(NaturalNews) A recent report released by Statistics Canada, Canada’s official statistical agency, has revealed that more than 90 percent of Canadians are contaminated with bisphenol-A (BPA), a toxic chemical compound used in many plastics and resins. The report is the first of its kind in Canada to verify the extent to which BPA has invaded the bodies of the population at large.
“[F]or the very first time [we] have baseline information against which we can study trends and track what is happening with respect to bisphenol A exposure,” explained Tracey Bushnik from Statscan’s Health Analysis Division in a Reuters article.
In 2008, Canada banned BPA from baby bottles, but the chemical is still widely used both there and around the world in can liners and other plastic materials used in various consumer products.
A pipeline carrying oil from the US state of Indiana to Ontario, Canada has spilled more than 800,000 gallons (3m litres) of oil into a creek which flows into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.
A spokesman for the firm running the pipeline, Enbridge Energy Partners, said a malfunction had caused the leak.
The spill has killed fish and endangered wildlife in the region.
Officials said the pumps which feed the pipeline had been shut down as soon as the leak was discovered. Continue reading »
(Toronto Sun) — Who made the decision for police to stand down despite the fact the city was under attack?
And why?
Was it a police decision or political?
These should be the cornerstone questions of an external review surrounding the chaos of the G20.
After all, police officers were trained to stop the Black Bloc anarchists, were appropriately equipped and massively manned.
As downtown Toronto witnessed burning police cars and a small group of thugs on a rampage, a police source tells me the only thing that stopped the officers from doing that was an order telling them not to. They tell me they could have rounded up all, or most of them, in no time.
I have had several frontline police officers tell me they were told not to get involved. But even before that decision was made, says one insider, there was mass confusion and indecision.
“The orders went from engage to, no, don’t engage to engage to, no, don’t engage,’ ” said an officer. “It was an absolute shambles. Everyone was talking over each other on the radio. Nobody seemed to know what to do. It was just a mess.”
The officer said that eventually there was “a clear order from the command centre saying ‘Do not engage’ ” and, at that point, smelling weakness and no repercussions, the downtown was effectively turned over to the vandals while police, up to 19,000 strong, were ordered to stay out of it.
Four police cars were destroyed and dozens of other properties were damaged.
“It was awful,” said an officer. “There were guys with equipment to do the job, all standing around looking at each other in disbelief … The Montreal riot guys were livid … They just wanted to get in there and do the job but were told they are too intimidating.”
So who made that order?
Was it Chief Bill Blair? Mayor David Miller? Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Somebody else? Continue reading »
Police arrest protesting cyclists along the streets of downtown Toronto during the G20 Summit on Sunday, June 27, 2010. (Ryan Remiorz / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
A tense and bizarre standoff between police and a crowd lingering in central Toronto following a weekend of G20 protests has ended after nearly four hours.
At a busy intersection in the city’s core, a large contingent of police boxed in a group of about 200 people in heavy rain. They were not allowed to leave the area.
Dozens were arrested during the police action, which occurred only steps from where police cruisers were torched 24 hours earlier.
Just before 9:45 p.m. local time, police let the remaining crowd go free.
Talking to reporters late Sunday night, Toronto Police Staff Superintendent Jeff McGuire was pressed to explain why police had barricaded people for so long in the rain, before simply letting them go.
McGuire said, “We’re not perfect in everything we do, but our interest was in the safety of the citizens of Toronto.” Continue reading »
TORONTO (AP) – Canada’s Conservative government says the nearly $1 billion it plans to spend on security at the G-8 and G-20 summits next month is worth it.
Canada has budgeted up to $930 Canadian (US$885 million) for the summits. By comparison, the stated amount spent by Pittsburgh on security for last September’s G-20 summit was US$12.4 million. London’s stated amount for the G-20 last year was US$10.9 million.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Thursday the cost is expensive but the security “worth it.”
Toews argues that hosting separate summits back-to-back is unprecedented.
Canada is hosting the G-20 economic summit on June 26-27 in Toronto. The G-8 is meeting in Huntsville, Ontario, a day earlier. Continue reading »
A security officer examines a computer screen showing a scan from a full-body scanner. (Reuters)
A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country.
“I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.
“That’s why we haven’t put them in our airport,” Sela said, referring to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, which has some of the toughest security in the world.
Sela, former chief security officer of the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security at Ben Gurion. Continue reading »
Continuing on the trail of exposing what is rapidly becoming one of the largest frauds in commodity markets history is the most recent interview by Eric King with GATA’s Adrian Douglas, Harvey Orgen (who recently testified before the CFTC hearing) and his son, Lenny, in which the two discuss their visit to the only bullion bank vault in Canada, that of ScotiaMocatta, located at 40 King Street West in Toronto, and find the vault is practically empty.
This is a relevant segue to a class action lawsuit filed against Morgan Stanley, which was settled out of court, in which it was alleged that Morgan Stanley told clients it was selling them precious metals that they would own in full and that the company would store, yet even despite charging storage fees was not in actual possession of the bullion.
It appears that this kind of lack of physical holdings by all who claim to have gold in storage, is pervasive as the actual gold globally is held primarily in paper or electronic form. Lenny Organ who was the person to enter the vault of ScotiaMocatta, says “What shocked me was how little gold and silver they actually had.”
