Northern Echo #38

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Published monthly and distributed thru out the communities of northern Manitoba *(plus) Issue # 38

December 2014

Circulation 12,000

During the Holiday Season more than ever, our thoughts turn gratefully to our Readers and Advertisers who have made our progress possible.

And in this spirit we say, simply but sincerely Thank You and Best Wishes for the Holiday Season and a Happy New Year

2015

Northern Echo

Murray GM in The Pas would like to Thank All their customers for a Great Year 2014.

Please Have a Safe & Happy Holiday Season !

Toll Free: 1.888.799.0000 212 Larose Ave. The Pas, MB

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Manitoba & RCMP News

On November 6, 2014, at approximately 9:45am, The Pas RCMP responded to a singlevehicle collision on Highway 10, 45 kilometres south of The Pas. Police say that a Manitoba Corrections van transporting six prisoners to Dauphin from The Pas was traveling south on Highway 10 when the driver, a Corrections officer, lost control of the vehicle. The vehicle entered the east ditch, rolled and came to rest inside the tree line. A 44-yearold female Corrections Officer, from The Pas, was a passenger in the vehicle. She was ejected from the vehicle and pronounced deceased at the scene. The 43-year-old male driver of the vehicle, also from The Pas, was transported to hospital in stable condition. The six male prisoners suffered minor injuries and were transported to hospital as a precautionary measure.

RCMP report that road conditions are considered a factor in the collision and it is unknown at this time if she was wearing a seatbelt. An RCMP Forensic Collision Reconstructionist is attending

Drugs, drug paraphernalia, firearms and cash seized by Thompson RCMP On November 6, 2014, at approximately 2:30pm, Thompson RCMP executed a search warrant under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act at a residence in Thompson, Manitoba.

As a result of the search, Thompson RCMP seized a quantity of crack cocaine, cocaine, marihuana, drug paraphernalia, a firearm and $25,000 in cash.

at 204-677-6909 or anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477(TIPS).

Grand Rapids RCMP respond to home invasion On October 26, 2014, at 3:30 am, Grand Rapids RCMP responded to a report of a home invasion at a residence in Grand Rapids, Manitoba.

Police say that five masked persons, armed with various weapons including firearms, entered the residence where several people were gathered having a party. Shots were fired, but none of the

Apprehended

The Pas RCMP respond to fatal collision

to assist with the investigation.

Christopher Robinson RCMP report that Ryan Dean Abele of Thompson, is currently in custody and is facing numerous drug and firearms-related charges. Abele will be appearing in Thompson Provincial Court.

RCMP would like to remind the public that those who traffic in illicit drugs destroy lives, homes and communities. The RCMP remain fully committed to enforcing laws against illicit drugs to their fullest extent. If you have any information about this or any other crime, you can contact Thompson RCMP in person or by phone

victims were hit. Several victims were injured when they were physically assaulted by the suspects. The suspects took alcohol and fled the scene.

RCMP have arrested three of the suspects, including 24-year-old Reginald Ballantyne, 23year-old Christopher Arthurson and 21-year-old Dillon Lavallee, all of Grand Rapids. Two suspects, 23-year-old Christopher Robinson and 18year-old Myles Siran, both of Grand Rapids still remain at large, but are being actively pursued.

Robinson is considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached.

Police say that all five suspects are facing mul-

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tiple charges, including robbery with a firearm and break and enter.

RCMP apprehend home invasion suspects Grand Rapids RCMP apprehended two suspects connected to a recent home invasion that occurred in Grand Rapids, Manitoba.

On November 2, 2014, Christopher Robinson and Myles Siran were taken into custody by Grand Rapids RCMP without incident. Robinson and Siran were two remaining suspects of five, believed to be connected to a home invasion where five masked persons, armed with various weapons, including firearms, entered a residence and assaulted a number of individuals.

Headingley RCMP lay assault charges involving Manitoba Corrections Officers Three Manitoba Corrections Officers have been charged with assault causing bodily harm, in connection to an incident that occurred at Headingley Correctional Institution.

Police say that the victim, a 24-year-old male, was an inmate at the time of the incident.

Charged in this investigation are Supervising Officer Michael Haddad, 44, Correctional Officer Mark Svendsen, 40 and Correctional Officer Michael Delorme, 31.

All officers are from Winnipeg.

The victim was also charged with aggravated assault during the same event.

Northern Echo Printed at Winnipeg Sun 1700 Church Avenue Winnipeg, MB R2X 3A2 Telephone: 1.204.694.2022

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RCMP remind the public to change driving habits for winter RCMP in Manitoba want everyone to reach their destination safely and are offering the public some driver safety tips to do so.

It is no surprise for Manitoba drivers that ice and snow affect the roadways. What may be surprising, however, is how some simple changes in driving habits can make a big difference to your safety while driving in winter conditions.

Habits that drivers have on dry roads could have serious consequences if practiced on icy or snow-covered roadways. Below are a few tips to help you do that: hPosted speed limits are for ideal travel conditions. On winter roads, be aware there could be ice. Driving at reduced speeds is a great precautionary measure against slippery conditions hDo not use cruise control hIncrease your distance between other vehicles as stopping distance on an icy road is double the stopping distance on a dry one hUse steady and precise movements when driving in winter conditions. Jerky movements and steering while breaking or accelerating can cause skidding hObserve road signs pointing out icy spots,

THOMPSON

such as bridges and overpasses hIf you start to skid, do not brake or accelerate. Look where you want the vehicle to go and steer in that direction hAs always, keep in mind the basic safety rules: buckle up, slow down, drive with caution, be aware, be alert, be sober, give yourself plenty of time to reach your destination, and keep focused on the road hFor winter driving, preparation is key.

Make sure you have your vehicle and yourself

ready before you head out on the roads: 1. Have proper tires on your vehicle. Tire pressure decreases in colder weather, so check your tire pressure often 2. Ensure you have windshield washer fluid that is rated for winter use so you can keep your windshield clean and your line of vision clear 3. Be familiar with the safety features of your vehicle 4. Clear all snow and frost from your vehicle before driving so that you can see and be seen

Wilf Lloyd, grizzly bear attack survivor, describes ordeal Wilf Lloyd, who was attacked by a grizzly near Fernie, B.C., and then shot by his hunting partner in the struggle, says he is recovering well.

The 56-year-old taxidermist from Cranbook, B.C., was on his annual family elk hunting trip with his son-in-law Skeet Podrasky when a bear came out of the bush.

“I heard a noise below me," he said. "And I just knelt down to pick it up and I heard a thud, and I looked up, the grizzly’s eyes were locked right on me and he was full charge and he was about seven feet away.”

Lloyd said it all happened so fast.

“I went to get up. I went to grab my gun and I yelled at Skeet, ’Bear! Bear!’” said Lloyd. “He hit me in my chest and rolled me, and within a second he was on top of me.”

Lloyd remembers the bear growling with its paws on his chest, knowing it was looking for his throat and face.

“He's made a decision to come in on me. He brings his head down towards my face and I jam my whole left arm right into his mouth. And as he did that, he's starting to

5. Ensure wheel wells are cleared of slush or build-up that could impede your ability to steer 6. Make sure someone knows the route you are planning to take 7. Have extra winter wear in your vehicle, such as toques, mittens and winter boots 8. Keep a road safety kit and shovel in your vehicle 9. Be aware of road conditions before you set out. If road conditions are unfavourable, the safest strategy is to avoid driving.

clamp down, and Skeet shot him,” said Lloyd.

Lloyd and Podrasky believe the shot struck the 225-kilogram bear in the shoulder.

“I could feel the vibration of the bullet,” said Lloyd.

The shot caused the bear to release Lloyd’s arm, so he began trying to kick the bear away from him while screaming at Podrasky to shoot again.

It was during this struggle that Lloyd was shot in the leg.

Lloyd said the bear charged them repeatedly until it was shot to death.

“I really feared for my life,” said Lloyd. “But after a while, you tell a story and you relive it every day and it gets a little easier. It gets a little more sensible, I guess.”

As to whether or not the taxidermist wants to stuff the bear, Lloyd said that is a touchy subject. He would have to apply for a permit to stuff the bear and is undecided about pursuing that.

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Was Moammar Gadhafi Killed Because His Plans To Introduce A Gold Dinar Currency Threatened The U.S. Dollar?

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There's growing speculation that Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi was targeted

by NATO because of his plans to

was trying to do the same thing just prior to U.S. invasion for all of those “weapons of mass destruction.”

• Libya had no exteRnal debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion – though much of this is now frozen globally.

*****

Gaddafi wrote, “They want to do to Libya what they did to Iraq and what they are itching to do to Iran. They want to take back the oil, which was nationalized by these country’s revolutions. They want to re-establish military bases that were shut down by the revolutions and to install client regimes that will subordinate the country’s wealth and labor to imperialist corporate interests. All else is lies and deception.”

introduce a gold dinar – "a single African currency made from gold, a true sharing of the wealth."

Gaddafi had called on African and Muslim nations to join together to create this new currency that would rival the U.S. dollar and euro. The plan was to sell oil and other resources around the world only for gold dinars. A country's wealth would depend on how much gold they have and not how many dollars they trade.

Libya has (had) 144 tons of gold. By comparison the United Kingdom has double that amount but 10 times the population.

Had the plan succeeded it would have shifted the economic balance of the world.

The Western banks would never tolerate a return to a gold currency which was being planned by Libya's Gaddafi - hence, the banks goaded their government enforcers to attack and bring him down. Where did Libya's 144 tonnes of gold end up anyway?

"If Gaddafi had an intent to try to re-price his oil or whatever else the country was selling on the global market and accept something else as a currency or maybe launch a gold dinar currency, any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks," Anthony Wile, founder and Chief Editor of the Daily Bell told Russia Today in an interview back in May 2011. "So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward from moving him from power."

Framed Invasion of Libya was About Gaddafi’s Plan to Introduce Gold Dinar By Jason Hamlin Under the guise of “protecting civilians,” the United States led NATO into Libya and is attempting to assassinate the Libyan leader.

Of course, Libya happens to be the largest oil producer in Africa, but many do not realize that Gaddafi was planning to introduce the gold dinar, a single African currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar and allow African nations to share the wealth.

It is surely no coincidence that Iraq’s prior leader, Saddam Hussein,

Facts about Libya under Gaddafi that you probably did not know about !

• There was no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at 0% interest by law.

• If a Libyan was unable to find employment after graduation, the state would pay the average salary of the profession as if he or she is employed until employment is found.

• There was no electricity bills in Libya; electricity was free … for all its citizens.

• Should Libyans want to take up a farming career, they receive farm land, a house, equipment, seed and livestock to kick start their farms –this was all for free.

• Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great ManMade River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.

• A home was considered a human right in Libya. (In Qaddafi’s Green Book it states: “The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others.” (Banks) • All newlyweds in Libya would receive 60,000 Dinar (US$ 50,000 ) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start a family.

• A portion of Libyan oil sales is (read: was) credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.

• A mother who gives birth to a child would receive US $5,000.

• When a Libyan buys a car, the government would subsidizes 50% of the price.

• The price of petrol in Libya was $0.14 per liter.

• Education and medical treatments was all free in Libya. Libya can boast one of the finest health care systems in the Arab and African World. All people have (had) access to doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines, completely free of charge.

• If Libyans could not find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya, the government would fund them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US $2,300/month accommodation and car allowance.

• 25% of Libyans have a university degree. Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans were literate. Today the figure is 87%.

Finally, the gold bullion held by the Libyan Central Bank (March 2011) was among the 25 largest reserves in the world, as reported by the Financial Times, citing the International Monetary Fund. This provided Libya a critical lifeline after billions of Libya’s assets were seized by the United States and the 27 member states of the European Union.

Many believe the NATO-led invasion of Libya was about oil and a vast wealth of other natural resources. Yet another critical element that few are aware of is the fact that Gaddafi had planned to introduce a single African currency made from gold.

Dr James Thring stated, “It’s one of these things that you have to plan almost in secret, because as soon as you say you’re going to change over from the dollar to something else, you’re going to be targeted … There were two conferences on this, in 1986 and 2000, organized by Gaddafi. … Most countries in Africa were keen. ” This would have eradicated the US Dollar and Euro as trade currencies for Africa.

So, was Muammar Gaddafi a Terrorist?

Few can answer this question fairly, but if anyone can, it’s Libyan citizens. Whatever the case, it seems rather apparent that he did some positive things for his country despite the infamous notoriety surrounding his name. And that’s something you should try to remember when judging in future.

Video documentary spells out an interesting, if rather different, story from the one we think we know.

Watch documentary on YouTube.

Type in: Gaddafi The Truth About Libya - Documentary or go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkTUDw0mjMA

page 6

from across Canada

Monthly

"If the federal and provincial governments cannot protect our interests, and choose to work more closely with foreign-owned multinational energy companies than their own citizens, then we will be forced to represent ourselves abroad and tell Petronas the truth about their prospects," Chief Na'Moks continued.

Review

First Nations Oppose Petronas LNG Plant due to "shocking" lack of consultation First Nations throughout the Skeena Watershed have declared their opposition to the proposed Petronas LNG project on Lelu Island, citing a lack of consultation and massive damage to salmon habitat.

"When BC, the Prince Rupert Port Authority and Petronas sited a massive LNG development on the Skeena River's most critical salmon habitat, they created the legal obligation to consult and accommodate First Nations who have an interest in Skeena salmon,” said President and Chief Negotiator for the Gitanyow First Nation Chief Malii or Glen Williams.

“We have written CEAA several times since spring 2013 to express our concerns with the project and requested bilateral consultation. The Crown has refused, stating that because of the distance between our traditional lands and the terminal it is not required. This flawed reasoning does not uphold the honor of the Crown. Despite this we have continued to do our homework and we now have concrete scientific evidence that shows our salmon rely on these area and anything they do in these sensitive ecosystems need to be vetted through our Chiefs. The lack of consultation is unacceptable, industry and government have completely ignored our constitutionally protected rights and we will not stand for it."

