Police in Canada have issued a rare rebuke to the public after a late-night emergency mobile phone alert about an abducted child prompted widespread complaints. At 11.36pm on Thursday night, police in Ontario issued an amber alert for Riya Rajkumar, 11, after police feared the girl’s father had kidnapped her.

Shortly after the alert was issued, police found her body, but they said that calls from the public helped them locate and arrest her father, Roopesh Rajkumar. A second alert was sent at 12.21am, saying Riya had been located.

But police say they received a barrage of angry calls, as Ontario residents complained that the alert was issued too late at night. “I can’t even begin to describe how disappointing and upsetting it is to read the comments, emails and calls to our communications bureau complaining about receiving an mber alert late at night,” tweeted Constable Akhil Mooken, a spokesperson for Peel regional police. “I appreciate that a lot of people were sleeping but the immediate need to locate the child outweighed the momentary inconvenience that some people encountered.”(theguardian)…[+]

TRINIDAD – Valen­tine’s Day turned out to be a scary ex­pe­ri­ence for an el­der­ly cou­ple when they woke up to find a four-feet Boa Constrictor in their bed­room ceil­ing Thursday.  Robin Nages­sar, 73, and his wife Sum­intra, 61, re­mained out­side their home for about four hours un­til the snake was cap­tured by se­nior Game War­den Steve Seep­er­sad.

Re­call­ing the scary en­counter, Nages­sar said he got up around 3 am be­cause his wife had to go out.  Nages­sar said he saw the snake around 6.30 am when he was about to ap­ply med­ica­tion in his eyes.  He said he did not at­tempt to cap­ture it be­cause he was too afraid.  His wife re­called, “I was wash­ing wares when my hus­band said to come and see some­thing. When I came clos­er I saw a big snake, watch­ing. I was fright­ened. I stayed out of the house un­til about 12 o’clock when they moved it. I was too fright­ened to go back in­side.”  She sus­pect­ed that the snake crawled out of the bush­es and in­to their house dur­ing the night.

Their daugh­ter, who lives near­by with her hus­band, called the Fire Ser­vice who then con­tact­ed the game war­den.  Seep­er­sad said he found the two-year-old red tail boa, in the ceil­ing be­tween the galvanize and rafter. He de­scribed the snake as a ba­by as it usu­al­ly grows to about 12 feet long. “It is def­i­nite­ly non-ven­omous. If it were to bite you, it would feel as if you got a bite from a dog,” Seep­er­sad said.

Seep­er­sad sus­pect that the snake sought refuge in the cou­ple’s home from the bush fires. He said the snake is pro­tect­ed and any­one who kills it could face a fine of $10,000. He not­ed that the fine was in­creased from $200 to $10,000 as of Jan­u­ary 1. (Trinidad Guardian)…[+]

A team of British investigators is in Bulgaria looking into whether the 2015 suspected poisoning of a local arms dealer has links to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter last year in Salisbury. “There is a British team here on the ground,” Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boyko Borisov, told the Guardian in an interview in Sofia. “They are jointly conducting an investigation with Bulgarian law enforcement authorities.”

Emilian Gebrev, who runs a Bulgarian company that produces and exports weapons, fell into a coma in April 2015, along with his son and one of his company directors. All three survived the suspected poisoning, but the case was never solved.

In October last year, after talking over the Skripal case with a friend, he approached Bulgarian prosecutors with the results of laboratory tests from 2015, which he believed showed he could have been poisoned with a nerve agent similar to novichok, the substance British authorities believe was used against Skripal and his daughter.(theguardian)…[+]

ABUJA – A tribunal today issued an arrest warrant for Nigeria’s suspended chief judge for failing to appear for trial over alleged breaches of asset declaration rules, days before Saturday’s presidential election.

The ‘code of conduct tribunal’ had ordered chief judge Walter Onnoghen to appear for trial on Wednesday. The tribunal issued the warrant for Onnoghen to appear on Feb. 15.

“The inspector general of police is hereby ordered to arrest and bring the defendant to court unfailingly on the next sitting of the court on Friday,” Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) Danladi Umar said. Onnoghen was suspended by President Muhammadu Buhari last month pending the tribunal’s verdict on his alleged violation of wealth declaration rules, weeks before a Feb. 16 presidential election in which Buhari is seeking a new mandate.(Reuters)…[+]

Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith has with immediate effect, raised the policing alert from ‘Amber’ to ‘Red’, as a result of ongoing gang activities and homicides.

