The province is lifting the mask requirement for most health-care staff who interact with patients.

In a memo sent to the province’s health-care workers Thursday, Monika Warren, chief operating officer of provincial health services and chief nursing officer for Shared Health, said the new rules will be in effect starting May 1. Only health-care workers who assist patients with respiratory symptoms will still be required to mask up.

The mandate had been in place for more than six months.

“Others may choose to continue wearing a mask (extended use) if they wish and medical masks and N95 respirators will remain available,” Warren said in the memo.

By 2030, it is estimated that as many as 9,000 Canadian churches and other places of worship, out of about 27,000, could be closed. In the U.S., that figure is 100,000 out of about 380,000 that could close in the next 20 years. If that happens, what’s going to happen to all those buildings, and the land they sit on?

That’s the question being asked in Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition (2024, Eerdmans).

In the book, edited by Mark Elsdon, various authors highlight the challenges facing congregations in the years ahead as membership and attendance falls and interest in traditional forms of religion wane.

Nobody knows for sure how many places of worship will be lost in the U.S. — nobody is tracking it in a systematic way, Elsdon said. Despite that, the trends are clear.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that's probably because it has, at least if you're measuring via internet time. What's now in question is whether it will be around much longer and, if so, in what form?

Starting in 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a niche teen app into a global trendsetter. While, of course, also emerging as a potential national security threat, according to U.S. officials.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring TikTok parent ByteDance to sell to a U.S. owner within a year or to shut down. It's not clear whether that law will survive an expected legal challenge or that ByteDance would agree to sell.

Here's how TikTok came to this juncture:

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — Google plans to invest $2 billion to build a data center in northeastern Indiana that will help power its artificial intelligence technology and cloud business, company and state officials said Friday.

The data center planned for Fort Wayne was announced in January. But Google disclosed the project's cost Friday and said it is expected to create up to new 200 jobs, including data center technicians and support services, The Journal Gazette reported.

The data center in the city about 120 miles (190 kilometers) northeast of Indianapolis will help power Google's “AI innovations and growing Google Cloud business for customers across the world,” Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office said in a news release.

Google said the new data center will join a network of Google-owned-and-operated data centers across the globe that “keep the internet humming" and power digital services such as Google Cloud, Gmail, Search and Maps.