An SFU study showed that altering or destroying crucial habitat in the estuary will significantly damage the abundance and health of Skeena salmon, which are the essential foundation

The First Nations leaders are calling for Petronas as well as the provincial and federal governments to withdraw the project from the Lelu Island site immediately.

of First Nations' constitutionally protected right to fish throughout the watershed.

"If BC thinks it can partner with foreign oil and gas companies, pick where pipelines and plants are to be sited, all the while ignoring the science that says industrial development on the Skeena Estuary is risky and foolish, and then pretend to 'consult' with First Nations after the fact, they have fundamentally misunderstood their legal and moral obligations to First Nations," Wet'suwet'en Tsayu Clan’s Chief Na'Moks added.

Apartment 'viewing fees' shock Calgary woman looking to rent A woman trying to find a place to rent in Calgary says she has been shocked by the demands landlords in the city make.

Trish Nicholson, who has spent months looking for a home

On the same note, Wilf Adam, Oputt, Chief of the Lake Babine Nation asserts, "It's time to go beyond mouthing platitudes about new relationships and apologizing for past wrongs. The entire system of how major industrial development on our lands is proposed, and approved, is broken. It doesn't work for anyone. It is expensive, it creates more uncertainty and most often further erodes Canada's reputation as a civil society, or a desirable place to do business. On every level it is failing."

Poor siting of the proposed facility and failure to seek First Nations consent place this $11 billion project at serious risk, according to the Chiefs.

since moving from Vancouver, says some Calgary landlords are charging a $25 viewing fee just to let her a look at an apartment.

And that’s just the beginning, she said.

“They'll list it for $1,285 but by the time you show up its $1,450, $1,650 and there's all the fees on top of that,” she said.

“You know the list seems to go on and on. It’s almost like they make it up as you go.”

A spokesperson for Service Alberta told reporters there is nothing illegal about charging a viewing fee, but noted that there has been a substantial increase in the number of people from Calgary contacting the province about landlord and tenant issues.

Nicholson said as the rental market in Calgary shrinks, the demands from landlords seem to get longer and more outrageous.

“I pretty much visit five sites a day.”

The situation leaves Nicholson, a mature working professional, with very few options, she said.

“I'll have to leave Calgary, bottom line. If I can't afford to live here, I can't afford to live here.”

page 7

Cocaine wrapped in Louis Vuitton logos seized at Halifax port More than 459 kilograms of cocaine have been seized at the Port of Halifax.

The CBSA said the suspected cocaine was found in a commercial cargo shipment at the port last month.

It's the third largest seizure of its kind in Atlantic Canada.

"This massive seizure means that we have prevented hundreds of thousands of individual doses of this dangerous and illegal drug from reaching our communities and being sold on our streets," said Dominic Mallette, CBSA chief of operations.

Deadly cat disease outbreak in Saskatoon Cat owners in Saskatoon are being warned to watch out for a deadly feline disease.

According to the local SPCA, the city has been hit by an outbreak of a disease called Panleukopenia.

On Monday, the SPCA announced it is under quarantine after two cats with the disease were admitted in October. There have been at least two other cases, according to Patricia Cameron, the executive director of the Saskatoon SPCA. The local pet shelter is urging owners to vaccinate their cats as soon as possible, because the disease is so contagious.

"The vaccines are very effective, and the best possible way to protect your pet," Cameron said in a release.

According to Cameron, indoor cats are also susceptible to the disease.

"When you take a stroll, go from your car to the house, or do yard work, the virus can come into your house on your clothes and shoes," she said. The virus can survive for up to a year in certain environments.

However, if owners believe their pets have the disease, they should be brought into a vet as soon as possible.

Symptoms of Panleukopenia include depression, lethargy, loss of appetite, fever, vomiting, and self-biting on the tail, lower back, and legs.

Officers made the discovery after searching a container ship from Argentina that passed through Panama. According to shipping documents, it contained 1,216 cases of alcohol — but that's not what agents found when they X-rayed the container.

They found eight large duffel bags, each containing 50 bricks of cocaine, wrapped with plastic carrying a Louis Vuitton logo.

Officers discovered a total of 400 bricks of cocaine weighing about one kilogram each, for a total of 459.3 kilograms of cocaine.

They called the RCMP.

2nd significant seizure at port Sgt. Keith MacKinnon, with the RCMP's serious and organized crime unit, said the shipment amounts to about 18 million hits of nearly pure cocaine, which would be diluted four times before being sold on the street.

He said it's not uncommon for those selling drugs to brand their product, referring to the Louis Vuitton logo found on the packaging.

"Sometimes organized crime groups will mark their specific loads, per se, with packaging that’s very recognizable to that organization. We've seen that very frequently in the past," said MacKinnon.

This marks the second significant seizure of cocaine at the port this year. In May, CBSA officers intercepted 46 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a commercial cargo shipment No arrests have been made.

Police say they don't suspect the ship or the shipping line.

The disease attacks the lining of the digestive system and can lead to bloody diarrhea, rapid dehydration, and pain. Panleukopenia can also leave cats vulnerable to other diseases because it compromises their immune system.

Charges dropped against man accused of swiping cash after armoured truck crash EDMONTON - Dale Hasenuik knows he shouldn't have taken the money, but says he was just trying to help.

The 61-year-old owner of a trucking business was driving from

Fort McMurray to Edmonton on a cold morning last December when he came across a nasty crash on an icy section of Highway 63.

A G4S armoured vehicle had collided head-on with a pickup truck.

Another motorist had already pulled over and found the driver of the wrecked armoured truck dead. Hasenuik checked on the driver of the other mangled vehicle, who had also been killed.

Other people stopped to offer help and, as they all waited for police to arrive, Hasenuik says he and others kicked aside debris and small rolls of cash that were littering the road.

He then spotted a large bundle of money wrapped in plastic near the trailer hitched to his own truck. He thought someone else might try to steal it, he says, so he picked it up and put it in the back seat of his truck.

After about 45 minutes, when RCMP still hadn't made it to the crash scene, Hasenuik drove to the nearest RCMP detachment in the village of Boyle. He says he handed over the money and explained what he'd done in a written statement.

The cash was counted at $130,000.

Three days later, while he was sleeping at home on his farm near Leduc, Hasenuik was arrested and charged with theft and possession of stolen property.

He says he was flabbergasted and still doesn't quite understand the whole thing.

It seems the court agreed. At the beginning of a preliminary hearing in Fort McMurray last month, the charges were suddenly withdrawn.

"I should have been charged with stupidity for trying to do the right thing," says Hasenuik.

He feels vindicated now, but is trying to rebuild his damaged reputation. After news reports of his arrest, Hasenuik says he received calls from questioning relatives and lost a large contract with an American company that didn't want to be associated with him while he faced charges.

"I really looked like a shyster," he says.

"They made me look like the lowest form of human being. It was as if I stopped in, grabbed money from the dead people, and then buggered off."

RCMP and Alberta Justice did not provide comment. continued on page 8

page 8

continued from page 7

Chinese, Canadian central banks agree to 200 bln yuan currency swap BEIJING - The central banks of China and Canada have agreed to a currency swap worth 200 billion yuan ($32.67 billion) or C$30 billion, according to a Canadian government statement issued at a meeting of Asia Pacific nations on Saturday.

The swap will be effective for three years, according to a separate statement from China's central bank. The agreement was announced after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, will also create a clearing hub for the yuan - or renminbi, as the currency is also called - in Toronto, the first such hub in the Americas.

The central bank said that it would appoint the Canadian branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, China's largest commercial bank, as the hub's clearing bank.

The currency swap will help set up the clearing bank, and allow the two banks to swap currencies if needed to ease trade and investment. The yuan clearing bank would allow Canadian financial institutions to use the clearing bank to process payments for their customers in yuan.

The move is in line with Beijing's ambition to promote its currency to more international investors and eventually turn the "redback" into a global reserve currency, while at the same time

expanding China's already considerable political and economic clout.

"This is a fantastic announcement for Canada and China relations, a terrific move for Canadian businesses to be able to compete more abroad, not only direct-to-China investment but ... as more RMB/CNY activity takes place around the world," said C.J. Gavsie, managing director of foreign exchange sales at BMO Capital Markets.

China will additionally give Canadian investors the right to invest up to 50 billion yuan initially in China's capital markets. The quota will be granted under the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) scheme.

That programme, launched in 2011, allows financial institutions to use offshore yuan to invest in the mainland's securities markets, including in stocks, bonds and money market instruments.

Time for some serious thought about Inuvik’s future It‘s the sad condition of the church’s paint job that catches the eye, that tells you something is wrong.

Once bright white, it is now weathered and grey in the winter light, streaked and peeling, leaving the building looking poor and vaguely abandoned. There’s no warmth or light through the stained glass windows. A snowdrift covers the steps to the inside, although no one is going there tonight anyway.

The condition of Inuvik’s Our Lady of Victory, commonly known as the “Igloo Church” because of its design, raises a troubling question: When a community icon starts to fade, can the rest be far behind?

Inuvik has always been different, a town designed for the North, planned by government bureaucrats, built according to blueprints and put in its place, on the banks of the Mackenzie River.

Alone among nearly all of the other settlements in the territory, Inuvik didn’t grow out of the land, wasn’t born because of furs or fish or lumber, wasn’t the natural child of ancient Aboriginal hunters and trappers. Instead, one day it wasn’t and then one day it was.

And now we need to consider the possibility that it won’t be there much longer, at least not in any vibrant, life-enhancing way.

Not in the way that makes people want to move and stay there, to build their homes, raise their kids, start businesses and go to church.

Inuvik is today being challenged by forces both local and international, by economic stresses far greater than any it has faced before, and its future is, at best, uncertain.

Always a resource town, Inuvik has lived with the ups and downs of the oil business almost since it first drew breath. Its history has been one of pipelines, of oil and gas drilling, methane hydrate research, and all the peripheral activity that surrounds the work of resource development.

A history of promises made and promises broken, of pipelines that never happened, gas fields that went dry and oil companies that simply left one day, never to return.

But those challenges, while they could make grown men weep,

were thought of as short-term set-backs that would turn around as the oil business always had and so while the weak ones left, the strong stayed.

Mall Hours: Mon - Wed 10 am - 6 pm Thurs - Fri 10 am - 9 pm Sat 10 am - 6 pm Sun 12 pm - 6 pm (participating stores only)

This time, even the strong are feeling the pain. This time the town is being squeezed from two sides and that’s a whole new problem.

There’s too much energy in the world these days with oil and gas production in the United States growing to equal that of the Middle East and Russia. Shale gas has become as common as water and the resources of the North are not as attractive as they once were.

Where just a few short years ago, millions of exploration dollars were being spent in the Delta, this year there will be none. As in zero. Next year’s Inuvik Petroleum show has been cancelled for the first time in 14 years. continued on page 14

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page 10

News Headlines From Around the Man Immediately Regrets Jumping Onto A Dead Whale Even the parents of this Perth, Australia, man who jumped onto a whale circled by hungry sharks say their son is an idiot.

Harrison Williams, of Quinns Rock, north of Perth, was videotaped jumping from his friend’s boat and swimming across to the dead whale, because one of his mates said “it would be pretty funny to surf the whale.”

All Of The Pirate Bay's Founders Are Now Behind Bars Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij has been arrested by Thai police, meaning that all of the file-sharing site's founders are now in custody.

Thai border police arrested Neij on the border between Thailand and Laos. Neij moved to Laos several years ago to live with his wife and children.

Despite having previously driven between the Laos and Thailand freely in the past, Thai border police decided to enforce an Interpol arrest warrant, and take him into custody.

Neij was released on bail in 2009 after being convicted of aiding copyright infringement in a court in Sweden.

Neij is the final Pirate Bay founder to be arrested by police, and

Fredrik Neij

Harrison Williams almost wins this year’s Darwin Award.

Seven News footage showed several large great white sharks circling and feeding on the other side of the whale.

The 26-year-old said he knew they “busy chomping on the whale,” but told Seven News he knew it was a stupid thing to do once he was on top of the whale.

“Definitely I wouldn’t do it again… I’ve done it, I don’t need to do it again. Definitely it was a stupid act — didn't mean to disrespect anyone. Mum thinks I’m an idiot — dad’s not too proud either,” he said.

Crew on the Westpac Lifesaver Helicopter snapped photographs of two huge sharks, one estimated to be 5.5 metres long, feeding on the whale.

if convicted, that will mean that all three of the torrent site's founders are serving jail terms.

Another co-founder, Peter Sunde, was arrested in May 2014 when Swedish police raided the farm he was living in. The arrest came just days after he failed to win a seat in the European Parliamentary elections. He is currently in prison in Sweden to serve the remainder of his eight-month sentence for aiding copyright infringement.

Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm was arrested in Cambodia in 2012 at the request of Swedish authorities. He was deported to Sweden later that year, and then deported to Denmark in November 2013. On October 31 he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for computer hacking.

Lion falls in to 60-footdeep well in India It’s a known fact that cats don’t like water. So when a lion falls into a well, you can be certain you’ll be dealing with a

very unhappy lion.

That’s exactly what happened earlier this week in Amrapur village, India. Late Sunday night or early morning, a lion fell into a 60-foot-deep open well and was discovered by residents Monday morning.

The lion, a male Asiatic, is considered a endangered species, with only about 400 of them living in the area in 2010. So the residents called local forest officers to rescue him.

Rescuers used ropes and a charpoy to lift the lion out of the well.

“It was in good health despite the fall,” Ramesh Katara, deputy conservator of forest of Junagadh district told The Indian Express.

“But we have sent it to animal care centre in Sasan-Gir as a precautionary measure. It will be kept under observation there for some time before we release it in the wild.”

Farmers in the area are required to build protective parapets around their wells to prevent the deaths of lions. A parapet will be installed around this well to prevent further incidents.

