More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A 40-year-old woman was charged Friday with killing three young girls in a crime that has shocked New Zealand.
Police did not immediately identify the woman but the Stuff news agency said she was the girls' mother, Lauren Dickason, a doctor who had just moved to New Zealand from South Africa along with her daughters and husband Graham Dickason, an orthopedic surgeon.
Emergency services said that when they responded to an incident at the home in the South Island town of Timaru they found a woman, who was hospitalized in stable condition.
Police said the woman killed twin 2-year-old girls Maya and Karla and their 6-year-old sister Liane. Police said they had earlier given incorrect ages for the girls.
The family had moved into housing for medical professionals near the Timaru Hospital less than a week earlier. Before that, as new arrivals to the country, they would have been required to spend two weeks in a coronavirus quarantine hotel run by the military.
Stuff reported that Graham Dickason returned home just before 10 p.m. Thursday and found the bodies of his daughters.
Neighbours Karen and Brad Cowper called police when they heard a man screaming and crying, Stuff said. The neighbours said they asked the man if he was OK but he didn't respond other than to say: "Is this really happening?"
Police said they weren't looking for any other suspects.
"Look, whenever our police staff face a tragedy like this, you cannot help but take it personally. A lot of us are parents, we have our own children, and the human side of us comes through," said Police Superintendent John Price.
Nothing on Lauren Dickason's social media pages over recent months when she was living in Pretoria, South Africa, indicated anything was amiss. She posted pictures of her family and of bakery treats, and wrote about the virus, urging people to get vaccinated. In May, she marked the couple's wedding anniversary on Facebook.
"Happy 15th wedding anniversary Graham Dickason. What an adventure. We have truly created a beautiful family and had many good times together," she wrote. "May the next years be more blessed, more happy and may the kids let us sleep."
Her Facebook page says she went to high school in Pretoria and studied medicine in Cape Town.
Mandy Sibanyoni, who worked as a childminder for the Dickasons in South Africa, described them as an "awesome family" with "wonderful kids" and no obvious problems.
She said the only sign of "stress" she saw from Lauren Dickason was as a result of one of her daughters being born with a lip disfigurement, which needed surgical interventions. But both parents "loved their kids like nobody's business," she said.
"I'm torn apart, a part of mine is gone," Sibanyoni said in an interview with The Associated Press in Pretoria. "And it's like those kids, they are my kids too because I raised them."
"I don't know what to do about this because the only question that I've got now is, what happened? What went wrong? Because Lauren cared for her kids."
New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said the killings were "absolutely tragic" and his heart went out to everybody associated with the family.
Inspector Dave Gaskin, the Aoraki area commander, said the deaths were "incredibly distressing" for residents of Timaru, particularly after five teenagers from the town were killed in a car crash last month.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
A loud boom heard by residents across Hamilton was caused by a ‘busted or shredded’ propane cylinder, police say.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
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.