In a statement yesterday afternoon, Commissioner Griffith said that law abiding citizens may experience some inconvenience due to these intensified operations, however, it is necessary to deal with criminal activity and to maintain law and order across the country.The Commissioner will host a media briefing tomorrow, at 10a.m. at the Police Administration Building, Port of Spain, to update the nation on the status of the policing operations.(Trinidad Express)…[+]

Animal rights activists have launched an unprecedented legal challenge to the slaughter of dolphins in Japan, claiming that fishermen are routinely violating animal welfare laws and exceeding government-set quotas.

The London-based organisation Action for Dolphins and the Japanese NGO Life Investigation Agency on Wednesday submitted evidence they hope will halt the annual dolphin hunts in Taiji, a whaling town on Japan’s Pacific coast, the Guardian can reveal. “Dolphins are mistakenly viewed as ‘fish’ in Japan, and therefore domestic laws protecting mammals from cruelty have not been applied to them,” claimed Sarah Lucas, chief executive of Action for Dolphins.

The lawsuit, filed with the Wakayama district court, “asserts that dolphins are biologically mammals, and the cruelty inflicted on them in Taiji is “illegal under Japan’s own laws”. The allegations made against Yoshinobu Nisaka, the governor of Wakayama prefecture, where Taiji is located, include that he has allegedly abused his power by issuing permits to fishermen who violate Japan’s animal welfare laws and catch quotas. It is unknown whether those allegations will be denied. A prefectural government official declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian, saying it was unaware of the lawsuit.(theguardian)…[+]

The government’s push to roll over EU trade deals from which the UK currently benefits has yielded agreements covering only £16bn of the near-£117bn of British trade with the countries involved. Despite frenetic efforts by ministers to ensure the continuity of international trade after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, has so far only managed to secure deals with seven of the 69 countries that the UK currently trades with under preferential EU free trade agreements, which will end after Brexit.

Fox’s department has yet to sign agreements with several major UK trading partners – including Canada, Japan, South Korea and Turkey – while sources have said that sufficient progress is unlikely to be made before the Brexitdeadline in less than 50 days’ time. Canada, Japan, South Korea and Turkey alone accounted for goods exports worth £25bn in 2017 and imports of merchandise worth £28.6bn, with the UK currently able to access these markets on preferential terms as part of membership of the EU.

The deals are being rolled over under a traffic-light system by the Department for International Trade. According to a document obtained by the Sun, only a handful are colour-coded in green as deals that will enter into force by March 2019. The majority are in amber and red, where deliverability is either off-track or significantly off-track, while some major trade deals, including with Japan and Turkey, are coded in black as “not possible to be completed by March 2019”.(theguardian)…[+]

TRINIDAD – In the space of 14 hours between Monday night and Tuesday morning four men were gunned down in separate incidents from West to East Trinidad. As a result, the murder toll stood at 66 up to last night. This compares to 75 at the same time last year. The first incident occurred at 9 p.m. on Monday in Carenage. Police said around 9 p.m., taxi driver Tyrone Joseph, 44, was about to drive into his home when he got out to open his gate and was ambushed by a gunman who shot and killed him. (Trinidad Express)…[+]

Katy Perry Collections, the fashion line by the pop star, has removed footwear after they were accused of using blackface. The sandals and loafers, designed with a face featuring prominent red lips, are no longer on sale at retailers including Walmart. A spokesperson for the company told TMZ: “In order to be respectful and sensitive the team is in the process of pulling the shoes.”

The designs are the latest in a series of controversial items of clothing to be criticised for allegedly using the red-lipped Sambo caricature that has long been regarded as racist. Last week, Gucci removed a black polo neck jumper from its shops that featured red lips designed to be worn over the face in a balaclava style. In December, Prada removed a series of accessories that resembled black monkeys with red lips. In 2016, high-end winter sports brand Moncler released a series of designs featuring a black face with prominent red lips. The brand said it was meant to be the face of a cartoon penguin, “whose message is first and foremost one of global friendship”, but removed the designs, adding: “We are deeply troubled if the face, seen out of its context, could be associated with past or present unacceptable, racially offensive caricatures.”(theguardian)…[+]

MADRID — The simmering conflict over Catalan independence roared back to the center of Spanish attention on Tuesday, as 12 people went on trial for their roles in the botched secession attempt of 2017, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez scrambled to keep the issue from toppling his government.

The eagerly anticipated trial before the Spanish Supreme Court in Madrid has drawn enormous attention and is being broadcast live on national television, but it could soon be overshadowed by the political crisis unfolding just blocks away, in Parliament. On Wednesday, Mr. Sánchez’s minority Socialist government faces a crucial parliamentary vote on his national budget. If a majority of lawmakers reject it, including Catalan lawmakers who have so far backed the prime minister, he will almost certainly be forced to call elections.(nytimes)…[+]