“Is that David Wallace?” Western Standard Publisher Derek Fildebrandt asked reporter David Wiechnik after he had muted the Zoom call they were on.
“Yeah,” Wiechnik replied.
“Holy shit,” Fildebrandt said.
“That guy is the most untrustworthy guy there is.”
(Incognito)
Sports bettors worked with dozens of players across NCAA men’s basketball to rig the outcome of at least 29 games, federal prosecutors alleged in an indictment unsealed Thursday.
The athletes played for schools across the country, prosecutors claim, including Tulane, St. Louis University, DePaul, Fordham and others.
Among the defendants named by prosecutors are Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley, who were previously charged in a case involving an NBA coach and players. Prosecutors say Hennen and Fairley were at the head of a gambling ring that recruited college basketball players around the country to manipulate their performances in games that Fairley and Hennen bet on.
Tip of the iceberg extending to all pro sports?
Canadians are increasingly concerned about rising crime in their communities, according to a new Angus Reid Institute poll.
“New data from Angus Reid,” says Shachi Kurl, president of the institute, “shows that three-in-five (62 per cent) Canadians believe crime has been rising in their communities over the last five years. That’s a lot more than the number of Canadians who say there’s been no change (24 per cent) or a decrease (five per cent).”
With the trial for two women accused of killing a 12-year-old boy they were trying to adopt now in its final weeks, the public deserves to know if and how the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) has been held accountable, says Ontario’s former child advocate.
But full transparency from the CAS is very unlikely, said Irwin Elman, who was in the independent watchdog role from 2008 until the Ford government closed his office in 2019.
“The child protection system is a closed system,” said Elman, who’s not involved in the trial but has been closely following it.
No one will lose their job over this horror story.
I am one of those people who suffers from an acute, yet ephemeral, fear of flying, which washes over me the precise moment I feel the plane’s wheels lift off the tarmac. “What type of idiot risks her life in a metal box flying 30,000 feet above the ground?,” I think to myself as I look around the cabin, seeking comfort in the seemingly calm faces of the imputed idiots around me. I forget about this fear right around the moment the plane completes its ascent, only to be suffused with it yet again when the pilot announces he is ready to steer the flying metal box back down to Earth.
Accused in fatal Yorkdale GO bus shooting has extensive criminal history
The man accused of fatally shooting a passenger on a GO bus in North York over the weekend has an extensive criminal history, including convictions for attempted murder and firearm offences.
Shots were fired on board the packed Oshawa-bound bus around 7 p.m. on Sunday. Officers who responded to Yorkdale Station found a man suffering from gunshot wounds. The victim, who police have not yet identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.
That Tim Walz is abandoning his reelection campaign for Minnesota governor amid a maddening multibillion-dollar welfare fraud scandal should serve as a big reminder: Democrats are robbing you every day and hardly even trying to hide it.
Recall Walz as the stereotypical self-abasing Democrat white male, presumably heterosexual, who was inexplicably chosen to be Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election. His stint in that role was the equivalent of a 300-pound belly flop into a pool full of sand, with memorable moments like when he said he rode his bicycle as a child and was “proud of that service” or otherwise was proven to have lied when he referred to “the weapons of war that I carried in war.” (He never saw combat.)
You can’t reduce crime simply by redefining what is and isn’t a crime. Many actions that were once crimes are now chalked by city bureaucrats up to “social disorder” and no longer show up in crime stats.
In other cases, crimes are so common and police response to them is so indifferent — like theft of bikes and tools and law furniture from private yards — that many victims no longer bother to report them.
Toronto police have charged a driver after her vehicle ended up on the tracks of a GO station and was hit by a train.
Police say it happened shortly after 10 p.m. Wednesday at the Etobicoke North GO station. A female suspect was arrested for impaired driving. The driver, who was not identified by police, sustained non-life-threatening injuries after the vehicle was struck.
Practically my back yard.
Toronto police have a man in custody as part of an investigation into a string of New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in the city’s west end.
My neck of the woods.
The Toronto Maple Leafs were in second-last place, slugging it out with the Detroit Red Wings for bragging rights as the worst of the worst in the hapless Norris Division.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and The Golden Child ruled the Christmas box office. It was 1986, a different time and a very different place.
A great closure rate but I doubt that makes a difference to victims unable to adequately defend themselves.
Another take on murder rates …
Makes sense. @fancypants_s https://t.co/KH1nBeGtBk
— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) December 30, 2025
There is a push to convince the public that crime is down and that things are not as bad as you think — don’t fall for it. Over the past several weeks, we’ve heard from police, politicians, and even a screaming headline in the Toronto Star, that crime is down and your perception is all wrong.
It used to be that criminals ripped off the contents of commercial trucks.
But the latest trend is to steal the actual truck itself — worth up to $250,000 — put a new VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) on the vehicle and operate it, says Stephen Laskowski, the president-CEO of the Ontario Trucking Association.
Caroline Ellison, the former girlfriend of crypto swindler Sam Bankman-Fried, is set to be released from prison just over a year into her sentence.
The 31-year-old was sentenced to two years in prison in September 2024 for wire fraud and money laundering, after admitting to helping Bankman-Fried’s FTX platform steal billions from clients.
According to Federal Bureau of Prisons records seen by the Daily Mail, Ellison is now set to be released from custody on January 21, 2026, nine months before the end of her original sentence.
Mexican authorities say they’ve seized motorcycles, Olympic medals and drugs in a series of raids — a move seemingly linked to the hunt for Canadian fugitive Ryan Wedding.
The operation amounts to the most significant series of moves publicly acknowledged by Mexico that appear to be in connection with the manhunt for the alleged cartel-linked drug lord.
The government’s statement didn’t identify Wedding by name, but said the raids targeted a foreign former Olympian listed among U.S. authorities’ most wanted fugitives.
