Israel said it employed “unprecedented force” to attack key targets within Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime on Monday morning.

Among them, Minister of Defence Israel Katz said, was the “Destruction of Israel” clock in Tehran’s Palestine Square — a digital billboard that has been counting down the days until the promised “annihilation” of Israel since 2017.

Other targets in the capital included the headquarters for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ international security and its militia arm, the Basij, as well as Evin Prison, where “political prisoners and opponents of the regime” end up,

Katz posted to X

. The co-ed prison has a history of abusing, ignoring and violating the human rights of some inmates, mainly women.

Iran has long had a massive clock in the center of Tehran counting down until Israel’s destruction.

Israel just blew it up. pic.twitter.com/FaM4rNy0nB

— Avi Mayer אבי מאיר (@AviMayer) June 23, 2025

The clock’s timer dates back to September 2015 when Iran, trying to ease Western sanctions, struck a deal with the U.S., China, the U.K., France, Germany and Russia that it would limit and reduce its uranium enrichment. Parts of the agreement included a 25-year timeline.

Khamenei, in a speech to followers after, suggested that the timeframe shouldn’t alleviate Israel’s concerns in the interim.

“Firstly, you will not see next 25 years,” he was quoted in

an X post to his account

. “God willing, there will be nothing as Zionist regime by next 25 years.

“Secondly, until then, struggling, heroic and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists.”

About 20 months later, on June 18, 2017, demonstrators unveiled a clock to mark Quds Day — an annual event meant to support Palestinians and oppose Israel, established in 1979 by Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In red digital lettering presented in Persian, English and Arabic, the clock displays the number of days above the text “Left before the destruction of Israel” and a repetition of Khamenei’s statement.

The words are presented on an Israeli flag intersected by a fist painted green, red and white.

When it debuted, it gave Israel 8.411 days until its destruction, which would be roughly 25 years from the date that Khamenei predicted — Sept. 9, 2040, what will be the last day of Rosh Hashana, Judaism’s new year and the first of the high holy days on its calendar.

While the Israeli Defence Force has specified more of the targets that were struck, it did not independently state the countdown billboard had been hit by an airstrike.

🎯 A List of Targets Struck in Iran This Afternoon:
1. Command centers and assets belonging to the IRGC and internal security forces
2. 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗷 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀- One of the IRGC’s central armed bases of power; responsible for enforcing Islamic law and reporting…

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) June 23, 2025

A total of 145 people in France were reportedly assaulted with syringes while attending a country-wide street music festival over the weekend.

The festival, called Fete de la Musique, took place at locations across the country and attracted millions of festival-goers, according to French media such as

France24

and

RFI

. Overall, there were 12 arrests related to the syringe attacks, the interior ministry said.

On June 21, Paris firefighters said they were receiving a large number of calls related to high attendance at the festival in

a post on X

. According to Paris police, there were 13 cases of people saying they were pricked in the capital,

The Guardian reported

. It was not revealed by authorities what the contents of the syringes were; however, the interior ministry said some victims were taken to hospital for toxicology tests. French publication

France Info reported

that investigations were opened after three victims, including an 18-year-old boy and 15-year-old girl, became ill.

Meanwhile, François Grosdidier, the mayor of Metz, a city in northeastern France, said there had been a “call for syringe assaults” on social media in the major cities where the festival was taking place. At 9:15 p.m., Grosdidier said the first such assault was reported in Metz. The victims were approximately 15 young girls between the ages of 14 and 20 years old.

Using video footage of a suspect, police were able to identify and arrest him. Grosdidier said he hopes the investigation will help authorities identify other assailants.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by François Grosdidier (@francois_grosdidier)

Grosdidier also said that police arrested an individual who slapped a young girl and broke up some fights in the area, likely provoked by alcohol consumption. He posted a series of photos from the festival that showed him speaking with authorities.

French media such as

Le Monde

as well as The Guardian corroborated Grosdidier’s point that there were calls on social media platforms to assault festival-goers with syringes.

The attacks were wide-ranging, with four arrests in the southwestern city of

Angoulême

and roughly

50 victims

. In the Normandy region, several women in Évreux and Rouen were reportedly pricked with needles,

per French media site Ici

. Investigations were opened and it was not immediately clear if the syringes had any substances inside them.

