Today on Pansexual and Panromantic Pride Day, everyone deserves to feel seen, respected and supported—no matter who they love. Create a world where everyone feels proud to be themselves! #PansexualPrideDay pic.twitter.com/4sZjulnJjs
— HHS.gov (@HHSGov) December 8, 2024
Canada’s privacy laws are one of the “real barriers” to addressing the significant issue of cross-border sex trafficking, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Canada says.
Sex trafficking is one of several border security concerns that have been routinely discussed between the two countries under the Biden administration, Ambassador David Cohen says, long before U.S. president-elect Donald Trump began pushing Canada and Mexico to address irregular migration and drug trafficking or risk punishing tariffs.
While Cohen points out progress has been made on those fronts, he said there was still work to do on other border issues.
“Not mentioned in the president-elect’s social media post is a problem we have with sex trafficking between Canada and the United States,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block.
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Lawyer Nabil Halabi reports that lower cells in #Saydnaya Prison, known as "red wards" or "death wards," remain sealed. The regime disabled electronic gates and ventilation systems, leaving detainees trapped in what are described as human slaughterhouses.— Maher Akraa (@maherakraa) December 8, 2024
Click to read the entire thread on X.
Canada’s border services agency has no infrastructure in place to search trains for drugs, people and other goods crossing illegally into the country by rail, the head of the border agents’ union says — a security gap that adds to concerns about an overall lack of enforcement at the border.
Mark Weber, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, says a shortage of personnel and equipment at official points of entry means less than one per cent of containers moving through Canadian seaports are being searched for illicit goods.
That rate is even smaller for cross-border rail traffic, he said.
“We don’t do it at all,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block. “We don’t know what comes in via train.
There’s no question that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, with their extremist ideology on the issue of abortion, the wanton destruction of unborn children, ran an administration that actually put a bull’s-eye on the backs of those who pursue pro-life goals.
They used the FBI and the Department of Justice to do that work, with charges against and prosecutions of groups and individuals who opposed the abortion industry mandates that they wanted to impose.
Now those bureaucracies have been warned by a member of Congress to keep all their records of those legal campaigns against pro-lifers.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Sunday that it has conducted a series of airstrikes in central Syria, targeting ISIS camps and operatives as part of an ongoing effort to combat the terrorist organization.
According to a CENTCOM statement, the operation involved precision strikes on over 75 targets, utilizing multiple Air Force assets, including B-52 bombers, F-15 fighter jets, and A-10 aircraft.
“The strikes against the ISIS leaders, operatives, and camps were conducted as part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS, in order to prevent the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria,” the statement read.
Trump said, “I don’t want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together, and you have to send them all back.”
Biden pledges to send aid to Syria while Hurricane Helene victims are still homeless.
America last. pic.twitter.com/NgTArTScmj
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 8, 2024
Quebec Premier François Legault met up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk while visiting Paris this weekend.
On Saturday, Legault posted a photo of himself shaking hands with Trump on social network X. “With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to discuss Canadian border control and tariffs on Canadian products,” he wrote.
Later in the evening, he posted another photo of himself clasping elbows with Zelenskyy, saying Ukraine has Quebec’s support and solidarity. “Quebec is with Ukraine and will be until the war is over,” he said, adding that the province has welcomed thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
Legault also said he met with Musk, Tesla’s CEO, “to discuss, among other things, international trade and electric vehicles.”
President-elect Donald Trump refused to pledge prosecutorial vengeance against President Joe Biden and special counsel Jack Smith.
Less than three weeks after Trump bested Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 elections, Smith dismissed his case that centered on Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, and his case of Trump’s handling of classified documents. Smith faced accusations of political lawfare online after his filing, but Trump skirted a question on Meet the Press Sunday about whether he’d retaliate with lawfare.
“Make Canada Serious Again,” is the rallying cry of former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. As far as slogans go, it may not be great. But for Canadians seeking a way through the current trade imbroglio with U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, it is apt.
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and his family have arrived in Russia and have been granted asylum by the Russian authorities, Russian news agencies reported on Sunday, citing a Kremlin source.
Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the rebel leader whose stunning insurgency toppled Syria’s President Bashar Assad, has spent years working to remake his public image, renouncing longtime ties to al-Qaeda and depicting himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. In recent days, the insurgency even dropped his nom de guerre and began referring to him by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
The extent of that transformation from jihadi extremist to would-be state builder is now put to the test.
Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu, visiting the Syrian border on Sunday, hailed the collapse of the Assad regime, “a central link in Iran’s axis of evil,” describing it as a “historic day in the history of the Middle East.”
Netanyahu said the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who fled the country after a coalition of rebel groups stormed Damascus on Sunday, was the direct result of blows Israel inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, “the main supporters of the Assad regime.”
Netanyahu on the fall of the Assad regime:
“This is a historic day for the Middle East. The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus offers great opportunity, but also is fraught with significant dangers. This collapse is a direct result of our forceful action… pic.twitter.com/gYyixHkmXQ
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 8, 2024
Western Canada is home to four criminal organizations considered high-level threats to national security, according to Criminal Intelligence Service Canada.
The federal agency released its 2024 Public Report on Organized Crime, which contains data from law enforcement across the country.
The report found that “organized crime remains a preeminent threat to Canada’s security, contributing to thousands of deaths annually from overdoses due to illicit drugs, as well as firearms and gang violence.”
