Fast track to the front >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News - Scuttlebutt Sailing News

When the 2021 J/70 World Championship is held in the USA, it will be a victory for the sport. While there remain international teams with travel challenges, the entry list has 77 teams from 16 countries for the August event in Los Angeles, CA. That’s a win in this pandemic.

The escalation of effort in the J/70 Class has filled the parking lot at host California Yacht Club for months, with Cal Race Week (June 5-6) and California Cup Regatta (June 25-27) offering a taste of the conditions expected at the 2021 Worlds.

While past champions are pushing the fleet, it was newish skippers Ryan McKillen and Maggie McKillen which claimed first and fourth, respectively, at the California Cup. This report by Doyle Sails explains how this couple are now players:

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Ryan McKillen’s entry into yachting was slightly less traditional than that of his fellow sailors – four years ago, he was based out of San Francisco as a software engineer and had never sailed before.

Fast forward to present, where Ryan and his wife, Maggie, now run one of the most competitive two-boat J/70 programs in North America and race frequently on their M32 out of Miami and Newport.

In 2017, Ryan was sitting at his desk with a view out across San Francisco Bay, with the yachts sailing past drew his interest, day after day – he grew up in Ohio and had no previous exposure to yachting.

Ryan enrolled in an introductory sailing course, enjoyed it, and began to research daysailer and cruising yachts. He stumbled across a boat called an E33, and reached out to the man behind the project, Robbie Doyle. With no knowledge of who Robbie Doyle was, and only a few days on the water sailing, Ryan gave Robbie a call and asked, “I want to go sailing; how do I do it?”
Not long after, Ryan was onboard Maxi 72 Proteus with Robbie Doyle and taking part in the famed Caribbean 600 on one of the most high-performance race yachts. From there, Ryan’s focus turned to race competitively while cruising fell by the wayside.

During the Caribbean 600, Ryan met Proteus’ tactician Mark Mendelblatt who offered some well-respected advice to Ryan about how he could get into some serious sailing if that were of interest, which ended with Mark suggesting a J/70. One design fleets were something Ryan knew nothing about but was by no means a deterrent.

It was an excellent opportunity for Ryan, and his plans for securing a J/70 became a priority when Mark commented, “If you get a J/70, you will love it – it’s a great fleet with a great bunch of people. I will sail with you for the first while, give me two years, and you will be on the podium” – which is exactly where Ryan and the Surge team find themselves today. With some enthusiasm and encouragement from Mark, Ryan purchased the J/70 179 from Judd Smith (Doyle Sails One Design expert and J/70 legend).

It is an immense commitment to have a husband-and-wife team running a two-boat program in the same fleet, but for Ryan and Maggie, this is part of the magic that comes with the one-design fleet that is the J/70.

Naturally competitive by nature, Maggie spent a great deal of time on coach boats with Tony Rey (professional sailor and director of Doyle Sails Newport) during the early stages of Ryan’s sailing and loved every aspect of it. When asked why Maggie began sailing, she said, “I asked so many questions in those early days. I was so intrigued by what Ryan was doing, and Tony was nice enough to answer them all.

“He sparked my interest in sailing and helped me understand what goes into sailing from the technical side. After a year or two of Tony watching me watch Ryan, he suggested that I start sailing myself. At the time, I didn’t take him seriously and didn’t give it too much more thought”.

In 2020, Maggie and Ryan had relocated to Miami, where Ryan asked her if she wanted to go sailing seriously and suggested purchasing another J/70. “I wasn’t sure,” continued Maggie, “but I know that I am a naturally competitive person and Ryan and Tony convinced me that it would be something that I would enjoy, and they were right.”

Maggie explained what it was like to come into a completely new sport with no prior experience, “As an adult, I didn’t have any sports that I was committed to wholeheartedly. We’re active people, and I do a lot of spinning and cardio, but there was no definite sport, so immediately it gave me the childlike thrill of being part of a team and committed to something exciting.”

Ryan’s team has a couple of years’ experience on Maggie’s, and the compilation of the team is what she enjoyed most initially. Watching Ryan form a successful crew and run his campaign at the highest level was a great example to follow – Maggie’s focus was now replicating that for her team. Maggie’s crew currently consists of what she refers to as “a group of brilliant sailors, who have also become our friends.”

In a male-dominated sport, Maggie initially found her entry into sailing a little daunting. To have a female skipper is one thing, but to have a female skipper that is entirely new to the sport is another – but Maggie made no secret of the fact that when she is out on the water, she means business.

“When my boat Magatron and Ryan’s boat Surge are out on the water, we are competitive, but there is a mutual respect that we share. Ryan is happy when he sees me doing well, and vice versa, but my natural competitiveness sometimes gets the better of me. I want to win,” she laughs. Ryan continues, “if someone is going to beat me, I would want it to be my wife and no one else and more often than not, I can at least rely on her for not always tacking on me.”

The two-boat program has taken both the Magatron and Surge campaigns to the next level as the pair spends all of their time before a regatta as each other’s tuning partners with their shared coach Tony Rey on the water alongside them. It is a perfect match and a campaign that has seen both teams improve considerably.

It is clear that both Maggie and Ryan share the opinion that people are the most crucial part of their campaigns. For Ryan, having the right people on his team was a non-negotiable “I was never going to compromise on the people. My whole life, both personally and in business, I’ve made sure that I have been surrounded by amazingly talent, who are also people I love as friends. No compromises. That is what I have with my crew,” comments Ryan.

With a fleet of J/70s as large as it is, you will always have differences in how people run their programs. However, Ryan has ensured that the Surge program is the best it can be. He continues, “If I make sure that the boat, the sails, the set-up is at its best, then everyone knows we can only blame ourselves. If we are getting beaten on the water, the responsibility sits with us as the sailors, and we have to figure it out, so I do what I can, when I can to make sure the boat is looked after well.”

