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AMA (NSW) President Dr Michael Bonning will tell the inquiry he has witnessed firsthand the harms tobacco products and vapes cause to patients and the new laws are a good start to discourage people from smoking and vaping.

The AMA supports the changes to the legislation, as they include evidence-based measures to revitalise Australias tobacco and vaping control measures to protect Australians from harm, Dr Bonning said.

These include new measures around rotating health warnings, standardising packaging and terms that can be used.

Australia has made so much progress in tobacco control over the past few decades, but tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death and disability. More needs to be done to crack down on tobacco sponsorship and implement the retail ban on vapes.

The AMA supports changes that will bring e-cigarettes in line with tobacco advertising restrictions. The AMA also supports the Bills restrictions on social media marketing that targets individuals based on algorithms.

Dr Bonning, who chairs the AMAs Public Health Committee, will tell the inquiry, that the AMA does not support political parties accepting sponsorship from tobacco or e-cigarette companies and calls on all parties to refuse to enter arrangements that clearly compromise government policy making on public health matters.

The AMA calls for all political parties to stop accepting sponsorship from the tobacco industry because this clearly compromises government policy making on public health matters.

Proposed vaping reforms are critical including a retail ban on all vapes and are an overdue change to protect younger people from becoming addicted to nicotine.

Australia needs to protect younger people from addiction to vaping and not make the same mistakes it made around tobacco use in the past. It took decades for the health harms of tobacco to come to light, with the powerful tobacco industry disputing the evidence and relentlessly promoting their addictive products.

We are seeing the same tactics play out today with vapes, hooking new generations on to nicotine by marketing directly to younger people and downplaying the health harms.

See more here:
The AMA welcomes bill to tighten tobacco and vaping laws - Australian Medical Association

November 1, 2023 1:37 PM

This winter, The City of Red Deer is piloting changes to the snow and ice control program that emphasizes restoring mobility sooner and providing safe, accessible and well-maintained transportation infrastructure for all.

To improve mobility and responsiveness, residential streets will now be included in The Citys 24-hour snow and ice control operations. Previously, residential plowing was completed weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

We have heard from the community that they want residential streets completed sooner, said Greg Sikora, Manager of Parks and Public Works. By expanding our operations to 24/7, we will be able to clear Green and Grey Routes within seven days individually, which is an improvement from the previous average of 24 plus days to complete.

Once residential plowing is triggered, short-term, 24-hour per day parking restrictions will be implemented along residential routes. These restrictions will be enforced through ticketing and towing on both Green and Grey routes. Red Deerians will be notified of parking restrictions in a number of ways: Crews will place No Parking signs on every impacted street a minimum of 12 hours in advance of plowing, Residents can search their address via the mapping tool on The Citys website at reddeer.ca/snow, Residents will be alerted through Notify Red Deer, and Updates will be shared on The Citys social media channels.

Other improvements include increased service levels to the current trail clearing program, including an additional 25 km of the Waskasoo asphalt trail network, 10 new locations of shale trail and staircase clearing, and 68 more kilometres of neighbourhood asphalt trail clearing.

These networks will be cleared within three to six days, improving pedestrian and cyclist experience. Similarly, transit stops will also be cleared more quickly.

Changes to the overall program will focus on increasing the presence and effectiveness of pre-treating, plowing and sanding equipment on major arterials, hills and bridges before, during and after snowfall.

To address icy driving conditions and provide greater traction control, we will be more aggressively sanding and salting our major roadways and high-risk spots, said Sikora.

In June 2023, Council adopted the revised Integrated and Accessible Transportation Policy (IAATP), which focuses on providing the community with mobility services based on four guiding principles: safe, accessible, well-maintained and accountable.

The City is also launching a public consultation process on residential snow clearing operations. Residents are invited to provide input on the residential program, and how we can better meet the needs of the community throughout the winter. At the end of the program, all responses will be analyzed and summarized in a report. City Council will then review the findings to inform future snow clearing policies and operations. Visit engage.reddeer.ca to learn more.

For more information about the new snow and ice program, visit http://www.reddeer.ca/snow.

