Grim summer for sea turtles: Hundreds killed by red tide, illegal nets

Welcome to The National Today newsletter, which takes a closer look at what's happening around some of the day's most notable stories. Sign up here and it will be delivered directly to your inbox Monday to Friday.

TODAY:

• It has been a tough summer for sea turtles, with mass deaths from red tide blooms and fishing nets
• British Columbia is the first province to go after prescription opioid makers, launching a lawsuit against 40 companies to recover health care costs
• Russia is set to hold its biggest military drill since the height of the Cold War
• Missed The National last night? Watch it here

Sea turtle deaths

Conservation authorities in southern Mexico have launched an investigation after the decomposing remains of more than 300 endangered sea turtles were found in an illegal fishing net.

The olive ridley turtles, a species at risk of extinction, were found inside a 120-metre long net off the shores Barra de Colotepec in Oaxaca state, along the Pacific coast.

The local office of environmental protection says the turtles, which grow to up to 75 centimetres in length and can weigh 45 kilograms, drowned or asphyxiated.

It's estimated that they had been dead for at least a week when local residents discovered them.

A federal attorney from Mexico's environment ministry has opened a formal inquiry.

It has been a rough summer for sea turtles.

In Florida, more than 450 have died — including greens, loggerheads, Kemp's ridleys and hawksbills — over the past two months after being poisoned by toxic algae along the southwest Gulf Coast.

The "red tide," as it is known, is a natural annual occurrence in the Gulf of Mexico, but this year's algae bloom is the worst in more than a decade.

Red tide has killed at least 100 manatees, more than a dozen dolphins and countless thousands of fish in the Gulf. Crews have removed more than 1,800 tonnes of dead marine animal carcasses from Florida beaches in the five hardest-hit counties, according to state reports.

The high levels of Karenia brevis, which contains a neurotoxin that weakens and ultimately paralyzes marine life, have persisted since last November, and will probably last until cold weather returns to Florida in early 2019.

The longest red tide on record lasted 30 months, starting in 1994.

The deadly algae blooms develop in deeper water and then intensify as they near shore, fed by pollutants and warmer currents. It's not clear what role climate change might be playing in this year's outbreak, but it seems certain that more turtles will die.

Nesting season runs from May through October, and hundreds of caches of turtle eggs along Florida's beaches have yet to hatch. The tiny turtles, already preyed upon by fish and birds, will be particularly susceptible to the algae.

According to the latest update, Florida's red tide stretches from Clearwater to south of Naples, a distance of more than 280 kilometres.

Opioid lawsuits

British Columbia has become the first Canadian province to go after prescription opioid makers, launching a lawsuit against 40 companies to recover health care costs associated with the exploding addiction crisis.

And other provinces are likely to follow.

Last month, Benoit Bourque, New Brunswick's health minister, announced that his province is considering launching its own lawsuit or joining somebody else's.

And the previous Liberal government in Ontario had urged Ottawa to prosecute Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, the pain pill that fuelled the rise of the opioid epidemic.

According to the latest federal figures, there were at least 3,987 opioid-related deaths in Canada in 2017, a 34 per cent increase from the 2,978 in 2016. And the situation isn't getting better, with B.C. reporting 878 fatal overdoses through the first seven months of 2018, eclipsing last year's pace.

Most of those deaths are due to illicit versions of fentanyl and its analogues. Ontario's coroner, for example, blames the illegal street drugs for almost 80 per cent of the province's 1,263 overdose fatalities in 2017.

But the abuse of pharmaceutical versions of the drugs plays a part too, with many experts blaming big pharma for aggressively marketing them to doctors and downplaying their risks, thereby sowing the seeds of the addiction crisis.  

More to the point, there's money to be had.

Back in the spring of 2007, Purdue Pharma agreed to pay $600 million US in fines and penalties to the State of Virginia after pleading guilty to misleading doctors, patients and drug regulators about the safety of OxyContin.

Since then, more than 600 U.S. cities, counties and states have filed their own opioid-related lawsuits.

Nevada, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, North Dakota and Florida are the latest states to join the fray, having filed suit against Purdue Pharma and several other drug makers in a coordinated action in mid-May.

U.S. President Donald Trump  has vowed that a federal lawsuit against the drug companies "will happen," as the country grapples with a crisis that caused 42,000 opioid-related deaths in 2016. (Provisional numbers suggest that even more Americans died of fatal overdoses in 2017.)

In fact, there are now so many government lawsuits that most observers expect that the drug makers will ultimately have to reach a global settlement — just like tobacco companies did in 1998 in the United States, which in turn sparked several Canadian class actions.

Such talks are already well underway in Ohio, where a federal judge has consolidated 433 claims against Purdue, Endo, Johnson & Johnson, Allergan and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

The new litigation in British Columbia must be a particularly bitter pill for Purdue.

