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Toronto Sun
28-05-2025
- Business
- Toronto Sun
NATO floats cybersecurity to be included in new spending target
Published May 28, 2025 • 2 minute read Mark Rutte Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt / Photographer: Simon Wohlfahrt/Bl (Bloomberg) — NATO proposed including expenditures on cybersecurity and activities related to border and coastal security to qualify for the military alliance's new defense-related spending target of 1.5% of GDP. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account NATO started negotiations with countries on what will be allowed under its new spending target that it plans to adopt at a June summit, according to a document shared with member countries and people familiar with the matter. The total spending target will be 5% of GDP, with 3.5% on hard defense expenditures and 1.5% on defense-related outlays. Other expenditures that may qualify for the 1.5% portion will be protecting critical infrastructure spending, non-defense intelligence agencies and space-related activities, according to the document. A broader definition of what qualifies as a defense-related outlay would make it easier for countries to meet the target, with some nations lobbying to have expenditures such as counter-terrorism to be included. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said this week that he expected alliance members to approve the new 5% target. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. A spokesperson from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Talks are expected to continue in NATO's policy and planning committee Wednesday, according to the document. The proposal is subject to change and will form the basis for discussion among alliance members, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Infrastructure expenditures, particularly for the purpose of military mobility, will likely be included, according to the document. Those outlays will have to contribute to the military alliances defense plans or enable the use of the core-defense spending activities. Southern NATO countries are pushing for counter-terrorism related spending to be included, some of the people said. The inclusion of dual-use goods other than infrastructure will also have to be agreed on, said people, who stressed an agreement will need to be found before the summit. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Kyiv is pushing for Ukraine aid to count toward this spending, according to a person familiar with the matter. This would allow the country to make up for the fact that NATO isn't currently discussing the renewal of last year's €40 billion ($45.3 billion) pledge for Ukraine. US President Donald Trump first demanded allies spend 5% earlier this year after threatening to pull out of the alliance or to only protect the allies that spent enough on defense. The figure was widely regarded as unrealistic when he first mentioned it, but European allies and Canada have come around to the understanding that their spending had to drastically increase. Only 23 out of 32 allies reached the current spending target of 2%, according to NATO's annual report published in April. But all of them are expected to meet it by the summer, Bloomberg reported earlier. — With assistance from Andra Timu. Toronto & GTA Canada Canada Tennis Music
New York Times
16-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
The Impact of the L.A. Fires Was Felt Far From the Burn Zone, Poll Shows
A new survey released on Wednesday found that the Los Angeles wildfires took an extraordinary financial and emotional toll on millions of people in Southern California that extended far beyond the communities that burned. More than 40 percent of the adults surveyed said they knew someone who had been personally affected by the wildfires that began on Jan. 7. The polling equivalent of more than a million adults said the fires had directly cost them jobs or income. And about a third of respondents said they had donned masks to protect themselves from the smoke hazards. The survey, by the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, underscored the extent to which the fires transcended the vastness of Southern California, where even large-scale disruptions can often be swallowed up by the region's sheer size. Los Angeles County, the nation's most populous at about 9.7 million residents, stretches for more than 4,000 square miles, encompassing 88 cities and about a quarter of the state's population. The two main January fires — in Pacific Palisades on the Pacific Coast and in Altadena to the east, at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains — were more than 34 miles apart. But as hurricane-force winds whipped up one inferno after another, claiming 30 lives and destroying thousands of buildings, the threat of the disaster seemed to stretch countywide. The survey found that even in relatively unscathed places 20 miles or more from the fires, like the suburbs on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and in northern areas of the county, roughly a quarter of respondents said they knew someone who had lost a home or a business. 'In the past, wildfires here have been compartmentalized,' said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former Los Angeles city councilman and county supervisor who directs the Luskin School's Los Angeles Initiative, which conducted the survey. 'But this time, the fires were everybody's problem,' he continued. 'Everybody had a stake in it. Everybody was threatened to one degree or another. It was a communitywide disaster, like an earthquake. Except that, even here, we've never had an earthquake that destroyed 15,000 homes.' The fires also have posed political challenges, particularly for Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, the poll showed. Ms. Bass, who had been in Ghana on behalf of the Biden administration when the fires broke out, was among the most popular and best-known Democrats in Southern California in 2022, when she was elected. A former community organizer, legislator and member of Congress, Ms. Bass, who is Black, had deep roots in Los Angeles's Black communities and broad liberal support that transcended demographic lines. But the survey showed that her popularity had plummeted after the wildfires. Last year, 42 percent of the survey's respondents viewed her favorably, and only 32 percent expressed an unfavorable opinion. This year, only 37 percent viewed her favorably, and nearly half viewed her unfavorably. Support among Black residents has remained solid, the survey showed, but it has slipped significantly among other demographics, particularly white residents, of whom 60 percent said they now view her unfavorably. Other Los Angeles leaders, including members of the county's board of supervisors, experienced no such slide in their popularity from last year. The survey has been conducted for the past decade to measure satisfaction with the quality of life in Los Angeles County. This year's poll, which took place in late February and early March among 1,400 adult residents, was the latest one to reflect the shaken mood among Californians in the aftermath of the wildfires. In an earlier poll, cosponsored by The Los Angeles Times and conducted in February by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, almost a quarter of the county's residents said the fires had prompted them to consider moving out of Southern California, though only 9 percent had considered it seriously. In the Luskin survey, nearly nine respondents in 10 believed that people who had lost homes in communities such as Pacific Palisades and Altadena should be allowed to rebuild in the same location. And with the cost of living as the top concern of respondents, a slim majority supported some sort of tax increase to fund improvements in the county's wildfire preparedness. 'This is going to scar the psyche of Los Angeles for a long time,' Mr. Yaroslavsky said. 'I think people are going to mark their lives by it. There will be 'before the fire,' and 'after the fire.''
