If your week has gone by in a flash, listen to or read reports from The Press who made the news this week.
Posted at 3:54 p.m.
Listen to the essentials of the week in audio
Coroner’s public inquest into the death of Amélie Champagne
Quebec Chief Coroner Pascale Descary has ordered a public inquiry into the death of Amélie Champagne. The 22-year-old who suffered from persistent symptoms of Lyme disease recently committed suicide. Her father, Alain Champagne, told columnist Patrick Lagacé that she had been admitted to the Sherbrooke University Hospital after a suicide attempt. Since the patient lived in metropolitan France, the Estrie hospital referred her to the CHUM in Montreal. Unfortunately, Amélie Champagne committed suicide the day before her appointment. The public inquiry aims in particular to clarify the circumstances of the death of the young woman.
Election campaign: slippage on immigration
The theme of immigration has monopolized the electoral campaign and caused slippages for four weeks. Premier François Legault said welcoming more than 50,000 immigrants would be “a bit suicidal”. Parti Québécois broadcast anti-Islam tweets. Conservative Party leader Éric Duhaime said he was considering building a wall at the Canada-US border to prevent asylum seekers from crossing it. And the outgoing Minister of Immigration, Jean Boulet, launched several falsehoods about newcomers who “go to Montreal, do not work, do not speak French or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society” . How do immigrants perceive this election campaign? Not very well, according to testimonies collected by La Presse. These Quebec elections have given rise to fear in Francisco Morataya. More and more, the discourse on immigration tends to the right, he says, and this does not bode well for other people like him who would like to choose Quebec as a land of welcome.
Russian men flee the country
At least 200,000 people have left Russia since the announcement of the partial mobilization of 300,000 men announced last Wednesday by Vladimir Putin. The total mobilization pool in Russia is 25 million people. Russian President Vladimir Putin also signed on Friday the annexation of four regions of Ukraine that Moscow occupies totally or partially. The four regions will be officially annexed, after so-called regional referendums hastily organized at the end of September. The vote was called a “travesty” by Kyiv and its Western backers.
Women at the heart of protests in Iran
Mahsa Amini’s death shocked the people of Iran. The 22-year-old was arrested on September 13 by the country’s vice squad for wearing “inappropriate clothing”, which showed a lock of hair. The protest movement triggered by his death is in its third week. On Friday, there were 83 dead during the numerous demonstrations. Homa Hoodfar is a professor at Concordia University. She was imprisoned for four months in Iran in 2016. “As far as I am concerned, we are at a turning point. The regime really needs to take a major turn. But for what I see now, it will not last. And women, like women’s rights, are at the center of this protest movement. We saw women in previous movements, but never like today,” she underlines.
A first success for planetary defense
NASA’s DART probe succeeded in its mission: to hit the asteroid Dimorphos to deflect its trajectory on Monday evening. A Quebec engineer, Julie Bellerose, was in charge of the piloting. Launched last November, the DART probe aimed to measure how Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos will have changed after the collision. About 500 asteroids with a diameter greater than 150 meters are identified each year. But only 10,000 of the 25,000 asteroids of this size are known. For comparison, the asteroid that signed the death warrant for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was 10 km in diameter, and the one that injured nearly 1,500 people in Siberia in 2013, 20 meters in diameter. .