For A Thursday

In the news...


A gunman was neutralised after shots were fired in a German cinema:

A masked man was shot dead Thursday after entering a movie theatre in southwestern Germany with what appeared to be a rifle and taking several hostages, authorities said. No one else was hurt.

It must be those lax gun laws.




It will cost taxpayers $250 million to bloat the Canada Pension Plan:

The federal government estimates it will cost taxpayers $250 million per year to offset the additional financial burden that expansion of the Canada Pension Plan will eventually place on low-income earners.

You voted for this, Canada.




Speaking of wastes of money:

Ontario’s soon-to-be-defunct standalone pension plan cost taxpayers at least $16 million over the past two years, according to government estimates and public accounts.

Based on the numbers available, it’s likely the figure was closer to $20 million. The money was spent on research and to start setting up the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan and the “administration corporation” that was supposed to run it.

Premier Kathleen Wynne says the program will be “wound down,” but could not estimate how much the ORPP has already cost taxpayers.

Instead, starting in 2019, all Canadian workers will pay about $7 more a month into the Canada Pension Plan. Had the ORPP gone ahead, Ontarians without a workplace pension plan would have paid at least double that on a sliding scale geared to their income.

And:

An investigation into money laundering at gas stations and laundromats that began two years ago in southern Brazil has since mushroomed into a wide sweeping corruption scandal, creating a national soap opera that has enthralled Brazilians as it reaches into the upper echelons of the country’s political and corporate elites. ...

The fallout has included the recent impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the arrest of dozens of senior politicians and business leaders. But also caught up in the tumult are hundreds of millions of dollars managed by some of the world’s biggest investors, including Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, one of Canada’s biggest and most respected publicly funded pension funds.

China's organ trade still continues:

According to the report, the entire organ-harvesting enterprise is controlled by the state, with the intimate involvement of China’s military and security apparatus. The report exposes the Chinese government’s efforts to enforce a systemic cover-up of the whole thing. It is an industrial-scale enterprise involving the trafficking of tens of thousands of organs intended for transplant every year — at least 15 times as many as claimed in official government statements.

Gutmann’s 2014 research had settled on a “best guess” that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been slaughtered for their organs over the past several years. The new report’s primary research findings, gathered from hospital records, medical journals, whistle-blower accounts and hard-to-hide databases, appears to confirm that those earlier estimates were wildly over-cautious.

 Remember  Trudeau admires China's "basic dictatorship".


Also:

A convicted Islamist terrorist is one step closer to being granted Canadian citizenship, thanks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.

Trudeau successfully rammed his controversial Bill C-6 through the House of Commons on the last day before summer recess. Now all that’s left is a rubber stamp from the Senate.

The bill repeals a Stephen Harper-era law that enabled the government to strip Canadian citizenship from foreign-born citizens convicted of terrorism.

There's transparent democracy for you.


(Paws up)




A tied decision keeps a lower court ruling on Obama's abuse of authority:

But on Thursday, the Supreme Court disagreed. In a 4-to-4 decision, the justices let stand a lower court ruling that Mr. Obama had overstepped his authority. The decision freezes the president’s actions for the balance of his term, leaving the future of the program — and millions of undocumented workers — in limbo.

Does anyone care to ask why anyone without documentation or approval should skirt authority where someone else would be punished?



And now, drone footage of a church dome. Enjoy:


Byzantine - BigFly from BigFly.fr on Vimeo.