The federal government says it can’t wait any longer for Ontario to end encampments in its cities and will offer money directly to municipalities, including Toronto, to fix the problem.
The federal government says it can’t wait any longer for Ontario to end encampments in its cities and will offer money directly to municipalities, including Toronto, to fix the problem.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Housing Minister Sean Fraser said he sent a letter to every province and territory on Sept. 18 asking them to partner with Ottawa to “urgently” find shelter for the unhoused or those living in tents.
The offer includes a total of $250 million in funding in exchange for matching contributions by the provinces and territories.
However, Fraser said since the offer was made, the feds have not heard back from Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
Trump meets definition of a fascist, his former chief of staff says
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump meets the definition of a fascist and "prefers the dictator approach to government," his former White House chief of staff said in a series of interviews with the New York Times.
Kelly said the former president would seek to rule like an authoritarian if he returned to the White House. In the interviews published on Tuesday, he quoted Trump as having told him German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler "did some good things."
"He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government," Kelly said, according to the newspaper. "Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators - he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure."
Fifty years ago, Philadelphia prison officials ended a medical testing program that had allowed a University of Pennsylvania researcher to conduct human testing on incarcerated people, many of them Black.
Fifty years ago, Philadelphia prison officials ended a medical testing program that had allowed an Ivy League researcher to conduct human testing on incarcerated people, many of them Black, for decades. Now, survivors of the program and their descendants want reparations.
Thousands of people at Holmesburg Prison were exposed to painful skin tests, anesthesia-free surgery, harmful radiation and mind-altering drugs for research on everything from hair dye, detergent and other household goods to chemical warfare agents and dioxins. In exchange, they might receive $1-a-day in pocket change they used to buy commissary items or try to make bail.
“We were fertile ground for them people,” said Herbert Rice, a retired city worker from Philadelphia who said he has had lifelong psychiatric problems after taking an unknown drug at Holmesburg in the late 1960s that caused him to hallucinate. “It was just like dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit.”
The Environmental Protection Agency didn't ensure that states submitted accurate estimates of the number of lead pipes they had.
The Environmental Protection Agency is at risk of misallocating nearly $1 billion in lead pipe replacement funding to the wrong states because it didn’t verify inaccurate data provided by Texas and Florida, an agency watchdog announced.
At issue is a first-of-its-kind EPA survey that asked local officials to estimate the number of lead pipes in their state. Some states with long industrial legacies like Illinois and Michigan have far more than others. The bipartisan infrastructure law provided $15 billion to find and replace lead pipes. The survey was to ensure states with more pipes got more money.
But the EPA didn’t verify what states told them and there were glaring problems with the numbers provided by Texas and Florida, according to the inspector general. For example, a single data entry error by Houston caused the EPA to allocate nearly $120 million more to Texas than it probably should have in fiscal year 2023, the report said. When Houston told Texas officials about the mistake, the state didn’t inform the EPA, the report said.
Sky News exposes the scale of staff-on-staff bullying at UK schools from more than 320 current and former teachers. Some have suffered a devastating emotional toll and were paid thousands to "keep quiet".
When Maya* started a new teaching job, she did not expect to be called the n-word as she walked down the corridor.
The bullying from her fellow teachers proved relentless. She was called a "curry lover" and believes she was hidden from meeting parents at one point due to her skin colour.
It was not just racism she faced there but also sexism. Male colleagues told her she would have to "bend over a desk to get a promotion" and had "blowjob lips". Incidents like these happened "almost every day", she says.
Eventually forced to leave her job, Maya signed a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) making her unable to speak about the abuse she suffered. As part of the conditions of her exit, she also received a significant payout, which she describes as "money to keep quiet".
Andriy Kostin forced out over rash of officials getting disabled status; North Korean soldiers ‘about to arrive in Kursk’. What we know on day 973
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, has resigned after dozens of his officials allegedly had themselves registered as disabled to avoid military service. “The prosecutor general must take political responsibility for the situation in the prosecution bodies of Ukraine,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced after a security council meeting about cracking down on draft dodging. Kostin minutes later called the situation “clearly amoral” and agreed with Ukraine’s president that “it is right to announce my resignation from the position of prosecutor general”. Ukraine’s domestic security service, the SBU, said on Tuesday that 64 members of medical commissions had been named as suspects in criminal investigations in 2024, and nine more had been tried and found guilty.
