Comedian Samantha Bee returned to her TBS show on Wednesday, apologizing again for using a crude epithet to describe Ivanka Trump but expressing anger that the ensuing controversy distracted from more important issues.
President Donald Trump had called for her to be fired for what she said on last week's episode of Full Frontal, but TBS accepted her apology.
Immediately addressing the issue at the opening of her show, Bee said she hated to "contribute to the nightmare of 24-hour news cycles that we're all white-knuckling through."
"I should have known that a potty-mouthed insult would be inherently more interesting ... than this juvenile immigration policy," she said.
Bee had called Ivanka Trump a vulgar term in an attempt to encourage her to speak to her father about changing a policy where children of people entering the country illegally are being detained.
To drive her point home, Bee finished her monologue and went directly into another segment about immigration, knowing that she would have a curious audience tuning in to see her reaction.
Cameras showed four dour-looking men dressed in suits with their hands on red buttons, who she introduced as her show's new censors.
"Civility is just nice words," she said. "Maybe we should all worry about the civility of our actions."
Sam addresses the controversy from last week's show. pic.twitter.com/RtqBOhOCVf —@FullFrontalSamB
The former cast member on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart now has one of TBS's most popular shows. After Bee apologized in a statement last week, TBS said the network also was at fault for letting the word through. Full Frontal does not air live, so the network has time to edit it.
"It is a word I have used on the show many times, hoping to reclaim it," Bee said on Wednesday. "I used it as an insult, I crossed a line, I regret it and I do apologize for that. The problem is that many women have heard that word in the worst moments of their lives. A lot of them don't want it reclaimed. They want it gone, and I don't blame them.
"I don't want to inflict more pain on them," she said. "I want this show to be challenging and I want it to be honest and I never intended to hurt anyone, except Ted Cruz."
After drawing a laugh at the mention of the Texas senator, Bee said that many men also were offended by her language. "I do not care about that," she said.
Voters at a few polling stations in Toronto, Ottawa and London, Ont., reported problems with new machines being used to check voter lists and tabulate votes on election day.
The glitches were causing long lineups, slowing down the election process, voters said.
There were reports of electronic vote tabulators not working, errors in electronic databases, internet connectivity outages, a fake training ballot being handed to a voter, and staff who were not well versed in the new machines giving long explanations on how to use ballots.
Voters in Toronto said some electronic vote tabulators were not accepting ballots at one polling station. At another polling station, one voter said some voters were leaving in frustration before casting ballots because of long lines.
Vote tabulating machines, such as this one, are being used at polling stations across Ontario. (CBC) One voter in Ottawa said ballots were stuffed into a bag because a machine wasn't able to tabulate votes.
Toronto voter Scott Weir said long lines formed shortly after a Toronto Centre polling station opened at Sprucecourt Public School, near Parliament Street and Gerrard Street East, because of glitches with an electronic vote tabulator.
Weir said no votes had been cast in the polling station as of 9:30 a.m., and there appeared to be no contingency plan. He said he would come back later because he had to go to work.
“Problem with tabulator” at Spruce Court School in Toronto. Person who is calling trying to fix is on hold? Long long line.... and no votes cast yet. #OntarioElections #vote —@southofbloor "Long long line … and no votes cast yet," Weir said in a tweet.
In an email to CBC News, an Elections Ontario spokesperson said 99.57 per cent of all technology-enabled polls were up and running across the province.
Problems 'being addressed'
"The few voting locations that are experiencing technical issues are being addressed, if they have not already been rectified."
Due to "unavoidable delays or interruptions," Elections Ontario has extended voting hours at polls in seven ridings:
The eastern Ontario riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell (poll 012 will now close at 10:30 p.m.).
The Toronto-area riding of York South-Weston (poll 406 will now close at 9:40 p.m.).
The northwestern Ontario riding of Kiiwetinoong (poll 032 will now close at 1 a.m.).
Two polls in York-Simcoe (poll 008 will close at 9:55 p.m., poll 006 will close at 11:25 p.m.)
The western Ontario riding of Essex (poll 033 will close at 9:20 p.m.)
The eastern Ontario riding of Bay of Quinte (poll 016 will close at 9:25 p.m.)
