"This court is going to make sure that you never have the opportunity to do that again."

"You preyed on these women's trusts and their spirituality, and you manipulated them for your own personal gratification." 

Judge Jessica Peterson, Nevada courtroom 

 

"He took away my sense of safety, even within my own mind. I believe I didn't have privacy in my own thoughts. Living with that kind of psychological control has had lasting effects on my ability to trust others and to fully express myself."

"The trauma delayed important parts of my life."

"He also took something deeply sacred from me: my spirituality. From a young age, I was taught to obey him and to follow rules without question."

"That conditioning put me in harm's way and has left me having to constantly remind myself that it is OK to say no."

Siera Begaye, child victim impact statement 

Actor Nathan Chasing Horse, best known for his role in Dances with Wolves, was handed a life sentence in Nevada for sexually assaulting Indigenous women and girls. Chasing Horse still has charges pending in other states and Canada.  CBC

 

Actor Nathan Chasing Horse, remembered for his role in Dances With Wolves, now 50 years old, this week was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 37 years. The Nevada courtroom heard the victim testimony of two young girls, 14 at the time that Mr. Chasing Horse whom they knew for his guidance in spirituality, convinced them that they were obliged to accept that he had the right to abuse them sexually. 

 

The presiding judge at the man's sentencing accused Chasing Horse of exploiting girls as young as 13 for  his own "personal gratification", while he had the trust of a spiritual authority figure as a traditional healer. Some of Chasing Horse's victims were Canadian. He has been accused of maintaining a harem of wives including an Alberta minor, as well as of having sex with an underage B.C. girl who had been sent to live with him because she was ill, and his reputation as a healing figure was thought to be of benefit to her. 

 

There were active warrants in both British Columbia and Alberta against Chasing Horse at the time of his 2023 arrest in Las Vegas. Had he been sent to trial in Canada, the Canadian justice system would have dealt with this man's crimes far differently than did Judge Peterson in the Nevada courtroom.  In Saskatchewan last year, a court sat to mete out justice to a 63 year-old spiritual healer who had used his position for a long reign of sexual assaults.

 

Nathan Chasing Horse is led out of the courtroom after being arraigned at North Las Vegas Justice Court, Feb. 2, 2023. Photo by Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, File

 

Cecil Wolfe had violated a dozen women over a period of nine yeas. The abuse of these women was explained as a necessary treatment to remove "bad medicine". For his crimes against those 12 women, eight years in prison was considered more than adequate punishment, with parole likely in five years. His victims were warned by presiding Justice John Morrall that the sentence would seen unjust to them.  "The sentence I will impose will seem wholly inadequate for the women. The violations they have experienced will remain with them for the rest of their lives."

 

Because Wolfe, like Nathan Chasing Horse, is Indigenous, the court in Canada was forced to consider his 'marginalized' background and how it would have victimized him through racial prejudice, lack of opportunities, and the inherited deleterious effect of the Residential School system for First Nations children, impacting a sense of societal betrayal through following generations. Called the Gladue impact sentencing of Indigenous people, courts must take that 'marginalization' into effect, reducing sentencing times.

 

In a Canadian courtroom, Chasing Horse would have had his sentence wholly minimized, as a First Nations miscreant. A man convicted of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old in an Alberta court was given a 10-year sentence rather than the 12-year sentence thought to be more appropriate, by the Crown. "But for his Gladue factors, I would have imposed the sentence sought by the Crown", wrote Alberta Justice Jayme Williams.

 

A man in Texas was given a 50-year jail sentence for sexually abusing a child; while for sexually exploiting four girls between 13 and 15 years of age, a Connecticut man was given 35 years in prison. Manitoban Thomas Martin Butler, responsible for a series of child sex assaults in the mid 1990s that included two elementary school-aged children in his care being subjected to regular sexual abuse by himself or other men, received a 25-year sentence, a rarity in Canada. 

 

Siblings Raven-Dominique and Jeffery Gobeil say they were shocked to hear the man convicted of sexually abusing them as children was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Tuesday. (Justin Fraser/CBC)

 

"I hadn't even imagined the possibility of it being 25 years [sentence for 'horrendous' series of child sex assaults in 1990s]."

"If you had told me five years ago that we would be here today I would not have believed you."

"I wouldn't have even thought it was possible."

Lawyer Raven-Dominique 33, child victim of Butler's sex assaults 

While working as a doctor with USA Gymnastics, U.S. sports physician Larry Nasser sexually abused over 150 women and girls. "I've just signed your death warrant", Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said in 2018, as she read out his sentence -- 175 years in prison. The chasm in justice meted out between the American and Canadian judiciary in response to heinous crimes could not be more pronounced.

 

The provincial courthouse in Saskatoon, Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2016. A Saskatchewan man has been sentenced to eight years in prison for the sexual assaults of 12 women while under the guise of being an Indigenous medicine man. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Matthew Smith

  

Deadly Fibre-Optic Drones

"As both radio‑controlled and fiber‑optic FPV drones evolve, militaries worldwide—including Israel’s—are racing to develop new detection tools, visual‑tracking systems, and close‑range interceptors to counter a weapon whose effectiveness stems not from sophistication, but from its simplicity and rapid innovation cycle. "

"The surge of FPV drone attacks launched from southern Lebanon in recent days has renewed scrutiny of why these small, inexpensive aircraft—whether controlled by radio or by fiber‑optic cable—remain so difficult to counter, even for militaries equipped with sophisticated electronic‑warfare systems." 

"Israeli officials have confirmed that recent incidents involved both traditional first‑person‑view quadcopters and newer fiber‑optic–guided variants flown manually by Hezbollah operators, a tactic that has expanded steadily since late 2023." 

"Reports in Israeli media have described fiber‑optic lines stretching several kilometers, enabling operators to remain deep inside Lebanese territory while maintaining a stable, jam‑proof link."  

"For defenders, this eliminates the possibility of disrupting the drone electronically and forces reliance on visual, acoustic, or kinetic interception."  

"Proximity further complicates the picture. Hezbollah frequently launches drones—both radio‑controlled and fiber‑optic—from positions only a few hundred meters from the border, often concealed behind ridgelines, trees, or building."

"At such short distances, defensive systems have only seconds to detect, classify, and respond.   

Even when partial interference is applied to radio‑controlled drones, their momentum and onboard stabilization can carry them forward long enough to strike their target."

World Israel News

FPV drone. (Shutterstock)

 

"In a sleekly produced Hezbollah video from Sunday, the quadcopter drone, weighing no more than a few kilograms, hits its target as the Israeli soldiers appear to be completely unaware of its approach. According to the Israel Defense Forces, the attack killed 19-year-old Sgt. Idan Fooks and injured several others. Hezbollah then launched more drones at a rescue helicopter that arrived at the scene to evacuate the wounded troops."

"Fiber-optic drones are effective in their simplicity: Instead of a wireless signal that controls the drone remotely, the fiber-optic cable hardwires the drone directly to its operator." 

CNN  

In the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the terrorist group has unleashed a new weapon at northern Israel. These are small drones controlled with fibre-optic cables, cables the width of dental floss, and so transparent they are almost invisible, and they are capable of avoiding detection by electronic means. 

 

Famously, these are drones widely used in Ukraine in its invasion by Russia. They are small, difficult to track and they are lethal. A dozen Israeli soldiers in northern Israel were injured by drones last week, two of them seriously. Attempts to intercept the drones by the Israeli military have been fruitless. These drones launched by Hezbollah killed an Israeli soldier, and separately, a defence contractor operating in southern Lebanon.

 

First responders gather near a crater left by an Iranian missile on March 24, 2026 in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Erik Marmor/Getty Images

 

As a result of Israeli air defences' interception success against larger, more powerful rockets, missiles and conventional drones, Hezbollah turned to using fibre optic drones and they constitute an alarming new threat. Locally produced, the drones are simple and easy to make, requiring off-the-shelf drones, a small amount of explosives, and transparent wire, all readily accessible on the consumer market. "Beyond physical barriers like nets, there is little that can be done. It’s a low-tech system adapted for asymmetric warfare", remarked an Israeli military source.

 

Air defences can resort to electronic jamming of most drones that can cause it to crash, or to return to its point of origin. Fiber-optic drones on the other hand, are not radio controlled, or piloted by GPS signals; instead they have a thin cable connected directly to an operator. Wind or other drones can cause the cables to tangle, but it is impossible to electronically jam them. "If you know what you're doing, it's absolutely deadly", said a drone expert, explaining that the drones fly low and creep up on a target.

 

A Ukrainian-made FPV fiber-optic drone flies at a military marketplace at an undisclosed location in the Kyiv region, Ukraine (Jan. 29, 2025). AP/Efrem Lukatsky

 

Moscow and Kyiv counter one another in a race to develop new drone technology. While Russia hits almost Ukraine nightly with Shahed long-range attack drones that originated in Iran, some can be taken down by electronic jamming. To solve that dilemma fibre-optic drones were developed, minus the range of a drone that uses a radio link or artificial intelligence to navigate. Israel must search for a method to either net or cut the cables, some of which cables extend up to 50 kilometres.

 

One attack killed an Israeli soldier and wounded six others a week ago. Hezbollah issued a video taken by the drone until it exploded in the midst of troops gathering near a vehicle,while another drone, fired at the same location as a military helicopter landed to evacuate the wounded, narrowly missed. There is no warning sound before the drone hits, and it seems to 'hunt' its target once someone becomes aware of its swift approach and trajectory and attempts evasive action. 

  

Relatives and friends grieve during the funeral of Israeli soldier Sgt. Idan Fooks, who was killed in combat in southern Lebanon, in Petah Tikva on April 27, 2026.  Ilia Yefimovich/AFP/Getty Images

"As a result of these changes, CFLRS [Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School] is experiencing significant changes in candidates' basic capabilities and increasing pressures on staff and instructors." 

"For many candidates it is the first time that they have lived with members of a different sex and for some it is also the first time they have been expected to treat women as their peers."

"Older candidates from certain cultural backgrounds are also more likely to experience friction when responding to younger CFLRS instructors due to cultural hierarchies based on age." 

"[An early foreign-origin-heavy French platoon was] plagued by allegations of racism from candidates against staff but equally candidates against other candidates and constant infighting between cultural blocks within the platoon -- i.e., Cameroonian candidates against those from Cote d'Ivoire."

"[On the English side, platoons with heavy permanent resident members] suffered from low fitness levels."

National Defence, Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School report 

 

"[The military is currently working on an] onboarding tool [to explain the institution's ethos and culture to candidates'."

"On French [officer] platoons, where permanent residents have made up 50 - 80% of all candidates, there have been more emotional responses, with francophone staff openly raising the question of whether it is appropriate for officer commissions to be granted to non-Canadian citizens."

Commodore Pascal Belhumeur, spokesman, Department of National Defence 

Recruits on a field course sweep for dropped belongings during basic military training (BMQ) at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., on April 29, 2024. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

Through Canada's recruiting of non-citizens for the Canadian Military enabled by an experimental drive to increase the active participation of Canadian Armed Forces personnel, a January internal report highlights that the lowering of entrance standards has brought with it somewhat predictable complications, where recruits fail at greater rates, reflecting those changes to recruit practices dated from late 2024. 

 

New changes to the Canadian Armed Forces recruitment process:

• Restrictions on candidates with certain health and mental health issues lifted;
• More permanent residents permitted to join;
• Security screening reduced
• Old aptitude test  dropped

The tight restrictions of 2022 which permitted permanent residents to join the Armed Forces were relaxed in 2024, resulting in close to 800 recruits, in months following the change; in 2025, 1,400 permanent residents were recruited. Among permanent resident candidates instructors note poor English and French skills, along with problems emerging with new male recruits accepting the presence of women as military peers. In basic training surveys included complaints of "inter-candidate cultural frustration", the major concern linked to a lack of respect for women.

 

"That sort of behaviour is absolutely not tolerated in the Canadian Armed Forces"; any members engaging in such behaviour are removed "if it comes up", according to Commodore Pascal Belhumeur. A higher attrition rate is viewed as an assurance that preventive mechanisms are in play. Overall, the rate of basic training completion dropped from 85 percent to 77 percent in the first three quarters of 2025, according to the report.

