BREAKING NEWS: Hastings County...

...absolutely no raging gun-battles in progress this sunny Tuesday... yet again...

Toronto police are investigating a late-night shooting in north Scarborough that left one man in hospital with serious injuries and another in police custody. Shots rang out just before midnight Monday in a parking lot of a shopping plaza located on Finch Avenue, just east of Kennedy Road.

Authorities say they are investigating whether the gun battle that erupted between a two groups of men was caught on a surveillance camera that was set up in the plaza. Investigators say they found numerous shell casings in the parking lot.

The plaza remained closed throughout Tuesday morning while police examined evidence at the scene.

Curiously, once more, Mayor Miller's office strangely silent on which gun club the shooters belonged to.

RELATED: In other Hogtown happenings...

-- TORONTO -- Toronto police have identified a 19-year-old man accused of firing shots toward officers just after midnight on Sunday.

Abshir Abdirashid of Toronto faces nine charges, including two counts of attempted murder, and is scheduled to appear in court today.

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"We're not very good at dying"

Herein lies the dichotomy, the decision to focus on reducing suffering is made only after life-prolonging treatment has been ineffectual and death is imminent. It's very hard to switch gears - to let go of the rope.

It's a lot easier when you have a clear sense that this is what the person would have wanted.

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The good news is...

...they stimulated the economy by selling a sh!tload of newspapers...

Alfie Patten, the boy who was reported to have fathered a child when he was 12 years old, is not the baby's father, DNA tests have shown.

Alfie, now 13, from Eastbourne, in East Sussex, told a national newspaper in February that he believed he had made his 15-year-old girlfriend pregnant.

But the tests established in March that a 15-year-old boy from Eastbourne is the father of Chantelle Stedman's baby.

Unfortunately, on the flip side, the girl in question is now revealed as an infamous country-wide liar and tramp.

Our modern world.

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SPIN

...who says it's just for politicians?

-- VANCOUVER, B.C. -- Vancouver sex trade workers need to know their rights when dealing with cameras and reporters and will be offered media training leading up to the 2010 Olympic Games, an advocacy group said.

Hang on a sec... hooker journalism is gonna be an integral part of the Olympic television coverage? What's up with that? Is this some new marketing plan to reverse the CBC's failing fortunes?

"We find sometimes that media attention to the area can be a little less than compassionate and we don't want them to feel like animals in a zoo during that time."

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Because, inevitably, it's the shy, sensitive types giving ten dollar blowjobs to unwashed strangers in dark alleys to help pay for their next fix.

Meanwhile, in other hooker-related news...

Oh Canada.

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Stockholm Religion

It is a harsh, but necessary thing to point out that, in reality, children are hostages to their parents. They are vulnerable, both physically and psychically.

If parents teach their children that the world is flat, the children will not only uncritically take that on as a personal belief, but they will fight others psychologically, even physically, who disagree, because disagreement is an indirect attack against their parents on whom they are one hundred percent dependent.

The correlation is nearly total: If parents believe in a particular religion, their children, as adults, will as well.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Bless my folks: one agnostic, the other atheist, but saw that I got to catechism and church until I made up my own mind that, as has been said, "Its not that I don't believe in god. Its just that I don't trust his ground crew".

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A rookie mistake

See, Iggy... an old hand wouldn't have "rolled the dice" here...

It would appear that Iggy.me, Judy Sgro and IRuby were hoping against hope that the whole thing might blow over.

Michael Ignatieff could have asked IRuby to step down as Critic for Multiculturalism and Youth immediately - but he didn’t. Instead he obviously decided to take the wait and see approach.

All of which raises a few questions. One is the curious appearance of Ms. Dhalla front and centre in the photo-ops at the Convention.

Whose idea was that?

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Hope, Change and...

...Crawford, Texas...

The shifting policies of the Obama administration on national-security issues have left reporters and White House officials exasperated with each other.

“You started out on Monday questioning why we were being so opposite of George Bush in all these questions,” Bob Gibbs, Mr. Obama's amiable if syntactically challenged press secretary, complained on Friday.

"And on Friday I'm answering questions about why are we so much like George Bush on all these questions."

Funny how that works, huh?

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"I am not by any means a political pundit, but it appears to me Barry and his crew are winging it."

