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Judge dismisses judicial review of Public Health Act regulation concerning raw milk

A man's latest attempt to challenge B.C.'s rules on unpasteurized milk — also known as "raw milk" — was dismissed in the province's Supreme Court.

Gordon S. Watson sought a judicial review of the province's regulation of unpasteurized milk as a health hazard subject to "significant restrictions" under the Public Health Act.

Justice Bill Veenstra wrote Watson mostly wanted a legal opinion that a practice known as "cow-sharing" allows raw milk distribution and to restart a previous constitutional challenge. Watson also sought "various declarations" and an injunction against the enforcement of raw milk rules.

But Veenstra noted Watson had been before the courts in 2010 and 2013 on raw milk issues and dismissed his latest effort under "res judicata" — a legal doctrine which prevents relitigating matters that have already been decided.

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The Toronto Maple Leafs’ first game against an Atlantic Division playoff threat Monday went as well as they could’ve hoped.

In a 5-2 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Maple Leafs got plenty of offence from their core, significant contributions from the biggest names added to their forward and defence groups (Max Pacioretty and Chris Tanev) plus a rock-solid performance from red-hot goaltender Anthony Stolarz.

Tampa Bay established some momentum after earning a 1-1 tie in the first period, but the Maple Leafs scored four goals in the second to run away with the game. Late penalty trouble allowed the Lightning to score their second goal and apply pressure in the final minutes, but they weren’t able to put the game in doubt.

An A-plus is best served for a truly dominant effort, but the Maple Leafs deserve an “A” for the decisive victory.

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Israel has accused Hezbollah of keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in a bunker under a hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut, though it said it would not strike the complex.

The Sahel hospital in Dahiyeh was evacuated shortly afterwards, and Fadi Alame, its director, told Reuters that the allegations were untrue.

Israel did not provide evidence for its claim that cash was being kept under the hospital. Instead, it published an animated graphic that purported to show a bunker under the hospital and said it had previously been used to hide the former secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Israel appealed to the Lebanese government to confiscate the money it said the Shia militant organisation had stolen from the Lebanese people.

Shortly after, Israel issued a series of warnings to residents of Dahiyeh that it would begin striking buildings in the area and that they should move at least 500 metres away. Those who remained in the area began to flee.

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Two of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera’s sons have confirmed they are negotiating for a plea deal with the US government, an attorney for the pair confirmed during a federal court status hearing in Chicago on Monday.

The hearing confirmed an August report from the Mexican news organization Milenio that Ovidio Guzmán and Joaquín Guzmán López were negotiating a deal for a more lenient sentence and to become cooperating witnesses for the US government.

During Monday’s hearing for Ovidio Guzmán, the federal judge also allowed for him and his brother to be represented by the same attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented El Chapo during his sensational 2019 federal trial.

. . .

Ovidio Guzmán and Joaquín Guzmán López, along with their other two brothers still at large in Mexico, were the leaders of “Los Chapitos”, a faction of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, one of the biggest organized crime groups in Mexico.

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This kind of thing is going to happen with Chris Tanev a lot.

He will put his body in harm’s way. He will get hurt. And then, he will, probably, return to action as if nothing happened. Or at least that’s how things have gone in recent years and how the Toronto Maple Leafs can only hope things go for the foreseeable future.

On Saturday, Tanev knelt down to block Mika Zibanejad’s blast while killing a penalty. The shot appeared to hit him, with a thud, directly on the right knee. He fell to the ice instantly, hobbled to the dressing room, and then, in proper Tanev fashion, returned one shift into the next period.

. . .

This will be the question about Tanev for however long he plays for the Leafs: How much damage can his body take?

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Israeli police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency say they have arrested a network of Israeli citizens spying for Iran who allegedly provided information on military bases and conducted surveillance of individuals.

The investigators claimed the network had been active for about two years. According to reports in the Israeli press, the suspects are accused of photographing and collecting information about Israeli bases and facilities, including the defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, known as the Kirya, and the Nevatim and Ramat David airbases.

The Nevatim base was targeted by Iran’s two missile attacks this year, and Ramat David has been targeted by Hezbollah.

“This is one of the most serious security cases investigated in recent years,” state prosecutors said. Police said the group had carried out 600 missions over two years.

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The former U.S. Marine describes the moment of his arrest and the long years waiting for his release.

Speaking in Washington in his first lengthy newspaper interview since he was released on Aug. 1 in the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, Mr. Whelan, 54, said he thought the arrest, in late December 2018, was a prank. It wasn’t.

Within hours, he found himself locked into a 9-foot-square cell in Moscow’s notorious, high-security Lefortovo Prison, where Soviet-era political prisoners had been tortured. So began Mr. Whelan’s odyssey through what he described as Russia’s harsh, often surreal, state-manipulated criminal justice system. His ordeal lasted, by his own count, five years, seven months and five days.

