Month: July 2020

A surrogate mother has given birth to a baby boy in China four years after his parents died in a car crash, Chinese media reported.

The deceased couple was undergoing fertility treatments before the fatal accident in 2013.

Their parents fought a drawn-out legal battle to gain access to the couple’s fertilised embryos, kept in a hospital in the eastern city of Nanjing.

The baby boy – nicknamed "Tiantian," or "sweet" in Mandarin – was born on December 9 to a Laotian surrogate, the Beijing News reported Tuesday.

Surrogacy is illegal in China, forcing those who can afford it to look for potential options abroad.

Laos has become the latest impoverished nation in Asia to witness a flourishing but legally opaque commercial surrogacy industry after countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Nepal outlawed the practice in recent years.

"He’s always smiling. His eyes are like my daughter’s, but he looks more like his dad," new grandmother Hu Xingxian, told the state-run newspaper.

The grandparents had to clear several hurdles to transport the embryos out of China and prove the paternity and nationality of the baby once it was born.

"First we thought of using air freight, but none of the airlines were willing to take the thermos-sized bottle of liquid nitrogen where the four embryos were stored," Liu Baojun, a surrogacy expert who assisted the families, told The Beijing News.

So the families decided to transport their precious cargo by road to Laos, where commercial surrogacy is legal.

The next problem was getting the baby back into China. Children born through surrogacy outside the country need to have a DNA test proving that one of the biological parents is a Chinese national.

To get around the issue, the Laotian surrogate mother was brought to China on a tourist visa and the families arranged for her to give birth at a private hospital in the southern city of Guangzhou.

The child was kept in the hospital for 15 days, until all four grandparents gave blood and DNA tests, establishing the baby was indeed their grandson and that both parents were Chinese nationals.

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The landmark ruling that allows parents to inherit frozen embryos created by their children has triggered a wide-ranging debate on Chinese social media.

James Comey was fired as FBI director by President Donald Trump in May 2017.

On Tuesday he publishes an eagerly-anticipated book detailing the circumstances of his firing, and his relationship with Mr Trump.

The sacking of the FBI chief has been seen as one of Mr Trump’s most controversial decisions in office and led to questions over whether it amounted to obstruction of justice – one of the grounds for impeachment. 

Here is what we know so far:

Mr Comey admits he was maybe too harsh on Hillary Clinton

Mr Comey writes that his public handling of the Clinton email case – specifically, of providing more information to the public rather than less – may have been influenced by the widespread assumption…

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Is the golden age of high-rise condos behind us?

Statistics Canada thinks that might be the case. The agency put out two reports this week in which it predicted that the shift to working from home, and the bust-out of short-term rentals amid the pandemic, will depress demand for condos in the longer run.

“As working from home becomes more prevalent, we may see an increase in the demand for larger living spaces that single-family homes can offer, causing a shift in demand from condominium apartments towards single houses,” StatCan said in a rare bit of crystal ball-gazing this week.

“Builders may start catering to buyers’ preferences by offering additional office space in the design of their new homes to accommodate remote working arrangements.”

Watch: Some families leaving big cities after coronavirus pandemic. Story continues below.

 

In an outlook published this week, the agency predicted that in the country’s three largest housing markets ― Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver ― condos will come under pressure.

“Prior to the pandemic, Toronto was experiencing an exodus of middle class families to surrounding cities. This population outflow was previously overshadowed by immigration which has now decreased due to the impacts of the pandemic. This will likely also drive down the price of condominiums in the medium to long term,” the agency said.

“Similarly to Toronto, Vancouver has a potential of short term rentals flooding the market and thus causing a decline in condominium prices in the short to medium term.”

RELATED

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• Home Sales, Construction Headed For Period Of 'Severe Declines': CMHC

Recent data from real estate groups is pointing in the same direction.

An analysis from real estate portal Zoocasa found that in June there was a 257-per-cent spike in available condo rentals in Toronto buildings known to be “Airbnb-friendly.” That compares to an 83-per-cent increase, versus a year ago, in available rentals in the city as a whole.

“A significantly slower tourism industry is forcing many short-term rental investors to consider recalibrating their income strategy to either seek long-term tenants or consider offloading their investment entirely,” Zoocasa’s head of communications, Jannine Rane, wrote on the portal’s blog.

Meanwhile, a large share of homebuyers is looking to purchase on the edges of the city, or outside the city altogether, a phenomenon that seems to be happening in cities around the world, including in New York, London and the San Francisco Bay Area. As with Toronto, in many cases, it’s an acceleration of existing trends.

In a recent Nanos poll for the Ontario Real Estate Association, 60 per cent of respondents said they found rural living more appealing than before the pandemic. 

Exodus to cottage country

Near Greater Toronto, real estate agents are reporting a “full-on frenzy” in the Muskoka cottage-country region north of the city. Home sales were up 30 per cent in June at the real estate board that covers the area, compared to the same month a year earlier.

“This is the highest demand we’ve seen for waterfront properties on record, with sales activity bouncing from recent lows to hit the largest sales record for any month in history,” Lakelands Association of Realtors president Catharine Inniss said in a statement.

And while Toronto’s real estate board cheerily reported a rebound in sales and a nearly 12-per-cent increase in the average selling price in June, the condo market there is showing signs of softening.

Condo sales were 16.3 per cent lower in June than a year earlier, while detached home sales were up 5.6 per cent. 

The MLS home price index shows condo prices have fallen or stopped growing in the past few months in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

In a recent report, Toronto real estate agent Doug Vukasovic noted that the very high prices in city cores are also driving people to look further outside the city.

“But bang for your buck may no longer be telling the whole story,” Vukasovic wrote. “Anticipating a post-pandemic ‘new normal’ of more flexible work and commuting arrangements, could buyers be prioritizing a bit more space ― and even a bit of backyard ― over being in the midst of the action downtown? 

“Time will tell if this trend continues and Toronto’s suburbs continue their growing appeal.”

Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported this week that there have been rumblings of some sort of change to the Bray Wyatt character. Quite frankly, it’s probably for the best because his character needs it right now. It would also help if he won more matches. One of the criticisms of the character is that his promos are meant to sound menacing but he doesn’t come off as a scary guy at all.
The only thing I know is that he is scheduled to appear at WrestleMania so if WWE has a change in mind for his character then we’ll see what it is within a couple of weeks. Matt Hardy and Wyatt are not currently advertised for a Mania match so it seems like they would be slotted for the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal.