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Canadian news is starting to vanish from Instagram. Google is next. Here's how to find CBC as that happens – CBC.ca

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We use this editor’s blog to explain our journalism and what’s happening at CBC News. You can find more blogs here.


On Monday, I got a personal preview of what a future without Canadian news on social media and search engines looks like. 

I had pulled up the CBC News Instagram account on my phone. With more than 662,000 followers, our main news account offers a daily assortment of posts, video journalism, explainers and robust conversation in the comments. It reaches a younger audience that is important to us and, based on the activity we see there, just as interested in independent, fact-based journalism as any other age group we serve. 

As I opened the Instagram app, I caught a momentary glimpse of recent stories we had published to the social media platform, which is owned by Meta, the company also behind Facebook. The top posts included a video documenting how a group of high school students had built a wheelchair-friendly lawn mower and donated it to a man in Windsor, Ont., and a story post on the largest-ever high school graduating class at the only school in Pikangikum First Nation. Each had thousands of likes. 

And then it all disappeared.

The screen flashed white. 

Gone were more than 6,700 posts from over several years, thousands of likes, comments and thumbnails, replaced with a message that reads, “People in Canada can’t see this content. In response to Canadian government legislation, news content can’t be viewed in Canada.” 

A screengrab from a cellphone of the Instagram App shows a white screen with a camera icon that has a line through it and the message: 'People in Canada can’t see this content. In response to Canadian government legislation, news content can’t be viewed in Canada.'
A screengrab from the Instagram app displays a message explaining that people in Canada cannot see news content in response to the federal government’s legislation. (Brodie Fenlon/CBC )

A “learn more” link took me to a page that explained, “You can no longer see content from any news outlet accounts, even if you previously followed them or search for them. You can no longer share or view news links on Instagram via stories or Profile Bio links, including news links from any news outlet accounts.”

This Instagram lockout of CBC News content on Monday wasn’t universal, but we did hear from other people who had the same experience as I did and were wondering what was happening. I suspect I’m among the up to five per cent of Canadian users Meta has indicated will be barred from accessing news content in ongoing tests that began last month. 

A glimpse of what’s to come 

It’s a glimpse of what we can expect in the future if Facebook’s parent company and Google make good on threats to eliminate Canadian news from their platforms in retaliation for Bill C-18, the federal Online News Act that will force these platforms to strike financial agreements with news media outlets for “fair compensation” — still undefined — when news content appears there.

In Google’s case, the California-based company says it will eliminate news links for Canadians from its search, news and discover products when the law comes into effect, expected in December. As the world’s largest search engine, the elimination of Canadian news from Google would have a significant impact on users and news publishers alike. 

The Instagram lockout I experienced this week suggests Meta may block everything produced by Canadian news organizations and posted on their platforms — not just news links, but original content made specifically for Instagram, such as photos and video.

So why is this happening?

Critics, including Meta and Google, say Bill C-18 is unfair, unworkable and amounts to a tax on links, with no recognition of the traffic or “free marketing” the tech companies provide to news publishers. 

The Canadian government and supporting news organizations insist the legislation will ensure fair compensation from “tech giants” that they say built social media audiences on the backs of their content, then siphoned away the majority of digital ad revenue they count on to do journalism.

(For the record, CBC/Radio-Canada’s corporate position is that the Online News Act will help level the playing field and contribute to a healthy news ecosystem in Canada “at a time when 80 per cent of digital ad revenue goes to Facebook and Google,” said spokesperson Leon Mar.)

Some industry watchers see the tech companies making an aggressive stand in Canada as an international shot across the bow — a warning to other jurisdictions that are considering similar initiatives, following a previous standoff with Australia’s government

This is very much an active story CBC News is covering — even as the public broadcaster is among the players affected by the new law and any industry response to it. Our journalists will continue to cover the story as we do any other that has direct implications for CBC/Radio-Canada: with accuracy, balance, fairness and impartiality. 

How to find CBC News coverage

Nonetheless, we know large numbers of Canadians rely on Google and Meta to discover our news coverage. If those sources suddenly cut off access to our news, as Meta did for some Instagram users this week, then we want to ensure Canadians know where to go to find our journalism elsewhere. 

Here’s a list of other sources of CBC News, followed by a local news directory maintained by CBC/Radio-Canada, which allows you to search for other news providers in your community.

You can also search CBC/Radio-Canada’s local news directory for private news outlets in your community. Find names and direct links here.

Wide access to independent fact-based journalism is a pillar of any healthy democracy and we aim to be anywhere people are looking for news. 

If third-party platforms independently decide to get out of the news business, for whatever reason, rest assured we will help you find our journalism and make it as easily accessible to you as possible. 

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STD epidemic slows as new syphilis and gonorrhea cases fall in US

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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.

The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.

“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”

More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.

Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.

The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.

However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.

Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.

“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.

What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.

In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.

Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.

Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.

Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.

Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.

Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)

There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.

“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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World’s largest active volcano Mauna Loa showed telltale warning signs before erupting in 2022

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.

That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.

Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.

“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.

Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.

When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.

The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.

The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.

Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.

Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.

Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.

(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Waymo’s robotaxis now open to anyone who wants a driverless ride in Los Angeles

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Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.

The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.

After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.

Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.

Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.

“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.

Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.

But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.

Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.

Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.

That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.

Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.

Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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