 

Greater numbers of candidates are ordered to repeat a course, where previously the numbers were lower, ranging from four to eight percent, whereas in 2025 that repeat-course number was 15 percent. In 2023, 62 percent of candidates retaking a course saw medical reasons as the cause; another 15 percent for failing practical evaluations (i.e., drills, weapons and fitness); while another two percent retook a course for failing academic evaluations on topics from sexual misconduct to navigation theory. 

 

New recruits carry duffles full of kit during basic military training (BMQ) at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., on May 1, 2024. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

Only 45 percent of candidates ordered to retake courses in the 2025 fiscal year saw medical reasons as the cause, with 27 percent for failing practical evaluations, and seven percent for academic failures. A higher number of mentally unwell recruits who signed as a result of the lowered entry bar, are mentioned as well in the report. As well, 15 percent of permanent resident candidates failed the initial fitness test; that number was 8 percent among citizen candidates, including newly naturalized citizens. 

 

The basic training success rate for citizens among officer candidates is 85 percent, and 88 percent for permanent residents. One early French officer platoon was comprised 83 percent of permanent residents, half of which were foreign-born recruits. Non-citizen enrolment in the average French officer course is 57 percent ,while amongst English officer platoons permanent residents take up about 30 percent typically, comprising about 25 percent on average, of course enrolment. 

 

More troubling, according to the report, some candidates had been resident in Canada for a mere three months, finally corrected with the imposition of a three-year residency requirement for all candidates. Despite the higher attrition rate among candidates and the increase in cultural and competency problems, the new standards for recruitment, according to the military still resulted in a net-positive impact, since recruitment numbers have increased notably. 

 

 

"I think the Canadian Armed Forces that we are recruiting is a representation of Canadian society now."

"If you look at the number of Canadians that are foreign-born and the number of people who we're bringing into the Canadian Armed Forces, I think we are representative of the Canadian demographic."

"[Recruitment is competitive -- and the military is] proud to reflect the diversity of Canadian society."

"It's absolutely worth it. We went from 63,000 to over 68,000 people in uniform because of the change that we've done, and we've done this in a way without dropping the training standard."

Commodore Pascal Belhumeur 

 

 

Hitting Russia's Oil Refineries Deep Within

[The Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery [Orsk in Orenburg region] was hit."

"A strike was recorded, followed by a fire on the territory of the enterprise."

"The facility is involved in supplying the Russian occupation army."

Ukraine Military General Staff

 

"The enemy must understand a simple fact: it no longer has a 'safe rear'."

"Distance no longer guarantees protection -- every region where enterprises support the war against Ukraine is within reach'."

Security Service of Ukraine 

 

"We have to minimize [Russia’s] physical ability to send oil to the vessels and transport it outside of their ports."

"Our main target here is to limit Russia's ability to finance war."

"Prices rose without our participation. It was because of the Iran war initiated by the U.S."

"But for Ukraine it has created additional problems because [Moscow] is getting money for the same volume of oil it exports."

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director, Kyiv-based Energy Industry Research Center  

Ukrainian drone strikes hit oil infrastructure across Russia this week, sparking huge fires. (Reuters: Governor of Krasnodar Region Veniamin Kondratyev)

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared the success of his military's latest long-range drone attack at an oil facility deep within Russia, causing a huge fire on Wednesday. The oil facility is located in the Ural Mountains, the Perm region of Russia, over 1,500 kilometres from the border with Ukraine. There, a Russian oil pumping station was struck, reflecting Ukraine's military strategy of targeting Russia's energy infrastructure.  

 

Perm Governor Dmitry Makhonin, while admitting a drone had hit, declined to mention details, leaving it as an unspecified industrial facility. The fire that resulted was massive. Yet another Ukrainian success in its counteroffensive to the Russian military's unceasing night time attacks on Ukrainian cities and the country's energy infrastructure. An increasing number of long-range attacks with increasingly accurate, domestically developed drones has infuriated Vladimir Putin, who spits rage at Ukraine's 'terrorism'.

