Canada

The MP representing B.C.'s Sea-to-Sky region wants to see passenger rail introduced in the booming region north of Vancouver, just weeks after CN Rail said it intends to discontinue its operations in the area.

"And it's having a major impact on the communities — not just in the Sea-to-Sky, but actually all the way down to creating congestion into Metro Vancouver. So ... there is a major need for alternative transportation options."

Weiler said the Sea-to-Sky region, which has been seeing an influx of residents ever since Highway 99 was expanded for the 2010 Olympics, has had its population grow by 60 per cent since then.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33408045

Show begins 27th season covering Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount and cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show, depicting Trump in bed with Satan

South Park has kicked off its 27th season with a blistering episode taking aim at Donald Trump and its newly minted parent company, Paramount, just one day after signing a $1.5bn deal with the network.

The premiere episode, “Sermon on the Mount,” sees Trump in bed with series regular Satan and covers topics including Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount, the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, wokeness, Trump’s attacks on Canada and more.

Unlike other characters, Trump is depicted as an actual photo of the US president on an animated body. There is also an extended scene featuring a hyper-realistic, deepfake video of Trump, completely naked, walking in a desert. There are repeated suggestions that Trump’s genitalia are small.

So this was absolutely incredible. Anyone else seen it?

Nariman Ajjur has been fighting for more than 19 months to bring her family to safety.

Her nephew was in the hospital recently; the toddler was hurt in an airstrike that killed his father and injured his mother. Ajjur says her parents and four other siblings are also trapped in the middle of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.

“I have been forced to find the certificate for my brother to complete this application, including extensive information of background checks and even after doing all that, our families are still waiting. We have no words left. I don’t know what to say to my family now. They are asking if they will get to safety soon.”

Her family completed the security screenings under Canada’s Special Immigration Measures for Gaza.

The last step is to get their biometrics done to have their visa approved.

Unfortunately, there is no place in Gaza to get that done, unless they are evacuated to a place where they can do biometrics, Ajjur explained.

She said this leaves her family stranded with more than 3,000 Gazans who’ve met the same requirements with family in Canada.

The CAF deployed 600 personnel, a warship, a maritime helicopter, and three warplanes to Australia on July 13 to participate in the Talisman Sabre war exercise, which will run until August 4. Talisman Sabre is a biennial, massive-scale joint military exercise seemingly designed to flex member countries’ military might against superpowers like the PRC as global tensions rise. Australia and the US have been running the Talisman Sabre exercise every other year since 2005, but this year’s is set to be the largest yet – representing a grand total of 19 countries and 35,000 personnel, running from July 13 to August 4.

Such large-scale military operations as those on display under Talisman Sabre would constitute a gross and wholly avoidable escalation of current tensions in the South China Sea, as former Australian Ambassador to the Philippines and to South Korea, Mack Williams, wrote in 2017. The US' FONOP program in the South China Sea has been systematically proven ineffective and even counter-productive, serving only to provoke Chinese hostility, precluding diplomatic engagement.

The US have a monopoly on credit card payments with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diners Club, etc.

Even with online payment systems like PayPal, GPay, Apple Pay.

The only Canadian option that I know of is the new Shop Pay, which is owned by Shopify. (And we all know the founder CEO, Tobias Lutke is a far-right fascist traitor who loves the idea of being a 51st state.)

Right now Visa and Mastercard are controlling what stores can sell, and what services can be provided. Censoring online content, like asking Steam and Itch.io to remove certain games.

What are examples of alternatives in other countries? I know that Japan, for example, has their own independent ones, I think?

Do you think they might be refused by American companies in order to keep their monopoly?

I'd like to know what you think.

Copying the At a glance section from CIHR site:

Issue

Neonatal sepsis is the third major cause of death for babies 28 days or younger. It is difficult to diagnose sepsis in newborns and if not treated quickly it can cause developmental delays, learning disabilities and death. Research

Dr. Bob Hancock and his team, including MD/PhD student Andy An at UBC and collaborator Dr. Amy Lee from Simon Fraser University, developed a software program that can predict sepsis in newborns, even in babies that do not have any symptoms of the condition.

The article isn't that long, and worth a read if you're curious. Here are some excerpts:

Two babies are born minutes apart.

One is lethargic, has a fever and is breathing rapidly.

The other is alert, has a normal temperature, and is breathing regularly.

Both have sepsis. Both could die if the sepsis is left untreated.

That’s the challenge with neonatal sepsis. It is hard to detect, hard to diagnose and the longer you wait to treat it, the more life threatening it becomes.

Sepsis is an overwhelming response to an infection that spreads throughout the bloodstream. Normally the body uses its immune system to fight infection, but in sepsis, the immune response is impaired causing serious damage to tissues and organs.

Sepsis is one of the leading causes of death in newborns in The Gambia. Microbiologist Dr. Bob Hancock and his lab at the University of British Columbia extracted RNA from blood cells collected from 700 babies in the West African country to find out why neonatal sepsis rates were so elevated. They sequenced the RNA to look for changes in gene expression linked to sepsis. Out of the 700 babies, they detected that 15 had sepsis in the first week of life.

“The Eureka was when we went back and looked at the babies, we saw big changes occurring at the time of birth in babies that were going to go on to acquire sepsis compared to babies who just had a local infection, or babies who didn't have any infection at all,” said Dr. Hancock. “In other words, sepsis was already starting, even though those babies looked healthy.”

The team used their findings to apply bioinformatics tools—software programs that analyze gene expression patterns in the blood of newborns—to identify specific molecular markers associated with sepsis. “So, we can predict sepsis before it occurs,” Dr. Hancock explained, “and that is astonishingly important because those babies can now be carefully monitored and treated as early as possible, rather than waiting until they're really getting sick.”

A relatively small number of babies born in Canada have sepsis—1 to 5 cases per 1,000 live births—but those that do can be born in rural or remote areas where getting rapid lab results is challenging. A predictive tool like the one Dr. Hancock’s lab developed could help physicians detect sepsis in newborns more quickly, averting long term health issues and even death.

CIHR recently awarded Dr. Hancock’s collaborators a grant to conduct clinical studies on a predictive tool for sepsis in the general population. The tool is integrated into a point-of-care device that enables physicians to predict sepsis at the patient’s bedside, accelerating treatment and improving chances of recovery.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia has acquitted all five players involved in the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial.

Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote had all pleaded not guilty to sexual assault in an encounter that took place in a London, Ont., hotel room in the early hours of June 19, 2018.