News is getting better and better every day

[csocsike]

Child dies after attacked by five dogs

Happened on native reserve in northern Alta.



Natalie Alcoba, National Post

Published: Friday, November 17, 2006 A five-year-old boy was mauled to death by a pack of dogs as he was walking home alone on a northern Alberta First Nations reserve.
Police said the child was so viciously attacked Thursday evening that his face was unrecognizeable.
A spokesperson for the local RCMP detachment said the boy had been returning from a relative’s house on the North Tallcree First Nation reserve when he was confronted by the animals, some of them wild.
He could see the house he shared with his mom and siblings, number 9930 on a road without a name, when the animals attacked, around 6:30 p.m.
There were five, maybe six of dogs and they were out for blood. They pounced on the boy, sinking their teeth into his snowpants, shredding his hooded winter coat and tearing through his entire body.
Neighbours saw the violent attack through the windows of their homes. One man, a father himself, ran out with a shovel and chased the predators away. He called to others for help, and someone dialed 911.
“It was too late by then,” said Sergeant Ryan Becker, with the Fort Vermilion RCMP detachment, which is about 45 kilometres north of the reserve.
The boy died on the side of that road. His body was later transported to a local hospital.
Police found two of the suspect dogs — a rotweiller and a german shepherd-mix — tied up at a nearby residence. The animals have been quarantined and will likely be destroyed, said Sgt. Becker.
The other three or four animals are believed to be strays. Dozens of wild dogs roam the reserve’s 7,000 acres, but attacks on people have not been a problem in the past, according to Sgt. Becker.
Police expected to positively identify the child by the end of the day. But investigators said they know who he is and have informed his family. Sgt. Becker said the family, led by a single mother who is raising as many as 12 children, had recently moved to North Tallcree from Fox Lake, another reserve nearby.
National Post
nalcoba@nationalpost.com

[csocsike]

WASHINGTON — Requirements for Canadian air travellers to have passports and pay an extra $5 user fee when entering the United States have been pushed back.

The U.S. government has said it’ll miss a Jan. 8 deadline to begin implementing the air portion of Washington's new Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Joanna Gonzales said the U.S. hasn’t set a new deadline yet but warned Canadians against holding off obtaining a passport for travel in the New Year.

“It might send the wrong message and people might think they don't have to worry about January,” Gonzales said in an interview. “We don’t have a specific date (to start this), but it is going to be in the very near future.”

The passport requirement for air travellers is the first stage of tighter U.S. border identification rules for Canadians and Americans entering the country.

Earlier this fall, U.S. President George W. Bush signed legislation extending the deadline for passports or another form of approved ID for crossing the land border from Jan. 1, 2008 to mid-2009.

But Homeland Security is still advising Canadians that the U.S. intends to implement the new land crossing rules well ahead of the later deadline, so long as a new wallet-sized 'passport lite' is ready for use by American travellers.

Ottawa has not yet decided if it will introduce its own alternative to a passport.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it’s postponing a $5 airline traveller fee to offset the cost of increased counterterrorism inspections.

The fee, originally set to be applied starting Nov. 24, will now be added to the charge of airline tickets starting Jan. 1.

© CanWest News Service

[Spanky]

Secret Santa reveals his identity

By MARIA SUDEKUM FISHER, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 18, 6:10 AM ET




KANSAS CITY, Mo. - For 26 years, a man known only as Secret Santa has roamed the streets every December quietly giving people money. He started with $5 and $10 bills. As his fortune grew, so did the gifts. In recent years, Secret Santa has been handing out $100 bills, sometimes two or three at a time, to people in thrift stores, diners and parking lots. So far, he's anonymously given out about $1.3 million. It's been a long-held holiday mystery: Who is Secret Santa?

