U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly rose to a three-month high in early April as optimism about job growth and wage expectations more than outweighed decades-high inflation.

Source: UMich Consumer Sentiment Unexpectedly Rises to Three-Month High – Bloomberg

The report, released Thursday by the children’s advocacy group FairPlay, found up to 20 million users are being fed content by just 90,000 accounts that promote restrictive diets and extreme weight loss. About one-third of those accounts are run by underage users.

“This is a world that Instagram creates by recommending who to follow and recommending people follow each other,” said Rhys Farthing, the report’s lead author who works as the data policy director at online safety advocate Reset Australia.

“What struck me the most is that this algorithm was created by humans. It didn’t arise fully formed like Aphrodite. And it would be so simple to just change the algorithm and pop this bubble … but we’re not seeing that happen, and it’s incredibly harmful to young people.”

Source: Instagram pro-eating disorder accounts reaching millions of users, many underage: report – National | Globalnews.ca

Canada was warned in 2012 by its own scientists that a virus was infecting both farmed and wild salmon, but successive governments ignored the expert advice, saying for years that risks to salmon were low.

Justin Trudeau’s government has said it will phase out open-pen industrial fish farms off the coast of British Columbia by 2025. But both his government and the previous Conservative government were in possession of a newly released report that linked large-scale farms and wild salmon to the highly contagious Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV).

In 2012, biologists with the department of fisheries and oceans investigated the presence of the virus, which has been found in both farmed and wild salmon. In March, a federal information commissioner ordered the report be released, after a multi-year access-to-information battle between the group Wild First, which opposes open-pen salmon farms, and the federal government. Details of the report were made public on Thursday by the Globe and Mail.

Kristi Miller-Saunders, a federal biologist and an author on the study, called the delay in releasing the report a “travesty” and said its omission has contributed to longstanding doubt over whether farmed salmon were infecting wild salmon.

PRV causes anemia and jaundice in farmed salmon. But in wild Chinook, whose numbers have collapsed in recent years, the virus is associated with a different disease which causes blood cells to rupture, leading to kidney and liver damage.

Source: Canada ignored warnings of virus infecting farmed and wild salmon | Canada | The Guardian

Source: ‘I’m shocked by my church leaders in Moscow’ – priest in Ukraine – BBC News

Source: Valneva vaccine: UK becomes first country to approve French biotech’s inactivated COVID jab | Euronews

On a spring morning, Sylvia Mendez walked into an eighth-grade history classroom in Santa Ana and began a talk she’d given hundreds of times before. At 85 years old, she held steady with a cane.

Her voice was soft but her message strong.

“Never get distracted,” she told the students in front of her. “You have to fight for what you want.”

Source: Sylvia Mendez carries torch of family’s fight for Latino students – Los Angeles Times

Source: Avian Flu Diary: Shanghai Sets New Record For `Confirmed’ COVID Cases As Xi Doubles Down

Source: Fourth COVID vaccine dose gives 76% added protection against death | CIDRAP