Author: Trevor Bates

In a downtown Toronto courtroom on Sunday, as a jury found disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard, 82, guilty on four counts of sexual assault, his son Kai Zen Bickle sat in the front row. “Justice was was served here,” Mr Bickle said soon after, outside the Toronto courthouse. “We are dealing with a systemic monster who used his business talents for evil, to prey on others.” The six-week trial had been the first time Mr Bickle had seen his father since a dinner party in 2019, where he says he saw Nygard inappropriately touch a girl. “That’s where Kai Nygard…

The Biden administration is sending Alaska more than $200 million to improve the Railbelt electrical grid, which runs from Homer to Fairbanks. The project includes a high-voltage submarine cable between the Kenai Peninsula and Anchorage and multiple battery energy storage systems. All three members of Alaska’s congressional delegation lauded the Department of Energy award. In a joint press release, they noted that the money comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill of 2021, which both U.S. senators voted for. Congresswoman Mary Peltola says her office took the lead on pressing the Biden administration for the grant. She says she personally spoke…

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) successfully rescued four Canadians from an overturned catamaran that was sinking off the coast of North Carolina on Saturday. The agency says it received an emergency signal from the Moon Dragon(opens in a new tab) — a nearly 20-metre luxury yacht that charters between the Mid-Atlantic and the Virgin Islands. According to officials from the USCG, the crew said while at sea, multiple side hatches broke leading to catastrophic flooding, forcing them to abandon ship. Petty Officer First Class Austin Lang, a USCG operations unit controller, says the successful rescue was a result of the crew…

FBI Director Chris Wray warned this week that violent domestic extremists could be inspired by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Meanwhile, possible hate crimes in the death of a Sikh man in New York and the defacing of a Jewish restaurant in Los Angeles reflected the tension raised in the United States by the war. Elsewhere, there have been dozens of bomb and death threats made against people and institutions targeted by anti-LGBTQ+ social media channel Libs of TikTok. And a neo-Nazi in Maine ups stakes and sells his compound. It’s the week in…

KELOWNA—Team Canada sits at a combined 1-2 after day one at the 2023 Pan Continental Curling Championships. Winnipeg’s Kerri Einarson split her matches—a 9-2 victory over Chinese Taipei’s Cynthia Lu and a 10-7 loss to Japan’s Satsuki Fujisawa—while Brad Gushue’s foursome from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador fell 8-5 to Korea’s JongDuk Park. Gushue won the inaugural Pan Continental Championships a year ago in Calgary while Einarson’s team took the bronze. Team Gushue must finish in the top five in Kelowna to qualify Canada for the world men’s championship in Switzerland next March. As host nation, Canada is already qualified…

The current era of global stability, built from the ruins of the Second World War, is “fracturing,” Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly warned Monday. And for Canada, the stakes are high. That warning comes from remarks delivered by Joly on Canada’s place in an uncertain world at the Economic Club of Canada. “Our world is marked by geopolitical turbulence, unpredictability and uncertainty. The tectonic plates of the world order are shifting beneath our feet,” an advance copy of Joly’s speech shared with Global News reads. “And, the structures that are built upon them are fracturing.” Joly’s remarks come at a…

Data collected this year points to a continuing decline in the Western Arctic Caribou Herd. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently shared the results from this summer’s photo census of the herd, which is estimated at 152,000 animals. That indicates a 7% decline from the previous year. “It just represents a continued decline for the last 20 years since 2003,” said Alex Hansen, wildlife biologist with Fish and Game. “That’s a concern.” From 2021 to 2022, the herd lost 24,000 caribou, dropping to a population of 164,000 animals — the lowest count since the early 1980s. From 2022…

The majority of British Columbians support the right of religiously affiliated health care facilities to reject euthanasia on their premises and to transfer patients requesting medical assistance in dying (MAiD) to other institutions, according to a survey by Angus Reid Institute in collaboration with Cardus. Fifty-eight percent of British Columbians believe that a patient requesting euthanasia in a religious hospital should be transferred elsewhere, while only 24% think the hospital should be compelled to go against its religious beliefs. The survey comes in the wake of a recent case where a terminally ill woman in British Columbia was transferred to…

As Canadians continue to face the worrisome consequences of recent grocery inflation, numerous premiers have called on the Bank of Canada to “pause” the increases in its key interest rate. The latest Consumer Price Index, which is a measure of the overall change in prices of a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by households over time, found that the price of food had increased by 8.3 per cent this June from the previous year. Rising grocery prices are another factor in the rising cost of living in Toronto, along with the soaring costs of rentals that have dominated…

Canadian National Defense Minister Bill Blair announced a donation of C$33 million ($24.38 million) to the International Fund for Ukraine, a UK-led initiative to purchase military aid for Kiev. Canada’s contribution will be used to purchase for Ukraine “hundreds of short- and medium-range anti-aircraft missiles and related systems necessary to protect Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure.” The funds will come from new  C$500 million military aid funding for Ukraine announced by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a visit to Kiev in June. The Canadian Department of Defense recalled that the total volume of Canadian assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the…