But Wait! There's More!

As the world spins on its axis ...




Just in:

A gunman on a security watchlist killed at least two people and wounded at least 11 others near the picturesque Christmas market in the historic French city of Strasbourg on Tuesday evening before fleeing.

With France still on high alert after a wave of attacks commissioned or inspired by Islamic State militants since early 2015, the counter-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation.

Amid fast-moving, confusing scenes it was not clear if the suspect, identified by police as Strasbourg-born Chekatt Cherif, 29, had been cornered by commandos or had slipped the dragnet.

We may never, ever know his motive.

It's probably drugs, mental illness or Russians. Perhaps a combination of the three.

This broad is as good as gone:

A Canadian court on Tuesday granted bail to a top executive of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd while she awaits a hearing for extradition to the United States, a move that could help placate Chinese officials angered by her arrest.

Meng Wanzhou, 46, Huawei's chief financial officer and the daughter of its founder, faces U.S. accusations that she misled multinational banks about Iran-linked transactions, putting the banks at risk of violating U.S. sanctions.

Justice William Ehrcke at a court hearing in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Tuesday granted bail to Meng, subject to a guarantee of C$10 million ($7.5 million) and other conditions.

She must remain in Canada and be subject to electronic monitoring and security when she leaves her residence.

 
China, however, feels no compunction in arresting people:

The Canadian government confirmed Tuesday afternoon that a Canadian citizen has been detained in China, in what two of Canada’s former ambassadors to that country say looks like a response to the arrest of a Huawei executive in Vancouver earlier this month.

Emotional blackmail? Retaliation? China being the world's most polluted @$$hole? You decide.




Speaking of @$$holes:

Child killer Michael Rafferty is secure behind the razor wire of a prison specializing in sex offenders, Canada’s public safety minister Ralph Goodale said Tuesday.

(Sidebar: just like whatever number of ISIS thugs, eh, Ralphie?)

But that reassurance hardly was enough for the child’s father, Rodney Stafford.

“He is still living a better life than he is entitled to,” Stafford said. “Why does he get an opportunity to get out of his little cell in maximum security when Victoria doesn’t have the chance to climb out of that pine box?”

Rafferty was found guilty in 2012 of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford and sentenced to life in prison.

**

Rempel told us of her first meeting with representatives from the Yazidi community in 2015, when she learned firsthand of the specific horrors unfolding in Iraq. The barbarism of ISIL génocidaires is limitless. Rempel was told, for example, of parents forced to eat their own babies, killed and boiled by jihadists. Everyone knew the genocide was happening. They could see it in real time on YouTube. Here was “never again” time staring everyone in the face.

Canada had to play a role, and Rempel expected it would. What Rempel saw instead was “inertia” and an inability to respond effectively. Trudeau’s government was not prepared to seek out genocide victims if they were not on UN lists (even though Canadian personnel capable of doing so were in the area); but Yazidis were not on UN lists because the UN was prioritizing Muslims over minorities. ...

In Canada, a migrant arriving at an illegal point of entry gets full protection. The very next day, his relatives — not just wife or children or parents, but aunts and cousins; the definition is broad — can arrive for processing at a legal point of entry. Meanwhile, Yazidis in Canada, mostly women, because the men were almost all massacred, traumatized from prolonged sex slavery, can’t even bring over their sisters without a tortuous and defeating process (there are only two interpreters in Canada who speak their unique dialect). Yet their kinsmen are precisely what they need to heal.

Raj Grewal is a liar.

Case in point:

At a closed meeting last month Brampton city council decided to refer the matter to the RCMP, sources told the Post, noting that a confidential report on the issue had been shared with local MPs Raj Grewal and Navdeep Bains, who is also the federal economic development minister.

Goreway Heaven has some Liberal connections, including the fact one of the company’s directors, Bhagwan Grewal, is a former Liberal riding association president and was part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s official trip to India earlier this year. Several of the company’s directors match the names of Liberal donors listed in Elections Canada records, with a smaller number of directors donating to the Conservatives and NDP.

Both MPs have strongly denied they leaked the confidential information to Goreway Heaven. The company says it never saw the report, and was one of 24 “potential purchasers” of the property. Two of the company’s directors, Jaswinder Bhatti and Kulwant Riarh, told the Post the company did not discuss the deal with either MP. ...

