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Ottawa Star www.OttawaStar.com • November 7, 2013 • Volume 1, Issue 10
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‘Shopping While Black’ Barneys and Macy racial discrimination complaints stir emotions By Jesse Washington, The Associated Press
The usual scenario involves suspicious glances, inattentive clerks or rude service – not handcuffs. Yet when a black teen said he was wrongly jailed after buying a $350 belt at a Manhattan luxury store, it struck a nerve in African-Americans accustomed to finding that their money is not necessarily as good as everyone else’s. Shopping while black, they say, can be a humiliating experience. Much attention has been paid to the issue over the years—Oprah Winfrey complained that a Swiss clerk did not think she could afford a $38,000 handbag, and even President Barack Obama has said he was once followed in stores. But according to shoppers interviewed last week, many people don’t recognize how prevalent retail discrimination is, and how the consistent stream of small insults adds up to a large problem. Continued on page 14
Irish police return children to Roma parents Two blond, blue eyed children returned to Gypsy homes after DNA tests prove their parentage
Montreal electronic musician Grimes is being criticized for her decision to play a private show in Russia. Photo: Andrew Mager
Quebec plans to take in less immigrants The Canadian Press
Q
UEBEC—The Quebec government, in the midst of a heated debate about minority accommodation, says it will lower its immigration targets so it can better integrate newcomers and ensure they are able to function in French. Immigration Minister Diane De Courcy announced the reductions as she made public the government’s immigration plan for the coming year.
The previous Liberal government had already started to trim levels before the debate over the values charter, a still-unadopted plan to ban civil service employees from wearing obvious religious symbols such as the hijab. About 55,000 immigrants came to Quebec in 2012, which the government of Premier Pauline Marois now believes is too many. Continued on page 5
By Shawn Pogatchnik, The Associated Press
DUBLIN, Ireland—Two blond children who were taken by Irish police from their Romanian Gypsy parents were returned last week to their families after DNA tests determined that the children were rightfully theirs, an episode that raised accusations of racism. The Irish police were responding to public tipoffs fueled by media coverage of an alleged child-abduction case in Greece involving a blond-haired girl and a family of Gypsies, known as Roma. Justice Minister Alan Shatter told lawmakers he was “pleased and relieved’’ that the children had been returned to their homes. He ordered the police commander, Commissioner Martin Callinan, to produce a report explaining why officers felt it necessary to take the children—a 2-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl—from their families. Continued on page 12
Canadian weed finds market in Asia Reversing years of East to West trade By Chris Brummitt, The Associated Press
HANOI, Vietnam—For the young Vietnamese dope smokers rolling up outside a smart Hanoi cafe, local cannabis is just not good enough. As with their Adidas caps, iPhones and Sanskrit tattoos, so with their choice of bud: only foreign will do. Potent marijuana grown indoors in Canada and the United States is easy to buy in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, say regular smokers, and sells for up to 10 times the price of locally grown weed. That’s perhaps surprising giv-
en that marijuana is easy to cultivate regionally, and bringing drugs across continents is expensive and risky. Some experts say the trade can be explained by the dominant role Vietnamese diaspora gangs play in cultivating the drug in western countries, making sourcing the product and smuggling it to Vietnam an easier proposition than it might be otherwise. The drug is used mostly by foreigners and wellheeled Vietnamese, who are prepared to pay for quality. Continued on page 10