VANCOUVER — The British Columbia government has released 12 priorities for anti-racism research in its first update since the Anti-Racism Data Act came into effect last June. The province says the focus will be in areas such as racial diversity within the public service, interactions with the justice system and how health care and education […]

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A judge put South Carolina’s new law banning most abortions around six weeks of pregnancy on hold Friday until the state Supreme Court can review the measure, giving providers a temporary reprieve in a region that has enacted strict limits on the procedure. Judge Clifton Newman’s ruling that put the state’s […]

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man died while waiting over a half-hour for an ambulance after being struck by a hit-and-run driver last month, according to emergency dispatch logs, an incident that Portland firefighters say highlights their frustration at a lack of available ambulances to respond to emergency calls. The Bureau of Emergency Communications 911 […]

Environmental groups levelled a legal challenge against the federal government’s recent decision to greenlight a massive Metro Vancouver port expansion project in Delta, B.C. Approved in April, the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project would double the existing facilities’ footprint and has 370 conditions attached to it aimed at protecting the environment and local species. These […]

OTTAWA — Almost a year before the closure of 24 Sussex Drive due to disrepair and an infestation of rodents, the chairman of the National Capital Commission’s board of directors warned that further delaying a cabinet decision on the fate of the residence would put the whole structure at risk. The mansion, which sits on […]

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s governor signed a bill Thursday banning most abortions around six weeks of pregnancy, setting up an anticipated legal challenge from providers. The law, which goes into effect immediately, restores the ban South Carolina had in place when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. The ban […]

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A wave of newly approved abortion restrictions in the Southeastern United States has sent providers scrambling to reconfigure their services for a region with already severely limited access. Stiff limitations enacted in South Carolina and pending in North Carolina and Florida — states that had been holdouts providing wider access to […]

EDMONTON _ The governments of Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec are joining the federal privacy commissioner in investigating the company behind the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, ChatGPT. Alberta’s privacy authority says the joint investigation would see if OpenAI, which is the parent company of ChatGPT, obtained valid consent from Canadians to collect, use and disclose their personal information via its chatbot. ChatGPT, which […]

TORONTO — Ontario should put in place “effective guardrails” on the public sector’s use of artificial intelligence technologies, the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Ontario Human Rights Commission said Thursday in a joint statement. The government must urgently develop “robust and granular” rules so it can reap the benefits of AI technologies in an […]

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Abortion will soon be severely restricted in one of the last bastions for legal access in the U.S. South. The South Carolina Senate approved a bill Tuesday that would ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy — before most people know they are pregnant — and sent it to […]

MONTREAL — Artificial intelligence pioneer Yoshua Bengio says regulation in Canada is on the right path, but progress is far too sluggish. Speaking in Montreal, the Universite de Montreal professor said he backed a bill tabled in the House of Commons last June that adopts a more general, principles-based approach to AI guardrails and leaves […]

MONTREAL — Nearly 30 years after Quebec’s second sovereignty referendum, the Parti Quebecois says there are secrets about how the victorious No side spent money that the public deserves to know about. On Wednesday, the province’s legislature debated a motion introduced by PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon calling on the province’s chief electoral officer to […]