World
Canadian PM, Justin Trudeau, Wife, Sophie Announce Separation

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, have decided to separate, according to statements posted online by both of them.
“Sophie and I would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate,” Trudeau wrote in a message posted to his Instagram account.
Trudeau, 51, and Grégoire, 48, were married in May 2005 and have three children together: two sons, Xavier, 15, and Hadrien, nine, and one daughter, 14-year-old Ella-Grace.
“As always, we remain a close family with deep love and respect for each other and for everything we have built and will continue to build,” Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau wrote in identical messages. “For the well-being of our children, we ask that you respect our and their privacy.”
Grégoire Trudeau, a former television presenter, has been a prominent presence at Trudeau’s side throughout his political career and became a public figure in her own right as an advocate for several charitable and social causes, including mental health and gender equality.
According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau have “signed a legal separation agreement.”
“They have worked to ensure that all legal and ethical steps with regards to their decision to separate have been taken, and will continue to do so moving forward,” Trudeau’s office said.
“They remain a close family and Sophie and the Prime Minister are focused on raising their kids in a safe, loving and collaborative environment. Both parents will be a constant presence in their children’s lives and Canadians can expect to often see the family together. The family will be together on vacation, beginning next week.”
According to a source with knowledge of the arrangements, Grégoire Trudeau has moved to a separate home in Ottawa and the prime minister will remain at Rideau Cottage. Grégoire Trudeau will also spend time at Rideau Cottage, where their children are expected to live most of the time, and the Trudeaus will share parenting responsibilities, according to the source. Trudeau is expected to speak publicly this week before leaving on vacation with his family.
Trudeau’s parents — former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau — famously separated in 1977. The announcement of Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau’s separation was extensively covered by international media on Wednesday.
Dominic LeBlanc, a cabinet minister and childhood friend of Trudeau’s, was expected to brief Liberal MPs about the situation on Wednesday afternoon.
As first reported by the National Post, a source confirms that Grégoire Trudeau will no longer take on any official duties and she will not be provided with government staff to manage her own personal appearances.
As recounted in his autobiography, Common Ground, Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau began dating in 2003. Grégoire Trudeau, the daughter of a stockbroker and a nurse, was a former schoolmate of Trudeau’s late brother, Michel.
The couple became engaged in 2004 and married each other a year later during a ceremony at Montreal’s Sainte-Madeleine d’Outremont church — “by Canadian standards, a sweet and appropriately understated fairy-tale wedding,” was how a writer for Maclean’s described it.
‘Our marriage isn’t perfect’
Both Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau spoke at times candidly about their relationship and the challenges of marriage.
“Our marriage isn’t perfect, and we have had difficult ups and downs, yet Sophie remains my best friend, my partner, my love,” Trudeau wrote in Common Ground, which was published in 2014.
Grégoire Trudeau told an interviewer in 2015 that “no marriage is easy.”
“I’m almost kind of proud of the fact that we’ve had hardship, yes, because we want authenticity. We want truth,” she said. “We want to grow closer as individuals through our lifetime and we’re both dreamers and we want to be together for as long as we can.”
Trudeau launched his political career in 2007, when he decided to seek the Liberal Party nomination in the Montreal riding of Papineau. After winning there in 2008 and 2011, Trudeau began to consider seeking the Liberal leadership. The decision, he wrote, would ultimately come down to “a deeply personal private discussion between Sophie and me.”
“We had many long, honest talks that summer,” Trudeau recalled. “I wanted to be sure she knew, from my own experience, just how rough that life can be. I recalled for Sophie that my father had once told me I should never feel compelled to run for office. ‘Our family has done enough,’ he said.”
His father said that, Trudeau noted, “despite having never experienced the incessant, base vitriol of twenty-first-century politics.”
“I welcome a good tussle, and my skin is thick, but I had grown up in the reality of public life,” Trudeau wrote. “Sophie had not, and our decision would affect our kids, in some ways, more than either of us.”
In an interview in 2008, Grégoire Trudeau said that when she met Trudeau, “politics was not impossible, but it was not in the short-term or the mid-term plan.”
“But an opportunity came up, and we felt that if we weren’t going to embark on this adventure, a part of us would be selfish with the voice that we have and the opportunities that are given to us,” she said.
In Common Ground, Trudeau credits Grégoire Trudeau with “profoundly” influencing his style of politics and for helping keep him grounded.
“Sometimes it’s easy for people who have made politics their livelihood to get caught up in the heat of battle and forget about their personal values. Sophie never does, and no matter how intense things get, she makes sure I don’t either,” Trudeau wrote.
Personal lives generally private matters
The personal lives of prime ministers are generally treated as private matters. But Pierre Trudeau’s relationship with Margaret Sinclair — including their marriage in 1971 and their separation in 1977 was highly publicized. Trudeau was the first prime minister to get married while in office and also the first to publicly separate from his partner. Margaret Trudeau later disclosed her long struggle with mental illness.
Justin Trudeau, who was born nine months after his parents wed, experienced their divorce as a young child and he wrote at length about those years in Common Ground. Trudeau said that much of what was written about his parent’s relationship was “lurid and inaccurate.”
“From my perspective today, the commonly held story of my parents’ marital breakdown is nothing but a caricature, because my father was not just the tradition-bound diehard he appeared and my mother was not entirely the totally free spirit that her actions suggest,” Trudeau wrote.
“Things are never that simple, especially with a couple as complex as my parents, and I remain amused by and exasperated with those who view their relationship — all the passion, triumph, achievements, and tragedy — in black and white, seeing it merely as a flawed union between a cool and aloof man and an exuberant and uninhibited younger woman. It was that, but also much more.”
Source: CBC News
World
Google Renames Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America on Map

