Government Corruption
As The New York Times reported last month, the government in South Africa declared a national emergency — 23 children died and nearly 900 people were sickened from pesticide poisoning in Johannesburg’s Soweto township.
The illnesses and fatalities have been traced to small amounts of highly neurotoxic pesticides, including the insecticides terbufos and aldicarb, found in local food items.
Without formal electricity, running water or municipal garbage collection, many residents rely on highly toxic pesticides for pest infestations in their homes and makeshift markets, resulting in food inadvertently being contaminated with pesticides.
In response, a partnership between the Women on Farms Project and Oxfam (in South Africa and Germany) launched a “Double Standards Pesticides” campaign in 2019 to pressure the government of South Africa to ban 67 pesticides already banned in the European Union.
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Read MoreThe outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden is doing everything to make sure that President-elect Donald Trump will not be able to facilitate peace in the Ukraine conflict once he returns to the White House in January, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said.
The policy currently pursued by the White House is “quite risky, even self-destructive,” Ryabkov told RT in an exclusive interview on Saturday. “We caution them against it,” the diplomat added.
He was referring to the permission given by Washington to Kiev to carry out strikes deep into Russian territory with American-made weapons, and an increase in arms deliveries to Ukraine, which happened after Biden’s loss to Trump in November’s election.
”The outgoing US administration demonstrates a unique capability of doubling down and destroying the chances of its successor,” Trump, of fulfilling his campaign promise of swiftly finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the deputy FM stressed.
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Read MoreJustin Trudeau has added eight Liberal MPs to his front bench and reassigned four ministers as part of a long-awaited cabinet shuffle.
The shuffle follows a disastrous week for the prime minister after former deputy prime minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland resigned from cabinet after he told her she’d be reassigned. This followed, Freeland said, a period of tension between she and Trudeau about how to handle Canada’s finances.
The government is also bracing for U.S. President-elect Donald Trum
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Read MoreThe Canadian Coast Guard in an internal report says its fleet is so old it now spends a third of a billion a year on maintenance as “30 percent of vessels have less than five years left.” Defence Minister Bill Blair counts Coast Guard spending in claiming Canada is on a path to meeting minimum NATO requirements for military preparedness.
“The Canadian Cost Guard fleet is aging as vessels approach and exceed their intended end of service life,” said an Evaluation Of Fleet Procurement And Maintenance. “Across the fleet 30 percent of vessels have less than five years left until they reach their end of service life.”
“Twenty-seven percent have exceeded their service life by up to 14 years and six percent have extended it by 17 to 36 years,” said the Evaluation. “As of 2023 the large fleet has reached 82 percent of its intended service life on average. The age, condition and obsolescence of Canadian Coast Guard vessels and their electronics and informatics infrastructure represent a key risk to program delivery
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Read MoreParks Canada yesterday had no comment over a mistaken historical commemoration. The agency honoured a Saskatchewan athlete as the first Canadian woman Olympic gold medalist in track and field. She wasn’t.
Parks Canada in its December 17 announcement called Ethel Catherwood of Saskatoon the “first Canadian woman to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field.” The agency would not identify its source for the claim. “By succeeding in the high jump she helped challenge public opinion of women’s athletic skills, opening the door to future opportunities for female athletes in track and field,” wrote Parks Canada.
“National historic designations illustrate the defining moments in the story of Canada,” it said. “Together they tell the stories of who we are and connect us to our past.”
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Read MoreImmigration Minister Marc Miller is enforcing new regulations to limit in-and-out claims by foreigners gaming immigration rules. Miller’s department called the practice “flagpoling.”
“Canada has experienced unprecedented volumes of asylum claimants,” the department wrote in a legal notice detailing amendments to Immigration And Refugee Protection Regulations. “In 2019 the Canada Border Services Agency processed 29,635 asylum claims at ports of entry. In 2023 the Agency processed 72,320 claims at ports of entry.”
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Read MoreParliament should mandate criminal background checks on all marine port employees, a practice already required at airports, says the Commons public safety committee. MPs blamed organized crime for vehicle thefts worth $1.5 billion last year.
“The committee recognizes organized crime plays a significant role in the commission of vehicle thefts and that the real motivation is not necessarily the stolen vehicle but the financial gain,” said a committee report Fighting The Phenomenon Of Vehicle Thefts In Canada. It recommended Parliament “provide police services with the authority to conduct security clearances for all Canadian port authorities’ employees” and “establish a centralized database for employee access cards for all Canadian ports.”
“Many stolen vehic
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Read MoreThe New Brunswick Liberal government will walk back on defending parental rights and children from the harms of gender ideology.
New Brunswick Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Claire Johnson is rescinding the previous Conservative government’s Policy 713, which required parental consent for students under the age of 16 to change their name and pronouns at school.
“Our government committed to
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Read MoreThe U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) strongly backed a controversial research project with China into novel viruses in 2019 even though it created new biosecurity risks, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show.
Hundreds of records obtained by U.S. Right to Know from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits show how the GVP was boosted by the State Department and underwritten by USAID as it got off the ground from 2016 to 2019.
They also show that the U.S. forged ahead despite unanswered questions about who would own the data and whether Chinese partners would be transparent with the research.
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