“It is not only prosecutors, by the way,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address. “There are hundreds of cases of obviously unjustified disability [statuses] among customs and tax officials, in the pension fund system, and in local administrations … All this must be dealt with carefully and promptly.” After the security council meeting, the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, dismissed the management of the central commission overseeing fitness for service, and senior officials in related roles in the health ministry. Zelenskyy ordered his cabinet to urgently draft a law dissolving existing medical commissions and reforming the disability assessment system.
The LNG Industry Figured It Had This Election in the Bag
British Columbians awaiting a final vote count that will determine who governs their province are understandably anxious. After all, in many ways, the agendas of the NDP and Conservatives are starkly different.
But one group hasn’t felt much concern during the campaign. For the liquefied natural gas industry, the winner made little difference.
Both parties are supportive of the construction of nearly $100 billion worth of LNG terminals, though the BC NDP has set more conditions.
Only the BC Green Party has opposed the economic gamble. As Green Leader Sonia Furstenau stated before she was defeated in her attempt to win the riding of Victoria-Beacon Hill, “neither David Eby nor John Rustad have an economic plan that is rooted in reality.”
Families want inquiry after 9 police-involved Indigenous deaths
A group of Black and Indigenous women say they want a national public inquiry into a recent spate of police-involved deaths after nine Indigenous people were killed in interactions with police in August and September.
About two dozen people gathered on Parliament Hill on Tuesday, including the families of eight people who died.
The families say accountability and justice for the deaths of their loved ones is difficult to get and that concrete actions need to happen to address police brutality and to offer support and resources for the people affected.
Laura Holland, a Wet'suwet'en woman and the mother of Jared Lowndes, said police-involved killings are a state of emergency for Indigenous people.
Elmer Pérez was one of many immigrants hired by U.S. shipbuilders to fill the urgent need for skilled labor. These workers do the same jobs and take the same risks as their American counterparts, but are left on their own when things go wrong.
On the morning of Jan. 22, 2024, Elmer De León Pérez descended deep into the bowels of a ship that he was helping to build in Houma, Louisiana. Pérez was a welder, working to construct one of the U.S. government’s most sophisticated ships, an $89 million vessel for tracking hurricanes and conducting oceanographic research. It was funded by President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation.
When emergency workers found his body, Pérez was already showing signs of rigor mortis. A coroner’s report would note that he was wearing a red hoodie, plaid pajama pants and brown steel-toed boots, and that a “copious amount of clear fluid was noted to the mouth and nose,” as well as on the sleeve of his shirt. The coroner concluded that Pérez “died as a result of bilateral severe pulmonary consolidation and edema” — fluid in the lungs — and “copper and nickel intoxication.” (The ship, like many, used copper-nickel alloys as a coating because they resist corrosion from salt water.)
But Pérez wasn’t working directly for Thoma-Sea; he was employed by a contractor. So when he died, Thoma-Sea paid nothing. Not to his family, including the partner that survived him. Not to his toddler son. Not even to help send Pérez’s body home to Guatemala. Instead, his family borrowed money and desperately tried to raise the rest online. Family members said they haven’t heard anything from Thoma-Sea since Pérez died.
Judge appointed Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss as recipients of ex-mayor’s assets in defamation case
Rudy Giuliani must give control of his New York City apartment, a 1980s Mercedes-Benz once owned by Lauren Bacall, several luxury watches and many other assets to two Georgia election workers he defamed.
Lewis Liman, a US district judge in New York, appointed Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss as recipients of the property and gave the former New York mayor and Trump confidante seven days to turn over the assets.
A jury ruled that Giuliani owes them around $150m for spreading lies about them after the 2020 election though Giuliani is appealing the ruling. Liman authorized the two women to immediately begin selling the assets.
Ottawa wetlands cut from 'provincially significant' list
At some point in 2023, Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources pushed through updates to its map of provincially protected wetlands, and 55 hectares in Ottawa's rural west end were dropped.