 

Russia's larger army continues to press slowly forward passing four years of an invasion that isn't really war, according to Vladimir Putin, but a 'special military operation' where he has ordered his military to flatten Ukrainian towns and villages, dislocating millions of Ukrainians as he forges on with his brutal mission to occupy more than the 20 percent of Ukraine's geography it currently holds, to add to Greater Russia. 

 

A Panamanian-flagged vessel carrying Russian crude oil is moored of the coast of the Philippines on April 1. The country purchased its first shipment of Russian oil in five years because of the global supply crunch (Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

 

Ukraine, for its part, continues to have an advantage in refining drone technology, both for attack and for defence purposes. The video that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted showed an immense plume of dark smoke rising into the atmosphere close to an urbanized area. Ukraine, its president explained, was expanding the range of its long-distance strikes. He announced a new phase in efforts to limit Russia's capacity to wage war, by impacting its revenue stream through oil extraction and shipment to willing buyers. 

 

"The straight-line distance is more than 1,500 kilometres. We will continue to increase these  ranges", he promised. 

 

Only the previous day, Ukraine had struck the Tuapse oil refinery and terminal on the Black Sea for the third time in less than two weeks. The attack led to the evacuation of the local population from the area, while creating what President Putin stated could be "serious environmental consequences". Mr. Putin's blinkered vision fails to recognize his own orders to the Russian military create similar conditions in Ukraine.  

 

A satellite image shows smoke rising following a Ukrainian drone attack on an oil pumping station amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Bashkultaevo, Perm Region. (Reuters: Planet Labs BBC)

 

The plan of escalating Ukraine's long-distance strike campaign against Russian oil facilities to put a grinding stop to Moscow's reaping a financial windfall from a U.S. waiver on sanctions in the midst of a global supply shortage caused by the Iran war, appears to be going the way of Ukraine's advantage.  

"Kyiv is exploiting the vulnerabilities of Russia's large land mass."

"Ukrainian forces will likely continue to exploit the large attack surface of Russia's deep rear and overstretched Russian air defences to launch more frequent and larger strikes against Russian oil infrastructure and military assets."

Institute for the Study of War, Washington  

"Severe naloxone-induced opioid withdrawal with agitation should be managed as a high-risk agitated delirium, prioritizing patient and staff safety through standardized emergency department protocols, including verbal de-escalation attempt, trained security involvement and judicial use of physical and chemical restrains when necessary."

'Just the Facts' report summary 

 

"It [report] speaks to the increased toxicity of what's circulating on the street right now."

"There's no question: When we use naloxone to reverse patients, they can become very agitated and violent. They're generally incoherent. It's rare that they're like that in the usual state. It's just that in the withdrawal state, they're thrashing, they're throwing punches, they're yelling and it can be very scary for the team, and it can be very disruptive [including for other hospital patients]."

"That's the nature of emergency care. You can have a case like this happening a metre, or a couple of metres away from a 95-year-old who has broken their hip. They're in pain, they're scared and now to have this nightmare scenario playing out just a few metres away. That can't be good for anyone's recovery." 

Dr. Eddy Lang, emergency physician, Calgary

Thrashing, agitated patients put doctors, nurses and other patients in danger in emergency rooms. Photo by Dan Janisse /Postmedia

 

Canada's overloaded emergency rooms are now facing a new reality brought to the fore by an increasingly toxic drug supply, forcing emergency room doctors to make greater efforts to balance reverse of overdoses while at the same time being mindful to avoid users heading into withdrawal sufficiently violent they endanger those making the effort to save their lives. It can now take 10 times the usual dosage of naloxone to restore breathing sufficiently to keep an individual overdosing from dying, given the proliferation of increasingly toxic drugs.

 

Street drugs contaminated with other chemicals, including animal tranquilizers. These are lethally dangerous combinations that people unheeding of the warnings, fixated on reaching that high are grasping at in their captured dependency. Yet the potentially life-saving overdose antidote now poses another potential threat in that one single dose is insufficient against the powerfully drug-intoxicating effects of the contaminated street drugs. Higher naloxone doses run the very real risk of "acute agitated withdrawal", a brief report warns, recently published online prior to print publication in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine.

