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Toronto (EON) - Canadian Omar Khadr, who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002, at age 16 — has officially been charged with murder, spying and supporting terrorism, the Pentagon said Tuesday.Omar Khadr, allegedly threw a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier while fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He is also accused of allegedly planting mines targeted at American convoys.
Khadr has been in American custody since 2002, and his lawyers have repeatedly urged Canada to step in to ensure his rights aren’t violated.
Khadr, is the son of a Canadian Islamic extremist who was close to Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman Al-Zawahari, reported Canada.Com.
Khadr, now 20, is to be arraigned on the charges within 30 days, the military said.
Toronto (EON) - The man accused of killing a Laval, Quebec police officer on March 2, 2007 was released Tuesday on a CA$200,000 bail.
Basil Parasiris has been charged with several offences stemming from a drug raid carried out by police in the early morning hours of March 2. Among the alleged offences are a first-degree murder charge in the shooting death of Constable Daniel Tessier, attempted murder in the wounding of Tessier’s partner, Stephane Forbes, and several weapons offences. Parasiris will remain free on bail pending a preliminary hearing to be held in August of this year.
For his part, Parasiris has not denied that the shooting took place, and has apologized to Tessier’s family. He claims that he was acting in self defence, as he didn’t know that it was police entering his house in a planned raid, and instead believed intruders had broken in. “I’m really, really sorry (about) what happened. My condolences to the Tessier family,” Parasiris told CTV News. “I honestly thought there was a home invasion or something.”
The judge overseeing the bail proceedings, ruled that Parasiris would not pose an immediate threat to society, but did place strict conditions on his release. While awaiting trial, Parasiris, 41, will have to live with his father, obey a curfew, and not travel outside Canada.
In what is believed to be the first ruling of its kind in Canada, releasing on bail a defendant charged with killing a policeman, the judge criticized some of the police tactics used during the raid. Justice Jean-Guy Boilard of the Quebec Superior Court noted that the police didn’t use a “knock notice” before entering Parasiris’ house, but rather used a battering ram to break down the door. When serving a warrant under normal conditions, police are to knock at the door and identify themselves. Jacques Larochelle, Parasiris’ lawyer, indicated that he will contest the warrant’s legality.
The prosecution argued that, even if it was not clear to Parasiris that police were entering his home, he should not have been so reckless with a gun.
During the fatal raid on the Parasiris home in March, police collected four loaded handguns, as well as a small amount of drugs and cash. According to reports, the 357-magnum handgun allegedly used by Parasiris to shoot the officers was legally registered.In January 2006, Angelina made a similar request to add Brad’s name to her
five-year-old Cambodian son Maddox and two-year-old Ethiopian daughter
Zahara.
Brad is now joint guardian to Maddox and Zahara and the couple also have an 11-month-old daughter Shiloh together.
Hamilton (EON) - Ontario may use a new system to elect its Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP) starting in 2011. A binding referendum on the question is to occur during the general elections on October 10 this year.
The Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform recommended on May 15, 2007 that Ontario will switch to Mixed member proportional representation (MMPR).
Under MMPR, Ontario’s 107-seat legislature would be replaced with one with 129 seats. Of these, 90 would be elected from ridings under the existing first past the post (FPTP) system. The remaining 39, however, would be “list members” (not associated with specific regions) publicly nominated in advance by parties and assigned so that each party’s total representation was in proportion to its share of the popular vote. It will also ask Ontario voters on election day whether they want to vote for the party or vote for the candidate. If someone votes for the party, they are still voting for the candidate which keeps the current electorial system unchanged.
Proponents say the system will be fairer to minor parties. Critics say it would be too complicated for most voters to learn to use
Toronto (EON) - All eight million users of BlackBerry have been relieved of a large system failure that left them without email for two days.
Emails were lost after a large system failure blocked all of their users worldwide, Tuesday. It is reported at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday the system failure began. It ended Wednesday morning leaving its millions of users with a backlog of emails.
BlackBerry, owned by Waterloo, Ontario based Research In Motion (RIM), apologised for the outage Wednesday and said they will take further measures to ensure this will never happen again.
Research In Motion said that a system upgrade caused the large system failure and when they tried to fix the problem “it did not fully perform to its expectations”.
“It wasn’t a capacity issue, it wasn’t a security issue. It was an outage overnight when there was an upgrade,” said Co-CEO of RIM, Jim Balsillie. “I think it’s pretty likely that the systems are in place that this kind of thing, as incredibly unlikely as it is to happen, is all the more unlikely to happen again.”
St John’s/New York (EON) - A change in wind direction has finally allowed ice-breakers from the Canadian Coast Guard to free many of the ships of seal hunters that had been trapped in pack ice off the Newfoundland coast for a week, The Globe and Mail reported Tuesday.
Some 300 sealers were still trapped in the pack ice, the Canadian newspaper reported, but coast-guard officials expected to free the remaining 60 trapped ships by the weekend if the south-westerly winds stayed with them.
“Mother Nature has started to co-operate with us a little,” Captain Brian Penney of the St John’s Coast Guard told reporters.
“We are starting to get a reduction in the total number (of vessels) that are out there, the ice field is starting to move,” Penney said, referring to the wind that was slowly pushing the ice off the coast and out into the open ocean.
