China announces first human death from H3N8 bird flu

Local

CTV News: Canada’s largest public-sector union voted in favour of a strike mandate, which affects 120,000 public servants.

As of last week, 35,000 members of the Canada Revenue Agency employees cast their votes for a strike to take place.

By the end of this week, roughly 155,000 public servants representing five major bargaining groups could be in a legal strike position by the end of this week.

If Public Service Alliance Canada goes through this strike it will be the largest strike in Canadian history.

National

CTV News: The governor of the Bank of Canada has stated that the bank is prepared to raise the policy rate again in an effort to bring inflation back to its target of two per cent in 2024.

Despite keeping its policy rate at 4.5 per cent during its recent meeting, the bank expressed confidence that inflation will decrease from 5.2 per cent February to three per cent in the middle of 2023.

“If monetary policy is not restrictive enough to get us all the way back to the two per cent target, we are prepared to raise the policy rate further to get there,” said Tiff Macklem, during a press conference in Ottawa on Wednesday.

International

National Post: A 56-year-old woman from the southern province of Guangdong has been the the third person to be infected by the H3N8 flu, another version of influenza.

She later died from the illness. The strain does not seem to spread between people.

The illness is very common in birds and has affected many other mammals in the world.

Tests from the wet market where the woman had visited before she became ill were conducted and positive influenza samples were found. It was then speculated that this was the source of her illness.