Vienna – The possibility of “voluntary basic military service” for women is intended to increase the proportion of women in the armed forces. To date, female soldiers have only been able to enter a cadre career (officer, non-commissioned officer) including an aptitude test, but from April there should be the possibility of an orientation phase that is equivalent to basic military service, explained Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner (ÖVP) on the occasion of Women’s Day.
The planned arrival this spring of a cohort of 50 foreign nurses to come and lend a hand to the Gaspésie health network has been postponed due to a lack of available accommodation to accommodate them.
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As elsewhere, the shortage of caregivers is hitting the region hard, far from major centers.
“There is a significant lack of staff here, we are talking regarding 100 nurses”, underlines the spokesperson for the CISSS de la Gaspésie Lou Landry.
Last fall, a first wave of 38 nurses from Africa set foot on Gaspé soil to help meet labor needs.
Recruited by the Government of Quebec, these newcomers are currently completing refresher training for a few months, following which they will be able to reinforce local health care personnel.
Behind the scenes work
But the second cohort of around fifty nurses from Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin and Algeria will not arrive as planned in April.
The arrival of the long-awaited caregivers, some of whom are accompanied by their spouse or family, has been postponed until the fall due to the glaring lack of housing.
“It’s a great solution that meets a need for us, but which brings its share of challenges, especially housing,” agrees Lou Landry.
He points out that the CISSS is currently working with municipalities and MRCs to find a solution.
The publicist does not hide that the same problem arose last fall, with the first foreign arrivals.
“Everyone had a roof over their heads, but there were some who stayed in hostels for a while to ensure a transition when they arrived. We had made an appeal to the population to try to stimulate a little, to make the housing offers spring up a little. »
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Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette.
Appetite of the regions
On a tour to measure the interest of the regions for newcomers, Minister Christine Fréchette stopped in Gaspé.
She notes that several corners of the province have “an appetite like never before” to welcome immigrants.
But a keen interest in newcomers is not enough. We must also be able to meet the needs of these people, argues the Minister of Immigration.
“It must be said how limited the reception capacity can be, she underlines. We can’t tell people to live an hour away from Gaspé and come to work every morning, when they don’t have a car, there’s no public transit, there are two taxis in the city of Gaspé, we have no choice but to take that into consideration! »
More immigrants in the regions, but no increase in thresholds
The Legault government is in favor of the regionalization of immigration. But more new arrivals in the regions does not mean that the immigration thresholds should be raised, according to Minister Christine Fréchette.
The latter is currently on tour to take the pulse of the field in view of the consultations aimed at determining the number of immigrants that Quebec will welcome in the coming years.
A parliamentary commission which will not be held before the second half of 2023, she told our Parliamentary Office.
Due to labor needs, the Minister of Immigration admits that a lowering of the thresholds would be “surprising”.
If his government does not close the door to an increase, it does not rule out renewing the current level of immigration, set at 52,500 foreigners per year.
75% in Montreal
“It is not because there are more of them who go to the regions that we are increasing the thresholds. We can distribute the pie differently, there may be a little less in Montreal, a little more in the regions, ”she says.
Currently, 75% of newcomers choose Montreal to settle and work.
Quebec gets only 4%-5% of immigration, and the Gaspé, a meager 1%.
“There is a gap at the moment, it is not representative of the weight of the different regions, the distribution that we have of immigration. If we start to restore that, the balance will be different, but there once more, people have to be able [d’] to welcome [les nouveaux arrivants] adequately and to support them,” argues Christine Fréchette.
EFE
March 2, 2023
Washington, (EFE).- The United States Department of Justice considered this Thursday that the former president of the country Donald Trump (2017-2021) can be sued for having incited the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
According to a brief from the Justice Department’s civil law division registered today in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and collected by the US media, Trump “does not have absolute immunity” from civil lawsuits filed by police officers and members of Congress who seek hold him responsible for the physical and psychological damage suffered by those events.
