OTTAWA– Canadian unemployment is at an all-time low and businesses have a message for politicians ahead of October’s national election: We need foreign workers so do not make the campaign about keeping them out. Concern about immigration is on the rise in Canada, according to a recent survey, especially among Conservative voters whose party leads Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in polls ahead of October elections.

Unlike the United States where immigration is viewed by some as a threat, Canadian businesses broadly support Trudeau’s promise to boost the number of foreign workers allowed into the country every year to about 1% of the population.

“We don’t want immigration to be used as a political weapon here as it has been in the United States,” said Goldy Hyder, head of the Business Council of Canada, whose members employ 1.7 million people. “We agree with the federal government’s targets and we need to meet those targets … The facts clearly demonstrate that Canada is going to need immigrants to help grow the economy.”(Reuters)…[+]

Senior defence attorney Bert Samuels says the four Jamaican fishermen who have brought a case against the United States Coast Guard alleging egregious mistreatment and human rights violations in 2017 could have a case against their own Government.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on June 12 filed a lawsuit against the US Coast Guard seeking damages on behalf of Luther Fian Patterson, Robert Dexter Weir, Patrick Wayne Ferguson, and David Roderick Williams, who it says were “secretly detained without due process at sea in inhumane conditions on four coast guard ships for over a month”.Another fisherman was also detained in the incident on September 14, 2017 in which the men’s vessel was stopped in international waters off the coast of Haiti. According to the claim, the US Coast Guard destroyed the Jamaican-registered boat, the JossetteWH 478 and the men were held at sea for just over a month, shackled, and left exposed on the decks of multiple coast guard ships, which made stops in Guantanamo Bay, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Miami. The men say they were held under inhumane conditions, abused, and prevented from contacting their loved ones to inform them they were alive.(Jamaica Observer)…[+]

Prince William has said he would “fully support” his children if they were gay, but admitted he would “worry” about the added pressures they would face. It was something he had thought about since becoming a parent, he said. “I wish we lived in a world where it’s really normal and cool, but particularly for my family, and the position that we are in, that’s the bit I am nervous about,” he said.

The duke was speaking to young people at a LGBT youth charity in London. The Albert Kennedy Trust (AKT) supports LGBT young people who are at risk of homelessness. The duke said he backed whatever decision his children made, but added: “It does worry me from a parent point of view. “How many barriers you know, hateful words, persecution, all that and discrimination that might come, that’s the bit that really troubles me.

“But that’s for all of us to try and help correct and make sure we can put that to the past and not come back to that sort of stuff.” The duke said this was not the first time he has been asked this hypothetical question about his children. The Queen’s cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, and his partner James Coyle were the first royal same-sex couple to get married last year.(BBC)…[+]

MANAMA – The Trump administration launched a $50 billion economic formula for Israeli-Palestinian peace yesterday, saying an investment programme for the Palestinians was a precondition for ending the decades-old conflict. U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner opened a two-day international meeting in Bahrain to rally support for the blueprint, which has met broad disdain from Palestinians and others in the Arab world although regional U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia discreetly support it.

“We can turn this region from a victim of past conflicts into a model for commerce and advancement throughout the world,” Kushner told the gathering, attended by the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was scathing about its prospects: “Money is important. The economy is important … The political solution is more important.”(Reuters)…[+]