In a statement last week, Raj Grewal went further, saying he received the city report last Nov. 21, almost a year after the company had already bought the land.
But the Post has obtained a copy of an email addressed to both MPs’ personal parliamentary email accounts — different from the public addresses whose messages are typically filtered through staff — dated June 28, 2016 with the subject line “Goreway Bridge update.” A source has confirmed the report was attached.

Sit back with one's choice of beverage for this one:

A coalition of First Nations groups is imploring Ottawa to rein in an oil tanker ban on the northern B.C. coast, and plans to level a United Nations complaint against the government to protest the legislation.

The plea is a last-ditch effort to reverse Bill C-48 as it nears passage through the Senate. The National Chiefs Coalition met with a number of senators Tuesday morning in Ottawa to oppose the moratorium.

Calvin Helin, CEO of Eagle Spirit Energy Holding, heads the coalition, which has sketched out plans to build a roughly $18-billion oil pipeline from northern Alberta to around Prince Rupert, B.C.

Helin, a Lax Kw’alaams Band member, has long pitched the idea as Canada’s sole First Nations-led oil pipeline. Helin said C-48 is a matter of “enormous concern” for the roughly 200 First Nations communities represented by the coalition, and said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tanker ban explicitly targets the project, effectively stripping Indigenous people of their economic self-determination.

“Is this what reconciliation is supposed to represent in Canada?” he said.

Also to fight - these guys:

Albertans are correct that Quebec has penchant to disparage Athabasca oil while simultaneously fuelling their cars with petroleum from some of the worst regimes on earth. They are also correct that Quebec disproportionately benefits from federal treasuries flush with Alberta oil money. These frustrations aside, a boycott may not be the wisest way to show Quebec the error of its ways.

All Alberta has to do is stop sending oil out east.




Once again, the government proves its callous inefficiency:

To the searing annals of wholesale child-welfare failures across the country — Sara Podniewicz, Jordan Heikamp, Matthew Vaudreuil, Phoenix Sinclair, Jeffrey Baldwin are just those cases I personally covered and/or have written about — we can now add the name of Charlie, from British Columbia.

Charlie is the pseudonym given him by Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth, the B.C. Representative for Children and Youth, in her damning report, Alone and Afraid, to the B.C. legislature this week.

She had to use a pseudonym because Charlie, unlike the other children I’ve named, lived.

He was rescued — saved — by police and paramedics who on Jan. 20, 2016 arrived at Charlie’s home, alerted by a concerned citizen who had called the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) to report her fears for the little boy.

He answered the door, a naked, grotesquely malnourished 12-year-old who weighed 65 pounds and whose wasted frame was covered in dirt, sores and small bruises and notable for its protruding bones. The mere sight of him left the first responders traumatized. Charlie was all alone of course, and while the rest of the house was tidy, his room was covered in garbage and smeared with fecal matter.

They rushed him to hospital. He clung to the paramedics.

As Charlesworth noted, he reached this pitiful state — a special needs child, with autism, who nonetheless as the three years since demonstrate capable of so much — despite MCFD knowing about him and his desperate family situation for a decade.

It was in 2006 that police first alerted the ministry.

But over the next 10 years, despite a total of eight reports from concerned school principals, a hospital social worker, BC Children’s Hospital, nurses and others that Charlie was being neglected and that his mother couldn’t or wouldn’t care for him, not one of the myriad of child-protection workers and supervisors who were involved with the family ever once saw the little boy.

But ... but ... Jordan Peterson won't use made-up names!




 What-what-what?!:

Arabian news reports have shared photos and information about what is believed to be the first ever Coptic church mass conducted in Saudi Arabia on Sunday.

Cairo Scene reported on a translation from Al Watan, which explained that Egyptian Bishop Ava Morkos of Shobra El Kheima conducted the historic mass. Morkos had been invited by Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, and was allowed to bring over the necessary items from Cairo to perform the Mass.

The ceremony was held over two days in the house of a Coptic resident in Saudi Arabia, with several Coptic families invited to attend.

Not in an actual church?



Also:

Close to 100 Christian leaders and students were arrested on Sunday at a church in Chengdu, China, with a prayer letter claiming that three believers were tortured.

And now, a very special story:

A young boy’s visit with Santa Claus is sure to put you in the holiday spirit.

Misty Wolf of Fort Worth, Texas took to Facebook to share a heartwarming story of her six-year-old son, Matthew, meeting Santa.

In a post that has since been shared more than 88,000 times, Wolf writes that “Santa” showed tremendous kindness to her son who is both blind and autistic.