250News, Northern BC’s first independent, online news site will shut down Sept. 30

250News, Northern BC’s first independent, online news site will shut down Sept. 30. Founded 12 years ago in Prince George by veteran journalists Elaine Macdonald-Meisner and the late Ben Meisner, Macdonald-Meisner has been running the business solo since her husband’s untimely passing in 2015 and has decided to move on. Despite early skepticism in the region when the site first launched in 2005, it was still going strong, earning 14.4 million page views in the first eight months of this year.

Facebook has announced a major investment with CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research). The $2.625 million USD investment over five years continues Facebook’s support of CIFAR’s Learning in Machines & Brains program and will also fund a Facebook-CIFAR Chair in Artificial Intelligence at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA). Facebook is also funding a Canadian Facebook AI Research (FAIR) Lab.

Shawn Mendes has displaced Justin Bieber as the most dangerous Canadian celebrity to search online. According to McAfee’s research, there’s a more than 14 per cent chance searching for either will land you on a malicious website. Avril Lavigne was number three, while Celine Dion, Carly Rae Jepsen, Drake and Alessia Cara round out the list.