 

 

 

Across Canada, reports of stark increases in opioid-related overdoses are coming in from city after city. Paramedic and emergency staff already under strain by the demands occasioned by an aging population, a population whose increase has been unprecedented through immigration, a migrant crisis, refugee intake and foreign worker programs, as well as large numbers of foreign student visas all impacting on the universal health care system overwhelming medical practitioners, nursing staff and other hospital workers, now face increased demands brought about by drug overdose emergencies.

 

What's more, Emergency Rooms are seeing worsening episodes of violence, leaving those last-resort medical care utilities in a state of chronic disaster situations. Care intensities require a new focus and protocol; more resources, more equipment, more staff, more medication, more emergency department space -- when the ERS are already at bursting point, overcrowded, out of available beds, people ending up being cared for as they lie on cots in hospital corridors, or even on floors.

 

"Previously these patients wouldn't require high levels of critical care and are now requiring admission to hospital or admission to ICU for more intensive care for long periods of time."

"Five years ago, we would have gone with a different dosing strategy."

"Now we go low and slow and take our time, anticipating that the patient may respond in a manner that's unsafe." 

Dr. Taryn Lloyd, emergency and addictions medicine, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto  

Tested street drug samples turn up the presence of fentanyl containing medetomidine and xylazine, tranquilizers and sedatives used by veterinarian medicine. Those drugs act differently in humans, decreasing blood pressure and heart rate, and slowing breathing. Some contain Valium or other benzodiazepines. A mixture of fentanyl, medetomidine and benzos in the same sample are turning up in some analyses. And then, there is this: naloxone works only for opioids, it is not a treatment for, nor can it reverse the effects of other contaminants.

 

All of which makes overdoses more complex when the toxicity of the contaminants can lead to significant changes in heart rhythms or heart rates, prolonged sedation and brain injuries. It takes longer for the bloodstream to clear them out. People are found in deeper states of coma by attending paramedics. "Unfortunately, sometimes the amount of oxygen deprivation that occurs during these prolonged ingestions is fatal", advised Dr. Lang.

 

Dr. Lang describes situations where someone barely breathing, unable to be roused suddenly turns around "to now they're thrashing, jumping up in bed and their arms flailing in a way that is really scary to see and can be very traumatizing to the staff". Dr. Lang points out that despite concerning opioid overdoses, alcohol and crystal meth seem to be more emphatic sources of violence than opioid overdose withdrawal.  

 

Purple crosses commemorate those who died of toxic drug overdoses on International Overdose Awareness Day. (Carmen Groleau/CBC)

 

"It's such a powerful addiction. They're in this warm cloud of happiness that is just so addictive. They have to go back and back, even if it means they're homeless, they're involved in crime, they've alienated their families."

"So imagine, you're in this state of warm cloudiness and suddenly you are abruptly and violently woken up by naloxone."

"Any pain you may have been covering up with the opioid use is now heightened, and your whole body is aching." 

Dr. Eddy Lang, Calgary 

"What we want is to find the disappeared. And we are reinforcing the institutions of the Mexican State to better prevent and respond to this tragic crime."

"We reaffirm our commitment. We will continue searching for all missing persons until we find them."

"Our obligation is to continue looking for everyone, for every person."

"And, at the same time, to eradicate this crime. There should be no more disappeared in Mexico."

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum

 

"The idea that forced disappearances don’t happen, or that most disappearances are related to voluntary absences, minimizes the responsibility of the state."

"Limiting the number of missing persons to 43,128 minimizes the magnitude of a crisis that has a human face and that won’t be solved through administrative searches."

Centro Prodh human rights group

 

"We are reverting once again to the idea that only those with case files at the public prosecutor’s office will be considered."

"There is deep mistrust of the prosecutors’ offices; there is significant collusion between these offices and criminal groups – that’s common knowledge."

Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, Mexican anthropologist 

Mothers gather outside Banorte Stadium before the Mexico v Portugal match in Monterrey on 28 March, asking for justice for their missing loved ones. Photograph: Franco Uriel Pérez Ramírez/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

 

Volunteer search teams last year discovered an abandoned ranch where inexplicably a multitude of shoes were found. To the search teams this was evidence of an extermination camp operated by a drug cartel. When charred human remains were found there as well, Mexican authorities went into denial mode, insisting that the Izaguirre ranch in Jalisco, western Mexico, was actually a training camp for new recruits of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the most powerful of Mexico's many criminal groups.

