The lawsuit against Jim Carrey is getting uglier.
The estranged husband of Carrey’s ex-girlfriend, Cathriona White, who fatally overdosed on pills a year ago, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Carrey in mid-September. The husband, Mark Burton, filed via his lawyer Michael Avenatti, saying Carrey provided the prescription medication to White, which ultimately led to her death.
One of the many accusations is that Carrey allegedly failed to alert law enforcement authorities even though he had White under surveillance. The most harrowing charge against Carrey is that the A-list star tried to cover up her death, even sending a “bogus” text message to her after she was dead.
READ MORE: Jim Carrey responds to ‘evil’ lawsuit: I will not be exploited
Now, more fuel has been added to the fire: Burton has released text messages to the New York Post, supposedly sent between Carrey and White.
In a December 2012 exchange, White is talking about the couple’s deceased parents and the candles she’s burning for them on Christmas, and Carrey allegedly interrupts the conversation with the question, “Have you thought about my c**k today?”
Some of the text messages seem to go on to indicate that White is concerned about contracting some sort of sexually transmitted infection (STI) from Carrey, who seems to mostly be concerned about avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.
Burton states that White first began to notice symptoms of STIs in January 2013 and texted Carrey, who replied: “Aggravated folacles [sic] or bumps are normal when you shave or have vigorous sex.”
In February 2013, Burton says that White wrote Carrey about finding “a couple of bumps” and wanting to go get “checked.” Carrey responds, saying that he hopes White will be “OK.”
White, getting more nervous, writes back, “I understand your [sic] worried. Imagine how I am feeling right now. I am the one who should be freaking out.” At the time, Carrey was supposedly pressuring White to sign a document that would prevent her from suing him for giving her STIs.
In a potentially self-reassuring move, she then texts him that the bumps are probably “just the abrasion thing [Carrey] was talking about.”
READ MORE: Jim Carrey lawsuit: Late girlfriend’s estranged husband sues for wrongful death
Carrey responds by writing: “I hope your [sic] ok hun. It could be from someone before me. Doesn’t show up until you’re really stressed. It should be fine though.”
In the last released exchange, Carrey allegedly ensures that White is on birth control pills.
“You haven’t let your pill [lapse] [sic] at all since we were apart have you sweety?” he asks. “Sorry I just have a concern because it was a little carefree tonight. You can get a morning after pill if there’s any question.”
Shortly thereafter, The Daily Mail reports, White discovered she had contracted herpes type 1, herpes type 2 and gonorrhea.
You can read the legal documents here:
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“Jim Carrey’s public persona is a fraud,” Burton said in a statement Thursday. “In reality, he is a guy who texts about his c**k in the same breath as deceased loved ones at Christmas.”
“This is a case about Jim Carrey using his immense wealth and celebrity status to illegally obtain and distribute highly addictive and, in this case, deadly, controlled substances,” the suit says.
According to the toxicology report, White took her own life at age 28 by overdosing on Carrey’s and her own prescription medication (a combination of sleeping pills, painkillers and beta blockers).
Carrey, 54, and White broke up in the summer of 2015, and White began to suffer severe emotional distress shortly afterwards. It turns out, as was revealed in the autopsy report, that the suicide note she left is actually directly addressed to Carrey.
READ MORE: Jim Carrey girlfriend autopsy report: Suicide note reveals tragic details
Carrey released this statement shortly after her passing:
“I am shocked and deeply saddened by the passing of my sweet Cathriona. She was a truly kind and delicate Irish flower, too sensitive for this soil, to whom loving and being loved was all that sparkled. My heart goes out to her family and friends and to everyone who loved and cared about her. We have all been hit with a lightning bolt.”
Before she was found unresponsive, White sent one final tweet to her followers:
Signing off Twitter, I hope I have been a light to my nearest and dearest. ✌🏼️❤️ to yo all
— Cathriona white (@littleirishcat) September 24, 2015
The pair met in 2012 and started dating on-and-off until her death. Dennis Bradshaw, a close friend of White’s, told police that she was normally jovial and upbeat, but had periods of time when she was “really down.” White mentioned missing her family in Ireland, claimed Bradshaw, but said she was “madly in love with Jim” despite their “roller-coaster” relationship.
Carrey isn’t planning on letting Burton’s lawsuit steamroll him.
“What a terrible shame,” Carrey wrote in a statement. “It would be easy for me to get in a back room with this man’s lawyer and make this go away, but there are some moments in life when you have to stand up and defend your honour against the evil in this world.
“I will not tolerate this heartless attempt to exploit me or the woman I loved,” Carrey wrote. “I really hope that some day soon people will stop trying to profit from this and let her rest in peace.”
READ MORE: Jim Carrey confirms girlfriend’s death: “We have all been hit with a lightning bolt”
Avenatti calls the texts “recently uncovered evidence,” and Burton plans to file them in the California wrongful death suit in the coming days.
“We have located nearly every text message, picture and email between them over the last four years by conducting a forensic examination of electronic media,” said Avenatti. “The evidence will show that Carrey and his handlers are not shooting straight with the media or the public.”
For legal reasons, Global News has not included imagery of the text messages. You can see them in their entirety here.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, is in crisis or needs someone to talk to, you can find 24-hour help through the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention.
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OTTAWA – The Canadian economy beat expectations in July with fresh data showing it expanded 0.5 per cent as the country continued moving away from a contraction earlier in the year.
Statistics Canada data released Friday for real gross domestic product found the month’s growth was largely tied to resumption of oilsands production. It had been disrupted by massive wildfires that also forced the evacuation of Fort McMurray, Alta., in May.
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This marked the second month of growth, following a 0.6 per cent gain in June. The increases followed contractions of 0.6 per cent in May and 1.6 per cent in the second quarter of 2016 – the worst quarterly performance since the Great Recession of 2009.
“Recent monthly GDP figures have been deeply skewed by the see-saw in oilsands output, but that story has now run its course,” Douglas Porter, chief economist with BMO Financial Group, said in a research note Friday.
READ MORE: Can Justin Trudeau’s high approval numbers survive Canada’s lagging economy?
“Importantly, the big bounce in July GDP has broken the narrative that the Canadian economy was sinking back into the mire, and will dampen down talk that the Bank (of Canada) would need to cut rates again soon – at least due to domestic factors.”
The Bank of Canada has predicted a third-quarter GDP rebound of 3.5 per cent thanks to oil production back online and reconstruction efforts in Alberta’s oilsands region.
