WASHINGTON (AP) — The Chinese balloon that traversed the United States before being shot down last weekend captivated public attention and drew sharp denunciations as a brazen spying effort. But if the vehicle for espionage seemed novel, the concept was anything but. In ways that are far less public, but often more worrisome, U.S. officials […]

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Facing blowback, the director of Florida’s high school sports governing body is backing away from using an eligibility form that requires female athletes to disclose their menstrual history in order to compete. Instead, the executive director of the Florida High School Athletic Association is recommending that most personal information revealed on […]

Ottawa is spending $2 million for an international organization to provide Indigenous communities with options for identifying possible human remains buried near former residential school sites. The office of Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller said in a statement Tuesday it is signing a technical agreement with the International Commission on Missing Persons. Based at The […]

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A judge in Kenya has ruled that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, can be sued in the East African country. Meta tried to have the case dropped, arguing that Kenyan courts do not have jurisdiction over their operations, but the labor court judge dismissed that in a ruling on Monday. A former […]

Canada is under increasing pressure to declare a moratorium on seabed mining just as federal leaders are set to host an international marine conservation summit. More than 700 international scientists and a multitude of environmental organizations are calling on Canada to ban the search for deep-sea minerals in its own waters and show global leadership […]

A trio of Supreme Court decisions Friday overturned one rule on mandatory minimum sentencing but upheld two others, highlighting Canada’s ongoing debate on how to approach the contentious topic. The four-year mandatory minimum sentence for firing a gun at a house was deemed unconstitutional, with the court ruling it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. […]

As of April 2023, patients checking into any Manitoba hospital or emergency room will be asked for one additional item of personal information at the registration desk: the race or ethnicity with which they identify. This new aspect of personal data collection comes as a joint initiative of Shared Health and the University of Manitoba. Its purpose […]

After the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo launched a cartoon contest to mock Iran’s ruling cleric, a state-backed Iranian cyber unit struck back with a hack-and-leak campaign that was designed to provoke fear with the claimed pilfering of a big subscriber database, Microsoft security researchers say. The FBI blames the same Iranian cyber operators, Emennet […]

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court has agreed to wade into a landmark legal battle over whether Canada’s military judges, who are responsible for overseeing dozens of courts martial every year, are truly independent. The top court announced its decision on Thursday following requests from several service members whose criminal cases have been on hold. As […]

MASKWACIS — An Alberta First Nation signed a two-year agreement with Ottawa Wednesday that gives it the autonomy to administer its own child welfare. Louis Bull Tribe in Maskwacis, Alta., south of Edmonton, is the first in the province to sign such an agreement. “This is an important day for Louis Bull Tribe,” Chief Desmond […]

SASKATOON — Public Safety Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces were caught off guard by a request for help from Saskatchewan during the height of the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Documents obtained under freedom of information laws show employees in the federal departments were surprised when Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman sent a letter in October 2021 […]

In a first-of-its-kind enforcement, the Federal Trade Commission has imposed a $1.5 million penalty on telehealth and prescription drug discount provider GoodRx Holdings Inc. for sharing users’ personal health data with Facebook, Google and other third parties without their consent. Under a settlement, California-based GoodRx also accepted that it will be prohibited going forward from […]