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When a Chinese spacecraft successfully signalled from the ‘dark’ side of the moon this week, the country’s triumphalist state mediia was quick to describe the achievement as “a huge stride” for the Chinese nation. The deliberate echo of Neil Armstrong – and the Cold War space race he won – also carried an implicit warning: […]

NEW YORK — Dick’s Sporting Goods, a major U.S. retailer, will immediately halt sales of assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines at all of its stores and ban the sale of all guns to anyone under 21. The announcement Wednesday comes as students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, return to class for […]

A former sports teammate of the New Zealand man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane on Tuesday described him as being “creepy towards girls”. Jesse Kempson was a "weird guy", according to the softball teammate, who said he warned women off spending time with the suspect. “He was a different sort of character,” said the […]

Bad news, Canadian big spenders: You’re not going to be able to throw around those thousand-dollar bills like you used to. The 2018 federal budget, released Tuesday, includes an item that will see a number of Canadian banknotes lose their status as “legal tender,” meaning they will no longer be accepted as payment in stores. […]

Conservationists in Indonesia are celebrating after the world’s only known albino orangutan was released into the jungle in Borneo, after being found starving and dehydrated in an Indonesian village. Alba, as her keepers named her – Spanish for dawn – was rescued in April 2017. The Borneo Orangutan Survival nurtured her back to health, feeding […]

This past week another International Women’s Day came and went, but the cause must endure. In fact the cause must accelerate. Once upon a time, posting supportive messages on websites and hosting employee luncheons and receptions might have passed for progress towards gender equality, but in 2018, it rings hollow. The last six months represent […]

At some point in the summer of 2018, the Canadian government is going to legalize marijuana across the country. And as such, provinces are preparing for exactly how they plan to sell it. In Alberta, they’ll be issuing licenses for cannabis stores. In B.C., it’ll be a mix of public and private stores that will […]

Donald Trump, the US president, has said he would intervene in the case of arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou if it would help secure a trade deal with Beijing.  “If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which […]

I had barely gotten the words out before my doctor was reaching for his prescription pad. I hadn’t been sleeping, eating or accomplishing much of anything, really. It had been going on for some time. I had recently suffered a significant personal loss, but no, it wasn’t the first time I was experiencing these symptoms. […]

A group of Italian mayors has rebelled against Matteo Salvini, the country’s hardline interior minister, by refusing to implement stringent new laws on the treatment of asylum seekers. The mayors of Palermo, Naples, Florence and Parma said that a controversial security law, passed by the populist coalition in November, violates the basic rights of migrants […]