Under the banner Idle No More, thousands of Canada's aboriginal peoples (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) and their allies have staged mass demonstrations in cities and towns all around the country in protest of the abusive treatment of indigenous people in Canada by the Canadian government. Mass marches have peacefully taken over the streets in Ottawa, while Round Dance flashmobs (nodding to both traditional indigenous dances and social media-fueled protest practices of late) have popped in around Canada and even in a handful of U.S. cities in solidarity.

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Customers spotted a monkey - clad in a pint-sized shearling coat - wandering around the store's parking lot Sunday afternoon. The baby monkey, named Darwin, made its way through rows of parked cars and ended up outside a set of store doors.

Ikea staff lured the primate into a corner before calling police, who contacted the city's Animal Services department, said Staff Sgt. Ed Dzingala.

"It was just outside the store, just in a corner area where the monkey had nowhere to go, but it was pretty scared," Dzingala said. He said the monkey had escaped its crate in a parked car.

The monkey, which reportedly wore a diaper as well, never made it inside the store and was picked up by Animal Services officers within half an hour. The animal's owner later contacted police and was reunited with the pet, Dzingala said.

Word of the incident sparked a flurry of comments and photos on Twitter, as well as two parody Twitter accounts which took on the persona of the wandering monkey.

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Rubin, an alleged member of a group that called itself “The Family,” is to be taken to Oregon to face trial on federal arson, destructive device and conspiracy charges, federal authorities said in announcing her arrest. She was one of three remaining fugitives in the group, another 10 members of which were sentenced to terms ranging from three to 13 years in 2007. Collectively, the group is accused of 20 acts of arson carried out between 1996 and 2001 in five Western states on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

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For residents of the West Coast of the US and Canada, they are all reminders of the devastation unleashed on the other side of the Pacific Ocean by last year's Japanese tsunami.

The March 11 disaster, which killed almost 20,000 people, generated tens of millions of tons of wreckage, most of which remained on land. But it also swept an estimated 5 million tons of debris out to sea, 70 percent of which later sank. The fate of the remaining 1.5 million tons is causing concern in communities from Alaska to California, amid warning that the trickle of debris arriving on US shores could soon turn into a deluge.

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Reuters reports that Saputo Inc., Canada’s largest dairy processor, "has the trademark and brand rights to Hostess CupCakes and Hostess Twinkies." Sandy Vassiadis, a spokeswoman for Saputo, said, "It’s totally separate." She added, "We own the rights in Canada so what’s happening in the U.S. doesn't affect us.”

In other words, now the people who complain about Obamacare have another reason to move to Canada.

h/t Consumerist.

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"Pfizer gained a benefit from the (Patent) Act -- exclusive monopoly rights -- while withholding disclosure in spite of its disclosure obligations under the act," Justice Louis LeBel wrote on behalf of the court, Reuters reported. "As a matter of policy and sound interpretation, patentees cannot be allowed to 'game' the system in this way."

Pfizer's "game," according to the court, was in not providing enough details to identify the active ingredient in Viagra. "Pfizer had the information needed to disclose the useful compound and chose not to release it," the ruling said.

Now stripped of its patent, Pfizer will face generic competition in Canada. The little blue pill is Pfizer's sixth-biggest medicine, with annual sales of about $2 billion, Reuters reported, noting that the Canadian ruling is unlikely to significantly impact U.S. sales.

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Hours of surveillance video captured by the RCMP, Canada’s national police, show the since-assassinated godfather of Montreal’s powerful Mafia, Nicolo Rizzuto, in variations of the same scene: counting bills, pausing only to lick his fingers, and stuffing the bundles in his knee-high socks.

No one is surprised that the mob conducts its illegal activities in cash. Shocking many, however, are revelations about the source of the money — a Mafia-controlled scheme that rigged bids and dispensed bribes on Montreal public construction contracts.

The scam, revealed in an ongoing corruption inquiry in Montreal, added an estimated 30 percent to the cost of municipal construction projects in Canada’s second-largest city — a corruption tax paid, in the end, by the city’s taxpayers.

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The U.S. Geological Survey said the powerful temblor hit the Queen Charlotte Islands just after 8 p.m. local time Saturday at a depth of about 3 miles (5 kilometers) and was centered 96 miles (155 kilometers) south of Masset, British Columbia. It was felt across a wide area in British Columbia, both on its Pacific islands and on the mainland.

"It looks like the damage and the risk are at a very low level," said Shirley Bond, British Columbia's minister responsible for emergency management said. "We're certainly grateful."

The National Weather Service issued a tsunami warning for coastal areas of British Columbia, southern Alaska and Hawaii, but later canceled it for the first two and downgraded it to an advisory for Hawaii.