For Maggie, her constant inquisition and interest in Ryan’s sailing has developed a sincere passion for the sport, and she encourages other women not to be intimidated at any point.

“Have fun regardless of the weather or the people and just embrace it. For me, it was very daunting initially, but it is a sport for anyone at any age. The people I have met are hands down the best people I have met in my adult life. It is a huge family, with very welcoming people. It is a great sport to be part of”.

Where to from here for Maggie and Ryan? Ryan confirms that his interest in yacht racing isn’t waning, and he plans on being part of whatever the premiere one-design fleet is in North America and for a long time, and currently, that is the J/70. He also plans to race offshore. For Maggie, the goal is to eventually compete against Ryan on an M32, but the immediate focus for the couple will be the transition into their new roles as parents, with a baby due in the winter.

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Is fast food going too slow in reopening for dine-in business? – RetailWire - RetailWire

Jun 30, 2021

by Matthew Stern

City by city and state by state, U.S. retailers are reopening as reported COVID-19 infections continue to drop. Fast food chains, however, have been moving more slowly.

While local restaurants have been opening up, chains including Popeye’s, McDonald’s, Starbucks and those owned by Yum! Brands have remained more focused on digital sales and limited in the full reopening of stores in key markets, according to Yahoo! Finance. Brands cite operating in accordance with CDC guidelines and local regulations, but are farther from across-the-board reopening than smaller restaurant operators.

Part of the hesitation may be found in the franchise model some of these brands operate under. McDonald’s franchisees in late May were insisting on staying closed despite the easing of local restrictions, according to a Bloomberg report. Some stated that they were doing well enough through drive-thrus and mobile ordering and had neither enough staff to reopen nor interested diners to justify reopening. The chain hopes to have all restaurants fully open by late August.

Though COVID-19 cases continue to fall in the U.S., so has the rate of vaccinations, according to a CIDRAP report.

Low vaccination rates in some parts of the U.S. have raised concerns about a possible resurgence of the pandemic that would require the reintroduction of mitigation measures — even reaching the point of renewed store closures and lockdowns.

This trend is compounded by the emergence of the novel coronavirus’s Delta variant, a more contagious mutation of the virus that originated in India. The virus has recently and quickly become the dominant strain in the U.K., where a surge in infections has yet to stabilize despite the current high rate of vaccinations there (67 percent vaccinated, 49 percent fully vaccinated, according to The New York Times COVID-19 vaccinations tracker). Two weeks ago, U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson paused the nation’s reopening plans due to the COVID-19 surge. 

The anticipated July 5 full reopening of U.K. restaurants has been rescheduled to July 19 at the earliest, according to an Eater report.

Experts expect to see the Delta variant become the dominant strain of the virus circulating in the U.S. as well, according to CBS News.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Are fast food chains hurting themselves by not reopening more quickly or has the pandemic established a new operating model wherein consumers prefer drive-through and curbside pickup rather than dining in? Are restaurants and retailers prepared for the Delta variant and its possible effect on their businesses?

Braintrust

"Short of walk-in only urban locations, I doubt we will ever see a full reopening of in-store dining areas in QSR."

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Canada Invests in New EV Fast Chargers Across British Columbia - Canada NewsWire

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Canada Invests in New EV Fast Chargers Across British Columbia  Canada NewsWire
Canada Invests in New EV Fast Chargers Across British Columbia - Canada NewsWire
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Fast and furious first half of 2021 keeps financial markets at full throttle - Reuters

LONDON, June 30 (Reuters) - After the unprecedented pandemic-driven swings in global financial markets last year 2021 was never going to be dull, and so it has proved.

Vaccine programmes and some of the biggest fiscal and central bank stimulus ever seen have made for compelling viewing.

Oil's 45% surge will be its best start to a year since 2009, world stocks (.MIWD00000PUS) are on course for their second best H1 since 1998, wood is on fire and amateur traders' much-loved 'meme' stocks AMC (AMC.N) and GameStop (GME.N) are up more than 2,500% and 1,000% respectively.

Add to that another wild run for bitcoin, digital art selling for tens of millions of dollars despite being free on the internet and major gyrations in government bond markets and you start to get the picture.

"It has been extremely dramatic year," SEB investment management's head of asset allocation Hans Peterson said. "The swings have been absolutely enormous. It has not been an easy year, it has been quite tumultuous."

World equities have recorded an 11% gain but mainstay U.S. and German government bond markets have had their toughest H1 since 2013 despite a better last few months.

Bank of America analysts estimate that U.S. President Joe Biden's spending plans take the running tally of global fiscal and monetary stimulus over the last 15 months to $30.5 trillion, an amount equivalent to China and Europe's economies combined.

Central banks alone have bought $0.9 billion of financial assets an hour. That has fuelled a $54 trillion surge in global equity values, but also means U.S. inflation is now annualising 8% compared to an average of 3% over the last 100 years.

"The zeitgeist for the first half has been U.S. fiscal stimulus and its relationship with the bond markets," said Eric Theoret a global macro strategist at Manulife Investment Management, adding it would be crucial going forward too.

HOT OIL

Other seismic moves have been the surge in oil, the 20% rise in copper and a 30-40% leap in wood and food staples like corn and soybeans that is fanning both inflation and other markets.

Oil’s hot streak has seen the Canadian dollar and Russian rouble outperform. Metals have helped lift South Africa's rand but not the Aussie dollar. Britain’s pound has done well thanks to the UK’s rapid COVID vaccine rollout programme, whereas the Japanese yen and the euro, where progress on the inoculation front has been slower, have slid 6.7% and 2.5% respectively.

