IN THE NEWS

Raptors, including the whistling kite, are intentionally spreading grass fires in northern Australia, a research paper argues. The reason: to flush out prey and feast.

The province’s Special Investigations Unit says it has found ample evidence that an Ontario Provincial Police officer operated a police cruiser in a “careless manner,” leading to a crash on Highway 401 near Gananoque in October 2016. However, the officer should not face criminal charges in the incident, the SIU added.

Ottawa Police say they’re investigating new reports of a fake Uber driver in the Ottawa ByWard Market. Police say a man would offer women a ride home, sometimes posing an Uber driver. Victims would have their credit or debit card information stolen by use of a card skimmer.

Unusually heavy snowfall and a high risk of Alpine avalanches stranded some 13,000 tourists in the Swiss resort of Zermatt at the base of the famed Matterhorn mountain. Swiss authorities deployed helicopters to ferry some tourists to a nearby village to escape the snow-bound Alpine valley.

The Edmonton Police Service (EPS) has a policy of not releasing the names of many murder victims. Last year, EPS did not release the names of 17 of last year's 42 homicide victims. Calgary Police Service named all 27 of its 2017 homicide victims. The Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police has a provincial framework for a consistent approach to naming homicide victims.

Around 200,000 Salvadorans allowed to live in the United States since 2001 after earthquakes in El Salvador must leave the country in 2019, U.S. officials said.

The federal government's contingency plans for a new surge of asylum seekers at the border this winter could be put to the test with the pending U.S. decision on the fate of as many as 200,000 Salvadorans.

The Canadian government has signed a contract with Advanced Symbolics of Ottawa to watch social media posts for indications of suicidal behaviour.

Sgt. Robert Mugridge of Ontario's Chatham-Kent force received almost $400,000 in pay during a suspension of more than three years. Ontario is the only province where officers charged with serious offenses are paid.

A report prepared for Public Safety Canada calls on the government to create a review commission to monitor the activities of the Canada Border Services Agency. The body would examine complaints about border officers and also replace the existing RCMP complaints commission.

A poll shows 62 per cent of Canadians want the prosecution of people suspected of jihadi activities abroad, while 28 per cent say the government should focus on rehabilitation and deradicalization.

Public Safety Canada's annual public report on terrorism in Canada says attacks are becoming simpler, using knives and vehicles as weapons. One “high-impact” vehicle assault in Edmonton injured five people. Terrorists hope to develop cyberattack capabilities, but have so far failed.

Almost 200 Canadians have traveled to join ISIS and other extremist organizations. Those who return to Canada should face criminal charges.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has assessed Abdullah Milton, the star witness against accused terrorism financier Awso Peshdary as parasitic and psychopathic. Milton was paid at least $700,000 to infiltrate an Ottawa terrorism network close to Peshdary.

The Toronto police homicide squad now leads the investigation into the deaths of Toronto billionaires Honey and Barry Sherman. On Saturday the Sherman family criticized police as the source of media speculation about a murder-suicide.

First responder agencies from Washington state and Abbotsford and Langley, British Columbia joined US and Canadian federal operators in the fifth Canada-U.S. Enhanced Resiliency Experiment. International communications were coordinated by a public safety broadband network (PSBN), which enabled special features for first responders.

A convicted child molester was prevented from flying overseas from Sydney Airport on Wednesday under new laws aimed at keeping Australian pedophiles from travelling to Southeast Asia for sex tourism.

An explosion and fire that ripped through Austria’s main gas pipeline hub killed one person and injured at least 18 others, prompting Italy to declare a state of emergency as flows from the strategic site were cut off.

A man with a pipe bomb strapped to him set off the crude device in the subway near Times Square injuring the suspect and three other people at the height of the morning rush hour.

Daniel Therrien, Canada's privacy commissioner says security legislation should be amended to ensure the government does not keep personal data it does not need. Therrien told the Commons public safety committee that security agencies should not be able to keep a profile on every Canadian.

A Toronto area company called The ICEN Group assisted in the release in October of Joshua Boyle, his wife Caitlan Coleman and their three children from Pakistani militants after five years in captivity. Boyle's family hired the company, headed by former CSIS employee Andy Ellis.

Two suspects turned on Yosif Al-Hasnawi when the 19-year-old tried to help an older stranger, police said. Some witnesses, however, criticized paramedics who responded to the shooting, saying Al-Hasnawi was clearly in distress but wasn’t taken seriously.

Foreign ISIS fighters are leaving the Middle East to return home. Britain, France and the United States directly target their citizens fighting for terrorist groups on the battlefield to prevent their return. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said, "Canada does not engage in death squads."

An Ottawa pharmacist who faked a robbery at his own drugstore to cover up the “mountains” of fentanyl patches he trafficked has been found guilty of his crimes, in what appears to be the city’s first case of narcotics trafficking in the profession and the latest effort to deal with the opioid crisis.

A former CFL player, Const. Jason Mallett, turned disgraced Ottawa police officer has been charged by his own force with having sex while on-duty with multiple women in a series of discipline charges that will see the force wanting the badge of its one-time poster boy.

Information released before Parliament begins debate on C-59, a new national-security bill, shows that federal agencies want to gather "bulk" amounts of electronic data about ordinary Canadians to find terrorist threats. A committee reviewing the bill will hear from federal officials and police chiefs today.

About 11 percent of medicines in developing countries are counterfeit and likely responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of children from diseases like malaria and pneumonia every year, the World Health Organization said.

Police are calling down warnings of an alleged phone scam after it turned out the phone calls were part of a legitimate Ontario fundraising campaign. The Ontario police association is running a campaign for its program called "Kids and Cops and Canadian Tire Fishing Days."

A 22-year-old Canadian woman from Montreal is in the custody of Kurdish forces in Syria, along with her two-year-old daughter and newborn baby girl, after having fled a Daesh-controlled region of Syria.

The Trudeau government has created the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), a $4.5-million body consisting of eight MPS and three senators supported by a secretariat from the Privy Council Office.

Ottawa police are taking the final steps to reduce the “boys’ club” mentality that was historically prevalent in dealing with women’s careers on the force.

The RCMP will remove data about religious and cultural practices from records about Muslim refugee claimants who came from the U.S. into Canada at an irregular crossing point  in Quebec. An interview guide used questions specifically targeting Muslims.

Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has warned the European Union not to meddle with its missile development program. If the EU interferes with Iran's missile program, "we will also regard the Europeans as a threat and will act accordingly," said IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami.

The minister of public safety, Ralph Goodale said in a televised interview that the chance of reintegrating ISIS fighters is "pretty remote". Mr. Goodale says prosecutions are difficult because battlefield intelligence about individuals must be turned into evidence usable in Canadian courts.