Latest news with #Vigo
Global News
10 hours ago
- Health
- Global News
BC Conservatives question $1M contract for B.C. drug and mental illness adviser
The BC Conservative opposition is raising concerns about the contract the NDP government has awarded to its top adviser on mental health and the drug crisis. It has been one year since the B.C. government appointed Dr. Daniel Vigo as its chief scientific adviser for psychiatry, toxic drugs and concurrent disorders. Vigo has been responsible for developing solutions for people suffering from mental health, addictions and brain injuries due to toxic drugs. According to his contract, Vigo is eligible to receive $250,000 each quarter he works, up to $1 million for the year. In addition, he is eligible to receive 12 per cent of his salary as administrative fees or expenses. 2:07 B.C. government opens more involuntary care beds 'It was very clear during the election that involuntary care was one of the pieces that was needed in this system. I think the government was already aware of that, and I think that because they knew they were facing some pushback from some of their more ideological supporters, they decided to spend a million dollars hiring a doctor as a consultant to tell us what we already knew so that they could fall back on, 'Well, this is the science behind it,'' said Claire Rattée, BC Conservative MLA for Skeena. Story continues below advertisement 'At the end of the day, it's a million dollars that could have been spent on treatment.' Rattée added she was concerned about a 'lack of deliverables' in the contract. Get weekly health news Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday. Sign up for weekly health newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy She said that according to the document, Vigo should have already submitted three quarterly reports, none of which have been made public. 'We're talking about a government that has spent well over $1 billion on addictions and the overdose emergency that we have here, but where are the measurable outcomes? What are the outcomes of any of the things that they have done?' added BC Conservative public safety critic Elenore Sturko. 'We have seen some announcements, we've seen some piecemeal work, even the stuff that's been announced by Dr. Vigo over the last couple of months here — It looks like something is happening, but what's the outcome and where have we gone and what should British Columbians expect from this huge expenditure?' B.C.'s health minister says the BC Conservatives aren't telling the whole story. The $1 million is earmarked for Vigo to build out a team of four people and to cover the cost of data collection and legal advice, Health Minister Josie Osborne told Global News. 1:52 New involuntary care beds are opening in Maple Ridge She said Vigo was retained because the toxic drug crisis and the intersection of addicitons medicine and psychiatry are evolving quickly, and the province wants to be on the cutting edge. Story continues below advertisement 'This is a fresh, innovative look using the professional experience that they have to help us identify the people who need help the most to help us identify the solutions,' Osborne said. 'It is a very challenging situation to see people that are suffering, to see and know that people need treatment and care and that we need the very best clinical expertise, the very medical advice that we can and the appropriate settings and care and therapies for these people — we don't have experts in that inside the ministry.' In his year on the job, Vigo has provided significant advice to the province, including a determination that the B.C. Mental Health Act does not need to be amended to allow for involuntary treatment. He led the development of new guidance to B.C. doctors, laying out the scenarios under which someone can be treated involuntarily under the Mental Health Act, all of them involving mental impairment. 1:54 Success of forced addictions treatment lacks evidence, minister says And he has been involved in the rollout of B.C.'s first two involuntary treatment facilities, one in the South Fraser Pretrial Centre and one in the Alouette Homes in Maple Ridge for people who aren't in contact with the justice system. Story continues below advertisement He has also been made available to media to answer questions about the province's involuntary treatment policy. Rattée said the progress for the price tag simply isn't good value. 'So far, they've only moved on. You know, 18 beds at Alouette, I believe it is, and 10 at Surrey pre-trial, and nothing to do with voluntary treatment services,' she said. 'This is a drop in the bucket when it comes to actually addressing the issue that we are facing right now.' Last month, the province terminated the contract of another adviser halfway through the planned six-month term. Michael Bryant had been hired on a $150,000 contract to consult on the province's policies and service delivery in the Downtown Eastside.