Some of the seal hunters, who were suddenly caught in a powerful north-easterly storm, have been trapped in the ice for two weeks.
Some have now run out of fuel, and others have for days now had to reduce their water and food supplies to emergency rations.
At least 10 of the hunting vessels had sustained “significant damage” in the ice, Penney said.
One Canadian woman told the newspaper how her four sons and three grandsons had returned from the ice at the weekend a few pounds lighter.
Apart from worrying about the ship and their supplies, they were mostly bored, Margaret Burden of Port Hope Simpson in southern Labrador told the newspaper.
“They made a huge snowman and put a (sealer’s) suit on him and left him on the ice floes,” Burden told the newspaper.
The hunters said it was the worst weather conditions they had encountered in 20 years.
Just over a week ago, more than 100 ships were trapped in the pack ice. At one time, there were up to 600 sailors stuck in the ice floes.
The annual seal hunt takes place between mid-March and mid-April in the Gulf of St Lawrence off the Newfoundland coast.
The cull is met by massive international protests by animal-rights activists, but the snow-white seal-cub skins are still highly prized in Russia and China.
The Canadian government gave permits to 270,000 sealers to take part in 2007’s cull.
Animal-rights activists accuse some hunters of tearing the skins off live cubs.
Montreal (EON) - A simmering diplomatic row between Canada and China has been exacerbated Thursday after a Canadian human rights campaigner was sentenced to life in prison on terrorism charges in a Chinese provincial court.
The Canadian government summoned a Chinese diplomat to express dismay over the life sentence imposed on Huseyin Celil, a member of the Muslim ethnic Uighur community from the Xingjiang province in China and a Canadian citizen since 2005.
In parliament Thursday, Foreign Minister Peter Mackay said the government was “deeply disappointed with the verdict”- which besides the life in prison on separatism charges also included 10 years for a terrorism charge.
MacKay, who vowed to raise the issue with Chinese officials on a planned visit next week, said fears about hindering valuable business relationship will not keep his government from standing up to Beijing on human rights.
“We’re going to press that case and I certainly will be bringing this up when I’m in China next week,” said MacKay, who will meet with his counterpart during the visit.
“We don’t intend to let this case go,” he said, adding that the sentence appeared to contravene diplomatic agreements between the two countries, forcing Canada to reconsider a 1999 consular agreement.
Celil, 38, was arrested in March 2006 in Uzbekistan and extradited to China where his family says he was tortured. China claims Celil, who was born in China, was a “prominent member of East Turkestan terrorist organizations.”
Canadian consular officials have been denied access to him since his arrest and trial in the Xingjiang capital of Urumqi as China does not recognize Celil’s Canadian citizenship.
The father of four came to Canada in 2001 as a refugee after spending several years in a Chinese prison, accused of dissidence, and became a citizen in 2005.
China has never recognized Celil’s Canadian citizenship and have repeatedly admonished Canada for inquiring about the case, arguing that the issue is domestic and that Canada has overstepped its authority by attempting to intervene.
Chinese officials charge that Celil is “a key member of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.” They have long accused militants in the Uighur community of using terrorism to attain an autonomous Islamic state in the resource-rich region, which borders several former Soviet republics.
“Chinese authorities have persistently refused to respond adequately to our concerns with respect to due process for this Canadian citizen,” MacKay said in a statement.
Amnesty International has issued several alerts over Celil’s status and treatment since his arrest last year.
The current row is one of several between Canada and China over the past year.
Last April, China issued a forceful denial that they were engaging in industrial espionage in Canada, responding to allegations by members of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government.
In September, China was offended when Canada presented the Dalai Lama with an honourary citizenship and by Harper’s criticism of their human rights record last November.
Toronto (EON) - Belinda Stronach will not seek re-election in the next federal election in the riding of Newmarket-Aurora, according to media reports Wednesday.
In a press release issued early today, Stronach says she will become the Executive Vice-Chair of Magna effective immediately.
Stronach said that she had Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, and Senator Marie-P. Poulin, President of the Liberal Party of Canada, of her decision earlier today.
“I am always assessing the best role I can play in public life, and, after being encouraged by members of the corporate leadership atMagna to return, I have decided that the timing of my return to the business should not be delayed. My father is looking to the future, the company is facing important strategic decisions, and the Canadian and global auto sector and economy is in a period of great challenge,” said BelindaStronach. “So I am stepping aside from elected politics for the time being and will now take part in public life in a different way.”
“There are other considerations behind my decision that are important to me. The heavy demands of public life on family time are real, and as a mother I want to spend some more time with my kids” addedStronach . “And I remain concerned with the issue of global security for the coming decades, and will continue to work towards ending extreme poverty and disease in Africa. I will be involved increasingly in this work through such initiatives as www.spreadthenet.org and through the creation of a personal foundation.”
“It has been an honour and privilege to serve the people from my community of Newmarket and Aurora and I thank them again for having placed their trust in me. I will continue to represent the interests of the constituents I serve until such time as a federal election is called. I also plan to continue to play an active role in the community.”
In recent months, Stronach has made headlines with her romantic ties with Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and former Toronto Maple Leafs player Tie Domi.