REAL TURNAROUND

Emerging markets have seen big moves too. Brazil's race to raise interest rates in recent months has seen its currency go from being the worst performer in the world at the end of Q1 to the best, now up 5.5%.

At the other end of the table, Colombia and Peru have been struck down by political uncertainty and Turkey’s lira has followed last year’s 20% beating with a further 14% drop.

Remarkably, the lira was the world’s best performer for the first six weeks of 2021. Then bond yields and energy prices kicked higher and President Tayyip Erdogan sacked another central banker.

Things have been even more wild in crypto markets where bitcoin soared all the way from $29,000 to just shy of $65,000 in April only to slump back to $36,000 as countries like China tightened regulations.

An explosion in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a kind of crypto asset used to track ownership of intangible digital assets such as images, videos and music, saw a digital collage fetch $69.3 million in March, while the first ever tweet by Twitter boss Jack Dorsey sold for $2.9 million in NFT form.

From their early year peaks, funds or stocks linked to innovation – the ARK Innovation Fund, Tesla, solar energy stocks, BioTech shares and special purpose acquisition companies or SPACs – are down 15% to 30% although there has also been a rebound since May.

The FAANGS quintet of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google have jumped 10% this month for example.

"We are in a very unusual recovery of course," said Vincent Manuel a chief investment officer at Indosuez Wealth Management, adding that many investors were scratching their heads as to why 10-year Treasury yields had fallen back to 1.5% after the Fed pulled forward U.S. rate hike expectations.

"There is a paradox," said Citi strategist Matt King. "The more successful the Fed and the other central banks have been at driving everything up, the more dependent the markets have become on the continuation of that flow of liquidity."

Additional reporting and graphics by Thyagaraju Adinarayan and Elizabeth Howcroft; Editing by Kirsten Donovan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Badcasting 'F9: The Fast Saga' fullcirclecinema.com - Full Circle Cinema

Welcome to Badcasting! A way for you to kill time at work or something to read while on the toilet. Here, we take a look at past films or characters and reimagine them with different actors. This isn’t a reflection on the quality of the film (in this case, F9) or the talents of specific actors or actresses but instead looking at what could, and in some cases should, have been.

This edition’s film: F9: The Fast Saga.

There will be MILD SPOILERS for this film. Nothing pertaining to the plot.

Dominic Toretto – Stephen Hawking (Before the Wheelchair, Asshole)

Starting off this badcast is the “man” behind the family. Dominic Toretto is the face of this franchise and the backbone that keeps it strong and upright (don’t be mean about it). This former convict turned street racer is also a master marksman, combat fighter, software/electrical engineer, and expert ‘nana eater. Vin Diesel can pull most of these off flawlessly – except for the street racing part. We need a man who knows how to burn rubber like his life depended on it (seriously, stop it).

Hawking was a premier theoretical physicist and cosmologist well before he ever lost his ability to walk. After a quick Wikipedia read and watching the trailer for The Theory of Everything. I think I understand this man perfectly. He lost his ability to walk late in life leaving only his mind intact. If it were me, and my mind was the only thing fast, I’d be furious. Hawking deserves to put the pedal to the metal and live life in the fast lane one more time.

And, if he has to throw a dude out of an electric wheelchair in order to escape an army of hackers, that’s just art imitating life in a f^#ked up way.

Letty Ortiz – Cardi B

Letty Ortiz is one of many characters in this franchise who got a second chance at life. After dying in Fast & Furious, she was revealed to be alive in Fast & Furious 6. However, in F9, Rodriguez felt wasted. She was given few lines of dialogue in order to barely be considered a character arc and a few great action sequences.

Letty has grown into one of the series best ass-kickers. She takes down multiple combatants with ease. Love or hate her music; Cardi B has been known to knockout a few men in her time. Some would even consider her a tough pill to swallow. Let her loose on the villain’s henchmen and they won’t know what hit them….. or where their wallets are when they wake up. She can be driving around in her magnetized sports car yelling “OKURRR” instead of “YES” whenever something good happens for our heroes.

Roman Pearce –  DK Metcalf

This one hurts to type because Tyrese is a god damn superstar that Hollywood doesn’t appreciate. The man lost his daughter in a supermarket or something and Instagram Lived it so we all would know how much pain he was in. The man can act his way out of a plastic bag (as long as there was another hole at the end of it). Let him perform his own rendition of “My Left Foot” on Broadway already! It’s his dream to do it and my dream to watch it. The character of Roman needs to be quick on his feet, though, and Tyrese’s damn left foot is holding him back.

DK Metcalf is not an actor whatsoever. DK Metcalf is a state of human evolution only one man has achieved. This man is terrifying to look at. Don’t even give DK a gun; let him just rip the heads off of the bad guys and laugh. He’s essentially bulletproof with those brownie-pan abs of his. Tyrese can act scared while on set, but put DK in those actual situations and he’ll always walk away unharmed. In this film, we see Roman go to space. Launch DK up in an actual rocket and he’ll be back down 2-3 days later with a Martian skull.

Tej Parker – Floyd Mayweather

I’m in the same boat with Ludacris as I am with Tyrese. Getting rid of Ludacris is so ridiculous that I can’t think of another word to describe how ridiculous it is. But he needs to focus on writing Ludaversal 2, which is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Floyd Mayweather being “retired” is about as accurate as me and not licking doorknobs; only true until someone offers us a ton of money or a YouTuber dares us. Floyd has plenty of acting gigs in his undefeated belt, including All-Star Weekend, Untitled Cars Project and Mayweather v Paul: Dawn of Scams. He’s more than ready to take on this multi-billion dollar franchise. He just needs to learn how to translate computer jargon off a script page, which should be as easy as teaching a middle-age man with potential brain injuries how to read.

