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The branches of the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) will remain closed on Saturday, as will those of the Société québécoise du Cannabis (SQDC).

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Most shopping centers and supermarkets remain closed on Saturday for Saint Jean Baptiste Day. This applies to Promenades Gatineau, Galeries de Hull and Galeries Aylmer.

However, some bars, restaurants and small shops will remain open, as will most pharmacies. However, it is advisable to contact each establishment before traveling or consult their website.

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The Gatineau sports center and the Paul Pelletier and Lucien-Houle water sports centers will be open on Saturday 24 June. It will also be the beaches and outdoor pools.

The outdoor centers Lac-Leamy and Lac-Beauchamp will also be open.

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The Société de transport de l’Outaouais (STO) is offering a standard, free service to mark Quebec’s National Day.

On the Transcollines side, land lines will not be operational on Friday 23rd June. On the other hand, the on-demand service will be available according to its usual schedule. During the Saint-Jean weekend, users have access to the normal service: the free CCN shuttle (line 924) and the TAD (Transcollines on Demand).

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In Gatineau, parking is free on municipal holidays. Additionally, street parking is metered only Monday through Friday, 7am to 5pm. Parking in Saint-Jean will therefore be free.

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The ticket office of the Salle Odyssée at the Maison de la Culture will be closed on Saturday.

Galerie Montcalm and Espace Pierre-Debain will be closed on Saturday June 24th and Monday June 26th due to a public holiday in the city of Gatineau. The ticket offices of the Théâtre de l’Île and the Center culturel du Vieux-Aylmer are only closed on June 24th.

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The remainder collection will take place in Gatineau on Saturday according to the usual schedule. However, the Aéroparc and Boulevard de la Carrière eco-centres and the transshipment center will remain closed on Saturday 24 June.

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All branches of the Gatineau Public Library will remain closed on Saturday June 24th.

As for municipal services, all Gatineau service centers and the Maison du citoyen will also be closed.

For its part, the non-emergency call center 311 is offered without interruption.

With the streets of Guatemala City awash with placards bearing the faces of candidates taking part in the general elections, it’s impossible not to know that elections will be held this Sunday. It is more difficult to find citizens who have a firm belief in who they are going to do it for. Fed up with corruption spreading at various levels of the state and a campaign riddled with allegations of fraud are reflected in the disenchantment of the population and the zero and blank votes collected in just over a month, according to polls have doubled. These polls show that among the 22 presidential candidates, three are the favourites: former first lady Sandra Torres, diplomat Edmond Mulet and Zury Ríos, daughter of dictator Efráin Ríos Montt. But neither will have enough votes (50% plus one) to win the first ballot. So the big question that will occupy the country this Sunday evening is which two candidates will run in the second ballot on August 20th.

Eight years after the democratic spring brought thousands of Guatemalans onto the streets and ended with the ouster of President Otto Pérez Molina over tariff fraud, the hope that made part of the population dream of change has faded. After years of authoritarian rise and institutional decline, accelerated under the presidency of Alejandro Giammattei and leading judges, prosecutors and journalists to jail or exile, the feeling the country has taken over seems to be a kind of silent anger result in many citizens going to the polls and voting for the lesser evil, or “least worst,” as they say in Guatemala.

More information

“The state of Guatemala is more committed to corruption than to its country. Everything is stolen. “We’re fed up with leaders who just come to suck from the state,” laments Brenda Castellanos, a 49-year-old street vendor and mother of three, who arrived Thursday from the El Amparo neighborhood, a popular Zone 7 neighborhood of the capital, for the closing ceremony of the electoral campaign of Zury Ríos and the mayoral candidate of the Valor Unionista coalition, Ricardo Quiñonez. But the woman won’t be voting for Conservative politics, but for Amílcar Rivera, the Victoria Party candidate who has just over 5% of voting intentions, “because of the security issue, because he’s thinking about how to make an election.” with the gang members [miembro de una pandilla mara]”, says.

Castellanos says there are women in her neighborhood who want to start small businesses but are unable to because gangs are blackmailing them. “How will our country develop if the gang members take away from the women what they want to earn?” she asks. According to polls, insecurity is one of the main concerns, along with corruption and the economy, that will determine the outcome of the Guatemalan election.