But now, weak from chemotherapy and armed with a desire to pass on his belief in random kindness, Secret Santa has decided it's time to reveal his identity.
He is Larry Stewart, a 58-year-old businessman from the Kansas City suburb of Lee's Summit, Mo., who made his millions in cable television and long-distance telephone service.
His holiday giving started in December 1979 when he was nursing his wounds at a drive-in restaurant after getting fired. It was the second year in a row he had been fired the week before Christmas.
"It was cold and this car hop didn't have on a very big jacket, and I thought to myself, `I think I got it bad. She's out there in this cold making nickels and dimes,'" he said.
He gave her $20 and told her to keep the change.
"And suddenly I saw her lips begin to tremble and tears begin to flow down her cheeks. She said, `Sir, you have no idea what this means to me.'"
Stewart went to the bank that day and took out $200, then drove around looking for people who could use a lift. That was his "Christmas present to himself." He's hit the streets each December since.
While Stewart has also given money to other community causes in Kansas City and his hometown of Bruce, Miss., he offers the simple gifts of cash because it's something people don't have to "beg for, get in line for, or apply for."
That was a feeling he came to know in the early '70s when he was living out of his yellow Datsun 510. Hungry and tired, Stewart mustered the nerve to approach a woman at a church and ask for help.
The woman told him the person who could help was gone for the day, and Stewart would have to come back the next day.
"As I turned around, I knew I would never do that again," Stewart said.
Over the years, Stewart's giving as Secret Santa grew. He started a Web site. He allowed the news media to tag along, mostly because he wanted to hear about the people who received the money. Reporters had to agree to guard his identity and not name his company, which he still does not want revealed.
His entourage grew over the years, and he began traveling with special elves. People like the late Negro Leagues icon Buck O'Neil, who handed out hugs while Stewart doled out $100s. NFL Hall of Famer Dick Butkus will join Stewart this year in Chicago when Stewart hands out $100s in honor of O'Neil, the first African-American coach in the Major Leagues.
They'll give out $100,000 between Chicago and Kansas City. Four Secret Santas who Stewart "trained" will hand out an additional $65,000.
Doctors told Stewart in April that he had cancer of the esophagus and it had spread to his liver. He has been lucky, he says, to get into a clinical trial at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But the aggressive chemotherapy has stripped away his appetite and energy. He's lost about 100 pounds, but has held onto his white hair.
The treatment costs more than $16,000 a month, not including the cost of traveling to Houston every two weeks and staying there for five or six days. He now has two months off, but returns to treatment in February.

His insurance company won't cover the cost of the treatment, which has left him concerned about his finances and his family.
Now, his mission is bigger than handing out $100 bills. Stewart wants to speak to community groups about his devotion to kindness and to inspire others to donate their time and money. "That's what we're here for," Stewart says, "to help other people out."

[csocsike]

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Canada kept list of dissidents to lock up in time of crisis
Historian uncovers plan to detain as many as 2,500 in camps

The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, November 06, 2006
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=d25ea021-d0f0-41dd-96ed-a4f5463b9edc

Ottawa had Cold War plan to round up activists
CanWest News Service
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=936592e1-db93-47e4-b2fa-d963680c0cef

[csocsike]

"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" -Adolf Hitler,1935

[oma]

"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" -Adolf Hitler,1935

And the world did, indeed.

[csocsike]

[VictorM]

Useless things that everyone should know

Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.

Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache.

A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

Marilyn Monroe had six toes.

All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.

Walt Disney was afraid of mice.

Pearls melt in vinegar.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.

A duck's quack doesn't echo and no one knows why.

The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second was William Jefferson Clinton.

Turtles can breathe through their butts

Butterflies taste with their feet.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.

On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.

Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

It's physically impossible for you to lick your elbow.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

A snail can sleep for three years.

No word in the English language rhymes with "MONTH."

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. SCARY!!!

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

All polar bears are left handed.

In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

"Go," is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall. Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Almost everyone who reads this will try to lick their elbow.

PS... So, did you try to lick your elbow????

[VictorM]

Female Hormones in Beer

Yesterday, scientists for Health Canada suggested that men should take a look at their beer consumption, considering the results of a recent analysis that revealed the presence of female hormones in beer. The theory is that drinking beer makes men turn into women.
To test the finding, 100 men were fed 6 pints of beer each.

It was then observed that 100% of the men gained weight, talked excessively without making sense, became overly emotional, couldn't drive, failed to think rationally, argued over nothing and refused to apologize when wrong. No further testing is planned.

[csocsike]

Eric Beauchesne, CanWest News Service

Published: Tuesday, December 05, 2006
OTTAWA -- Canadian consumers, unlike Americans, are still borrowing heavily, but also unlike Americans, they are having little difficulty keeping up with their debt payments, a major Canadian financial institution said.

“Unlike the sharp slowing in the pace of household borrowing south of the border, household credit in Canada is sill rising fast,” CIBC World Markets said in an analysis Monday on how well Canadian consumers are holding up under their rising debt burden.

During the third quarter of this year overall household debt rose 2.3 per cent, easily outpacing the 1.4 per cent rise in disposable income, it said, noting that led to a moderate increase in the ratio of debt-to-income to a record 122 per cent from 117 per cent a year earlier.

The ratio of interest payments on consumer loans to disposable income is also still on the rise, and is now at a two-year high, it added.