Project with Google’s Sidewalk Labs comes under increasing scrutiny amid concerns over privacy and data harvesting
A “smart city” project in Canada has hit yet another snag, as mounting delays and privacy concerns threaten the controversial development along the Toronto’s eastern waterfront.
The 12-acre Quayside project, a partnership between Google’s Sidewalk Labs and the city of Toronto, has come under increasing scrutiny amid concerns over privacy and data harvesting.
Continue reading...Officials say language classes and recreation programs for immigrant children staying in federal shelters ‘not directly necessary’
Vice President Mike Pence will meet Wednesday with top Mexican officials who are seeking to head off the administration’s threatened tariffs, the Hill reports.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard is representing his country at the talks and expected to argue Mexico is already taking steps to prevent migrants from crossing the US-Mexico border.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Paul Manafort should not be held in solitary confinement, and nor should anyone else. Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chair, is reportedly heading for Rikers Island where he’s likely to be held in solitary while awaiting trial on New York state charges.
Yes - released from solitary.
NYT used the term solitary confinement, & that’s what I am commenting on.
“Protective custody” IS a separate practice, but does not necessarily exclude solitary. If he is in fact not being held in solitary, great. Release everyone else from it too.
Lawmakers in president’s own party voice firm opposition to threat over Mexico
In a rare confrontation, Republican senators declared deep opposition Tuesday to Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on all goods coming into the US from Mexico. But it’s unclear they have the votes to stop him, and Trump said they’d be “foolish” to try.
All sides, including officials from Mexico meeting Trump negotiators in Washington this week, remain hopeful that high-level talks will ease the president away from his threat. But with the tariffs set to start next Monday, and Trump declaring them “more likely” than not to take effect, fellow Republicans in Congress warned the White House they were ready to stand up to the president.
Continue reading...Brexit and trade disputes push bank’s policy uncertainty index to record high, says report
Donald Trump’s trade wars with China, Mexico and Europe have sent global investment tumbling, according to a World Bank report that forecasts worldwide growth this year will slip back to levels not seen since 2016.
The Washington-based lender to developing world countries said in its half-yearly global health check that spiralling political uncertainty was to blame for a slowdown in trade and a collapse in investment spending that will push down GDP growth to 2.6% this year “before inching up to 2.7% in 2020”.
Continue reading...Museum delegation to discuss preservation of island’s statues but indigenous tribes say they want Hoa Hakananai’a back
A delegation from the British Museum will arrive on Easter Island on Tuesday aiming to discuss how to help preserve more than 1,000 of the island’s renowned statues.
Rapa Nui leaders will introduce their visitors to their culture – but they also want to talk about the possible return of the world-famous statue that has stood in pride of place in the museum’s Wellcome gallery for the last 150 years.
Continue reading...Canadians can no longer turn a blind eye to the “genocide” of Indigenous peoples in the country, a landmark report on missing and murdered women has concluded.
Indigenous communities across the country have for decades attempted to convey the depth and scope of a tragedy that has haunted thousands of families.
Continue reading...Silvana Trevale left Venezuela in 2011 but has returned to document the ever worsening crisis that has deeply affected families of every economic status. She was selected as the 2018 recipient of the Joan Wakelin Bursary, administrated in partnership with the Royal Photographic Society
Venezuela, a country that once hoped for wealth and a bright future with its oil reserves and natural resources, is falling to pieces. It faces a humanitarian crisis where families struggle daily to find food, medicine and clean water as they live with collapsing public services. Many attend the ongoing protests, which are frequently violently repressed. Though I left my home in 2011 I have returned to Venezuela to document the ever-worsening crisis that has deeply affected families of every economic status.
Continue reading...Democrats are turning a president enraged at the blocking of his border wall into an unhinged beast
Donald Trump’s threats of higher import tariffs against Mexican goods can be better understood not as an escalation of his trade war with the rest of the world, but as the act of a desperate man, prepared to upset most US business leaders to achieve his aim of building a border wall with the country’s southern neighbour.
His anger, which he will bring with him on a state visit to London on Monday, is not so much with Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration in Mexico City as with Congress, which has blocked the border wall, or at least restricted funding to such an extent that its completion is unlikely before the next presidential race gets under way.
Continue reading...Mexico’s president hinted on Saturday that his country could tighten migration controls in order to defuse Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexican goods. Andrés Manuel López Obrador also said he expected “good results” from talks in Washington next week.
