Iran has limited the provision of family planning services at state-run hospitals as it tries to boost its population size.

Vasectomies will no longer be carried out at state-run medical centres and contraceptives will only be offered to women whose health might be at risk.

Such services will, however, still be provided at private hospitals.

The government has become concerned about fewer births and an increasingly ageing population.

Annual population growth has dropped below 1% and, if no action is taken, Iran could become one of the world’s oldest countries in the next 30 years, the health ministry says.

Just two years ago, the country was recorded as having population growth of 1.4%. The rate in neighbouring Iraq was 2.3% and 1.8% in Saudi Arabia, according to World Bank data.

Marriage and children within marriage are both in decline, Iran’s state-run news agency Irna reports, largely because of economic hardship.

Last month, Deputy Health Minister Seyed Hamed Barakati reported that the marriage rate had dropped by 40% in a decade.

“With this trend, we will be one of the oldest countries in the world in the next 30 years,” he said.

Iran enjoyed a population boom after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 but went to on implement an effective population control policy.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been calling for people to have more children, saying he wants the current population population of 80 million to grow to 150 million.

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What does the phase 2 reopening mean for me? 

That’s the question many British Columbians have been grappling with since the province slipped out of the worst days of the pandemic. 

With the last few months having starved many of us of human interaction — the shared meals, laughs and simple comfort of being around friends and family — picking and choosing who gets into our new social bubble has become a tricky balance.

And nowhere have the stakes of that decision been more clear than when provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry revealed yesterday the isolation of an outbreak that erupted at a family dinner in the Fraser Health region, of which the Tri-Cities is a part. 

Of the 30 people at the gathering, 15 had become infected. As CBC’s Justin McElroy recently pointed out on Twitter, we’re at a point in British Columbia “where close to half of all covid cases in the last week are because a family thought a 30-person party where people went inside and outside was a-ok.”

And while that can just as well be read as a sign of how low the province’s caseload has sunk, for Dr. Bonnie Henry, it’s also forewarns of the danger of becoming too complacent. 

“That is a warning sign to us all,” said Henry Tuesday. “It is not that somebody intentionally brings that into their community, to their loved ones, to their family.”

Henry’s warning comes at a time when the virus continues to peak across the globe, ravaging countries like Brazil and Peru, the latter of which took early and decisive action again the pandemic.

More than seven million cases of COVID-19 have been reported to the World Health Organization, and over 400,000 deaths. In the countries showing positive cases, complacency is the biggest threat, according to the organization.

But no matter what country the pandemic is raging in, “we are all connected,” Henry said.

“We know from several months ago that it matters to us when something like this happens in China,” she said. “It matters to us when something happens in Italy, in Spain. It matters to us when it happens in the United States and here in Canada.”

“I want everyone to understand that the COVID-19 pandemic around us is far from over.” 

— with files from Glen Korstrom and Cindy E. Harnett

© Copyright Tri-City News

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigned from the company’s board last week in an effort to push the platform to become more diverse. Reddit on Wednesday made good on its promise to hire a black board member, appointing Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel. 

On Thursday, Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit in 2005 with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz, told CBS This Morning that leaving the company was a “hard decision,” but that he did it for his his 2-year-old daughter and his wife, tennis pro Serena Williams. (Editors’ note: CNET and CBS This Morning are both part of ViacomCBS.)

“Reddit was my first child. I started it right out of college,” Ohanian told CBS This Morning. “But looking inward, it was a hard decision until it was a really easy one … when I remembered that my greatest creation is not and never will be Reddit. It’s my daughter, and I want her to be proud of her father.”

Ohanian announced his resignation from the Reddit board on June 5, urging the company to fill his seat with a black candidate. His resignation followed criticism of Reddit on June 2 from former CEO Ellen Pao for “amplifying” racism and hate. In a blog post Friday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the platform will also change its content policy to “explicitly address hate.”

