Top Stories – July 11 – More Home Delivery

Licensed cannabis retail stores in BC can now deliver non-medical cannabis to customers through carriers like Canada Post and delivery-service providers. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth says it’s one more reason to buy legal instead of illicit. The Province has also released another study showing concerning levels of pesticides in illicit cannabis products.

Beginning today, two sections of Stevens Road in West Kelowna will temporarily close to vehicle traffic to install underground utilities and complete road reconstruction work as part of active transportation upgrades in the Shannon Lake Corridor. This week it’s between Ross and Juliann Roads and next week it switches to between Juliann and Dominion. Detours will be in place.

Elon Musk may find that his plan to walk away from his 44 billion dollar purchase of Twitter will not be as easy as he thinks. Twitter could have pushed for a 1 billion dollar breakup fee that Musk agreed to pay under these circumstances. Instead, it looks ready to fight to complete the deal. On Friday, shares of Twitter fell to $36.81, well below the $54.20 that Musk had offered to pay.

The BC government is making another Covid booster shot available for anyone 12 or older that wants one this fall. People under 70 who got their last shot six months or more ago and who feel they have unique or special circumstances, and don’t want to wait, can make an appointment for a second booster through the call centre. The number is 1-833-838-2323 or go to getvaccinated.gov.bc.ca .

Rogers Chief Executive Officer Tony Staffieri issued a statement Saturday afternoon saying service had been restored and the company’s networks and systems were close to fully operational. He said they narrowed the cause to a network system failure following a maintenance update in the core network, which caused some routers to malfunction. He apologized for the outage, adding they were troubled that some customers could not reach emergency services.

Didn’t take long for the scams to appear offering compensation following the Rogers outage on Friday. One of them says they’re ready to send you 90 bucks if you click on a link. Don’t. Rogers says affected accounts will be automatically credited.

Economists are predicting the Bank of Canada will hike its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point on Wednesday. In Canada, inflation hit a 39-year-high of 7.7 percent in May… well above the two percent target rate central banks typically aim for. The bank raised rates by half a percentage point on June 1, bringing it to 1.5 percent.

Shoppers can continue to shop at Superstore. The United Food and Commercial Workers represents workers at 28 Superstore locations and other Loblaw-owned stores in BC. In a vote last week, 58 percent were in favour of the latest contract offer from the company. Details were not released.

Longtime World Wrestling Entertainment boss Vince McMahon agreed to pay more than 12 million dollars over the past 16 years to suppress allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity. The Wall Street Journal reports four women, formerly affiliated with WWE, signed agreements with McMahon, that bar them from discussing their relationships with him.

Sports

Six Kelowna Rockets players will be attending NHL Development camps this week. They include goalies Talyn Boyko to the Rangers and Jari Kykkanen to the Panthers, defensemen Noah Dorey to the Oilers and Jake Lee to the Flames, and forwards Max Graham to the Flames and Colton Dach to Chicago.

The BC Lions lost their first game of the season on the weekend, 43-22 to Winnipeg. BC is now 3 & 1, while the Bombers are unbeaten in five.

Three West Kelowna Warriors were selected in the NHL draft. Ben MacDonald was picked 91st by Seattle, Tyson Jugnauth went 100th to Seattle and Ian Devlin was 182nd overall and went to Pittsburgh. No Kelowna Rockets were picked this year.

The Formula 1 race at the Red Bull Ring in Austria was won by Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc. Red Bull driver Max Verstappen retained his points lead with a 2nd place finish. The teams meet again in France in 2 weeks.

The Blue Jays are off today for a break after their west coast swing last week. Back at it tomorrow at Rogers Centre as the Philadelphia Phillies visit for a couple of games.

The Scottish Open in North Berwick was won by Xander Schaffele. Most of the players will be staying in Scotland, to be joined by others for the 150th Open Championship later this week at St. Andrews.