An American man was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison after pleading guilty to cyber extortion in the mass data breach of a student information system used across Canada. 

Court documents show Matthew D. Lane was sentenced in a Massachusetts court after he pleaded guilty to charges relating to the cyber extortion of two companies. 

The companies were not named in court documents but PowerSchool, a software and cloud storage company for school systems in the U.S. and Canada, confirmed Wednesday that Lane was the person behind its data breach. 

"PowerSchool appreciates the efforts of the prosecutors and law enforcement who brought this individual to justice," a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

OTTAWA - The Canadian Security Intelligence Service says it's committed to "ongoing review and improvement" of its use of new technologies following a critical spy watchdog report.

The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency said in a report made public this week that CSIS lacked "adequate policies and procedures" to manage a confidential technical means of collecting information.

The review agency said the spy service mischaracterized a novel technology as an extension of existing know-how. It also said CSIS used the technical capability before satisfying all regulatory requirements.

The Canadian Press obtained a heavily redacted version of the intelligence review agency's top secret report through the Access to Information Act.

MONTREAL - A Quebec Superior Court judge has ordered a man to pay $5,000 for improperly using artificial intelligence to defend himself in court.

Jean Laprade was ordered to pay the fine after he was found to have cited expert quotes and jurisprudence that don't exist.

The decision is the latest in a legal saga that began in 2019. It is related to a business deal that dates back to a time when Laprade was based in Guinea.

He was asking the Quebec court not to approve a 2021 decision by the Paris International Arbitration Chamber that ordered him to pay some $2.7 million for an airplane he claimed to have been awarded in a business deal.

OTTAWA - The Canadian Security Intelligence Service lacked "adequate policies and procedures" to manage a confidential technology for collecting information, says a newly released spy watchdog report.

The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency says CSIS mischaracterized a novel technical capability as an extension of existing know-how.

CSIS also did not consult Public Safety Canada about its plans to acquire this novel technical capability and did not notify the public safety minister or the Federal Court before using it in an operation, the spy watchdog says.

"Further, CSIS used this technology prior to satisfying all regulatory requirements," the report says.

Canadian economist Peter Howitt, who is among a group of three researchers to win this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, said he found out about the prize from a persistent Swedish reporter who called his wife's phone early in the morning, even before the committee could reach him.

"It's just the dream of a lifetime come true," he said when reached early Monday. "We didn't have any champagne in the fridge in anticipation of this."

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Monday that Howitt, along with Dutch-born Joel Mokyr and Philippe Aghion of France, received the prize for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth."

Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works, a key concept in economics that refers to the process in which beneficial new innovations replace — and thus destroy — older technologies and businesses. The concept is usually associated with economist Joseph Schumpeter, who outlined it in his 1942 book “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.”

The latest survey of endangered southern resident killer whales confirms their plateau and gradual slide toward disappearance in the absence of stronger measures to protect them, a director with the Center for Whale Research says.

Michael Weiss says declining chinook salmon, pollutants and noise from cruise ships, tankers and freighters in the orcas' habitat off the coast of Washington state and southern British Columbia are among the factors driving the decline.

"We're not talking about southern residents going extinct in the next five years, but we are talking about a fairly good chance of at least one of the (three) pods being gone within the next 50 years," Weiss told The Canadian Press.

The long-term work of restoring chinook habitat, particularly freshwater spawning grounds, along with adjusting fisheries, would be key to the orcas' recovery, says Weiss.

MONTREAL - A former researcher at Quebec's electric utility research institute charged with economic espionage for the benefit of China was never confronted by senior managers at Hydro-Québec about concerns when publications came to light in 2022 triggering an internal probe.

"It wasn't an obligation," said Patrick Cyr, a manager who oversaw Yuesheng Wang at the time.

Wang, 38, has pleaded not guilty to economic espionage under Canada’s Security of Information Act — the first time someone has been charged with that crime. He also faces four other charges filed in 2022 and 2024 under the Criminal Code: fraudulently using a computer and breach of trust at the time of his November 2022 arrest, and charges laid in 2024 of committing preparatory acts on behalf of a foreign entity and informing that entity — the People’s Republic of China — of his intentions.

Under a tight cross-examination Friday from Wang's lawyer Alexandra Boulanger, Cyr explained the initial finding was that internal rules of Hydro-Québec were being compromised when an academic paper was published in March 2022 with the utility's knowledge.

LONGUEUIL - Jeremy Hansen is on the cusp of embarking on a historic deep space mission to the moon, admitting to some inquisitive students Thursday that while the unknowns present a scary prospect, some risks are worth it.

Hansen was asked about his fears as he took questions from Grade 5 and 6 students from St. Jude Elementary School on Montreal's South Shore about the Artemis 2 mission around the moon.

"What helps me with that is that I have learned to trust myself and to trust others," Hansen, 49, of London, Ont., said at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Longueuil, Que.

"And I have no guarantee of the outcome: you can die in space just like you can die here on Earth, but what I do believe is that we have been very smart about our approach."