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Romería review – Carla Simón's gripping pilgrimage tackles Aids, parents and the legacy of secrets
Is biology destiny? Spanish film-maker Carla Simón brings to Cannes her very personal and in fact auto-fictional project Romería (meaning 'pilgrimage') – about an 18-year-old girl, arriving in Vigo in Galicia on Spain's bracing Atlantic coast. She is on a mission to find out more about her biological father who died here of Aids after he split from her mum, who has since died, too, and about her dad's extended – and very wealthy – family. Romería returns Simón (and her audiences) to the complex and painful subject of her mother and father, which she first approached in her wonderful autobiographical debut Summer 1993 although for me the more conventionally enclosed fictional transformation of the material there might have given that film a sharper arrowhead of storytelling power. Yet Simón still shows her usual richness, warmth and her candid, almost docu-realist film-making language, complicated here by a stylised hallucinatory sequence and a Super-8-type flashback section. Simón has an instinctive and almost miraculous way of just immersing herself within extended freewheeling family scenes – her camera moving unobtrusively in the group, like another teenager at the party, quietly noticing everything. Yet I wondered if in the end the film fully absorbed and reconciled two opposing needs: the angry need to reproach her extended family's cruel, uncaring treatment of her father and the need to find resolution and closure, to reclaim family membership and to be grounded in that identity. With unaffected grace and charm, Llúcia Garcia plays Marina, an easy-going, good-natured teen who shows up in Vigo in 2004 with her digital video camera, keen to meet her dad's folks – whom she hasn't seen in years. (These opening scenes are interspersed with quotations from her late mother's diary about coming to live in Vigo with Alfonso, or Fon, Marina's dad.) Her uncles and aunts, affectionate and enthusiastic and welcoming in their various ways about Marina, all have the same initial reaction, whose significance Simón cleverly reveals: they are stunned at her resemblance to her mother. It is as if Fon's wife has come back from the grave to stir up very mixed feelings. Almost immediately, Marina finds discrepancies between what she has always been told about her dad's life there with her mum, and what these people are now telling her. Part of her reason for being there is to locate official paperwork confirming Fon's paternity in order to get a grant to study cinema, and she is stunned to discover the family still do not acknowledge her as one of their own. Her existence is missing from Fon's death certificate. Now she has to persuade her cantankerous and difficult grandparents to swear an official deposition. And they clearly are wary of her – the tetchy grandma even claims that she does not look like her mother. Her grandpa just gives her a grotesquely huge amount of cash for her cinema studies – transparently a crude payoff to get her to go away. Because the awful truth is that they were angry and ashamed of Fon for suffering from Aids, due to needle use – Marina's mum used drugs, too, and it looks very much as if his parents created the myth that this wild-child woman got their son into bad ways and helped kill him. Now she is back – or rather her daughter is, a blood relation, and they have a learned neurosis about blood. Marina, at first nice and polite, starts to show her mother's fire. Part of this movie is about the perennial question which will fascinate and defeat all of us: what were our parents like before we were born? What was it like for them to be people just like us? It is at the centre of this distinctive, intelligent, sympathetic drama. Romería has premiered at the Cannes film festival
BBC News
11-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Sevilla sleep at training ground after 'violent attacks'
Sevilla's first team were forced to spend the night at their training facility on Saturday evening after they were met with "violent attacks" by supporters.A statement released by the club strongly condemned "organised vandalism" at the Jose Ramon Cisneros Palacios training complex after Sevilla's 3-2 loss at 10-man Celta on social media appears to show a large group of supporters chanting outside of the facility with pyrotechnics, while another shows them tearing down the gate to the entrance of the training and staff of the La Liga side were forced to stay inside the building following their arrival back from added that the club "will pursue the public naming of employees and the dissemination of private data on social media and in the media, acts that constitute criminal offenses".Defeat in Vigo left Sevilla 16th in La Liga, six points above the relegation zone with three games left to play. The La Liga side, who won the Europa League in 2020 and 2023, said they will report the attacks and vandalism and will do "everything in its power to assist in the pursuit of the perpetrators of these crimes". The statement said the club "will try to help identify those involved in these actions and will act relentlessly in the event that they are Sevilla FC fans".The club acknowledged their poor season on the field and accepted protests but "under no circumstances will they be tolerated if they are accompanied by aggression, threats, or acts of vandalism".Winless in their last eight, Sevilla play relegation rivals Las Palmas on Tuesday in a huge game before hosting Real Madrid and rounding the season off with a trip to Villarreal.
