Foreign workers: Microsoft gets green light from Ottawa for foreign trainees

The federal government has granted an exemption to Microsoft Canada that will allow the company to bring in an unspecified number of temporary foreign workers to British Columbia as trainees without first looking for Canadians to fill the jobs.

A notice posted on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website says foreign workers will receive specialized training in a new human resources development centre in the province. The tech giant will not have to perform a labour market impact assessment (LMIA) — a rigorous process that would include a search for Canadians who could fill the positions.

Lawsuit Settled Involving Ferguson Officer Accused Of Choking, Hog-Tying A 12-Year-Old

WASHINGTON -- A lawsuit against a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who was accused of choking and hog-tying a 12-year-old boy in 2010 has been settled for $4,500.

The 2012 lawsuit alleged that Ferguson Police Officer Justin Cosma, who was then serving as a police officer in Jefferson County, Missouri, and his then-colleague Richard Carter approached the shirtless 12-year-old as the boy was checking his mailbox at the end of his driveway.

The Torture Party: Why Republicans Defend the Most Sadistic Government Program in Recent History

If George W. Bush’s fervent insistence that his government did not engage in torture does not define and haunt him forever—like Richard Nixon insisting he was not a crook, or Bill Clinton denying he had sexual relations with that woman—it will only be for the paradoxical reason that he insisted as much too many times for any one clip to supply the iconic denial.

The Bush administration’s supporters, operating under the assumption that its most brutal “enhanced interrogation technique” was waterboarding, spent much of the past decade defending this singular practice. Waterboarding did not amount to torture, they insisted, because Navy SEALS allegedly undergo the same treatment as part of their training. Anyway, it happened just a handful of times. Marc Thiessen, the Bush administration’s torture point man, later insisted, “We waterboarded in the CIA—the CIA waterboarded three terrorists. Just three.”

Uruguay Takes on London Bankers, Marlboro Mad Men and the TPP

What the hell is happening in tiny Uruguay? South America's second smallest country, with a population of just 3.4 million, has generated international headlines out of proportion to its size over the past year by becoming the first nation to legalize marijuana in December 2013, by welcoming Syrian refugees into the country in October 2014 and by accepting the first six US prisoners resettled to South America from the Guantánamo Bay prison on December 6, 2014.

Outgoing President Jose Mujica, a colorful former Tupamaros rebel who was imprisoned and brutally tortured by the military during the era of the disappeared in the 1970s under US-supported Operation Condor in Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and other nations of the Southern Cone, is a favorite media subject and has been at the center of these actions.

A Handful of Corporate Lawyers Have the Supreme Court’s Ear

The marble facade of the U.S. Supreme Court bears the words “Equal Justice Under Law,” but an elite group of attorneys has emerged as first among equals, and they represent corporations, not people.

California Parents Outraged Their Kids Are Learning About Consent, Gender Identity

Parents in one northern California school district are accusing Planned Parenthood of trying to pressure their kids into having sex by providing them with information about consent, sexuality, and gender identity. They’re trying to get the national nonprofit, which is currently the largest sex ed provider in the country, kicked out of school.

Defense Bill Passes, Giving Sacred Native American Sites To Mining Company

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate passed a measure authorizing the nation’s defense programs Friday, and along with it managed to give lands sacred to Native Americans to a foreign company that owns a uranium mine with Iran.

The $585 billion National Defense Authorization Act of 2015 is one of the must-pass pieces of legislation that Congress moves every year. But like they did in attaching extraneous riders to the must-pass government funding bill, lawmakers used the defense bill as a vehicle to pass a massive public lands package.

House Price Index Shows Declines In 8 Of 11 Cities

Only one major Canadian metro area avoided falling or stagnant house prices in Teranet’s latest house price index.

Overall house prices fell 0.3 per cent in November from October, but thanks to strong price growth earlier this year, they were still up 5.2 per cent from a year ago.

Eight of the 11 cities measured in Teranet’s index saw house prices fall. Halifax and Vancouver were flat on the month, while Edmonton was the only city to see prices grow (up 1.1 per cent).

Senators Find Mistakes In Tory Bill C-525, Pass It Anyway

OTTAWA - The Conservative-dominated Senate has discovered inadvertent drafting errors in a bill targeting labour unions — but is poised to pass it anyway.

Conservatives used their majority on the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee Friday to reject Liberal amendments that would have corrected the mistakes in C-525.

Amending the bill would be tantamount to killing it, they argued.

Latin Americans Are Paying the Price for Corporate Climate Destruction

Information contained in a new report that details how multi-national corporations are destroying the environment and causing serious climate damage in Latin America brings attention to an important area not being discussed at the UN COP 20 climate negotiations being held in Peru.

The report describes in detail how the destruction caused by three European multi-national corporations is typical of the damage caused by multi-nationals throughout the continent.