“We have to put an end to everything, from the gang members on the street to those in government, because within government there is the worst corruption that can exist in the country: from MPs to the President,” says Brenda Ávila , 42 , mother of two children. Like Castellanos, both are community leaders, aware of the state’s inefficiency in solving their problems and committed from the outset to asking for help from local authorities to meet the basic needs of their neighborhoods. Hence the support for Mayor Quiñonez, who they say has helped them improve their neighborhood’s roads and access to water, which is often scarce in the Guatemalan capital. The two women say their informal jobs allow them to collect just over 3,000 quetzales a month [poco más de 350 euros]. They have to juggle that to make ends meet in a country where the basic family basket is 8,300 quetzales. [más de 960 euros].

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Distrust of the referee

Aside from being fed up with the corruption that hampers development in a country of 17.6 million people where nearly 60% live in poverty, a large proportion of the 9.3 million eligible voters in Guatemala go to the polls with distrust of the arbiter proceed of the process the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE). Information has emerged in recent days about alleged bribes its members are receiving from the ruling party, and judges have also been accused of “fraud” after expelling three of the front runners: left-leaning Mayan leader Thelma Cabrera from the Peoples’ Liberation Movement (MLP); the son of former President Álvaro Arzú, Roberto Arzú of the right-wing Podemos party, and Carlos Pineda, a farmer with no political experience who, in a few months, was able to climb to the top of the polls thanks to his popularity on networks like TikTok.

Carlos Pineda, one of the candidates excluded from the race. Moises Castillo (AP)

“What shocks me is the very serious violation of the political rights of Guatemalans, both of the candidates who were wrongly excluded and, above all, of the tens of thousands of Guatemalans whose first preference was Thelma Cabrera, Roberto Arzú or Carlos Pineda,” says political scientist Ricardo Sáenz. “That had already happened in the 2019 election when they dropped out [la exfiscal general ahora exiliada] Thelma Aldana, but it wasn’t seen as harshly to successively kick out three presidential candidates who challenged the status quo,” he said.

The three excluded candidates have promoted zero voting as a sign of their rejection of the system. “We will not be accomplices of the corrupt pact,” Cabrera said, referring to the informal alliance of politicians, bureaucratic elites and businessmen who protect each other to maintain power. And although the possibility proposed by Mayan politics of boycotting the process with a zero vote currently seems impractical (it would take more than half the vote), polls have shown that this option has doubled in the last month 13, 5% reached.

the second round

Because voting is so fragmented on 22 candidatures, it would be Guatemalans’ second-biggest preference, behind only Sandra Torres’ vote, who has 21.3% of voting intentions according to the latest poll released Thursday. The widow of former President Álvaro Colom and a candidate for the National Unity of Hope (UNE), who has moved from social democracy to more conservative positions over the course of her political career, is standing in an election for the third time.

Although the former first lady has one of the strongest electoral votes in the country, mostly in rural areas, areas traditionally abandoned by the state, she still remembers the aid programs she supported during her husband Álvaro Colom’s (2008-2011) tenure. carried out ) and which she now promises to reproduce, the 67-year-old woman and communicator by profession is met with strong rejection, even in urban areas. This was already evident in the two previous parliamentary elections, in which he lost in the second ballot.

Nearly eight points below her, with 13.4% of support, is the Cabal Party’s Edmond Mulet. The 72-year-old lawyer is recognized in the country for his nearly three decades in the diplomatic service, which he crowned Under Secretary of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and head of the mission to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. But he is also questioned about his role in irregular child adoptions during the internal armed conflict when he was a young lawyer in the 1980s.

The third candidate with a chance to advance to the second round is Zury Ríos of the Unionista-Vamos coalition with 9.1% of the vote. The daughter of dictator Ríos Montt, who died in 2018 at the age of 91 while on trial for the genocide of indigenous Mayan Ixils during the war (1960-1996), the right-wing candidate emerges as the favorite in the ruling party elections. Among his sympathizers is Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, director of the Foundation Against Terrorism, a civil organization that has promoted complaints against members of the judicial system and journalists. The 55-year-old former MP has offered to take over Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang policies in Guatemala and bar those responsible for corruption from holding public office.

