‘A fraud on us': Judge challenges the defence ahead of fall verdict in $300M St. Mike's hospital construction trial
Former Bondfield CEO John Aquino, left, and ex-St. Michael's Hospital executive Vas Georgiou, right, are seen outside a Toronto court on Tuesday, Nov. 12. Michelle Mengsu Chang/ Toronto Star
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Toronto Star
3 days ago
- Toronto Star
More phones are being stolen at Toronto summer festivals — here's how to protect yours
The Taste of Little was held on College Street over June 13 to 15. Police say there have been an increase in reports of phone thefts at recent summer festivals. Nick Lachance/ Toronto Star flag wire: false flag sponsored: false article_type: : sWebsitePrimaryPublication : publications/toronto_star bHasMigratedAvatar : false :
Toronto Sun
3 days ago
- Toronto Sun
Violent prowler who targeted Edmonton women admits to sexual assault, stealing underwear
He pleaded guilty to crimes including sexually assaulting a stranger at knifepoint. Austin Dean St. Germain pleaded guilty in Edmonton's Court of King's Bench on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, to four counts including break and enter, sexual assault and robbery related to his 2023 crime spree in the city's Cumberland neighbourhood. Photo by Ed Kaiser / Postmedia A man has admitted to terrorizing women in a north Edmonton neighbourhood two years ago, pleading guilty to crimes including sexually assaulting a stranger at knifepoint, ransacking a neighbour's home and amassing a collection of stolen underwear. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Austin Dean St. Germain pleaded guilty in Edmonton's Court of King's Bench Wednesday to four of the 12 counts he faced, among them break and enter, sexual assault and robbery, related to his 2023 crime spree in the city's Cumberland neighbourhood. St. Germain — who has long black hair and glasses and wore remand centre coveralls — sat in the prisoner's box as prosecutor Luke Craggs read an agreed statement of facts detailing his crimes. He is expected to be sentenced this fall after the preparation of an Indigenous offender pre-sentence report. St. Germain, 28, admitted to victimizing four women in his neighbourhood between March and May 2023. At the time, he was living in the basement of a townhome complex and addicted to drugs and alcohol. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. St. Germain first targeted the woman who lived next door. Over the span of two months, the woman reported four break-ins or attempted break-ins that escalated in severity. Initially, she awoke to discover damage to her back door, including pry marks, a slashed screen and a shattered window, as well as footprints in the snow. A few weeks later, St. Germain kicked in her front door, leading to a panicked 911 call as he tried to break down the door to her bedroom. St. Germain fled and feigned ignorance when police arrived, asking them what happened. Initially, he was deemed a potential witness. On the fourth occasion St. Germain returned to the house when the victim was away. He forced the door open and ransacked the home, placing a security camera in the microwave and turning it on. He stole TVs, jewelry and alcohol, and laid a black lacy dress belonging to the woman on her bed. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Police later grew suspicious of St. Germain for his initial interest in the crime scene. They later found his Facebook profile, which included photos of the stolen items, including a TV listed on Marketplace. Assaulted woman walking daughter to pre-school St. Germain also admitted to attacking a woman walking her daughter to pre-school. On March 9, 2023, St. Germain approached the two as they walked on a pathway. He punched the mother, knocking her to the ground, then tried to cover her mouth to muffle her screams. The mother fought back while the daughter called for help. St. Germain ran off. More than a month later, St. Germain attacked another woman. On the morning of April 28, he approached a woman walking near a park and told her to put her phone down. When she turned to face him, she saw a large butcher knife in his hand. St. Germain knocked the woman to the ground when she tried to flee and forced his hands down her pants, touching her vagina. She fought back, managing to squeeze the attacker's genitals until he let go. She later underwent a sexual assault assessment in hospital, which found traces of St. Germain's DNA. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Police arrested St. Germain the following month. A search of his home turned up the Oilers jersey he wore during the sexual assault, as well as women's underwear, cheque books and banking documents. It was later determined he'd stolen more than 30 pairs of underwear as well as scarves and jewelry from a fourth woman shortly before his arrest. Some of the jewelry was traced to a nearby pawn shop. St. Germain told police he committed the thefts to fuel his drug and alcohol addiction. He said he attacked the mother intending to steal her phone and bank cards and planned to rob the woman he sexually assaulted. His fingerprints were also found at the scene of the break-ins. The case is next in court July 18 to set a date for sentencing, which will likely take place in the fall. Neither Craggs nor defence lawyer Renu Prithipaul told Justice Susan Richardson what sentences they plan to ask for, though both said they had not agreed on a joint submission. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. St. Germain was denied bail and remains in custody. jwakefield@ @ Read More Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don't miss the news you need to know — add and to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters. You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. The Edmonton Journal | The Edmonton Sun Toronto Raptors CFL Canada Celebrity Sunshine Girls
Winnipeg Free Press
5 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Judge rules AI company Anthropic didn't break copyright law but must face trial over pirated books
In a test case for the artificial intelligence industry, a federal judge has ruled that AI company Anthropic didn't break the law by training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books. But the company is still on the hook and could now go to trial over how it acquired those books by downloading them from online 'shadow libraries' of pirated copies. U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco said in a ruling filed late Monday that the AI system's distilling from thousands of written works to be able to produce its own passages of text qualified as 'fair use' under U.S. copyright law because it was 'quintessentially transformative.' 'Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic's (AI large language models) trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,' Alsup wrote. But while dismissing the key copyright infringement claim made by the group of authors who sued the company last year, Alsup also said Anthropic must still go to trial over its alleged theft of their works. 'Anthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library,' Alsup wrote. A trio of writers — Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — alleged in their lawsuit last summer that Anthropic committed 'large-scale theft' by allegedly training its popular chatbot Claude on pirated copies of copyrighted books, and that the company 'seeks to profit from strip-mining the human expression and ingenuity behind each one of those works.' As the case proceeded over the past year in San Francisco's federal court, documents disclosed in court showed Anthropic's internal concerns about the legality of their use of online repositories of pirated works. So the company later shifted its approach and attempted to purchase copies of digitized books. 'That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft but it may affect the extent of statutory damages,' Alsup wrote. The ruling could set a precedent for similar lawsuits that have piled up against Anthropic competitor OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, as well as against Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Anthropic — founded by ex-OpenAI leaders in 2021 — has marketed itself as the more responsible and safety-focused developer of generative AI models that can compose emails, summarize documents and interact with people in a natural way. But the lawsuit filed last year alleged that Anthropic's actions 'have made a mockery of its lofty goals' by tapping into repositories of pirated writings to build its AI product.