Ramsey- Lizzo

I adore the gal who plays Ramsey, but three of the ten villains in this franchise (I’ll include the spinoff even if Vin won’t) have been British so I just refuse to trust anyone from that country. In her place, we’re getting Grammy Award-Winning AMERICAN artist, Lizzo.

“Fast” has made a habit of including talented recording artists in their films (perfect examples include Tyrese, Ludacris and Vin). It’s time to expand that list a little more. Lizzo is charismatic, loveable and can sing the boring exposition instead of reciting it, allowing the audience to hum and remember important details of whatever MacGuffin they’re after.

Jakob Toretto – Ric Flair

The estranged brother of Dom that we never knew about, Jakob comes into the “Fast” world and shakes everything up in F9. Much like Dom, Jakob is an expert at fucking everything and there’s nothing he can’t do – except be better than Dom. Brother v Brother. Mono eh Mano. Demi-God v God Complex.

Since John Cena has said he refuses to beat Ric Flair’s WWE Championship record, he is now the lesser man in my book. Honor has no place in a franchise with cars, butts and family. Ric Flair is clearly the superior fighter and therefore deserves to push Dominic Toretto out of his stupid wheelchair (he kept the guy’s wheelchair from earlier).

*MINOR SPOILERS*

Han – Steve Jobs

Han makes a triumphant return to the living in F9 after dying in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift/Fast & Furious 6/Furious 7. How did he survive you may be wondering? Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) reached out and employed him while he was living in Tokyo. So it was thanks to this job and Mr. Nobody’s protection that he remained alive.

Justice For Han? Maybe not entirely.

But I’m sure he was happy to settle for a Han Job.

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Thanks for making it to the end of the F9 Badcast! I’m grateful you made it this far. Check out the last Badcast here.

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Did you enjoy this article? If so, consider visiting our YouTube channel, where we discuss the latest and greatest in pop culture news.

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Lexar’s New CFexpress Card Reader Makes Fast Work Of Photo Transfers - Forbes

If you are a professional photographer, you don’t need reminding that time is money. Today’s cameras can shoot at very high speeds and a day’s shooting can easily fill a lot of memory cards with thousands of photos. All those images need to be uploaded to a computer so they can be curated and then edited.

Getting photos from a memory card to a computer has always been a bottleneck in many photographers’ workflow. It can take a long time to transfer the contents of a large-capacity memory card to a Mac or PC. To speed things up a bit, Lexar has just announced the launch of a high-speed memory card reader that can read the latest generation CFexpress Type B memory cards and transfer them to computers using the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface.

Lexar makes a range of flash memory cards and drives and now it has announced the Lexar Professional CFexpress Type B USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Reader. This card reader has been specially designed for photographers who demand the fastest transfer speeds, even when on the go. 

The new card reader can offload large batches of high-quality images and RAW 8K video from CFexpress Type B cards to a computer at USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 speeds, boosting workflows from location to post-production. 

This professional-level reader includes both a 2-in-1 USB Type-C to USB Type-A cable and USB Type-C to USB Type-C cable for port-to-port connection with laptops and desktop computers. It's compact enough to slip into a pocket and, thanks to plug-and-play functionality, it can offload content at high speed, even on location. 

If you shoot photos using a camera that takes the latest CFexpress Type B memory cards, this new reader from Lexar looks to be the best solution on the market at the moment. Transfer speeds are dependent on the host computer supporting USB 3.2 Gen 2 but it’s also backwardly compatible with older USB standards, albeit at reduced read speeds. 

Pricing and Availability: The Lexar Professional CFexpress Type B USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Reader is available from now and retails for $69.99. 

More info: www.lexar.com

Features:

• Designed for use with CFexpress™ Type B cards
• Offers blazing-fast transfer speeds for RAW 8K video and high-quality images
• Leveraging USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 technology to dramatically accelerate workflow
• Read speeds of up to 1700MB/s¹
• Portable and compact design for photographers and videographers on the go
• Includes 30cm 2-in-1 USB Type-C to USB Type-A and USB Type-C to USB Type-C cable
• Five-year limited warranty

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COVID-19 in Ottawa: Fast Facts for June 30, 2021 - CTV Edmonton

OTTAWA -- Good morning. Here is the latest news on COVID-19 and its impact on Ottawa.

Fast Facts:

• Ontario has moved into Step 2 of the provincial government's "Roadmap to Reopen" plan.
• One third of all adults in Ottawa are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
• The number of active COVID-19 cases in Ottawa is now below 90.
• A deadly COVID-19 outbreak at a City of Ottawa-run long-term care home has ended.

COVID-19 by the numbers in Ottawa (Ottawa Public Health data):

• New COVID-19 cases: One case removed from the total on Tuesday
• Total COVID-19 cases: 27,660
• COVID-19 cases per 100,000 (previous seven days): 7.4
• Positivity rate in Ottawa: 0.9 per cent (June 21-27)
• Reproduction Number: 0.96 (seven day average)

Testing:

Who should get a test?

Ottawa Public Health says you can get a COVID-19 test at an assessment centre, care clinic, or community testing site if any of the following apply to you:

• You are showing COVID-19 symptoms;
• You have been exposed to a confirmed case of the virus, as informed by Ottawa Public Health or exposure notification through the COVID Alert app;
• You are a resident or work in a setting that has a COVID-19 outbreak, as identified and informed by Ottawa Public Health;
• You are a resident, a worker or a visitor to long-term care, retirement homes, homeless shelters or other congregate settings (for example: group homes, community supported living, disability-specific communities or congregate settings, short-term rehab, hospices and other shelters);
• You are a person who identifies as First Nations, Inuit or Métis;
• You are a person travelling to work in a remote First Nations, Inuit or Métis community;
• You received a preliminary positive result through rapid testing;
• You require testing 72 hours before a scheduled (non-urgent or emergent) surgery (as recommended by your health care provider);
• You are a patient and/or their 1 accompanying escort tra­velling out of country for medical treatment;
• You are an international student that has passed their 14-day quarantine period;
• You are a farm worker;
• You are an educator who cannot access pharmacy-testing; or
• You are in a targeted testing group as outlined in guidance from the Chief Medical Officer of Health.