Statistics Canada said there was a 19 per cent increase in non-conventional oil extraction, which includes oilsands. It was the driving force behind a 3.9 per cent increase in the overall mining, oil and gas extraction sector.
Conventional oil and gas extraction rose at a slower pace (0.6 per cent) while mining declined by 3.1 per cent, mostly because of a diamond mine closure for repairs in the Northwest Territories following a fire in June.
The output of goods-producing industries overall rose one per cent in July while output from service-producing industries advanced 0.3 per cent.
READ MORE: Liberals shelled out $62.9 billion in ‘unprecedented’ first quarter, says budget watchdog
The Statistics Canada report was stronger than a general estimate from economists, who had forecast growth of 0.3 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters.
The GDP figures indicate that Canada’s economy began the third quarter on solid footing after it experienced a significant contraction in the second quarter.
“Much like June, July saw a continued recovery of economic activity following the wildfire-led disruptions in May,” TD economist Brian DePratto wrote in a commentary.
“The story is more positive than just the recovery however, with a welcome broad-based expansion of economic activity in the month.”
Manufacturing output rose 0.4 per cent overall, due to a rise in non-durable goods such as petrochemicals. The finance and insurance sectors grew 0.9 per cent. The transportation and warehousing sector rose 1.1 per cent, in part because of travel to events such as the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil.
However, there were pockets of weakness.
Durable goods manufacturing fell 1.4 per cent – including declines from motor vehicles and parts and aerospace products and parts – while construction declined for a fourth month in a row, down 0.8 per cent.
Support activities for mining, oil and gas extraction fell for a sixth month in a row, dropping by 6.9 per cent because of less drilling activity.
Wells Fargo CEO pummeled by House committee
It looks like Americans have found the rusty pitchforks they last used in 2008 when we found out big banks were behaving badly.
Wells Fargo (WFC) CEO John Stumpf appeared twice on Capitol Hill this week. Unsurprisingly, he was grilled. And it was a bipartisan roasting.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren called him "gutless" and told him he should quit -- a call echoed by Republican Congressman Roger Williams. And Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry called Stumpf "tone deaf" for not recognizing the problems earlier.
But perhaps the biggest indictment of Stumpf and Wells Fargo came from Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
"I've come to the conclusion that Wells Fargo should be broken up," she said at Thursday's hearing. "It's too big to manage and I'm moving forward to break up the bank."
Now wait just one minute. Doesn't that go a little too far? As bad as the Wells Fargo scandal is, a call to dismantle the bank seems to be a bit of an overreaction.
Yes, more than 5,000 employees have been fired for their roles in setting up fake accounts. There may be more heads on the chopping block. It's reasonable to suggest that Stumpf should be canned too, as well as other senior managers.
I also have no problem whatsoever with the clawing back of bonuses and other compensation for Stumpf, Wells community banking chief Carrie Tolstedt and other high-ranking officials at the bank.
At best, these executives were oblivious to the bad behavior. It's more troublesome if they knew about it and turned a blind eye to it. It's obviously even worse if we find out that they knew AND actively encouraged it.
But should lawmakers really be calling for the dismantling of Wells Fargo, a bank with about 268,000 employees?
Think of all the bank tellers, mortgage brokers, back office people and other Wells Fargo workers who had absolutely NOTHING to do with this mess. Should they all be punished?
A lot of banks went under during the Great Recession and many ethical, hard-working financial services workers employees lost their jobs for no fault of their own. Why should we actively root for that to happen again?
Sure, some are arguing that Wells Fargo would be better off being chopped up into pieces. Several of my followers on Twitter have told me that they think a bunch of Baby Wells will wind up leading to more jobs.
Each individual piece would need more compliance people and middle managers, for example. Yes, that could happen. But I have the sneaking suspicion that breaking up Wells would give the company an excuse to lay off more workers, not add them.
What's more, isn't this a democratic, free-market society? Why should Congress do the job of investors, consumers and regulators?
Wall Street is already punishing Wells Fargo. Its stock has tanked. If consumers are really angry, they could (and probably should) move their bank accounts from Wells Fargo to smaller community banks or credit unions.
And even though bank regulators have taken their sweet time to punish Wells Fargo -- the problems date back to 2007 at a minimum, and some argue the fake accounts issue was a problem years before that -- they are acting strongly now.
Trust me, I have no sympathy for Stumpf. I'm also disappointed that everyone's favorite billionaire, Warren Buffett, apparently is choosing to wait until after the election to say a lot more about the scandal.
CNBC reported Thursday that Buffett has spoken to Stumpf and that Buffett told Stump he misjudged the scope of this scandal.
But doesn't the Oracle of Omaha owe it to Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) shareholders to say even more about Wells? Especially in light of his famous quote back in 1991 about how he would be "ruthless" if any of his companies lost a "shred of reputation" for Berkshire?
I'd argue yes. But I'd also argue that members of Congress should stay out of this. The guilty should be punished. But it's not time to light a match and burn down the entire Wells Fargo stagecoach.
CNNMoney (New York) First published September 30, 2016: 11:20 AM ET
Dodgers announcer Vin Scully retires
"It's time for Dodger baseball."
That's Vin Scully's usual start to Dodgers baseball games, which he's been calling for 67 years.
Throughout his career, he also called games during the MLB postseason and even did some football games.
Here's a list of his five most memorable calls, along with a bonus track:
Sandy Koufax's Perfect Game
Koufax pitched his fourth no-hitter on September 9th, 1965 against the Cubs. He had 14 strikeouts -- the most ever in a perfect game.
"Sandy into his windup. Here's the pitch. Swung on and missed. The perfect game!" Scully said. "Sandy Koufax whose name will always remind you of strikeouts did it with a flourish. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that 'K' stands out even more than the 'o-u-f-a-x.'"
Koufax is the only Dodger to pitch a perfect game.
Hank Aaron's 715th Home Run
Aaron came up to bat on April 8, 1974. He was one home run away from breaking Babe Ruth's record of 714 career home runs. Aaron hit a ball deep into left center field.
"It is gone!" Scully said. "What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol."
Bill Buckner's Blunder
Mookie Wilson was at bat, and the New York Mets were tied with the Boston Red Sox 5-5 in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.
The Mets had managed to hold on and come back from what seemed like a loss when Wilson hit a ground ball that won the game.
