The Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training says it has temporarily shut down two British Columbia websites after both appear to have been compromised. The home pages of StudentAidBC and LearnLiveBC were altered Sunday and replaced with a statement allegedly from a hacker group. The affected sites offer application assistance or details about scholarships, grants, bursaries, loans and other financial programs for post-secondary students. A statement from the ministry says it has been alerted to the problem and is investigating, along with the Office of the Chief Information Officer

One of the largest and most popular summer celebrations in Vancouver has been cancelled for the second year in a row. The Vancouver Fireworks Festival society says the three-day Honda Celebration of Light fireworks event has been called off for 2021, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, the society says the festival will be back in 2022, with dates already set for July 23, 27 and 30. In years past, roughly 400,000 people crowded the shores of Vancouver's English Bay each night of the festival to watch the fireworks. The event was also cancelled last year, which would have bee

RCMP say a suspect is in custody following a shooting yesterday in Burnaby that seriously injured a 25 year old woman. Police say the 43 year old man was arrested hours after the incident and at a residence in Burnaby. They say they believe the shooting was targeted and isolated, and they have no evidence linking it to the Lower Mainland gang conflict. Police also say the woman is now in stable condition and her injuries are no longer believed to be life-threatening. Burnaby RCMP on Twitter: #BurnabyFrontline officers have arrested a 43-year-old Burnaby man in relation to this morning's shoot

A provincial corrections officer has been identified as the victim of a fatal shooting in Delta, B.C.The victim has been identified as Bikramdeep Randhawa, 29, of Surrey, B.C.Delta Police say in a news release they are considering the daylight shooting outside the Scottsdale Centre mall Saturday to be targeted based on behaviour by the suspects, but the motive is not known.They say investigators are looking at all angles, including that it was a case of mistaken identity, that it related to the man's personal life or that it was linked to his occupation.Police say they are in contact with oth

Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, and Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, have issued a joint statement regarding updates on the COVID-19 response in British Columbia. "Today, we are reporting 740 new cases, for a total of 129,482 cases in British Columbia."There are 7,886 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 11,727 people under public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases. "Of the active cases, 511 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 174 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-

Surrey RCMP is looking for information regarding an indecent act that occurred after hours, at a school in Fleetwood. Surrey RCMP is investigating after receiving a report of an indecent act which is alleged to have occurred on April 29, 2021, between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. Police received information that a woman was in the playground at Coyote Creek Elementary, located at 8131 156 Street, when she was approached by an unknown male who appeared to be exposing himself and masturbating. The woman yelled and the man fled into a nearby wooded area. The suspect is described as a South Asian male in h

An alert nephew and the co-ordinated efforts of police departments in Vancouver and England have saved an elderly woman from falling victim to an expensive scam. Vancouver police Const. Tania Visintin says the nephew of a 96-year-old woman called police April 7 to report someone had convinced his aunt to send $20,000 in small bills to an address in England. The fraudsters had contacted the woman by phone and convinced her to hide the money in the pages of two books. Visintin says the books were already in the mail when the nephew called, but Vancouver's financial crime unit worked with law en

To help keep communities safe and protect British Columbia's health-care system from COVID-19, the Province has authorized site-specific road checks on travel corridors between regions to help enforce the non-essential travel restrictions that were announced on April 23, 2021.On the advice of B.C.'s provincial health officer (PHO), Mike Farnworth, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, issued an Emergency Program Act order to prohibit non-essential travel between three regional zones in the province. The regional zones are:1. Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley (Fraser Health and Coasta

A former cabinet minister denies telling a gaming investigator that members of the B.C. Liberal government knew about illegal activities at casinos and were doing little to prevent the crimes. Kash Heed told a public inquiry into money laundering that he recalls a lunch in Victoria in 2009 with former gaming investigator Fred Pinnock, but his recollection of the meeting differs from Pinnock's. Pinnock testified last fall that he met with Heed in November 2009 shortly after he was appointed solicitor general to raise concerns about large amounts of suspicious cash that were likely linked to org