8-year-old hockey fan dies after being hit by puck during French league game Tragedy touched the hockey world on Sunday when an 8-year old fan died of injuries sustained after being struck by a puck during an FFHG Division 1 game in France.

Near the end of the third period during Saturday's game between Dunkirk and Reims, the young fan, Hugo Vermeersch, was hit in the ear with a puck and went into cardiac arrest. The president of Reims, Dr. Benoit Vrielynck, who is also a surgeon, began performing CPR before firefighters took him from the Patinoire Michel Raffoux Arena to a local hospital. Sadly, he would succumb to his injuries on Sunday morning. continued on page 24

page 11

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page 12

USA U.S. Stocks Could Collapse...

The Fed has propped up the equity markets for months... but that could soon come to a disastrous end !

According to Marketwatch, Dennis Slothower is the guru behind “The investment letter that evaded the 2008 crash... and is now the top performer."

Right now, Dennis is issuing another dire warning.

His technical indicators suggest that the market manipulation we’ve seen over the last several months is about to come to an end.

And with very real threats to this artificially inflated market

Russia trading US $ for GOLD With all of its income from selling oil, Russia is diversifying its reserves by buying massive amounts of gold, said William Rhind, CEO of the World Gold Trust Services.

Of all the central banks that make their reserve actions public, Russia has been the "largest, most active" gold accumulator, he explained. Still, Rhind said, the "elephant in the room" is how much gold China is buying, as Beijing does not publish these figures.

A recent report from the World Gold Council showed that many central banks, including Russia's , have beefed up their gold reserves.

This investment, the report suggested, was "driven by a number of factors including a continued diversification away from the U.S. dollar and the backdrop of ongoing geopolitical tensions."

More than half of all the gold added to central bank reserve

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a gold bar while visiting the Central Depository of the Bank of Russia

coming from a potential U.S. debt downgrade...the possibility of a European collapse...and a sluggish U.S. economy - the bottom could fall out of the U.S. stock market at any time.

Stranahan Park, the effects of these new laws came into full view.

Arnold Abbott, who is ordered to appear in court, says that hundreds of homeless people had gathered in the park and then police arrived. Police issued court orders to him and two members of the clergy, who were handing out food. He says he faces a maximum of 60 days in jail.

90-year-old Florida man faces jail for feeding the homeless Fort Lauderdale, Fla., recently joined more than 30 cities that have restricted or are taking steps to restrict sharing food with the homeless. But Arnold Abbott says he plans to keep breaking the law by feeding the homeless.

Late last month, the city of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., passed a series of laws that restricted where organizations could feed the homeless.

On Sunday, when a 90-year-old man received a citation in

assets in the third quarter was purchased by Russia (55 of about 96 metric tons), the World Gold Council report said.

In total, Russia's central bank has bought about 150 metric tons of gold so far this year, Bank of Russia Chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina said on Tuesday.

Mr. Abbott is a longtime advocate. He says he has been feeding the homeless at a local beach for more than 20 years, and he founded his organization, Love Thy Neighbor, in 1991. He says he will return to that beach Wednesday night – and expects a repeat

of Sunday’s interaction with police.

“After I was cited, I took everybody over to a church parking lot,” he says in a phone interview. “We did feed everybody. It wasn’t a complete waste.”

Mayor Jack Seiler, who was unavailable for an interview by press time, told the Sun Sentinel that providing homeless people with a meal perpetuates a “cycle of homeless” in Fort Lauderdale.

"Providing them with a meal and keeping them in that cycle on the street is not productive,” he said.

David Raymond, who served for nine years as executive di-

page 13 rector of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, said last month that limiting outdoor food service could make sense. Food, he said, should connect homeless people with other services. And he noted the tensions that can occur when those providing food bring homeless people periodically to the same place, which can hurt area businesses.

One of the recent laws passed in Fort Lauderdale, aiming to mitigate this tension, will require volunteers to bring portable toilets to all food distribution events.

These rules, Abbott says, are “ridiculous.”

“They’re doing everything in the world,” he says, “to rid the area of homeless persons.”

The National Coalition for the Homeless released a report last month called “Share No More,” listing more than 30 cities that have restricted or are taking steps to restrict food-sharing programs.

The report also aims to correct assumptions about food sharing.

To the coalition, a lack of affordable housing, few job opportunities and disability perpetuate homelessness more than food-sharing programs do.

Other cities that have attempted to restrict, ban, or relocate food-sharing programs are Denver, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Phoenix, according to the report.

Rules that restrict organizations from feeding the homeless, Abbott says, show a lack of common sense among legislators.

Without outdoor feedings, homeless people would need to resort to digging through dumpsters or similar drastic measures, he says.

“This I don’t want to happen,” he says. “I will continue fighting, I will promise you that. I will not let up.”

Nevada poachers face trial charged as 'serial wildlife killers' Three men convicted of state hunting violations in Nevada now face trial on federal charges stemming from a poaching ring that saw untold numbers of deer, antelope, birds and other wildlife killed illegally across Nevada, game officials said on Monday.

Authorities uncovered the poaching ring after one of the defendants posted a photograph on Facebook of two deer he shot and

killed out of season last June, said Cameron Waithman, who led the Nevada Wildlife Department investigation of the case.

The ensuing probe found that Adrian Acevedo-Hernandez,

stretched from Nevada’s northern border with Idaho to its southeastern intersection with Arizona, he said.

Waithman said the men were engaged in an extreme version of what conservation officers call “thrill kills,” indiscriminate killing of wildlife for excitement rather than for food.

“These are people who, for whatever reason, don’t want to shoot at paper targets anymore and go out and kill stuff for fun,” he said.

Nevada game wardens will never be able to fully tally all the wildlife illegally killed by the poaching ring, said Edwin Lyngar, a spokesman for the state wildlife agency.

“They just sort of shot at everything that moved,” he said.

Their quarry included upland game birds, protected migratory songbirds and deer and antelope whose carcasses were left to rot, Lyngar said.

Police killings (USA) highest in two decades WASHINGTON — The number of felony suspects fatally shot by police last year — 461— was the most in two decades, according to a new FBI report.

36, Jose Luis Montufar-Canales, 31, and J. Nemias Reyes Marin, 31, had been illegally killing and butchering animals across the state and bragging about the kills online since early 2013, Waithman said.

The men, described by Waithman as “serial wildlife killers,” were convicted in a state court of misdemeanor hunting violations earlier this year. In July they were indicted by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas on felony firearms offenses and criminal charges under the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The three men, who resided in Las Vegas but are suspected of having entered the United States illegally, remain in federal custody awaiting trial, Waithman said.

Search warrants executed at a residence occupied by one of the men uncovered large caches of deer meat, deer parts, butchering tools, weapons and ammunition. The evidence there led investigators to broaden their probe to unsolved poaching cases that

The justifiable homicide count, contained in the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report, has become increasingly scrutinized in recent months as questions continue to be raised about the use of lethal force by law enforcement.

National attention has been drawn to cases from New York to Albuquerque, though much of the focus is on Ferguson, Mo., where the restive St. Louis suburb awaits the decision of a grand jury weighing the fatal shooting in August of a black teenager by a white police officer.

The death of Michael Brown prompted weeks of protests and larger questions about the operations of a largely white department

continued on page 18

page 14 Continued from page 8 But, and here’s the truly bitter part, at the same time as all that new-found southern energy is taking away much of the economic future of the town, the cost of that same energy needed to maintain Inuvik is growing, doubling in some cases, pushing the cost of living to a point where residents are having to make hard choices as to food or fuel, of stay or go.

Stories abound of houses for sale, of departing residents, closing businesses and costs that keep going up faster than the locals can earn the money to meet them.

The future seems bleak, especially now with the shorter, colder days of December darkening the sky.

Time for some serious thought about where the town is going.

In the meantime, paint the damned church.

so that John could pick up a pair of skates for her son.

After both she and Husbands had made purchases, the couple then went to the mall's crowded food court, John said.

She was ordering sushi as Husbands was standing off to the side holding bags containing their purchases when she heard him yell the word "what," she said.

John said she turned around and saw that Husbands appeared to be talking to a group of people, so she turned back to finish her

Eaton Centre shooting trial hears from girlfriend of accused TORONTO - The man who killed two people when he opened fire at Toronto's Eaton Centre realized he had gotten himself into "some trouble" and knew he was "going away for a really long time," his then-girlfriend said at his trial on Monday.

La Chelle John told the court that her boyfriend — Christopher Husbands — made those comments to her just before he turned himself in to police two days after the shooting at the downtown mall in June 2012.

"He said 'I got myself into some trouble and I'm going away for a really long time," John, 23, recounted. "He was just crying, I was just crying and then he just went inside and turned himself in."

Husbands, 25, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and has denied that he went to the mall with the intention of killing anyone.

The trial has heard that his lawyer plans to argue that Husbands was indeed responsible for the deaths and injuries that resulted from the shooting but that it was a "chance encounter'' with a group of five men that prompted him to open fire.

John told the court Husbands seemed "fine" in the hours leading up the shooting.

The couple had gone to the Eaton Centre that Saturday evening

transaction when she heard "a bunch of commotion" behind her.

"At that stage I just see everyone running and scattering, I didn't know what to make of it," said John, adding that she didn't know there had been a shooting.

"The last time I saw Christopher there was all this commotion and he was running."

Moments later, John said Husbands was nowhere to be seen so she turned back to the sushi counter, retrieved the debit card she had been using to pay for her purchase, picked up the bags Husbands had dropped and left the mall.

She told the court she did not see Husbands with a gun, nor did she know he had carried a gun to the mall that day.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Eugene Ewaschuk, who is presiding over the trial, pressed John on that point.

"Do you see the gun in his hand?" he asked, as surveillance footage of Husbands running away from the sushi outlet was played in court.

"You're looking right at it. Do you remember seeing it?" he went on.

"No," replied John.

"You never heard any shots?" Ewaschuk asked.

"No," John said.

John also said she didn't know what was inside a small black bag that Husbands had slug across his body at the mall.

Later that day, Husbands called John once she was home to ask her if she was ok, she said, and even came over to her apartment very briefly — but the two didn't discuss the events at the mall.

She said she got a call from an unknown number the following day which turned out to be Husbands.

"He said ' I got myself into some trouble, I'm going to go get myself a lawyer and I suggest you do the same,'" she told court.

page 15 In the early hours of the following day, John said she got another call from Husbands.

"He basically said that he's with his lawyer and he's going to turn himself in," she recounted, adding that she went to meet Husbands, who was in a car with his lawyer behind a downtown police station.

John also told Husbands' trial on Monday that he had been attacked about three months before the shooting, suffering multiple stab wounds.

During cross examination, Husbands' defence lawyer, referring to John's earlier testimony during a preliminary inquiry, suggested Husbands had become "paranoid and fearful" after the stabbing — a statement John agreed with.

Husbands's state of mind is important to the case as his defence is arguing that he didn't go to the Eaton Centre with the intention of killing Ahmed Hassan, 24, and Nixon Nirmalendran, 22.

According to the prosecution, the shooting was the result of bad blood between Husbands and Nirmalendran and friends.

The animosity stemmed from an incident several months earlier in which several men stabbed and robbed Husbands at an eastend home, the prosecution has said.

Saskatoon pub-crawl bouncer pleads guilty to aggravated assault A Saskatoon man has pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in connection with an incident on a pub-crawl bus the night Myles MacIntosh fell into the South Saskatchewan River and died.

The three-day trial of Scott Denny, 33, was set to begin Monday but instead Denny entered the guilty plea in Saskatoon provincial court. The Crown and defence entered a joint submission of two years in jail, minus 12 months credit plus two years of probation. After a brief adjournment, Judge Marilyn Gray accepted the recommendation.

The family of MacIntosh flew from Nova Scotia to be in the courtroom on Monday. MacIntosh’s fiancee from Saskatoon was also in attendance.

An emotional Denny spoke at his sentencing and apologized to MacIntosh's family and friends.

"That night on that bus, regardless of what happened, I had an obligation to keep everybody safe and the fact that I failed to do so has been almost too much to bear for me on a daily basis, so I can’t even imagine how you guys must feel or begin to fathom how you guys must feel towards me from the incident that’s happened," Denny said from the prisoner's box.

MacIntosh, 28, was reported missing in the early hours of Feb. 2, when he failed to return home from his own bachelor party.

MacIntosh was at Outlaw's bar for his bachelor party when he got into an altercation on the

dance floor with another patron, Crown prosecutor Jennifer Claxton-Viczko said in court.

Both MacIntosh and the other bar patron were ejected from the bar. They both appeared uninjured at that time, according to witnesses.

MacIntosh then boarded a pub-crawl bus even though he didn't have a ticket or wristband to be on the bus. The pub crawl had been organized by beily's night club, and Outlaws was the pub crawl's last stop before heading back to beily's. Denny was a bouncer on the bus, but he was drunk, Claxton-Viczko said.

Once the bus started moving, at some point MacIntosh either stumbled into a woman and pulled her hair accidentally or pulled it jokingly. Denny took exception to it, and when MacIntosh wouldn't sit down, Denny approached him.

MacIntosh punched Denny in the face. After being struck, Denny "retaliated by brutally assaulting Mr. MacIntosh, by repeatedly punching him," Claxton-Viczko said.

The bus was crossing the Senator Sid Buckwold bridge, so the driver couldn't pull over until she reached the intersection at Lorne Avenue and Eighth Street. When the bus stopped, both MacIntosh and Denny fell out the front door head first, where Denny continued to "pummel" MacIntosh.

MacIntosh appeared to lose consciousness at one point, but finally when the assault was over, he re-boarded the bus, only to walk from the front door to the back door and leave again. That was the last that anyone on the bus saw him.

Peggy MacIntosh, the mother of Myles, said their family not only lost a son but also a daughter-in-law.

"Happiness seems a million miles away. We’ll never hear his voice again telling us how life is now complete now that he finally received his red seal and found the love of his life," she said in her victim impact statement.

"Our hearts will never feel whole again."