Zury Ríos Sosa, daughter of dictator Ríos Montt, during her final election campaign in Guatemala City. Esteban Biba (EFE)

With this panorama, the big question arises as to which of the three will make it into the second round. Aware of the short distance that separates him from Mulet, Zury Ríos released a message on Thursday, before the start of the election ban, warning of the dangers of his main opponent: “He will destroy Guatemala.” Guatemalans: Don’t be fooled by the candidate Fool Edmond Mulet: He will legalize drugs, he will legalize abortion. He wants to impose a foreign agenda. “He disguises himself as a sheep when he’s a dire wolf,” said the contestant in a message posted to her social mediaaccompanied by exciting music.

As a center-right representative, Mulet has publicly defended freedom of expression and the independence of the judiciary, so he could benefit from the useful voice of Guatemalans concerned about their country’s authoritarian course. According to political scientist Sáenz, it has the support of an important section of the city’s middle class. “They see him as the ‘least worst’ candidate capable of slowing down this authoritarian offensive a bit and curbing widespread corruption in Guatemala,” he says.

Given the sense of being fed up with the situation in the country, the analyst also sees another sense of hope being espoused by members of civil society, particularly young people, emerging from the 2015 protests and for political parties ahead of the congressional elections have run for office. who you are also celebrated this Sunday. And he adds: “The Guatemalans are always looking for a way to change the system and I think we will use this election to stop the gangsters as much as possible.”

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St Paul’s Cathedral caused an uproar by calling Sir Winston Churchill an “impudent imperialist” and a “white supremacist” in an online post about Britain’s great war leader.

The cathedral, which hosted Sir Winston’s 1965 state funeral, only removed the highly derogatory descriptions last week after complaints were received that they vilified a man voted the greatest Briton of all time.

The Mail on Sunday understands the offensive description appeared on St Paul’s website for more than a year – but last night it was unclear who wrote it.

In an article about the state funeral, the website pointed to the war leader’s role in repelling the threat of invasion and enabling a fight against the Nazi occupation of Europe.

But it added: “He is also a controversial figure as he was a shameless imperialist and white supremacist.”

Sir Winston Churchill, one of Britain’s great wartime leaders, salutes with the famous “V” hand sign for victory

The offensive description appeared on St. Paul’s website for more than a year

St. Paul’s Cathedral was the site of Sir Winston’s 1965 state funeral. Just last week, the extremely derogatory descriptions were removed

Sir Winston’s grandson Nicholas Soames said last night the family was upset by what he called “deeply offensive, thoughtless, stupid and ignorant” comments.

The 75-year-old Tory politician said his grandfather “saved England” by leading the fight against Hitler’s racist Nazi regime.

He added: “Even considering some of the more extreme views in the Church of England, that really is going too far.” It was deeply offensive and offending to several members of my family, and a number of people have protested. I am pleased that the Canon of the Cathedral has now issued a written apology and has the matter overturned. I don’t know how it got there. This is so thoughtless, stupid and ignorant and so damaging to the image of the church. It’s so awful to say that.’

Lee Anderson, vice leader of the Conservative Party, said: “It’s getting ridiculous.” Anyone who publishes information like this needs to take a good look at themselves and ask themselves why they hate this country, its history and its heritage so much . They are idiots.’

Sir Winston’s offensive description was amended on Friday to read: “He’s also a controversial figure, especially when you look at him from a modern perspective.”

The cathedral acted after receiving a complaint from Nick Gent, 72, a member of the Friends of St Paul’s. In his letter last month, he wrote, “I believe some of the language you used in Churchill’s profile is overly charged and so judgmental that it demonizes Churchill.” Perhaps that language is a function of ignorance or of political ideology.” He accepted that Churchill often held himself “hostage to fate” with comments and jokes that would be considered unacceptable today.

But he said it was important to judge the man on his accomplishments in defeating Hitler.

