Canada's Conservative government introduced a bill on Tuesday to reinstate two controversial elements of its anti-terrorism law that would give police the power to make preventive arrests of anyone suspected of planning a terrorist attack.
The Anti-terrorism Act includes proposed new safeguards in response to criticism that the measures enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US were too far-reaching.
The wide-ranging act allows the government to impose stiff penalties on individuals or organizations it deems are related to terrorist activity.
The original provisions expired on March 1.
The act would require people with information relevant to the investigation of a past or future terrorist act to appear before a judge.
It mandates that police, when applying for an investigative hearing into a past terrorism offense, must convince a judge that reasonable attempts have been made to obtain the information by other means.
The act also requires the federal attorney general to periodically provide an opinion, supported by reasons, as to whether the power should be maintained.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson defended the option of allowing police to look into a past terrorist act despite a contrary recommendation from the Parliamentary committee that studied the anti-terror law.
"I think the legislation's very clear that these are tools of last resort and that the police have to now completely demonstrate in every instance to a judge that they have exercised all the options," Nicholson said on Tuesday.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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