The Simcoe North riding, north of Toronto (polls 033 and 034 will close at 9:25 p.m.)
The spokesperson said in the event of a problem, poll officials will revert to the traditional paper method to enable voters to cast ballots. That process is the same process in place at polls where technology is not being used for voting.
A sign directs voters to a polling station in downtown Toronto. (David Donnelly/CBC) The process includes using a paper list of electors and the poll clerk manually striking off the name of the voter who has voted and updating manually a paper copy to identify names crossed out. Elections Ontario said all of its staff have been trained on this contingency process.
Fake ballot handed to voter
In one case, a University of Toronto grad student says she was shocked when she entered the voting booth to mark her choice and didn't recognize any of the candidate or party names on her ballot.
"The first one I read, the candidate was Patrick Chan and the party was the Figure Skating Party of Ontario. And other parties included the Alpine Skiing Party of Ontario and the Curling Party of Ontario, the Grammy Party of Ontario. So I was very confused," said Faith Gallant, 23, who voted early Thursday morning in the riding of York South–Weston.
An Elections Ontario training ballot, with fake candidate and party names, was mistakenly handed to a voter in a Toronto riding. (Hallie Cotnam/CBC)
Gallant said she brought the problem to the attention of poll workers, who told her "someone must be playing a practical joke on you." They checked the remaining stack of ballots for any other anomalies and, finding none, handed her a real ballot so she could properly vote.
It turns out she had been given a training ballot used by staff to train poll workers on what ballots look like and how to fold them, Elections Ontario said.
Technology tested in byelections
In this election, Elections Ontario is using new technology — e-Poll books and electronic vote tabulators — to check the names of voters and to record and to count votes at half of all polling stations in the province.
An e-Poll book contains an electronic version of paper voters' lists, while an electronic vote tabulator electronically counts each ballot and generates results after polls close.
Cara Des Granges, spokesperson for Elections Ontario, said in an interview on Tuesday that the office had tested the technology in byelections.
"Elections Ontario has the utmost confidence in the accuracy of vote tabulators and has piloted them successfully in byelections," she said in an email to CBC Toronto.
"E-Poll books make it easier and faster for an elector to get a ballot. Vote tabulators automate the counting process for election officials. which provides faster and more accurate results."
Elections Ontario will retain paper ballots for manual recounts if required, she added.
What do mean the voting machine is broken!!! #sprucecourt #toronto #cabbagetown #OntarioVotes2018 #OntarioElection2018 —@ianbruce99 .@ElectionsON ...so trying to vote. No one can get the ballot machine to work at #sprucecourt in #cabbagatown. I’m going to have to leave and my vote will not be counted. Why is my vote being suppressed through incompetence? —@abnto Voters took to social media to report problems at polling stations.
In the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York, voter Liz Woodburn said there were two lines at the Toronto United Mennonite Church polling station, one for people with voter information cards and one for people without, and staff mistakenly directed voters with cards into the other line. The result was an even longer wait.
"I showed up shortly before 9:45 a.m. to extremely long lineups, which I've never experienced at that station before. It's a regular polling station. I've never had long lineups there," she said.
Woodburn waited an hour before she was finally able to vote after being directed to the wrong lineup. Once she got to the front of the line, her card was scanned in a second and she received her ballot quickly. She said the electronic vote tabulator seemed to working properly.
'I consider this an irregularity'
"I would say the staff were not consistently or effectively trained. People were being held up with long explanations on how to use the ballot. The people who didn't have a card were not getting processed. They were standing there for ages and it seemed like whoever was supposed to deal with those problems didn't know how to do it."
Woodburn said she saw about six people leave in frustration before voting. She reported the problems to Elections Ontario, which it said it would investigate.
"I consider this an irregularity," she said. "The thing I am most concerned about is I observed leaving without voting."
Some voters, including Ottawa-Vanier voter Tatiana Paganezzi, are reporting computer trouble at polling stations. This is the first Ontario election where laptops with voter lists been deployed along with electronic vote tabulators. 0:18 Long lines and people leaving in frustration were also reported at a polling stations in the Toronto ridings of Parkdale-High Park and University-Rosedale.
Meanwhile, in Ottawa, Tatiana Paganezzi, a resident of Ottawa–Vanier, said she wasn't on the voters list.
