'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
Activision Blizzard's CEO Bobby Kotick admitted that the gaming company's response to a California discrimination lawsuit was "tone deaf" amid a growing employee backlash and accusations of a "frat boy" work culture.
"Every voice matters — and we will do a better job of listening now, and in the future," Kotick said in a note to employees on Tuesday. "I am sorry that we did not provide the right empathy and understanding."
Kotick's response came hours before hundreds of employees staged a walkout on Wednesday to pressure the company to do more to address a host of issues including unequal pay, gender discrimination and harassment.
Those issues burst into the open last week, when California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, filed a lawsuit accusing Activision Blizzard — the company behind popular video games such as "Call of Duty," "World of Warcraft" and "Candy Crush" — of fostering a "frat boy" work culture where female employees have to "continually fend off unwanted sexual comments and advances by their male coworkers."
The complaint also alleges that "the company's executives and human resources personnel knew of the harassment and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the unlawful conduct, and instead retaliated against women who complained."
The company's director of corporate communications, Kelvin Liu, blasted the state's filing and investigation as "inaccurate" and "distorted" in a statement to CNN Business following the lawsuit.
Several former employees have detailed their experiences at Activision Blizzard on social media since the lawsuit was filed, and more than 2,000 current and former employees signed a petition on Monday slamming the company's initial pushback against the lawsuit's claims as "abhorrent and insulting."
The petition also cited an internal statement by Frances Townsend, a former George W. Bush administration counterterrorism official and Activision Blizzard's executive vice president of corporate affairs, in which she reportedly described the lawsuit's allegations as "factually incorrect, old and out of context."
Wednesday's walkout aims to "improve conditions for employees at the company, especially women, and in particular women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups," according to a document shared with CNN Business. Its demands of leadership include an end to mandatory arbitration clauses in all employee contracts, changing hiring and promotion policies to improve representation within the company, and publication of compensation data.
Participants of the walkout are also calling on company leadership to hire a third party to audit Activision Blizzard's reporting structure, human resources department and executive staff. "It is imperative to identify how current systems have failed to prevent employee harassment, and to propose new solutions to address these issues," the document said.
In his note to employees, Kotick announced he had hired the law firm WilmerHale to review the company's policies "to ensure that we have and maintain best practices to promote a respectful and inclusive workplace." He urged employees to reach out to the law firm's team led by Stephanie Avakian, a former director of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement.
"Of course, NO retaliation will be tolerated," Kotick said. He also said the company would do more to support its workers, creating "safe spaces, moderated by third parties," for employees to share their issues.
"We are immediately evaluating managers and leaders across the company," he said. "Anyone found to have impeded the integrity of our processes for evaluating claims and imposing appropriate consequences will be terminated."
More than 100 Activision Blizzard employees were expected to attend Wednesday's walkout in person outside the company's offices in Irvine, California, a Blizzard employee told CNN Business, while over 1,000 others were expected to participate virtually.
In a letter shared with CNN Business ahead of the walkout on Wednesday, participants said Activision Blizzard's latest responses did not address several of their demands, including an end to forced arbitration, greater pay transparency and employee involvement in selecting a third party to audit the company's processes.
"While we are pleased to see that our collective voices ... have convinced leadership to change the tone of their communications, this response fails to address critical elements at the heart of employee concerns," the letter said. "Today's walkout will demonstrate that this is not a one-time event that our leaders can ignore."
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.