"Little roller up along first. Behind the bag. It gets through Buckner. Here comes [Ray] Knight and the Mets win it!" Scully said. "If one picture is worth a thousand words, you have seen about a __million words, but more than that you have seen an absolutely bizarre finish to Game 6."
The Mets went on to win the World Series.
Kirk Gibson's Walk-Off Homer
Gibson came into Game 1 of the 1988 World Series near the end of the ninth and final inning.
His teammate was on first base, but the Dodgers were down against the Oakland A's 7-6.
"All year long they looked to [Gibson] to light the fire, and all year long he answered the demands until he was physically unable to start tonight with two bad legs," Scully said. "Gibson shaking his left leg, making it quiver like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly."
Gibson hit a home run to win the game.
"High fly ball into right field. She is -- gone!"
The Dodgers went on to win the World Series.
Clayton Kershaw's No-Hitter
"Although we certainly do not believe in superstitions, we would advise you if you have a friend or three who might love baseball, you might give 'em a call and say, 'Hey, you better tune into the Dodger game. Kershaw is doing a gem.'"
On June 18, 2014, Kershaw went on to pitch a no-hitter with a career-high 15 strikeouts. He allowed no runs and no hits.
Bonus: A History of Beards
Noticing how popular beards have become in the MLB, Scully took it upon himself to do some research and shared what he learned with his listeners during a Padres-Dodgers game.
CNNMoney (New York) First published September 29, 2016: 2:45 PM ET
A brief history of creepy talking toys
Teddy Ruxpin, the iconic talking bear from the late '80s, is back -- and he's flaunting some timely upgrades.
The toy bear made a splash when he launched in 1985. He was a first-of-its-kind animatronic toy with motorized eyes and mouth, and he told stories through a cassette player (remember those?) in his back.
"Kids adored Teddy Ruxpin so much that he became a multi-billion dollar product in five years," said Jeremy Padawer, co-president of Wicked Cool Toys, the company behind Ruxpin 2.0. (The original Teddy was created by Ken Forsse and Alchemy II in 1982. Wicked Cool Toys is working with Alchemy II on the new iteration.)
Why is the toymaker bringing Teddy Ruxpin back?
"The kids who embraced him back then are 28 to 40 years old now. They have young kids who they'd want to introduce Teddy Ruxpin to," said Padawer. "We felt the time was right to bring back this nostalgic toy but with the right technology to fit the time."
Teddy Ruxpin will still read stories with a motorized mouth. But now he has color LCD eyes that show 40 animated expressions synched to the stories.
He can blink and look up and down, but his eyes also flash hearts, stars, even snowflakes. He has an internal hard drive with 10 stories about his adventures, with an option to download additional ones.
The 14-inch tall bear (priced at $99) also has touch sensors in the hands and feet. "This is meant to allow an easy interface for young kids. By pressing the touchpad on the hand or foot, they can start, pause or switch a story," said Padawer.
With the upgrade, Ruxpin also got a companion app that lets kids read along with him.
True to the original Teddy, the new bear is meant to be a fun and educational toy.
"He's balancing education with a fun experience for children," said Padawer. Now for the sad part. New Teddy doesn't hit stores until July 2017.
CNNMoney (New York) First published September 30, 2016: 1:05 PM ET
Prince George and Princess Charlotte made a rare public appearance together in Victoria, B.C., on Thursday when they attended a party on the grounds of Government House.
This was the royal children’s first official public engagement together.
READ MORE: Prince George and Princess Charlotte attend children’s party in Victoria
They seemed to have a great time, playing with balloons, bubbles, and petting and riding animals.
FULL COVERAGE: Royal Visit 2016
We’ve highlighted the cutest moments from the morning (watch the videos below):
Princess Charlotte just loves balloons
Princess Charlotte could not be happier to see a column of balloons when she arrives at the party.
Prince George rides a pony (for a moment anyway)
Prince William puts Prince George on a pony and while he seems to be OK with it at first, he quickly decides he might be better off on the ground.
Prince George plays with a bubble gun
Prince George grabs an orange bubble gun and decides to test just how many bubbles it can blow.
Princess Charlotte meets Moose the therapy dog
The Duchess of Cambridge bends down to pet Moose, a therapy dog from St. John’s Ambulance and she calls Charlotte over. Eventually Charlotte comes and pets Moose on the head.
Prince George steals Princess Charlotte’s balloon
Princess Charlotte gets a balloon animal made for her and attempts to bonk the entertainer on the head. That’s when Prince George steals it, but Princess Charlotte doesn’t seem to mind.
Prince George hugs Prince William
Prince George is in his dad’s arms and decides to give him a big squeeze.
VIDEO GALLERY:
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First official engagement for Prince George and Princess Charlotte at Victoria children’s party
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Rare glimpse of Prince George and Princess Charlotte at party hosted for military families
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Prince George, Princess Charlotte of Cambridge enjoy balloons, animal rides in Victoria, B.C.
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Princess Charlotte dances with her mom, Kate, at children’s party in Victoria
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Princess Charlotte and Prince George watch balloon maker at children’s party
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Princess Charlotte and Prince George have some fun with balloons and animals
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William and Kate along with Prince George and Princess Charlotte arrive for children’s party
If the sky is clear where you live, head outside tonight for a possible light show.
For the past few nights, the northern lights, or aurora borealis, have been visible across Canada. If you’ve missed them, you’ll get a chance again on Thursday and Friday.
READ MORE: Why do we get the northern lights?
There haven’t been any solar flares or coronal mass ejections from the sun to cause this. Instead, it’s due to a massive coronal hole, an area where the magnetic field opens up, allowing particles to stream out and travel along the solar wind.
When these particles reach Earth, they interact with our magnetic field setting the sky alight with beautiful curtains of green, red and purple.
Earlier this week, people from across the country captured beautiful displays.
Notanee Bourassa captured this amazing display of northern lights 32 km north of Regina, Saskatchewan early Wednesday morning.
Courtesy Notanee BourassaMy time lapse of the recent big solar storm! 2 nights in a row from southern Ontario! https://t.co/6p7SMwLiDd @TweetAurora @NorthLightAlert
— Laura Duchesne ☄ (@LauraDuchesne) September 6, 2016
#yeg #exploreedmonton #explorecanada #travelalberta #albertaskies #amazing #amazingcolors #aurora #northernlights #yegdt #cityofedmonton pic.twitter.com/9lU7uMRiYr
— Hugo Sanchez (@YEGHugo) September 29, 2016
Whoa! Check out this photo by Famous Amos Photography in #Alberta last night! #northernlights See more here: https://t.co/oNm6w4uVl0 pic.twitter.com/EJX7E3VnaS
— DewEze (@DewEze_Mfg) September 29, 2016
It was even seen in the U.S.
