Latest news with #MarkLennihan
CTV News
5 days ago
- General
- CTV News
Quebec law that helps victims of intimate image sharing remove photos now in effect
The iris scanner, centre, and camera lens, right, are shown on the back of a smartphone, Monday, April 17, 2017, in New York. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Mark Lennihan MONTREAL — A Quebec law is coming into force, giving people new tools to obtain a court order to remove intimate images posted online. Under the Criminal Code, publishing, texting or sharing intimate images of someone without their consent is a crime. But for most victims, this does not always mean unlawfully shared images will get removed quickly. The new Quebec law allows victims to fill out a form online or at a courthouse and obtain an order from a judge requiring the images or footage to be removed. Failure to comply comes with stiff penalties — with fines up to $50,000 per day for a first offence or 18 months in jail. Quebec is the second province after British Columbia to pass legislation protecting victims of non-consensual image sharing. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2025.
CTV News
5 days ago
- General
- CTV News
Quebec law that helps victims of intimate image sharing remove photos now in effect
The iris scanner, centre, and camera lens, right, are shown on the back of a smartphone, Monday, April 17, 2017, in New York. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Mark Lennihan MONTREAL — A Quebec law is coming into force, giving people new tools to obtain a court order to remove intimate images posted online. Under the Criminal Code, publishing, texting or sharing intimate images of someone without their consent is a crime. But for most victims, this does not always mean unlawfully shared images will get removed quickly. The new Quebec law allows victims to fill out a form online or at a courthouse and obtain an order from a judge requiring the images or footage to be removed. Failure to comply comes with stiff penalties — with fines up to $50,000 per day for a first offence or 18 months in jail. Quebec is the second province after British Columbia to pass legislation protecting victims of non-consensual image sharing. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2025.
Japan Today
08-05-2025
- Health
- Japan Today
How cruise ship passengers can stay safe from the latest version of norovirus
FILE - The Queen Mary 2 prepares to depart the Red Hook Terminal, bound for Southampton, England, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Nov. 11, 2018. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File) By JONEL ALECCIA For Americans planning cruise ship vacations this spring or summer, there could be reason to worry about more than rough seas, experts say. Recent government cuts included top staff at the Vessel Sanitation Program, which is run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and conducts inspections and investigates illnesses. The reductions, part of larger Trump administration cuts, come amid a surge in cruise ship outbreaks fueled by a new strain of norovirus. So far this year, there have been 16 illness outbreaks reported on cruise ships in the CDC's jurisdiction, mostly from norovirus, compared with 18 outbreaks in all of 2024 and 14 in 2023, VSP reports show. U.S. officials conducted nearly 200 inspections of 150 ships last year. 'Certainly it's something that would be on my mind if was getting ready to get on that cruise ship,' said Donald Schaffner, a food science expert at Rutgers University. Here's what you need to know about staying safe on board: U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a broad restructuring of the nation's health agencies in April. The move eliminated the CDC's Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, which housed the cruise ship vessel program, along with others focused on asthma, air quality, lead exposure in children and other issues. Four full-time CDC staff, including scientists, were dismissed, said Erik Svendsen, the division's fired former director. The program also employed 12 U.S. Public Health Service commissioned officers, who remain. The officers, however, lack the expertise of the scientists who were let go, Svendsen said. In addition, the program was already understaffed, he said. 'It's going to put them back many months before they're really functional again,' he said. A CDC spokesperson said in a statement that the VSP work 'has not stopped.' 'Critical programs in the CDC will continue under Secretary Kennedy's vision to streamline HHS to better serve Americans,' the statement said. About 18 million people board cruises in North America each year, part of nearly 32 million passengers worldwide, according to the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group. Cruise industry officials say the chance of contracting a gastrointestinal illness is far greater on land than on a ship. Norovirus is the most common ailment tracked on ships, though other outbreaks do occur. Of the 19 million to 21 million norovirus illnesses that occur each year in the U.S., less than 1% are tied to cruises, said Lee-Ann Jaykus, a North Carolina State University food microbiologist and virologist who has studied norovirus. But even that fraction of cases can mean misery for many hundreds of people on ships who come down with symptoms that include sudden onset of vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain that can last three days, according to the CDC. Norovirus is highly contagious, often spread by food or on surfaces, particularly in crowded conditions. It is a short-lived illness for many people, but it can be dangerous for people with underlying health conditions, young children and those aged 65 and older. There are many different types of norovirus, but typically one dominant strain causes illness outbreaks, Jaykus said. This year, a new epidemic strain has emerged, called GII.17. This version has circulated at low levels for years, but it was behind a surge in U.S. norovirus outbreaks this past winter. Between Aug. 1 and April 9, more than 2,400 suspected or confirmed norovirus outbreaks were reported to a CDC monitoring system, roughly double for the same period a year earlier. The GII.17 strain has been responsible for nearly 80% of them, the CDC reported. 