B-C provincial health officer Doctor Bonnie Henry is scheduled to provide an update this afternoon on the province's respiratory illness season.
It's Henry's first update of 2024 and she'll be joined by Health Minister Adrian Dix.
The most recent information from the province's centre for disease control says that in late December Influenza A and R-S-V cases were on the rise.
The centre said at the time that COVID-19 numbers were remaining stable or decreasing since early November.
Sharp-eyed mariners on a Canadian vessel have rescued a U.S. man, one day after the United States Coast Guard ended its search for a commercial fishing boat from Washington state with two people aboard. U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Strohmaier says crew aboard the Canadian fish boat Ocean Sunset spotted a life-raft drifting in open ocean far west of Vancouver Island on Thursday.
Canada's ambassador to the United Nations is expected to speak later today about a UN effort to establish a temporary pause in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Bob Rae will take the podium on Day 2 of a special emergency session of the UN General Assembly as delegates debate a draft resolution calling for a pause in hostilities.
The Canada Border Services Agency issued Thursday an "armed and dangerous" alert to officers stationed along the Canada-U.S. border, warning them to be on the lookout for the man suspected of fatally shooting 18 people in southern Maine. The shootings were reported Wednesday night in Lewiston, about 260 kilometres southwest of the New Brunswick border.
An Oregon man has been sentenced to 20 years in a U.S. federal prison for sexually exploiting three British Columbia children. RCMP say 37-year-old Kevin McCarty of Happy Valley, Ore., used social media to stalk the children online, then coerced them into making and sharing sexually explicit photos and videos of themselves.
A Vancouver "compassion club" that had been funded by the British Columbia government has been raided by police over alleged drug trafficking. Vancouver police said Thursday that search warrants were served at the Downtown Eastside offices of the Drug User Liberation Front, and two homes linked to the investigation.
Canada's allegations about India's links to the killing of activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar have significantly bolstered vocal support for the movement calling for an independent Sikh state, said organizers of an upcoming referendum. The group Sikhs For Justice is scheduled to hold a second round of voting for its unofficial referendum on Khalistan — referring to an independent Sikh state in India — on Sunday at the gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., where Nijjar was shot on June 18.