'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
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)
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Rookie goalie Arturs Silovs will start in net for the Canucks as Vancouver kicks off a second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers Wednesday night.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.