Tornado Hits Toronto, Hurricane Bill To Follow

A rare event in Southern Ontario, but devastating to endure, a tornado or tornado’s struck the northern part of the city causing widespread damage to property and leaving over 50,000 residents without electricity.

Hurricane Bill is sweeping in from the Atlantic Ocean and it is feared that it will cause severe damage again in the north-eastern U.S. and southern Canada.

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McCaughey “Death Panel” Myth Creator Resigns

Cantel Medical Corporation, in a corporate press release dated August 20, 2009, stated that Betsy McCaughey, a corporate director who created the myth that U.S. healthcare reform would lead to the formation of “Death Panels“, allowing doctors to decide who would live and who would die based on the cost of end-of-life care, had resigned effective immediately from Cantel’s board of directors.

McCaughey insists that health-care reform is bad for Americans generally and will severely impact the elderly and of course limit the amount of funds a doctor can expect to be reimbursed, which would directly impact Cantel’s profitability.

McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York State and has weighed in heavily against health-care for Americans, creating the conflict of interest with her employer who wishes to create the appearance of neutrality.

In fact, Cantel bills itself as a “leading provider of infection prevention and control products in the healthcare market” and has an urgent corporate need to prevent health-care reform from occurring in the U.S.

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Honduras Accuses Zelaya Of $2.7 Million Theft

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Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has been accused by the Government of Honduras of the theft of over $2.7 Million in cash from the Central Bank of Honduras prior to his enforced exile from Honduras.


Zelaya apparently ordered the cash to be delivered on June 24, 2009 to the office of Mr. Zelaya's chief of staff, Enrique Flores Lanza, according to depositions by three witnesses for the Honduran prosecutors.

The Honduran military removed Mr. Zelaya from his home early on the morning of June 28 and transported him by air to Costa Rica declaring that if he returned to Honduras he would be arrested. However knowledge of the theft of the $2.7 Million in cash was not discovered until a month after Zelaya’s exile.


The Interim President, Roberto Micheletti, was advised by the Central Bank that funds delivered to Zelaya were not accounted for as government expenditures, and exceeded the government’s budget, and that the cash should be returned immediately.

Security video at the Central Bank showed the removal of the cash by Zelaya’s officials and in an effort to identify the individuals involved Honduras TV broadcast the video tape repeatedly. Sphere: Related Content

Suaad Hagi Files $2.5 Million Lawsuit Against Canada

Suaad Hagi Mohamud has filed a $2.5 Million lawsuit against the government of Canada for the wrongful rejection of her Canadian Citizenship while she was traveling in Kenya to visit her mother.

Suaad Hagi was questioned by a KLM airline employee in Kenya who disputed her contention that her Canadian Passport was in fact hers based on the shape of her lips and the style of her eyeglasses in the photo.

In Africa, when confronted by airline employees most travelers pay a bribe to be allowed on to their scheduled flight. Suaad Hagi did not have the money to pay a bribe and was therefore detained in a jail cell at the Kenyan airport for four days before being transported to a jail and then prison.

Despite her efforts to have the Canadian Consulate in Kenya support her claim of Canadian citizenship, the Consulate instead agreed to assist the Kenyan government in the prosecution of Suaad Hagi as an imposter.

DNA from Suaad Hagi’s son in Toronto, Canada proved that she was who she claimed to be. In addition, Suaad Hagi had several other photo identification’s in her possession which also stated that she was a resident of Canada.

Suaad Hagi was finally allowed to return to Canada ninety days after her detention, arrest, and imprisonment and returned to Toronto to an enthusiastic and supportive crowd. She said she blames the Canadian government, saying they "let me down, big time. No matter where we are, where we go, we're all citizens and I believe that we don't have a different level, we're all Canadian citizens. I'm just asking the government to get up and back up their people wherever they are." she said.

Suaad Hagi also has lawsuits against KLM Airlines and the government of Kenya planned.
　
　

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Libya Celebrates Lockerbie Bomber

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Abdel Basset al-Megrahi landed in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on Thursday, hours after being freed from prison on the orders of Scotland’s justice minister Kenny MacAskill.


MacAskill made the decision to release the 57-year-old Libyan agent, who is dying of prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds. He had served eight years of a minimum 27-year sentence.

