“This seizure is a great example of the excellent work and collaboration between the CBSA, the OPP and BEST. Partnerships and information sharing between law enforcement agencies yield real results for Canadians. The CBSA is committed to protecting the border and keeping illicit narcotics off our streets. ”said  Michael Prosia, Regional Director General, Southern Ontario Region CBSA.

In December 2025, OPP members from the multi-agency Border Enforcement Security Task Force (BEST), which includes the CBSA, initiated an intelligence-led investigation into suspected drug trafficking activity and the alleged importation of heroin from the U.S. into Canada.

On Thursday, December 18, 2025, based on intelligence from the OPP, CBSA Intelligence and the National Targeting Centre identified a suspect tractor trailer attempting to enter Canada at the Peace Bridge port of entry. Upon primary inspection, border services officers referred the tractor trailer for examination. With the assistance of a CBSA detector dog, border services officers detected and seized 42 kg of suspected heroin concealed in the trailer. The CBSA also seized the tractor and trailer as offence-related property, and two cellphones. All seized items were turned over to the custody of the OPP.

The estimated street value of the drugs seized is $6.98 million. This investigation remains ongoing.

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LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – At least 80 million children living in areas affected by war or natural disaster had their education disrupted last year, leaving them prey to child labor, trafficking and extremism, experts said on Thursday.

Many humanitarian aid appeals for 2015 ignored education, and aid appeals for education were only one-third funded. Overall, education received 1.4 percent of all humanitarian funds, British charity Theirworld said in a report.

“The new analysis …(confirms) 2015 was a disastrous year for children who had their education disrupted by wars and natural disasters,” said Susan Nicolai, head of development progress at the London-based think tank Overseas Development Institute.

“World leaders need to urgently guarantee that there isn’t a future humanitarian emergency response where education isn’t seen as critical,” said Nicolai, whose institute’s research produced the 80 million figure featured in the report.

“Without this we will continue to see short-term crises result in multi-generational disasters,” she added.

Schools help new generations develop the skills they need to build their lives and their countries, and also offer a safe place to learn and play which in turn can help children deal with trauma in the aftermath of a crisis, Theirworld said.

Education during emergencies also protects children from exploitation and poverty, it said. “Out-of-school children are at greater risk of being coerced or exploited by extremists, traffickers and criminals,” it added.

Theirworld was set up by Sarah Brown, wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and launched a global education campaign in 2013.

Although the number of children affected by crises is rising, humanitarian aid for education has almost halved since 2010, leaving an annual funding shortfall of $9 billion, the charity said.

The report looked at funding in 28 countries hit by emergencies, including natural disasters, conflicts or health crises like the Ebola outbreak.

“In the face of increasing needs and the immense cost of not investing today, it is shocking that less than 2 percent of all humanitarian aid goes to education,” said Tom Fletcher, global strategy adviser at Theirworld.

“Humanitarian aid must provide children with a safe school, a future and hope,” he added.

U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown and others, including the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF), are calling on world leaders to set up a multi-million dollar humanitarian fund for education in emergencies, that can be mobilized quickly when needed.

The leaders are meeting for the first ever World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May.

The report’s funding data was drawn from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Financial Tracking Service, which monitors all humanitarian aid.

 (Reporting by Alex Whiting, editing by Tim Pearce.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

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The 97th-ranked Rybarikova, who eliminated 31st seed Daria Gavrilova in her previous match, got by the powerful Bencic 6-4 3-6 6-3 while Czech Karolina Pliskova dumped former Serbian world number one Ivanovic 6-2 6-0 in a fleeting 49 minutes.

After an uneven start at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, 18th seed Pliskova’s game clicked into gear in spectacular fashion, reeling off 10 consecutive games to close out her one-sided victory.

Ivanovic entered the tournament fresh off a run to the quarter-finals and semi-finals in Dubai and St. Petersburg, respectively, while Pliskova had suffered a couple of early exits in the Middle East.

Pliskova, perhaps, perked up in seeing Ivanovic across the net. She had won all three of her previous encounters with Ivanovic, including earlier this year in Sydney.

“We’ve played a few times already and I’ve always won. But I think I played really good tennis today and I’m happy that I made (the next round) so fast,” said Pliskova, who powered in 18 winners.

Next up for Pliskova will be Britain’s Johanna Konta, who advanced 6-4 6-1 over Czech Denisa Allertova, who had conquered second-seeded Australian Open champion Angelique Kerber in the previous round.

Rybarikova advanced to another challenging test against U.S. Open runner-up Roberta Vinci.

The ninth-seeded Italian hurried past Elina Svitolina of Ukraine 6-1 6-3 to book her spot in the fourth round.

