Prince Harry reportedly a ‘no-show’ on flight to Toronto to visit actress Meghan Markle

Prince Harry reportedly scrapped a trip to Toronto this weekend to visit an American actress believed to be his new girlfriend after __news broke about their secret relationship.

“The flight was booked last week but he was a no-show,” a source told the Evening Standard.

“The crew for the British Airways flight knew the Prince was booked to travel with them. It appears he pulled out at the last minute and decided not to travel,” the source added.

According to the newspaper, Harry, 32, was scheduled to fly from Heathrow to Toronto on Sunday to visit Meghan Markle, a 35-year-old actress best known for her role as Rachel Zane on the legal drama Suits. (The show is filmed in Toronto).

But hours before his scheduled 11:30 a.m. British Airways flight, the British tabloid Sunday Express broke the __news of their apparent relationship. That raised concerns paparazzi would be waiting for Harry in London and Toronto, the Daily Mail reported.

The couple is said to have met in May when the Prince was in Toronto to promote the Invictus Games, an international athletic competition for wounded or sick military veterans.

“He’s in a very relaxed period of his life and Meghan has come along at the right time. They are taking each week as it comes and just enjoying each other’s company. But it’s fair to say that they love seeing each other and there’s a definite chemistry between them,” an unnamed source told the Sunday Express.

“Harry has been desperate to keep the relationship quiet because he doesn’t want to scare Meghan off. He knows things will change when their romance is public knowledge but he also knows he can’t keep it a secret for long.”

The Los Angeles-born actress has stayed with Harry at Kensington Palace and met the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Sunday Express reported.

“William and Kate really liked her and she fitted in straight away,” an insider told the newspaper.

The Prince opened up about the challenges of meeting a girlfriend in an interview earlier this year with the Sunday Times.

Even if I talk to a girl, that person is then suddenly my wife, and people go knocking on her door

“Even if I talk to a girl, that person is then suddenly my wife, and people go knocking on her door,” he said. “If or when I do find a girlfriend, I will do my utmost … to ensure that me and her can get to the point where we’re actually comfortable with each other before the massive invasion that is inevitably going to happen into her privacy.”

Prior to meeting Prince Harry, Markle was romantically linked with Canadian restaurateur and chef Cory Vitiello.

Vitiello tweeted on March 22: “So proud of my lady @meghanmarkle being named Global Ambassador for @worldvision.”

The actress was reportedly with the chef a month later at the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards.

#BTS from @oneyoungworld last night talking politics, social issues & life w/ @justinpjtrudeau (you were SO missed Sophie, @jessicamulroney @benmulroney 👌🏽👌🏽) photo cred: @afinsky #OYW #Ottawa

A photo posted by Meghan Markle (@meghanmarkle) on Sep 29, 2016 at 4:59am PDT

Jury selection begins in case of New Brunswick boys killed by falling python

CAMPBELLTON, N.B. — Jury selection begins today for a man charged in the deaths of two New Brunswick boys who were suffocated by a python in August 2013.

Jean-Claude Savoie, who now lives near Montreal, is charged with criminal negligence causing death.

Four-year-old Noah Barthe and his six-year-old brother, Connor, died after a 45-kilogram African rock python fell on top of them as they slept in Savoie’s apartment in Campbellton.

The RCMP said the snake managed to get out of its tank overnight and got into a ventilation pipe in the ceiling.

Its weight caused the pipe to collapse and the snake fell into the room where the boys were sleeping.

Jury selection is being held at the Campbellton Civic Centre in order to be able to handle the hundreds of potential jurors.

Two weeks have been set aside for the trial.

In bid to impress women he was with, Chinese man jumps down into panda pit and starts wrestling

Seemingly to impress his two female companions, a 20-year-old man jumped inside a Chinese zoo enclosure and was knocked to the ground by a giant panda, the South China Morning Post reports.

Mei Ling, the 12-year-old male panda weighing 120 kilograms, tore the man’s pants and pinned him to the ground. Luckily, he was able to escape the pit, seemingly unscathed.

The entire encounter was captured on a closed circuit video feed which went viral after it appeared on Chinese news.

In the video, you can see the man walk up to the sleeping Mei Ling and then attempt to touch the animal’s head. At that point the panda awakens and wrestles the man to the ground. In the background you can hear one of the man’s companions say “it is biting him.”

According to the SCMP, the man then left the park without alerting authorities. Zoo workers found no blood in the enclosure and determined the animal had not been hurt.

‘I was in shock’: Police probe Ottawa nursing home after elderly woman found with maggots in wound

The Ottawa police elder-abuse unit is investigating a nursing home after staff discovered maggots had infested a resident’s leg wound, landing the woman in hospital and horrifying her family.

The discovery suggests flies laid eggs and larvae hatched in the sore before anyone noticed, raising anew questions about the quality of care in Canadian long-term-care facilities.

It takes days for fly larvae to reach a full-grown stage, something that should not happen in a properly treated patient, said Jeff Tomberlin, a Texas A&M University professor and chairman of the American board of forensic entomology.