“It is my decision that Mr al-Megrahi … be released on compassionate grounds and be returned to Libya to die,” MacAskill said.

Al-Megrahi is a former Libyan agent who was imprisoned for the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

The decision to release al-Megrahi was criticised by the US government and some victims’ families, who believe al-Megrahi, held responsible for the 270 deaths in the Lockerbie bombing, should remain behind bars for life.


U.S. President barack Obama, described the release as a “mistake” and said that al-Megrahi should be placed under house arrest on his return, not simply released from custody.

But MacAskill told reporters on Thursday: “Mr. al-Megrahi is a dying man; he is terminally ill with prostate cancer and my decision is that he returns home to die.” Al-Megrahi was released from Greenock prison in Scotland and escorted by a police convoy to Prestwick airport in Glasgow on Thursday afternoon for a direct flight to Libya.


In a statement following his release, al-Megrahi said: “I am obviously very relieved to be leaving my prison cell at last and returning to Libya, my homeland. The remaining days of my life are being lived under the shadow of the wrongness of my conviction. I have been faced with an appalling choice: to risk dying in prison in the hope that my name is cleared posthumously or to return home still carrying the weight of the guilty verdict, which will never now be lifted. The choice which I made is a matter of sorrow, disappointment and anger, which I fear I will never overcome.”

Al-Megrahi’s was freed days after he dropped his second appeal against his conviction, a condition necessary for the early release application to be considered.

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UBS Banker Gets 40 Months

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Bradley Birkenfeld, a U.S. citizen residing in Florida, was sentenced today to 40 months in a federal penitentiary for his role as an agent of Swiss banking giant UBS AG.


UBS signed a “Qualified Intermediary” agreement with the IRS in which UBS was required to disclose the identity of any UBS clients who were U.S. citizens investing in U.S. securities.

Instead, UBS counseled U.S. citizens on a variety of methods to avoid disclosure to the IRS of their assets on deposit at UBS in Switzerland.


Birkenfeld was sentenced by District Court Judge William Zloch in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for conspiring to defraud the United States by helping a billionaire U.S. real estate developer create sham corporations and entities to hide $200 million in assets from the IRS.

Birkenfeld was credited with providing information in a sweeping U.S. investigation of UBS over its private banking business which involved American citizens who used their Swiss bank accounts to hide money overseas to evade U.S. taxes.


Birkenfeld’s sentencing has been delayed four times since it was originally set for August last year and was finally handed down two days after U.S. and Swiss authorities signed a pact in which Switzerland agreed to reveal the names of about 4,450 wealthy American clients of UBS to the IRS.

"To those taxpayers who have illegally hidden their income in foreign bank accounts and to those who have illegally helped clients hide income and assets, today's sentencing serves as notice: come in and completely come clean," said John A. DiCicco, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department's Tax Division.


Kevin Downing, a senior attorney with the Department of Justice tax division, said an additional sentence reduction may be requested by the government based on Birkenfeld's continuing cooperation in the UBS tax fraud probe over the next 90 days. Taking this into account, Judge Zloch deferred the date for Birkenfeld to report to prison until January 8, 2010. Sphere: Related Content

China’s Military Deploy Throughout Country

China is in the midst of a country-wide military exercise named “STRIDE- 2009” which is intended to increase the flexibility and experience of The People’s Liberation Army troops in all forms of civil unrest and military deployment.

Troops have commandeered civilian aircraft, trains, trucks, and automobiles in order to replicate the actual conditions that might occur in an emergency.

50,000 heavily armed troops have spread throughout the country. According to the PLA General Staff Headquarters, in charge of organizing "STRIDE-2009," one army division from each of the military commands of Shenyang, Lanzhou, Jinan and Guangzhou province, will participate in a series of live-ammunition drills lasting for two months.

Unlike previous annual tactical exercises, the army divisions and their air units will be deployed in unfamiliar areas far from their garrison training bases by civilian rail and air transport. The division from northeast Shenyang Military Command will be transported to northwest Lanzhou Military Command. Troops from east Jinan Military Command and south Guangzhou Military Command will be exchanged.