(Reporting by Larry Fine in New York; Editing by Frank Pingue)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – A majority of New York City police officers believe the city has become a more dangerous place and feel less satisfied in their jobs, according to a survey released on Monday by the city’s largest police union.

More than 6,000 of the city’s 24,000 patrol officers responded to the online survey, which was conducted by public opinion firm McLaughlin & Associates on behalf of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

Nearly 90 percent of the respondents said the city had become “less safe” in the last few years since Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton began their tenure. Ninety-six percent said the relationship between the public and the department had worsened.

“The results of this survey prove what we’ve been hearing time and time again from members over the past two years – the job is more difficult than ever, the dangers are greater, and morale is extremely low,” said Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch.

“The understaffing, inadequate training, low pay and lack of support has had a chilling effect on police officers across the city.”

Monica Klein, a spokeswoman for de Blasio, called the survey’s results “highly suspect.”

“We are experiencing historic lows in criminal activity,” she said. “Murders and shootings are at their lowest in modern history. NYPD is the most effective police force in the country thanks to our officers’ dedication and commitment to their job.”

De Blasio’s relationship with the New York City Police Department has been marked by occasional tensions since he took office in 2014.

An NYPD spokesman said the department had not yet received the survey but would review it once it was delivered.

The McLaughlin firm noted that the survey was open to all officers and did not use sampling, making it impossible to report an accurate margin of error. Approximately half of the union’s officers received emailed invitations to participate.

(Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In April 2014, the administration of President Barack Obama announced the most ambitious clemency program in 40 years, inviting thousands of jailed drug offenders and other convicts to seek early release and urging lawyers across the country to take on their cases.

Nearly two years later the program is struggling under a deluge of unprocessed cases, sparking concern within the administration and among justice reform advocates over the fate of what was meant to be legacy-defining achievement for Obama.

More than 8,000 cases out of more than 44,000 federal inmates who applied have yet to make it to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for review, lawyers involved in the program told Reuters. That is in addition to about 9,000 cases that are still pending at the DOJ, according to the department’s own figures.

Only 187 inmates have had their sentences commuted, far below the thousands expected by justice reform advocates and a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million people behind bars in the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate.

The administration said it wanted to decide on all the applications before Obama’s term ends next January, when the program will automatically expire.

A senior DOJ official told Reuters it is calling on the lawyers’ group — Clemency Project 2014 — to simply hand over the outstanding cases without further vetting, saying it is not working fast enough. So far, the group estimates it has handed over around 200 cases.

But criminal justice experts say the administration itself should bear much of the blame. The idea to tap pro-bono attorneys to help vet the cases originated with the DOJ, and critics say it should have prepared its own staff to handle the large volume of applications.

“It’s unfair to criticize the volunteer group that you asked to help,” said Rachel Barkow, a criminal law professor at New York University who has studied clemency in U.S. prisons.

She estimates that about 1,500 prisoners should be eligible for commutation, saying the 187 granted so far does not “fulfill the promise of the program.”

The DOJ declined to comment when asked for its response to such criticism.

The delays have left prisoners like Linda Byrnes, 69, in limbo.

“I thought clemency was for people like me,” Byrnes told Reuters through an electronic messaging system from a federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia.

Byrnes, who has spent 20 years in prison for distributing marijuana and has two years left on her sentence, was recently diagnosed with mouth cancer and has yet to hear whether she has been assigned a lawyer after submitting her application to Clemency Project in August 2014.

Obama, who has commuted more sentences than the past five presidents combined, has been a stern critic of harsh U.S. sentencing policies that he says have disproportionately burdened minorities.

Federal life sentences have fallen since Obama took office, from 280 in fiscal year 2009 to 153 in 2013, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. About three quarters of the sentences were given to minorities and most were for non-violent offences, the report said.

Clemency Project 2014 said it does not comment publicly on the individuals it represents.

The group vets the applications, writes the petitions and sends them to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which oversees all pardons and sentence commutations and makes recommendations for the president’s approval.

So far, 25,000 of 34,000 applications received by Clemency Project have been rejected for failing to meet the basic criteria – no record of violence, no significant ties to a gang or drug cartel, good behavior in prison and completion of at least 10 years of sentence. About 10,000 inmates did not go through the Clemency Project and either applied directly to DOJ or through a paid attorney.  “It really would be a sad state of affairs if individuals who had asked for a lawyer weren’t considered in time because their petitions never reached the pardon attorney’s office,” a DOJ official told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

(Graphic on the clemency bottleneck: http://tmsnrt.rs/1VThxVT)

“CRITICAL ROLE”

A large number of mostly unqualified applications, a shortage of lawyers and the complexity of the cases have slowed progress, said Cynthia Roseberry, project manager for Clemency Project 2014.

