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Hard Numbers: Sexual assault rap for hockey juniors, Microsoft crosses threshold, diving for “ghost gear,” Canadian lobstermen get shelled
FILE PHOTO: A Team Canada player skates past the tournament logo during practice in Edmonton December 25, 2011. Team Canada will play in the upcoming World Junior Hockey tournament in Calgary and Edmonton which takes place from December 26 to January 5, 2012.
5: Five members of the Canadian junior ice hockey team from 2018 have been charged with sexual assault, reviving a case that has captured national attention over the past several years. Hockey Canada initially settled the lawsuit, but that prompted public outcry and pushed the police to open a new investigation, which alleges that the players abused the woman in a hotel room following a fundraising gala in 2018. The survivor is seeking more than $3.5 million in damages.
3 trillion: You’d think that hitting a $3 trillion market cap for the first time would make you the world’s most valuable company, but alas … The good folks at Microsoft, which crossed that stratospheric threshold on Wednesday, still trail their Silicon Valley rivals at Apple, which, as of this writing, is worth $30 billion more.
55,000: Seek ghosts, save animals. A Vancouver-based nonprofit that scours the Pacific seafloor to remove abandoned or lost “ghost gear” left behind by fishing boats has brought up more than 55,000 kilograms (121,254 pounds) of the stuff since 2017. The discarded nets, lines, and traps wreak havoc on marine life and habitats.
2: Speaking of marine life, on the other side of Canada, the lobster industry is worried about getting shelled by new US regulations that will increase the minimum legal length for lobster carapaces by 2 millimeters next year to 84, and by a further 2 millimeters to 86 in 2027. The changes were triggered automatically by US surveys showing risks to the population of young lobster in the waters off Maine. But if Canada leaves its own standard at 82 millimeters, then hundreds of millions of dollars of Canadian lobster exports each year could be shut out of the US, a major market.