"I wasn't in the database, apparently, even though I've lived in the area for six or seven years, and I've voted here before," Paganezzi said.
Pagnezzi said she was told computers were down, and that she would have to fill out a paper form to cast her ballot.
"It was quite quick, though, there wasn't a lot of people."
Ottawa–Vanier voter Michael Porter tweeted the machines at Colonel By Secondary School weren't able to tabulate votes, so officials were instead putting ballots into bags.
@CBCOttawa The ballot reader wasn’t working at my polling station… They were collecting the ballots in a big bag. 😳 —@The_BRO
And in London, voters of London North Centre were lined up out the door at the Eastern Star Temple on Fanshawe Park Road East. One said the station was down to one functional computer early in the day.
The voting location was equipped with five computer terminals, leaving four unavailable to process voters' information.
Local polling official Melissa Baidoobonso said staff were able to remedy the situation and move voters through.
Here is the entrance to a polling station at Eastern Star Temple in London, Ont. (Travis Dolynny/CBC) "It's our first time using these computer systems, so of course there's been a bit of a hiccup," she said. "It is a new technology that we're using, but we've smoothed it out."
In Tillsonburg, 50 kilometres southeast of London, some voters who showed up at the town's only polling station were reportedly told to "come back later" due to computer problems.
Sheena Larmer and her husband were told by clerks that there were issues with the computers. They decided to go for breakfast, and when they returned, the polling station was still having problems, leading to a wait of around 25 minutes to cast their ballot.
"Oh, it was ridiculous. It was such a mess," Larmer said.
"Although I'm a really committed voter, I worry that there's a lot of people that would just say 'oh, forget this.'"
Many voters who commented on CBC London's Facebook page, however, said they had no problems voting on Thursday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says he warned European countries years ago about the risk of the United States imposing its rules on others, and that now they are paying the price for ignoring him.
Speaking Thursday during an annual live television phone-in with the Russian people, Putin likened the tariffs that Washington imposed last week on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union to economic sanctions.
"It appears our partners thought that this would never affect them, this counterproductive politics of restrictions and sanctions. But now we are seeing that this is happening."
The Russian president said he had warned in a speech in Munich in 2007 about a growing U.S. sense of exceptionalism and the risk of it imposing its own rules on other countries.
"That is exactly what is happening now. Nobody wanted to listen, and nobody did anything to stop this from developing. Well, there you go, you've been hit. Dinner is served … please sit down and eat."
Putin also accused the U.S. of upsetting the strategic nuclear balance, and said nobody should take any hasty steps: "The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us."
Forces to remain in Syria
Putin, who easily won re-election in March, has since 2001 used the annual phone-in to cast himself as a decisive troubleshooter on the home front and a staunch defender of Russia's interests on the world stage.
Critics say the event, being held a week before the World Cup starts, is a stage-managed piece of theatre designed to let Russians let off steam and fleetingly feel as if they can influence a bureaucratic, top-down system.
Putin and his aides say it is an indispensable tool to gauge public sentiment and learn about people's real problems. Kremlin-watchers often liken his performance to that of a czar listening to his petitioners as he often promises to fix individuals' household problems.
With respect to Russia's involvement in Syria's war, Putin did not reveal his hand, stating that the status quo would prevail for now.
The Kremlin first launched airstrikes in Syria in September 2015 in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, turning the tide of the conflict in President Bashar al-Assad's favour.
"We are not yet planning a withdrawal of these military forces," he said. "We are not building long-term facilities there and if needed we could fairly quickly withdraw our troops without material losses," he said.
"But for the moment, we need them there, they are carrying out important tasks, including providing security for Russia in the region, and helping our interests in the economic sphere."
In December, Putin flew to Syria and declared Russia's mission accomplished, ordering a "significant part" of its contingent to start withdrawing.
Says Russian poisoning would have been fatal
Putin, as has been Russia's position, scoffed at the notion that former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned on March 4 in Salisbury, England, with Novichok, a nerve agent developed decades ago by the Soviet military.
"If as Britain insists a military chemical agent was used against these people, they would have died within second or minutes, on the spot. Thank God, this did not happen. Clearly we are dealing with something other than a military agent."