Sir Winston’s grandson Nicholas Soames said last night the family was upset by what he called “deeply offensive, thoughtless, stupid and ignorant” comments. Sir Nicholas is pictured at Royal Ascot on July 27, 2019

Then Prime Minister Winston Churchill is pictured with Queen Elizabeth II on 3rd December 1952 at the Commonwealth Economic Conference at Buckingham Palace

In an email to Mr Gent, Canon Dr. Paula Gooder on Thursday: “We agree that the tone is inconsistent with the rest of the page or pages on the site.” “We have removed the sentence and hope the paragraph now feels more balanced and appropriate in this context. “

Mr Gent said: “Churchill was such a great philanthropist, going beyond politics.” “He should be a role model for the youth.”

Historian Andrew Roberts said, “It is magnificent that St. Paul’s has abandoned its ultra-vigilant attitude.” The cathedral was the center of the world during Churchill’s funeral in 1965, and its original, ill-chosen words belied this. Since pretty much everything from the past is controversial, especially when viewed from a modern perspective; Your new wording is happily meaningless.’

Lady Antonia Fraser, historian and author, said: “There is much more to say about Churchill and that he was a wonderful man.” He is regularly voted Greatest Englishman and I think he stays there.

Frank Furedi, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Kent University, said: “Branding Churchill as a shameless imperialist and white supremacist is not just an act of historical distortion, but an attempt to discredit everything positive that Britain stood for in the 20th century .”

A St Paul’s spokesman said: “The information on our website regarding Winston Churchill’s state funeral has recently been updated.” It was brought to our attention that some of the text in the description did not match the tone of the rest of the page.

“We therefore reworded the paragraph to make the description more balanced and more appropriate to the context.”

Insulting the memory of a national hero

It is not the first time that institutions and activists have tarnished Sir Winston Churchill’s reputation.

At an event at a Cambridge college named in his honor in 2021, he was branded a “white supremacist” who was “worse than the Nazis”.

And a bronze statue in Westminster has survived multiple attacks over the years.

At a Black Lives Matter march in 2020, protesters spray-painted the words “was a racist” on the memorial.

And last year, Albanians draped their national flag over the statue in protest the day before Memorial Sunday.

In 2000, during the May Day riots, a strip of grass was placed on the head of the memorial, apparently giving Sir Winston a green Mohican-style haircut.

NEW DELHI: All efforts will be made to restore peace in Manipur under the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Interior Minister Amit Shah said at an all-party meeting on Saturday to discuss the prevailing situation in the northeastern state.
Shah also told the meeting that since the violence began in the state, there has been “not a single day” that he has not spoken to PM Modi about the situation or the PM has not given any instructions, according to the Manipur-based BJP chief Sambit Patra told reporters after the meeting.
Opposition parties have criticized the center’s handling of the situation in Manipur and questioned the prime minister’s “silence” on the issue.
Almost 120 people have died and more than 3,000 have been injured since ethnic violence erupted in the state.

“In his statement at the meeting, Amit Shah ji said very clearly that since the violence began on May 3, there has not been a single day that he has not spoken to the Prime Minister.
“Efforts are being made to restore peace in the state on the orders of the Prime Minister,” Patra said.
The BJP chief said efforts are underway to keep the peace in the state.
“The good news for us is that no one has lost their life since June 13. Efforts are being made to ensure that peace continues to be maintained in the state,” he told reporters.
At the meeting, Patra said the Interior Ministry gave a presentation on how the violence in Manipur started, what sparked the violence, what steps have been taken so far and what steps are being taken to restore peace in the state.

All party leaders present at the meeting, chaired by the interior minister, expressed their concerns and expressed their opinions “in a very sensitive way and across political lines,” the BJP chief said.
“All political parties agreed that Interior Minister Amit Shah’s 3-day and 3-day stay in Manipur was an unprecedented step as it created a positive feeling somewhere and moved Manipur forward,” Patra, who was also present at the meeting, said.
Ethnic violence erupted in Manipur after a “Tribal Solidarity March” was organized in the state’s mountainous districts on May 3 to protest the Meitei community’s claim for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.
The violence was preceded by tensions over the eviction of Kuki villagers from the forest reserve, which had led to a series of minor riots.