She said that while Myles can not learn from the consequences of his actions, Denny can, "and we hope he does make changes in his life from this situation ... We hope whatever the consequences he receives, that they be with intent to help Mr. Denny understand the need to change and realize his mistakes."

It is believed MacIntosh eventually found his way to the edge of the river ice near the Senator Sid Buckwold Bridge, and fell into the water. DNA from blood found on the ice matched that of MacIntosh.

The body of MacIntosh was found in the South Saskatchewan River in May, north of Melfort. *** Scott Denny spoke during his sentencing on the charge of aggravated assault of Greg (Myles) MacIntosh.

"First and foremost, I’d like to offer an apology to the MacIntosh family, friends and loved ones that are here today.

"On the night of the incident, in the moment, I thought that I was acting in defence of myself and the people on that bus, but upon further reading the statements of the eye witnesses, I realized, at some point, that defence became excessive and unnecessary on my part. There’s not a day, I guess, that goes by that I wish that I could change that.

"That night on that bus, regardless of what happened, I had an obligation to keep everybody safe and the fact that I failed to do so has been almost too much to bear for me on a daily basis, so I can’t even imagine how you guys must feel or begin to fathom how you guys must feel towards me from the incident that’s happened.

"For that reason in itself, I’ll forever be sorry for the things that happened that night ...

"I would just like to thank my family and friends that are here today, for standing by me. I’m a better man and a better son than, often, I’ve shown in the last few years and once I’m released from my incarceration I fully intend to be the person I was intended to be." *** The following is the victim impact statement written by Peggy MacIntosh, mother of Greg (Myles) MacIntosh. It was presented to the judge to read during the sentencing of Scott Russell Denny.

"Our family will never be complete again. We not only lost our son, but our future daughter-in-law. Happiness seems a million miles away. We’ll never hear his voice again telling us how life is now complete now that he finally received his red seal and found the love of his life. Our hearts will never feel whole again.

"Myles has suffered the consequences of his actions and unfortunately cannot go forward learning from them. Mr. Denny, however, can — and we hope he does make changes in his life from this situation. It is so hard for us when we think how we did not just lose our son but how his last hours or so was filled with so much violence and unchangeable results. We hope whatever the consequences he receives, that they be with intent to help Mr. Denny understand the need to change and realize his mistakes.

"We have decided not to allow this situation to destroy us, but rather bring us together tighter than ever as a family. With the help of family, friends, our church and everyone who was involved in this situation, we are moving on with a positive outlook. We hope Mr. Denny understands our regrets of his part in this situation along with our hope that the loss of our son can somehow be the motivation to turn his life around in a positive direction." continued on page 16

page 16 Continued from page 15

TRACE Matrix Index: Canada 2nd-Least Corrupt Country In The World

An earlier search in August 2013 found nearly five grams of cocaine. Officials say the institutional value of that seizure was $4,950.

The medium-security Ontario prison for men opened in 1959 and is currently undergoing construction for expansion. Separated into two sections, its medium and minimum units have the combined capacity to house 702 inmates.

3 dogs in N.W.T. treated for too tight collars Two dogs are recovering at the Great Slave Animal Hospital in Yellowknife after getting surgery to treat wounds from collars that had become embedded in their necks.

The hospital's veterinarian says it's a problem he sees all too often, and it's a sign the territory's Dog Act isn't being enforced.

Canada is the second-least corruption-prone country in the world, with only Ireland having a lower risk of bribery, according to a new index measuring business corruption.

The study comes as business groups across the country pressure the federal government into rescinding strict new rules that would ban companies convicted of bribery and other corrupt acts from winning government contracts.

The first edition of the TRACE Matrix, developed by the antibribery non-profit TRACE International and the RAND Corporation, names Nigeria as the country with the highest risk of bribery.

It scored 97 out of 100; Canada scored 22, with Ireland coming in at 20 (the higher the score, the higher the risk of bribery).

Joyceville Contraband Package Contained 1,551 Grams Of Marijuana A package valued at $225,000 containing marijuana, tobacco, and meth was found at Kingston’s Joyceville Institution, according to news release.

Correctional Service Canada (CSC) says a package containing 1,551 grams of marijuana; 2,989 grams of tobacco; 5.19 grams of meth and ecstasy; 10 packs of rolling papers; 100 packs of matches; 100 packs of cigar paper; 51 bales of tobacco; and 20 syringes was found on prison property.

The Joint Forces Penitentiary Squad have launched an investigation into the drug and paraphernalia seizure.

It is the latest incident in a series of drug-related contraband busts at Joyceville.

In September, a prison visitor and two inmates were busted for attempting to sneak in 259.41 grams of marijuana – a quantity valued at $25,941.00.

“We're living in a very special environment,” says Dr. Tom Pisz. “But it’s still Canada. We should consider it our moral obligation to pass the message of how to treat our animals.”

Robi, a Rottweiler mix, was found running loose in Behchoko.

He recently had surgery to clean out a wound that was caused by a collar pressed into his skin.

It's a simple adjustment to loosen the strap, but not all dogs have an owner.

“We suspect that he had been an owned dog at one point, and then got loose, and has been roaming since,” says Dana Martin, the vice president of the N.W.T. SPCA. “And of course the collar wasn't adjusted.”

Someone removed Robi's collar before bringing him to the SPCA, but the damage had been done.

“The air doesn't get underneath so the bacteria and stuff kinda builds up and the hair falls out and then if he grows, it becomes really tight,” Martin says. “Then the skin doesn't have a chance to breathe and it becomes a wound.”

A brown and white puppy named Courage had similar wounds when he came to the animal hospital two weeks ago from Ulukhaktok.

A man had called the RCMP to his house to have the dog put down.

The officers found two yellow ropes around the dog's neck were so tight, the skin had grown over. They flew the dog to Yellowknife instead for treatment.

“We've seen it too often,” Dr. Pisz says. “Even one a year is too often, but recently we've had three of them in the last

three months.”

Pisz says more needs to be done to enforce territorial laws.

"The bigger problem is the lack of education around taking care of animals."

Pisz says he’s grateful to people who have brought the animals in for treatment instead of shooting them.

One of the RCMP officers in Ulukhaktok has adopted Courage.

Prince Albert police giving tickets for doing good Prince Albert youth may start seeking out police officers in hopes of getting caught.

Prince Albert police are handing out tickets for those caught doing good.

Children can get a free hamburger for following the rules, such as crossing the street safely or picking up litter.

"Once they realize they are receiving a positive ticket for doing something good. It seems then that they calm right down and then they are appreciative," said Const. Rob Lindsay with the Prince Albert police service.

Lindsay said he is hoping it will change how youth perceive the police.

"Hopefully it will give them a chance to come be more approachable to us, communicate with us and talk to us as well down the road," he said.

Those who go above and beyond can even be entered into a draw to win free tickets to the movies or a P.A. Raiders WHL game.

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continued from page 13 working in a majority African-American community. The Justice Department is conducting a parallel inquiry into the shooting Aug. 9 and a broader review into Ferguson law enforcement operations and whether the department has engaged in a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing.

This year, a USA TODAY analysis of the FBI's justifiable homicide database during a seven-year period ending in 2012 found an average of 96 incidents each year in which a white officer killed a black person.

The new 2013 total of justifiable killings represents the third

He said most major agencies have strongly supported close tracking of deadly force incidents. But he said the majority of police agencies in the country are small -- with fewer than 50 officers -- and their reporting practices involving such cases are not always uniform.

Since 2009, according to municipal records, Albuquerque officers have been involved in nearly 50 shootings, with at least 32 resulting in death, including several mentally ill suspects.

"Unfortunately, I think there has to be a government mandate for this kind of reporting that ties the responsibility to the communities' eligibility to receive federal funds.'' Alpert said. "It has to happen, because it has gotten to be an embarrassment.'' consecutive increase in the annual toll. Criminal justice analysts said the inherent limitations of the database — the killings are selfreported by law enforcement, and not all police agencies participate in the annual counts — continue to frustrate efforts to identify the universe of lethal force incidents involving police.

University of Nebraska criminologist Samuel Walker said the incomplete nature of the data renders the recent spike in such deaths even more difficult to explain.

"It could be as simple as more departments are reporting,'' Walker said.

The Nebraska criminologist has been among the most vocal advocates calling for an all-inclusive national database to closely track deadly force incidents involving police.

"It is irresponsible that we don't have a complete set of numbers,'' Walker said. "Whether the numbers are up, down or stable, this (national database) needs to be done. ... This is a scandal.''

University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert, who has long studied police use of deadly force, said the latest number of justifiable homicides, while increasing, still likely represents a significant under-counting.

Number of US Prison Inmates Serving Life Sentences Hits New Record A report released by the Sentencing Project, a Washington DC– based nonprofit criminal justice advocacy group, revealed that the number of prisoners serving life sentences in the US state and federal prisons reached a new record of close to 160,000. Of these, 49,000 are serving life without possibility of parole, an increase of 22.2 percent since 2008. The study’s findings place in striking context the figures promoted by the federal government, which indicate a reduction in the overall number of prisoners in federal and state facilities, from 1.62 million to 1.57 million between 2009 and 2013.

At least seven U.S. police departments have been the subjects of federal reviews in the wake of fatal police shootings since 2010.

In addition to Ferguson, one of the broadest examinations has been occurring in Albuquerque where the Justice Department last month announced an agreement that requires the city's troubled police agency to transform its lethal force policy.

Ashley Nellis, senior research analyst with the Sentencing Project, argued that the rise in prisoners serving life sentences has to do with political posturing over “tough on crime” measures.

“Unfortunately, lifers are typically excluded from most sentencing reform conversations because there’s this sense that it’s not going to sell, politically or with the public,” Nellis said. “Legislators are saying, ‘We have to throw somebody under the bus.’”

California is the leader in lifers, with one-quarter of the country’s life-sentenced population (40,362), followed by Florida (12,549) and New York (10,245), Texas (9,031), Georgia (7,938), Ohio (6,075), Michigan (5,137), Pennsylvania (5,104), and Louisiana (4,657).

There are currently 3,281 prisoners in the US serving a life sentence—with no chance of parole—for minor, nonviolent crimes, according to a November 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Louisiana, one of nine states where inmates currently serve life sentences for nonviolent crimes, has the nation’s strictest three-strike law, which states that after three offenses

page 19 the guilty person is imprisoned for life without parole.

As Ed Pilkington reported in the Guardian, the ACLU study documented “thousands of lives ruined and families destroyed” by this practice. Among those is Timothy Jackson, now fifty-three, who in 1996 was caught stealing a jacket from a New Orleans department store. “It has been very hard for me,” Jackson wrote the ACLU. “I know that for my crime I had to do some time, but a life sentence for a jacket valued at $159.”

The ACLU study reported that keeping these prisoners locked up for life costs taxpayers around $1.8 billion annually. The study stated that the US is “virtually alone in its willingness to sentence non-violent offenders to die behind bars.” Life without parole for nonviolent sentences has been ruled a violation of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights.

National Database of Police Killings Aims for Accountability Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation tracks how many police officers die in the line of duty, it keeps no such record for how many civilians are killed by police each year. Recognizing a significant gap in the public records of civilian deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers, D. Brian Burghart, the editor of the Reno News & Review and a journalism instructor at University of Nevada, decided to create a public database. “In 2014, how could we not know how many people our government kills on our streets every year?” And he launched Fatal Encounters, a website that, as Bethania Palma Markus reported for Truthout, “tracks and tallies when cops take lives” and “invites the public to help build the database.” Burghart has compiled a list of police agencies across the country to facilitate public record requests about fatal incidents.

may be adversely affected.

Researcher: Jiakai Lin, Indian River State College

Agribusiness Giants Attempt to Silence and Discredit Scientists Whose Research Reveals Herbicides’ Health Threats Independent journalists, including E. Ann Clark, James Corbett, Rachel Aviv, and Democracy Now!, document how Big Agriculture giants Monsanto and Syngenta have attempted to silence the findings and destroy the reputations of scientists whose research shows that the companies’ herbicides pose serious threats to human health.

Monsanto is not alone in trying to silence its critics. As Rachel Aviv of the New Yorker and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reported, after fifteen years of research, Tyrone Hayes, University of California–Berkeley professor of integrative biology, determined that Syngenta’s herbicide atrazine causes sexual abnormalities in frogs and could cause the same problems for humans. The company now known as Syngenta hired Hayes to research atrazine in 1997. But when his findings ran contrary to their interests, they refused to allow him to publish and instead worked to discredit him. He left Syngenta in 2001, but continued to research the harmful effects of atrazine on the endocrine system.

In September 2012, Dr. Gilles-Éric Séralini published research findings in the peer-reviewed Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology. These findings showed the toxic impact of Monsanto’s herbicide and genetically modified corn—including adverse health effects on rats. However, after publication, the journal made the unprecedented decision to retract the study.

Court documents from a class action lawsuit against Syngenta show how the company sought to smear Hayes’s reputation and to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from banning the profitable chemical, which is already banned by the European Union. The company’s public relations team drafted a list of four goals. Reporter Rachel Aviv wrote, “The first was ‘discredit Hayes.’ In a spiral-bound notebook, Syngenta’s communications manager, Sherry Ford, who referred to Hayes by his initials, wrote that the company could ‘prevent citing of TH data by revealing him as noncredible.’ He was a frequent topic of conversation at

US Government Medicates Citizens without Consent This story examines the ethical issues of water fluoridation.

Fluoridation in the United State began in the early 1945. Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first city to implement community water fluoridation. By 2008, more than 72 percent of the U.S water supplies have been fluoridated (CDC, 2010). While claims have been made that fluoride added into water can be beneficial to prevent and even reverse tooth decay, more studies have shown it’s causing more harm than good. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies fluoride as a drug when used to prevent or mitigate disease. Adding fluoride to water for the sole purpose of preventing tooth decay is a form of medical treatment.