The company had struck an agreement to settle several Canadian class action suits over OxyContin in 2017. It agreed to pay $18 million to people who became addicted to the painkiller, and split $2 million between Canada's 13 provinces and territories to offset their health care costs.

Courts in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario approved the deal — which would have left the provinces and territories unable to pursue further legal action — but last April a Saskatchewan judge rejected the settlement, raising questions about whether the total of $20 million reflected the "real costs" of treatment and rehabilitation.

Purdue Pharma is appealing the ruling.

• Like this newsletter? Sign up and have it delivered by email.
• You may also like our early-morning newsletter, the Morning Brief — start the day with the news you need in one quick and concise read. Sign up here.

Russian war games

Russia is set to hold its biggest military drill since the height of the Cold War.

Operation Vostok-2018 will see almost 300,000 troops, 1,000 aircraft, all of Russia's paratroopers, as well as vessels from the Pacific and Northern Fleets, engage in a giant war game in Siberia and the country's Far East.

Elements of the Chinese and Mongolian military are also set to join the exercise.  

"Imagine 36,000 pieces of military equipment moving together at the same time — tanks, armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles. And all of this, of course, in conditions as close to combat as possible," Sergei Shoigu, Russia's defence minister, said yesterday.

The simulation, set to take place Sept. 11 to 15, will be the Russian military's largest show of faux force since Zapad 1981. That joint Soviet-Warsaw Pact drill in Poland tested new weapons systems like the SS-20 ballistic missile, throwing a scare into Western powers.

The intention this time seems to be the same.

"The country's defence capability in the current international situation, which is frequently quite aggressive and unfriendly for our country, is justified, needed and has no alternative," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Frants Klintsevich, deputy chairman of the Defence and Security Committee in the Russian senate, and a member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, suggested that Vostok-2018 will be useful in cooling down "some hotheads."

"Such a check-up will be quite handy in the context of a very difficult situation in the world," he told reporters. "First and foremost, I mean the unprecedented pressure that the U.S. is exerting on Russia."

NATO issued a statement yesterday saying that it had been forewarned of the war games and intends to monitor them.

"Vostok demonstrates Russia's focus on exercising large-scale conflict. It fits into a pattern we have seen over some time: a more assertive Russia, significantly increasing its defence budget and its military presence," said Dylan White, a spokesman for the alliance.

The Vostok exercise marks a significant escalation from last year's Zapad-2017, another large-scale war game that saw as many as 100,000 troops duck and weave in Belarus, pointedly near the frontiers of NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

In response, NATO quickly held its own Dragon-17 exercise in the north of Poland, involving some 17,000 soldiers and 3,500 piece of equipment.

And it comes at a time of increasing tension between Russia and the West.

Last week, Vladimir Putin accused NATO of moving its military assets closer to the Russian border.

A NATO spokeswoman characterized the deployments as "defensive" and "proportionate."

Quote of the moment

"It's not a question of like or dislike, it's a question that they will overturn everything that we've done, and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence. When you look at Antifa — these are violent people."

- Donald Trump warns of violence in streets if the Republicans lose the November midterm elections, during a closed-door White House meeting with Evangelical Christian leaders.

A few words on ...

Wanting to bee a part of it.

What The National is reading

• Myanmar rejects UN report accusing its military of genocide (CBC)
• Iran arrests 'tens of spies' working for government bodies (Al Jazeera)
• French and British fishermen square off with rocks, fireworks in battle for scallops (CBC)
• India's health ministry calls for halt on sales on e-cigarettes, vaping devices (Reuters)
• CNN, Carl Bernstein come under fire as source for Trump blockbuster recants (Washington Post)
• Waymo's self-driving cars struggle to turn left, understand basic road features (Telegraph)
• Statue of Erdogan removed after confusing residents of German town (Deutsche Welle)
• Neil Young, Daryl Hannah reportedly wed in California (Guardian)

Today in history

Aug. 29, 1989: Is Louis Riel a Father of Confederation?

Métis leader Tony Belcourt lays out the pitch he has made to Brian Mulroney's government to recognize Louis Riel as one of Canada's founders. Thrice-elected to parliament — but never allowed to take his seat — Riel was driven to rebellion by eastern Canadian interests that wouldn't recognize the rights of his people, or leave them alone, he says. "We want to change the image that Riel was a traitor," adds Belcourt. "He was a great hero to the country." Three years later, the House of Commons adopted an all-party resolution recognizing the nation-building contributions of a man who was hanged for treason in 1885.

Sign up here and have The National Today newsletter delivered directly to your inbox Monday to Friday.

Please send your ideas, news tips, rants, and compliments to thenationaltoday@cbc.ca. ​