New York Times
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
One Giant Stunt for Womankind
This morning, Jeff Bezos' private spaceflight startup, Blue Origin, launched six well-known women into space. The company documented the event with a livestream hosted by the sportscaster Charissa Thompson. The celebrities Kris Jenner, Orlando Bloom and Oprah Winfrey watched from the ground. Bezos himself escorted the crew to the capsule. As the rocket blasted into the sky, live audio from inside the ship was broadcast down to Earth. One of the occupants could be heard screaming: 'Oh my goddess!' Bezos has said that it's his generation's job to 'build a road to space, so that future generations can unleash their creativity.' Now he has made his spaceship into the world's most extravagant influencer platform. The flight's roster seems to have been assembled with the energy of an American Girl doll collection, with seats awarded to women with different claims to fame and relevance. There was the pop star Katy Perry, the journalist Gayle King, the aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, the feminist activist Amanda Nguyen, the film producer Kerianne Flynn and Lauren Sánchez — the television journalist, aviation businesswoman, philanthropist and children's book author who is engaged to marry Bezos. Bezos' company has promoted this as the 'first all-woman spaceflight' since the Soviet Union cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she made a solo trip to the Earth's orbit in 1963. Tereshkova spent three days in space, circled the Earth 48 times and landed an international celebrity and feminist icon. The Blue Origin flight attempted to reverse-engineer that historic moment: By taking established celebrities and activists and launching them into space, it applied a feminist sheen to Blue Origin and made its activities feel socially relevant by association. Blue Origin pitched the flight as a gambit to encourage girls to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers and to, as Sánchez put it in an Elle cover story on the trip, inspire 'the next generation of explorers.' But the flight was recreational, and its passengers are not space professionals but space tourists. Their central mission was to experience weightlessness, view the Earth from above, and livestream it. They are like payload specialists with a specialty in marketing private rockets. If the flight proves anything, it is that women are now free to enjoy capitalism's most decadent spoils alongside the world's wealthiest men. Though women remain severely underrepresented in the aerospace field worldwide, they do regularly escape the Earth's atmosphere. More than 100 have gone to space since Sally Ride became the first American woman to do so in 1983. If an all-women spaceflight were chartered by, say, NASA, it might represent the culmination of many decades of serious investment in female astronauts. (In 2019, NASA was embarrassingly forced to scuttle an all-women spacewalk when it realized it did not have enough suits that fit them.) An all-women Blue Origin spaceflight signifies only that several women have amassed the social capital to be friends with Lauren Sánchez. Blue Origin is one of several private spaceflight companies — among them Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures and SpaceX — now offering rich people and their friends access to space. Its New Shepard rocket is self-piloting, and the six women had no technical duties on the flight. Though two participants had some aerospace experience (Bowe worked for NASA, and Nyugen interned there), Sánchez has said she picked them all because they are 'storytellers' who could step off the flight and promote their experiences through journalism, film and song. To Blue Origin, their value lies expressly in their amateurism. Kristin Fisher, a journalist and the daughter of the NASA astronaut Anna Lee Fisher, who joined the livestream, called the flight's roster 'so refreshing.' In the early days of human spaceflight, astronauts 'were all white male military test pilots, and they had to have 'the right stuff.' You could never talk about nerves, or being nervous, or your feelings,' Fisher said. 'But now, in 2025, it is the right stuff.' Sánchez arranged for her favorite fashion designers to craft the mission's suits, leveraging it into yet another branding opportunity. Souvenirs of the flight sold on Blue Origin's website feature a kind of yassified shuttle patch design. It includes a shooting-star microphone representing King, an exploding firework representing Perry and a fly representing Sánchez's 2024 children's book about the adventures of a dyslexic insect. Each woman was encouraged to use her four minutes of weightlessness to practice a different in-flight activity tailored to her interests. Nguyen planned to use them to conduct two vanishingly brief science experiments, one of them related to menstruation, while Perry pledged to 'put the 'ass' in astronaut.' The message is that a little girl can grow up to be whatever she wishes: a rocket scientist or a pop star, a television journalist or a billionaire's fiancée who is empowered to pursue her various ambitions and whims in the face of tremendous costs. In each case, she stands to win a free trip to space. She can have it all, including a family back on Earth. 'Guess what?' Sánchez told Elle. 