In the unprecedented exercise, one of the PLA's major objectives will be to improve its capacity of long-range projection. The General Staff Headquarters, which have been preparing for the exercise for three months, will coordinate with China's civilian airlines to use passenger and cargo flights to compliment Air Force transport.

All heavy weapon systems, such as tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, will be carried by rail, and lightly armored troops deployed to Jinan Military Command will go by China Railway High-speed (CRH) trains traveling at up to 220 miles per hour.
　
　
　
　
　

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Lead Poisoning Chinese Children

After 300 parents complained that their children were becoming ill from the emissions at the Shaanxi Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Factory located in the Changqing Industrial Park in Fengxiang County, doctors at the Xi'an Central Hospital diagnosed lead poisoning at levels three times the maximum safe level.

In 2006, the factory was ordered to help relocate the nearby villagers because the lead from their production could harm people's health, but so far only 100 of 581 households have been moved.

The villagers said they were willing to move to another location but could not afford new houses. The only thing they can do is to transfer their children to another school to avoid further poisoning.

About half of the parents in Maodaokou Village have decided to transfer children to another school next semester, but others do not have enough money, so their children must remain in the polluted environment.

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Charity Activists Murdered In Chechnya

The bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and Alik Dzhabrailov, her husband, were found in Grozny, the Chechen capital, on Tuesday in the trunk of their car, shot to death.

They had been kidnapped a day earlier by five armed masked men from the offices of the “Save the Generation” charity, which provides medical and psychological help to young people who have suffered as a result of the violence in Chechnya.

The murders come less than one month after Natalya Estemirova, one of the best known activists in Chechnya and head of the rights group “Memorial“, was killed in similar circumstances.

Tatiana Lokshina, the deputy head of “Human Rights Watch” in Moscow and someone who worked closely with Estemirova, said; "Unless this new double murder and the killing of Estemirova are properly and fully investigated, unless the perpetrators are brought to justice, one really cannot do independent reporting of human rights work in the region on the ground.
It's incredibly important that the investigation into these killings is controlled by the Kremlin, done by investigators from the federal government and not done by local officials, because the possibility of involvement of the local police in the killing cannot be excluded."

Sadulayeva's husband had previously been jailed for four years for links to banned armed groups and had married the charity head two months after leaving prison.

"This is just unimaginable. They killed a young woman, she was probably 25, and her husband, who was about the same age. They had just gotten married," said rights activist Ludmila Alexeyeva, of the Moscow Helsinki group.

Human rights activists have blamed the forces of Ramzan Kadyrove, the Kremlin-backed Chechen president, for the killing of Estemirova.

Natalia Estemirova had been threatened by Kadyrov in the past and he was unhappy about the reporting she was doing exposing human rights abuses in Chechyna. "These are just outrageous crimes, the abduction and killing of Natalia Estemirova in a country that aspires to democratic standards is just appalling." Kadyrov, condemned the killings as an "inhuman crime" and said he would take the investigation under his personal control. "The person who committed this crime wanted to split our society, to destabilize the Chechen Republic," he said.

Chechnya and other parts of the Russian Caucasus remain the site of a deadly insurgency led by Muslim fighters against the pro-Kremlin local authorities, who in turn have been accused of human rights abuses.

The reports of the killings came as a journalist for a local newspaper in Dagestan, a province in Russia's volatile south, was found dead on the outskirts of Makhachkala, the capital, according to Russian news agencies.

Malik Akhmedilov, who worked for “Khakikat” newspaper, was found with gun shot wounds to the stomach, a local interior ministry source said.

The murders come amid growing international pressure on Russia to end the culture of impunity in which its activists are being murdered after the unsolved killing of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.
　
　
　
　
　

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Meteor Shower Peaks August 11-12th

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The annual Perseid meteor shower, which peaks August 11-12th, 2009, can appear in any part of the night sky, but the tails of the meteors all point back to their origin in the constellation Perseus.


This impressive spectacle appears to originate from a point called a "radiant" in the constellation of Perseus - hence the name Perseid.

"Earth passes through the densest part of the debris stream sometime between the 11th or 12th of August. Then, you could see dozens of meteors per hour streaking through the night sky," said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.


The rock and dust fragments which cause the shower were left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle when it was last near our Sun. The comet orbits the Sun once every 130 years and last swept through our inner Solar System in 1992. Sphere: Related Content