@IAStormChasing #northernlights #northiowa #92916 pic.twitter.com/iXNM2Ez7Rx
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— Diana Hayungs (@diana_hayungs) September 29, 2016
Both the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center and Natural Resources Canada are predicting storm activity on Sept. 29 and 30, with activity dropping afterwards.
READ MORE: How solar storms could leave us in the dark
If you want to try to catch them for yourselves, head outside once the sky gets dark and look north. It may take time for your eyes to adjust to the dark, but after they do, you should be able to see even faint aurora if it’s present.
Another option is to set up a camera on a tripod and set it to a high ISO and take a long-exposure photograph, maybe around 15 seconds. The camera is far more sensitive than the human eye in this set-up.
Anticipated geomagnetic storm activity.
Natural Resources CanadaFollow @NebulousNikki
TORONTO – Brad Marchand capped a wild comeback with a late short-handed goal, and Canada claimed a second straight World Cup title with a 2-1 victory over Team Europe on Thursday.
Marchand beat Jaroslav Halak with 43 seconds left in regulation, sending the Canadians to a sweep over Europe in the best-of-three final. Marchand’s goal came just over two minutes after Boston Bruins teammate Patrice Bergeron tied the game 1-1 on Canada’s fifth power play of the game.
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It was the 16th straight best-on-best victory for the Canadians, propped up by a stellar 32-save effort from Carey Price.
READ MORE: Canada slips past Europe in Game 1 of World Cup of Hockey final
Zdeno Chara managed the lone goal for Europe, which led from the early minutes of the first period until Bergeron finally evened up the score at 1-1 with less than three minutes to go in the final period.
Canada was on the verge of being shutout in a best-on-best format for the first time since losing 2-0 to Russia in the quarter-finals of the 2006 Olympics.
Out of sorts for much of their Game 1 win over Europe, Canada came sluggish again on Thursday night.
They didn’t get their first shot on Halak until almost six minutes had passed. Twenty-seven seconds after that, the Europeans took the 1-0 lead when Chara dipped in from the point and beat Price.
Canada’s @hc_men’s wins the World Cup of Hockey! Well done boys. Thanks for defending home ice. #WCH2016
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) September 30, 2016
It was just the third deficit Canada faced all tournament, and the longest lasting by far. The Canadians trailed for 89 seconds against the U.S. and 72 seconds against Russia.
A group that rolled into the final looked much like it in the series opener, imprecise at times and unable to impose its will on Europe. Canadian defenders mismanaged pucks at the blue-line twice on a first-period power play, leading to dangerous short-handed rushes for the Europeans, both of which were stopped by Price.
The Canadians couldn’t put much pressure on the European defence, which swiftly moved pucks out of its own zone. That meant little to no sustained offensive pressure.
An early power play in the second seemed to give the host country something of a jolt. John Tavares had the best chance, ringing off a shot off the post with Halak exposed. Then, later in the period with the Jonathan Toews unit pressing, Drew Doughty stepped into a shot that was stopped by Halak. A Corey Perry wraparound followed, also blocked the Slovak goaltender.
Perry had six shots and 10 attempts on goal through two periods.
Building off his excellent 33-save outing in the opener, Price was sharp at the other end. He kept Canada’s deficit at one goal, making one of his best stops on Thomas Vanek crashing the front of the net.
Europe outshot Canada 15-13 in the second and 12-8 in the first. The Canadians had been outshot in three periods all tournament prior to that, including the opening period on Tuesday night.
A nervous crowd at the Air Canada Centre alternated between boos and cheers in the third frame, and the Canadian team on the ice looked nervous and edgy itself.
Searching for offence, Babcock shuffled his lines in the third period. He flipped Tavares and Steven Stamkos onto the sides of Toews, Logan Couture and Perry joining Ryan Getzlaf. The fourth line of Joe Thornton, Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly played sparingly.
Effective throughout the tournament, the trio of Sidney Crosby alongside Marchand and Bergeron continued to make things happen.
It took until less than three minutes remained in the third for Canada to get on the board. After Anze Kopitar was called for holding Perry, the Canadian power play finally came to life.
Brent Burns sent a shot from the right point that Bergeron managed to get a stick on, beating a previously perfect Halak. It was the fourth goal of the tournament for the 32-year-old.
Crosby, the tournament MVP, added his World Cup-leading 10th point with an assist on the play.
Canada was back on its heels just over a minute later with Doughty whistled for high-sticking. After Roman Josi rung a shot off the post, an open Marian Hossa was stopped by Price.
It was 20 seconds or so later that Toews entered the offensive zone, sucked in a slew of European defenders before dropping to Marchand, whose shot beat Halak for the game-winner.
It was his tournament-leading fifth goal of the tournament.
Canada remains unbeaten in the best-on-best format since the preliminary round of the 2010 Olympics.
If it seems life keeps getting more and more expensive and the only thing not increasing is your paycheque, you’re not the only one — incomes in Canada are largely stagnant.
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Statistics Canada data released Thursday shows average weekly earnings for employees, nationally, was $955 in July. That’s an increase of a paltry 0.1 per cent from 12 months earlier.
READ MORE: Low-paying jobs keep Canada’s employment numbers afloat
Only two of Canada’s 10 largest sectors, educational services and construction, saw an average increase in wages over the previous 12 months.
Average weekly earnings grew in three provinces: Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
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P.E.I.’s income growth, the strongest of the provinces with a 4.1 per cent increase to $829 weekly, was attributed to strength in manufacturing, finance and insurance, and wholesale trade.
Nova Scotia’s earnings “grew notably” in the education sector, while New Brunswick saw growth in its health care and social assistance sector.
READ MORE: The top eight careers of the future in Canada
Outside the Maritimes there was little change, except for in Quebec and Alberta, which saw salary decline.
“Average earnings in Alberta were down 1.6 per cent to $1,119 in the 12 months to July, largely because of a combination of employment and earnings losses in professional, scientific, and technical services, and wholesale trade,” Statistics Canada states.
In Quebec, “losses were widespread” with notable declines in a number of sectors.
