The Arctic is cooking. Across northern Russia—a region that is famously bitterly cold—temperatures this week have routinely surpassed 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius), adding to the mountain of broken heat records this summer has racked up so far.

Rowling has not just become the perennial main character of anti-trans activism; she is driving it around the world. She is not simply someone with bad opinions but, in fact, is someone actively using the royalties gathered from brand partnerships like this to fund fighting human rights organizations that dare to suggest trans women should have rights.

However, much money Tim Hortons spent to secure the rights to slap “Hufflepuff” on a donut is going to fund initiatives like Rowling’s public fight against Amnesty International UK after the organization characterized an anti-trans sexual violence support centre set up by Rowling as . . . well, anti-trans. Those colour-changing Patronus iced drinks are boosting the profile of someone who tried to ruin a cis woman boxer’s life last year just because she was a masculine woman at the Olympics. That themed trivia event at your local Timmies will support the continued visibility of someone who has decided to spend every day making trans people’s lives worse.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/68818194

How gig nursing platforms are lobbing States to deregulate healthcare

A seismic shift is rocking the healthcare industry. Uber’s business model—the “gigification” of labor—and lobbying practices have made their way to healthcare staffing.1 Backed by huge sums of venture capital and private equity funds, gig nursing platforms are promoting a political agenda that limits public oversight of healthcare facilities, weakens labor protections, and exposes patients to risks.

Since 2022, lawmakers in at least seventeen states have introduced bills to recognize gig nursing platforms as a new kind of business model, one that should be regulated differently from healthcare staffing agencies. In an additional eight states, policymakers have already carved out platform work from certain state laws. In sum, efforts that would deregulate gig nursing platforms have emerged in nearly half of all US states.

Platforms such as Clipboard Health, KARE Technologies, Nursa, and ShiftKey are using new technologically infused definitions to advance old deregulatory arguments. These platforms are trying to convince policymakers that their business model is not that of a healthcare staffing agency, and that they instead should be recognized as a “healthcare worker platform” or a “healthcare technology platform.” By renaming their businesses, gig nursing platforms are following the path of Uber, which exempted itself from regulation in dozens of states by convincing policymakers that it was not a transportation company.2 This new categorization allowed ride-hail platforms to avoid responsibility for passenger safety, minimum wages for workers, and contributions for social insurance funds.3 For the healthcare industry, the stakes of this strategy are even higher. Gig nursing platforms and their state-level campaigns threaten the stability, working conditions, and value of labor for an entire profession.

The Saskatchewan Government is stepping in to keep a police-run Human Trafficking Response Team (HTRT) operating after the federal government’s support agreement expired.

“It was unfortunate that the federal government did back away from the table with the funding of these positions,” Saskatchewan Justice Minister Tim McLeod said. “However, we were able to secure the funding through the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence to continue these very important positions.”

The new provincial commitment of $160,000 is partnered funding between the province and the federal government, but it’s not a permanent solution as there is no confirmation of its continuation.

I think it is unconscionable for our governments not to seriously invest in eradicating human trafficking in Canada, freeing victims, and bringing perpetrators to justice. With the Pedo-in-Chief leading the country to the south of us, the West-sanctioned genocide of women and children in Palestine, and global power-brokers shrugging off a highly-publicized child-sex-trafficking ring known as the Trump-Epstein files. Are we fighting gendered violence or enabling it?

New modelling data from the Public Health Agency of Canada shows there was a 22.8 per cent increase in new HIV infections between 2022 and 2024. In 2024, an estimated 2,517 new infections occurred compared with the 2,050 infections recorded two years earlier.

In 2019, B.C. declared an end to the HIV epidemic after new AIDS cases had declined by 90 per cent and new infections were at a record low. But since then, Montaner says infection numbers have been moving in the other direction.

In May, Manitoba's public health minister declared HIV a public health emergency after HIV rates rose sharply, becoming 3.5 times higher than the national rate. Earlier this year, Saskatchewan reported infection rates just under Manitoba's, making theirs the second-highest rates in Canada.

“What we're seeing is a resurgence of HIV, both new infections and AIDS, which was until two or three years ago, persistently declining — because the strategy was working,” Montaner said.

