Battling cancer and attempting to get by on a fixed income in one of the world’s least affordable housing markets, he turned a Vancouver Tim Hortons into his makeshift home. Now his death – while sitting alone at a table of the ubiquitous Canadian coffee chain – has cast a spotlight on the toll the city’s housing crisis is taking on Vancouver’s most vulnerable.

Believed to be in his 70s and known to his friends as Ted, the man was a familiar figure at the Tim Hortons in the city’s downtown. Friends described him as a kind and easygoing man who had lived out the past decade at the 24-hour coffee shop, sleeping and eating at a table near the washroom. Witnesses said he may have spent hours slumped at his table last week, unresponsive, before a passerby alerted staff.

“It is a nearly unimaginable scenario,” said Jeremy Hunka of the Union Gospel Mission. “To have somebody dying for hours in a public restaurant at a table, where customers are drinking their coffee, coming and going, and nobody is noticing this person’s dying breath.” His death has prompted renewed scrutiny of the link between the city’s red hot property market – where the average cost of a detached home hovers around C$1.8m ($1.4m) – and levels of homelessness that have soared to record highs in recent years. The number of homeless in the city is continuing to grow at a pace of about five people a week, said Hunka. “We need more housing, more supports, and more compassion.”(theguardian)...[+]

Vladimir Putin on Thursday demanded that Russian officials be given consular access to Yulia Skripal and that Russian law enforcement agencies take part in the investigation into her poisoning with a military-grade nerve agent. Skripal and her father, a former double agent who was released from Russian prison in a spy swap with the UK in 2010, were poisoned with a novichok nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury in March. British officials have blamed Russia for the attack, calling it the first use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe since the second world war.

“We would very much like to be given access to our citizens, to Yulia in this case, and to be given the opportunity to take part in the investigation,” Putin said during a nationally televised question-and-answer session on Thursday. Putin also said that both Skripal and her father would have died if a military-grade nerve agent was used.

Both Skripals were found unconscious and “critically unwell” after the poisoning. Doctors were concerned they could die or suffer irreversible brain damage. Both eventually recovered to the point where they could be discharged from the hospital. Sergei Skripal has not spoken publicly about the attack, while in a statement in May, his daughter asked for privacy. The recovery had been “slow and extremely painful,” she said, adding that she wanted to care for her father and eventually “return home to my country”.(theguardian)…[+]

Grenada – The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the Government of Guyana and the University of Guyana have signed a USD150,000 agreement to support the institution’s efforts towards the construction of a new library. The agreement was signed on May 29, on the margins of the 48^th Annual Meeting of CDB’s Board of Governors, which took place in Grenada.

“We are optimistic that this process will place the University of Guyana further along the path to having new facilities that are environmentally resilient, socially inclusive and a place of study and lifelong learning for the men and women who attend this institution,” said Dr. W^m. Warren Smith, President, CDB.

“This project is small but very poignant and very important; is going towards the advancement of the library facilities and we hope that with this other donors and other development partners can come on board, just like CDB […] to help with the reshaping of the university,” said Hon. Winston Jordan, Minister of Finance, Guyana. “We know that the library of any university is the intellectual centerpiece of what it does by way of what it does in education and instruction, by way of what it does in research for public policy and social benefit, and we at the University of Guyana have been without that critical infrastructure value for a long time. And so as we move along the project of rebuilding our university this is a demonstration of ‘putting your money where your mouth is’, and we are delighted to be able to have that,” said Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana, Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith.

The seven-month technical assistance project for which the agreement was signed will allow the University to undertake a comprehensive assessment of its current library infrastructure, and prepare designs and cost estimates for construction of a new library. The designs will be supported by an Environmental and Social Management Framework to ensure a socially inclusive, environmentally sensitive and hazard- and climate-resilient new facility.(CDB)…[+]