“I think if we follow this drumbeat of support, both offline and online, I think we’re going to see more and more tech businesses in particular taking more responsibility over not just the content on their platforms, but also the diversity of their workforces,” Ohanian told CBS This Morning. 

The changes come as Black Lives Matter protests continue across the US and the globe, with people demonstrating against the recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, and against systemic racism. 

Black Lives Matter. Visit blacklivesmatters.carrd.co to learn how to donate, sign petitions and protest safely.

We love the clean lines and bold color palette that Fermob’s outdoor furniture collections always bring to the table, so we’re excited to introduce you to the latest additions to their family. From aluminum tables that wouldn’t be amiss in an art gallery, to a lounge chair and footrest that can be used indoors or out, these pieces stand strong in the aesthetic that the company is known for.

The Bebop family is expanding with the addition of several minimal, airy, versatile tables that can be put to use in just about any room you can think of. Designed by Tristan Lohner and made of 100% aluminum, Bebop tables are super light and ready to stand up to just about every climate condition. Group them together in various sizes for a custom arrangement, choosing from all 24 shades of Fermob’s color chart.

The Lorette collection, a collaboration with designer Frédéric Sofia, blends French garden furniture with a resort style feel. The motifs are inspired by mashrabiya latticework, and similar to the concept of canework in traditional garden gates. The series includes a steel framed folding chair and folding table with detailed perforated steel sheets, with both designed specifically for outdoor use and offered in Fermob’s entire color palette.

Initially created for the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, the Luxembourg collection has become iconic in its own right. The aluminum series has Frédéric Sofia to thank for reinterpreting the chairs and armchairs that were originally designed in 1923, with a result that combines the lightness and resistance of aluminum with the comfort of curved seat slats. The new stools come in two sizes, a dining height stool and a stackable high chair.

Fermob turned to the GuggenbichlerDesign team to create a cousin to their existing Surprising Chair in the Surprising collection, a steel version called Surprising Teak. They also partnered with Vlaemynck, a long-standing expert in teak, to bring this sturdy, warm piece to life. It, along with the matching Surprising Teak Footrest, have been treated for the outdoors but would look great as an indoor lounge chair as well.

Read more about Fermob’s design philosophy here.

You can find and purchase all of these new Fermob offerings via a retailer.

In 2011, Rodney Brossart, a cattle rancher from Lakota, North Dakota was accused of stealing six cows. The cows, he said, simply wandered on to his 3,000-acre farm, and by his estimation, they, therefore, belonged to him. When the cops came, he and his family were prepared. Armed with high power rifles, they engaged in a 16-hour standoff with police.

Apparently at an impasse, the Grand Forks Police Department SWAT team called in a favor from federal immigration agents at Customs and Border Protection, requesting to use one of the agency’s MQ-9 Reaper drones—also known as the Predator B—to pinpoint Brossart’s location on the ranch. When the SWAT team, assisted by aerial surveillance from the drone, stormed the house and arrested Brossart, he became the first U.S. citizen to be arrested using intel gathered from a drone.

Over nearly a decade since that standoff, the details of CBP’s drone operations have been vague. Previous reporting and public documents suggest that the agency operates a fleet of 10 Predator drones that are legally permitted to patrol within 100 air miles of the border—CBP also asserts the power to do so within 100 miles of any port of entry, like an international airport—but little is known about how often or in what circumstances CBP decides to use them.

Indeed, CBP has gone to lengths to keep the public in the dark about its use of drone aircraft—flight data for its fleet doesn’t appear on many commercial databases, and the agency is light on specifics when it comes to who is being surveilled and why, only touting the results as evidence of a need for an ever-greater security envelope across the country. The agency has simultaneously tried to assert sweeping powers based on dubious legal authority. In some cases, such as warrantless searches of electronic devices on the border, CBP has lost. On other fronts, such as its tactical team deployments for immigration sweeps in cities across the country, broad powers to stop and search individuals within the border zone, and profiling and abuse, the agency has yet to be reined in.

