Globe: A B.C. city put a family doctor on the payroll to address a shortage. Now, many physicians want in
The City of Colwood on B.C’s Vancouver Island hired its first family physician under a municipal funding model, which will see doctors receive paid vacation and parental leave, medical benefits and a defined pension from the municipal pension plan as city employees do.
Globe: Canada sees drop in number of family physicians for the first time in decades, study finds
The number of family physicians in Canada declined last year for the first time since the mid-1990s, a downturn that happened as rapid population growth and a rising number of elderly, chronically ill patients were already straining the primary-care system.
Although the reduction in head count was small – there were 28 fewer family doctors in the country in 2023 than in 2022 – it works out to a nearly 3-per-cent drop in family physicians per capita because the population expanded significantly at the same time, according to new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
Timber Bigfoot, a member of the Prophet River First Nation, whose territory extends to the park, volunteered with local search and rescue, telling search managers he had lived off the grid in the Redfern Lake area for several years and walked these trails his whole life.
Mr. Bigfoot said he spoke with Ms. Crocker every day for more than a week at the height of the search, and every few days for a period afterward. He asked what gear Mr. Benastick had, to which she replied a hatchet, some fire starter, two jars of peanut butter, two small tarps and a backpack, he said.
NYT: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Will Attempt the Closest Ever Pass of the Sun’s Surface
On Dec. 24 at 6:53 a.m. Eastern time, the Parker Solar Probe, a NASA spacecraft, will pass within 3.8 million miles of the sun’s surface, more than seven times closer than any previous mission has. While surfing across the corona, the sun’s outer atmosphere, Parker will surpass the blistering speed of 430,000 miles per hour, breaking its own record as the fastest object ever made by humans.
UPI: AI model achieves human level performance on general intelligence test
A new artificial intelligence (AI) model has just achieved human-level results on a test designed to measure “general intelligence”.
On December 20, OpenAI’s o3 system scored 85% on the ARC-AGI benchmark, well above the previous AI best score of 55% and on par with the average human score. It also scored well on a very difficult mathematics test.
In unrelated news, average voter fails to achieve human level performance on general intelligence test.
BBC: Denmark boosts Greenland defence after Trump repeats desire for US control
The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.
Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).
He described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate”. On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an “absolute necessity” for the US.
Trump flexing his expansionist muscles (Greenland, Panama, Canada), following his idol Vlad!
Last Updated: 24.Dec.2024 17:28 EST
