Mid-Week Post

Lousy Smarch weather....

In the bleak mid-winter....


A drunk driver who killed three children and their grandfather apologises in open court:

A drunk driver who killed three children and their grandfather in a horrific crash told the grieving family Wednesday that he wished he could erase his "inexcusable" actions, but his apology was rejected by the children's parents.

Marco Muzzo, 29, faced a packed courtroom as he expressed the sorrow and regret he said have been consuming him since the Sept. 27 tragedy in Vaughan, Ont.

"I am tortured by the grief and the pain that I have caused the entire family," he said. "I will forever be haunted by the reality of what I have done. I am truly sorry."

His voice trembling at times, Muzzo acknowledged that his words could bring no consolation to those whose lives have been irreparably harmed by his behaviour.

But he vowed to work to make amends by educating others on the dangers of drunk driving.

"I will spend the rest of my life attempting to atone for my conduct," he said.

Muzzo pleaded guilty earlier this month to four counts of impaired driving causing death and two of impaired driving causing bodily harm.

Nine-year-old Daniel Neville-Lake, his five-year-old brother Harrison, their two-year-old sister Milly, and the children's 65-year-old grandfather, Gary Neville, died after the van they were in was hit by an SUV.

Jennifer and Edward Neville-Lake, whose family was decimated in the crash, left the room as Muzzo took the stand and did not return until he was back in the prisoner's box.

Outside court, Jennifer Neville-Lake said the couple had no interest in what Muzzo had to say and questioned the sincerity of his remorse.

In the end, she said, whether or not Muzzo is sorry is "irrelevant," since nothing can bring back their loved ones, she said.

 No one wants to hear your apologies, party-boy.




Well, thank God a gun wasn't used:

Eight people were injured and a female student was in custody after a stabbing at a Canadian high school east of Toronto, police said on Tuesday.

One of the people had serious but not life-threatening injuries, while the others had minor injuries, Durham Regional Police said in a series of posts on Twitter.

The Federal Court of Appeal has allowed a Nazi executioner to stay in Canada:

The federal government has hit another roadblock in its decades-long effort to strip Canadian citizenship from a now 92-year-old man who was once a member of a brutal Nazi death squad.

In its decision, the Federal Court of Appeal set aside a ruling against Helmut Oberlander and ordered the government to take another look at the case.

Oberlander, an ethnic German born in Ukraine, has argued he had no choice when German forces conscripted him at age 17 in 1941 to serve as an interpreter in Einsatzkommando 10a. The unit was part of a force responsible for killing more than two million people. Most were civilians, and most were Jewish.

"The appellant was entitled to a determination of the extent to which he made a significant and knowing contribution to the crime or criminal purpose of the Ek 10a," the Federal Court of Appeal said in its recent decision.

"Only then could a reasonable determination be made as to whether whatever harm he faced was more serious than the harm inflicted on others through his complicity."

In making its decision, the court noted the Supreme Court in 2013 ruled that individuals cannot be held liable for a group's crimes only because they associated with the group or passively acquiesced to its criminal purpose.

Oberlander, who immigrated to Canada with his wife in 1954 and raised two daughters, became a citizen in 1960 and ran a construction business in Kitchener, Ont. The government first began trying to strip him of his citizenship in 1995, prompting a hotly contested and protracted court battle.

We have a legal system, not a justice one.




Ontario sells any electricity to Quebec and the US at a loss:

CS Wind Canada is laying off 51 employees at its manufacturing facility in Windsor, Ont., with the company saying there isn't enough work to maintain current operations.

Remember - budgets balance themselves:

Actually, there is another whammy that has already hit small-business owners without sufficient comment: the Trudeau four-point hike in the top personal income tax rates. While Trudeau promises to deliver Harper’s proposed small-business corporate rate cut from 11 to nine per cent on up to $500,000 in profits, he has already raised 2016 personal taxes on profits in excess of $200,000 derived by owners from their corporations.

Also:

Premier Kathleen Wynne revealed some of the impacts on consumers Wednesday, such as an increase of about 4.3 cents a litre on gas and about $5 more per month on residential natural gas, before the legislation enabling cap-and-trade was to be introduced.

Ontario Liberal voters wanted this.




But... but... I thought he loved Canada!

Filmmaker Michael Moore took some time out of his busy schedule to trash talk Toronto on Wednesday, but it turns out his claims are mostly garbage.

The Oscar-winning director, whose new documentary Where to Invade Next premieres Friday, told the Canadian Press that Torontonians were at least partially to blame for the water crisis in his hometown of Flint, Mich. ...

(Sidebar: Davison, Michigan, actually.)

City officials were quick to contest Moore’s claim, noting Toronto hasn’t trucked trash to Michigan since 2010, after it bought the Green Lane landfill near London, Ont.

“We can confirm that any city-managed garbage or garbage received at city-run transfer stations is not going to Michigan,” said Derek Angove, Toronto’s director of waste management.

Even when Toronto did send its trash south of the border, it was sent to a landfill in Sumpter Township, 130 kilometres south of Flint.

If only he would fade into irrelevance.




Well, that's one life-saving measure:

A baby born prematurely after his mother went into silent labour was kept alive in a sandwich bag.

This amazing photo shows little Isaac Derwent in the plastic bag before he was moved to an incubator. ...

Isaac was born ten weeks early at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth and weighted just 3lb 11oz. Much to his mother’s confusion, doctors wrapped him in the sandwich bag after he was born.

He has made a full recovery.

“Straight after being born Isaac was put into a plastic bag and the doctors said the idea behind that was to regulate his body temperature,” said his mother.

“It was quite shocking to give birth and then for the first thing to happen is they put your baby in a sandwich bag.

“We do have a picture of him in it, which I am sure we can all laugh about when he gets older.

And now, animal spies:

After a series of shark attacks in the popular Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in 2010, rumors in the Egyptian press accused Israeli intelligence agency Mossad of training the beasts. It was thought that the shark might have been deliberately planted in the area in order to damage the tourist trade. Israel vehemently denied the accusations and pointed out that they too had beach resorts on the Red Sea, meaning that any shark in the area was a danger to Israel as well.