This raises ethical questions of fluoridation being forced upon the population without the people’s consent and without due regard for the unique medical circumstances of those who

Neither the journal’s retraction of Séralini’s research nor its implications were covered by corporate media, reflecting a trend in which science critical of GMOs is sidelined and dismissed by the special interests promoting them.

Journal editor Dr. A. Wallace Hayes admitted that none of the established criteria for retracting a study applied to the Séralini paper.

However, as Clark and Corbett reported, a new connection between the journal and Monsanto might account for the retraction, as well as another retraction of a similar study from Brazil that demonstrated the toxic effects on mice of an insecticide that forms the basis of the Bt GMO crops. After these papers were published, the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology created a new position: the associate editor for biotechnology. The journal then selected Richard E. Goodman, from the University of Nebraska, to fill the position and preside over such retractions. As it turns out, Goodman worked in regulatory sciences for Monsanto from 1997 to 2004.

company meetings. Syngenta looked for ways to ‘exploit Hayes’ faults/problems.’ ‘If TH involved in scandal, enviros will drop him,’ Ford wrote.”

Despite its documented threats to environmental health and public health, atrazine remains on the market.

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continued from page 10 "It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of little Hugo this morning....RIP little angel," read a Twitter statement from the team.

Dunkirk goaltender Niels-Erik Ravn sent out his condolences via Twitter: Today, the world lost Hugo, a hockey player from Dunkerque.

He was such a great kid. He got hit by a puck last night at our game.

I would appreciate a lot if you could take a minute of your day to send your thoughts and prayers to him and his family. Thanks #RIPHugo "It's hard. Everyone knows each other, everyone knows the kid," said Patrice Vergriete, Mayor of Dunkirk.

According to Agency France Press (AFP), an investigation has been launched, with the lead magistrate stating that there is no protective plexigrass screens on the side of the Patinoire Michel Raffoux Arena rink. Vermeersch was reportedly sitting in an area that wasn't protected from flying pucks.

The game was suspended.

Fans gathered outside the arena on Sunday to lay flowers and pay their respects to little Hugo

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warns world 'on brink of new Cold War' BERLIN - Tensions between the major powers have pushed the world closer to a new Cold War, former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Saturday.

The 83-year-old accused the West, particularly the United States, of giving in to "triumphalism" after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the communist bloc a quarter century ago. The result, he said, could partly be seen in the inability of global powers to prevent or resolve conflicts in Yugoslavia, the Middle East and most recently Ukraine. (go to page 25)

N Seeing dots means trouble

Pat Sedgwick awoke earlier than usual on an August morning last summer to a rolling curtain of black dots blocking the vision of her right eye.

A 79-year-old from Toronto, Sedgwick had been anticipating a rare day of complete solitude in her P.E.I. cottage. But that’s not the way the day unfolded.

“It was frightening,” she recalls.

“I couldn’t identify what I was seeing. I was just seeing a very mixed-up kaleidoscope. And there were round little circles and they’d go up and down and then they’d go away.”

Sedgwick called her daughter, who assured her it was merely a symptom of aging, or a result of the cataract surgery Sedgwick underwent three years earlier. Sedgwick didn’t mention the little intermittent dots.

But as a precaution, her neighbour drove her to the hospital, where she was informed her retina had detached. It’s an ailment that, if not treated in time, can result in complete blindness in the affected eye.

Dr. Netan Choudhry, director of vitreoretinal surgery at Toronto’s Herzig Eye Institute, says retinal detachment affects less than one per cent of people.

That figure rises to three per cent if people live to be 85 or older, according to a 2008 British Medical Journal study.

The condition is more common in those with severe shortsightedness, people who have had cataracts removed or those who are diabetic, as Sedgwick is.

Despite the low prevalence, Choudhry says a detached retina remains a “complicated condition” with only one right course of action: seek immediate medical attention, ideally from an eye specialist.

“Retinal detachment is an emergency, and should you delay, it could result in a poorer prognosis in the treatment. … Invariably, time is often of the essence,” he says.

The retina is a layer at the back of the eyeball which contains photoreceptor cells. They receive light and convert it into signals that the brain processes as vision.

“The retina functions like a camera film, and basically it’s the reason we’re able to have sight,” Choudhry explains.

When it detaches — through aging, trauma or a pre-existing retinal condition — the gel that sits in front of the retina breaks down and separates, pulling on the retina and eventually peeling it away. Once it does, the gel can get underneath the retina and cause a complete separation of the retina from the back of the eye.

When that happens, people can suffer sudden loss of vision, the appearance of flashing lights, thunderbolts or floaters — tiny spots in vision, which are often blood cells that have dispersed in the eye — or a big dark shape blocking part of the vision from the affected eye.

Choudhry says there is almost never pain associated with the detachment, unless it occurs as a result of a trauma.

Reattaching a retina now carries a success rate of 80 to 95 per cent, depending on the level of scarring and how long it’s been detached, Choudhry says.

There are many operations available to try to reattach it, most commonly the injection of gas or silicone to absorb the gel that caused the separation.

But all the procedures aim to do the same thing, which is to seal the tear, and they need to happen quickly, before the macula detaches as well.

The macula, located in the middle of the retina, is the part responsible for central and high-quality vision. Once it detaches, the chance of restoring vision is much lower.

Even if the macula remains attached, surgery must happen within 72 hours. That’s because those photoreceptor cells that convert light into signals for the brain lose access to oxygen when the retina detaches, and they start to die.

While there is ongoing research aimed at finding ways to protect these cells in the event of retinal detachment, the medicine is not there yet, Choudhry says.

“If the macula is attached, then you have a huge potential for recovery, because that central portion of vision is still good, so you better get going quickly,” says Dr. Guillermo Rocha, an ophthalmologist in Brandon, Man. Prevention is the only true tool against retinal detachment, with at least annual visits to your eye doctor. Once it happens, though, there are no home remedies or steps you can take to mitigate the damage. You need to get medical care.

Rocha, the lone full-time ophthalmologist in the Prairie Mountain Health Region, knows how difficult it can be to obtain that necessary immediate treatment. He’s had patients who have been unwilling to make trips in for care because of distance or bad weather.

“Honestly, I don’t accept that,” says Rocha. “I don’t care if you have to take a bus, but you have to do it if you want to preserve your vision.”

He says that for retinal detachments among rural citizens, awareness of the urgency of the situation — and who to see about it — is even more crucial.

“Some might go to emergency, they wait for four hours, and already they’ve lost time just waiting,” says Rocha.

“The sequence of events should be to see an ophthalmologist immediately.”

The good news, says Rocha, is that the field has advanced significantly, even over the two decades he’s been practising.

Once thought impossible to repair, laser technologies and developments in treatments have given surgeons and ophthalmologists more tools to work with.

“Retina surgery is a bit like neurosurgery, in the sense that I remember when I first went into medical school, they would say, once they opened the skull, that’s it for the brain, there’s no success,” he says. “Slowly, obviously, we’ve seen that’s not the case.

It’s the same with retinas.”

And in the more remote areas of northern Alberta and Manitoba, telemedicine has become part of the process. Rocha says using video conferencing to diagnose conditions and identify whether or not a person needs to be flown to an urban centre for care cuts down on critical travel time.

For her part, Sedgwick was unable to get the surgery she required in P.E.I., and had to be driven to Halifax, where she had one procedure. She had a second cleanup surgery after her return home to Toronto.

Her recovery has been steady, and she now says her vision is much improved. She acknowledges that she’s fortunate, given her circumstances, but knows she’s at higher risk of having a repeat episode, especially in the other eye.

“They can’t promise (it won’t happen again),” she says.

But she added, laughing, “I can promise one thing — if I see a black dot I’m going to go immediately. I’m not fooling around anymore.”

page 25 "The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some are even saying that it's already begun," Gorbachev said at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, close to the city's iconic Brandenburg Gate.

Gorbachev called for trust to be restored through dialogue with Moscow, and suggested the West should lift sanctions imposed against senior Russian officials over the country's support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. Failure to achieve security in Europe would make the continent irrelevant in world affairs, he said.

Gorbachev's comments echoed those of Roland Dumas, France's foreign minister at the time the Berlin Wall fell.

"Without freedom between nations, without respect of one nation to another, and without strong and brave disarmament policy, everything could start over again tomorrow," Dumas said. "Even everything we used to know, and what we called the Cold War."

Missing Malaysia Flight MH370 latest update: Plane to be declared lost, MAS processing compensation for families

Furious families of MH370 victims condemn Malaysia Airlines after report says the airline is preparing to officially declare the plane 'lost' – meaning the search will be scrapped Commercial director Hugh Dunleavy said authorities are working to set a date, likely by the end of the year, to formally announce the loss of the Boeing 777, which vanished off radars on March 8 with 239 people aboard.

An industry source said once the plane is declared lost, all search efforts will be stopped.

Six Important Facts You’re Not Being Told About Lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 There are some astonishing things you’re not being told about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the flight that simply vanished over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.

The mystery of the flight’s sudden and complete disappearance has even the world’s top air safety authorities baffled. “Air-safety and antiterror authorities on two continents appeared equally stumped about what direction the probe should take,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

It's nine months of searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, but with so many efforts, there's still no debris or remains of the plane found. According to reports, the flight will be officially declared lost so that families can already get their compensations.

The New Zealand Herald reported that both Malaysian and Australian governments are working on the compensation details for the families of the missing passengers. If the search operations do not find anything by the end of the year, the flight will be formally announced as lost.

Right now, the compensation details are being planned out, but the processing won't really progress until the flight is officially declared lost. So, that's something the families still have to wait for.

Malaysia Airlines is making sure that all families feel confident that they will get their money. Recently, the families are accusing MAS of avoiding paying the compensation to the family members.

MAS outright denies these allegations and affirms that families will indeed get full compensation amounts.

Hugh Dunleavy, MAS Airline Director said, "We will ensure we do compensate them for the loss of their loved ones through our insurers. We are trying to hurry (compensation) up as much as we can but some of these things are outside the scope of the airline itself."

"If they're not happy with the compensation then they seek legal advice and move ahead, then once they come in our people will assess them and respond," he added.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8. It departed from Kuala Lumpur and was headed to Beijing. It has 227 passengers and 14 crew members, all of whom are missing. It was believed that the Boeing 777 ended up in the Southern Indian Ocean.

However, all search operations have failed in finding any proof of wreckage to date.

“For now, it seems simply inexplicable,” said Paul Hayes, director of safety and insurance at Ascend Worldwide, a British advisory and aviation data firm.

While investigators are baffled, the mainstream media isn’t telling you the whole story, either. So I’ve assembled this collection of facts that should raise serious questions in the minds of anyone following this situation.

• Fact #1: All Boeing 777 commercial jets are equipped with black box recorders that can survive any on-board explosion No explosion from the plane itself can destroy the black box recorders. They are bomb-proof structures that hold digital recordings of cockpit conversations as well as detailed flight data and control surface data.

MANITOBA

• Fact #2: All black box recorders transmit locator signals for continued on page 26

page 26

continued from page 25 at least 30 days after falling into the ocean Yet the black box from this particular incident hasn’t been detected at all. That’s why investigators are having such trouble finding it. Normally, they only need to “home in” on the black box transmitter signal. But in this case, the absence of a signal means the black box itself — an object designed to survive powerful explosions — has either vanished, malfunctioned or been obliterated by some powerful force beyond the worst fears of aircraft design engineers.

• Fact #3: Many parts of destroyed aircraft are naturally bouyant and will float in water In past cases of aircraft destroyed over the ocean or crashing into the ocean, debris has always been spotted floating on the surface of the water. That’s because — as you may recall from the safety briefing you’ve learned to ignore — “your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device.”

Yes, seat cushions float. So do many other non-metallic aircraft parts. If Flight 370 was brought down by an explosion of some sort, there would be massive debris floating on the ocean, and that debris would not be difficult to spot. The fact that it has not yet been spotted only adds to the mystery of how Flight 370 appears to have literally vanished from the face of the Earth.

• Fact #6: If Flight 370 was hijacked, it would not have vanished from radar Hijacking an airplane does not cause it to simply vanish from radar. Even if transponders are disabled on the aircraft, ground radar can still readily track the location of the aircraft using so-called “passive” radar (classic ground-based radar systems that emit a signal and monitor its reflection).

Thus, the theory that the flight was hijacked makes no sense whatsoever. When planes are hijacked, they do not magically vanish from radar.

A glass of wine a day CAN protect against heart disease - but only if you have a specific gene carried by just 15% of the population

• Fact #5: The location of the aircraft when it vanished is not a mystery Air traffic controllers have full details of almost exactly where the aircraft was at the moment it vanished. They know the location, elevation and airspeed — three pieces of information which can readily be used to estimate the likely location of debris.

Remember: air safety investigators are not stupid people.

They’ve seen mid-air explosions before, and they know how debris falls. There is already a substantial data set of airline explosions and crashes from which investigators can make well-educated guesses about where debris should be found. And yet, even armed with all this experience and information, they remain totally baffled on what happened to Flight 370.

Co-author Professor Lauren Lissner added: 'Moderate drinking alone does not have a strong protective effect. Nor does this particular genotype.

'But the combination of the two appears to significantly reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.'

The gene produces the protein CETP which affects the 'good' HDL cholesterol that helps remove blood fats from the body that lead to heart disease.

A theory is that alcohol boosts this form of cholesterol. Another is alcohol may contain healthy, protective antioxidants.

The researchers believe one or both hypotheses may prove correct, but the mechanisms by which HDL cholesterol or antioxidants act remain unknown.

Professor Thelle added: 'Our study represents a step in the right direction, but a lot more research is needed.

'Assuming we are able to describe these mechanisms, it may be a simple matter one day to perform genetic testing and determine whether someone belongs to the lucky 15 per cent.

'That would be useful to know when offering advice on healthy alcohol consumption. But the most important thing is to identify new means of using the body's resources to prevent coronary heart disease.'