'It's new to the population,' Jaykus said, which means most people don't have immunity to the germ, so it can spread more widely. People infected with norovirus typically shed 'literally billions of viral particles,' said Schaffner, the food safety expert. And it only takes a few viral particles to make someone sick. The first rule should be for sick people to stay home, he said. That's not possible on a cruise. If people get sick on a cruise ship, they're required to report the illness and isolate themselves, but many fail to do so. 'You spent all this money for a fancy cruise and you're feeling a little bit under the weather, so you tough it out,' Schaffner said. 'But in the meantime, now you spread the virus." Passengers should be alert for signs of illness, even in other travelers. Vomit, for instance, can spread norovirus particles into the air, Schaffner noted. 'If you're in a situation where you see someone vomit, immediately walk away from them, ideally into the wind,' he said. Washing hands frequently is key, especially after using the bathroom or before eating and drinking. Using soap and water is best; wash for at least 20 seconds, scrubbing well. Hand sanitizer alone doesn't work well against norovirus, the CDC notes. Cruise lines have extensive sanitation protocols in place that are monitored through the CDC's vessel program, which is paid for by industry through inspection and other fees that total tens of thousands of dollars per ship per year. It remains to be seen how cuts to the program will affect inspections and outbreak investigations in the future, Schaffner said. 'If you want to have no disease outbreaks, all you have to do is fire all the epidemiologists,' he said. 'And there'll be no one there to investigate.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Time of India
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
S.W.A.T. Season 8: Why is the show ending? See Episode 20 release date, plot and where to watch
CBS will end S.W.A.T. with its eighth season. Despite high ratings and fan support, the show has faced multiple cancellations. The final episode airs May 16. Cast members say the ending will leave viewers wanting more. The penultimate episode, Episode 20, airs May 9 and includes a tense mission and family drama. FILE - The CBS logo at the entrance to its headquarters, in New York Dec. 6, 2018. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File) Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads High Ratings Cast's Thoughts Season 8 Episode 20 Release Date Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Plot Where to Watch FAQs CBS has confirmed that S.W.A.T. will end with its eighth season. The announcement came after the show was canceled for the third time. The final episode will air on May 16.S.W.A.T. has experienced a difficult path. CBS canceled the show twice before, and fans hoped it would return again. However, the network confirmed in March that Season 8 would be its last. Despite strong ratings, CBS chose not to continue the series. Viewers are now preparing for the final chapter of the long-running latest episodes have received high ratings. Episode 19, titled Run to Ground, earned an 8.7 out of 10 on IMDb. This rating reflects the audience's interest in the storyline and characters. The final episodes follow a strong season, which has helped maintain interest despite the cancellation recent interviews, cast members Anna Enger Ritch and Annie Ilonzeh shared their thoughts on the series finale. Ritch said the ending will make fans want more. She spoke about how many storylines remain open. Ilonzeh said the finale will leave viewers surprised and curious. According to both, the show will end with unresolved 8 Episode 20 will air on May 9. Former cast member Alex Russell directed the episode, and Sarah Alderson wrote it. The story will follow an arms deal that goes wrong. The team must stop dangerous weapons from reaching terrorists. The episode also shows a personal story involving Hondo's cousin, who goes missing from Marine synopsis for the May 9 episode reads, 'When Hondo's cousin goes AWOL from his Marine base during basic training, Hondo, Deacon, and Daniel Sr. take a road trip to get the kid in line; Alfaro plots to work outside the law when he discovers that his mother's abusive ex is back in her life.'All episodes of S.W.A.T. Season 8 are available for streaming on Paramount+. Viewers can catch up before the final episode airs on May decided to cancel the show after Season 8 due to internal decisions, even though it maintained strong ratings across multiple final episode of S.W.A.T. will air on May 16, 2025, bringing the eight-season series to an official close.
Vox
15-03-2025
- Health
- Vox
The Covid pandemic was catastrophic. But don't overlook what went right.