Google Maps has changed the Gulf of Mexico’s name to the Gulf of America for people using the app in the US.
Explaining the name change, Google said it was making the change as part of “a longstanding practice” of following name changes when updated by official government sources.
It said the Gulf, which is bordered by the US, Cuba and Mexico – would not be changed for people using the app in Mexico, and users elsewhere in the world will see the label: “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”.
It comes after President Donald Trump ordered the body of water to be renamed in US government documents after he returned to office last month.
Apple has followed suit, also changing the name to the Gulf of America in its map app for users in the US. Bloomberg reported that the change would be rolled out globally at a later date.
Mexico has decried the move, arguing that the US had no legal right to change the Gulf’s name.
The change was made by Google on Monday after the Geographic Names Information System, a US government database run by the Interior Department, listed an update to the Gulf’s name.
The listing reads: “The Gulf of America, formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico, with an average depth 5300 ft is a major body of water bordered and nearly landlocked by North America with the Gulf’s eastern, northern, and northwestern shores in the U.S. and its southwestern and southern shores in Mexico.”
It said the change was made in accordance with Trump’s executive order to “restore names that honor American Greatness”.
Following the signing of the order, President Trump proclaimed February 9 as “Gulf of America Day”.
“I call upon public officials and all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities,” a White House statement said.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum had asked Google to reconsider its decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
She argued the US could not legally change the Gulf’s name because the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea dictates that an individual country’s sovereign territory only extends up to 12 nautical miles out from the coastline.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press, a global media organisation, said that it would not change the name of the Gulf of Mexico in its style guide – which is used by most US media outlets.
Because of the style guide decision, the White House said it was barring an AP reporter from covering an executive order signing in the Oval Office.
“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” AP’s Executive Editor Julie Pace said in a statement. “Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”
Trump’s executive order, signed on 20 January, also ordered North America’s tallest mountain – Denali – be called Mount McKinley, which was its name previously.
That change is not yet reflected on Google Maps, though the AP has adopted the mountain’s old name in its style guide.
Google has also made changes to its default events in calendars, removing references for several holidays and cultural events including Pride and Black History Month, which used to appear automatically. The issue has gained online attention this week, but Google said it made the change last year.
The tech company said in a statement that “maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable”.
“So in mid-2024 we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments,” the company said.
USA
Court Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Executive Order Ending US Birthright Citizenship

A federal judge in the United States, on Thursday, put a temporary block on President Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship.
The ruling imposes a 14-day halt on the enforcement of one of the most controversial executive orders Trump signed hours after being sworn into office for a second term.
It comes after lawsuits were filed by a total of 22 states, two cities and numerous civil rights groups.
“This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” senior US District Judge John Coughenour was reported as saying during the hearing in Washington State.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is,” said Coughenour, who was appointed to the bench by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan.
Birthright citizenship is fundamental to America’s national identity, with the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution decreeing that anyone born on US soil is a citizen.
It says, in part: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Trump’s order was premised on the idea that anyone in the US illegally, or on a visa, was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country, and therefore excluded from this category.
AFP
USA
Ilegal Immigrants: Trump Empowers U.S Officials to Raid Churches, Hospitals, Schools

U.S immigration and border officials will be able to arrest migrants at so-called “sensitive” locations again, after the Trump administration overturned policies limiting where such arrests could happen.
Officers will now be able to make arrests at designated “sensitive” areas, including houses of worship, schools, and hospitals.
Officials have been prohibited from doing this since 2011.
Later, the Biden administration expanded the regulation, further restricting the authority’s powers.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
“The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
A second directive reinstates the ability for the U.S. to quickly deport any undocumented person arrested who is unable to prove they have been in the country for more than two years.
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