"We got change alright, every other day!"

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Well, at least...

...he was right about one thing...

The broadcast quoted military officials as saying Prabhakaran had been killed along with his intelligence chief Pottu Amman and Soosai, the head of the rebels' naval wing.

They were shot dead in an ambush in the Mullivaikal district while trying to escape the war zone in an ambulance, the general added.

Earlier, at least three senior rebel leaders were killed, including Prabhakaran's eldest son, Charles Anthony.

Ironically... the news appears to have sparked mass demonstrations...

The announcement sparked mass celebrations around the country, and people poured into the streets of Colombo dancing and singing.

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"Well geez, Major... what's this button for?"

Now, everybody please join me in saying a heartfelt prayer... that they never, ever let him anywhere near anything... remotely involving missiles.

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BEST HEADLINE BAR NONE:

"Biden speaks at Wake Forest - does not disclose nuclear launch codes"

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Hey... this is Canada

Of course the murderer's rights come first.

-- OTTAWA -- The son of a woman who was raped, strangled and left to rot in the woods has been blacklisted from the killer’s parole hearing.

Jeremy Mead, who was six years old when he watched his mom brutally assaulted at gunpoint, is barred from the May 27 hearing in Toronto because he wrote a victim’s impact statement deemed “disturbing” by officials at Correctional Service of Canada.

Mead wrote the first impact statement this past December, after learning Richard Raymond Babinski was permitted day passes to attend cultural events. It was the first time Mead had put pen to paper to express how his mom’s murder traumatized him for life.

Yeah... let's penalise the guy who is scarred for life because his mother was brutally murdered... that makes sense.

CSC refuses to reverse its decision - a position Mead calls a “slap in the face” to him and his mother’s memory.

“They’re going to give him a second chance, but they’re not going to give me a second chance,” he said. “His rights are overpowering my rights.”

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RELATED: A friend remembers Eva Marie Mead

She did everything you're supposed to do when you run up against someone scary and dangerous -- got in touch with the police, filed charges, and helped the police gather evidence against the man who had sexually assaulted her (and who was later convicted of murdering her).

In the end, obsession trumped common sense.

And now Eva Marie Mead's son is being re-victimised by the system.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

Hey... somebody has to stand up for those poor, misunderstood cons...
Well, Zorph... at least this time, you're not using a false trolling id... or shittin' on gays...

"It's a little past ironic that compassionate, intellectual, progressive Zorpheus considers... "whining, spineless nancyboys"... to be the ultimate insult he can throw at us knuckle-draggin' neocons."

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IRB back in the news

-- CALGARY -- The release of a double-murderer onto city streets occurred despite the contention of the federal government that the convicted killer should remain in custody, immigration officials said yesterday.

Elvir Pobric, who escaped a Bosnian prison more than 10 years ago and hid as a fugitive in Canada, was released last week, days after his detention review hearing was closed to the public.

The fact Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator Lee Ann King made the decision to release Pobric pending another hearing, without offering any reasons, has left politicians and police asking questions.

Hang on a sec... the IRB?

That sounds so familiar.

But c'mon now... what are we dealing with here...

Pobric was sentenced to 20 years in a Bosnian prison following the April 1992 murders of two men. After shooting them execution-style, Pobric burned and buried the bodies and a car in a garbage dump.He was arrested two days later.

In November 1996, he escaped from jail. Pobric claimed refugee status when he arrived in Canada in 1999.

An outstanding fraud charge against Pobric has to be dealt with before officials with Canada Border Services Agency can find him inadmissible.

But Canadians will not learn how immigration officials will deal with him. Removals are reported to the public only after the removal has taken place.

Oh Canada.

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FROM THE COMMENTS: Oh... my... gawd...

"At his detention hearing, his Vancouver-based interpreter introduced herself over the speaker phone and said she was fluent in both Bosnian and Serbian.

“'Can you tell me your name?,' asked Pobric, clad in a blue jumpsuit and handcuffed. “'I’m sorry, I don’t like to have a translator who have a Boza first name OK?

"That’s a Serbian name."

"The case was adjourned until Tuesday in order to find a Bosnian interpreter and to give the media time to make an application that the case be opened to the public."