U.S. finally seeing incomes rise
In the United States, household income surged in 2015 after years of stunted growth following the recession, largely due to improved employment rates.
The gains appeared to have helped those most in need of a pay raise — 3.5 __million people were lifted out of poverty in that period.
“Real median household income increased by 5.2 per cent between 2014 and 2015 while the official poverty rate decreased 1.2 percentage points,” the U.S. Census Bureau reported on Sept. 13.
READ MORE: More women work in Canada than the US. Here’s why
“Median household income in the United States in 2015 was $56,516, an increase in real terms of 5.2 per cent from the 2014 median income of $53,718. This is the first annual increase in median household income since 2007, the year before the most recent recession.”
A Florida’s woman’s lawsuit says a deputy shot her with a stun gun, then apologized with a cake that said, “Sorry I Tased You” in blue frosting.
The cake didn’t cut it for Stephanie Byron. She sued former Escambia County sheriff’s deputy Michael Wohlers in May.
On Monday, the county’s Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission announced it had reviewed the case and placed Wohlers on a one-year probationary period from serving at any law enforcement agency in Florida.
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The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Pensacola, alleges Wohlers violated Byron’s civil rights, committed battery against her and caused her hardships, including physical injuries, monetary loss, medical expenses, humiliation and mental anguish.
Wohlers’ attorney wouldn’t comment Thursday but denied the allegations in a court document.
The incident happened in June 2015 when Wohlers stopped by an apartment complex where Byron was working.
According to court documents, Wohlers was in his full uniform and “used his apparent law enforcement authority to intimidate, harass, and threaten” Byron about her personal life. The lawsuit says Wohlers took Byron’s tea, and when she went to retrieve it he fired his stun gun at her. She said she was knocked to the floor and the court document says Wohlers “jumped onto Ms. Byron, kneeing her in the chest.” He then removed the stun gun prods from her body and left.
The lawsuit also says Wohlers told his employer that he accidentally discharged his device into a pillow at his house.
Sometime after that, Wohlers baked Byron a cake. Byron’s attorney entered a photo of the cake as an exhibit into the court file.
“The cake Wohlers baked provides his version of the encounter and clearly shows a person Wohlers firing the Taser at Ms. Byron. It also reads ‘Sorry I Tased You,'” the complaint reads.
The cake depicts two stick figures in frosting, with one aiming something with black wires at the other.
Wohlers resigned from the sheriff’s office in July 2015.
Wohlers’ attorney denied the allegations in a written response to the complaint. The response also said Wohlers is protected by “qualified immunity” – rights that can shield government officials from civil liability lawsuits if the official did not knowingly violate a citizen’s rights while performing their duties.
Byron is seeking compensatory damages, costs, expenses and reasonable attorney’s fees.
Banks are tightening the security of their SWIFT messaging networks – used by the industry to shift trillions of dollars each day – following revelations that hackers are increasingly able to get into this system to steal money.
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Bankers at SWIFT’s annual SIBOS conference in Geneva said they were adopting new security tools, reviewing procedures and pressing their counterparties to do the same. Some banks are also looking at alternative technologies for transferring money, such as blockchain-type systems.
They are stepping up their efforts after the theft of $81 __million from the Bangladesh central bank in February and revelations of other infiltration of banks’ SWIFT terminals. These hacks have undermined confidence in SWIFT messages, which were previously accepted at face value.
READ MORE: Stalker apps: Think there’s one on your phone? Here’s what to do
“The attacks will continue and get more sophisticated,” SWIFT Chief Executive Gottfried Leibbrandt warned delegates at the conference organized by SWIFT, which is a global member-owned cooperative.
Benoit Desserre, Global Head of Global Transaction Banking at France’s Societe Generale, said his bank had already undertaken all of SWIFT’s recommended security measures but that the hacks had encouraged it to go one step further.
The bank is introducing a new layer of security whereby the staff who are approved to send SWIFT payment instructions must now sign on with a fingerprint scanner. This is in addition to passwords and a physical computer key.
“It was easier for us to make that investment knowing what has happened,” he told Reuters in an interview. “It suddenly became more important to get something like that.”
READ MORE: How Yahoo’s massive password breach could end up affecting other online accounts
In time, SocGen may press its counterparties to use a similar system, only agreeing to fulfill payment instructions which carry a digital fingerprint, Desserre said. But he said cost could slow a broader roll-out of the technology.
Facebook Friends
In the wake of the hacks, the French bank also went through its SWIFT system to weed out redundant communications channels. SWIFT operates like Facebook in that members can only send messages to confirmed counterparties. But sometimes these links remain open even after business relationships end.
SWIFT’s Chairman Yawar Shah told delegates at the conference that such open channels were a security risk and that all banks should weed out unused channels.
Desserre said Societe Generale had removed thousands.
Cheri McGuire, Chief Information Security Officer at Standard Chartered said her bank was also conducting an internal review around its SWIFT systems.
READ MORE: Kids’ data is valuable too: Children at risk of identity theft following VTech hack
But banks are not just looking at their own systems.
The Bangladesh Bank heist involved diverting money held at accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York into accounts in the Philippines.
Bankers said to avoid this happening in the future bigger banks needed to ensure the smaller banks they work with have appropriate security procedures.
Sergio Dalla Riva, Head of Product Development, Global Transaction Banking at Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A. said understanding the security capabilities of your clients was becoming part of customer due diligence.
Lev Khasis, Chief Operating Officer at Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank by assets, said he expected regulators to tighten oversight of security practices but that peer pressure would also play a role.
“Some big banks will be pushing their smaller counterparties to move in that direction,” he said. Sberbank was already pushing its clients in this way, he said.
New Technology
The SWIFT hacks are also spurring interest in new technologies.
Lars Sjogren, Global Head of Transaction Banking at Danske Bank said his bank was working with technology companies to develop tools that would spot unusual and potentially fraudulent payment instructions sent via SWIFT.
“Payments of a certain size by a customer to people they normally pay should be green-lighted. But others could be yellow or red-lighted. There is a huge demand from our customers for that kind of service,” he said.
Others are looking at technologies which might one day replace the current SWIFT “FIN” message which banks send to tell another bank to move money around.
Blockchains are the most commonly touted alternative. These involve a publicly accessible ledger, which works as an electronic record-keeping and transaction-processing system and requires no third-party verification. The ledger can be checked at any time, helping to highlight fraudulent transfers.
