Tag Archives: WorldNews

Current child welfare system doesn’t work for Indigenous kids: former B.C. advocate

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond

British Columbia’s former children’s advocate says the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women needs to hold all governments accountable.

While Nestlé extracts millions of litres from their land, residents have no drinking water

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Just 90 minutes from Toronto, residents of a First Nations community try to improve the water situation as the beverage company extracts from their land

The mysterious rash on the arm of six-year-old Theron wouldn’t heal. For almost a year, his mother, Iokarenhtha Thomas, who lives in the Six Nations of the Grand River indigenous reserve in Ontario, went to the local doctor for lotions for the boy. It worked, for a time. But the itchy red rash always returned. Thomas came to suspect the culprit behind the rash: water – or, rather, the lack of it.

Thomas, a university student and mother of five, has lived without running tap water since the age of 16. Her children lack access to things commonplace elsewhere, like toilets, showers and baths. For washing and toilet usage, they use a bucket.

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Ukip has become too vile even for its own extremists | David Lawrence

British brown shirt throwbacks to British 1930’s fascism.

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MEP Bill Etheridge is the latest to desert the party as it ramps up the ugly anti-Muslim rhetoric

Ukip’s controversial and gaffe-prone West Midlands MEP, Bill Etheridge, has dramatically quit the party, claiming that its character has been “permanently changed” and is now viewed by voters as “a vehicle of hate towards Muslims and the gay community”.

The move is yet another blow to the Eurosceptic party, which has driven hard into far-right territory under leader Gerard Batten, who has actively courted anti-Muslim figurehead Tommy Robinson in an obsessional quest against Islam (which he calls “Mohammedanism”).

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Scientists say halting deforestation ‘just as urgent’ as reducing emissions

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Protecting and restoring forests would reduce 18% of emissions by 2030 and help to avoid global temperature rise beyond 1.5C

The role of forests in combating climate change risks being overlooked by the world’s governments, according to a group of scientists that has warned halting deforestation is “just as urgent” as eliminating the use of fossil fuels.

Razing the world’s forests would release more than 3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, more than the amount locked in identified global reserves of oil, coal and gas. By protecting and restoring forests, the world would achieve 18% of the emissions mitigation needed by 2030 to avoid runaway climate change, the group of 40 scientists, spanning five countries, said in a statement.

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Mike Pence accuses China of meddling in US elections despite lack of evidence

Pimping for Trump and using racism and yellow peril to cover bribes from Russia.

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Vice-president’s allegation echoes similar claim made by Trump last week but has been contradicted by cybersecurity experts

Mike Pence has claimed that Russian interference in US elections “pales in comparison” with Chinese meddling, which he said was aimed at ousting Donald Trump.

Related: Trump accuses China of meddling in midterms, citing Iowa newspaper ad

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Trump mocking Christine Blasey Ford shows how women are silenced | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Can’t get much lower but I am sure he will try… Ford is facing the same humiliation as thousands of sexual assault complainants before her. We need to rip up this script of male domination

I believe Dr Christine Blasey Ford. I found her testimony of a violent sexual assault by supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh powerful and convincing, as did many, many others who watched her give evidence before the Senate committee last week. Even Donald Trump said at the time: “I thought her testimony was very compelling and she looks like a very fine woman to me, very fine woman.”

It is of course foolish to expect any kind of consistency from that man. He had already questioned on Twitter why the 15-year-old Ford had not reported the assault to police. And on Tuesday night, at a campaign rally in Mississippi, he mocked her and her testimony in front of a baying and cheering audience. We already know that Trump considers himself to be quite the impressionist, and so here we see him imitating her inability to remember certain details from the events of that night 40 years ago.

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