God forbid they should be insensitive to this murderer's religious and ethnic sensibilities.

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"Nuclear weapons..."

"...are just about as safe as the people who are their custodians," says Hoodbhoy. The threat comes not from the "mountain barbarians," he says, but from "Al Qaeda, together with their Islamist allies within the Pakistani state and society."

"These are urban people, engineers, technicians, people in fairly high offices."

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Let there...

...be Darcey...
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And then, there's this...

Who would you choose to have breakfast with?

A moderate Muslim with an award winning book who consistently speaks out on behalf of Canada and a man who gave up his community to put his country first or a bunch of hard right Islamists who you have nothing in common with?

Having shared bread with the two 'outsiders' I can tell you first hand that it is not a conversation to be missed.

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UPDATE: Like the folks at Yonge-Dundas...

...these folks were never, never gonna give up...

Mr Pathmanathan said the LTTE was "prepared to silence its guns if that is what needed by the international community to save the life and dignity of the Tamil people".

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Shooters in our streets...

...and university campuses...

Witnesses told the Sun the young shooter was allowed in The Underground club with an "underage" wrist band ahead of the shooting just before midnight Thursday.

Once inside the bar, in the lower level of the Student Centre, the young man ripped off the wrist band so he could drink, witnesses said.

When he was confronted by a security guard who tried to escort him out, the youth pulled out a gun and fired off three or four rounds, an employee of the bar said.

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RELATED: Even the cops are targets...

A suspect has been arrested and a handgun seized after police officers were shot at in a troubled North York neighbourhood.

Officers were called to an address on Driftwood Avenue, in the city's Jane Street and Finch Avenue area, just after midnight Sunday after a shot was fired into a townhouse.

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The capricious and unknowable...

..."Will of Allah"...

In the decade since the fighting ended, the wave of unregistered nikaah marriages has been followed by a corresponding wave of "talaaq" or Islamic divorces, leaving thousands of Tajik women and children destitute and completely unprotected by the law.

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Whatever Ignatieff promised them...

...it's not working.

-- TORONTO -- A crowd of thousands of Tamil-Canadians has shut down the intersection at Yonge and Dundas Sts. to protest the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka.

As of 9 p.m. any in the crowd are sitting in the streets, despite police pleas for them to keep moving. The demonstrators say they will stay put until they hear from the federal government.

That's funny... CTV skipped over the part about them fighting with the cops.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"I say find out who's organizing this campaign and send them a bill for the whole shebang. Police, ambulance, fire dept, city services and clean up. Hit em in the wallet where it hurts."

And...
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Oh gawd... must be Friday night

"Disagreeing with you doesn't mean I'm a troll."

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As Canadian as...

...apple pie...

It's not just that Ignatieff has lived more than 30 years out of Canada (though that alone should disqualify him), Mr. Wells. It's that the only reason he's back is to add another line to his resume.

And therein lies Iggy's real "pronoun problem".

Canada - not worth living in unless they'll make you Prime Minister.

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Count Ignatieff & the Liberal Party...

...say we have to continue to suck up to the barbaric regime in Communist China... Zhao Ziyang disagrees...

Just weeks before the 20th anniversary of the bloody Chinese government crackdown on demonstrators at Tiananmen Square, the leader ousted for opposing the crackdown has broken his silence, with a posthumous memoir that condemns the 1989 killings as a "tragedy."

In 1989, Zhao Ziyang was the highest-ranking leader in the country - the chief of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

And just what was it that turned Zhao's head around?

Zhao says on the night of June 3, while sitting in the courtyard with his family, he heard what he described as intense gunfire. He said "a tragedy to shock the world had not been averted, and was happening after all."

The gunfire he heard was government troops firing on protesters around Tiananmen Square, actually in the early hours of June 4.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, were killed.

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Drugs... the "victimless" crime

-- ABBOTSFORD -- In their final semester of high school, teenagers Dilsher Gill and Joseph Randay made a fatal decision to take over a Red Scorpion drug line that had been run by two other young men gunned down in March, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Four weeks later, the popular students were also shot dead — all because Scorpion rivals wanted to kill anyone perceived to be linked to Jonathan, Jarrod and Jamie Bacon and their notorious gang.

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