WORLD

Ottawa, Canada | AFP | Netflix will spend Can$500 million (US$400 million) over the next five years to make original films and television shows in Canada, the company and Heritage Minister Melanie Joly announced Thursday. This amounts to about five percent of the video streaming service’s estimated total US$7 billion production …

Barcelona, Spain | AFP | Police on Thursday seized more than six million ballots and envelopes and 100 ballot boxes in a Catalan town, in the latest bid to block a banned independence referendum, a police source said. The seizures are the latest in a long list of items confiscated by …

Washington, United States | AFP | A Russian media group with links to the Moscow government spent $274,000 in 2016 on Twitter ads which may have been used to try to influence the US election, the social media firm said Thursday. Twitter said it shared data with congressional investigators about ads …

Miami, United States | AFP | Zika has been around for decades but only recently began to cause birth defects due to a single mutation the mosquito-borne virus likely acquired in 2013, researchers said Thursday. The report in the US journal Science explains for the first time how this once relatively …

Chicago, United States | AFP | Two toddlers were hospitalized in serious condition after a playmate accidentally shot them with a loaded gun at a daycare in the US state of Michigan. Both of the children’s conditions were upgraded from critical a day earlier, police said Thursday, as they wrapped up …

Chicago, United States | AFP | Otto Warmbier, the American student who died days after being released from North Korea in a coma, displayed no obvious signs of torture despite assertions by his parents and President Donald Trump, an Ohio medical examiner said Wednesday. The coroner said the 22-year-old, who had …

Vatican City, Holy See | AFP | Pope Francis on Wednesday urged people across the world to open their arms to migrants, as Catholic charity Caritas launched its “Share the Journey” campaign on migration. “With open arms … that is exactly how to welcome (migrants), with arms wide open,” Francis …

New York, United States | AFP | Rap mogul Jay-Z and pop superstar Jennifer Lopez will headline a concert in New York to raise funds for survivors of hurricanes that have devastated the United States and the Caribbean. Tidal, the streaming service led by Jay-Z, on Wednesday announced the line-up of …

United Nations, United States | AFP | Representatives of UN agencies will be permitted to visit Rakhine state in Myanmar on Thursday for the first time since the start of a massive exodus of minority Rohingya Muslims. “There will be a trip organized by the government, probably tomorrow, to Rakhine,” United …

Washington, United States | AFP | The United States will reduce the number of refugees it is prepared to welcome for resettlement to only 45,000 over the next year — just over half the figure for 2016, officials said Wednesday. The decision will disappoint refugee advocates and United Nations agencies, which …