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Read more from the original source:
News Room: City of Red Deer announces pilot snow and ice control ... - The City of Red Deer

The El Nino weather pattern means Victorians can expect a hotter and drier summer than recent years, and communities should begin preparing their properties and creating a Bushfire Survival Plan.

CFA District 18 Assistant Chief Fire Officer Gavin Wright said conditions across the Mallee are rapidly drying out.

Over recent weeks weve seen a number of private burn-offs escape, requiring local CFA brigades to be called out to assist the landowner to bring the burn-off back under control, ACFO Wright said.

Were urging residents and farmers to complete their fire prevention activities and property preparation ahead of the FDP, but to make safety a priority when doing so.

Be sure to register your burn-off, check local conditions on the day, as well as coming days and have enough water and people on hand should you need it.

While CFAs 52,000 members are poised to respond and support communities this bushfire season, theyre urging people to use common sense and take responsibility for preventing fires.

Residents in District 18 are asked to take this opportunity ahead of the FDP to clean up their properties.

Those conducting burn-offs must notify authorities online at the Fire Permits Victoria website (www.firepermits.vic.gov.au), or by calling ESTA on 1800 668 511.

By registering your burn-off online, you allow emergency call takers to allocate more of their time taking calls from people who need emergency assistance immediately.

No burning off is permitted during the FDP without a Permit to Burn, which can be applied for through the Fire Permits Victoria website.

There are very strict conditions attached to these permits and the liability sits with the permit holder to ensure they always act safely.

Fire Danger Period information:

The rest is here:
Fire restrictions announced for Buloke - News & Media

"For the last two decades, our social networking and social media platforms have been universes unto themselves," writes the Verge's editor-at-large: Each has its own social graph, charting who you follow and who follows you. Each has its own feed, its own algorithms, its own apps, and its own user interfaces (though they've all pretty much landed on the same aesthetics over time). Each also has its own publishing tools, its own character limits, its own image filters. Being online means constantly flitting between these places and their ever-shifting sets of rules and norms. Now, though, we may be at the beginning of a new era. Instead of a half-dozen platforms competing to own your entire life, apps like Mastodon, Bluesky, Pixelfed, Lemmy, and others are building a more interconnected social ecosystem.

If this ActivityPub-fueled change takes off, it will break every social network into a thousand pieces. All posts, of all types, will be separated from their platforms. We'll get new tools for creating those posts, new tools for reading them, new tools for organizing them, and new tools for moderating them and sharing them and remixing them and everything else besides. He's talking about a decades-old concept called POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. ("Sometimes the P is also 'Post,' and the E can be 'Elsewhere.' The idea is the same either way." The idea is that you, the poster, should post on a website that you own. Not an app that can go away and take all your posts with it, not a platform with ever-shifting rules and algorithms. Your website. But people who want to read or watch or listen to or look at your posts can do that almost anywhere because your content is syndicated to all those platforms... [Y]our blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet. The article argues that for now, "the best we have are tools like Micro.blog, a six-year-old platform for cross-posters." But the article ultimately envisions a future with not just new posting tools, but also new reading tools "with different ideas about how to display and organize posts."

Link:
Will The Future See Interconnected Social Media Platforms? - Slashdot

There will be changed traffic conditions from Sunday 12 November on Cumberland Highway, Fairfield West for the installation of a red light speed camera.

Over a five-year period between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2021, 20 crashes were reported at this intersection with 21 casualties reported, 7 serious.

The camera will be installed to monitor northbound traffic at the Cumberland Highway and Thorney Road intersection as part of the Saving Lives Accelerated Program.

Work will take place over eight night shifts and five day shifts between 12 November and 17 December, weather permitting.

During the day we will work between 7am and 5pm. At night we will work between 7pm and 5am the next day. We will not work more than two night shifts in any week.

Road Users are advised to drive to these conditions and follow the directions of signs and traffic control.

Transport for NSW thanks the community for their patience during this time.

For the latest traffic updates download the Live Traffic NSW App, visit livetraffic.com or call 132 701.

Read the original post:
Red light speed camera installation on Cumberland Highway in ... - Transport for NSW