To better understand how CBP uses its fleet of Predators, Gizmodo mapped and analyzed one year’s worth of flight data from seven of the 10 Predators in CBP’s fleet. The data, obtained through Tampa-based flight tracking company RadarBox, reveals that since June of 2019, these seven drones have completed more than 150 flights—patrolling the southern and northern borders, zig-zagging over politically active indigenous lands, and circling the skies over cities small and large—some of them far outside the U.S.

Gizmodo has also published the searchable map that we used to do some of our analysis. While our database of drone flight logs is only partial, it is perhaps the most detailed picture of how CBP uses these controversial surveillance aircraft to date, and we hope it sheds a public light on the agency’s practices.

CBP drones are operated by a subsidiary agency called Air and Marine Operations (AMO) and are allowed to conduct warrantless surveillance in publicly navigable airspace within 100 miles of the air border. They are flown by AMO pilots, including when they are loaned out to other agencies. (CBP has, on occasion, itself asked to loan out unmanned military aircraft.) Critics have questioned whether the drones are actually cost-effective for their stated purpose of border interdiction. In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General pegged the cost of each unit at $17 million and operating costs at $12,555 per hour, including “pilots, equipment, and overhead.”

That same year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published documents showing that CBP had loaned its Predator drones out to other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies around 700 times from 2010 to 2012; CBP had previously released documents claiming the number was under 500. CBP continued to withhold the names of many state and local police entities it had coordinated with, claiming it could compromise operations.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Intercept showed that CBP loaned drones to state and local law enforcement on 15 occasions, and 53 times to federal agencies, from July 2016 to August 2017. Those documents only contained, however, dates and durations of flights alongside the agency it was coordinated with. Other information suggested, and CBP confirmed to the Intercept, that a drone was used to monitor protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 to protect police equipment.

Drone loans have important ramifications for how local police departments handle protests, providing capabilities for live surveillance of standoff situations, as well as tracking suspects, vehicles, and suspected weaponry. In particular, police departments in expansive rural areas sometimes find themselves under financial pressure to use drones rather than fly their own helicopters or fixed-wing air units.

Last week, Motherboard reported that CBP drones routinely fly over American cities—including Minneapolis during widespread protests against racist police brutality and the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. CBP issued a statement saying the drone was intended to lend “situational awareness” to other authorities, though it didn’t clarify who it was acting in coordination with.

Our data show that along the northern U.S. border, CBP may have participated in several additional local law enforcement operations in recent months. Its flights along the northern border typically followed a westbound route from Pembina, North Dakota, to the edge of Montana. But on April 30, a CBP drone with the call sign CBP104—the same drone that surveilled protests in Minneapolis—spent four hours circling Fargo around the vicinity of North Dakota State University. While it is unclear why authorities sent the drone there, Fargo Police have leased drones from CBP in the past. In 2017, the Fargo Police Department enlisted CBP’s drones to conduct electronic surveillance of a suspect in a murder case.

In another detour away from the northern border, on February 21, CBP216, stationed in Grand Forks, spent hours looping around indigenous land in Minnesota that had previously been the site of sustained resistance to tar-sands pipelines. Surveillance of indigenous water protectors is not unprecedented. CBP confirmed to the Intercept that a drone was used to monitor protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 to protect police equipment; according to the Guardian, authorities discussed using drones as part of a crackdown on the Keystone XL pipeline protests in 2017 and 2018.

Half of all drone flights this year were likely to conduct surveillance along the southern U.S. border. Four CBP drones returned regularly to the southern border to fly the same route multiple dozens of times in the last year—only occasionally breaking the route to circle border cities like Laredo, Texas. Our data show drones at the southern border routinely patrolling sparsely populated areas of the desert, methodically sweeping the skies in flight paths that resemble freshly mowed lawns.