Related: 'No idea too lunatic': how Trump's shock troops attack US democracy
Continue reading...Government’s inquiry into disappeared women and girls to be published Monday
Three decades of missing and murdered Indigenous women amounts to a “Canadian genocide”, a leaked landmark government report has concluded.
The document, titled Reclaiming Power and Place, was compiled over more than two and a half years. Canada’s CBC News was given a copy of the report, which is due to be released on Monday, on Friday. Its contents were confirmed to the Guardian by an individual working within the inquiry.
Continue reading...After 5% tariff announced, president tweets ‘Mexico has taken advantage of the US for decades’
Donald Trump has defended his decision to impose new tariffs on Mexico as stock markets worldwide were rattled by fears of an escalation in trade tensions.
“Mexico has taken advantage of the United States for decades,” Trump tweeted. “Because of the Dems, our Immigration Laws are BAD. Mexico makes a FORTUNE from the U.S., have for decades, they can easily fix this problem. Time for them to finally do what must be done!”
Continue reading...Tens of thousands of students, academics and teachers have marched throughout the vast South American country in protest against ultraconservative president Jair Bolsonaro’s cuts to education, including moves to dramatically reduce funding for federal universities
Continue reading...Container ship M/V Bavaria, with tonnes of garbage on board, has left Subic Bay on a 20-day journey to Vancouver
The Philippines has made good on a threat by President Rodrigo Duterte and put 69 containers of what its officials called illegally transported garbage on a ship that is heading to Canada.
The nation is one of two in south-east Asia that have protested being treated like dumpsites by wealthier countries.
Continue reading...US will place a 5% tariff on all goods from Mexico to pressure the country to stop the flow of Central American migrants, Trump says
In a surprise announcement that could compromise a major trade deal, Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is slapping a 5% tariff on all Mexican imports to pressure the country to do more to crack down on the surge of Central American migrants trying to cross the border.
He said the percentage would gradually increase “until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied”.
Continue reading...From Amazon cities to small towns in the deep south, demonstrators turned out to condemn funding cuts
Tens of thousands of students, academics and teachers have taken to the streets of Brazil for their latest mass protest against what they call far-right president Jair Bolsonaro’s assault on education.
Up and down the country – from Amazon cities to small towns in Brazil’s deep south – demonstrators turned out to condemn Bolsonaro’s highly controversial moves to slash funding for public education and science.
Continue reading...Mexican president was thanked with an ode while aboard a low-cost flight to Tepic
When Andrés Manuel López Obrador put his presidential Boeing up for sale last year and pledged to travel economy class around Mexico, it was part of a budget-slashing populist push to get closer to the people.
Related: Mexican minister resigns after causing 38-minute flight delay
Continue reading...Women from Nicaragua, Ecuador and Guatemala who suffered child rape take cases to UN human rights committee
Four women from Latin America whose lives were put at risk when they were not allowed abortions after being raped as girls are taking their cases to the UN human rights committee.
The women, from Nicaragua, Ecuador and Guatemala, filed cases against their governments on Wednesday for failing to provide appropriate healthcare and denying them abortions, even when it was their legal right to have one.
Continue reading...The natural substitute helps diabetics, combats obesity and tackles climate change
Javier Larragoiti was 18 when his father was diagnosed with diabetes. The teenager had just started a degree in chemical engineering in Mexico City. So he dedicated his studies to a side project: creating an acceptable alternative to help his father and millions of Mexicans like him avoid sugar.
“It’s only when you know someone with this sickness that you realise how common it is and how sugar intake plays a huge role,” he says. “My dad tried to use stevia and sucralose, just hated the taste, and kept cheating on his diet.”
Continue reading...Killing of 15 people on Sunday followed by further slaughter in three prisons in Manaus
Brazilian authorities have blamed a power struggle between quarrelling Amazon mafiosos for a two-day explosion of prison violence that has left at least 55 prisoners dead.
The slaughter reportedly began at about 11am on Sunday during visiting hours at the Anísio Jobim prison complex in Manaus, the jungle-fringed capital of Amazonas state.
Continue reading...Japanese national flying from Bogota to Tokyo is declared dead from an overdose
A Japanese man with 246 packets of cocaine in his stomach and intestines died mid-flight on his way from Bogota to Tokyo, authorities have said in northern Mexico where the plane made an emergency landing.
The 42-year-old man, identified only as Udo N, began having a seizure after the commercial flight from the Colombian capital made a stopover in Mexico City, the prosecutor’s office for the state of Sonora said. “Flight attendants noticed a person suffering convulsions and requested permission to make an emergency landing in Hermosillo, Sonora,” it said.
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