In the city of Tours,

Ici reported

that there were 13 people who were victims of a syringe attack. There were also attacks reported in the

northeastern city of Thionville and commune of Sarreguemines

.

In Vesoul, a commune in eastern France, the local trade association posted

a warning on Facebook

.

“For several months, numerous cases of syringe attacks have been reported throughout France, often during festivals or soirées,” the caption of the post said in French, adding that the syringes could be filled with dangerous substances. A video accompanying the post said that those pricked with a syringe may feel suddenly ill or suffer from dizziness. It urged festival-goers to be vigilant.

There were more than 370 people detained throughout the festival weekend across France for a variety of charges, according to Agence France-Presse.

• Nova Music Festival Exhibition to open in Toronto with personal items from victims of Hamas attack
• Amy Hamm: Vancouver car-ramming exposes B.C.’s crumbling mental health system

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

OTTAWA

— Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser says he is “open” to including the term “femicide” in the Criminal Code, which has long been called for by researchers and advocates looking to shine a spotlight on the issue of the killing of women and girls. 

The term broadly refers to when a woman is killed by a man based on the fact that she is a woman, with varying definitions that speak to previous patterns of abuse by a male perpetrator or ideologies. Police services that use the term often do so when a killing occurs in the context of an intimate partner relationship.

Kingston, Ont. police did so for the first time last month when announcing it had laid first-degree murder charges against a 26-year-old man charged in the death of his 25-year-old partner. Police said it considered her death a “femicide.”

During the federal election campaign, the Liberals inked the term into their platform, promising to better protect victims of sexual and intimate partner violence by “making murder motivated by hate a constructive first-degree offence, including femicide.”

In a recent wide-ranging interview, Fraser said the government would look at the “precise language” of the reforms it plans to make to the Criminal Code, which are expected to be tabled in a bill this fall.

Asked specifically whether he was open to including “femicide” in the Criminal Code, Fraser said, “I’m open to it, certainly.”

“I’m not going to close the door on any of the solutions that may be presented to me over the next couple of months as we seek to finalize the draft. But we’ve not made a decision one way or another as to the language that will be included in  either the name of the offence, or the specific language included in the new provisions we’ll be looking to add.”

Megan Walker, a longtime advocate for victims and preventing violence against women, says Fraser’s statement makes her “cautiously optimistic.”

“It’s the first time that there’s been any acknowledgement that femicide could potentially be incorporated into the Criminal Code of Canada, so I’m encouraged.”

The London, Ont.-based advocate, a member of the city’s police board

—
which has called for it to be defined in law—says that d

oing so would allow for more accurate data collection.

Police across Canada operate in a patchwork of how they report these killings, referring to them as an “intimate partner death” or, in other cases, a “domestic homicide.”

Other times, police do not disclose any such details. That includes the cases of a murder-suicide when no charge is laid, but a woman is killed by her partner or ex-partner.

National Post contacted police services across Canada to confirm whether they use “femicide.” Police in Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Edmonton said they do not, but rather stick to definitions outlined in the Criminal Code.

“The motivation for a crime is carefully investigated and ultimately proven in court,” Toronto police spokeswoman Stephanie Sayer wrote in an email.

She added that Toronto police became the first in Canada to lay a terrorism charge in connection to a homicide linked to a hatred of women, when it did so against a 17-year-old, who pled guilty in the stabbing death of
24-year-old Ashley Noelle Arzaga, whose 2020 death police said was inspired by the incel movement. 

“The classification of a homicide as ‘femicide’ highlights the gender-based motivation behind the crime, but it does not change the legal charge or outcome of the case, as it’s not in the Criminal Code,” Sayer said.

A spokesperson for Montreal police said, besides not being defined in the Criminal Code, “there’s no uniformity” in how “femicide” is used.

Peel police said it uses “femicide”, as does the Ottawa Police Service, which said it began doing so last August when it announced murder charges against the husband of Jennifer Zabarylo, who was found dead in the couple’s home. Ottawa police said it established its definition based on 14 different factors.