Lenny describes exactly how much (or little as the case may be) silver was available - roughly 60,000 ounces. As for gold - 210 400 oz bars, 4,000 maples, 500 eagles, 10 kilo bars, 10 one kilogram pieces of gold nugget form, which Adrian Douglas calculates as being $100 million worth, which is just one tenth of what the Royal Mint of Canada sold in 2008, or over $1 billion worth of gold.
As Orgen concludes: “The game ends when the people who own all these paper obligations say enough and take physical delivery, and that’s when the mess will occur.” Continue reading »
John Lipsky, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sits for a photograph following a television interview outside the Jackson Lake Lodge in Moran, Wyoming, on Aug. 20, 2009. (Bloomberg)
March 21 (Bloomberg) — Advanced economies face “acute” challenges in tackling high public debt, and unwinding existing stimulus measures will not come close to bringing deficits back to prudent levels, said John Lipsky, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
All G7 countries, except Canada and Germany, will have debt-to-GDP ratios close to or exceeding 100 percent by 2014, Lipsky said in a speech today at the China Development Forum in Beijing. Already this year, the average ratio in advanced economies is expected to reach the levels seen in 1950, after World War II, he said. The government debt ratio in some emerging market nations had also reached a “worrisome level.”
“This surge in government debt is occurring at a time when pressure from rising health and pension spending is building up,” Lipsky said. Stimulus measures account for about one-tenth of the projected debt increase, and rolling them back won’t be enough to bring deficits and debt ratios back to prudent levels.
Rising public debt could lead governments to seek to eliminate it through inflation or even default if they fail to carry out fiscal measures in time, Mohamed A. El-Erian, co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co. warned earlier this month. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” a book arguing that unforeseen events can roil markets, said March 12 he is concerned about hyperinflation as governments around the world take on more debt and print money.
Budget Deficit
The U.S. budget deficit widened to a record in February as the government spent more to help revive the economy. The gap grew to $221 billion after a shortfall of $194 billion in February 2009, the Treasury Department said on March 10. The figures indicate the deficit this year will probably surpass the record $1.4 trillion in the fiscal year that ended in September. Continue reading »
Mississippi congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) (2nd R) speaks of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina alongside (L-R) Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 15, 2005 file photo. (Reuters)
(Reuters) - A small group of U.S. lawmakers unveiled legislation on Thursday to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement in the latest sign of congressional disillusionment with free-trade deals.
The bill spearheaded by Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, would require President Barack Obama to give Mexico and Canada six months notice that the United States will no longer be part of the 16-year-old trade pact.
“At a time when 10 to 12 percent of the American people are unemployed, I think Congress has an obligation to put people back to work,” Taylor said.
He argued NAFTA has cost the United States millions of manufacturing jobs and hurt national security by encouraging companies to move production to Mexico.
The high unemployment rate makes it the “perfect” time to push for repeal even though past efforts have failed, he said. Continue reading »
The Canadian government is on the verge of approving the introduction of extremely bizarre genetically modified pigs into the Canadian food supply.
These new mouse/pig hybrids have been dubbed “enviropigs” and are being touted as being much better for the environment. This new “breed” of Yorkshire pigs was created by scientists in Ontario at the University of Guelph, who spliced in genes from mice to decrease the amount of phosphorus produced in the pigs’ excrement.
So soon millions of Canadians will be eating meat from mouse/pig hybrid creatures and most of them will not even realize it. It is expected that approval for this new “brand” of pigs will be sought in the United States as well.
But this is hardly the first time that scientists have mixed two kinds of animals together in an attempt to create creatures that will be beneficial for humanity.
The truth is that scientists around the world are now creating bizarre hybrid “animals” on a regular basis. Over the past couple of decades the field of genetic modification has made extraordinary advances, and now researchers and scientists seem very eager to exploit these new technologies.
So what kind of weird, mysterious creatures have scientists been creating?
Well, what would you think of a cat that glows in the dark?
So perhaps in the future not only can your cat cuddle up to you and keep you warm - it could also serve as a night light.
But U.S. researchers were not even the first ones to do this to cats. A team of scientists in South Korea had previously created a cat that glows red under ultraviolet light.
Now why in the world would scientists do this kind of a thing?
Well, because they can.
But scientists have created creatures that are even more bizarre than fluorescent cats.
One Canadian company is actually producing spider goats.
Yes, it is true. A Canadian company known as Nexia has created goats that are genetically modified to be part spider.
The reason for this bizarre genetic modification is to get goats that will produce spider silk protein in their milk. This spider silk protein is then collected, purified and spun into incredibly strong fibers.
Reportedly, the fibers that are produced are more durable than Kevlar, more flexible than nylon, and stronger than steel.
This substance has industrial and military applications that are apparently extremely valuable.
But when you tell most people that spider goats exist they will just laugh at you.
If that is the response that you get when you tell someone about spider goats, just show them the following video.
The YouTube video posted below contains a television news report that discusses how these spider goats are created and what this company is doing with the spider silk that these spider goats are producing….
So does all of this tampering with the environment disturb you?
After all, at least scientists are not creating human/animal hybrid creatures, right?
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