'Moms go to space.' (Fisher, the first mother in space, went there in 1984.) The whole thing reminds me of the advice Sheryl Sandberg passed on to women in 'Lean In,' her memoir of scaling the corporate ladder in the technology industry. When Eric Schmidt, then the chief executive of Google, offered Sandberg a position that did not align with her own professional goals, he told her: 'If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. Just get on.' It is the proximity to power that matters, not the goal of the mission itself. As Blue Origin loudly celebrates women as consumers of private space travel, it has elided the experiences of professional female astronauts — including the little details that humanized their own flights. Elle suggested that the Blue Origin flight 'will be the first time anybody went to space with their hair and makeup done.' As Perry put it, 'Space is going to finally be glam.' But in fact, female astronauts have long brought their beauty work into space with them. Life magazine published an image of Tereshkova at the hairdresser, explaining that she was 'primping for orbit.' The astronaut Rhea Seddon, who first flew to space in 1985, took NASA-tested cosmetics onboard, knowing that she would be heavily photographed and the images widely circulated. Though sending women to space has largely been framed as a project for inspiring other women, it stokes certain male fantasies too. Life described Tereshkova's mission this way: 'A blue-eyed blonde with a new hairdo stars in a Russian space spectacular.' Senator Kenneth Keating of New York said she was 'carrying romance to a new high.' Robert Voas, who served as a NASA astronaut-training officer in the 1960s, put it this way: 'I think we all look forward to the time when women will be a part of our spaceflight team, for when this time arrives, it will mean that man will have really found a home in space — for the woman is the personification of the home.' Blue Origin's vision is that 'millions of people will live and work in space with a single-minded purpose: to restore and sustain Earth, our blue origin.' This spaceflight feels like a training mission for the billionaire fantasy of escaping Earth's smoldering husk. In order to fulfill that dream, women will need to get onboard. The private aerospace industry's largely male clientele may not wish to bro down forever on Mars. They will desire moms to go to space with them, and fiancées too.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
LA Schools Face Stiff Headwinds From Wildfires and Trump, Report Says
The Los Angeles Unified School District is at a critical turning point, with fresh obstacles from both the recent wildfires and changes in federal aid and policies under the Trump administration, a new report argues. The 26-page document, 'Looking Ahead as LAUSD Confronts Fire Recovery and Federal Policy Uncertainty,' found those twin events will place new 'operational and financial pressures' on the nation's second-largest district in 2025 and beyond. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter The report, published earlier this month by the L.A.-based nonprofit education advocacy group GPSN, points out that LAUSD was already strained, with cratering enrollment, intense budget pressure and mixed marks on recent state and federal exams, although it is making progress compared to the rest of the state by some metrics. Other U.S. school districts are facing some similar post-pandemic headwinds and the second Trump administration, GPSN Executive Vice President Ana Teresa Dahan said in an interview, but the crisis at LA Unified is especially bad because of additional threats posed by the fires and years of plunging enrollment exacerbated by the pandemic. 'LAUSD was facing declining enrollment before these two crises occurred, and there's a chance that this can make that worse,' said Dahan. 'Between declining enrollment and delays in funding, LAUSD could find itself in a financial crisis.' Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, said the dangers to the district posed by the fires and the Trump administration are very serious. 'Those things are looming,' said Polikoff. 'LAUSD would be a great target for the Trump administration if they want to put a trophy on the shelf.' Drawing on academic research, news reporting and publicly available data, the GPSN report found the wildfires which ripped through Los Angeles in January affected more than 700,000 students and staff with school closures and displacements at the height of the disaster. Related Even schools that were spared by flames suffered smoke damage, debris, and environmental hazards, according to the report. Ongoing hardships caused by the fires, such as financial uncertainty caused by job losses — estimated at 25,000-45,000 in the report — and the displacement of families from lost homes and neighborhoods, also compound LAUSD's fire woes, said Dahan. Meanwhile, LA school officials are preparing for the Trump administration to change, cut, or significantly diminish federal funding for public schools, which typically accounts for about 10% of the district's budget. Trump on Thursday issued an executive order to shut down the U.S. Department of Education. He has also threatened to withhold funding for districts that use race-based programming. LAUSD last year was forced to overhaul its signature program for Black students, the Black Student Achievement Plan, after a Virginia conservative group filed a civil rights complaint against the program. LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has said he would fight to impose any restrictions placed on the district. Merely the fear of federal immigration enforcement at LAUSD schools, and uncertainty about the status of federal funding, could be enough to depress attendance and cause budgeting troubles for the district, Polikoff said. Related In a written response to the GPSN report, a district spokesperson acknowledged the dangers faced by LA Unified. 