Robin Percival, a spokeswoman for the RCMP,

the main police service for the country’s rural and remote areas, said in a statement that it was looking at examples such as Ottawa police, with the goal of establishing its own definition.

The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, which was established in 2017, has been tracking the killings of women and girls, including through media reports, and has produced several reports detailing the circumstances of their deaths, from locations to how they were killed, to the nature of their relationship to the accused.

It is among the most prominent groups that say defining femicide in Canadian criminal law would improve data on the issue nationwide.

Kat Owens, the interim legal director of the LEAF, which stands for Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, says there is “value” to defining it in the Criminal Code, but adds looking at the criminal legal system alone to deal with gender-based violence is insufficient.

“We know that we can’t address what we don’t measure.”

She said she views the push to change the Criminal Code to include “femicide” as largely being a step towards better data collection, as well as raising awareness, and that a parliamentary committee should carefully study the issue.

“Anytime we’re adding something into the Criminal Code that has additional elements that need to be proven, then we have a question of OK, well what kind of evidence do you need?”, which she said is the case when it comes to questions of intent.

Owens pointed to the Liberals’ promise of making femicide a first-degree murder offence, which is reserved for killings police believe to be pre-planned.

She said caution should be exercised with the proposed change, saying it essentially “removes any sort of incentive for a guilty plea,” as compared to when a charge of second-degree murder is laid, where pre-planning was not a factor.

“You might see a victim’s family put through a trial where the person might have pleaded guilty if there were other options on the table, but realistically, people are much less likely to plead guilty to first-degree murder, given the sentence of life without eligibility for parole for 25 years.”

In his recent interview, Fraser confirmed he was discussing the possibility of creating a “presumptive charge of first-degree murder,” based on a killing motivated by hatred of women.

“But the precise nature, whether it’s a unique offence, an aggravating factor or some other mechanism that we use in the (Criminal Code) is something that I owe conversations to important stakeholders before we finalize,” he said.

Walker said she wants to see the issue of adding femicide to the Criminal Code studied as a separate issue, apart from other justice reforms the government plans to make, with families of victims invited to share their experiences.

“I have worked with many, many families whose children were killed, and they use the term femicide because they say that it best represents what’s happened to their child,” she said.

“If we cannot respect the views of families who have lost their children, then I think we are failing all women across the nation.”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Forty years after the Air India bombing, the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history, more than half of Canadians say that it has never been treated like a national tragedy.

On June 23, 1985, Canadian Sikh terrorists blew up a bomb aboard Air India Flight 182, en route from Montreal to London, with a final destination of Mumbai. The plane exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 329 people aboard. The debris washed up in Ireland.

Of those aboard the plane, most of them were Canadian citizens.

Yet, 32 per cent of Canadians told the Angus Reid Institute that they had never heard of the attack. Just nine per cent said they know a lot about it. Among those who say they do know about the attack, 60 per cent say it hasn’t been treated as a national tragedy.

“It continues to be not just a faded page in Canadian history, but almost a blank page, particularly among young people in this country, among young Canadians, the lack of awareness is really very stark,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute.

In fact, the pollsters found that if they asked Canadians what was the deadliest attack in Canadian history, only 17 per cent identified the Air India bombing. Twenty-seven per cent identified the Polytechnique massacre in Montreal in December 1989, which left 14 women dead, as the deadliest, followed by 18 per cent who said the mass shootings around Portapique, Nova Scotia, in 2020, which killed 22 people, as the deadliest.

While one-third of Canadians say they’d never heard of the Air India bombing, a majority — 59 per cent — say they know the main details. However, the number of Canadians who don’t know about it has grown to 32 per cent from 28 per cent two years ago.

“This has never actually been treated like a Canadian tragedy,” said Kurl. “The vast majority of victims were not white and or not of European descent. It was 1985; that absolutely plays a role, or is a factor, in the way this was handled.”

Knowledge is particularly low among the youngest Canadians. Just five per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 say they know a lot about the attack, compared to seven per cent of those aged 35 to 54 and 15 per cent of those 55 and older. Those who say they know a little bit, just the main details, are concentrated in the eldest demographic too, with 74 per cent saying they know at least that much.