“Maggots in a wound are not good,” he said. “I can’t think of a case where you could actually say it’s not negligent … If they found fully developed larvae in it, you have to wonder how frequently they’re cleaning the wound, and really paying attention to what they’re doing.”

The incident comes two years after the same woman, 89-year-old Luba Ignatieva, was “viciously” attacked by another resident at West End Villa in Ottawa, sending her to hospital with a broken hip, her daughter, Lara Gerol, said.

In the most recent incident, Ignatieva failed to get one of the twice-weekly dressing changes required for a chronic “venous stasis ulcer” on her leg.

When staff finally removed Ignatieva’s bandage on Oct. 10 after six days, they found the sore crawling with maggots and sent her to hospital.

“I was in shock,” said the daughter, who believes either hospital employees or paramedics called the police. “It means the wound was not cleaned properly … It means they’re not even looking.”

I don’t have enough words in my vocabulary to describe the horror

In a letter to the home, she wrote: “I don’t have enough words in my vocabulary to describe the horror (we felt) when we learned my mother went to hospital with maggots in her leg.”

Extendicare Inc., West End Villa’s owner, said in a statement that it can’t comment on specific residents, but that Ignatieva is being looked after by a team that includes a doctor, while the facility is in an “open dialogue” with the family.

“We can assure you that the quality of care of our residents is of utmost importance to us,” the statement said.

In a letter to Gerol obtained by the National Post, West End administrator Kelly Keeler said the ulcer, caused by poor circulation, won’t heal partly because Ignatieva refuses to have her leg elevated. Keeler said the woman also declined twice on Oct. 7 to have the dressing changed.

But the daughter says Ignatieva told her no one even tried to replace the bandage, and that it would have been completely out of character for her to refuse.

Gerol alleged the letter also seemed to play down the incident and almost blame her mother. Keeler argued “maggots are not the result of a dirty environment or unprofessional care,” and said Ignatieva liked to spend time outside in the garden, where she said flies are plentiful.

The administrator also noted that in some countries, maggots are used for wound care.

But Tomberlin, the entomologist, said there is a world of difference between the “medical-grade” larvae that are reared in sterile conditions and used in some clinics, versus wild ones that can deliver nasty infections “or worse.”

The Ottawa force is investigating but will not comment on specifics to avoid compromising the probe, said Const. Chuck Benoit, a police spokesman.

Ontario Health Ministry spokesman David Jensen said a “critical incident” inspection was carried out at West End on Oct. 18.

An order for a “voluntary plan of correction” was issued to the home, and a report will be posted on the ministry website in November, he said.

Maggots in live humans — a phenomenon scientists call myiasis — is not unheard of, though it occurs mostly in tropical and sub-tropical countries, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

A University of California study in 2000 found 45 cases throughout the U.S., the largest group being homeless people.

Gerol said some of the staff at the home — where her mother has lived for seven years — are “wonderful, dedicated, really good people,” but that turnover is high and many other employees are less skillful and caring.

Two years ago, she had asked that West End remove the other resident living in Ignatieva’s room, believing the person to be “very dangerous.” The request was denied and her mother was almost killed in a subsequent attack, Gerol said.

She sued the home, with the case eventually settled out of court.

• Email: tblackwell@nationalpost.com | Twitter: TomblackwellNP

Zika virus shrank testes of infected mice by 90 per cent, sharply reducing fertility, new study shows

NEW YORK — Zika virus ravages the testes of male mice, sharply reducing sperm counts and fertility, says a study that raises a new spectre about its threat to people.

Experiments found testes of infected mice shrank about 90 per cent by weight, while their output of useful sperm fell by three-quarters on average, and often more.

Don’t jump to the conclusion right off that this is definitely what is happening to the human

Now it’s time to find out if Zika causes similar damage in men, experts said.

“We just don’t know that yet,” said Michael Diamond of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, a senior author of the study. The virus is known to infect a man’s reproductive system and persist in sperm and semen, “so it’s in the right place,” he said.

Diamond said he suspects that in mice, the damage is permanent.

But mice are not men, and experts unconnected with the study agreed that it can’t be assumed that the mouse results apply to people.

Shannan Rossi, who studies Zika in mice at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, noted that the researchers had suppressed the animals’ immune system defence against the virus. That’s a standard step in such experiments but it adds another level of difference from humans, she said.

Zika, which is transmitted by the bite of a tropical mosquito, is such a mild disease in people that most who get it don’t even know they are sick. But it can cause serious birth defects if women are infected while pregnant, so health officials have been concerned mostly with helping women who are pregnant or about to become pregnant avoid the disease.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, said the study alerts researchers to look for effects in men.

“Don’t jump to the conclusion right off that this is definitely what is happening to the human,” he said. But the mouse finding is a “red flag you need to pursue.”

The mouse results appear in a paper released Monday by the journal Nature. They show the virus attacks the anatomical structure where sperm are made and reach maturity. Testosterone levels also fell.

The infected mice were able to impregnate females at only about one-fourth the normal rate. And in females that got pregnant, the number of fetuses was less than half of normal.