On Wednesday, Sberbank joined the Hyperledger Project, which was formed by the Linux Foundation, a not for profit technology consortium, to develop new blockchain technologies for businesses. Khasis said such a system might be more secure than sending FIN messages.
SWIFT is also developing blockchain initiatives and its involvement could help to speed up the technology’s adoption, David Treat, Blockchain Lead at consultants Accenture, said. Nonetheless, he said that governance and privacy challenges remained.
Mark Buitenhek, Global Head of Transaction Services at ING, said he was doubtful blockchain or other technologies were a silver bullet.
“Fraud is a constant and fraud will remain there if we move to the next digital generation or not,” he said.
MARKSVILLE, La. – After a police body camera captured two deputy city marshals firing on a car and killing a six-year-old boy, the head of the Louisiana State Police said the video was the most disturbing thing he’s seen.
Nearly a year later, the public is getting its first look at the graphic footage.
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The state judge presiding over the murder cases against the two deputies allowed reporters to make copies of the tape Wednesday after a hearing where it was formally introduced as evidence.
Prosecutors and defence attorneys previously described in writing how the footage depicts the shooting, which stops less than a minute into the video. The rest of the nearly 14 minutes of footage shows the stomach-churning aftermath, as the officer with the body camera checks on the lifeless body of Jeremy Mardis while his critically wounded father, Christopher Few, lies bleeding on the pavement.
Prosecutors showed the tape in court Wednesday to support their claim that one of the deputies, Derrick Stafford, had a pattern of using excessive force – including last November’s fatal shooting of Jeremy Mardis in Marksville.
Matthew Derbes, a prosecutor from Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office, said Stafford’s pattern of hurting people he’s arresting also provides a motive for shooting at Few while his hands are raised.
“Motive is something the jury wants to hear,” Derbes said. “Why would they do this?”
Defence attorneys for Stafford and Norris Greenhouse Jr. argue the deputies acted in self-defence. They claim Few drove recklessly while leading officers on a three-kilometre chase and then rammed into Greenhouse’s vehicle as he was exiting it, before he and Stafford opened fire.
“Christopher Few was a suspect before they knew that child was in the car,” said Christopher LaCour, one of Stafford’s attorneys.
READ MORE: 3 Baton Rouge police officers killed, suspect dead
While the video doesn’t capture the entire pursuit, state District Court Judge William Bennett noted that the footage doesn’t show Few’s car posing a threat to the officers as they fired.
“That car was not being used as a deadly weapon at that time,” Bennett said. “I daresay it was not even close to being used as a deadly weapon at that time.”
The video from the body camera worn by Marksville Police Sgt. Kenneth Parnell III lacks audio for the first 27 seconds. The deputies began shooting before the audio begins.
Prosecutors say the video shows the deputies firing from a safe distance from Few’s car. Stafford’s attorneys, however, argue the 27-second-long segment without audio makes it impossible to determine if he started shooting before or after Few raised his hands inside the car.
After the shooting and sirens stop, somebody yells at Few to show his hands. Few was slumped over the blood-stained door on the driver’s side of his car when officers approach him.
“Is he hit at all?” Stafford later asked Parnell.
“Who?” Parnell replied.
“The driver,” Stafford said
“Yeah,” Parnell responded.
“I never saw a kid in the car, man,” Stafford said. “I never saw a kid, bro.”
About seven minutes after the shooting, Parnell opened the passenger door to Few’s car, shone a flashlight onto Mardis, nudged his right shoulder and checked for a pulse. Then he walked over to another officer and said he found a faint pulse on the boy.
Donning surgical gloves, Parnell walked back to the boy’s side of the car and shone a light on the boy again.
“Oh, my God,” he muttered.
Several minutes later, a paramedic told Parnell the boy was dead.
READ MORE: Woman shot by city police officer in Louisiana, state police say
Defence attorneys have suggested investigators rushed to judgment. George Higgins, one of Greenhouse’s attorneys, said investigators have no evidence that any of the bullets fired by Greenhouse struck Few or his son.
Higgins asked State Police detective Rodney Owens during Wednesday’s hearing why the deputies were arrested before obtaining results of ballistics tests.
“You didn’t know that Mr. Greenhouse did not shoot anybody when you arrested him?” Higgins said.
Owens acknowledged that he didn’t. But investigators later traced 14 shell casings to Stafford’s semi-automatic handgun and determined four other shell casings recovered at the scene came from Greenhouse’s gun. Of the four bullet fragments recovered from the boy’s body, three matched Stafford’s weapon and another couldn’t be matched to either deputy.
Owens also testified that there isn’t any physical evidence that Few’s car collided with Greenhouse’s vehicle, but he couldn’t rule that out as a possibility.
Stafford and Greenhouse await separate trials on second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder charges.
Stafford, a Marksville police lieutenant, and Greenhouse, a former Marksville police officer, were moonlighting as deputy marshals on the night of the Nov. 3, 2015, shooting.
Stafford’s trial is scheduled to start Nov. 28; Greenhouse has a March 13, 2017, trial date. Bennett refused Wednesday to consolidate the cases for a single trial.
State Police Col. Mike Edmonson cited the video when he announced the arrest of the two officers on Nov. 6.
Elizabeth Warren: Wells Fargo CEO should resign
Members of Congress are alarmed over horror stories from Wells Fargo workers who say they were fired after blowing the whistle on illegal activity.
Nearly a half-dozen former Wells Fargo (WFC) workers told CNNMoney they were retaliated against for calling the bank's ethics line about the opening of fake accounts and similar issues.
Now, lawmakers are grilling Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf about the allegations.
"Do you appreciate the kind of courage it takes to be a whistleblower?" Rep. Keith Rothfus asked Stumpf at Thursday's hearing before the House Financial Services Committee.
Citing the CNNMoney report, Rothfus asked Stumpf if he knows how many "honest Wells Fargo employees may have lost out in a race with some of the fraudsters."
Stumpf didn't have a number on how many Wells Fargo workers may have been fired or demoted after speaking up, but said the company is reviewing the matter.
"Every one of them, we're going to work on," the CEO said.
Rep. Gwen Moore told the story of a female Wells Fargo whistleblower from her district in Wisconsin who was pushed out after complaining about sales tactics.
"Is there a fund for the good ones? What is the remedy for my constituents?" Moore asked Stumpf.
Stumpf said he's aware of the retaliation allegations, calling them "very regrettable."