Jollimore says the face of HIV is changing in Canada. He says when the AIDS crisis began in the 1980s it was centered in big cities, mostly affecting gay men, but today, it is showing up in rural and remote communities without adequate health infrastructure and resources. He says more investment is needed to reach those people. “It tends to thrive in pockets where there's the least connection to care,” Jollimore said. “In those communities where stigma or discrimination or racism may prevent someone from coming forth to get tested or treated.”

This week, global health leaders at the International AIDS conference in Rio de Janeiro warned that major foreign aid cuts, mostly from the United States and other high-income countries — including Canada — could unravel years of progress. UNAIDS says, in 2025, international funding for HIV testing and treatment initiatives in low- and middle-income nations plummeted by 18 per cent.

As I am writing this, much is still not known about the 60,000-odd people who swam from Morocco to Ceuta last week. But we do know that many of them saw social-media posts encouraging them to swim to Ceuta and, perhaps, to thereby precipitate a crisis. Ceuta has been a Spanish city since the 16th century, but it is not part of mainland Spain. Nor is it possible to cross from Ceuta to mainland Spain, and therefore into the Schengen Area, the European Union’s free-movement zone, without crossing a checkpoint. Illegal immigrants cannot travel from Ceuta to mainland Spain at all.

Last week, according to El Pais as well as other Spanish, international, and Moroccan media outlets, many Moroccans saw a TikTok video nevertheless claiming that “the Spanish border is open and you can cross without papers,” meaning they could reach the European continent. The video appeared to reference a recent ruling by the Spanish supreme court making it harder to return migrants who arrive by sea, but it was not the only encouragement. Other messages, many of which have now disappeared, told people where to buy wet suits, flippers, goggles, floats, and even waterproof bags for documents and cellphones. Screenshots from Google Maps told them which sections of the Ceuta beach might have fewer police. Moroccan border guards were either unwilling or unable to stop them.

Surprised by the unprecedented numbers and perhaps fearing hundreds would drown—in the end, at least 70 people died in the water, including some children—the Spanish police let them land on the beach. This is when the photographs and videos began to circulate. Among those promoting them were senior members of the Trump administration, and senior leaders of the European far right.

Vice President Vance posted a link to a wildly dishonest Fox News segment that incorrectly described the migrants arriving in “Northern Spain” rather than Northern Africa. “Thank God,” he wrote, “@POTUS was elected and our country’s border no longer looks like this.” Others made more specific threats. Robert Jenrick, a high-profile member of Reform, the British far-right party, wrote that “Ceuta is our future if we don’t secure our border. These men are on their way to Calais.” Nigel Farage, the Reform Party leader, posted a video also claiming that the Moroccans were en route to Britain. Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), declared that “Germany is the likely destination.”

These were lies. The Moroccans who swam to Ceuta were never going to make it to Britain, Germany, or anywhere else in Europe. Once again: Access to Ceuta does not give anyone automatic access to the rest of Europe. More to the point, nearly all of those who swam over the border had returned to Morocco by Sunday morning. The Spanish government negotiated their return with the Moroccan government. Moroccan police resumed blocking the border. Spanish police, according to El Pais and the Financial Times, were checking documents in Ceuta to find any Moroccans who illegally remained.

It remains unclear who created the viral posts that encouraged the would-be migrants to believe that they could get to Europe from Ceuta. But those who want to weaken the Spanish government, boost the European far right, and create turmoil inside the EU lost little time in promoting the photographs as soon as they arrived.

The two current mods' last logins were 2 years ago and 3 weeks ago. I want to help remove spam from this community, like the post I reported earlier today. I've several new posts in the community that can be used to action this request. Thanks

https://lemmy.ca/c/usa

It doesn't include any mention that it is an advertisement, in fact, and not content created by the publication.

Saanich News is owned by Black Press Media, who in turn is owned by Carpenter Media Group as of 2024.

According to the Columbia Journalism Review in January, Carpenter Media is from Alabama, is ominously buying up local news outlets, and has become the fourth-largest newspaper operator in the US.

