Benjamin Hall

This week, the provincial government in Ontario announced that it was expanding the number of private clinics providing medical services.Right now, Ontario has about 900 such clinics, and they mostly offer medical imaging and cataract surgeries. Sylvia Jones, the province’s health minister, said this week that the government was expanding its program to include hip and knee replacements.The province is being careful not to violate the Canada Health Act by requiring people to pay for medically necessary procedures. That would jeopardize the 20 billion Canadian dollars the province will receive this year from the federal government for health care. While…

It happened again. Of course it did.Two tennis players, starting near midnight, battling nearly to sunrise in front of a scattering of fans, with a squad of kids in their early teenage years scurrying after balls at nearly four in the morning. Last year it was Andy Murray duelling with Thanasi Kokkinakis until the night sky began to lighten at around 4am. On Thursday, and into Friday, it was Daniil Medvedev of Russia and Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland doing the tennis version of the 2am jazz set. “I would not have stayed,” Medvedev said in an on-court interview after he completed his…

In an expansion of hostilities rippling through the region, Pakistan said on Thursday that it had carried out airstrikes inside Iran, a day after Iranian forces attacked what they said were militant camps in Pakistan.The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry said that the country’s forces had conducted “precision military strikes” against what it called terrorist hide-outs in southeastern Iran. Iranian officials said that nine people were killed, including four children, and Pakistani officials said the death toll of the Iranian strikes included at least two children.A senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pakistan had struck at…