The incident sparked an international response, with several countries joining Britain in expelling Russian diplomats. Russia retaliated by banishing Western officials.
Both Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been released after spending weeks in hospital. Yulia Skripal has said since the incident she wants to return to Russia at some point in the future.
"We would like to be given access to our citizens, to Yulia, and we would like to have the opportunity to take part fully in the investigation," said Putin.
Avoids awkward questions
At the start of a new presidential term and on a drive to improve living standards, Putin also used the event to try to reassure Russians about the economy.
"Overall, we are heading in the right direction," he said. "We have started on the trajectory towards robust economic growth in Russia. Yes, this growth is modest, small, but it is also not a fall."
The Russian central bank forecasts economic growth at between 1.5 and 2 per cent this year.
The "traditional question" of Putin's eventual successor came up, to which the 65-year-old said he wouldn't be anointing the next president.
"The Russian people, the voters will decide who that will be," he said. "But of course I think that we should raise a new, young generation of leaders, responsible people who will be able to take on the responsibility of Russia."
Putin will get to showcase Russia beginning next week, as the country begins hosting the World Cup.
He warned neighbouring Ukraine that if it tried to make any military moves against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine while Russia hosts the impending soccer tournament, it would suffer.
"I hope that there won't be any provocations, but if it happens I think it would have very serious consequences for Ukrainian statehood in general," he said.
Putin dispensed with his usual studio audience this year, fielding questions asked by text and video. He referred some questions to regional governors, government ministers and state company heads who were shown on giant TV monitors sitting at their desks across Russia, waiting to be quizzed.
Members of the public submitted around two million questions, state TV reported, some of them flashed up on a giant screen close to Putin.
Some of those questions, which Putin did not attempt to answer, were politically awkward. One asked why opposition leader Alexei Navalny had not been allowed to register as a candidate in the presidential election, another why there was money for the military but not ordinary people, and another asked whether Russia was a banana republic.
"Life is getting worse and worse," read another. "It's in the Kremlin where everything is wonderful."
Plastic waste and toxic chemicals found in remote parts of the Antarctic this year add to evidence that pollution is spreading to the ends of the Earth, environmental group Greenpeace said on Thursday.
Microplastics — tiny bits of plastic from the breakdown of everything from shopping bags to car tires — were detected in nine of 17 water samples collected off the Antarctic peninsula by a Greenpeace vessel in early 2018, it said.
And seven of nine snow samples taken on land in Antarctica found chemicals known as PFAs (polyfluorinated alkylated
substances), which are used in industrial products and can harm wildlife.
Greenpeace activist Grant Oakes shows a water sample collected using a manta trawl in Neko Harbour, Antarctica, February 16, 2018. Microplastics were detected in nine of 17 water samples collected off the Antarctic peninsula by a Greenpeace vessel in early 2018. (Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)
"We may think of the Antarctic as a remote and pristine wilderness," Frida Bengtsson of Greenpeace's Protect the Antarctic campaign said in a statement about the findings.
"But from pollution and climate change to industrial krill fishing, humanity's footprint is clear," she said. "These results show that even the most remote habitats of the Antarctic are contaminated with microplastic waste and persistent hazardous chemicals."
The United Nations' environment agency says plastic pollution has been detected from the Arctic to Antarctica and in remote places including the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans in the Pacific.
On Tuesday, it said that less than a 10th of all the plastic ever made has been recycled, and governments should consider banning or taxing single-use bags or food containers to stem a tide of pollution.
Crossing oceans
Last year researchers at the University of Hull and the British Antarctic Survey found that levels of microplastic in Antarctica were five times higher than expected only counting local sources such as research stations and ships.
A manta trawl is used to collect water samples in Neko Harbour, Antarctica, February 16, 2018. (Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)
That means that the pollution is crossing the Southern Ocean, often considered as a barrier to man-made pollution.
Scientists say the long-term impacts on marine life are unknown.
At the other end of the world, researchers in Germany reported in April that sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean contains large amounts of plastic waste, which could be released as the ice thins because of global warming.
"Plastic stays around for hundreds of years," said author Ilka Peeken of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.
In trying to understand the spread of pollution, she told Reuters that new areas for research could include how far tiny bits of plastic are getting blown on winds to the Arctic and how much is swept by ocean currents.