Two sizeable wetlands — one on either side of Highway 7 — used to be classified as part of the Goulbourn complex, a group of marshes and swamps that stretch across an area west of the suburb of Stittsville.
Now they are among the first known examples of wetlands to lose their "provincially significant" status since the Ontario government rolled out controversial changes in January 2023 aimed at getting homes built faster.
'It's like a cage': Foreign workers who quit Canadian Tire speak out about feeling trapped by work permits
Rowell Pailan spends his days applying for jobs in factories, in restaurants, in shops. He's ready to take any kind of work.
Last September, Pailan quit his job with the company he came to Canada to work for over what he says are disputes about his treatment, including hours and wages. Now, he can't find an employer willing to do the paperwork to change his closed work permit — a standard part of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program that ties workers to specific companies.
He knows the end date on that work permit means time is ticking on his Canadian dream.
"I'm still asking myself, what I am doing here, what I'm doing here in Canada," he said in a recent interview in his Wolfville, N.S., apartment.
Frostbite amputations reached new high in Edmonton, decreased in Calgary last winter
The number of amputations due to frostbite in Edmonton reached 110 last winter, the highest level in more than a decade, according to new data obtained by CBC News.
But Calgary marked its second consecutive winter of declining frostbite amputations, counting roughly one-third of Edmonton's procedures last fiscal year.
The frostbite amputation numbers mark a notable shift after years of Alberta's two major centres following similar trends.
First openly transgender lawyer to argue at US Supreme Court
An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer will make history in December as the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, opposing Tennessee's Republican-backed law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
The ACLU's Chase Strangio, 41, represents a group of transgender people who pursued a lawsuit challenging the measure that prohibits medical treatments including hormones and surgeries for minors experiencing gender dysphoria.
ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang called Strangio the leading U.S. legal expert on transgender rights.
"He brings to the lectern not only brilliant constitutional lawyering, but also the tenacity and heart of a civil rights champion," Wang said.
There was a time when all of Sask voted for the CCF/NDP automatically ... every election.
I almost miss those days.
Nine members of Force 100 investigated over allegations of sexual assaulting prisoner at Sde Teiman detention camp
An Israeli military unit that has been accused of human rights abuses against Palestinian detainees is reportedly under investigation by the US state department in a move that could lead to it being barred from receiving assistance.
The inquiry into the activities of Force 100 was instigated following a spate of allegations that Palestinians held under its guard at a detention centre have been subject to torture and brutal mistreatment, including sexual assault, Axios reported on Monday.
Nine members of Force 100, a unit inside the Israeli Defence Forces, are the subject of criminal investigation over allegations that they sexually assaulted a prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert, which human rights groups have dubbed “the Israeli Guantanamo”.
He, Moe and Drug Fraud should be repatriated to the nations their ancestors emigrated from.
Documents obtained by Ottawa Citizen show officials were concerned about negative media in case of Kristen Adams
Canada’s military decided not to apologize to an employee after she was sexually assaulted while working with Nato allies, over fears that any apology would be reported by an Ottawa newspaper.
Kristen Adams, who was working at a canteen for troops in Latvia, was sexually assaulted by a Nato soldier on 3 December 2022. After filing a formal complaint about the assault, she was warned by the army’s morale and welfare services that she should have better understood the risks of the job.
Whew. That's quite the story about people in Moe's gov't doing all sorts of inventive stuff to fill their pockets with taxpayer dollars and execute a massive cover-up to protect it.
Here's hoping every Sask voter pays attention and votes accordingly.
It's not junk science. The shield is a deranged drainage system, meaning that there is "no coherent pattern to the rivers and lakes" (source). The fissues in the mafic rock (aka greenstone rock), which are surrounded by granite, mean that water flows hapazardly through the underground cracks and caverns (created by glacial erosion and the subsequent post-glacial rebound) to settle in the lowest areas (source).
You would likely be opposed by millions of others tho.
Nobody wants a nuclear waste facility in their backyard, especially those who live in the heart of the Canadian Shield where the rock fissures that feed ground water wells can travel hundreds of kms in any direction ... meaning that the smallest of leakages can do the same.