“There are a lot of gray areas,” said Roseberry, who estimates it takes 30 days for one lawyer to review one case on average. “We’ve got to unpack each of these applicants to see specifically what factors affect them… and so that takes a little more time.”

This includes finding pre-sentencing reports for each case, determining if the person would have received a shorter sentence under current law and reviewing prison behavior records.

Roseberry said the group was unaware of any request from the Justice Department to hand over the pending applications. Roseberry said the group’s initially slow pace has picked up in recent months.

The Justice Department declined to elaborate on its private communication with the lawyers.

The Pardon Attorney’s office has brought in personnel from other parts of the department to help to speed up reviews of petitions, the DOJ official said.

Roseberry said about 3,000 applicants still need to be assigned to a lawyer, and that it was not certain whether the group will be able to submit all of the applications it has received before Obama leaves office.

The group has more than 570 law firms and 30 law schools contributing to the effort.

Some rejected prisoners and those who have yet to hear a decision say they believe they would have had a better chance if they had sent their clemency petition directly to the government.

Josie Ledezma was sentenced to life for conspiracy to transport cocaine and applied for clemency through Clemency Project 2014. She said she did not hear from them for six months and later learned that her assigned lawyer had shut down her legal practice. In January, nearly one year after applying, she was told Clemency Project 2014 could not help her and encouraged her to apply directly.

“I wrote back and asked what was it that made me not qualify, but never got a response,” Ledezma told Reuters through an electronic messaging service for federal prisoners.

(Editing by Jason Szep and Stuart Grudgings)

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Near the end of a Michigan debate that featured sharp clashes over trade and the auto industry bailout, as well as a lengthy discussion of religion, Clinton and Sanders both said they could not wait to face the brash billionaire in the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I think Donald Trump’s bigotry, his bullying, his bluster, are not going to wear well on the American people,” Clinton said. “We have to end the divisiveness, we have to unify the country.”

Sanders said he would “love” to run against Trump and noted many opinion polls showed him faring better against him than Clinton did. He and Clinton urged voters to compare the substance of their debate with the Republican versions, which last week featured name-calling and Trump defending his penis size.

“We are, if elected president, going to invest a lot of money in mental health,” Sanders said, then cracked a joke. “And when you watch these Republican debates, you know why we need to invest in mental health.”

Trump frequently says he will beat either Clinton or Sanders. “I am the one person that she does not want to run against,” he said of Clinton on Saturday.

The debate in Flint, which is suffering a water contamination and public health crisis, came as Sanders has struggled to slow Clinton’s march to the presidential nomination. Sanders picked up some good news on Sunday with a projected win in Maine’s caucus.

Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state and first lady, has spoken on the campaign trail of the need for more love and kindness, a contrast to Trump’s rhetoric about his plans to deport illegal immigrants and temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country.

“I don’t intend to get into the gutter with whoever they nominate, but instead to lift our sights,” Clinton said in the debate.

Describing herself as a “praying person,” she said it was hard to imagine living under the pressure of the White House “without being able to fall back on prayer and on my faith.”

Sanders, asked if he was deliberately keeping his Jewish faith in the background on the campaign trail, said his father’s family was wiped out in the Holocaust. He described going shopping with his mother as a boy in Brooklyn, New York, and seeing people with numbers on their arms from Nazi concentration camps.

“I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being,” Sanders said.

‘DISASTROUS’ TRADE POLICIES

Earlier, the two candidates exchanged angry jabs over trade, with Sanders accusing Clinton of backing “disastrous” trade policies that moved manufacturing jobs out of cities like Flint and Detroit and shifted them overseas.

But Clinton said Sanders’ opposition to the 2009 auto bailout, a crucial issue in a state that is home to the U.S. auto industry, would have cost millions of jobs. The bailout, which Clinton supported, passed Congress and has been credited with helping save the U.S. industry.

Sanders, 74 a U.S. senator from Vermont and democratic socialist, also questioned the sincerity of Clinton’s conversion to opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal.

The two contenders cut each other off on several occasions, a rare occurrence in a race that has been much more polite than the raucous Republican presidential campaign.

“Excuse me, I’m talking,” Sanders said to Clinton when she tried to interrupt. “If you’re going to talk, tell the whole story,” Clinton responded.

Sanders pressed his charge that Clinton was too close to Wall Street and demanded again that she release the transcript of paid speeches she has given to Wall Street firms. Clinton said she would release them when all the candidates, including Republicans, also release transcripts of similar talks.

‘THERE AIN’T NOTHING!’

Throwing up his hands, Sanders said: “I’ll release it. Here it is. There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches to Wall Street!”

The debate was held in Flint to highlight the city’s water contamination crisis, and both candidates expressed outrage at Flint’s plight and demanded Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s resignation.