“How have 40 years gone by? How have 268 Canadian citizens been murdered, and our country has not just forgotten this, the data shows us, for many, particularly for younger adults today, is they just never knew anything about it,” said Kurl.

In the aftermath of the attack, only one person, Inderjit Singh Reyat, was convicted, and he pleaded guilty to manslaughter for a bombing that killed two Japanese airport workers at Narita International Airport; it was supposed to bring down a second Air India flight. Only 29 per cent of Canadians can report accurately that nobody was convicted; in 2023, when pollsters asked the same question, 34 per cent knew the truth.

Seventy-one per cent believe there should be an exhibit about the bombing at the Canadian Museum of History and 65 per cent say it should be taught in schools. Fewer of those polled, just 41 per cent, support displaying wreckage from the bombed plane in Canada.

There are a number of conspiracies about the Air India bombing, and the polling finds that 51 per cent of those polled believe there is too much disinformation about what really happened. One conspiracy theory blames the Indian government for the attack. In fact, 10 per cent of Canadians believe the Indian government was behind the attack, while 28 per cent correctly identify violent factions within the Khalistan movement. (Sixty-one per cent of Canadians say they don’t know who was responsible.)

There will be ceremonies across the country to mark the anniversary of the bombing, and 13 per cent of Canadians say they would be interested in attending a memorial service, a number that holds roughly consistent across the country, except in Atlantic Canada, where 21 per cent say they would be interested. Such services have led to controversy as some attendees in the past have belonged to the Sikhs for Justice group, which supports the establishment of a Sikh homeland, and which believes one of the alleged architects of the attack is in fact innocent.

Sixty-three per cent of Canadians say it is inappropriate for Khalistan supporters to attend such a memorial, including 69 per cent of those who say they know a lot about the Air India bombing.

“It’s striking to see that in five or 10 years, a lot of the people who have tried to carry this torch of awareness while at the same time continuing to grieve for their loved ones, they’re going to be gone. They’re not going to be here anymore,” said Kurl.

The polling was conducted online between June 13 and June 15, 2025, among a sample of 1,607 Canadian adults. The sample was weighted to be representative of adults nationwide according to region, gender, age, household income, and education, based on the Canadian census. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of +/- two percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

• Canada’s worst terrorist attack: Air India families still feel anguish and frustration 40 years later
• Chris Selley: Is the Liberals’ ‘Canada Strong Pass’ a one-off gimmick, or something more substantial?

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Natasha Hausdorff, the British barrister who has become an outspoken defender of Israel’s legal rights on global news networks, warns that a “vicious cycle of disinformation” — fuelled by media self-censorship and terrorist propaganda — has warped the world’s understanding of the Gaza conflict, and put Jewish lives at risk.

More notably, the expert in international law has popularized one such law, 

Uti possidetis juris

. It states that newly formed sovereign countries should retain the borders that their preceding area had before their independence. Therefore, at the time Israel declared itself a state, Mandatory Palestine – which included what today is known as Israel, Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank) and Gaza – would by law be legal territorial boundaries of Israel. It is a lynchpin argument, she believes, against the charges of “illegal occupation” and “illegal settlements.”

She regularly briefs politicians and international organizations and has spoken at parliaments across Europe.

After her law degree at Oxford University, she clerked for the president of the Supreme Court of Israel in Jerusalem in 2016. In 2018, Hausdorff was a Fellow at Columbia Law School in the National Security Law Program.

Dave Gordon interviewed Hausdorff prior to a talk she delivered at Toronto’s Nova Exhibition on June 12, hosted by StandWithUs Canada.

It would seem uti possidetis juris ought to have been used by Israel decades ago in international forums. Why hasn’t it?

I can fully appreciate that Israel’s official stance is constrained by diplomatic operations and political pressures. It’s a rule that applies automatically, whatever Israel says about the situation.

There are other examples of Israel not standing on ceremony, as far as international law is concerned. One of those relates to Egypt’s obligation to open the border to Palestinian civilians, fleeing civil disorder in Gaza. That’s in accordance with Egypt’s obligation under the Organization of African Unity Convention on (governing the specific aspect of) Refugees, which it signed in 1980.