Where to get tested for COVID-19 in Ottawa:

There are several sites for COVID-19 testing in Ottawa. To book an appointment, visit https://www.ottawapublichealth.ca/en/shared-content/assessment-centres.aspx

• The Brewer Ottawa Hospital/CHEO Assessment Centre: Open Monday to Friday 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
• COVID-19 Drive-Thru Assessment Centre at 300 Coventry Road: Open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• The Moodie Care and Testing Centre: Open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 
• The Heron Care and Testing Centre: Open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• The Ray Friel Care and Testing Centre: Open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• North Grenville COVID-19 Assessment Centre (Kemptville) – 15 Campus Drive: Open Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• Centretown Community Health Centre: Open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Sandy Hill Community Health Centre: Open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 pm.
• Somerset West Community Health Centre: Open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Wednesday, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Friday

COVID-19 screening tool:

The COVID-19 screening tool for summer camp children and staff. All campers and staff must complete the COVID-19 School and Childcare screening tool daily.

Symptoms:

Classic Symptoms: fever, new or worsening cough, shortness of breath

Other symptoms: sore throat, difficulty swallowing, new loss of taste or smell, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, pneumonia, new or unexplained runny nose or nasal congestion

Less common symptoms: unexplained fatigue, muscle aches, headache, delirium, chills, red/inflamed eyes, croup

Ottawa is now in Step 2 of Ontario's "Roadmap to Reopen" plan.

Step 2 began at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, two days ahead of schedule. It loosens several COVID-19 restrictions across Ontario, including allowing for the reopening of salons and other personal care services. Outdoor fitness classes no longer have a cap on participants and retail has expanded capacity.

The province moved to Step 2 ahead of time as vaccination targets were met and exceeded. Step 2 required that 70 per cent of adults in Ontario have one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 20 per cent have two. As of Tuesday, those figures across Ontario were 77.53 per cent and 37.32 per cent, respectively, which meet or exceed the threshold for Step 3.

Step 2 is scheduled to last 21 days, to give health officials time to monitor case trends. Ontario's new Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Keiran Moore, said there will be no early movement to Step 3.

The City of Ottawa made it official Tuesday: more than one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in Ottawa.

According to Ottawa Public Health, as of Tuesday morning, 1,015,759 vaccine doses had been administered in community clinics, pharmacies, pop-up clinics and other locations. OPH says the total includes 741,114 first doses and 274,645 second doses.

To date, 79 per cent of adults 18 and older have had one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 33 per cent are now fully vaccinated.

In a public service announcement, the City of Ottawa said the milestone gives people a million reasons to celebrate, but there are still many more vaccines to administer.

"These are milestones we can be proud of. But we can’t fully celebrate yet. If you have not received your first vaccine, or accelerated your second dose, now is the time. We have a steady supply of vaccines and many appointments available," the city said.

"It doesn’t matter whether you choose a community clinic, a pop-up clinic or a pharmacy for your vaccine; what matters is that you get your COVID-19 immunity started now with a first dose or completed with that critical second dose."

Ottawa Public Health says there are 86 known active cases of COVID-19 in Ottawa, down from 99 on Monday.

OPH's COVID-19 dashboard is reporting a negative daily change in the total COVID-19 case count for a second time this month, with total cases dropping by one to 27,660 since the pandemic began.

Typically this means in addition to newly added cases, the health unit removed some from the total after case management determined individuals who had been listed in Ottawa's total live elsewhere. Exact numbers for how many cases were added and how many were removed were not made available Tuesday. 

OPH suggests looking at the seven-day averages and the reproduction number for a better idea of how COVID-19 is trending in Ottawa. The weekly incidence rate of new cases per 100,000 population is 7.4 in the past seven days, up slightly from 7.3 but still among the lowest levels in 2021. The weekly testing positivity rate is below 1 per cent and there are six people in hospital, with one in the ICU.

The City of Ottawa says a COVID-19 outbreak has officially come to an end at a city-run long-term care home.

In a memo Tuesday afternoon, Donna Gray, the city's general manager of community and social services, said Ottawa Public Health confirmed an end to the outbreak at the Centre d’accueil Champlain because there had been no new cases at the home for 14 days.

Vaccination against COVID-19 was high among residents, but lagged among staff, with 71 per cent of employees having had at least one dose before the outbreak began. That figure climbed to 77 per cent in June but remained the lowest among the four city-run long-term care homes. A memo in early June said Carleton Lodge had an uptake rate of 83 per cent, and Garry J. Armstrong and Peter D. Clark each had 80 per cent of staff vaccinated with at least one dose.

Gray had confirmed in late May that the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7) had been detected in the home and that some of the residents who had tested positive were fully vaccinated.

Ottawa's medical officer of health Dr. Vera Etches said fully vaccinated people can still be infected by the virus.

"Where we see vaccine failure after the two doses, the most commonly is in people over 80, so it is going to be a more vulnerable population."

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It’s Ridiculous: The Mid-Engine, Hellcat-Powered ’68 Dodge Charger of Fast 9 - Motor Trend

You can only ask this question in the context of a Fast and Furious film: How do you top a '68 Dodge Charger with a jet engine in the trunk? Easy—a '68 Charger with a Hellcat in the back seat. How does a Hellcat engine, even one tuned to Demon specification like this one, top a jet engine? Because it's real.

