Globe and Mail

Canadian scientists discover world’s first moving animal – our ancestor the slug

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Fossilized burrows of prehistoric slugs (Photo courtesy University of Alberta)

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

July 28, 2012 – Globe and Mail

On the cusp of the 30th Olympiad, as the world gawps at the apex of human movement, a team of Canadian scientists has published breakthrough research on the first creatures to move at all: prehistoric South American slugs.

Researchers from the University of Alberta have unearthed the oldest evidence yet of animals capable of self-propulsion. Earlier life forms, such as sponges, had to stay put.

As well, the 585-million-year-old slugs could be the first bilaterians – creatures with a front, back and sides. And they are the immediate ancestors of all locomoting animals, humans included.

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The making of a murderer – and how to prevent it

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J.P. Moczulski

This is Joe’s story.

At age 18, he was convicted of second-degree murder, accused of stabbing another boy to death.

Joe’s name isn’t real – police changed it to protect his privacy. But his story is. Police in Prince Albert, Sask., use it to illustrate their strategy.

This timeline traces Joe’s run-ins with police and social services through an infancy marked by domestic violence, alcoholism and abuse, a violent childhood and a series of petty-crime charges.

Early intervention, police maintain, could have prevented the murder years before it happened. The crime-prevention program is working so well, Anna Mehler Paperny reports, Toronto is adopting the same one in a new pilot project

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Greenhouse idea takes root in Far North

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Katherine O’Neill

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

July 17, 2012 – Globe and Mail

There’s nothing quite like the humid, so-thick-you-can-taste-it air of a teeming greenhouse – especially when it’s 40 degrees below freezing and you’re plunged in darkness for months.

That’s the kind of unlikely oasis planners want to bring to Canada’s hardest-to-feed communities. They have got their work cut out for them.

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Khadr’s lawyers ask court to demand decision on Guantanamo detainee’s return to Canada

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Janet Hamlin

Saturday, July 14 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Omar Khadr’s Canadian lawyers are asking a federal court to order Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to make up his mind on whether to bring the Canadian convict back to serve time in Canada.

In an application filed on Friday, John Norris and Brydie Bethell asked judges to review what they argue is an unreasonable delay in deciding on Mr. Khadr’s transfer application. The 25-year-old was eligible to return to serve the rest of his sentence in Canada as of October, 2011.

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Double-bunking in prisons not a problem for Vic Toews

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Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Thursday, July 12 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he has no problem with the number of federal inmates sharing cells built for one.

And even as he reiterated his commitment to building 2,700 new cells in existing prison facilities, he said those additional units aren’t meant to alleviate the pressures caused by double-bunking – because there’s no need.

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Ontario urges feds not to allow generic OxyContin onto market

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Michelle Siu for the Globe and Mail

Saturday, July 7, 2012 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Ontario is “strongly urging” the federal government not to let generic brands of the popular painkiller OxyContin into Canada once Purdue Pharmaceuticals’ patent runs out this fall.

The expiration of Purdue’s OxyContin patent on Nov. 25 opens the door for other companies to manufacture cheaper generic versions of the controlled-release oxycodone. Purdue will continue to make a new, tamper-resistant patented drug – OxyNEO – introduced to replace OxyContin earlier this year.

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Police and cities face off over pay

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Friday, July 6, 2012 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Financial showdowns between police and the cities paying them can be nasty. And they’re getting nastier: Across Canada, budgetary games of chicken are playing out between cash-strapped cities and police forces that argue they’re taking on more than they ever have – and need the cash to back it.

The mayor of Peterborough, Ont., has been locked out of two meetings of the police board, on which he sits, after a rare move by council to reject a funding request and slice the force’s budget on its own. Reports this week suggested the board may have asked Ontario’s Civilian Police Commission to remove the mayor entirely.

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Telcos in talks with Ottawa to shape Internet ‘spy’ bill: documents

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Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Friday, June 29, 2012 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Public Safety Canada has been in close consultation with telecommunication companies over the logistics of Ottawa’s so-called Internet “snoop and spy” legislation – talks that dealt with who will shoulder the costs of pricey “intercept capabilities,” and whether it will even be feasible to monitor user behaviour in an increasingly complex “cloud-computing” environment.

The reams of e-mails, meeting and teleconference agendas, obtained by The Globe and Mail through an access to information request, indicate the talks extended more than a year prior to the government tabling its online surveillance bill in February.

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Elliot Lake mall collapse: Eastwood Mall and Peak Building Restoration

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In 2010, Peak Building Restoration & General Contracting went to court claiming that Bob Nazarian and Eastwood Mall Inc., the owners of Elliot Lake’s Algo Centre Mall, owed Peak Restoration $741,157.01, having only paid part of the $ $823,657.01 bill for repairs and waterproofing to the Algo Centre’s rooftop parking lot in 2008.

(documents after the jump)

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