Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today…

Top UN court opens hearings on South Africa’s allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The United Nations’ top court is opening hearings into South Africa’s allegation that Israel’s war with Hamas amounts to genocide against Palestinians, a claim that Israel strongly denies.

In two days of preliminary hearings that begin Thursday, South Africa is initially asking the International Court of Justice to order

Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures.

The cuts come as Google looks towards “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the company said in a statement.

“Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally,” it said.

Google earlier said it was eliminating a few hundred roles, with most of the impact on its augmented reality

Federal public servants warned the government two years ago that large increases to immigration could affect housing affordability and services, internal documents show.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press through an access-to-information request show Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada analyzed the potential effects immigration would have on the economy, housing and services, as it prepared its immigration targets for 2023 to 2025.

The deputy minister, among others, was warned in 2022 that housing construction had not kept up with

OTTAWA — Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was detained for years in China, is among those urging a judge to avoid a harsh prison sentence for Cameron Jay Ortis, convicted of breaching Canada’s secrets law.

In a letter filed in Ontario Superior Court, Kovrig, a past professional acquaintance of the former RCMP intelligence official, says leaving Ortis “to rot in a prison cell for the sake of deterrence and retribution” strikes him as “an exercise in gratuitous cruelty.”

Kovrig, who spent more than 1

SASKATOON — A lawyer representing a Saskatchewan First Nation says an investigation into the statutory release of a man who killed 11 people and injured 17 others should be made public ahead of a coroner’s inquest into the stabbing rampage.

The parole board and Correctional Service Canada started the investigation into Myles Sanderson soon after the mass stabbing on the James Smith Cree Nation and in the nearby village of Weldon in 2022.

Sanderson, 32, died in police custody a few days after the killings.

Sanderson,

SAINT JOHN, N.B. — It has been one week since a judge in New Brunswick cleared Walter Gillespie of a murder charge that hung over him for half his 80 years. But as he looked around his dark, cramped apartment in Saint John, N.B., this week, Gillespie said he still feels caged by the legal battle that came to define his life.

“It just looks like another jail cell,” Gillespie said with a chuckle, his eyes sweeping over brown cardboard boxes stacked

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares were mostly higher on Friday after Wall Street drifted to a mixed close.

Tokyo’s benchmark extended its New Year’s rally, trading well above 35,000 and at its highest level since 1990. U.S. futures were nearly unchanged and oil prices surged.

On Thursday, a U.S. inflation report forced some investors to push back forecasts for when the Federal Reserve will deliver long-sought cuts to interest rates. But markets

BEIJING (AP) — China’s auto exports surged 63.7% in 2023 while domestic sales, boosted by year-end incentives, rose 4.2%, an industry association said Thursday.

The surge in exports, to 4.1 million according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, may propel China past Japan as the world’s number one exporter of cars. Japan exported 3.6 million cars in the first 11 months of the year, with a final tally

PARIS (AP) — A former France basketball player serving as an ambassador for the Paris 2024 Olympics has been forced to quit her role because of a controversy linked to a social media post related to the situation in Gaza.

Following an urgent meeting of the Paris 2024’s board and general assembly, Emilie Gomis submitted her resignation, Paris Olympics organizers said.

Days after the attacks perpetrated by Hamas in Israel on October 7, Gomis briefly published a message on her Instagram account showing maps of