More than $3 million set aside to improve air quality in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic has been spent on duct cleaning — a measure not backed by research as an effective way to limit infectious-disease transmission. Manitoba earmarked nearly $11.3 million, including provincial and federal pots of about $6.8 million and $4.5 million, respectively, […]

Personal emails linked to 235 million Twitter accounts hacked some time ago have been exposed according to Israeli security researcher Alon Gal — making millions vulnerable to having their accounts compromised or identities exposed if they have used the site anonymously to criticize oppressive governments, for instance. Gal, who is the co-founder and chief technology […]

EDMONTON — The Alberta government is refusing to release information on toxic contaminants in snowpacks downwind from mountaintop removal coal mines. The data was collected by two senior provincial government scientists who conducted research into the impact of windblown dust from mines in British Columbia on a pristine Alberta alpine lake. They recently published a […]

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A lawyer for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been suspended from practicing law in Connecticut for six months for improperly giving Jones’ other attorneys in Texas confidential documents, including the medical records of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The ruling by Judge Barbara Bellis on Thursday […]

TORONTO — A global ransomware operator issued an apology and offered to unlock the data targeted in a ransomware attack on Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, a move cybersecurity experts say is rare, if not unprecedented, for the infamous group. LockBit, a ransomware group the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has called one of the […]

Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children says it is aware of an online statement from a ransomware group that offers a decryptor to restore systems impacted by a mid-December cybersecurity incident. Canada’s largest pediatric health-care centre says in a news release issued Sunday evening that the statement includes “an offer of a free decryptor” after some […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — With security threats to Supreme Court justices still fresh memories, Chief Justice John Roberts on Saturday praised programs that protect judges, saying that “we must support judges by ensuring their safety.” Roberts and other conservative Supreme Court justices were the subject of protests, some at their homes, after the May leak of […]

As the year’s climate-related gains and catastrophes wrap, Canada’s National Observer is reviewing the top five stories to make waves in B.C.’s coastal and island communities in 2022. First Nations, forests and fish-related news surfaced as some top issues from CNO’s Island Insider beat, and are likely to dominate headlines in the new year as […]

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana has blocked the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from state devices, its technology office said Thursday. The Indiana Office of Technology “blocked TikTok from being used in our state system and on our state devices” as of Dec. 7, office spokesman Graig Lubsen told The Journal Gazette. The Office of Technology […]

TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — When migrants arrive to the main crossing point into southern Mexico — a steamy city with no job opportunities, a place packed with foreigners eager to keep moving north — they soon learn the only way to cut through the red tape and expedite what can be a monthslong process is […]

OTTAWA — An advocacy group for those who reveal wrongdoing says it cannot support a new task force looking at the federal whistleblowing regime because it lacks someone with “lived experience” as an actual whistleblower. In a letter to Treasury Board President Mona Fortier, Whistleblowing Canada Research Society president Pamela Forward calls the absence a […]

ATLANTA (AP) — Federal proposals that would have significantly boosted security funding for election offices and heightened penalties for threatening their staff failed to advance this year, leaving state officials looking to their legislatures for support. The massive budget bill that passed Congress on Friday will send $75 million in election security grants to states, […]