Ontario Unprepared for Looming Fentanyl Crisis: Here’s What We’re Reading Today
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Here’s what we’re reading today:
1. Ontario facing an ‘imminent’ fentanyl crisis
“A surge in bootleg fentanyl overdoses in western Canada and in northern U.S. states is now on Ontario’s doorstep as the country’s most populous province faces an imminent public health crisis for which it is woefully unprepared, organizations involved in drug issues are warning.
“The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council are among four groups set to issue an advisory on illicit fentanyl in Ontario’s drug supply Monday.”
2. The secret courts that rule the world
“This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.
“These trade pacts have become a flashpoint in the US presidential campaign. But an 18-month BuzzFeed News investigation, spanning three continents and involving more than 200 interviews and tens of thousands of documents, many of them previously confidential, has exposed an obscure but immensely consequential feature of these trade treaties, the secret operations of these tribunals, and the ways that business has co-opted them to bring sovereign nations to heel.”
3. Facebook replaced human news curators with an algorithm, and it’s already a total mess
“Last Friday, Facebook announced ‘An Update To Trending.’ The service’s two-year-old news curation feature, which was previously run by contractors, was going to become “more automated.” It would “no longer require people to write descriptions for trending topics.
“The update has had a couple of immediate effects: somewhere between 15 and 18 contractors lost their jobs, and a fake story about Fox News host Megyn Kelly quickly made its way into the Trending section over the weekend. Whoops!”
+1: From Nieman Lab: What does this mean for news?
+1: Welcome to the maddening world of false equivalence journalism.
4. ‘Sent from my iPhone’
“Once considered a crass way of showing off, now the sign-off is a nod of acknowledgement that we are doing the best we can.”
5. Why aren’t young people buying bars of soap anymore?
“Let’s fight about soap. What’s there to discuss, you ask? Plenty, if new consumer research is to be believed. Apparently, there is a serious ideological divide when it comes to bar soap and the people who put it on their bodies. For one, bar soap sales are declining. What was once a staple of our daily ablutions is being eclipsed by fancy-pants body washes and other cleaning options.”
