adplus-dvertising
Connect with us

News

Storm leaves tens of thousands in Canada in the dark through Christmas

Published

 on

Thousands of people remain stuck without power Christmas Day in Canada as dangerous winter storm conditions are well into their third day in some areas, also forcing the cancellations of planes and trains.

Alberta, Saskatchewan, P.E.I., New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador are the only regions not affected by an Environment Canada weather warning or statement as of 8:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.

A person wearing a heavy winter coat walks through a snowstorm.
A person walks through the Central Experimental Farm during strong winds and snow squalls in Ottawa on Saturday. Wintry, stormy conditions are persisting into Christmas Day in parts of Canada. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

Christmas Day without power

As of early Sunday evening, Hydro One was reporting more than 32,000 customers without power in Ontario, down from 54,000 earlier in the day, while Hydro-Québec was showing more than 83,000 customers still in the dark.

In an afternoon update on the situation, Hydro-Québec chief executive officer Sophie Brochu said the utility’s goal is to reconnect everyone who lost power on Friday by Sunday night, but that’s not a guarantee for everyone because of “difficult decisions to work in.”

For people who lost power after Friday, the wait may be longer.

“We’re asking people to prepare themselves for maybe a few days before being connected back. The big issue with this storm is that we have a lot of loss of power, but for small pockets of customers,” Brochu said.

She warned people without electricity not to cook with propane inside homes or to attempt heating homes using unsafe methods.

Snow, cold and outages in days ahead

Several provinces are expecting unpleasant weather conditions and power outages to continue into the week.

British Columbia released a weather statement early Sunday forecasting snow and freezing rain in the province’s Southern Interior until Tuesday.

Saskatchewan’s heavy snowfall eased up on Sunday, but Environment Canada said that chilly weather would affect regions into Boxing Day, with more snow to come on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The environment agency’s website also listed snow squall watches for several Ontario regions, most in effect for Monday with some continuing into Tuesday.

Niagara region digs out

Meanwhile, residents in Fort Erie, Ont., and surrounding areas in the southern Niagara region woke up Sunday morning to the task of digging out from the snow and assessing the storm damage.

“Yesterday was just a nightmare,” Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop told CBC News on Sunday, describing winds powerful enough to snap utility poles and knock trees over on to power lines and roadways.

“It got to a point where on Friday night, around midnight, that the winds were so high [and] the snow was so great that it was dangerous for anybody to be out — including workers trying to repair damaged hydro lines.”

The Niagara region declared a state of emergency on Saturday evening in the face of power outages and impassable roads; Chatham-Kent in southwestern Ontario also declared a state of emergency Saturday after road conditions led to multiple crashes and left hundreds of people stranded.

Neither region had lifted the state of emergency as of Sunday night, according to their websites.

“Right now, we’re focused on trying to get power back to those individuals who have not had power, some for now more than 48 hours,” Redekop said.

Niagara Power said in a tweeted statement it started the day with 14,000 customers without power, but that 9,600 customers were still without power as of 4 p.m. ET.

A parked vehicle covered in snow.
Abandoned vehicles are left covered in snow in Fort Erie, Ont. after a powerful blizzard swept over southwestern Ontario in recent days. (Nicole Toth/Submitted)

A 24-hour warming centre opened mid-day Sunday at the Fort Erie Leisureplex, with transit services and other vehicles transporting people in need to the facility.

Two border crossings in the Niagara region reopened Sunday. The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, on its website, said the Rainbow and Lewiston-Queenston bridges were reopened to traffic in both directions, though the commission is warning travellers of longer wait times.

The Whirlpool bridge, for NEXUS card holders only, remains closed in both directions. The Peace Bridge, operated by the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority, also remains shut.

 

A man dressed as Santa Claus rides a bike through the snow while giving a thumbs up.
Brian Dickie, dressed as Santa Claus, gives a thumb-up as drivers honk while he rides his bike through the snowy streets of Carleton Place, Ont., on Saturday. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

 

A fallen tree is shown next to a road that is covered in snow.
A fallen tree is shown next to a road in Montreal on Saturday following a storm in the region. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

 

Ontario, Quebec trains cancelled on Boxing Day

A Sunday evening tweet from Via Rail said that all trains scheduled for December 26 travel between Toronto-Ottawa and Toronto-Montreal would be cancelled, two days after a CN train derailment initially forced cancellations on Christmas Day.

Ferocious winter weather grounded flights and stranded nine trains between Ontario and Quebec, in some cases leaving passengers without food or water for more than 12 hours.

Highways between the two provinces that were shut down Christmas Eve have now reopened.

As of around 9 a.m. ET Sunday, Highway 417 from Ottawa to the Quebec border had been reopened in both directions.

That stretch of highway had been closed or partially closed since 11 a.m. Saturday after a three-vehicle collision.

Conditions on Highway 401 improved overnight Saturday. Shortly after 10 a.m. Sunday, OPP said the entire highway across eastern Ontario from the Quebec border to Quinte West had been reopened.

 

Stranded Via Rail passengers faced cramped conditions, out-of-service bathrooms

 

Via Rail passengers say cramped conditions, out-of-service bathrooms, lack of food and water while stranded in big storm in hours-long delay have them considering suing.

Snow squalls expected in part of N.B.

In New Brunswick, outages have been reported in almost all parts of the province after two days of high wind gusts and heavy rain.

On Saturday, New Brunswick grappled with one of the largest outages to hit the province in decades, with over 71,000 customers without power at the peak of the outage.

A van drives through large puddles on a street.
A van drives through major puddles in Fredericton on Saturday morning. Parts of New Brunswick have seen flash freezes, heavy rain, freezing rain and/or snow so far this weekend. (CBC)

N.B. Power spokesperson Marc Belliveau said more than 500 crew members and 30 contractors are working on restoring power. About 3,000 customers remained without power just before 10 p.m. AT, according to the N.B. Power outage map.

Environment Canada issued special weather statements for the Fundy coast and along southeast New Brunswick, saying that snow squalls are expected throughout Sunday morning.

Roadways and walkways may become difficult to navigate and motorists should be prepared for “winter driving conditions,” according to the statements.

Deadly bus crash in B.C. Southern Interior

Among the regions that saw significant snow in British Columbia was the Southern Interior, where a passenger bus rollover on Saturday evening left four people dead, RCMP confirmed Sunday. More than 50 people were sent to hospitals; eight remained hospitalized as of Sunday afternoon, two of them in serious condition, according to the local health authority.

“While the investigation is ongoing, it is believed that extremely icy road conditions caused the rollover,” RCMP in B.C. said in a statement.

Rainfall warnings and flood watches were issued in Vancouver and southwestern B.C., with heavy rain in the region following a week of snowstorms.

The storm that swept through the southern part of the province on Friday led to hundreds of flight cancellations and the closure of crucial arterial bridges in Metro Vancouver, as well as ferry suspensions and avalanche risk elsewhere in B.C.

Most flights and ferries resumed service on Saturday, although some delays were reported, according to Vancouver airport officials and B.C. Ferries.

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

News

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

Published

 on

 

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.

___

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.

Source link

Continue Reading

News

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

Published

 on

 

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.

___

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.

Source link

Continue Reading

News

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

Published

 on

 

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.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending