BREAKING Bob Cole, veteran CBC broadcaster and former voice of 'Hockey Night in Canada,' dead at 90
Bob Cole, legendary CBC broadcaster and former voice of Hockey Night in Canada, has died. He was 90.
French President Emmanuel Macron has changed his mobile phone and phone number in light of the Pegasus spyware case, a presidency official said on Thursday, in one of the first concrete actions announced in relation to the scandal.
"He's got several phone numbers. This does not mean he has been spied on. It's just additional security," the official told Reuters. Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said the president's security protocols were being adapted in light of the incident.
A global outcry was triggered when several international media organizations reported that the Pegasus spyware was used in hacking smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists and government officials in several countries.
In Israel, home of Pegasus developer NSO Group, a senior lawmaker said a parliamentary panel may look into spyware export restrictions. NSO says its software is used to fight crime and terrorism and has denied any wrongdoing.
"Obviously we're taking (this) very seriously," Attal told reporters hours after an emergency cabinet meeting focused on the Pegasus allegations.
Le Monde newspaper and Radio France broadcaster reported on Tuesday that Macron's phone was on a list of potential targets for surveillance by Morocco. The two media said that they did not have access to Macron's phone and could not verify if his phone had indeed been spied on.
Morocco has rejected these allegations.
A French lawyer for Morocco, Olivier Baratelli, said the government planned to lodge defamation lawsuits in Paris against nongovernmental organizations Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, according to French news outlet franceinfo on Thursday. The two groups participated in the Pegasus probe and alleged Morocco had targeted French officials for surveillance with the spyware.
Amid mounting EU concern, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin that spyware should be denied to countries where there is no judicial oversight.
Hungarian prosecutors on Thursday launched an investigation into multiple complaints received in the wake of the reports.
Israel has appointed an inter-ministerial team to assess reports based on an investigation by 17 media organizations that said Pegasus had been used in attempted or successful hacks of smartphones using malware that enables the extraction of messages, records calls and secretly activates microphones.
NSO has rejected the reporting by the media partners as "full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories." Reuters has not independently verified the reporting.
"We certainly have to look anew at this whole subject of licenses granted by DECA," Ram Ben-Barak, head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, told Israel's Army Radio, referring to the government-run Defence Export Controls Agency.
The Israeli government team "will conduct its checks, and we will be sure to look into the findings and see if we need to fix things here," said Ben-Barak. A former deputy chief of Mossad, he said proper use of Pegasus had "helped a great many people."
DECA is within Israel's Defence Ministry and oversees NSO exports. Both the ministry and the firm have said that Pegasus is meant to be used to track only terrorists or criminals, and that all foreign clients are vetted governments.
NSO says it does not know the specific identities of people against whom clients use Pegasus. If it receives a complaint of Pegasus having been misused by a client, NSO can retroactively acquire the target lists and, should the complaint prove true, unilaterally shut down that client's software, the company says.
Other world leaders among those whose phone numbers the news organizations said were on a list of possible targets include Pakistani Prime Minister Imram Khan and Morocco's King Mohammed VI.
(Reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Michel Rose in Paris Additional reporting by Gergely Szakacs in Budapest, Myriam Rivet, Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris Writing by Dan Williams, Ingrid Melander and Cynthia Osterman Editing by Gareth Jones, William Maclean and Giles Elgood)
Bob Cole, legendary CBC broadcaster and former voice of Hockey Night in Canada, has died. He was 90.
New York's highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction, reversing a landmark ruling of the #MeToo era in determining the trial judge improperly allowed women to testify about allegations against the ex-movie mogul that weren't part of the case.
Honda is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant next to its Alliston, Ont., assembly plant, which it is retooling to produce fully electric vehicles, all part of a $15-billion project that is expected to include up to $5 billion in public money.
MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by House Speaker Ted Arnott on Thursday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that is banned at Queen’s Park.
Researchers are working to better understand if some Canadian military veterans may be suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE -- a disorder previously found in the brains of professional football and hockey players after their death.
Residents of John D'Or Prairie, a community on the Little Red River Cree Nation in northern Alberta, were told to take shelter Thursday morning during a police operation.
During a special winner celebration near their hometown, Doug and Enid shared the story of how they discovered they were holding a Lotto Max ticket worth $70 million and how they kept this huge secret for so long.
A West Virginia father is getting some sense of closure after authorities found the remains of his young daughter and her mother following a deathbed confession from the man believed to have fatally shot them nearly two decades ago.
The first cargo ship passed through a newly opened deep-water channel in Baltimore on Thursday after being stuck in the harbor since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed four weeks ago, halting most maritime traffic through the city's port.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.