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In Canada fears of 'dangerous' politics mounting – BBC

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Chrystia FreelandReuters

Online threats, racist or misogynistic insults, public harassment and outright physical intimidation are just some of the behaviours that officials warn are changing the face of Canadian politics.

The issue was highlighted last weekend, when a man was filmed launching an expletive-laden verbal assault at Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.

The incident – which was posted to social media – shows a man shouting at her as she approached a lift in Grande Prairie’s city hall during a visit to Alberta.

The man is seen calling her a “traitor” and using various profanities as he tells her to leave the western province. Police have since confirmed they are looking into the incident.

It comes after other public incidents, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau being pelted by gravel by anti-vaccine mandate protesters during the last federal election and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh being verbally harassed outside an event earlier this year.

Some officials are ringing alarm bells warning that worse – maybe even dangerous – incidents are yet to come and are calling for better security for politicians.

Among those to have experienced these threats first-hand is Catherine McKenna, who served as a minister in Mr Trudeau’s cabinet between 2015 and 2021.

Ms McKenna said that the footage of Ms Freeland being accosted in Alberta was “all too familiar” for her after dealing with years of online threats and verbal abuse, which she said often took a distinctly misogynistic tone.

“Quite frankly, it was terrifying,” she said. “This is what happens, and it’s very dangerous.”

Canadian legislators from across the political spectrum have raised similar concerns.

Former federal Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt, for example, harshly condemned the incident, tweeting that “physical intimidation is not a form of democratic expression”.

Conservative member of parliament Gerard Deltell said online that ministers should be given security “worthy of a G7 country”.

Cabinet ministers in Canada are not automatically assigned security, but can request it based on specific threats.

Ms McKenna said she fears that the country will one day see an incident reminiscent of that which took the life of Jo Cox, a labour MP in the UK who was murdered in 2016 by an extremist.

“Every single day I’m concerned about that,” she said. “That’s what we all worry about.”

In June, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino – who has himself faced death threats – announced that Canadian parliamentarians will be given mobile alarms after several politicians publicly criticised the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for not adequately addressing their security concerns.

While the Office of the Speaker of the House of Commons declined to give specific details about new security arrangements when contacted by the BBC, a spokesperson noted that the safety of parliamentarians is a “multi-jurisdictional matter” involving the RCMP, the Parliamentary Protective Service and the ministry of public safety, among others.

Collectively, they provide security assessments, provide equipment, advice and training and outreach with local police forces for politicians and staff.

Audrey Champoux, the press secretary for Mr Mendicino, said that authorities are taking threats “very seriously” and continuing to explore “other options” to help keep members of parliament safe.

“This is not a partisan issue, but rather a matter of public safety that goes to the security of our democracy,” she said.

Officials and legislators alike have said publicly that the threat level against politicians has risen over the last several years, while political discourse has become increasingly uncivil and polarised, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Steven Weldon, the director of the Centre for the Study of Public Opinion and Representation at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, said that he believes the rise in harassment of politicians is – at least partly – the result of activists in Canada “learning” from the highly divisive politics of the US.

“There’s a sort of copying of behaviour,” he told the BBC. “There’s an aggressive, in-your-face kind of political activism that’s taken hold.”

This behaviour, Mr Weldon added, is most often a ploy for attention.

In the recent Alberta case involving Ms Freeland, Mr Weldon said that the culprits are likely “very happy” with the response and widespread coverage of the incident.

“It was a media shocker. That’s all planned,” he said.

“I don’t know if there’s increasing public acceptance of it, but [among] a certain group of anti-government activists in Canada, there is. It’s hard to tell what they’re looking for.”

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The man in the video has since defended his actions in interviews with Canadian media.

According to Mr Weldon, public support for “in-your-face activism” in Canada remains “compartmentalised” to a particularly loud, but vocal minority, and is still considered fringe.

This harassment, Canadian observers note, often falls disproportionately on women, members of Canada’s LGBT community and ethnic minorities.

Ms Freeland has said the weekend incident will not stop her from returning to Alberta, which is “filled with kind and welcoming people”, adding “one unpleasant incident doesn’t change that”.

Ms McKenna, for her part, said that she fears that the increasingly nasty tone of Canadian politics, and failures to adequately protect politicians, may dissuade potential future politicians – particularly young women – from seeking out a career in public service.

“Most people get into politics because they want to build a better community…and we need vigorous debate,” she said. “But this isn’t what’s happening.”

“I you go into politics and your safety and that of your family are threatened, you’re going to say ‘why would I do that?’ That’s terrible for democracy.”

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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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