Massive fire destroys WW II-era hangar in Edmonton

Apr 22, 2024 7:38 PM PDT

Flames and smoke engulfed Edmonton's Second World War-era Hangar 11 as the historic building north of downtown was destroyed by fire Monday night.

Located at 109th Street and 117th Avenue, the building was on the site of the city's former municipal airport.

The large building at Edmonton's Blatchford development, located just west of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, was one of the last surviving structures of its kind.

The 7,400-square-metre hangar was constructed of wood and built in partnership with the U.S. military in 1942 as part of a critical channel to deliver aircraft and war materials to allied forces on the eastern front during the Second World War.

Ryan Lee, curator at the neighbouring Alberta Aviation Museum, watched a significant portion of the building collapse Monday night in disbelief.

"It's completely gutted, there is absolutely no saving it and I just watched it collapse about five minutes ago," Lee told CBC News. "It's pretty scary. There's very little original buildings left at the [former] airport here.

"It's pretty gutting to see it go."

A spokesperson for Edmonton Fire Rescue Services said the call for the fire came in around 6:56 p.m. There were a total of 11 crews on scene Monday night, with heavy smoke and flames visible throughout the evening. No injuries were reported.

As of Tuesday morning, the fire had not yet been called under control and crews remained at the scene

The fire, including cause and the total cost of the damage caused, remains under investigation.

"There's a lot of history in that building that we're not going to get back," Lee said.

Due to smoke from the fire, NAIT has temporarily closed its main campus. In a statement, school officials said poor air quality has been detected in its buildings and all students and non-essential staff are asked to stay away from the main campus on Tuesday.

Once the smoke dissipates, air quality assessments will be conducted to ensure classes can safely resume, school officials said in a statement Tuesday.

Jordon Ashley, who lives nearby, said he saw a lot of heavy smoke around 8 p.m. Monday and came to see what was happening

"[It's] the destruction of a historic building, honestly, I wish I could've visited it myself but I didn't have the chance," he said.

The airport was closed in 2013 for residential redevelopment and there were discussions that the building was going to be repurposed by a private company.

A website for the redevelopment describes it as "one of Edmonton's most exciting up and coming new development projects. A building rich in history, preserved, restored and modernized, to offer a world-class building where commercial and residential come together to build community."

Hangar 11 recently became a designated Municipal Heritage Resource.

The historic hangar was included on the National Trust for Canada's 2017 list of the country's 10 most endangered buildings.

Transit service was temporarily cancelled to the new NAIT-Blatchford Market LRT station during the fire, but has since resumed regular service.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/massive-fire-destroys-ww-ii-era-hangar-in-edmonton-1.7181793

Oracle is moving its world headquarters to Nashville to be closer to health-care industry

TUE, APR 23 20245:06 PM EDT

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said Tuesday that the company is moving its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, to be closer to a major health-care epicenter.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Bill Frist, a former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Ellison said Oracle is moving a “huge campus” to Nashville, “which will ultimately be our world headquarters.” He said Nashville is an established health center and a “fabulous place to live,” one that Oracle employees are excited about.

“It’s the center of the industry we’re most concerned about, which is the health-care industry,” Ellison said.

The announcement was seemingly spur-of-the-moment. “I shouldn’t have said that,” Ellison told Frist, a longtime health-care industry veteran who represented Tennessee in the Senate. The pair spoke during a fireside chat at the Oracle Health Summit in Nashville.

Shares of Oracle were mostly flat in extended trading Tuesday.

Oracle moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, in 2020. The company has been making a major push into health care in recent years, most notably with its $28 billion acquisition of the medical records software giant Cerner. Ellison said Tuesday that Oracle is relatively new to the health-care sector, but he believes the company has a “moral obligation” to solve problems facing the industry.

Nashville has been a major player in the health-care scene for decades, and the city is now home to a vibrant network of health systems, startups and investment firms. The city’s reputation as a health-care hub was catalyzed when HCA Healthcare, one of the first for-profit hospital companies in the U.S., was founded there in 1968.

HCA helped attract troves of health-care professionals to Nashville, and other organizations quickly followed suit. Oracle has been developing its new $1.2 billion campus in the city for about three years, according to The Tennessean.

“Our people love it here, and we think it’s the center of our future,” Ellison said.

Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/23/oracle-is-moving-its-world-hq-to-nashville.html

The Biden-Harris Administration Issues New Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy Under HIPAA

April 22, 2024

The Final Rule strengthens privacy protections for medical records and health information for women, their family members, and doctors who are seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating lawful reproductive health care.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration, through the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a Final Rule, entitled HIPAA Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy. The Final Rule strengthens the Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule by prohibiting the disclosure of protected health information (PHI) related to lawful reproductive health care in certain circumstances. HHS is issuing this Final Rule after hearing from communities that changes were needed to better protect patient confidentiality and prevent medical records from being used against people for providing or obtaining lawful reproductive health care. This Final Rule will bolster patient-provider confidentiality and help promote trust and open communication between individuals and their health care providers or health plans, which is essential for high-quality health care.

“Many Americans are scared their private medical information will be being shared, misused, and disclosed without permission. This has a chilling effect on women visiting a doctor, picking up a prescription from a pharmacy, or taking other necessary actions to support their health,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “The Biden-Harris Administration is providing stronger protections to people seeking lawful reproductive health care regardless of whether the care is in their home state or if they must cross state lines to get it. With reproductive health under attack by some lawmakers, these protections are more important than ever.”

“Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, providers have shared concerns that when patients travel to their clinics for lawful care, their patients’ records will be sought, including when the patient goes home. Patients and providers are scared, and it impedes their ability to get and to provide accurate information and access safe and legal health care,” said OCR Director Melanie Fontes Rainer. “Today’s rule prohibits the use of protected health information for seeking or providing lawful reproductive health care and helps maintain and improve patient-provider trust that will lead to improved health outcomes and protect patient privacy.”

OCR administers and enforces the Privacy Rule, which requires most health care providers, health plans, health care clearinghouses, and business associates (collectively, “regulated entities”) to safeguard the privacy of PHI and sets limits and conditions on the uses and disclosures of such information. The HIPAA Privacy Rule also gives individuals certain rights over their PHI. In April 2023, OCR published proposed modifications to the HIPAA Privacy Rule to address changes in the legal landscape affecting reproductive health care privacy that make it more likely than before that PHI may be used and disclosed in ways that HIPAA intended to protect. OCR received almost 30,000 comments on the proposed rule from the public. After carefully considering these comments, the Department is issuing a Final Rule that:

Prohibits the use or disclosure of PHI when it is sought to investigate or impose liability on individuals, health care providers, or others who seek, obtain, provide, or facilitate reproductive health care that is lawful under the circumstances in which such health care is provided, or to identify persons for such activities.

Requires a regulated health care provider, health plan, clearinghouse, or their business associates, to obtain a signed attestation that certain requests for PHI potentially related to reproductive health care are not for these prohibited purposes.

Requires regulated health care providers, health plans, and clearinghouses to modify their Notice of Privacy Practices to support reproductive health care privacy.

The current HIPAA Privacy Rule is in effect until the new rule takes effect. If you believe that your (or someone else’s) health information privacy rights or other Privacy, Security, or Breach Notification rules have been violated, you may file a complaint with the HHS Office for Civil Rights at: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/filing-a-complaint/index.html.

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/04/22/biden-harris-administration-issues-new-rule-support-reproductive-health-care-privacy-under-hipaa.html