Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Google has fired 28 employees in the aftermath of protests over technology that the internet company is supplying the Israeli government amid the Gaza war, further escalating tensions surrounding a hot-button deal.
The firings confirmed by Google late Wednesday came a day after nine employees were arrested during sit-in protests at offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, after the company called police.
The dissent roiling Google centres on “Project Nimbus,” a US$1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 that calls upon Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.
The protests are being organized primarily by a group called No Tech For Apartheid. Google says Nimbus isn't being deployed in weaponry or intelligence gathering.
In a statement, Google attributed the firing of the 28 employees to “completely unacceptable behavior” that prevented some workers from doing their jobs and created a threatening atmosphere. The Mountain View, California, company added it is still investigating what happened during the protests, implying more workers could still be fired.
In a blog post, No Tech For Apartheid accused Google of lying about what happened inside its offices during what it described as “peaceful sit-in" that received overwhelming support from other workers who weren't participating in the protest.
“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its US$1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” No Tech For Apartheid asserted.
Without calling out a specific incident, Google CEO Sundar Pichai indicated in a Thursday blog post that employees will be on a short leash as the company intensifies its efforts to improve its AI technology at a pivotal moment in the industry and, potentially, humanity.
“This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Pichai wrote. “This is too important a moment as a company for us to be distracted.”
The contract raising the ire of some Google workers runs within the company's cloud computing division that is overseen by a former Oracle executive, Thomas Kurian.
Under Kurian's leadership, cloud computing has emerged as one of Google's fastest-growing divisions, with revenue of US$33 billion last year, a 26 per cent increase from 2022. A wide range of private-sector companies also buy Google's cloud computing services, in addition to governments around the world.
Google workers have periodically staged angry protests over other deals the company has been working on and have also raised ethical concerns about the way it is developing artificial intelligence.
One of the previous employee uprisings resulted in Google deciding in 2018 to end a contract with the U.S. defense department called “Project Maven” that involved helping the armed forces analyze military videos.
But Google has continued to thrive, despite the internal misgivings about the way it is making some of its money. Its revenue mostly comes through digital advertising sold through an internet empire that depends on its dominant search engine as its main pillar.
Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., posted a US$74 billion profit last year and now employs about 182,000 workers worldwide — about 83,000 more people than in 2018 when it abandoned Project Maven.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.