 

Dissatisfied with the outcome of the investigation, volunteers returned to the site to continue searching for answers and another disturbing discovery was revealed. There, they found a septic pit stuffed with human teeth and bone fragments. Yet another discovery consolidating the inescapable reality of an ongoing grim chapter in Mexico. Over 133,000 people have vanished across the country and Mexican authorities have gone out of their way fruitlessly to solve the situation, then resorted to minimizing it and finally denying its existence.

People hold pictures of missing persons in front of the National Palace during the commemoration of the International Day of the Disappeared in Mexico City, on 30 August 2019. Photograph: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images

 

The fact that Mexicans have been struggling with, in an ongoing effort to stem the tide of the disappeared -- or at the very least comprehend how and why it is occurring -- hoping for a clue that might direct them toward prevention focuses on the reality that tens of thousands of people have disappeared in the past several decades, and the suspects causing these sudden absences in civil society are organized crime, aided and abetted by colluding government officials. 

 

President Claudia Sheinbaum has sworn to pursue justice until such time as the mystery of these wholesale disappearances has been brought to a conclusion. The rate at which the government has moved in an effort to solve the frighteningly deadly situation has been glacial and ineffective in the opinion of government critics. Societal condemnation of government has placed new pressure on the president for the urgent need of greater progress.

 

According to government statistics, homicides have dropped by 41 percent under this administration, while the number of missing persons has more than doubled since 2015. Prosecutors have been mandated by the president to open an investigation once a disappearance report has been received. A nationwide emergency alert system was launched to respond to missing person reports. Nonetheless controversy has followed these initiatives.

 

A person runs along the Sunday bike route in front of a section of the metal guardrail at the so-called “Roundabout of the Disappeared,” plastered with photographs of missing persons, in Mexico City.

(Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)

 

An audit to review the national disappearance registry was ordered in the wake of the Izaguirre ranch discovery, with a goal to ensure accurate data collection. Created in 2018, the registry merged lists from state prosecutors, search commissions and volunteers, an assimilation difficult to analyze. "There were no standards, no methodology", stated security official overseeing the effort, Marcela Figueroa. The total of 130,000 entries were divided into three groups by Ms. Figueroa's research team. Given the lack of information, argued the government, searching for one set of the missing would be impossible.

 

One third of the entries were categorized as individuals who had been reported missing, but who had been found to have married, filed taxes or received vaccinations. Of the remaining 43,600 people of whom nothing had been heard from after being reported missing, sufficient information exists to enable continued searches. This conclusion drew mixed reactions from the concerned public with some researchers claiming government failed to make its data public and as such, verifying the audit's accuracy was not possible.  

"I want to give a vote of confidence."

"The problem is they can show whatever figures they want, but if there's no evidence to back them up, it's going to be really hard to defend what they're doing." 

Fernando Escobar, researcher, Common Cause, Mexico 

Forestry workers scrape soil looking for evidence of human remains during a massive, multi-agency search through Cumbres del Ajusco National Park, which sits south of Mexico City. (Jorge Barrera/CBC)

2025 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents

"Antisemitic conspiracy theories were disseminated with such frequency in 2025 that it is easier to summarize the totality of the accusations made against Jewish Canadians by simply stating that they were made the scapegoats for all the world's problems."

Antisemitism has become so ubiquitous in our society that the word Jew is now commonly used as a slur to disparage and malign non-Jews. In contemporary Canada, Jewishness itself has become derogatory."

Richard Robertson, Director of Research and Advocacy, B'nai Brith Canada  

The annual audit produced by B'nai Brith Canada through its League for Human Rights documents 6,800 antisemitism incidents across Canada. That would be the equivalent of 18.6 documented incidents occurring each and every day. Needless to say that number would report only those incidents brought to the attention of authorities, or in this instance, B'nai Brith. Not everyone experiencing the scourge of an antisemitic attack will report a verbal assault in person or online. It has become too commonplace, and Jewish resilience shrugs and carries on.