"We're taking it very seriously," he said, adding that the company has a non-retaliation policy.
It's the latest fallout since CNNMoney first reported stories from former Wells Fargo workers who tried to put a stop to the illegal sales tactics that lie at the heart of the fake account scandal that has rocked the nation.
"They ruined my life," said Bill Bado, a former Wells Fargo banker in Pennsylvania who was fired eight days after sending an email in 2013 to HR about unauthorized accounts being opened.
The Department of Labor has a Whistleblower protection program that protects employees who report violations.
Harvey Pitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told CNNMoney it's "clearly against the law" for a company or executive to "suppress whistleblowing." He cited Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank and other statutes that make this "unambiguously clear."
Lawmakers are beginning to pressure the SEC to probe the matter. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and two of her colleagues asked the SEC in a letter this week to "investigate whether Wells Fargo violated whistleblower protection laws." The Senators cited CNNMoney's report and noted that workers who report misconduct are protected from retaliation under current law.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Labor Department said it's reviewing both open and closed whistleblower complaints against Wells Fargo. It's part of a "top-to-bottom review" by the department of Wells Fargo cases, complaints and violations.
At least one lawmaker believes the whistleblower problem could lead to even more serious legal problems for Wells Fargo.
Rep. Stephen Lynch cited the allegations brought up by the Wells Fargo HR official who told CNNMoney of retaliation on whistleblowers at the bank. The official said Wells Fargo found ways to fire employees "in retaliation for shining light" on sales issues.
Lynch said: "These whistleblowers were intimidated, or even fired."
The lawmaker also suggested Wells Fargo could be prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the statute known as RICO that has been applied against FIFA as well as members of the Mafia.
CNNMoney (New York) First published September 29, 2016: 3:17 PM ET
What the heck is Alphabet?
For future MBAs, a job at Google is the goal.
The tech giant was the top-mentioned company among business-school students when asked where they'd most like to work, according to a new survey from Universum, a research and consulting firm.
Google may be an obvious dream employer for techies and engineers -- but what gives it such appeal among up and coming businesspeople?
There are three big draws, says Dustin Clinard, Universum America's managing director. The company has a much-loved brand, pursues diverse and ambitious projects, and offers a quirky and innovative workplace, Clinard says.
Google's moonshot projects, like self-driving cars and super-speed internet, give it "an inspiring purpose" that's key for attracting young business talent, adds Clinard.
Beyond Google (GOOG), MBA students favored four prestigious consulting firms -- McKinsey & Company, The Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company and Deloitte.
The major consultancies tend to maintain a big recruiting presence at top business schools, according to Clinard.
McKinsey, for example, spends "a good amount of time on campus to make sure students are well-acquainted" with the firm, its work and people, company spokesperson DJ Carella told CNNMoney.
Big-name consulting firms are often held in high regard at business schools, says Clinard, because they're known for hiring the best people and for focusing on solving the world's hardest problems.
Rank | Company |
|---|---|
1 | |
2 | McKinsey & Company |
3 | The Boston Consulting Group |
4 | Bain & Company |
5 | Deloitte |
Indeed, the survey found 93% of MBA students are looking to "be competitively or intellectually challenged" at their first jobs.
But they're not necessarily looking to make huge sums of money right away. Only 13% of the MBA students cited becoming wealthy as an initial career goal. Still, they're not expecting to be broke either. Survey respondents expect a starting salary of about $115,730 on average.
They're also not interested in following the path of Donald Trump or Carly Fiorina going from business to politics. About 77% of respondents said running for public office is not a career move they want to take on.
CNNMoney (New York) First published September 29, 2016: 10:18 AM ET
Three of the UK’s biggest banks have paid out billions of pounds in dividends to investors while turning a blind eye to huge capital holes in their balance sheets, researchers argue.
The findings, which come in the wake of estimates the UK banking sector has an aggregate £155bn shortfall of capital, will reinforce calls for the Bank of England to take a tougher stance on the capital adequacy of the lenders it oversees and to restrict the payment of dividends.
Read more
What is bank capital and why does it matter?
Between 2010 and 2015 HSBC paid out £37bn in dividends, Barclays paid out £6.3bn and Lloyds paid out £2.3bn according to the calculations of Sascha Steffen of the University of Mannheim, Viral Acharya of New York University and Diane Pierret of the University of Lausanne. If this cash had been retained by the banks it could have boosted their capital buffers by an equivalent amount.
The three researchers last month produced an estimate that suggested UK banks would be massively exposed and at high risk of going bust in another serious financial crisis.
UK banks are in better shape, but not in good shape.
Sascha Steffen, University of Mannheim
They found that the majority state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC could collectively need to raise another £155bn of capital to maintain a comfortable equity safety buffer in the wake of a fresh crisis based on the market value of their equity.
Speaking to The Independent, Professor Steffen said the UK’s big banks are in a stronger position than banks in continental Europe, thanks to the fact that they were aggressively recapitalised with public funds in the 2008-09 crisis, while this painful medicine and restructuring was often ducked in mainland Europe.
But Prof Steffen also said that there was still a strong case for UK regulators to impose restrictions on dividend distributions to force British banks to build up their capital buffers further.
“UK banks are in better shape, but not in good shape. They should stop paying dividends” he said.
He also said that UK regulators should prevent banks from using surplus cash to “buyback” shares, a practice favoured by managements as it tends to boost their stock prices.
Last week HSBC announced $2.5bn (£1.9bn) of share buybacks following the sale of its Brazilian business.
The three researchers used the Federal Reserve’s stress test method to quantify the capital shortfall of UK banks. This found a shortfall of €5.2bn (£4bn) at RBS and €7.3bn at Barclays. Barclays has paid out roughly this amount in dividends to shareholders since 2010.
RBS has not paid a dividend since the financial crisis when it had to be bailed out with £45bn of taxpayers’ funds. However, in March RBS’s management chose to pay £1.2bn to redeem the Government’s “Divided Access Share”, in order to enable the bank to restart dividend payments at some point.
The researchers found the 10 poorest performers in the European Banking Authority’s recent stress tests exercise had paid out a cumulative €20bn of dividends since 2010 and that all 34 of the listed bank in the test had distributed €170bn over the past five years.
They said that the banks pay out, on average, more than 60 per cent of their earnings in cash to shareholders.
