Semrau acquitted of murder
CBC NEWS: July 19, 2010: Capt. Robert Semrau has been found guilty by a military panel of disgraceful conduct but not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of a wounded Afghan insurgent.
The disgraceful conduct charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. Semrau has not yet been sentenced.
The four-member panel in Gatineau, Que., handed down the decision Monday. It came after three days of deliberations in the court martial of the Canadian Forces captain charged in a battlefield death in Afghanistan.
Semrau, 36, was accused of firing two rounds from his rifle into a dying Taliban fighter in Helmand province of Afghanistan in October 2008.
A question from the jury about evidence kept lawyers arguing for hours, preventing a verdict on the weekend.
Semrau never testified, but an Afghan army captain, who was on the patrol with Semrau, testified the Taliban fighter was "98 per cent dead" when he was found.
Semrau was charged with four offences, including second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years; attempt to commit murder using a firearm and negligently performing a military duty imposed on him. He was found not guilty of the latter two charges.
Now based at CFB Petawawa, the married father of two young children grew up in Moose Jaw,
Sask.
B.C. common-law couples to get marriage rights
The B.C. government is proposing major changes to the province's family law for the first time in 30 years.
The B.C. government wants to extend laws governing the division of property to common-law spouses who have lived together for two years or who have children together.
The proposal is part of a package of major changes to the province's family law put forward by Attorney General Mike de Jong on Monday morning.
De Jong said the package is intended to modernize the province's Family Relations Act for first time in 30 years by making it less adversarial and easier to understand.
The changes cover a wide range of issues such as separations, child custody, support payments, division of property and pensions, access responsibilities, children's participation in the legal process and family violence.
One of the most significant changes is a proposal to extend laws governing the division of property in separations to common-law spouses who have lived together for two years or who have children together. Currently, the act's property-division scheme does not generally apply to unmarried spouses.
The proposal also seeks to exclude pre-relationship, gifts and inheritances from property that would be divided 50-50 in any separation.
The far-reaching package of proposed changes also includes reforms to create more options for out-of-court dispute resolutions and improving the tools for enforcing court rulings.
The moncitizenship is the new Canadian governmental task. The diplomatic lines of Republics of Yemen and Poland are non grata with their masks.
Alberta man unarmed when shot by RCMP
An Alberta man was holding an umbrella and was not armed when he was fatally shot Saturday by an RCMP officer.
CBC NEWS: July 19, 2010 : An Alberta man was holding an umbrella and was not armed when he was fatally shot Saturday by an RCMP officer, says the head of a team investigating the incident.
Corey Lewis was shot at six times by an officer using an M16 rifle, said Clifton Purvis, executive director of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team on Monday. The provincial body investigates all major cases of death or serious injury involving Alberta police.
Police were called to a home in Okotoks, south of Calgary on Saturday night, after a report that a man had assaulted a teenager.
When officers arrived, a middle-aged man armed with what appeared to be a shotgun threatened them, said the RCMP over the weekend.
Lewis is the husband of Okotoks town councillor, Naydene Lewis.
Driver killed in Hwy 17 collision
The driver of a pick-up truck travelling eastbound on Hwy 17 outside Cobden died Monday morning after his vehicle was involved in a collision with a westbound tractor trailer.
CBC NEWS:July 19, 2010: The driver of a pick-up truck travelling eastbound on Hwy 17 outside Cobden died Monday morning after his vehicle was involved in a collision with a westbound tractor trailer.
Ontario Provincial Police said the collision happened at about 5:30 a.m. Monday morning just west of Flinnerty road in the Township of Whitewater, about 120 km west of Ottawa.
The pickup driver died at the scene, while the driver of the tractor trailer suffered minor injuries, police said. There were no passengers in either vehicle.
Hwy 17 is closed and detours are in place in the area of Mountain Road and Turcotte Road. Regional police, fire and paramedics assisted at the scene.
H1N1 shot averted 1M Ontario cases: study
50 lives estimated to have been saved
Last Updated: Monday, July 19, 2010 | 11:41 AM ET : The Canadian Press A study says Ontario's H1N1 vaccination program averted nearly one million cases of influenza and as many as 50 deaths.
The study said Ontario could have seen an additional 420 hospitalizations, 28,000 visits to hospital emergency departments and 100,000 visits to doctors' offices if it hadn't offered the flu shot program.
The study was done by Beate Sanders, a health economist with the Ontario Agency of Health Protection and Promotion, and was published in the journal Vaccine.
Sanders said that while the $180-million vaccination program was expensive, it was cost-effective.
Sanders noted, though, that if the vaccine had arrived any later the program wouldn't have been as effective as it was. That's because Ontario started vaccinating just before the peak of the second wave of H1N1 infections, the study found.
N.B. city reverses Anglo Society flag decision
The Anglo Society has lost permission to fly its flag outside of Bathurst City Hall on Sept. 18. (CBC)
Last Updated: Monday, July 19, 2010 | 5:14 PM AT: CBC NEWS: The city council in Bathurst, N.B., has reversed its decision to allow a New Brunswick anglophone-rights group to fly its flag outside City Hall to mark what it calls "Anglo Day" in September.
The council issued a brief statement on Monday rescinding permission for the Anglo Society of New Brunswick to place the banner it uses to promote its group in front of City Hall.
The group describes itself as a non-profit organization "dedicated to the promotion and protection of the English language and culture in the province" and is critical of many of the government's bilingualism policies.
The city's statement said that "after many phone calls, emails and street conversations as well as further investigation, council of the City of Bathurst has decided to withdraw its support for the flying of the Anglo Society flag on Sept. 18."
The council voted 4-2 to allow the group to fly its banner outside City Hall a week ago.
The decision sparked immediate concern by the mayor of the nearby community of Petit-Rocher and Michel Carrier, the commissioner of official languages.
Carrier had called on the council to reconsider the decision.
Anne-Marie Gammon, the lone francophone on council, said she had been inundated with emails from people protesting the possibility that the flag would fly in front of City Hall.
Bathurst Mayor Stephen Brunet said last week that the northern New Brunswick city was a multicultural community and that the Anglo Society should be treated as any of the other groups occasionally allowed to fly their flags at City Hall.
The council has a regularly scheduled meeting Monday night.
Semitic illegal drug calls Khat spreads in North
America and Europe
Emergency tundra landing ends well
Last Updated: Monday, July 19, 2010 | 12:21 PM CST: A pilot safely landed his aircraft on the tundra near Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, after the craft lost power in both engines.
The pilot of the privately owned 1971 twin-engine Aero Commander tried to turn the plane around after the engines died shortly after takeoff on Sunday but didn't have enough power to make it back to the runway at the Rankin Inlet airport.
He brought the plane down in the soft tundra 150 metres from the runway. The U.S.-registered aircraft was damaged, but the pilot and two passengers were unhurt.
"Any time you have an engine failure, multiple engine failure, on an aircraft and you can set it down and walk away, it's good news," said Shawn Maley, director of Nunavut Airports. "It looks like they picked the right spot to put the airplane down."
The Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
Espionage in Canada and Western Countries: Part One to Four
https://poetsofottawa.ning.com/profiles/blogs/espionage-in-canada-and
https://poetsofottawa.ning.com/profiles/blogs/espionage-in-canada-and-1
https://poetsofottawa.ning.com/profiles/blogs/espionage-in-canada-and-2
https://poetsofottawa.ning.com/profiles/blogs/espionage-in-canada-and-3
Ottawa International Poets and Writers for human Rights (OIPWHR)
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