This is a convention that has a much broader definition of refugee than the international convention. Nobody has been calling on Egypt to open the border from October 2023. But Israel can’t pressure (that), because Egypt threatened to tear up the peace agreement with Israel.

What’s your opinion about how the media’s been covering the war?

If the BBC were reporting from North Korea, there would be some indication somewhere that we are not free to report without censorship — controlled in what we’re able to say by the regime. I have not seen a single piece of reporting from Gaza that has acknowledged that: nothing comes out of the Gaza Strip that is not controlled by Hamas.

So for a start, the notion that the international media would be parroting Hamas propaganda in this fashion is deeply shameful, and indicates to me a complete absence of journalistic integrity. That’s quite apart from the devastating impact that this is having.

When I talk to policy makers, officials around the world, they tell me they’re basing their determination on what to do, on the basis of the Gaza pictures they see in the media.

Now, let me be clear, they are terrible. But I see on Israeli media, a series of interviews from Channel 12 in November, in Gaza, where they held out a microphone to Palestinians that were leaving Jabala. At the time, they could not grab it from him quickly enough, to tell the world how Hamas was responsible for all of the ills that had been visited upon them, how grateful they were to Israel for the humanitarian assistance, the fact that Israel provided humanitarian corridors.

I didn’t see those interviews anywhere on the international broadcast media. Frankly, they don’t fit with the agenda that people want to follow.

The amount of damage that this self-censorship, and embracing of Hamas, and other terrorist organization propaganda is doing, is seen in the obscene statements that we’ve heard from supposed allies of Israel: the U.K., France and Canada.

Jews are being executed on the streets in the capital of the free world (Washington, D.C.), and I think that is directly attributable to the irresponsible broadcast, where we had the media repeating this absurd claim of 14,000 babies dying in the next 48 hours.

The link, I’m afraid, is undeniable.

Do you think Israel is telling its story well?

So much misreporting is happening, and this isn’t being addressed. Can I put the blame squarely on Israel? I struggle with that, because the fact of the matter is that a lot of this information is publicly available. Right?

The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) website catalogues all of the aid going into Gaza, over the last 19 months. That is not only ignored by the international media, by politicians, by the UN, by the ICJ, it is actually inverted. And there is this reoccurring canard that there’s not enough food getting into Gaza, which, ultimately, you know, Israel can’t really fix if it’s telling people what the reality is, and they choose to ignore it. That’s not necessarily on Israel’s head.

Have Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, gotten better at the propaganda war?

They certainly have, I think, invested a great deal more in time, energy and resources into it. It’s certainly been a key factor of Hamas’s planning of this war. Hamas puts members in press vests, and generates fake images.

We’re seeing the impact of that disinformation campaign. I think we need to understand the symbiotic relationship that exists with these terrorist organizations and international organizations.

The Amnesty International report on genocide makes it clear in their methodology that they are taking their information from Hamas. They call them “local government authorities,” but we all know what they’re talking about.

They take this terrorist propaganda, put it into a report, which is headed up by Amnesty International. Then that gets repeated by Special Rapporteurs at the UN, like Francesca Albanese. Then it gets worked into UN resolutions, and the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly, then it gets quoted by the ICJ or the ICC, and then these international organizations pick it up again and say, “see! The ICJ says so.”

So that vicious cycle of disinformation has been operational for a very long time.

Of the untruths peddled, like settler colonialism, genocide, apartheid, etc., which is the biggest?

I think they’re all deeply vicious and poisonous, and the connection that they share is they are reminiscent of the ancient blood libel against Jews.

We’re seeing a phenomenon where the real victims in each of these instances are being blamed for the very crimes that were committed against them. If you’re asking me to pick one, I’d go with genocide, because it is the most reprehensible.

Principally, when you consider that the term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin to provide a lexicon for the Jewish experience in the Holocaust.

Ultimately the acts of the seventh of October were acts of genocide by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists, and even Palestinian civilians targeting Jews. The fact that the experience would be weaponized against the Jews in this fashion, and they would be accused of this, is projection.

