A sign displays the price of a litre of regular grade gasoline at an Esso gas station in Vancouver, on Tuesday, March 8, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what's on the radar of our editors for the morning of March 16 ...

What we are watching in Canada ...

Statistics Canada say this morning how fast prices rose in February with broad expectations that the annual pace of inflation will rise from January.

The annual rate of inflation hit a three-decade high in January when the consumer price index registered a year-over-year increase of 5.1 per cent.

Price pressures have become more pervasive over the past few months.

RBC economists Nathan Janzen and Claire Fan say they expect pressures to continue to appear across an array of products in February to push the annual rate to 5.4 per cent.

But the duo warn that inflation likely didn't peak in February.

They say the rate could get closer to six per cent in March on the back of surging prices at the gas pumps and grocery stores as Russia's invasion of Ukraine pushed up global oil and wheat prices.

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Also this ...

The federal minister in charge of the Canada Revenue Agency was told after the election that the agency planned to go full speed on collecting debts just in time for tax season.

The briefing documents to Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier said the agency planned the full resumption of collection activities early this year.

The move was the last of four steps the CRA planned to take after it had to adjust its efforts given health and economic concerns linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As those concerns have waned, the agency and the departments it assists are readying for a bump in outstanding debts that will require extra effort to collect. particularly as tax season kicks up.

The tax filing deadline this year is set for May 2 because April 30th falls on a Saturday.

The revenue agency says a return is considered filed if it is received, or a paper filing is postmarked, on or before May 2.

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And this ...

A Ukrainian-Canadian man in Calgary says he has been imagining the highrises around him in shambles ever since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine last month.

That's why the retired film professor George Melnyk, who escaped to the west from a German refugee camp with his parents in 1949, says he resonated with a speech Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave to Parliament yesterday

Zelenskyy asked over video for Canadians to visualize their country under attack -- to imagine Vancouver under siege or the C-N Tower hit by bombs.

Melnyk says the speech left him with mixed emotions.

He says he's hopeful because Zelenskyy is to make a similar speech to the American congress soon which he believes will be impactful.

But he's also sad to think the Ukrainian leader could be killed.

Yaroslav Broda is vice-president of the Edmonton chapter of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

He says he thought Zelenskyy effectively portrayed what it’s like to live in a war zone, and what Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Canadians have been feeling.

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What we are watching in the U.S. ...

WASHINGTON _ A U.S. Senate committee has approved a bipartisan blueprint to overhaul the nation's public health system, applying the lessons of COVID-19 to future outbreaks through a new chain of command, a stronger medical supply chain, and clearer crisis communications.

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee approved the PREVENT Pandemics Act by a vote of 20-2 Tuesday.

But it's only a first step. If the ambitious vision does eventually pass Congress, lawmakers must still deliver the tens of billions of dollars it will take to translate it into reality and maintain focus after the coronavirus recedes. Right now, Congress is even having trouble meeting a White House request for additional funds to keep COVID-19 at bay the rest of this year.

The bill also calls for a national task force modelled on the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong in the coronavirus response and make recommendations to the president and Congress. And the legislation incorporates creation of a new advanced medical research and development agency _ dubbed ARPA-H _ that President Joe Biden has called for.

The bill starts by formally placing responsibility for pandemic response _ in Burr's words, "mission control'' _ within a new White House office, on a similar footing as national security. In the Obama White House, the National Security Council had a global health unit, but that was disbanded under the Trump administration.

Congressional oversight of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be strengthened by requiring Senate confirmation of its director. Confusion over CDC's health recommendations has been recurring problem in the pandemic, so the legislation calls for an advisory council to instruct health officials on how to get fact-based information across to the public more clearly.

On the scientific front, the legislation takes multiple steps, including more active surveillance of emerging diseases, building a capability to forecast epidemics and improving data collection and distribution. The Food and Drug Administration would be assigned a higher priority on medicines and countermeasures targeting infectious diseases.

The bill calls for close attention to the medical supply chain, everything from raw materials for drug manufacturing, to protective equipment that was in such short supply in the first wave of the pandemic, to tests that continued to be an issue in the Omicron wave.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world ...

KYIV, Ukraine _ Russia escalated its bombardment of the Ukrainian capital and launched new assaults on the port city of Mariupol, making bloody advances on the ground as Ukraine's president prepared Wednesday to make a direct appeal for more help in a rare speech by a foreign leader to the U.S. Congress.

As the invasion entered its third week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested there was still some reason to be optimistic negotiations might yet yield an agreement with the Russian government.

After their delegations met Tuesday via video, Zelenskyy said Russia's demands were becoming "more realistic.'' The sides were expected to speak again later Wednesday.

"Efforts are still needed, patience is needed,'' he said in his video address to the nation. "Any war ends with an agreement.''

Developments on the diplomatic front and on the ground occurred as the number of people fleeing Ukraine amid Europe's heaviest fighting since the Second World War eclipsed three million.

Zelenskyy said Russian forces on Tuesday had been unable to move deeper into Ukrainian territory but had continued their heavy shelling of cities.

Over the past day, 28,893 civilians were able to flee the fighting through nine humanitarian corridors, although the Russians refused to allow aid into Mariupol, he said.

Russia's bombardment of the capital appeared to become more systematic and edged closer to the city centre Tuesday, smashing apartments, a subway station and other civilian sites. Zelenskyy said the barrages hit four multi-storey buildings and killed dozens.

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On this day in 2007 ...

Mississauga, Ont.-based Menu Foods issued a massive recall of pet foods after some pets became sick, and several died of kidney failure, after eating its products. The contamination was later traced to a Chinese supplier, who added the chemical melamine to bulk up wheat gluten used in the foods.

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In entertainment ...

Eric Mercury, the Canadian singer-songwriter whose soulful vocals pushed the boundaries of rock music on his 1969 debut "Electric Black Man," has died at age 77.

His niece Lee Ann Mercury says the Toronto-born musician died Monday in Montreal after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Mercury launched his career in the late 1950s just as Toronto's music scene started to catch fire with a growing number of hot live venues.

He joined local band the Pharaohs before stepping to the front of the stage in the Soul Searchers, an act where he shared top billing with fellow lead singer Dianne Brooks.

By the late 1960s, he had moved to New York to pursue a solo career and released an energetic debut album "Electric Black Man." Three more solo records followed in the 1970s.

Mercury would later join Stevie Wonder to co-write a song for Roberta Flack, appear in the 1978 drama "American Hot Wax" and lend his singing voice to the famous "Be Like Mike" Gatorade advertising campaign in the early 1990s.

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Did you see this?

For two years, Samantha Cover has been living with long COVID.

The Alberta woman says she used to be very active, but now, if she walks too fast, she starts gasping for breath.

She’s also been suffering from other symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, memory loss, blurry vision, headaches and a chronic sore throat, which have limited her abilities to process information, work long hours and engage in physical activity.

Cover’s daughters, who are between seven and 13 years old, are also experiencing long COVID symptoms.

Two years after the pandemic hit, Canadians with long COVID say they often feel frustrated as they grapple with the long-term effects of the virus.

Experts, meanwhile, say Canada lacks a centralized system of data collection that could help study and treat the condition.

Dr. Angela Cheung, who is researching the symptoms and treatments for long COVID patients in Canada, says based on a conservative estimate, roughly 300,000 Canadians are affected by long COVID.

She says some long COVID patients "don't feel heard."

To better understand the condition and provide relief to patients, Cheung says there needs to be a "concerted effort" in establishing special clinics across the country that provide care and conduct research on long COVID.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2022.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2022