 

The number that was recorded and released in the audit represents the highest volume since the League began its audit production in 1982. Before October 7, 2023's Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel, antisemitism was confined to the underground, when civil society would not countenance it. By 2025, however the incidence of antisemitic slurs had increased by 145.6 percent since 2022. Antisemitism, noted the report, had become so widespread that it appears to grow on its own momentum, no longer linked to events such as the war in Iran.

 

Members of Montreal's Jewish community gathered on April 22, 2026, to celebrate the 76th anniversary of the Israeli state's founding. (Olivia O'Malley/CTV News)

 

"We need to protect Canadians from the dangers that are rapidly increasing and emerging from digital spaces. Whether they are being fuelled by foreign-based entities or by foreign corporations, that shouldn't matter."

"Canada must regulate its online realm and must protect Canadians from the dangers presently existing within it."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith Canada 

Pro-Palestinian supporters set up across the street from the Israel Independence Day celebration on April 22, 2026. (Olivia O'Malley/CTV News)

 

The level of documented antisemitic incidents declined somewhat in both Quebec and Alberta in 2025. However, Ontario. the Prairies, Atlantic Canada and British Columbia saw significant increases in the number of antisemitic incidents. Most incidents occurred online, representing 92 percent of those reported, and appears to be part of a continuing trend. Year over year, the prevalence of online incidents of antisemitism have crept ever upward.

 

Listing recommendations for each level of government, the report called for a federal Royal Commission to be struck on antisemitism. Government at the federal level should establish a national antisemitism emergency task force -- should view violent antisemitic attacks as domestic terrorism and -- deploy added national security resources in the protection of Jewish institutions. 

 

As for the provinces and territories, the report recommends the immediate funding of security protection for Jewish institutions and the establishment of a special prosecution unit tasked specifically to address hate crimes The report recommended that municipalities ban events that incite hate and intimidation, exercise zero tolerance for intimidation expressed in public spaces, and for the prioritization of protecting Jewish neighbourhoods and institutions.

 

More than fifty Toronto police officers receive a morning briefing Sunday April 5 at Sheppard Plaza in North York before ensuring any anti-Israel or pro-Israel protesters remain out of residential neighbourhood streets. (Photo by Ellin Bessner/The CJN)

 

"What we need in Canada is a multi-level approach to fighting antisemitism. This is a national crisis. We need task forces."

"We need consolidated efforts to provide ... the immediate relief that is required, such as security infrastructure, funding and policing."

"But we also need legislative change. And this is something that no government in this country can do alone."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith 

The report contains a section on "the demonization of Zionism". What the report does not do is make a record of the apparent lack of interest expressed by various levels of government throughout the country at the viral and all-too-obvious 'protests' against Israel's actions in taking military steps to defend itself from the never-ending perniciously violent actions of Palestinians -- organized terror groups, and ordinary Palestinian civilians as well who have been incited by their governments in the West Bank and Gaza to value martyrdom in the cause of obliterating the Jewish State from the Middle East.

 

A lack of interest in the face of threats against Canadian Jews, the constant vilification of Jewish Canadian institutions by Muslim groups for their support of Israel, the clear civil disruptions that offend Canadian law, a tolerance for hate manifested by repeated statements of globalizing the Intifada, of a 'Final Solution' as coded, but not too-subtle messages of violence against Jews that most municipal, provincial and the federal government tolerate, while decrying antisemitism and linking it to the evil of 'Islamophobia'; a meaningless sop when it is abundantly clear that Islamists within Canadian society are the fount of the avalanche of antisemitic rhetoric and venom of today.  

"It is not OK to subject a minority in this country to unprecedented levels of hate because of the actions of a foreign government."

"The numbers speak for themselves. This is a national crisis, and we have not seen a response sufficient to the moment."

"We need a whole-of government approach. We need the same response to tackling antisemitism that we've seen from our federal government when it comes to other crises in this country."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith 

Aleph Bet Judaica, seen after a rock was thrown at its window on Sunday, Apr. 26, 2026. (Courtesy Photographer)