It’s clear to me that when South Africa brought this claim of genocide at the International Court of Justice, it didn’t have much hope of getting (a win) on it. It was trying to shift the debate and shift the Overton window.

In fact, when I was on (a broadcast) immediately after, my counterpart in this debate said, “Isn’t it wonderful, now we can finally use Israel and genocide in the same sentence, and nobody can tell us otherwise?” They’ve clearly been successful in doing that, even though the case has absolutely no resemblance to reality.

The Canadian government recently sanctioned two Israeli Knesset members, and in the same statement saying that Judea and Samaria are “illegally occupied.” What’s your response?

There is no illegal occupation to speak of, so (Prime Minister Mark) Carney’s wrong about that. It’s a policy that, as far as I can see, isn’t driven by legal analysis, but by political agenda.

There are demographic issues here, and riding issues of constituencies, and who it is that he needs to kowtow to, that these policies are being put in place.

As a lawyer, we look for the proper and equal application of international law. You cannot have a general rule like 

uti possidetis juris

, then an exception for a country you don’t like very much, where you have some ideological or political opposition to it. That’s not how any respectable legal system can operate.

Mark Carney and his government are actually undermining the very notion of international rule of law, and the international legal system, by inverting it.

Special to the National Post

This interview has been edited for brevity.

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An Iranian whose refugee claim was turned down in Canada because he was convicted in England 16 years ago of a serious assault that left one person dead and another two injured will get another shot at arguing he should be allowed to stay here because his bisexuality, Kurdish ethnicity, conversion from Islam to Christianity and identity as a Westerner would all put him at risk back home.

An immigration officer refused Sirus Lotfi’s last ditch plea to stay in Canada in March 2024, arguing he had not provided sufficient evidence to establish the basis for his protection claim.

“I respectfully disagree with this position,” Justice Angus Grant wrote in a recent Federal Court decision out of Toronto.

“On the core details related to the applicant’s risk factors, the affidavit (outlining those) was detailed and comprehensive. This was particularly the case with respect to (Lotfi’s) sexual orientation. The affidavit contained many details, from the applicant’s first homosexual encounters, to subsequent relationships, to his time spent in Tehran, frequenting a park where gay men would meet. Moreover, the documentary evidence before the officer clearly raised concerns with respect to the applicant’s safety, assuming the risk factors he raised in his affidavit were true. This being the case, there was simply no doubt that the facts set out in the applicant’s affidavit, if believed, would have justified granting the application.”

The judge noted “the well-established principle that when an individual in refugee protection proceedings swears to the truth of their testimony, that testimony is presumed to be true unless there is a valid reason to doubt its truthfulness.”

The immigration officer’s conclusion that Lotfi “had not established facts that he had categorically and unambiguously sworn to be true” amounted to a “veiled credibility finding,” Grant said. In other words, the immigration officer questioned Lotfi’s honesty without explicitly stating the Iranian’s credibility was in doubt.

The judge granted Lotfi’s application for a judicial review.

“The matter is remitted to a different decision-maker for reconsideration,” Grant said in his decision dated June 18.

Lotfi “entered Canada in November 2022 on a fraudulently obtained passport and made a claim for refugee protection,” said the decision.

“He did not have any other identity documents with him at the time, so he was arrested and detained by the Canada Border Services Agency.”

While Lotfi was in detention, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada “learned that in April 2009, the applicant was convicted in England with intent to do grievous bodily harm,” it said. “The Canadian equivalent of this offence is aggravated assault.”

Because of his conviction, for which he served half of a 10-year prison sentence, “Lotfi was referred for an admissibility hearing before the Immigration Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board,” said the decision.

It found Lotfi “was inadmissible to Canada on grounds of serious criminality.”

That meant Lotfi became ineligible for his refugee claim to be heard, so he applied for a pre-removal risk assessment — his last ditch plea to stay in Canada.

For that hearing, Lotfi submitted a detailed written argument alleging that he would be at risk in Iran on four distinct grounds. But the immigration officer hearing his case noted Lotfi’s lack of supporting evidence to establish his claim for protection.

The court heard Lotfi “had essentially no relationship with his mother in Iran, and moved to Germany as a young adolescent, where his father placed him in a boarding school.”