That's right, kids, the jet engine sticking out the back of the "Ice Charger" in 2017's Fate of the Furious was just a prop. The car was powered by a Chevy LS3 V-8 pushed back under the dashboard to make room for an all-wheel-drive system. Cool stuff, but the mid-engine Charger is the real deal.

At least, two of them are.

"Now, when I say we built nine, they're not all identical," he explains. "There's two of them that were built with the mid-engine design and the transaxle. The rest, the name of the company leaves me at the moment, but there's a company that makes a plastic Hellcat motor. So the rest of them have the [fake] plastic motor in place. And we actually used an LS3 with a manual-shifted Turbo 400 automatic and a Ford 9-inch rearend for our stunt cars that we just use and abuse. But yeah, a total of nine cars, two different platforms. I'd say four and a half months, they were all done and headed off to different countries."

The hero cars, the ones actors drive in close-up shots, have real Hellcats and actually run. Mopar provided the standard 707-hp crate engines, and McCarthy had them brought to Demon spec with a pully and a 110-octane race-gas tune from Performance Tech, the shop that tunes all the Fast movie cars. The now 800-plus-hp motors were mated to six-speed manual Graziano transaxles lifted from Lamborghini Gallardos.

"I feel that the clutch pedal is a key ingredient to the cool factor," McCarthy says. "In my opinion, it just has to be that way. An automatic just wouldn't have the same impact."

Rich Waitas at Magnaflow built a full custom exhaust with custom headers that route up and over the transaxle and dump out of hidden tips behind the rear bumper. With no engine up front and no room left for the original under-trunk gas tank, Vehicle Effects mounted an 8-gallon fuel cell under the hood. The classic chrome gas cap on the passenger front fender is functional on the mid-engine cars, making trips to the gas station more like filling up a Porsche than a Dodge.

Also under the hood is a high-angle rack-and-pinion power steering setup to enable big drifts. That and the transaxle necessitated a custom fully independent suspension at all four corners, and it gives the front-engine stunt cars a tell: the live rear-axle pumpkin hanging down. That is, if you can get low enough to see it.

"I'm always into the lowest stance possible [for the cars]," McCarthy says. "I might have gone a little too far on this one. It's definitely the lowest Charger we've ever put together, which is great. It looks awesome. But sometimes you get that high-center issue going in and out of the driveway with such a long-wheelbase car. But for a movie car, that's great; for a daily driver, you'd probably want to raise it up a couple of inches."

All these pieces are fitted to a custom chassis built by Wisconsin-based SpeedKore Performance, which also created the carbon-fiber widebody to go over the top. The Charger Daytona roofline and rear glass were chosen both to clear the Hellcat engine and to show it off. The body and chassis were modified to stretch the wheelbase nearly 6 inches by moving the front axle forward, mostly because McCarthy doesn't like the big front overhang featured on early Chargers. Deep-dish HRE wheels fill out the fat fenders and hide modern Brembo disc brakes.

"It's without a doubt the fastest Charger we've built," McCarthy says. "There have been a lot of Chargers that look like they have 1,000 horsepower; this one in reality is probably the highest horsepower Fast and Furious Charger ever built."

Replacing the rear seat with a supercharged V-8 requires a lot of interior modification. A metal and plexiglass divider helps reduce some of the heat and noise coming into the cabin, which is sparse but functional. McCarthy took design inspiration from the Ford GT40, going so far as to incorporate brass rings in the seat covers. The bucket seats are adjustable, with tools, and don't have headrests for a period feel. Between them is, of course, a NOS bottle for the inevitable scene where even more acceleration is necessary to save the day. A flat instrument panel with simple analog gauges and toggle switches, plus a steel three-spoke steering wheel, completes the old-school look.

"The tricky thing is always trying to come up with something new," McCarthy acknowledges, "because there's only so many ways you can build a Charger, and we've done most of them. And on top of that, not only have we built numerous Chargers in different styles, but we've used the Nelson Racing Engines Charger, that unpainted Charger, we've borrowed other Chargers from SpeedKore, so there's a long list of Chargers that have been featured in the franchise over the years.

"Like I said, it's always trying to come up with something new. When I was at SEMA, the SpeedKore guys were showing me what they were working on, which looked pretty badass. And then, I don't know who owns this car, so I can't give him credit for it, but there was a Mustang—I want to say it was maybe a '71ish Mustang—that had a mid-engine setup in it, which was very impressive. I don't want to take credit for other people's ideas, but I get a lot of ideas at SEMA. One thing led to another, and I just decided that's something we haven't done yet. Let's move the motor to a new location."

The work is surprisingly clean considering McCarthy and a team of seven had only those four and a half months to build all nine cars from scratch. And really, it was Jonny Miller and Brian Gogerty who did most of the work on the mid-engine cars while the rest of the team built the stunt cars or moved back and forth between builds.

"As always, our biggest challenge is just trying to get it done in time," McCarthy says. "Guys are working on the car for sometimes 14, 15 hours a day, and trying to keep sane for weeks and weeks and weeks on end. But they have a lot of practice. And obviously these were extremely labor-intensive cars to build. You talk to a guy, for instance at SEMA, who built a car, they'll go, 'Oh, we worked on it for three or four years.' We'll build 180 cars in five months. It's a whole different style of building cars, but the nice thing is you don't have to get each door gap exactly perfect. So there are some advantages. But they do have to perform and be reliable. And they were very reliable; they had no problems during filming. They fired right up every time."