Express Tribune
04-05-2025
- Express Tribune
Robbers in police uniforms loot Rs9.5m from butchers
Armed robbers impersonating policemen looted Rs9.5 million and other valuables from more than a dozen butchers travelling from Orangi Town to Mirpurkhas near the Toll Plaza on Superhighway in the early hours of April 30. The robbery took place near the shrine of Saint Jalal Shah Bukhari in Gadap Town, within the jurisdiction of Gadap City police station. As per police report, the butcher were intercepted at around 2.45am by suspects travelling in a white Vigo SUV which didn't have a licence plate. Four of the eight robbers were dressed in police uniforms. They were heavily armed and forcibly stopped the butchers' Hiace van, which was en route to the Mirpurkhas livestock market. The butchers, hailing from Urdu Chowk, Orangi Town No 10, were on a weekly trip to purchase cattle in Mirpurkhas. Police registered the FIR on the complaint of Farhan, son of Muhammad Aslam Qureshi, a resident of Orangi Town. Farhan recounted that the robbers held the butchers at gunpoint and looted cash, mobile phones, and other valuables from them. According to the FIR, the robbers looted amounts ranging from Rs17,000 to over Rs1 million, alongside valuable smartphones, documents, and personal belongings. Victims expressed concern over the police conduct, saying that an ASI in a black Vigo appeared on the scene immediately after the robbers fled and inquired about the incident. The ASI gave the robbers chase but never returned or spoke again to the victims. The butchers alleged that although they informed Duty Officer ASI Liaquat Ali about the suspects being dressed in police uniforms, this crucial detail was omitted from the initial police report. Although, victims had no phones to contact police, a Madadgar 15 mobile van reached shortly after the robbery, raising suspicions about how police were alerted. The victims have appealed to senior police officials to take notice of the incident, investigate the apparent impersonation of police, and recover the stolen money and valuables. Fake cops arrested The Surjani Town police conducted a raid in Sector 5D, New Karachi and arrested two fake police officials, identified as Shoaib and Saeed Jalal. According to SSP West Tariq Elahi Mastoi, the suspects were wearing police uniforms and harassing innocent people. Upon receiving information, the police took action and arrested them, recovering police uniforms, cash, and other documents from them. A case has been registered against them, and an investigation has been initiated.
Khaleej Times
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
'How I found purpose at this year's Art Dubai'
Over lunch, I made a quiet decision --- to be present, to try living as if I was in a movie. I'd been reading Robin Sharma earlier that morning; he said, 'Find your purpose." So off I went to Art Dubai, a press lanyard around my neck, why I was there was yet to unfold. Just near the entrance, a painting caught my eye: a swan, regal and calm, with a wild bouquet of flowers blooming from its back. I laughed. Actually laughed. It disarmed me completely — I smiled like the Cheshire Cat, caught off guard by its strange familiarity. The piece — by Jordy Kerwick — was surreal, mythic, and quietly magnetic. I live in Bali, where people are friendly, so I asked the man nearby, 'What is this?' For a moment, I was anyone. I was an artist. A traveller. A woman in love with colour and oddities. I looked down at the word 'Press' on my lanyard and decided — maybe I'd write something after all. Curious to learn more, I followed the man who had answered me — though I didn't ask his name for far too long. He introduced me to a quieter, more contemplative piece at the back of the booth — The Tree (2008) by Ibrahim El-Salahi. The man was Toby Clarke, co-founder of Vigo Gallery. At first glance, I was unmoved. I'm drawn to glitter, guts, surrealism — and this piece felt too still, too neat. But as Toby spoke, I learned it was inspired by the Haraz tree, an acacia that grows by the Nile and blooms not in the wet season, but the dry. It grows when nothing else does. It thrives under pressure. And then, it became clear. In front of The Tree, I was reminded of the bison — the only animal that runs into the storm rather than away from it. That painting held the same energy. Not loud, but resolute. Not decorative, but declarative. And isn't that what it means to be an artist? To root yourself in a place where nothing should grow and still — to bloom. In that moment, the swan, the tree, and the bison each stood as symbols — of freedom, resilience, instinct. Separate in form but connected in spirit. When I asked Toby what the common thread was between these paintings, he humbly responded, "me." The rest of Vigo's curation echoed that same understated strength. Henrik Godsk's stylised portraits, drawn from Danish fairground traditions, felt both ancient and futuristic — like folk tales pressed into paint. Johnny Abrahams' monochrome patterns offered minimalist rhythm, where structure became serenity. And again, Kerwick's swan — part warrior, part nursery rhyme — bookended the experience with its quiet, haunting joy. What struck me most was how deeply this work resonated here in Dubai, a city I've come to know for its ambition, its aesthetics, and its evolving relationship with creativity. But in this booth, with its ritual-like reverence and transcontinental storytelling, I felt something quieter. Something human. It's hard to explain, but something shifted. I've been to art fairs around the world, including in Dubai before, but this moment felt unusually intimate. There was something about the way the stories unfolded not just through the artworks, but through the conversations, the slowness, the willingness to connect. It reminded me that transcendence doesn't always announce itself with grandeur. Sometimes, it's in the quietest corners of a tree, a swan, a memory held in someone else's voice. That was the real shift: not the setting, but the surprise of being disarmed by something so inward in a place usually celebrated for its outward shine. Dubai and London. Soul and structure. Migration and memory. A strange, perfect symbiosis. As the fair buzzed and conversations flickered around me, I stood still — moved by art I nearly overlooked, in a city I once thought too slick to feel sacred — and realised: Even in the dry season. Even in the storm. You can bloom.
