Category: United States

Are You Being Prompted To Tip 20%? Consumers Grapple With Tip Inflation – The Globe and Mail

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Are You Being Prompted To Tip 20%? Consumers Grapple With Tip Inflation – The Globe and Mail When Alexander Koury took his cats to get groomed a few weeks ago, he got a bit of a shock at the checkout counter. The Phoenix financial planner brought his five-year-old orange tabbies Frankie and Scotch in for bathing, clipping and shaving, which cost $150. But then the payment system asked whether he wanted to tack on a healthy tip: Either 20, 25 or 30 per cent. “Ridiculous,” says Mr. Koury, 36, who…

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Does Your Doctor Get Money From Drug Companies? It’s Not Easy To Find Out – Health – CBC News

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By invitation only, 300 Canadian doctors have a chance to earn $6,600 on top of their usual public health-care fees by taking part in some research. Here’s what they have to do: sign up 12 high-risk heart patients, see each of them three times as part of normal practice, and fill out forms describing what drugs were prescribed. The doctors get an additional $500 for attending a three-hour information session about the research. It’s called the Guidelines Oriented Approach to Lipid Lowering (GOAL). And it is one example of how…

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The World Used Less Coal In 2016 Than Year Before: BP – National | Globalnews.ca

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Worldwide demand for coal decreased in 2016, for the second year in a row. Humans used 53-million tonnes of coal less than in 2015, according to this year’s statistical review of energy provided by BP. It’s a decrease of 1.7 per cent. It is the second-straight year that coal demand has declined. It also said that worldwide production of coal decreased by six per cent. Production at U.S. coal mines fell by 19 per cent while China’s coal production fell by nearly eight per cent. On the whole, coal’s share…

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Atlantic Hurricane Season Expected To Be Stormier Than Normal – Nova Scotia – CBC News

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Batten down the hatches — we’re likely in for a rougher-than-normal Atlantic hurricane season this year, according to Canadian and U.S. hurricane monitoring agencies. The U.S.-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says a “weak or non-existent” El Nino is a factor in its prediction. There is “the potential for a lot of Atlantic storm activity this year,” said acting NOAA administrator Ben Friedman. “We cannot stop hurricanes. But, again, we can prepare for them.” Hurricane season officially starts June 1 and runs through Nov. 30. NOAA predicts a 45…

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Trump’s Wall Will Do Nothing To Block The 740,000 People Who Overstayed Their US Visa Last Year — Quartz

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For years, the best—and virtually only—publicly released statistic tracking illegal immigration in the US has been the number of people caught at the southern border. Now, the US Department of Homeland Security is scrutinizing a lesser known type of undocumented immigrant: the one who comes in legally. In a new report released May 22, the agency has attempted to count the people who overstayed their visas in fiscal year 2016. The results tell a different story than the border apprehension numbers, and suggest that the US should broaden its singular…

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The Older The Doctor, The Higher The Patient Mortality Rate, Study Finds | Ars Technica

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The age of your doctor may impact the quality of the care you receive—and even cut your chances of survival—researchers report in the British Medical Journal. Harvard researchers looked over data on more than 700,000 hospital admissions of elderly patients cared for by nearly 19,000 physicians between 2011 and 2014. They found that mortality rates crept up in step with physician age. The stats are adjusted for a variety of variables, such as hospital mortality rates and severity of patients’ illnesses. All the patients were aged 65 or older and…

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Oil Prices As Little As 4 Years From Collapse Amid Historic Shift In Transport: Report

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A new report from a Stanford University lecturer predicts oil prices could collapse permanently as soon as four years from now, as electric cars and ride-hailing fleets bring a rapid end to the age of the personal combustible-engine vehicle. The report points to a significant threat to Canada’s economy, dependent as it is on oil and auto manufacturing, but it also predicts “huge opportunities” for companies that jump into the new “transportation-as-a-service” industry. “We are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in…

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US Utility Offers Clients Cheap Tesla Batteries For Grid Backup

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For the first time, a power utility has teamed up with Tesla to use its battery packs for extra grid power during peak usage times. Vermont’s Green Mountain Power (GMP) is not only installing Tesla’s industrial Powerpacks on utility land, it’s also subsidizing home Powerwall 2s for up to 2,000 customers. Rather than firing up polluting diesel generators, the utility can use them to provide electricity around the state. At night, when power usage is low, they’re charged back up again. Green Mountain Power said the idea started after a…

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A Secretive Silicon Valley Tech Giant Set Up Shop In Canada. But What Does It Do? – Technology & Science – CBC News

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It’s one of the most valuable and secretive technology companies in Silicon Valley: Palantir Technologies, a developer of data mining software used by spies, banks and some of the biggest companies in the world. The company was co-founded in 2004 by billionaire Peter Thiel — previously the co-founder of PayPal — and now an adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump. Financial institutions are said to use Palantir’s software to detect fraud and cyberattacks, while pharmaceutical researchers have been sold on its potential to more speedily discover new drugs. Hershey says…

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Some Canadian Bank Record Information Being Sent Directly To IRS – Politics – CBC News

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Thousands of reports containing confidential Canadian banking information records have been sent directly to the U.S Internal Revenue Service, without the Canadian government’s knowledge. According to information obtained by CBC News under a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request, 31,574 such reports have been sent directly to Internal Revenue Service over the past two years under the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). That is in addition to about 469,827 reports that the Canada Revenue Agency has transferred to the IRS under a Canada-U.S. agreement negotiated in the wake of the adoption…

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