'As this report correctly indicates, these are challenging times,' a district spokesperson said in a statement. 'Not only is our community still recovering from the impact of the Palisades and Eaton fires, but we are now facing an increasingly volatile economic and political landscape.' The GPSN report gave LA Unified high marks for quickly relocating two schools that were destroyed in the fires, and formarshaling resources to provide food for families at LAUSD campuses while schools were closed. Dahan said she also found hope for LAUSD in the district's state test scores, which show that it is closing the gap with the rest of California, in both reading and math. To maximize its chances of mustering a strong recovery from the fires, and an effective response to the new federal landscape, Dahan said LA Unified needs to double down on social and academic services for students, and work with local community groups to bring those things directly to families. 'I think that they have demonstrated that they know how to respond to these crises,' Dahan said. 'Now the real test will be, what does this mean for instruction and academics moving forward?'
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A Black Patient Almost Got Their Foot Amputated Because Of Their Non-Black Doctor's SUPER Wrong Diagnosis
Going to the doctor can be a terrifying experience when you genuinely have no idea why a part of your body is aching, itchy, numb, or you just know something is off, but you can't explain it. But one doctor told a story on TikTok that perfectly explains why Black people — who are 20-30% more likely to get misdiagnosed by a medical professional than white men — have yet another layer of concern when they enter a doctor's office. Dr. Nichole Mgboji, known as @naturallynonny on TikTok, is a 28-year-old podiatry surgical resident from Maryland. And a repost of a video she shared about an experience with a patient recently went viral with 3.5 million views. "Do you know why it's important to have a Black doctor if you're Black?" she asked. TikTok: @joelbervell / Via "There was a patient I saw today. I got a consult [from a colleague]. He's like, 'Hey, we think this is frostbite.' I was like, 'Oh man.'" "Thinking that it was going to be 'dry gangrene.' And if you don't know what that is, that means your toes are basically going to fall off, and you need to put betadine and everything to make sure it stays dry until you can amputate it," she explained. "I said, 'Do they have, you know, what's going on?' Like – they're like, 'Oh, it looks necrotic, it looks blackened, it looks...'" Necrotic means dead or dying tissue. *long, disappointed pause* "I went to the patient, and the patient had hyperpigmentation. They [the colleague] told me it was necrotic. That patient had cap refill," she said. Cap refill pertains to blood circulation in your arms and legs. "Their toes were alive, they're just Black — ya," she concluded. In the comments of the video, an alarming number of doctors and patients shared similar experiences. "My doctor thought I had cancer because of my arm having hyperpigmentation, which was just the natural deodorant having a bad reaction to my armpits," this person shared. "I'm in peds psych, I've heard providers refer to AAVE (African American Vernacular English) as 'psychosis' 'disorganized speech,'" this person said. "had a doctor ask me, 'what are those scars on your stomach what happened???' he meant my stretch marks..." this person shared. Other people expressed how grateful they were for Dr. Mgboji. "If nobody told you in a while.. thank you and I'm proud of you," this person expressed. "Oh lord have mercy. Thank god you were there," this person said. And one commenter needed to know how doctors end up in this situation in the first place. "I have a question. As a black girl going into healthcare do you learn about it in the curriculum? I heard how things look on us isn't even taught," they said. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Dr. Mgboji addressed that question, acknowledging, "At my institution, I don't believe there was an overwhelming amount of literature or pictures about different melanated skin tones, but we were instructed to recognize that things will, in fact, look different on various complexions." She shared how Black people can advocate for themselves if they're ever in this predicament. "Understand medical terminology at least, and in some circumstances, get a second opinion." "The best way is having a trusted family member or friend in the medical field. The medical field is very complex, and it's good to have someone close to you who can explain things to you in a way that you understand," she said. What do you think? Did the patient's actual diagnosis surprise you? Let us know in the comments.
