Residents of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories are evacuating their homes as a wildfire moves closer to the city of 20,000. Thousands have fled, driving hundreds of kilometers to safety or waiting in long lines for emergency flights. The wildfire season in Canada has been the worst on record, with 8,000 wildfires burning over 4.6 million hectares of land. The government has deployed military personnel and aircraft to help fight the fires and has asked for international help.
Posts published in “Health”
Maui County's top emergency management official, Herman Andaya, resigned Thursday due to health reasons. This comes one day after he defended his decision not to sound warning sirens as wildfires swept across the island. Maui Mayor Richard Bissen has accepted Andaya's resignation and is urging residents to remain vigilant and prepared for any potential emergencies while they search for a replacement.
Three people in the northeastern United States have died from a rare flesh-eating bacteria this summer, Vibrio vulnificus, which can spread through warm, brackish water or the consumption of undercooked shellfish. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has urged residents to take precautions when swimming in warm, brackish water or eating raw shellfish, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people with weakened immune systems avoid eating raw shellfish and wear protective clothing when handling it.
The Republican-led General Assembly in North Carolina has passed a bill that bars medical professionals from providing hormone therapy, puberty-blocking drugs and surgical gender-transition procedures to minors, with limited exceptions. The bill has been met with strong opposition from LGBTQ+ advocates, while supporters argue it is necessary to protect children from making irreversible decisions. The bill’s passage marks a major victory for social conservatives in North Carolina and sets a precedent for other states.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FDA failed to address safety concerns when it made the abortion pill mifepristone easier to obtain in 2016. The ruling is a win for abortion opponents, who argued that the FDA’s alterations to the drug’s disbursement regime in 2016 qualified as “reopening” the question of its initial approval. The court said that mifepristone should remain available under the rules that were in place from 2000 to 2016, which will likely have a significant impact on the availability of the drug.
A federal appeals court has upheld parts of a decision limiting access to the widely used abortion pill, mifepristone. The ruling agreed with a lower court that the Food and Drug Administration's moves since 2016 to relax the rules for mifepristone's use should be reversed, but declined to suspend the underlying approval of the medication. The decision is a victory for abortion opponents, but the Justice Department is expected to appeal the decision and the case is expected to continue to make its way through the courts.
A New Zealand jury has found a mother guilty of murdering her three young daughters, rejecting her defense that she was mentally disturbed at the time of the killings. The case has shocked the nation and has sparked a national conversation about the need for better support for families in crisis. The judge has adjourned the case for sentencing, with the maximum penalty for murder in New Zealand being life imprisonment.
13-year-old Wyatt Kauffman miraculously survived a fall of nearly 100 feet at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It took emergency crews two hours to rescue him, and he was airlifted to a Las Vegas hospital with nine broken vertebrae, a ruptured spleen, a collapsed lung, a concussion, a broken hand, and a dislocated finger. Kauffman's family is grateful for his survival and thankful for the emergency crews, and they are hopeful for a full recovery.