According to a 2015 document published by the Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute, since early 2013, the Predator fleet has been used to patrol remote sections of the southern border where the agency suspects illegal activity may be occurring. In such scenarios, the document claims, a Predator with “high-resolution sensors” returns multiple times to an isolated stretch of the border “in order to detect small changes in the landscape like tire tracks.” These sensors are likely Raytheon Multi-Spectral Targeting System or Northrup Grumman Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER), “a system that can detect vehicles and individuals at long ranges and against a high degree of background clutter.”

Interestingly, however, our data also show that CBP doesn’t always stick within the borders its tasked to protect. From February 6 to March 20, CBP213 conducted 20 operations in Panama’s airspace, focusing on islands and small towns in the Gulf of Panama. These operations appear to be part of CBP’s Air and Marine Operations, which, according to promotional material, run counterdrug operations from their “primary site” in Panama City. According to CBP, Panama City “sits between the two cocaine smuggling routes that move approximately 84 percent of all cocaine destined for the United States.” The operations were publicized on the AMO Twitter feed.

“This is a piece of the puzzle,” Dave Maass, a senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said of Gizmodo’s map. “We need more information on these flights, especially since local law enforcement and drone companies are exploring new and frightening forms of persistent aerial surveillance that could harm privacy throughout the country.”

If you know of any CBP or local law enforcement operations that might match up with flight times seen in our map, let us know at [email protected] and [email protected]

Family cellphone plans are supposed to make life easier. They’re meant to save you money and help you manage your family’s data usage, but many family plans fall short. That’s not always the case though. Tello is a little different.

With Tello, there are no one-size-fits-all family plans. Everything and everyone’s plan is customizable. What makes switching to Tello so easy?

Every modern phone is compatible with Tello

Source: iMore

The biggest expense when moving carriers is the investment in new hardware. Buying a fancy new phone for yourself is costly enough, but it takes a giant chunk out of your funds when you must pick out a phone for everyone on your plan.

When you switch to Tello, this isn’t a worry. If you own a modern unlocked device or a CDMA phone that’s compatible with Sprint, you’re good to go. It doesn’t matter if you have an Android device or an iPhone.

Family plans are customizable

Source: iMore

You’ve probably gone through the trouble of signing up for a family plan before and quickly realized that it’s not always a cost-efficient or user-friendly experience. When one person hoards all the data on your family plan, the rest have to suffer with reduced data speeds or worse, no data at all. Generally, if you want to change your plan to accommodate more users or to bump up your data, you incur another fee to upgrade.

Tello offers you a multitude of family plan options, and if you decide you need to make changes to that plan in the future, you can do it on the fly for free. Yes, you can make endless adjustments and tweak your plan at no cost.

And paying your monthly bill is easy too. Pay every line on your Tello family plan with one bank card, or split them up between accounts and users. How you use and pay for your family plan with Tello is entirely up to you.

Source: Tello

To get started, decide how many lines you need with Tello, and then scroll through the available family plans. You can add loads of data to your plan, no data and unlimited talk and text to Mom’s phone, or go with a set amount of data for the kids. Mix and match to your heart’s content.

Source: Tello

Ready-made plans for your family are available too. Choose a plan designed for grandparents, teens, students, or parents. Family plans start at only $9/month, and all plans come with 4G LTE, free hotspot and tethering, and the ability to share your data plan balance with other devices on the same plan.

Tello perks

We’ve all experienced a shockingly high phone bill after we add a supposed low-cost extra. Tello offers a different way to stay connected and cut costs. All the following extras are included free of charge with Tello family plans:

• Free unlimited texting
• 4G LTE
• Free hotspot
• Free tethering
• Free downgrades/upgrades
• Free calls to Canada, Mexico, and China
• Simple account management
• No surprise fees

There are no contracts with Tello. If you need to use Tello temporarily while you’re on vacation, you can do that. Simply cancel when you return. Want to jump on the Tello bandwagon with the whole family longterm? You can do that too. With Tello, you have total control of your bill and your plan.

We created this content as part of a paid partnership with Tello. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect our editorial opinion.

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