It's an important consideration when a custom star car can make or break a shooting schedule. At one point, the two mid-engine cars were simultaneously in Glasgow, Scotland, and Tbilisi, Georgia, shooting different scenes. These are places you don't just buy Dodge parts at the local shop.

Despite all the travel and shooting, the hero cars came back in near-perfect condition.

"I was adamant with the guys," McCarthy says. "Don't kill the mid-engine car. They both came back unscathed. No damage, nothing. It was great. And that's not normal. Usually even the cars I don't want to get damaged end up getting damaged one way or another."

That's good for a lot of reasons, not least of which because the cars have a lot of traveling left to do. They'll split up again and ship around the world on a promotional tour for Fast 9, then at least one will likely end up on display at one of the Universal Studios theme parks. Before they go, though, McCarthy hopes to get them out to a track and dialed in properly.

"The only thing I regret is, we didn't have a lot of track time," he says. "Normally we'll build these cars, and we'll head out to Willow Springs for the day and run them through their paces. With this car, we were just in such a time crunch to get them shipped out. I think I made one pass up and down the street in front of my shop, and everything felt good. Into a shipping container it went, and that was it.

"Hopefully," he continues, "when we get a little bit closer to movie release time [on June 25], we can take this car out and put it through its paces and see what it does. I have a bad feeling it's going to have a little bit of an understeer push characteristic to it, because it's just a ton of power, real sticky tires, and we never even scaled the car. I got to believe it's 62, 63, or 64 percent rear weight bias on the car. But hopefully with a little track time, we'll get that tamed and see what the thing can really do."

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Vin Diesel Eyes More Oscar Winners for ‘Fast and Furious’ Finale: Michael Caine and Rita Moreno - IndieWire

It’s not unprecedented for Oscar-winning talent to set up shop with “The Fast and the Furious” movie franchise. Just ask Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren, both of whom have now starred in at least two or more “Fast” entries. Now comes word that series star and producer Vin Diesel has two more Oscar winners on his wish list for the “Fast” finale, which will be split into two films “Kill Bill” style. The finale will bring the total number of “Fast” movies to eleven. Who does Diesel have on his list? Rita Moreno, for starters.

As reported by Variety: “With a planned 10th and 11th film in the works, [director Justin] Lin says he and Diesel have been plotting future storylines for years, but admits that ‘We’ve been talking a lot about Mrs. Toretto, from the very beginning of [me] coming back for ‘F9’. So, I feel like there’s gonna be a time and place to be able to reveal that.’ Diesel confirmed the storyline discussion, saying that the plot point has ‘come up in so many story meetings for ‘Fast 10.’ Diesel says ‘before we get to Mother Toretto, we will get to Abuela. And the person that I’m so excited to talk about that role is Rita Moreno.'”

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Diesel won’t have to do any convincing to lure Moreno to the “Fast” franchise. The “West Side Story” Oscar winner told Variety, “I’m waiting for his call. I think it’s a fabulous idea. I hope he puts me in black leather.” A role in the “Fast” franchise would bring Moreno to the world of supersized Hollywood action tentpoles for the first time.

As for the second Oscar winner on the “Fast” finale wish list, that would be two-time Academy Award recipient Michael Caine. Having starred in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, Caine is no stranger to the studio tentpole world. In an interview with The New York Times, Mirren let it slip that Diesel wanted Caine to play her character’s husband, aka the patriarch of the Shaw family. Given “F9” ends with Han (Sung Kang) confronting Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), it would appear there will be a lot of Shaw drama to come in the “Fast” finale.

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to say but apparently Vin had the idea of Michael Caine,” Mirren said. “I mean, wouldn’t that be fantastic? That would be just so cool and absolutely perfect. So we’ll see.”

“F9” marked Mirren’s third appearance as Magdalene “Queenie” Shaw, but it was the first movie to let the Oscar winner drive a car in an action sequence. Mirren shot the scene in “three or four days.”

“Of course there was all the brilliant stunt driving that is obviously done by experienced drivers,” Mirren told The Times. “I’m a big supporter, incidentally, of stunt people being given an Oscar. I think there should be a category for it because stunt people’s contribution to so many films nowadays is so huge and extraordinary.”

“F9” is now playing in theaters nationwide.

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Fast 9 Is Here: The Deep Impact of the Fast & Furious Franchise on Car Culture - Motor Trend

Maybe you love the Fast & Furious moves, or perhaps you've never forgiven them for that reference to the "MoTeC exhaust"—but either way, it's impossible to deny the impact the movies have had on society and car culture. With 10 films, including this year's Fast 9, Fast & Furious is one of the most successful franchises in Hollywood history. It's been 20 years since Brian O'Conner moseyed into Toretto's Market and Café for a tuna on white with no crust, and the car world has never quite been the same.

MotorTrend features editor Scott Evans well remembers the impact of 2001's The Fast and The Furious: "The buzz was everywhere. Even in my small California town, everyone had heard about this new street racing movie. I went to the theater and couldn't believe my eyes—I'd never seen so many modified imports in one place [as were in the parking lot]. The line to get into the theater was 10 times longer than normal."

Craig Lieberman, whose YouTube channel is a treasure-trove of behind-the-scenes information, served as a technical consultant for the first two films. "A lot of people became car fans because of the movies' influence," he says today. "I hear it every day on social media: 'This movie got me into cars. '"

"It's difficult to overstate the significance of the franchise," agrees Andrew Comrie-Picard, a racer and stunt driver who worked on the 2019 spin-off, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. "It ranks up there with American Graffiti as one of the most significant car culture movies of all time." For the first film, "they had the wisdom to get R.J. de Vera, an early tuner-car influencer, to consult and play the role of the video game-playing street racer. It meant the cars and the content were legit, like the 2JZ Supra and F-150 Lightning and even the VR6 Jetta, which was a thing back then."