Banks face billions in forex penalties

• Fact #4: If a missile destroyed Flight 370, the missile would have left a radar signature One theory currently circulating on the ‘net is that a missile brought down the airliner, somehow blasting the aircraft and all its contents to “smithereens” — which means very tiny pieces of matter that are undetectable as debris.

The problem with this theory is that there exists no known ground-to-air or air-to-air missile with such a capability. All known missiles generate tremendous debris when they explode on target.

Both the missile and the debris produce very large radar signatures which would be easily visible to both military vessels and air traffic authorities.

sweeping because moderate drinking is healthy just for a minority.

U.S. and British regulators are expected to announce billions of dollars in civil penalties for several major domestic and foreign banks suspected of manipulating the $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign exchange currency-trading market.

The benefits and dangers of moderate drinking have been hotly debated.

Now scientists have found a daily glass of wine can be good for you - but only if you have the right genes.

Small quantities of alcohol protect against heart disease, but only for those who have a particular variant of a gene known as CETP TaqIB, researchers found.

Unfortunately just three in 20 people carry the gene.

Researchers said their finding challenges claims that moderate alcohol consumption - seven drinks a week for women and fourteen for men - has widespread health benefits.

It backs earlier studies linking this gene mutation with the health benefits of alcohol.

Professor Dag Thelle, of the University of Gothenburg, said: 'In other words, moderate drinking has a protective effect among only 15 per cent of the general population.'

The study compared the drinking habits of 618 Swedish heart patients and 3,000 healthy controls with all the volunteers also undergoing testing for the particular CETP genotype.

Professor Thelle and colleagues said what they found suggests the advice frequently given about the benefits of alcohol is far too

U.S. banks JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Citigroup (C), London-based Barclays (BCS) and HSBC (HSBC), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Swiss banking giant UBS (UBS) are expected to agree to fines totaling as much as 1.5 billion pounds, or nearly $2.4 billion, from Britain's Financial Conduct Authority, several media organizations reported.

The announcements would conclude the first phase of probes that began in mid-2013 over the largely unregulated foreign cur-

continued on page 28

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Ontario allows investigation of immigration jails, but deaths and indeďŹ nite imprisonment continues

page 28

continued from page 26 rency market. Investigators have been examining evidence that traders at several major banks manipulated rates for some of the 160 world currencies that have been calculated and distributed by a joint venture of the WM Co. and Thomson Reuters.

FCA Chief Executive Martin Wheatley told a parliamentary committee hearing in February that evidence of foreign exchange wrongdoing was "every bit as bad" as findings that bank traders had manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, the international benchmark used to set rates on trillions of dollars in loans, mortgages, credit cards and some derivatives.

Several dozen traders have either been placed on leave or terminated during the investigations, according to numerous media reports.

Other foreign-exchange investigations by additional enforcement agencies and regulators remain pending. JPMorgan Chase confirmed in a Nov. 3 quarterly filing that the New York-based bank was in talks with the U.S. Department of Justice over a criminal investigation of its foreign exchange business.

The probes focus on JPMorgan's foreign exchange spot trading, as well as its internal controls and supervision of the trading, the bank said.

The New York State Department of Financial Services is conducting a foreign exchange probe.

Several U.S. banks signaled the likelihood of costly settlements in a recent announcements to shareholders.

Bank of America (BAC) recorded a $400 million non-deductible charge on Nov. 6. The nation's second-largest bank by assets also adjusted its third-quarter financial results to a net loss of $232 million, equivalent to a 4-cent loss on a per-share basis.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank said the moves came in response to "advanced discussions with certain U.S. banking regulatory agencies to resolve matters related to its foreign exchange business."

Similarly, Citigroup surprised investors on Oct. 30 by cutting the New York-based bank's third-quarter earnings by $600 million to help fund an increased allowance for legal expenses believed linked to the foreign currency investigations.

Swedish poker player wins $10 million in World Series competition in Las Vegas A Swedish man who got his start playing online poker after late restaurant nights while he trained to be a chef is $10 million richer after winning the top World Series of Poker main event prize. Martin Jacobson, 27, had three tens to beat Felix Stephensen of Norway and his pair of nines.

This wasn't his first try at the big win. He traveled to Las Vegas, days after he turned 21, to enter the main event. But he busted out after a few hands, his mother said. "I think that was good for him," she said in the lobby of the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio while

her son amassed more chips on stage inside. He learned it wasn't going to be an easy task, she said.

"There's no such thing as a 'perfect tournament,' but this was close to perfect, maybe," Jacobson said after the confetti blasts signaled his win had been cemented and friends and family ran to embrace him.

6,700 people paid the $10,000 entry fee to try their luck over the summer to be finalists in the Texas Hold 'em main event.

Toronto -- End Immigration Detention Network (EIDN), Canada's leading detention watch group, welcomes the decision to allow Red Cross access to Ontario's provincial prisons for the first time since 2008. However, the lack of any real oversight of prison conditions of immigration detainees adds to the dire need to end maximum-security imprisonment of immigrants without trial or charges.

Heroic young boy runs through sniper ďŹ re in Syria, pretends to get shot, then rescues terrriďŹ ed girl as bullets hit the ground around them A young Syrian boy has been hailed a hero after a video showing him running through sniper fire to save a girl.

As he runs shots are fired at him and he appears to fake being shot in the chest and falling over.

A seconds later he gets up and disappears behind the car before emerging hand in hand with the terrified girl who has been hiding from fire.

He appears to struggle to convince her to run to safety, but the girl eventually runs with him as more shots are fired.

A GlobalNews report documented 11 deaths in immigration detention custody since 2000.

Since September 2013, over 100 migrants held in a maximum-security prison in Lindsay, ON have been on a protest strike against endless detentions, sham judicial review processes and imprisonment in maximum-security jails.

EIDN is coordinating the strike, and in June 2014 released an expose on immigration detention showing signs of political interference in detention release processes. In July 2014, the United Nations condemned Canadian immigration detention practices in response to an application EIDN filed.

"Endless, cruel and illegal imprisonment is part of Stephen Harper's lock 'em up agenda, but why are provincial governments, particularly Ontario where most detainees are jailed, co-operating with this injustice? Wynne and other Premiers need to stop upholding Harpers' anti-immigrant platform," says Tings Chak, an organizer with EIDN. Chak adds, "Minister Yasir Naqvi signed an agreement on October 20th, but we don't know when the probe will actually take place. The Red Cross must immediately be given access to all prisons, and their findings should be made public as soon as possible. The Red Cross report will show what we already know about the dismal conditions, maximum security restrictions, and lack of access to legal rights in provincial jails. We know that prisons should never be used to enforce immigration laws."

Last year, 7,373 immigration detainees spent 183,928 days in prison, equivalent to about 504 years according to government data obtained by EIDN. In 2012, the year of the Red Cross report, of the 8,973 immigration detainees in Canada, 63 per cent were in Ontario. A third of all detainees are held in provincial prisons, and designated immigration holding centres only exist in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia.

"Immigration detention is a violent, brutal system that separates families, jails children and has

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drastic effects on mental health. As a result, Jan Szamko and Lucia Vega Jimenez have died in immigration detention and countless others are traumatized," says Mina Ramos from EIDN. "The Feds and Provinces are covering up this inhumane treatment by shutting out oversight."

Ramos insists that a wholesale shift is needed, "Immigration detainees in Canada can be jailed indefinitely without trial or charge. The entire judicial review process that is meant to uphold the integrity of immigration detention is broken, a fact that has been confirmed by the UN. This system does not need tweaking in the form of GPS units or more minimum security jails, it needs a total transformation that prioritizes community support and immigration status regularization."

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page 31

Jennifer HuculakKimmel shouldn't pay $1M US bill for birth in Hawaii hospital A Saskatchewan mother should not pay the nearly $1-million US hospital bill she received

after giving birth in Hawaii, says a lawyer experienced in such cases.

Last year, Jennifer Huculak-Kimmel gave birth nine weeks early while on holiday in Hawaii. Her premature daughter spent two months in intensive care.

The family had purchased travel insurance, but were turned down by Blue Cross, which cited a "pre-existing condition."

The insurer said a bladder infection two months before the pregnancy meant HuculakKimmel was ineligible to receive coverage.

However, when they bought the insurance, the

family says they were never asked about any preexisting conditions by the insurance agent.

"We disclosed everything that was asked of us there on that form," husband Darren Kimmel said.

"The lady asked the questions, we answered them, and that's the best we could do. We answered them honestly. The main question we were asked was, 'Are you 32 weeks pregnant?' And of course, at the time, she was only 24 weeks pregnant."

Scott Stanley, a Vancouver-based lawyer who works on similar cases said the family should not pay the bill.

"What I typically counsel people to do is to not

pay the bills, depending on their circumstances, because I have yet to see a big health authority come into Canada to try and enforce and collect," said Scott Stanley, a Vancouver-based lawyer who works on similar cases. "And of course, they'd have to do that."

He said the tragedy is that there's probably nothing she could have done differently to avoid the situation.

"I see cases like this all the time — not necessarily involving pregnancies — where people have gone to the United States ... and they've had a minor medical condition, but that's enough to disqualify them."

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Stanley said the Canadian insurance industry needs to be reformed to better help customers needing coverage and care. Kimmel wants to see the same thing.

"Maybe there should be a better way to purchase travel insurance," he said. "Maybe Blue Cross should change their policies on how they sell them and make their salesmen more accountable for what they do."

During the couple's hospital stay, Blue Cross had contacted them, saying their insurance had run out after their baby was born. Kimmel said it didn't make much sense to extend the insurance when they had already been refused by the company.

The family tried to be medevaced back to Saskatchewan as soon as they heard that their claim had been denied, but were not successful. One company wouldn't take the family, the other company said it required a full surgical team to travel with the mother on the plane.

Next steps

The family says it still isn't sure what it's going to do next. Collection agencies started contacting the family in July, but the family has so far rebuffed their calls.

"We made no bones about it. We weren't paying them a dime," he said.

"Those calls kind of quit, but I'm assuming they're going to start again. We weren't in any position to make any deals with them."

The family has also considered declaring bankruptcy, although says they aren't at that stage yet.

People on social media have already started talking about online fundraising, but the family says it doesn't want to go down that road.

"We don't want to take other people's money," he said. "People work hard for their money, and I don't feel they should be giving us money.

page 32

Diet or die: Obese woman, 27, loses 102kg and drops ten dress sizes after doctors warned she wouldn't live to celebrate her 30th birthday A young woman who was told she might not see her 30th birthday if she didn't slim down has lost an incredible 205lb – nearly two thirds of her body weight – and dropped 10 dress sizes.

At just 27 Bríanán McEnteggart weighed 350lb and wore a dress

out living your life, but I didn't want to be seen by anyone so I'd just stay home and read a book or watch television.'

Bríanán used to use junk food as a comfort, becoming increasingly isolated due to her size She tried to shed the weight by attending slimming clubs and even visiting a hospital dietician: 'I felt the diets I followed

started enjoying more regular meals.

Gone were the super-size bags of crisps and jumbo bars of chocolate and she took over the cooking at home, whipping up healthy recipes like

couldn't fit them into my life because they didn't let me have any treats.

turkey stir-fry for her parents, sister and nephew.

'My experience at the dieticians was even worse, they said their scales couldn't weigh me and I had to sit in something called 'the obesity chair' – it was mortifying. It's experiences like that that crush your self-confidence bit by bit.'

As Bríanán's weight increased she began to worry about her health as heart problems run in her family.

In October 2011 she visited her doctor and received the grim diag-

she didn't tackle her weight she could be less than 18 months away from

nosis. Just days later, she was dealt another blow when the bath at her

a heart attack.

family home cracked beneath her heavy weight.

Now, after losing 205lb, Bríanán has started a new job she loves, has

She says: 'Hearing something like that from the doctor scares the living

just set up home with her boyfriend and been named Slimming World

daylights out of you. A few days later I was taking a shower as usual when

Woman of the Year 2014.

I heard a noise and realised the bath had cracked. I couldn't believe it.

Bríanán, now 31, says she feels like she's entering a new chapter in

'I didn't want to have to come out and tell my parents I'd broken the

her life: 'When I look back at old photos of myself I can see that even

bath, I wanted that bath to swallow me up. Both of these things were

'I was a very unhappy girl – I would walk everywhere with my head

She began following Slimming World's Extra Easy eating plan and

were always too restrictive for me. I was hungry a lot of the time and I

size 34. It was at a routine health check that her GP warned her that if

though my mouth is smiling my eyes aren't smiling.

'I think I get as excited when other members lose weight as when I do, it's amazing to think we're all helping each other as well as ourselves.'

wake-up calls and I knew I really had to do something. Within days I was at my first Slimming World group.'

She lost 11lb in her first week and 47lb in just three months.

As she slimmed down Bríanán, who suffered from painful knees and legs as a result of her size, began walking more.

She says: 'Before I would struggle to walk even 500m so I couldn't do too much to start with. I began by walking between one lamppost and another and building up slowly. Now I can walk three miles a day and I'm hoping to take up Zumba and start shaking my hips a bit.'

Bríanán's recently reached her target weight, dropping from 350lb to 126lb, and was named Slimming World Woman of the Year 2014 at a ceremony in Birmingham on Saturday November 8.

What she's lost in weight, she's gained in confidence; she successfully applied for a job with an online training company, discovered a love of shopping and has swapped staying in for nights out on the dance floor with friends.

It was on a night out in summer 2013 that she met fellow Slimming World member Keith Lynch, who has lost 70lb himself, and the pair soon

down looking at the ground and I hated looking in the mirror. Now when

Bríanán had heard about Slimming World from a friend, Mary Mur-

I smile my whole face smiles, and I walk everywhere with my head held

phy, and joined her at the local Dundalk Slimming World group, run b

They have recently moved in together and are planning a future.

high. I feel like I've got a second chance at life and I'm looking forward

Consultant Fiona Pepper.

Bríanán says: 'I honestly believe that if it wasn't for my Slimming

to everything the future holds.'

Bríanán says: 'I felt sick and was absolutely petrified because I felt I

became a couple.