At Lefortovo, he survived an emergency hernia surgery in the middle of the night at a hospital where, he said, half the overhead lights did not work, and when the doctors dropped instruments on the floor, they picked them up and kept going. Sent to a labor camp after his conviction, he endured a diet of bread, tea and a watery fish soup that seemed better suited as cat food, as well as once-a-week cold showers and long days sewing buttons and buttonholes on winter uniforms for government workers.

. . .

Mr. Whelan’s arrest was a new chapter in what is called hostage diplomacy, when citizens of the United States or other nations are arrested and imprisoned on sham charges in order to be exchanged for a person or some concession.

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Aleksei A. Navalny knew he would likely die in prison.

In messages to his supporters posted on social media, Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, often struck a hopeful note about the future of his country, or a comic one, joking about the absurdities and indignities of prison life.

But in the journal entries he managed to write and smuggle out of prison, he was more introspective, and blunt: “I knew from the outset that I would be imprisoned for life — either the rest of my life or until the end of the life of this regime,” Navalny wrote in his diary in March 2022. “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here.”

He reflected on what that would mean: missing birthdays, anniversaries, his children’s graduations. Never meeting his grandchildren. The thought made him want to scream and smash things, he wrote. But then he thought of other Russian dissidents who had suffered similar fates. “I resigned myself and accept it,” he wrote.

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Moldova’s pro-western president, Maia Sandu, blamed an “unprecedented assault on our country’s freedom and democracy” by “foreign forces” on Sunday night, as a pivotal referendum on EU membership remained too close to call with most votes counted.

Moldovans went to the polls earlier in the day to cast their vote in a presidential election and an EU referendum that marked a key moment in the tug-of-war between Russia and the west over the future of the small, landlocked south-east European country with a population of about 2.5 million people.

With almost 84% of the vote counted, the no vote was ahead on 53%, according to data shared by Moldova’s electoral commission. But the results could yet change as votes are still being counted among the large Moldovan diaspora, which is favourable to joining the EU.

The separate presidential election results showed that incumbent president Sandu topped the first round of the vote with about 38%, but she will now face her closest competitor, Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor backed by the pro-Russian Socialists, in the second round.

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A video of Shaaban al-Dalou burning to death after an Israeli strike at a hospital has stoked criticism from Israel’s allies and highlighted the plight of people trapped in Gaza.

He was the son his mother boasted about: He memorized the entire Quran as a boy, and rose to the top of his university class. He wanted to become a doctor. But most of all, Shaaban al-Dalou dreamed of escape.

Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago, Mr. al-Dalou wrote impassioned pleas on social media, posted videos from his family’s small plastic tent and even launched a GoFundMe page calling out to the world for help getting out of the Gaza Strip.

Instead, the world watched him burn to death.

Mr. al-Dalou, 19, was identified by his family as the young man helplessly waving his arms, engulfed in flames, in a video that has become a symbol of the horrors of war for Gazans, trapped inside their blockaded enclave as the international community looks on.

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A year ago, Saudi Arabia was preparing to recognize Israel in a normalization deal that would have fundamentally reshaped the Middle East and further isolated Iran and its allies while barely lifting a finger to advance Palestinian statehood.

Now, that deal is further away than ever, even after the killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, which has been widely seized upon as a potential opening for a peace deal. Instead, Saudi Arabia is warming relations with its traditional archenemy, Iran, while insisting that any diplomatic pact now hinges on Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state, a remarkable turnaround for the kingdom.

A diplomatic détente is underway in the Mideast, but not the one envisioned by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues to say that his administration can clinch a deal with Riyadh. This month, the foreign ministers of the Persian Gulf states met for the first time as a group with their Iranian counterpart. It is a shaky, early-stage rapprochement that will only chip away at centuries of sectarian antagonisms, but it represents a sharp shift in a region where the rivalry between Riyadh and Tehran has drenched the region in bloodshed for decades.

Tehran’s outreach continued after that, with the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, visiting Saudi Arabia before heading to other countries in the region, including Iraq and Oman, in an effort to ease tensions.

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Israel’s foreign minister has announced he is taking “legal and diplomatic measures” against the decision by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to ban Israeli companies from showing their wares at an arms fair in Paris next month.

Israel Katz described the “boycott” as an anti-democratic measure that was “not acceptable, especially between friendly nations”.

Katz did not elaborate on the measures he had in mind and the French government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Organisers of the Euronaval Salon, a naval defence fair due to take place between 4 and 7 November, told Reuters that after a decision by the French government no Israeli stands or exhibits would be allowed, although delegates could attend.

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