Sung Kang is the actor who played Han, starting in the third installment, The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift, and became a car enthusiast largely as a result of his involvement with the film. "I think it was the first proper car film that represented a community," he says. "Usually there were very singular American cars in most American films, but The Fast and The Furious featured JDMs [Japanese Domestic Market vehicles]. Bringing together the love of American iron and JDMs was really cool to see."

Along with its effect on the car community, the original Fast & Furious film had massive repercussions for the aftermarket industry. "I went back to the companies that provided us parts for the movie," Lieberman recalls, "companies like Sparco, GReddy, and Nitrous Oxide Systems, and they all reported their sales went up. Not hundreds of percentage points, but 1,000-plus percent."

Bill Tichenor was with N.O.S. when the company was asked to get involved. "They asked for a lot of NOS, so it was a gamble," he says. "Sales went crazy the weekend the movie dropped and stayed that way for a long while. It even changed the name—people started calling it 'NAAAHS' like in the movie instead of 'N.O.S.,' which is what we called it. [The movie] really did take the sport-compact scene from a subculture to mainstream and ultimately created a lot of new car guys and gals that are still into cars today."

The effect on automakers was more subtle. "That whole movement of modifying Civics was completely homegrown by the kids who were doing it," recalls Kurt Antonius, head of public relations for Honda and Acura when the first F&F films came out. "The Civic was kind of a hand-me-down car from parents. All of a sudden there was this movement, this interest in modifying the cars. Parts suppliers started growing out of the woodwork.

"Some of [Honda's] executives, Japanese and American, started going to SEMA [the Specialty Equipment Market Association trade show] and going, 'Holy Christmas, look at this!' Everyone had a Civic in their display. Whether they were selling audio systems or aftermarket pipes or floormats, they had modified Civics. It was really overwhelming. And the amazing thing is that it was an organic movement the kids started themselves. It was not the result of Honda promoting anything or giving reduced parts pricing. It just grew on its own, and that was the beauty of the whole movement."

Tanner Foust, racer, TV host, and stunt driver for Tokyo Drift, recalls his early impressions of the movie. "The first time I saw how they brought a nitrous shot to life," he says, "through the injection process, the combustion chamber, out the exhaust, and the car zooming away with blue flames coming from the pipe, I said, 'This is one of the coolest things ever.' I had never seen the emotion of acceleration put together on the screen like that. Even though I wasn't a street racer myself, I was a huge fan of what those movies did for the aftermarket and the car enthusiast world."

When the studio brought on Foust and fellow drifter Rhys Millen as stunt drivers for Tokyo Drift, "the pressure to make drifting look good on screen was pretty big. I wasn't a fan of all the CGI in the second film. Rhys and I took it on ourselves to convince [the producers] that we needed to do as much as possible for real and try to minimize the cartoon factor.

"I spent hours convincing the folks that were in charge of CGI that we should try [the stunts] for real, like the moment in the parking garage where the 350Z comes around and the back wing scrapes the wall of the garage. We added three or four scenes in the film that they had planned to do with CGI. We always considered it a win when they would let us try to do it for real, rather than just plug in laptops and make it happen in CGI-land."

Actor Kang recalls his surprise at the drifting drivers' skill. "There was a scene where they were drifting up the parking ramp, and I remember asking, 'Are you guys actually going to be able to do this? How are you going to hit that corner?' Rhys put a quarter on the ground and says, 'Watch this. I'll hit it with my rear passenger-side tire.' And boom, he hits it. That's when I realized these guys are professional athletes. It was so exciting."

In terms of the influence the movies had on drifting, Foust says, "Before Tokyo Drift, whenever somebody asked me what kind of racing I did, I had to educate them on what drifting was. People thought it was just hooligans doing smoky burnouts. After Tokyo Drift, it became a household word. I still had to explain what the sport was about and the judging factor, but people knew the definition and related it back to its roots in Japan. It was amazing that one film could educate a generation so completely. We had a lot more competitive drifters drawn into the sport. The movie didn't glamorize drifting so much as showing how difficult it is and the skill it requires."

Likewise, Foust remembers, drifting had an effect on Hollywood stunt driving. "In the scenes where the cars are weaving in and out of traffic, they would have something like 25 other stunt drivers in those other cars. [Millen and I] spent the whole time drifting between them, and by the end of the night, those guys were saying, 'What the hell is this drifting stuff? This is awesome!' After the film, some of the biggest names in the stunt world purchased drift cars and were out practicing at Buttonwillow."

The emphasis on real-live car action remained part of the series. Comrie-Picard says of his time working on Hobbs & Shaw, "Director David Leitch is a real believer in authenticity. If it was physically possible to do it in-vehicle, we'd always do it." He describes one scene, in which an Apache helicopter flies between two vehicles, as one of the most intense in his career. "The helicopter would swoop in and flare out, dropping the tail between me and the car in front of me, below my roofline. It's something not to choke up when a military helicopter joins your car chase."

Some lament the later movies' shift to the heist genre, but Evans is of the opinion that even the first film was "a heist movie tethered loosely to the street-racing and tuning scenes. The cars were there to advance the plot but never at the center of it. What gave these movies broad reach was the everyman appeal of some nobodies from East L.A. who became the world's biggest action heroes.

"We all joked about 17-speed transmissions, floorboards falling out at high speeds, and solving 'Danger to Manifold' by closing the laptop," Evans says. "But as much as we loved tearing apart that first movie for what it got wrong, we all watched it. We all quoted it. We all talked about it. And it stuck. Twenty years later, you can throw out a Fast & Furious quote at a car show and five more will get thrown back at you."

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