World group I wouldn't be alive today, I would be six-foot under and my

Bríanán, from Dundalk in Ireland, wore a dress size 20 at just 15 and

had such a long journey ahead of me. I didn't need to worry though –

had to have her clothes specially made. As she got older she avoided so-

Fiona came running over to offer me a cup of tea and everyone was so

'My doctor is over the moon and so am I.

cial situations and used food as an emotional comfort.

friendly.

'I've always loved reading but now instead of burying myself in a

She says: 'Like most big kids I was picked on at school, I put up my

'Now I sail into the group, they're like my second family and I tell

defences so no one would ever know they'd hurt my feelings but when I

people that there's no reason to ever feel scared because everyone – no

got home I'd cry. Not much changed as I got older. At 27 you should be

matter how much weight they've got to lose – is there for the same reason.

parents would be visiting my grave.

book all the time, I feel like I'm finally starring in my own fairy tale.

These past three years have been the best years of my life and I can't wait for everything that's still to come.'

page 33 Earlier this year, my 5S was stolen because I placed it on a bench while

just walking with a pancaked brick in the front pocket of your tight

I was skating. Stupid me, I know. This time, though, in my second phone

jeans is less than ideal. Our reviews coordinator William Savona keeps

theft, my iPhone 6 Plus got taken right out of my back pocket. Unlike my

his iPhone in his back pocket, and after reading Dan’s piece and discov-

5S, my 6 Plus has the Find My iPhone app set up properly. Here’s my story.

ering that he too keeps it in there, I gave the back pocket a chance. That

It was like any other Saturday night out in Toronto, where bar-hop-

night in the bar, I had it in my back pocket. Someone must have taken it

ping and seeing shows is the norm.

I caught the thief who stole my phone

My brother immediately pulled out his 6 and called my phone. The

some beers with my brother. Shortly after arriving, I noticed that I didn’t

call went through, but no one answered. Thankfully, I had Find My

have my iPhone on me. I hastily patted myself down, feeling each of my

iPhone set up on my 6 Plus, so I grabbed the phone from him, went to

pants and jacket pockets, but there was no iPhone. I didn’t remember

the App Store, and downloaded the Find My iPhone app.

putting it down anywhere, and my mind began to race; I asked myself over and over, "Where is my iPhone?"

My heart was racing, and I was feeling terrible, angry, and overall confused. "Did I leave my phone somewhere?" "Did I even have my phone at this bar?" "I don’t remember putting it down for a second."

The panic settled in

You often hear about phones getting stolen, but I never thought it would happen to me.

without me noticing. The panic settled in.

I ended up at a local bar pretty late, around 3AM, and was having

Thoughts like these flooded my brain as the app was installing. I signed

Over the last week or so, I’ve been experimenting with keeping my 6 Plus in back pocket because it’s so damn huge. Skating or even

IS THIS YOUR WINDSHIELD?

into my iCloud account as soon as it was done. There it was, a flash of continued on page 35

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page 34

Why We 'Choke' Under Pressure ?

During the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, all eyes were on the

different for those with high versus low aversion to loss.”

U.S. Women's Gymnastics team, who won the team gold in gymnastics for America for the first time since 1996. But during the individual vault

High loss aversion actually helped participants when they faced in-

event, all eyes were on one U.S. gymnast in particular: McKayla

creasing losses -- they didn't choke, even when the loss was up to $100.

Maroney. The 16-year-old gymnast had chosen for the team in large part

Those with high loss aversion performed well when there were potential

because of her impressive skill in vaulting, and she was all but guaranteed

gains of $25 or $50, but when offered a $100 reward, they choked. The

to win gold in the event.

opposite happened to those with low loss aversion: their performance improved with both increasing prospective gains and increasing prospec-

But when the time came for Maroney to sprint down the runway and

tive losses, but they choked when threatened with a $100 loss.

spring off the apparatus, her gaze intent and her eyes on the prize, Maroney choked. She completely botched her performance, landing on

icant. In other words, it's all about how you frame the incentive: as a

the mat on her rear end. Needless to say, she lost the gold.

loss or as a gain.

While all of this was happening, MRI images were being taken of the participants' brains, focusing on the ventral striatum, that small area of the brain associated with reward processing and movement control.

“We can measure someone’s loss aversion and then frame the task in a way that might help them avoid choking under pressure,” Vikram

They saw that when both loss and gain incentives were presented, ventral striatum activity increased with the magnitude of the stakes.

Chib, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a statement.

More loss-averse participants had lower striatal activity (and thus

The researchers explain this phenomenon by looking at the ventral

performed worse) when playing for large potential wins, whereas more

striatum, a brain region that may connect incentive-driven motivation

winning-attached participants had less striatal activity (and worse per-

and the execution of physical performance. The activity of this brain re-

formance) when attempting to avoid losing.

gion suggests that an individual's attachment to winning is key to how they perform under pressure.

They proved it with this experiment: 26 adult participants, between the ages of 20 and 30, were tested on two consecutive days. They learned “It happens,” Maroney said afterwards. “It’s gymnastics, and you

a brief but difficult video game requiring precise hand control on the first

can’t be perfect. Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. I don’t blame it

day. On the second day, the participants were placed in an MRI machine.

on anything else. I just messed up.”

Before each two-second round of the game, they were told what the stakes for that round would be: Losing $100 in cash, gaining $100 or

Choking is a common, though agonizing, story for most professional

anything in between, based on how they performed. The amount of

athletes and performers. And it usually has nothing to do with a lack of

money that the subjects got to take home was determined at random

skill, but rather, the pressure of the immense gains or losses that are at stake.

based on their performance on one of the 300 rounds, which gave them

“Choking isn’t just poor performance," University of Chicago psychol-

an incentive to perform their best in each round.

ogist Sian Beilock, author of Choke, told Smithsonian. "It is worse perform-

"We have known from previous studies that the ventral striatum is

ance than you are capable of precisely because there is a lot on the line.”

responsible for representing information about incentives and motor per-

Moments of "just messing up" in high-pressure situations may seem

formance, but this study shows how it mediates the relationship between

random and uncontrollable, but scientists are beginning to demystify just

incentives and performance," Chib explained in an email to the Huffin-

why it is that we choke, and how we might be able to prevent such high-

gton Post. "We show that in the situations when people choke under pres-

stakes errors.

sure there is a break down in the connectivity between ventral striatum

It turns out that being too attached to winning may have been what

and the motor cortex (the are responsible for coordinating our move-

caused Maroney to choke, according to some new research from neuro-

ments). These breakdown in communication between these areas could

scientists Johns Hopkins University.

be causing individuals to choke under pressure."

Whether you choke under pressure might have more to do with your

So how can we apply this information to improve our own perform-

motivation: specifically, to what extent that you are driven by a desire to

ance? One way would be to use cognitive strategies to reframe high-

win or by a desire to avoid losing. If you're very loss-averse -- meaning

Separately, the participants were asked a series of theoretical ques-

stakes situations so as to help minimize your chances of poor

that you hate losing more than you love winning -- your chances of chok-

tions about what they would gamble and how much risk they'd take for

performance. So if you're someone who plays to win, try to avoid framing

ing will be lower. But for those who value the rush of winning over the

various outcomes, so that the researchers could determine their level of

the situation more in terms of what you could stand to lose.

pain of losing, the likelihood of choking is often higher.

loss aversion.

The Johns Hopkins study found that those who hated losing the most

“We found that the way we framed an incentive -- as a potential gain

"From this study, it seems that knowing an individuals’s loss aversion

choked when told that they stood to win the most, while those who cared

or loss -- had a profound effect on participants’ behavior as they per-

could be used to determine the best way to frame incentives in the work-

more about winning choked when they stood to lose something signif-

formed the skilled task,” Chib said in the statement. “But the effect was

place," Chib added.

page 35 continued from page 33 hope — my phone was somewhere in this bar.

When you track your iPhone using Find My iPhone, you are given three options: play a sound on the device, put the device in Lost Mode, or erase the device completely. You’re also shown a map with the device’s last known location, which seems to update every 30 seconds or so, as long as your phone is still on.

So there I was in the bar, holding my brother’s 6 with Find My iPhone open. I began hammering the Play Sound button, hoping I’d hear the ringing somewhere in the bar. I decided to walk around and look for it using the phone’s flashlight, but the bar was packed, the music was loud, and people were drunk.

I put my phone in Lost Mode soon after that, because frankly I didn’t have many other options. I wasn't even sure what Lost Mode did, but I went with it anyway. When you enable Lost Mode, you’re asked to enter a phone number you can be reached at (I entered my brother’s phone number), and you can enter a message. I wrote something along the lines of "Please please return

Police Officer Careers By enforcing the law and investigating crime, police officers play an important role in ensuring the safety and security of those in the community they serve. Police officers are role models and leaders in their communities by providing advice and guidance to people from all walks of life. Recognizing and understanding diversityis an essential part of policing.

As an RCMP officer you will: Graduate as a constable from Depot, the RCMP's Cadet Training facility, Serve three or more years in General Duty Policing, Work with and make an impact on your community, Acquire a wide range of law enforcement experience, Have options for over 150 career specializations, Work a varied schedule, including shift work, Have learning and development opportunities, and Have posting opportunities across the country.

Are you an Experienced Police Officer? Check out our Experienced Police Officer Program.

my phone!" Maybe someone had my phone, or maybe it had fallen on the ground somewhere. I also had no idea if the message I typed out was going to be sent as an iMessage, shown on the phone somewhere, etc. But again, there wasn't much else I could do.

Earlier that night, I had seen a show with my brother in Mississauga. He found a phone on the ground during the performance, and after the show ended, someone was hastily searching the ground for — guess what — that exact phone. My brother returned the device and his good deed was done for the day.

Fast forward, and we’re back in the bar. The thing about Find My iPhone, is that it’s not 100% accurate to the point where you can track it to the inch, or even foot — the icon kept shifting around every so often, and there was one point where I thought the thief had left the bar. I ran outside and continued smashing the Play Sound button, but the icon jumped back to the bar. I went back inside.

It was nearing closing time, 4AM, and I had been pressing the Play Sound button for 45 minutes straight. As people were exiting the bar, I began asking if they had seen a 6 Plus on the ground somewhere. I was very careful not to accuse anyone of stealing it, because that wouldn’t have been a smart idea.

I was about to give up. I went over to the manager (who knew my situation) to let him know that I hadn’t found it yet, and then it happened: the phone icon jumped across the street. The person left the bar. This was my chance.

What You Should Expect You should expect to work shifts, including nights, evenings, weekends and holidays as policing takes place 24 hours per day.

Whether you stay in general duty policing or pursue a specialization, there are many opportunities to ensure a career full of learning and challenge.

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This was my chance The manager apologized again and wished me luck. I got my brother and told him with my sternest face, "They’re across the street; let's go."

We exited the bar and ran across the street. As I was crossing, the blip moved again, appearing to be on a sidewalk corner a block away. My phone was near, but I didn’t see anyone at the exact location Find My iPhone was directing me to.

I then noticed group of people on the street — a man waving a handkerchief at a cab, perhaps trying to flag one down, and three younger guys. The man didn’t get in the cab and instead walked back onto the sidewalk. Something came over me. I cannot explain exactly what, but I knew this was the guy.

I said to my brother in Spanish, "I think that’s him," and we began to follow. The thief was up front, my brother was about 10-15 feet behind him, and I was 10-15 feet behind my brother.

I kept smashing the Play Sound button, and that’s when my brother heard the ring. "It’s him," my brother exclaimed.

How do you approach a thief?

In my 24 years I’ve never been in a fist fight and I’ve never confronted someone in a situation like this before. How do you approach a thief you know for a fact stole your $900 cellphone?

What do you say? What do you do?

This is the moment my instincts took over. I didn't feel fear. I felt confident. I had absolutely no intention of starting a fight. I just wanted my phone back.

continued on page 36

as:

This role provides you with an opportunity to experience a broad range of assignments such Responding to alarms; Foot patrol; Bicycle patrol; Traffic enforcement; Testifying in court; Collecting evidence at crime scenes; Apprehending criminals; and Plain clothes duties.

Postings

D Division Headquarters: 1091 Portage Avenue P.O. Box 5650 Winnipeg, MB R3C 3K2 Telephone: (204) 983-5420

As a police officer with the RCMP, you must be prepared to serve anywhere in Canada. As you gain valuable policing experience, different opportunities will become available to you.

Graduates do not normally get posted to their home province directly after training.

Midway through training, you will be asked to identify three provinces to which you would like to be posted.

You will also have an opportunity to identify your personal circumstances to help us determine an appropriate location.

Transfer Process The RCMP will work with you to determine your next career steps. Each time you are considered for a transfer, your current personal situation will be reviewed.

The RCMP covers the cost for relocating you and your immediate family, however; the RCMP does not assist spouses with their career relocations.

page 36 continued from page 32 The man who had my iPhone suddenly stopped on the sidewalk. I heard the ringing myself. My brother and I swiftly approached him.

There were no words exchanged, just the blaring sound coming from my iPhone in his jacket pocket.

"My iPhone! You have my iPhone! Holy shit man you found it! My iPhone! It’s ringing in your jacket!" I said all of that with the biggest smile on my face, acting as if I had just won the lottery. (I pretty much did.)

Without saying a word, he pulled out my 6 Plus from his jacket pocket, and I took the phone out of his hands. Find My iPhone worked.

My brother and I exchanged some words with the thief, and we joked and laughed about random things — mind you, it was after 4AM, and we had been drinking.

The thief claimed he was at the bar when he came across the phone. I don’t remember his exact words, but he says he was going to wait by his car for a minute, hoping someone would come and find it.

It’s crazy to think about the tiny window of opportunity I had to get the phone back. Had I not run across the street the second I did, had I not been stricken with a divine instinct that that was the thief, had my brother’s iPhone not been charged, I may have never seen my phone again. But I did. Persistence is key. Karma is a real thing.