‘Left-wing, right-wing, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same colonial bird’
People are dying left and right,” Meno Ya Win Hospital staff told Sol Mamakwa as the Kiiwetinoong MPP toured the Sioux Lookout area’s largest health care facility.
Sioux Lookout’s 76-bed long-term care facility was a promise the Liberals made in 2018 that has yet to transpire over six years of Progressive Conservative governance.
“After question period, I talked to Doug Ford. He came to me and this is what he said: ‘You know how we’re going to pay for that long-term care facility in Sioux Lookout? We’re going to need to open up the mines in the north.’
“So I told her that. She said, ‘really? Does that mean we have to give up our lands to get those [beds]?’
“‘Yep. That’s what that means.’
Ok. Then put the nuclear waste facility somewhere in the Golden Horseshoe, closer to the millions of customers who will use most of the power.
As the Cop16 biodiversity conference begins, scientists and academics say human activity has pushed the world into a danger zone
Humanity is “on the precipice” of shattering Earth’s limits, and will suffer huge costs if we fail to act on biodiversity loss, experts warn. This week, world leaders meet in Cali, Colombia, for the Cop16 UN biodiversity conference to discuss action on the global crisis. As they prepare for negotiations, scientists and experts around the world have warned that the stakes are high, and there is “no time to waste”.
“We are already locked in for significant damage, and we’re heading in a direction that will see more,” says Tom Oliver, professor of applied ecology at the University of Reading. “I really worry that negative changes could be very rapid.”
Since 1970, some studies estimate wildlife populations have declined on average by 73%, with huge numbers lost in the decades and centuries before. Passenger pigeons, the Carolina parakeets and Floreana giant tortoises are among the many species humans have obliterated. “It’s shameful that our single species is driving the extinction of thousands of others,” says Oliver.
The biodiversity crisis is not just about other species – humans also rely on the natural world for food, clean water and air to breathe. Oliver says: “I think we will, certainly, in the next 15 to 20 years, see continued food crises, and the real risk of multiple breadbasket failures … that’s in addition to a lot of the other risks that might impact us through fresh-water pollution, ocean acidification, wildfire and algal blooms, and so on.”
The official added that Israel also demands its air force have freedom of operation in Lebanese air space.
Lol. Israel thinks they're king of the ME.
Voters in Arizona and Massachusetts are set to decide whether employers should be able to continue to pay tipped workers such as servers and bartenders a lower minimum wage than non-tipped workers.
Mel Nichols, a 37-year-old bartender in Phoenix, Arizona, takes home anywhere from $30 to $50 an hour with tips included. But the uncertainty of how much she’s going to make on a daily basis is a constant source of stress.
“For every good day, there’s three bad days,” said Nichols, who has been in the service industry since she was a teenager. “You have no security when it comes to knowing how much you’re going to make.”
The amount tipped workers make varies by state. Fourteen states pay the federal minimum, or just above $2 an hour for tipped workers and $7 an hour for non-tipped workers.
ProPublica has traced these mass-mailed newspapers to a “pink slime” network known for misinformation and its financial ties to right-wing super PACs and billionaires.
A headline in the Wisconsin Catholic Tribune, and repurposed in other states’ versions, provocatively asks, “How many ‘sex change’ mutilation surgeries occurred on Wisconsin kids?” Another: “Haitian illegal aliens in America: What are Harris supporters saying?”
At the same time, they undermine Vice President Kamala Harris and prop up former President Donald Trump by, for instance, reminding readers on the front page that anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — whose father and uncle were among the most prominent Catholics in the country — has endorsed Trump.
Dioceses and parishes in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin have issued warnings about the publications. “It gives the impression that the Diocese of Grand Rapids or the Catholic Church is behind this newspaper,” diocese spokesperson Annalise Laumeyer said of the Michigan Catholic Tribune.
She reached out to local media to flag parishioners so they won’t be misled. And because of the clearly partisan content, non-Catholics might be left with an impression of the Catholic Church that is “worrisome,” she said.
Just had my flu shot a week ago, but also had to get a whooping cough vax as well (last time I had that vax was when I was 10) ... thanks to all the anti-vaxxer parents.
That's the trade-off I guess.
