SOCIAL STUDIES

MANITOBANS STILL IN THE DARK

More Manitoba residents saw their electricity restored Thursday — one week after a major snowstorm brought down power poles and transmission towers and delivered another wallop to farmers.

Manitoba Hydro said some 6,500 homes and businesses remained without power, down from 9,000 Wednesday and 53,000 on Saturday. Most of the remaining outages are in rural areas and First Nations communities in central Manitoba and the Interlake region to the north.

The storm started Oct. 10 and dumped up to 100 millimetres of rain and snow across a wide swath of the province. Previous wet weather had already saturated the ground, and the storm brought a further halt to fall harvest in many areas.

CHINA BANS BLACK-CLOTHES EXPORTS

China is reportedly curbing exports of black clothes from the mainland to Hong Kong in an effort to hamper antigovernment protests that have rocked the global financial hub for more than four months.

According to the South China Morning Post, a notice published on Sept. 26 by the Express courier service in Guangdong, a coastal province close to Hong Kong, contained a long list of items that could not be delivered to the special administrative region.

Among the banned items are black shirts and other clothing, helmets, umbrellas, walkie-talkies, drones, goggles, metal chains, safety vests and torches. In July, another notice by Guangdong courier company PHXBUY put a halt on similar goods, including flags, flagpoles and banners.