At some point his family “stopped paying tuition fees for this school, and he was subsequently placed in a Christian orphanage where he lived until he turned 18,” said the decision.

“Over the course of these years, (Lotfi) grew disconnected with his Islamic background and gravitated towards Christianity. At one point while at the orphanage, he tattooed a cross on his shoulder.”

Lotfi “also explained how he explored his sexual orientation while in the orphanage, though this was not easy to do. At 20, the applicant learned that his father had committed suicide. This led to a period of serious drug addiction, and in 2007 (he) was removed to Iran.”

Lotfi “had a difficult time adjusting to life back in Iran,” said the decision.

“Eventually, he learned of a park where gay men met to have sex. He began frequenting the park and having encounters with men, despite the obvious dangers that this posed. Eventually, however, (he) decided to leave Iran and went to the United Kingdom.”

The subsequent altercation in England “led to his criminal conviction, which resulted in the death of one individual and the injury of two others,” said the decision.

“He claims that he acted in self-defence, but contrary to the advice of his lawyer, he plead guilty and was sentenced to a ten-year sentence, of which he served five years. While in prison, (Lotfi) stated that he received mental health treatment for the first time, that he disavowed drugs, and formally converted to Christianity.”

• EU condemns death sentences for two women in Iran
• Determining gay refugees a difficult task, but risk of bogus claimants is ‘exaggerated,’ experts say

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

An incredible 16 billion passwords have been leaked in what tech experts are calling the largest data breach ever.

The breach contains a massive amount of information that can affect billions of online accounts since cybercriminals now have access to a massive amount of login credentials.

Cybernews researcher Vilius Petkauskas, whose team has been investigating the online theft since the beginning of the year, told

Forbes Magazine

that the breach comprised “30 exposed datasets” including logins from Apple, Google, Facebook and more.

A

Cybernews report

details that the stolen records from the 30 databases, each contain up to 3.5 billion passwords from social media and VPN logins to corporate platforms.

These aren’t just “old breaches being recycled” but rather “fresh, weaponizable intelligence at scale,” the Cybernews researchers warned.

Here’s how to find out if you’re affected and how to stay safe.

What has been exposed in the leak?

Currently, almost all major platforms have been affected, including Apple accounts (formerly Apple IDs), Gmail, Facebook and GitHub, as well as instant messaging platforms such as Telegram and commercial and government platform portals.

The data appears to contain URLs, usernames and passwords. “However, with the unfathomable size of the data that’s been exposed, there’s no way to tell how many accounts are currently under threat,” reports

tomsguide.com

.

The stolen data appears to come from several infostealers (malicious software created to breach computer systems and steal sensitive information, such as login details). The datasets are reportedly new, but the

sheer amount of info

could also be from a mix of different datasets from previous breaches.

One of those previous breaches included a database containing 184 million records, as reported by

Wired Magazine

in May.

How can you protect your accounts?

First, check on your accounts. To find out if your login credentials have been affected, you could use:

Have I Been Pwned

.

Second, change passwords to affected accounts, but consider doing it anyway with any major accounts where you may be at risk. (Apple, Facebook, Google).

Third, a recommended method to keep your accounts secure is to enable two-factor authentication (2FA). This is intended to stop threat actors from easily accessing your online accounts. A second-step authentication through an app, phone, passcode or a physical USB key will need to be approved by you.

If you haven’t already, find out how to

enable 2FA here

.

Fourth, delete unused accounts and consider using a

password manager

to secure your online accounts. A password manager provides a secure place to store all your passwords in one place, so you can autofill them into a website or app instead of remembering all of them.

Fifth, consider using

passkeys instead of passwords

. Passkeys aim to keep your accounts more secure by using passwordless logins instead of traditional passwords. Each passkey is unique — a digital key that can’t be reused. They’re also stored in an encrypted format on your devices, instead of on a company’s server. That keeps them safe from a data breach.

• Global Affairs investigating ‘malicious’ hack after VPN compromised for over one month
• China-backed hacker hijacked 9,200 Canadian devices to operate illegal hacking network: FBI and CSIS

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