The Justice Department lawyers understand that the official responsibilities of the president do not include incitement to violence, such as the one that took place on January 6 in the speech that Trump gave to a crowd in front of the White House, when in Congress, the victory in the presidential elections of Democrat Joe Biden was officially ratified.
A panel of three judges from the Court of Appeals must decide whether three multiple lawsuits filed by police officers and congressmen once morest the former president, whom they accuse of having incited the events of January 6, 2021, can go ahead.
Said panel heard the oral arguments of this case in December but also asked the Justice Department for its opinion, included in the document registered today and that it considers that the condition of Trump’s president at the time of the assault does not give him immunity from these lawsuits.
Trump has asked to dismiss lawsuits
The former president’s lawyers asked the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss the lawsuits on the grounds that the speech Trump gave that day in front of the White House was part of his job.
They argued that the president is “undoubtedly immune” from any civil liability when delivering a speech on a “matter of public concern.”
But Justice Department lawyers refuted that theory in their document on Thursday.
Thus, they recognized that speaking regarding an issue that concerns society is indeed part of the “traditional function” of the president, but, they stressed, said function “does not include incitement to imminent violence,” such as the one that occurred following his speech with the assault on Congress by hundreds of supporters of the then president.
World, Cover America
USA, Justice
Around 13,500 people with multiple sclerosis live in Austria. With treatment options that have become increasingly widespread over the past two decades, the question of an optimal long-term strategy arises. A domestic registry study has now demonstrated clear advantages for patients with relapsing forms of MS when using highly effective immunological therapies.
Specialists in neurology from the medical universities in Vienna, Graz and Innsbruck and the university clinics in Linz and Salzburg were involved in the study. The study data came from the Austrian MS Treatment Registry (AMSTR). The question was which drug treatment for relapsing multiple sclerosis following initial therapy with beta-interferon or glatiramer acetate is routinely most effective outside of clinical trials.
The two drugs have been in use since the mid-1990s and in previous studies reduced the MS relapse rate by around a third. Blocking off acute phases and preventing further such crises are the focus of MS therapy, because each flare-up of the disease can be associated with a greater permanent disability.
In the introduction to their study, the authors under Michael Guger (Steyr Hospital and Kepler University Linz) emphasize the further advances in MS therapy following the “platform” substances beta interferon and glatiramer acetate anti-inflammatory drug dimethyl fumarate and teriflunomide, originally used in rheumatism therapy, reduced the annual MS relapse rate by 44 to 53 percent and 32 to 36 percent, respectively, compared to placebo. Both agents are used for the therapy of mild to moderate forms of MS.
therapies in comparison
If there are two or more episodes of the disease per year, one speaks of severe MS. In the past two decades, new principles of action have been developed with highly immunologically active substances such as fingolimod (originally from transplantation medicine), ozanimod, cladribine (chemotherapeutic agent) or the monoclonal antibodies natalizumab, alemtuzumab or ocrelizumab and approved for the treatment of rapidly progressing multiple sclerosis. So far, however, scientific evidence as to which alternatives should be used if the “platform” therapy is not effective has been limited.
In their work, which was published in the Journal of Neurology at the beginning of March, the Austrian experts therefore compared the data of 669 MS patients from the therapy registry who, from 2006 onwards, were treated “horizontally” by interferon beta or glatiramer acetate to treatment with dimethyl fumarate or teriflunomide had switched, with 800 patients who were switched “vertically” to one of the highly active immunological therapies. The results were quite clear: With a “horizontal” change in therapy, there was an average annual relapse rate of 0.39 such episodes. “Vertical” switching to the highly effective therapies reduced the annual relapse rate to less than half (0.17).
Overall, according to one of the statistical evaluations, relapses occurred 86 percent less frequently when switching from basic therapy to demethyl fumarate or teriflunomide compared to the other drugs. Switching to the more effective therapies was also associated with an almost 80 percent reduction in the need for further treatment changes.