Crime

Actor and comedian Russell Brand was today charged with rape, indecent assault, oral rape and two counts of sexual assault against four women.

Detectives began an investigation after 50-year-old Brand was accused of rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse by several women in a joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches in September 2023.

The Metropolitan Police have now charged Brand – who lives in Florida – by post with one count each of rape, indecent assault and oral rape, as well as two counts of sexual assault, relating to four different women, and issued a court summons.

A mass stabbing at a University of Waterloo gender studies class was not a terrorist attack but a “particularly grave” hate crime meant to make people feel unsafe in those spaces, an Ontario judge ruled Monday in sentencing the attacker to 11 years in prison.

Loblaw Cos. Ltd. and its parent company George Weston Ltd. have settled their involvement in a pair of class-action lawsuits related to an alleged industry-wide scheme to fix the price of bread.

Lawyers involved in the case say the $500 million settlement was announced last year and executed on Jan. 31, but is still subject to court approval in Ontario and Quebec.

Loblaw and George Weston are paying a combined $404 million, with the remaining $96 million accounted for through Loblaw’s gift card program announced in 2017.

The trial for a Quebec man charged with killing three pedestrians with his truck will begin mid-May and is expected to last eight weeks.

The Crown prosecutor’s office says a judge confirmed today that Steeve Gagnon’s trial will begin May 15 in Rimouski, Que.

Gagnon faces 14 counts in the alleged attack in Amqui, Que., on March 13, 2023, including three counts of first-degree murder.

Violent offenders are not only carrying many more illegal guns in Mississauga and Brampton, but they’re quicker to use them and are firing hundreds more bullets indiscriminately at people and homes, police say.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has said that, were he to form government, he would impose harsh imprisonment for fentanyl trafficking, including mandatory life sentences for major dealers. This is a laudable idea, even if his proposed legal mechanism for enacting these reforms is questionable.