Here’s what you should take away from this story:

SMILE

If the loser smiles after losing the game, the winner loses the thrill of his victory !!!

That's the power of Smile !!!

SYMPATHY

'Sympathy'... You can get from Anybody.

But... 'Jealousy'.... You have to Earn it !!!

ALCOHOL

Drink 5 cups of milk and try to push the wall.

And then drink 5 cups of alcohol and watch...

It'll move on its own !!!

Never, ever keep your phone in your back pocket Return things that don’t belong to you Find My iPhone works when used properly — use it!

Be persistent — there's almost always hope Smile, and be nice Be safe and wait for police — don't do what I did After I got home, I had realized something critical: the thief never turned off the phone. Why? Usually, the first thing someone does after they steal a phone is power it down to cut off any location tracking. Why didn’t he turn the phone off? My theory is that he simply didn’t know how to. Maybe he wasn’t familiar with the new power button placement on the 6 and 6 Plus. Maybe. I don't know. All I know is that he didn't turn it off, and that's what saved me.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t get the cops involved, I was so determined to get my phone back that I don’t remember the thought ever crossing my mind. As soon as the blip moved across the street after the bar closed, I had a feeling I’d see my phone again. Unexplainable and crazy, I know, but it happened. And I have my iPhone back.

Obviously, if you ever find yourself in a situation like this, you should alert authorities and stay back — the guy who stole my phone could've easily had a weapon. I could've gotten hurt. I'm glad I have my phone back, but don't do what I did.

Triple Filter Test !!!

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in the highest esteem.

One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about your friend?"

"Hold on a minute," Socrates replied. "Before telling me anything I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."

"Triple filter?"

"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is absolutely true?"

"No," the man said, "I actually just heard about it and..."

"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"

"No, on the contrary..."

"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left: the filter of Usefulness.

Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"

"No, not really."

"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"

This is why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

Reminder Triple Filter Test can be applied to many of our "so called friends" !

How to annoy the telemarketer Sienfeld: Hello ?!

Telemarketer: Would you like to sign up for some special offer ?

Sienfeld: Well maybe, but this is not really a good time.

Could you give your home phone and I can just call you there?

Telemarketer: Well, we don’t really like people doing that...

Sienfeld : Well now you know how I feel !

What To Give An Optimist And A Pessimist A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom and gloom pessimist.

Just to see what would happen, at Christmas time their father loaded the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist's room he loaded with horse manure.

That night the father passed by the pessimist's room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly.

"Why are you crying?" the father asked.

"Because my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I'll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken." Answered the pessimist twin.

Passing the optimist twin's room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" he asked.

To which his optimist twin replied, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"

page 37 Leaet I found a Leaflet in newspaper this morning which read: aRe YoU an alCoHolIC? Call noW. We Can HelP !!!

My wife insisted I make a call. I Called up.

It was a liquor shop offer: 'buy 3 & Get 1 Free'

Cow Horns A blonde asked a farmer, "Why doesn't this cow have any horns?"

The farmer cocked his head for a moment, then began in a patient tone, "Well, cattle can do a lot of damage with horns. Sometimes we keep them trimmed down. Still, there are some breeds of cattle that never grow horns. But the reason this cow doesn't have horns is because it's a horse."

Scared Swimmer!

While fishing off the Australia coast, a tourist capsized his boat.

He could swim, but his fear of crocodiles kept him clinging to the overturned craft.

Spotting an old beachcomber standing on the shore, the tourist shouted, "Are there any crocs around here?!"

"Naw," the man hollered back, "they ain't been around for years!"

Feeling safe, the tourist started swimming leisurely toward the shore.

About halfway there he asked the guy, "How'd you get rid of the crocs?"

"We didn't do nothing," the beachcomber said. "The sharks got 'em."

Playing Smart A defendant was on trial for murder. There was very strong evidence indicating guilt, but no corpse had been found. In the defense's closing statement the lawyer, knowing that his client would probably be convicted, decided to try a trick.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have a surprise for you all," the lawyer said as he looked at his watch. "Within one minute, the person presumed dead in this case will walk into this courtroom!"

He looked toward the courtroom door. The jurors, somewhat stunned, all looked, eagerly. A minute passed. Nothing happened.

Finally, the lawyer said, "Actually, I made up the previous statement. But you all looked on with anticipation. I therefore put it to you that there is reasonable doubt in this case as to whether anyone was killed and insist that you return a verdict of not guilty."

With that, the jury retired to deliberate. But after only a few minutes, they came back and pronounced a verdict of guilty.

"But how?" the lawyer asked. "You must have had some doubt.

I saw all of you stare at the door."

"Oh, yes," the jury foreman replied. "We all looked - but your client."

Factory Whistle An Canadian manufacturer is showing his machine factory to a potential customer from Pakistan. At noon, when the lunch whistle blows, two thousand men and women immediately stop work and leave the building.

"Your workers, they're escaping!" cries the visitor. "You've got to stop them."

"Don't worry, they'll be back," says the Canadian. And indeed, at exactly One o'clock the whistle blows again, and all the workers return from their break.

When the tour is over, the manufacturer turns to his guest and says, "Well, now, which of these machines would you like to order?"

"Forget the machines," says the visitor. "How much do you want for that whistle?"

Cell Phone Etiquette After a very busy day, a commuter settled down in her seat and closed her eyes as the train departed Montreal for Hudson. As the train rolled out of the station, the guy sitting next to her pulled out his cell phone and started talking in a loud voice...

"Hi sweetheart it's Eric, I'm on the train - yes, I know its the six thirty and not the four thirty but I had a long meeting - no, honey, not with that floozie from the accounts office, with the boss. No sweetheart, you're the only one in my life - yes, I'm sure, cross my heart etc. etc...."

Fifteen minutes later, he was still talking loudly, when the young woman sitting next to him, who was obviously angered by his continuous diatribe, yelled at the top of her voice, "Hey, Eric, turn that stupid phone off and come back to bed!"

Eric doesn't use his cell phone in public any longer.

Speeding Ticket A man was pulled over for driving too fast, even though he thought he was driving just fine.

Officer: You were speeding.

Man: No, I wasn't.

Officer: Yes, you were. I'm giving you a ticket.

Man: But I wasn't speeding.

Officer: Tell that to the judge! (The officer gives man the ticket.)

Man: Would I get another ticket if I called you an idiot?

Officer: Yes, you would.

Man: What if I just thought that you were?

Officer: I can't give you a ticket for what you think.

Man: Fine, I think you're an idiot!

Golf Bet Tiger Woods & Stevie Wonder are in a bar.

Tiger says to Stevie, "How's the singing career going?"

Stevie replies, "Not too bad. How's the golf?"

Woods replies, "I've had some problems with my swing, but I think I've got that right, now."

Stevie: "I always find that when my swing goes wrong, I need

to stop playing for a while and not think about it. Then, the next time I play, it seems to be all right."

Incredulous, Tiger says, "You play GOLF?" Stevie: "Yes, I've been playing for years."

Tiger: "But you're blind. How can you play golf if you can't see?"

Stevie: "Well, I get my caddy to stand in the middle of the fairway and call to me. I listen for the sound of his voice and play the ball towards him. Then, when I get to where the ball lands, the caddy moves to the green or farther down the fairway and again I play the ball towards his voice."

"But, how do you putt" asks Tiger.

"Well", says Stevie, "I get my caddy to lean down in front of the hole and call to me with his head on the ground and I just play the ball towards his voice."

Tiger: "What's your handicap?"

Stevie: "Well, actually, I'm a scratch golfer."

Woods says to Stevie, "We've got to play a round sometime."

Stevie: "Well, people don't take me seriously, so I only play for money, and never play for less than $10,000 a hole. Is that a problem?"

Woods thinks about it and says, "I can afford that; OK, I'm game for that... $10,000 a hole is fine with me. When would you like to play?"

Stevie: "Pick a night."

Whiskey Shots A guy walks into a bar and asks for ten shots of the finest single malt scotch.

The bartender sets him up and the guy takes the first shot in the row and pours it on the floor. He then takes the last shot and does the same.

The bartender asks, "Why did you do that?"

And the guy replies, "Well the first shot always tastes like crap, and the last one always makes me sick!"

The Secret Airbase United State Air Force has a high security, super secret base in Nevada, known simply as "Area 51?"

One afternoon, a Cessna landed at this "secret" base. The aircraft was immediately impounded and the pilot was interrogated. The pilot's story was that - he took off from Vegas, got lost & spotted the Base just as he was about to run out of fuel.

The Air Force started a full FBI background check on the pilot & held him overnight during the investigation. By the next day, they were finally convinced that the pilot really was lost & wasn't a spy. They are fueled his airplane, threatened him that if he lands again he would spend the rest of his life in prison, and let him go.

The next day, to the total disbelief of the Air Force personnel, the same Cessna landed there again.

Once again, the MP's surrounded the plane... only this time there were two people in the plane.

The same pilot jumped out & said, "Do anything you want to me, but my wife is in the plane and you have to tell her where I was last night!"

Horoscope Aries

(March 21 - April 19) You’re encouraged to surround yourself with things that are familiar, but you can afford to stretch the bounds of probability too. Acting on impulse could lead to a few mistakes being made. Force yourself to be logical and methodical. Soon you will fully appreciate some of the potential developing in your life. You may have to alter, adapt and diversify to get to the finish line. It's better to compromise than to be stubborn and possibly lose the greatest chance you had to succeed.

Avoid arguments.

Leo

(July 23 - August 22)

Avoid potentially deceptive situations and bear in mind that not everyone who approaches you with ideas genuinely has your interests at heart. It takes someone clever to fool a Leo, but there’s every reason to be on the lookout for that someone right now.

Good things in life are well within your reach. Financial luck seems to be on your side, and you’ll manage money with flair. Don’t allow anyone to hurry you into making decisions this month.

Take your time. Your goals are within your grasp.

Sagittarius

(Nov. 22 - Dec. 21) Great month for communications. Be ready to deal with others demands, and be willing to devote time and effort to sort them out properly. Tie up loose ends over problems from the past, as by wiping the slate clean, your road ahead will be much smoother. If changes need to be made at home, there’s is no time like the present, but remember you wont always get your own way. Important

plans need to be given a shot in the arm, and this month is as good as any, so get cracking.

Taurus

(April 20 - May 20) Commitment to practical issues at work may have to wait as trends encourage you to take a different approach. Now comes a time that looks good for social adventures and general co-operation. If you’re willing to compromise, you stand a chance of convincing others to relinquish a great deal of the control of situations to you.

Retain a positive mindset over your hopes, dreams and ambitions, and don’t allow anything or anyone to convince you to veer off your chosen path. Be patient.

Virgo

(August 23 - Sep. 22)

December Gemini

(May 21 - June 21) Social life and group ventures remain central themes in your life and could help you discover that you have friends you never dreamed of.

What makes the difference now is how diplomatic you can be. Getting what you want from life is certainly within your grasp now. Levels of interests are high so let your mind wander from routine. Concentration is a keyword now so keep your wits about you. Keep financial plans on ice this month as the timing isn’t right to be taking chances over finance.

Libra

(Sep. 23 - Oct. 23)

Keep a low profile where you can and don’t take on new jobs for a few days. Sit on the riverbank of life and watch the water flow. Be prepared for some unfulfilled expectations regarding your partner. There’s no point keeping quiet if you feel strongly about something, and you’re likely to get a better response from others if you’re open. It may not be easy, but just make the effort. Let partners and children know how much they mean to you, and endeavour to put them before work at all times.

There’s potential for harmony in and around your home, so it may be the best place to be right now.

Getting peace and quite won’t be easy, but take matters in you stride. Avoid reacting in a negative way to situations that are clearly temporary. Mix with people you know and like. If your capacity for getting ahead is less than you’d wish you’ll feel irritated and frustrated. There’s no easy route to success, but having to surmount obstacles lets you enjoy the end results even more.

Keep your eye on the prize.

Capricorn

Aquarius

(Dec. 22 - Jan. 19) Don’t worry about things without evidence or justification. It would be a waste of energy and a waste of time. It's not a good idea to believe everything you hear, as it’s always possible that your informants have got the wrong end of the stick.

The emphasis is on financial matters, so do what you can to increase the amount of money coming in your door.

With some very ingenious ideas at our disposal, you should be in a great position to work out strategies that should keep the cash rolling in.

(Jan. 20 - Feb. 18) Problems that come along seem short lived and manageable.

Take a walk, clear your head. There’s a chance that more money could be coming your way, but only if you pay attention and get things done properly first time. You receive benefits from efforts you put in previously and as a result, you get opportunities you thought were gone and lost forever.

Be on your guard against others who want to steer you off course as not everyone is on your side. Take nothing for granted.

Cancer

(June 22 - July 22) Personal relationships are definitely your forte in December. Be aware, jealousy could be a factor in any negative opinions being expressed. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind. If routines are not your cup of tea, then ring the changes. Your totally freewheeling attitude to life lifts your spirits and allows you to laugh at yourself this month. Let your hair down and do something silly. Every day’s a new adventure. You’ll go much further than you thought. Teamwork is the key to success.

Scorpio

(Oct. 24 - Nov. 21) Your ability to soak up attention is emphasised, as is your willingness to make yourself the centre or attention. These traits will help you especially at work, where your motivational skills will be duly noted. It might be hard to convince your partner you know what you’re talking about. Someone close will give you a reality check soon. Be on your guard against someone who talks a good game, but is in fact doing absolutely noting, leaving you with the brunt of the responsibilities.

Pisces

(Feb. 19 - March 20) Don’t be shy about having your say, and be willing to go that extra mile if that’s what it takes to make people listen to you. Lady luck will follow you around, but large-scale speculation still isn’t advisable. You have the power to make your life more refined, cultured and comfortable, so anything or anyone unsavoury has to be avoided. Think outside the box and don’t be afraid to speak honestly. When it comes to work and career you’re on a roll. Your ideas are sharp. Don’t make promises you can't keep.

*

TM

1

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