The crisis in Flint, a predominantly black city of 100,000, was triggered when an emergency city manager installed by Snyder switched the city’s water supply to the nearby Flint River from Lake Michigan to save money.

The change corroded Flint’s aging pipes and released lead and other toxins into the water supply, exposing thousands of residents including children to high lead levels that have sparked serious health problems.

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney)

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By Luciana Lopez and Steve Holland

LAS VEGAS/COLUMBIA, S.C. (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rolled to victory on Saturday in South Carolina in a contest that saw former Florida Governor Jeb Bush drop out, while Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton beat back a strong challenge from Bernie Sanders in Nevada.

The victories by Trump and Clinton solidified their positions as the front-runners to win their parties’ respective presidential nominations ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

Bush suffered a distant fourth place finish in the Republican contest and announced he had suspended his campaign, ending his dream of becoming a third Bush president after his father and brother.

“The people of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and I really respect their decision,” an emotional Bush said in Columbia. He finished far out of the running in each of the first three states.

By winning both South Carolina and New Hampshire and holding leads in the 11 states that vote on March 1, Trump was arguably on track to win the nomination, an outcome that seemed astounding to contemplate when he got into the race last summer.

“It’s going to be very difficult for him to be derailed at this point,” said Hogan Gidley, who was a senior adviser to former Republican candidate Mike Huckabee.

Trump, 69, was declared the victor about an hour after polls closed in South Carolina.

“Let’s put this thing away,” Trump said in his victory speech in Spartanburg.

Trump was as feisty and anti-establishment as ever, denouncing TV pundits for saying that if his remaining opponents consolidated around one Trump alternative, there would be enough anti-Trump votes to beat him.

“These geniuses,” he said. “They don’t understand that as people drop out, I’m going to get a lot of those votes also. You don’t just add them together.”

He easily defeated Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who were in a close fight for second place and the right to declare themselves the anti-Trump alternative.

With 73 percent of South Carolina precincts reporting, Trump had 33.1 percent, followed by Rubio with 22.3 percent and Cruz with 21.7 percent.

It was Trump’s second victory in a row, an outcome that frightens establishment Republicans but thrills the “throw-the-bums-out” conservative base of the party that has long been fed up with Washington.

The bellicose New York billionaire had created some last-minute drama in South Carolina after Pope Francis said on Thursday his views on U.S. immigration were “not Christian.” Trump initially called Francis “disgraceful,” but later called him “a wonderful guy.”

Trump, who has also advocated a ban on Muslim immigrants to counter domestic terror threats, stirred fresh controversy on Friday when he told a crowd about a U.S. general who was said to have dipped bullets in pigs’ blood to kill Muslim prisoners a century ago.

After South Carolina, the Republican presidential campaign is about to rapidly pick up steam in March when dozens of states hold nominating contests. Another candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich, is concentrating on midwestern and northern states in the state-by-state contest to pick nominees for the Nov. 8 election.

Clinton’s victory in the Nevada Democratic caucuses, meanwhile, could help calm Democratic Party worries about the strength of her campaign.

Her win denied Sanders the breakthrough win he had sought in a state with a heavy minority population, but his ability to close a one-time double-digit polling lead for Clinton suggests the Democratic nominating race will be long and hard fought.

With 87 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton was leading with 52.5 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 47.4 percent. Vote counting was delayed in Nevada by heavy turnout.

Clinton’s victory buoyed worried supporters and gave her fresh momentum as she heads into the next contest in South Carolina on Feb. 27, where polls show her with a double-digit lead largely as a result of heavy support from black voters.

“Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other,” she told cheering supporters at a victory rally in Las Vegas. “This is your campaign.”

Sanders vowed to fight on and set his sights on the 11 states that vote on “Super Tuesday,” March 1. He predicted that when Democrats gather for their nominating convention in Philadelphia in July, “We are going to see the results of one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States.”

“The wind is at our banks,” he said. “We have the momentum.”

After routing Clinton in New Hampshire and finishing a strong second in Iowa, states with nearly all-white populations, Sanders had hoped to prove in Nevada that he could win over black and Hispanic voters and compete nationally as the race moves to states with more diverse populations.

But entrance polling in Nevada showed he badly lost among black voters, by 76 percent to 22 percent, a bad omen for South Carolina and other southern states with big black populations. He did win among Hispanics by 53 percent to 45 percent.

Clinton’s campaign has argued she would assert control of the Democratic race once it moved to more diverse states with black and Hispanic populations who have traditionally backed Clinton and have been slow to warm to Sanders.

(Reporting by Luciana Lopez and Steve Holland; Writing by John Whitesides, Steve Holland and Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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