For the first time in report's history, Canada's air quality worse than U.S.
Thanks to wildfires, air quality in Canada is now worse than in the U.S., according to the 6th Annual World Air Quality Report.
Microsoft said Thursday it is opening an inquiry into how it responds to workplace sexual harassment and gender discrimination, including its handling of allegations about co-founder Bill Gates.
The review is a response to pressure from Microsoft investors. Nearly 78% of shareholders at the company's Nov. 30 annual meeting voted to demand more accountability in addressing workplace sexual harassment complaints.
"We're committed not just to reviewing the report but learning from the assessment so we can continue to improve the experiences of our employees," CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Microsoft's board hired a law firm in 2019 to look into Gates after a Microsoft engineer alleged in a letter that she had a sexual relationship with Gates over several years. Gates resigned from the board in 2020.
Activist investor proposals to change corporate policy rarely succeed. Microsoft had urged shareholders to reject the proposal, which called on the company to investigate its harassment policies and release a public report about them.
But the investment firm behind the proposal, Massachusetts-based Arjuna Capital, said it was pleased with how the company has responded since the winning vote.
"I'm actually quite impressed with how Microsoft has followed up on their commitment since the annual meeting," said Natasha Lamb, co-founder and managing partner of the socially minded investment firm.
She said she has had talks with Microsoft about how the investigation would proceed. The board authorized the company to hire the law firm Arent Fox to conduct the review.
"Our concern is not just what happened with Microsoft in the past but whether that behaviour is being addressed and mitigated moving forward," she said in an interview Thursday. "At the end of the day, from an investor perspective, this is about how the company is treating its employees and whether it's able to attract and retain talent."
The company based in Redmond, Washington, said its public report will include an assessment of the effectiveness of its policies against harassment and discrimination. It will also summarize the results of investigations into harassment allegations against board members and senior leaders, including the handling of the 2019 investigation of Gates, and will outline steps to hold leaders accountable.
Thanks to wildfires, air quality in Canada is now worse than in the U.S., according to the 6th Annual World Air Quality Report.
Prince William and his wife Catherine have been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home, The Sun newspaper reported -- the first footage of Kate since she had abdominal surgery for an unspecified condition two months ago.
A Toronto man is spreading the word of a cryptocurrency scam that lures victims using AI-generated news sites after he lost $17,000 in investments.
Statistics Canada says the annual inflation rate edged down to 2.8 per cent in February.
The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.
Statistics Canada has conducted a series of surveys to measure the impacts of legalized cannabis since the Cannabis Act took effect in 2018. The latest one, the 2023 National Cannabis Survey, sheds light on users' preferences and habits last year.
The demand for total solar eclipse glasses used to safely view the rare celestial event has been ramping up as sellers, along with astronomy and eye-care experts in Canada, warn that viewing the eclipse with the naked eye is dangerous.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump on Monday charged that Jews who vote for Democrats 'hate Israel' and hate 'their religion,' igniting a firestorm of criticism from the White House and Jewish leaders.
A family doctor in Toronto has been suspended for three months after a disciplinary tribunal found that he failed to follow proper protocols while examining a patient's breasts and made inappropriate comments about her body.