Wren

The province of Manitoba has filed notice that it intends to fight a proposed class action lawsuit against it over birth alerts, arguing that the plaintiff in the case waited too long to sue.

The lawsuit was filed by Carol Harper, a mother from Winnipeg whose baby was taken by Child and Family Services (CFS) in 2019 shortly after birth.

In an amended statement of claim, filed in 2023 by CFM Lawyers of Vancouver, Harper alleges that happened because of a “birth alert” — a message CFS sends to hospitals warning when newborns are at risk.

Environmental activists partied outside the San Francisco Ferry Building on Friday to celebrate the decommission of a Southern California oil rig.

The Center for Biological Diversity called the event a “retirement party” for Platform Esther, a soon-to-be decommissioned oil rig off the coast of Orange County.

A mote of sanity prevails after NYT couldn't decide on the right headline to softball misogyny yesterday.

Drax power plant has continued to burn 250-year-old trees sourced from some of Canada’s oldest forests despite growing scrutiny of its sustainability claims, forestry experts say.

A new report suggests it is “highly likely” that Britain’s biggest power plant sourced some wood from ecologically valuable forests as recently as this summer. Drax, Britain’s single biggest source of carbon emissions, has received billions of pounds in subsidies from burning biomass derived largely from wood.

In Sudan, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said Thursday they’ve agreed to a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal to end more than two years of a devastating war with the Sudanese military. The truce was brokered by a U.S.-led group of mediators known as the Quad, made up of negotiators from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Hundreds of thousands of civilians facing famine remain trapped in the city of El Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur region after it was seized by the RSF. Sudan’s war has triggered what the U.N. describes as the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with millions of people displaced.

Scholars have found that the constant, often conflicting and at times false information coming out of the White House and shared via social media posts and the conventional news media causes members of the public to see truth and fact as relative and makes them more likely to dismiss those who disagree with them as untruthful. This leaves doubt about what’s real and what isn’t.

This citizen paralysis creates what philosopher Hannah Arendt described in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” as a general public “for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exist.” When lies are truth and truth is derided as lies, Arendt wrote, ordinary people lose their bearings and can be manipulated for totalitarian objectives.

How does one monitor a conflict zone on the brink of civil war, especially in a region which is difficult to access, experiences frequent internet shutdowns and where misinformation is common? In this guide, we outline the open source tools and methods we can use to evidence what is really happening in many such conflict settings.

Our focus for this guide is on India, which recorded 84 internet shutdowns in 2024 – the highest number amongst democratic nations. In early June, authorities imposed a curfew and suspended internet access in parts of Manipur after protests erupted over the arrest of ethnic leaders. The state, in the north-east of the country, has been wracked by violence for years.

Law enforcement also became convinced that there was a link among the victims. Not just their wealth and the location of their homes—something more singular. Detectives in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Westchester County, New York, cross-referenced their cases. Did the victims belong to any clubs? Only the most exclusive yacht and country clubs in the country, but there wasn’t one they all belonged to. What about academic affiliations? Collectively, they’d been to every elite boarding school and Ivy League university, but they weren’t all, say, graduates of Yale. Did they use the same arborist? Was the same individual collecting their trash? No and no. The police did notice one thing: Many of the victims’ phone numbers were not publicly listed, which made the fifty-ring calls odd—to say nothing of the hang-up calls some targets had received prior to being robbed.

As the federal government carries out aggressive immigration raids in major cities across the U.S., state officials are facing off with the federal government over a centuries-old question: When can states prosecute federal officials for violating state criminal law?

A statement from former speaker Nancy Pelosi and California Rep. Kevin Mullin on Oct. 23 asserted that “state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law—and if they are convicted, the President cannot pardon them.” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has formed a commission to address “unlawful attacks” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. New York’s attorney general recently set up a portal for the public to share footage of ICE interactions, stating that the office is “committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law.” And local officials in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston have stated that they will pursue legal action if federal officers break the law.

Last week and over the weekend, Licensed Practical Nurses (LPN), Health Care Aides and many other health care workers represented by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) at public facilities throughout the province voted 98 per cent in favour of striking if a collective agreement can’t be reached in mediation.

The vote result must still be certified by the Alberta Labour Relations Board, AUPE President Sandra Azocar told an Edmonton news conference called to announce the tally Wednesday.

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) has uncovered seven unregulated pregnancy centres (UPCs) across Canada that are offering recreational, non-diagnostic ultrasounds. This is a deeply concerning increase in the misuse of medical imaging equipment by organizations with no medical oversight or accountability.

ARCC’s position paper, Unregulated Pregnancy Centres and Sonography explains how the use of ultrasounds by UPCs may serve to mislead clients, spread misinformation, and interfere with informed reproductive decision-making.

Seven lawsuits filed in California state courts on Thursday allege ChatGPT brought on mental delusions and, in four cases, drove people to suicide.

The lawsuits, filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project on behalf of six adults and one teenager, claim that OpenAI released GPT-4o prematurely, despite warnings that it was manipulative and dangerously sycophantic.