition of Benzodiazepine — what we call synthetic, made strictly for illicit drug use and not for clinical or therapeutic use,” Younes said.

“And then on top of that, in the last couple of years the addition of one or more of the veterinary tranquillizer drugs like xylazine or medetomidine, which are called ‘tranq’ and other things, which are generally responsible for what you see with people in the streets (when) sometimes they’re kind of frozen in place or in some weird contorted position.”

“We’ll get six to eight different things appearing on a toxicology screen of someone who’s overdosed on down.”

The components of down change from month-to-month and year-to-year, he says. Even fentanyl evolves. Younes says para-fluorofentanyl, a fentanyl analogue, is even more common on the streets than fentanyl now.

What makes down so deadly is an impact that toxicologists call ‘synergy,’ he says.

“If you take the sedating effect of one class of drugs and the sedating effect of another class of drugs and you mix them together, the combined sedating effect is greater than some of the individual parts. So they sort of propagate each other,” Younes said.

“So in these combinations that we see on the street now, in down, where there might be three or four or five drugs in there that have a respiratory depressing effect or central nervous system depressing effect with a huge synergistic effect, and that’s what kills most people … They have a sedating effect of all these different classes of drugs that they are using.”

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday that the White House said expands the definition of people who are ineligible for birthright citizenship and bans “birth tourism.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is once more trying to limit the number of people who are born in the country who can become American citizens, in a sign that even after his first attempt at limiting birthright citizenship was rejected by the Supreme Court, he’s ready to try again.

The president said he was signing two executive actions on immigration.

He said one will limit the number of people eligible for U.S. citizenship after being born in the United States.

A second order seeks to curb what Trump called “birth tourism” by increasing restrictions on visitors to the U.S. who want to obtain visas to give birth while in the country.

Text of the order released by the White House said people planning to engage in birth tourism in the United States will be denied entry to the country and may be permanently barred.

The secretary of homeland security may exempt a foreign national on humanitarian grounds or when that person’s entry is in the national interest, according to the order.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s previous efforts to declare that children born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily aren’t American citizens, and upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship.

On Trump’s first day in office of his second term, he signed an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship, which allows anyone born in the United States to automatically become an American citizen.

Trump’s administration was immediately sued by opponents who said the executive order went against the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which makes anyone born in the country a citizen, with very limited exceptions.

The executive order was blocked by several lower courts and never took effect.

In June, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s order by a 6-3 vote. But the vote was too close for many immigration advocates and legal observers who felt the legal question of birthright citizenship was a long-settled issue.

No U.S. law outright bars birth tourism, but a federal regulation implemented in 2020 during Trump’s first term prohibits using temporary tourist and business visas for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a newborn. People who engage in birth tourism schemes could be prosecuted for fraud or other related crimes.

There are no official figures tallying the number of foreigners who come to the U.S. for the explicit purpose of giving birth and obtaining citizenship for their children, or the cost to taxpayers.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports lower levels of immigration, estimated in an analysis in 2020 that between 20,000-25,000 mothers came to the U.S. for birth tourism in a year-long period between 2016-2017.

There were 3.6 million births in ‌the U.S. in 2025.

—With additional files from Reuters

© 2026 The Canadian Press

Nova Scotia plans to prohibit children under 14 from riding e-bikes and e-scooters.

The age restriction is part of a slate of changes that will be made to the province’s Traffic Safety Act this fall, said Public Works Minister Fred Tilley on Thursday.

Electronic scooters have gained popularity over the past few years and with greater use comes greater risk, he said.

“The technology on bicycles and cars is changing on the daily, which allows these conveyances to move faster,” Tilley said. “You start to get into a different level of conveyance than a traditional bicycle or cycle.”

Last year, the Canadian Institute for Health Information said e-scooter injuries were on the rise across Canada.

It said there were 498 e-scooter hospitalizations in 2023-2024, a 32 per cent increase from the previous year.

That rise was much greater for children ages five to 17, Stephanie Cowle, director of knowledge and transition at Parachute Canada, told Global News. Parachute Canada is an organization and consulting firm targeting injury prevention.

“There are particular risks for children, but we also want to think about the safety of adults using these devices,” she said.

Regulations differ across jurisdictions, but Cowle said many provinces mandate helmets, restrict where the devices can be ridden and post limits for how fast they can go.

“There are rental or rideshare companies that put speed limiters on the devices. However, we’re also seeing people finding ways to get around those limiters and go much faster,” she said. “Right now in Canada, there are not any regulations that I am aware of that limit the speed of an e-bike or an e-scooter that you can purchase.”

Cowle said some devices can reach speeds as high as 70 km/h.

“If we compare that to your typical bike that you’re pedalling, the average person is likely going less than 20 kilometres an hour on a bike. So you can see that’s a big difference,” she said.

Some provinces are considering creating more classifications that would require riders of higher-speed devices to be licensed. In some parts of Europe, devices that travel faster than 25 km/h are considered mopeds and require a licence. Quebec also requires a unique class of licence for riders aged 14 to 17.

On Thursday, representatives from Nova Scotia’s NDP and Liberal party said they welcome regulations targeting e-bikes and e-scooters from the governing Progressive Conservatives.

“This is something that is really emerging in communities across the province. So we want to make sure that as anything new comes online that people are safe, that all of the restrictions are looked at,” Derek Mombourquette, Liberal MLA for Sydney-Membertou, said.

“We know that whenever there is a disruptive technology or transportation or anything like that, the government has to play catch-up to regulate, and that is the case here,” NDP leader Claudia Chender said.

Chender said, however, that she wants to see the data the government is relying on before she supports this particular initiative.

P.E.I., Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. all have age restrictions in place for e-bikes and e-scooters.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

A mother cat and her six newborn kittens are safe after they were found sheltering beneath an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) vehicle in North Bay.

The cats were found tucked inside a vehicle component beneath the police vehicle on July 28, OPP said in a news release.

Over the next two days, officers worked to safely remove the animals with representatives from Pet Save, Providing Animal Welfare Services (PAWS) and the Ontario SPCA.

The mother cat and her six kittens, believed to be about five days old when they were found, were taken to the Ontario SPCA for care.

All seven animals are in good health and are expected to be available for adoption in the coming months, police said.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.