Canadian border guards have been screening travellers using a huge, secretive US anti-terrorism database that is almost never referred to publicly, new documents reveal. The database, called Tuscan, is provided to every Canadian border guard and immigration officer, and empowers them to detain, interrogate, arrest and deny entry to anyone found on it.Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the Guardian through Canada’s access to information system reveal the fullest picture yet of a database that, although employed in Canada, is maintained exclusively by the US. It contains the personal information of as many as 680,000 people believed by US authorities to be linked with terrorism, and functions effectively as a second no-fly list that is cloaked in secrecy.

Canada’s official no-fly list is called the Passenger Protect Program, which lists known and suspected terrorists who are forbidden from flying to or from Canada. One estimate concludes it has around 100,000 names, and the government has offered a redress so travellers can apply to have their name removed.(theguardian)…[+]

Only hours after signing an executive order to end the practice of separating migrant families at the US-Mexico border, Donald Trump said the public uproar over his administration’s policy was a distraction by Democrats from a report into the FBI’s Hillary Clinton’s email investigation. Speaking to a packed rally in Duluth, Minnesota, on Wednesday night, Trump tied the issue to the inspector general’s report about the FBI’s handling of its Clinton inquiry during the 2016 elections, which he falsely claimed had proved his innocence in the Russia investigation while covering up Clinton’s guilt. “Right now they are building up immigration, they are building up immigration,” Trump said. “They don’t want to show what’s happening in Congress where this scam has been revealed.”

Trump faced significant backlash in recent days after audio and video emerged of children separated from their families under the “zero tolerance” policy implemented by his administration. It has led to 2,300 children being separated from their parents. Although Trump’s executive order is prospective, it does nothing to reunite children who have already been separated.(theguardian)…[+]

Grenada – The Board of Directors of the Caribbean Development Bank has approved a project that aims to increase the use of technology to build greater climate resilience throughout the Region. Funded through a grant of USD1.5 million and to be executed by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) over a three-year period, the project approved on May 28 will support flight-mapping services to collect Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for almost 10,000 square kilometres of vulnerable Caribbean coastal areas.

The grant provides resources for the preparation of an Intellectual Property Policy (IPP) and the creation of a product development and marketing strategy for the Centre, as well as the training of 38 end-users from the Bank’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) in the applications of LiDAR data.  “Generating quality scientific data and information products, data sharing, and ease of data access and transfer, are important aspects of building climate resilience across the Region because they support an improved understanding of climate risks and impacts,” said Daniel Best, Director, Projects Department, CDB.

“LiDAR-based mapping technology can therefore assist the Region in addressing some of the problems being experienced, due to the absence of geo-spatial data for decision-making, and improve the capacity of stakeholders to make better-informed decisions, for more effective management of natural hazard and climate risks,” he added.(CDB)…[+]

LiDAR is a remote sensing technology used to obtain highly accurate elevation measurements of the earth’s surface. LiDAR technology is capable of simultaneously gathering both topographic and bathymetric data, which are used to provide detailed information of land and ocean floors, and offer economies of scale.