“Allowing under-capitalised banks to pay out dividends represents a substantial wealth transfer from subordinated bondholders to shareholders as it increases the likelihood that bondholders will need to be bailed in,” they wrote.
“Moreover, it is ultimately a wealth transfer from the taxpayer to the shareholders as state aid is possible under the new restructuring rules after 8 per cent of equity and liabilities have been bailed in.”
Capital represents the shareholders’ funds on a bank’s balance sheet that are eaten up as a lender registers losses. If the capital is too small to absorb losses the bank is bust and its debt holders are forced to accept losses.
In the 2008-09 crisis banks went bust but had to be rescued by taxpayers since they were deemed to be systemically important, prompting a post-crisis drive for them to be compelled to maintain significantly larger equity cushions.
The Bank of England says UK banks are adequately capitalised, having run its own series of stress tests on the sector in recent years. But some independent analysts have criticised these stress test as flawed, saying the exaggerate the strength of UK lenders in the face of a looming new financial crisis.
An abusive partner or ex may be able to track you in detail through a secret app installed on your phone, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned Monday.
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What drivelikeagirl.com tells us about the future of your digital privacy
Surveillance apps are designed to be invisible to the phone’s owner. They can share audio recordings of phone calls, texts — even deleted ones — photos and location information. Some can turn on the phone’s microphone remotely to act as a bug, or to track whether the phone enters or leaves pre-defined circles on a map.
Installing the app usually requires at least a few minutes of physical access to the phone.
“Cyber stalking apps … enable continuous and secret tracking of a cellphone owner’s intimate conversations, medical appointments, online banking activity, intellectual musings, minute-to-minute movements, and far more,” University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron wrote in a recent paper
READ MORE: We-Vibe lawsuit: Why would a sex toy company want to collect your data?
In 2014 testimony, U.S. Senator Al Franken told the story of a Minnesota woman who wasn’t aware that an abusive partner was tracking her through her phone:
“She went to a domestic violence program located in a county building. She got to the building, and within five minutes, she got a text from her abuser asking her why she was in the county building. The woman was terrified. And so an advocate took her to the courthouse to get a restraining order.”
“As soon as she filed for the order, she got a second text from her abuser asking her why she was at the courthouse, and whether she was getting a restraining order against him.”
READ MORE: What drivelikeagirl.com tells us about the future of your digital privacy
In the last decade, the U.S. has seen several domestic violence homicides and other attacks where the abuser found the victim through a stalker app.
WATCH: We’ve been covering stories around digital privacy all year. Here’s one from earlier. When we looked at the leaked ashleymadison.com data, we found that almost none of the site’s users had turned off geolocation on their devices. Ashley Madison users are easy to map very precisely. We’re not going to publish that map, but it should make you think twice about the location apps on your phone.
SteathGenie, a spyware company which is no longer being sold after its owner was prosecuted in 2014, allowed the person owning the app to set up notifications if the phone entered a “red zone” or left a “green zone.”
A promotional video, still active on YouTube, refers openly to the movements of “your target”:
In general, spying apps promote themselves as aimed at three markets: parents spying on a child’s phone, employers tracking use of a company phone, and people keeping track of a partner.
“Couples can use FlexiSPY to establish trust in their relationship,” is the way one spyware company explains this third category.
FlexiSPY’s FAQ describes the app as “perfectly legal to install on your own phone … Please make sure you have explicit permission from the person whose phone you will be monitoring.”
READ MORE: Google Maps Timeline: Why a little-known Google feature tracked me for months
The company’s legal disclaimer asks customers to “acknowledge you own the mobile phone you will install the software on, or have consent from the owner to administrate the device & install software onto it.”
A little deeper in the site, however, potential customers were told on Tuesday that “FlexiSPY gives you total control of your partner’s phone without them knowing it.”
“We do everything technically possible to ensure that your partner does not discover the software.”
We asked FlexiSPY to explain the contradiction. They responded by removing both statements:
“The quotes from our website that you mention are out of date, and we have removed them,” spokesperson Marc Harris wrote in an email.
“The site is a decade old with hundreds of pages, many of them written in a time where this was not such a sensitive issue.”
Here’s how it looks now:
Between Tuesday and Wednesday, as Global News started to ask questions, FlexiSPY also removed most of its FAQ section. The two versions can be compared: (before, after).
Among the things that were removed was an estimate of how long, in minutes, it would take to install the app on various kinds of devices.
Harris would not say how many customers the company has, or how many of them are in Canada.
We asked Harris how a customer would find out a partner’s secrets by using a surveillance app that they knew about; we’ll update the story if we get a response.
WATCH: You can have your insurer monitor your every move while driving in exchange for a cheaper premium. But privacy experts are concerned.
FlexiSPY offers dozens of features, including password harvesting, copying browser history, geographic location and history, reading emails and text messages and downloading address books and calendars.
It doesn’t come cheap: FlexiSPY’s premium service runs to US$349 a year. For that price, you can control the target phone’s camera and microphone, and listen to and record phone calls.
In May, FlexiSPY started offering the ability to spy on Tinder messages on Android devices.
READ MORE: What a map we can’t show you tells you about your phone’s location settings
In Canada, installing a surveillance app without the victim knowing about it could violate several criminal laws, as well as open the door to a civil lawsuit.
“You can sue somebody for invading your privacy in a manner that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person,” says Halifax-based lawyer David Fraser, who specializes in privacy issues.
“If the victim is extremely upset and seeks psychological counselling, things like that, that goes towards the measure of damages.”
READ MORE: Where 1,296 gay Ashley Madison users face prison, flogging, execution
As well, criminal wiretapping laws which allow for up to five years in prison could apply, though prosecutions are “not common.”
“It has been my consistent experience that police lack the imagination or the training to extrapolate existing offences and see how they could work in an online or technology-enabled environment.”
READ MORE: Divorce expert ‘not surprised’ Calgary was Canada’s Ashley Madison capital
Think you might be the victim of a stalker app? Here are some danger signs the FTC points to:
- Your phone battery suddenly starts draining faster.
- The abuser has had access to your phone out of your sight. Spyware installation can take from 10 to 25 minutes, depending on the device.
- The abuser knows a surprising number of details about your life.
- It’s hard to turn your phone off.
- Your phone has been rooted (for Android devices) or jailbroken (for iOS) and you didn’t do it. The process bypasses software restrictions on the device, and is usually necessary to install spyware
Have you used spyware, or had it used on you? Send us a note.
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