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, […]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook’s corporate parent has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social media platform allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016. Terms of the settlement reached by Meta […]

OTTAWA — The young Russian seaman who turned up exhausted and bleeding on the British Columbia shore struck a Canadian intelligence official as well mannered, sincere and athletic, built like Tarzan of the movies. Less than two years later, defector Sergei Kourdakov would die in a California motel room — apparently by accidentally shooting himself — after […]

OTTAWA — The federal government says departments will focus on making the access-to-information system work better amid calls for fundamental changes to the transparency law. The Access to Information Act allows people to request government documents, from internal emails to expense reports for a $5 fee, but it is widely considered to be outdated and poorly administered. The law […]

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip over the last five years have been indicted in less than 1% of the hundreds of complaints against them, an Israeli rights group reported. The watchdog argued that Israel’s military systematically fails to conduct a credible prosecution of […]

TORONTO, Ohio — A ransomware attack has delayed lab and imaging results at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and could lead to longer wait times, the hospital said Thursday, noting that some of its systems could be offline for weeks. The hospital said it was unable to provide details about the nature of the attack, […]