On March 24, 2021, the House of Commons voted unanimously to officially designate August 1 Emancipation Day. It marks the actual day in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 came into effect across the British Empire.

Canadians are not always aware that Black and Indigenous Peoples were once enslaved on the land that is now Canada. Those who fought enslavement were pivotal in shaping our society to be as diverse as it is today.

Therefore, each August 1, Canadians are invited to reflect, educate and engage in the ongoing fight against both anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and discrimination.

Emancipation Day celebrates the strength and perseverance of Black communities in Canada.

Cross-post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/64394346

It was clear the fix was in when Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath called a Special Council meeting, to be held the day before councillors would decide whether or not to pause AI data centre construction in the city.

The one-year moratorium, proposed to let the city update its rules for AI data centres, would have been the first of its kind in Canada.

Described as a "science-based" education session for Council, Horwath's meeting was immediately called out as looking much more like a public lobbying pitch, with each presenter financially tied to the fate of data centre proposals in the city.

One presenter, Michael Schull, heads the the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Schull, a registered lobbyist with the city, had been in town booking private chats with councillors in the lead-up to the meeting.

At the previous session of Council, reps from McMaster University — another data centre proponent and Special meeting presenter — were openly feeding misleading talking points via text message to the lone councillor who voted "no" in a 15-1 decision to advance the moratorium, which has overwhelming public support.

Related, from the UN in Jan '26: World enters era of ‘global water bankruptcy’

We, the undersigned, call upon the Governor General of Canada to publicly condemn Tobias Lütke’s recent anti-democratic remarks, refer his conduct to the Civil Advisory Committee for formal review, and cancel or annul his Meritorious Service Cross.

Tobias Lütke, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Shopify, received the Meritorious Service Cross in 2018 for his entrepreneurship and his contributions to Canada’s technology industry.

Recent public statements attributed to Mr. Lütke are fundamentally incompatible with the democratic equality and respect for citizenship that Canadian honours should represent.

Responding to a discussion about public opposition to development projects, Mr. Lütke reportedly described people attending community meetings as:

“Retired, Unemployed, Unemployable, and useful idiots.”

He subsequently proposed that people receiving pensions should be regarded as dependants and deprived of their voting rights:

“New deal: when you get your pension deal it’s locked in and guaranteed. But now you are a dependent and that means no voting … let people with a stake in the future decide.”

When another person proposed allocating votes according to the amount of income tax paid—giving no vote to those paying no income tax and as many as five votes to wealthy taxpayers—Mr. Lütke reportedly replied:

“Good system.”

“When you’re among young people, it’s hard for them to understand how long we’ve known all the basic facts about climate change,” said Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who has worked on the topic for 35 years. “Even when I started as a PhD student in the 1980s, it was very clear that our emissions were causing global warming and all the consequences it would have.”

Yet even as Europe’s leaders acknowledge the scale and cause of the problem, they have weakened the very rules in place to stop it from getting worse. Two weeks ago, the European Commission proposed watering down the continent’s emissions trading system, a form of carbon market widely hailed as its most successful tool to cut pollution.

“What people are not getting is that we can’t turn this back – the CO2 to a large part remains in the air for thousands of years,” said Rahmstorf. “Some people think we can wait and, when it gets too bad, then we reduce emissions and things will get better again. People don’t realise that we can’t make it get better again. We can only prevent it from getting much worse.”

A study Rahmstorf co-authored in 2023 found ExxonMobil’s predictions of global heating over the following decades to have been mostly accurate, as skilful as independent academic and government models, and also very much at odds with its public statements on the matter.

Under existing legislation, employers can terminate group benefit plans for employees aged 65 and older and those workers are shifted onto the province's health-care plan.

With the legislative change, however, employers will no longer be allowed to terminate benefits for any employee "solely on the basis of age" and will have to cover health-care and benefit costs for those over 65 themselves.

"So it means that Alberta employers and their employees are going to be looking at the possibility of premium costs going up over time, as those plans are responsible for paying for more health care," she said in an interview.

"Employers have to find that money somewhere or they start, you know, trimming back a little bit the generosity of their insurance coverage."