OTTAWA — A coalition pushing for better regulation of facial recognition and other biometric surveillance technologies says proposed federal privacy legislation is in “dire need of significant amendments.” In an open letter Wednesday to Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, the Right2YourFace Coalition warns the use of facial recognition technology threatens human rights, equity principles and fundamental freedoms, including […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before House Speaker Mike Johnson was elected to public office, he was the dean of a small Baptist law school that didn’t exist. The establishment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law was supposed to be a capstone achievement for Louisiana College, which administrators boasted would “unashamedly embrace” a “biblical worldview.” […]

OTTAWA — An architectural group that lost out on building a monument to Canada’s mission in Afghanistan is accusing two federal cabinet ministers of giving a “pathetic” explanation for how the contract was awarded. The design by Team Daoust was selected by a jury, but the government overruled that decision to award the contract to […]

Five Ontario hospitals affected by a recent ransomware attack, along with their shared IT provider, are warning patients and staff that their data may be published. The attack caused an outage of some online services at Bluewater Health, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, Erie Shores HealthCare, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and Windsor Regional Hospital on Oct. 23. Affected […]

ATLANTA (AP) — A former employee is suing to force a Mississippi utility to repay $382 million that the federal government gave to build a failed coal-fueled power plant. Kelli Williams, a former construction manager for Atlanta-based Southern Co., filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the company and its subsidiary Mississippi Power Co. in 2018. That […]

HONOLULU (AP) — An officer sprinted from house to house in the historic town of Lahaina, Hawaii, alerting people to the approaching inferno. Another coughed and swore as he drove through thick smoke past burning buildings with people he rescued crammed in the back seat. With no ambulance available, one officer offered to bring a […]

TORONTO — The Toronto Public Library says it is dealing with a cybersecurity incident that’s affecting its website and some in-branch services. The library says the issue was detected on Saturday and that its website, digital collections and museum and arts passes cannot be accessed. A statement posted online also says that public computers and […]

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden enacted sweeping new ground rules and guardrails Monday for the growth and development of artificial intelligence, leaving room for what Canadian experts hope will be a careful but complementary approach from Ottawa. The executive order, billed as the single most comprehensive government action on AI in the technology’s history, […]

OTTAWA — The federal government is banning WeChat and Kaspersky applications from its phones over security concerns. WeChat is a social network, messaging and payments app from Chinese company Tencent, while Kaspersky was founded by Russian entrepreneur Eugene Kaspersky and offers cybersecurity and antivirus software. The government said both apps would be removed from its […]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Authorities in Tennessee have settled a First Amendment lawsuit for $125,000, the plaintiff’s attorneys said Monday. The suit was filed by a man who said he was arrested over a disparaging social media post about a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty. Joshua Andrew Garton was arrested in […]

Internal emails suggest City of Vancouver staff felt “significant anger and disillusionment” after city council voted to scrap the municipality’s living wage policy this year. That’s how former chief equity officer Aftab Erfan described the reaction from staff after the city announced in March it would no longer guarantee a living wage, effectively cutting the […]

FREDERICTON — In the weeks before the New Brunswick government decided to change its policy on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, it received a deluge of emails and other communications critical of the guidelines. A Canadian Press access to information request to the Department of Education seeking all complaints about Policy 713 — […]