is an editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate, tech, and world teams, and is the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. Sandra Lindsay, left, a nurse in New York, received the first Covid-19 shot on December 14, 2020, in New York City. Mark Lennihan/Pool/Getty Images For most people, the Covid-19 pandemic, which officially began five years ago this month, marked their first encounter with case counts and N-95 masks and lockdown orders. Not me, though. I was a young reporter for Time magazine in Hong Kong in early spring 2003, when we started getting reports about a strange new sickness spreading in southern China, just across the border. On March 15, exactly 22 years ago today, that sickness was given a name by the World Health Organization: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The SARS outbreak didn't get much attention in the US because the country only had a small number of cases, and the worst of it overlapped with the invasion of Iraq. But back in Hong Kong, which became an epicenter of the outbreak, we had no idea when or if it would end. Looking back on those days now, it feels like a dry run for what the entire world would experience less than two decades later with another coronavirus. Overnight, all of Hong Kong wore surgical masks. Airports, hotels, and restaurants were abandoned. At the Time offices in the city, editors sweating through uncomfortable N-95 masks debated sending some staff to work from home, to keep the magazine going if our building were to be closed. I interviewed scientists about the possibility of a vaccine or treatment, and was told that if one were needed, it would certainly take years for it to be developed. Related Trump is running from his biggest health care success We ended up getting lucky with SARS. The coronavirus that caused it turned out to be far less infectious than it first appeared, and the outbreak ended up petering out — though not before more than 8,000 people were sickened and 774 died around the world. With Covid, of course, we were not that lucky. More than 7 million people have been confirmed to have died from Covid so far, a number that is both still rising and almost surely an undercount. The political, social, and educational side effects of the pandemic were enormous, and are still playing out. It was, simply put, a global catastrophe — one of the few events that is truly worthy of that name. So why in the world would I put Covid in a newsletter that's supposed to be about good news? A Covid pandemic before 2020 would have been far worse Having lived through and covered both SARS and Covid, I sometimes like to run a thought experiment: How would we have responded back in 2003 if SARS had turned out to be as dangerous as Covid? Think back to 2003. Smartphones didn't exist, and even laptops were less common. Video-calling was essentially nonexistent — if you told someone you were going to 'Zoom' with them, you would have gotten very strange looks. What this all means is that remote work and remote schooling and telemedicine — which, as problematic as they all turned out to be, did keep the economy, education, and medical care moving forward during the pandemic — would have essentially been impossible. By one estimate, without remote work, US GDP would have declined twice as much as it ultimately did in that first year of the pandemic. All those Zoom meetings and cloud documents were a literal economic lifeline. Or take the virus itself. It was months after the first cases of SARS before the coronavirus causing it was successfully identified by scientists. I still remember visiting Hong Kong University's Queen Mary Hospital in April 2003, and peering through an electron microscope at the virus's distinctive, sun-like corona. In Covid, thanks to vast improvements in the speed of genetic sequencing, full genomes of the virus were being distributed well before the world was fully aware of what Covid was. Or vaccines. In 2003, early work on mRNA vaccine technology was only beginning, and BioNTech — the company that was responsible for the groundbreaking research on mRNA vaccines — wouldn't be founded for another five years.. Before Covid, it took anywhere from five to 15 years — if not longer — to develop a vaccine for a new virus. Had we needed one during SARS, we would have almost certainly been in for a long wait. But during Covid, the first vaccine candidates were produced by Pfizer-BioNTech on March 2, 2020 — less than two months after work on the vaccines had begun. Sandra Lindsay, a nurse in New York, received the first Covid shot on December 14, 2020, less than nine months later. And while advances in science were the first necessary steps, the US government, for all its flaws, acted with impressive urgency and ambition. We never would have received vaccines as quickly without the genius of Operation Warp Speed. By supporting the simultaneous development of multiple vaccine candidates, the parallel execution of multiple stages of vaccine development and trials, and by guaranteeing a market for the vaccines with billions of dollars, Operation Warp Speed lived up to is name. Beyond the science, the bipartisan relief bills kept poverty from spiking during those first, terrible months of the pandemic. In fact, poverty actually dropped in 2021 compared to the years before the pandemic, with child poverty falling by more than half. Don't forget what we accomplished I realize that almost no one wants to look back at the Covid pandemic, and certainly not with pride. The subsequent virus variants and new waves increasingly evaded even our best vaccines, keeping the pandemic going for years while eroding belief in them. Division over the public health decisions made during the pandemic, from mask requirements to school closures, still linger, poisoning the political atmosphere. Perhaps hundreds of millions of people are experiencing the effects of long Covid, their every day a reminder of the pandemic's toll. The collective trauma we suffered is still with us. And yet, I worry that all that pain and anger will cause us to neglect the amazing accomplishments of those years. Not just the scientists and officials who got us those vaccines in record time, but the doctors and nurses who toiled endless hours on the front lines of the pandemic, or the essential workers who kept things going while the rest of us isolated. My fear is not just that we'll forget that heroism, but that when the next pandemic comes — as it inevitably will — we'll forget that we have shown the ability and the will to fight it. On the five-year anniversary of the pandemic, there has been no shortage of articles about what we got wrong during Covid — and yes, in retrospect, we got many, many things wrong. I realize 'it could have been worse' isn't exactly the most stirring rallying cry after something as catastrophic as Covid. But it's still true, and we shouldn't overlook the people whose work ensured it wasn't. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
