A downtown Toronto long-term care home is rebuilding with a new design that considers lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, going beyond the province's standards but some say those standards are out of date. Right down to the placement of garbage cans, the new design of the Rekai Centre's Cherry Place aims to prevent the spread of viruses and prioritize residents' emotional and social needs, according to the centre's CEO, Sue Graham-Nutter. We never wanted our residents to go through this ever again, she said.
We had taken every precaution we could to avoid it. I have MS, which can react in unpredictable ways to viral exposures. My husband knows this very well, which is why I'm perplexed and furious that he thought it better to stay on the good side of our son by not allowing me to decide for myself whether I wanted to walk into a potentially deadly situation.
Covid-era policies initiated by the previous Conservative government include the furlough wage subsidies, 'bounce-back' loans, the Eat Out to Help Out programme and one-off grants. They were credited with propping up the economy throughout the Covid lockdowns, however, there has been criticism that the speed of the roll-out of financial support and a lack of eligibility checks led to widespread error and fraud.
Det Garda Eamonn Cunnane argues it was an "act of kindness with no attempt to conceal or to profit", that led to allegations against him over an unclaimed bike worth €50. He is seeking to overturn a decision by garda superiors refusing the restoration of full pay for a six-month period. A detective who loaned an unclaimed bicycle out of garda storage to give it to a vulnerable elderly neighbour during Covid has successfully applied to the High Court
Even without the specter of covid hanging over us, it's been a long time since my extended family gathered together and had a good old-fashioned Thanksgiving meal. I miss my mother's turkey and my aunt's dressing (she always made two kinds: oyster and non-oyster). I miss my other aunt's collard greens and her black-eyed peas and the sweet potatoes she garnished with marshmallows and pecans. Most of all, I miss my granny's dinner rolls, who no one's been able to recreate since she passed away.
Everybody strives to live an active lifestyle. It may be a brisk walk or a hot yoga class, but nevertheless exercise is a focus for a large part of society. When media was established, this necessity grew exponentially, creating jobs for the experts in this field, also known as influencers. Fitness gurus have ruled the centuries in the media. From the famous Billy Banks in the 90s to 2020's Blogilates, the workout saga has only been on the rise.
LAWRENCE JONES: So Governor, I hear the point you are making, this audience is aware of Mamdani. We've been covering him for months and what he stands for. But what do you say to the Republicans that have concerns about how you handle the pandemic, no cash bail, and some of the things that took place in the nursing home, as well. Will you apologize to those voters? Because that's something that can change this election. What do you say
When Priya Amin's 7-year-old son handed her a drawing, her first instinct was to respond with a standard reply of "ohh, that's so cute!" However, when she took a closer look at the sketch, she was left at a loss for words as she realized it was a heartbreaking depiction of their interaction 10 minutes earlier. It showed a parent at work and a child looking on and asking "Mommy are you done?" The mother, seated before a laptop, responds "No," without looking back.
There are few things in the world that scream indulgence quite like an iconic American buffet. From Golden Corral to Sizzler's, the restaurant landscape was dotted with popular chains that laid out all-you-can-eat spreads at super affordable rates. And while the general decline had started in the early 2000s, the struggle became impossible to ignore during the pandemic. One beloved chain that couldn't survive it was Hometown Buffet.
When Katrina, 60 (who withheld her last name for privacy), moved in with her family in Mexico during Covid, it made sense for her to manage her aging parents' medical care; she's a nurse. Her sister, who has an MBA, took care of the administrative tasks. It was the first time the family had all lived together since Katrina was in high school.
Buffet-style restaurants are fast becoming a thing of the past. Old Country Buffet and Hometown Buffet used to dominate the all-you-can-eat landscape, and now only a scant few remain. But there was another buffet out there, never quite as popular and always overshadowed by the "main" restaurant that it's part of - the KFC buffet. Some people never even knew these existed, but there are still a handful scattered around North America.
Many health visitors were sent to work in other parts of the NHS at the beginning of the pandemic. Alison Morton, CEO of the Institute of Health Visiting, told the inquiry it was "inappropriate" as they "were needed most on their own front line". NHS England's Chief Nursing Officer Duncan Burton told the inquiry its response to safeguarding did not stop throughout the pandemic despite staff being diverted to critical services. Health visitors in almost two thirds of trusts in England were redeployed in March 2020, according to research by University College London.
I've read in Gavin Williamson's statement that he says that the department had not done any planning by this point for school closure because their priority was keeping schools open, Coles said when giving evidence to the inquiry on Monday. I almost fell off my chair when I read that. I think that's an extraordinary dereliction of duty by the leadership of the department both political and civil service.
The message, however, went to a work phone that she had deliberately left at home that evening; she had a date night with her husband, Markus Räikkönen, a former soccer player turned tech entrepreneur. The couple had dinner with friends, stopped by a cocktail bar near the Helsinki harbor, and then went dancing at Butchers, a night club named to evoke New York City's meatpacking district.
Loneliness is by now widely recognized as a serious public health problem the world over. Research has robustly documented the across-the-board negative effects of loneliness and social isolation for both physical and mental health. A debate exists about the root causes of this so-called loneliness epidemic. Among the proposed culprits are some of the usual modern suspects including pervasive new technologies, as well as our modern, harried, and competitive lifestyle, with its high stress and workload demands.
The most extraordinary thing about Chinese director Lou Ye's An Unfinished Film (2024) is how ordinary it is, considering the attention it has garnered globally. In semi-documentary style, the 106-minute flick follows a film crew as they try to resurrect a 10-year-old project, and find themselves quarantined at a hotel near Wuhan, China, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
A family doctor accused of professional misconduct over his public comments on Covid-19 measures and restrictions had criticised "virtually every aspect of the State's response to the pandemic," a medical inquiry has heard.
Zhang Zhan, who was released from prison in May 2024 after serving four years behind bars, is expected to go on trial on Friday at the Shanghai Pudong New Area people's courtfor picking quarrels and provoking trouble, a catch-all term used to target government critics. Antoine Bernard, a director of advocacy and assistance for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a press freedom NGO, said Zhang's trial this week was not only prosecution, it's persecution.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices starts meeting today to discuss vaccine recommendations. The committee's decisions have a significant influence on who will have access to COVID vaccines this fall and whether babies get vaccinated against Hepatitis B. Many health and medical experts are paying close attention to what comes from the meeting because the Trump administration recently changed all of the committee members.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to questions seeking details to a newly posted agenda. But some public health experts are worried that the votes will at a minimum raise unwarranted new questions about vaccines in the minds of parents. Perhaps even more consequential would be a vote that restricts a government program from paying for vaccines for low-income families.