Gerard Fryer, a senior geologist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, said the first waves hitting shore in Hawaii are smaller than expected.

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Now is the time to note precisely what’s wrong, what’s gotten worse and what’s completely broken in key corners of the electoral process. That’s because once the dust settles after Election Day, the impetus to fix things will wane among the political victors, media and much of the public, as it does after every big election. The winners will say there is not a problem because they won. The press will start covering the new administration. And weary voters will want to look ahead to solutions, not back to old problems.

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The Elk had apparently taken a fancy to Messner's herd of cows, a romance that evolved gradually over the past three years. He told the Star, “He stuck around for a couple of days the first year,” said Messner. “Then last year, he was just hanging around again for a couple of weeks and not really doing anything, just hanging around and looking at the cows. This year, he decided to go for it." The Star writes:

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Genealogists at Ancestry.com say they've discovered teen idol Justin Bieber is a distant cousin of movie star Ryan Gosling and singer Avril Lavigne. Their family link dates back to some of Quebec's earliest settlers 400 years ago, the Utah-based company said Thursday.

As if Bieber didn't have enough superstar genes, Ancestry.com also said he's a distant relative of singer Celine Dion.

"The great thing about family history is that you never know what you're going to find," said Michelle Ercanback, a researcher with Ancentry.com. "It was a very pleasant surprise."

Ercanback said researchers begun tracing Bieber's family lineage about a year ago by paging through teen-idol magazines to find biographical tidbits from the pop star.

What they say they found was that Bieber and Gosling are 11th cousins once removed, and Bieber and Lavigne are 12th cousins. They share common relatives Mathurin Roy and Marguerite Bire, the researchers said. Both were born in France in the early 1600s, married in 1637, and moved to Quebec, where Roy worked as a master mason.

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Jean Philippe Rushton, a psychology professor and probably the most important race scientist in North America, died of cancer Tuesday night in Canada. The man who sparked a firestorm of controversy and protest in the late 1980s with his theories about the correlation between genital size and intelligence, and in later years was the head of a right-wing fund that has long supported the research projects of academic racists from around the world, was 68.

“He’s the end of an era of academic racists of his style and notoriety,” Barry Mehler, professor of history and director of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism at Ferris State University in Michigan, said today. “I don’t think we’ll see that again.’’

That’s not to say that academic racism has died, only its most prominent elder.

Rushton taught psychology at the University of Western Ontario for 25 years and began his academic career investigating the basis of altruism – why one person sometimes aids another, even at personal risk. But it was in the fields of biology and genetics, academic disciplines unrelated to his training, that Rushton made his biggest mark — and left his largest stain.

Rushton’s infamous theory about race and intelligence can be summed up in two words: size matters.

He postulated that brain and genital size are inversely related, implying that whites are more intelligent than blacks and that Asians are the smartest of all.

Saying that Rushton’s ideas were “monstrous” and “simply do not qualify as science,” David Suzuki, an actual geneticist, debated Rushton on the Western Ontario campus in 1989 before 2,000 students and more than 100 reporters and television crews. Security was tight inside and out of the auditorium.

“I did not want to be here,” Suzuki told the audience. “I do not believe that we should dignify this man and his ideas in public debate.” A few minutes later, he added, “There will always be Rushtons in the world. We must be prepared to root them out.”

Brian Timney, dean of social science, which includes the psychology department where Rushton actually worked, said Rushton’s legacy “was not a great one.” “His research was not highly thought of,” Timney said. “I work in neuroscience and I expect some academic vigor. He was not vigorous.”

The dean said while the university refused to fire Rushton, he was removed from the classroom for at least a semester during the height of the uproar in 1989.  ”There were so many protesters gathered outside his door, he couldn’t get in or out,” Timney said. Rushton delivered his lectures via videotape.

While Rushton may still be a big name in race science circles, at Western University “he sort of disappeared off the radar a long time ago,” the dean said.

Mehler also debated Rushton that year. The men appeared together on “The Geraldo Rivera Show.” “Is There a Master Race?” was the title of the segment.

Mehler remembers telling Rivera and his audience, “I have a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in institutional racism. I am an expert at recognizing racism when I see it. Rushton is a racist.”

Rushton kept his cool and soon he was red hot in the world of academic racists.

“He was very photogenic,” Mahler said today. “He never got flustered. He became the focus and the spokesman for the academic racists.”

But no matter how calm and cool Rushton was on the talk-show circuit, Rushton was pushing old-fashioned racism. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Mehler said.

While simultaneously defending his academic freedom, University of Western Ontario officials twice reprimanded Rushton for conducting research on human subjects in 1988 without required prior approval, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center profile of Rushton. In the first incident, Rushton surveyed first-year psychology students, asking questions about penis length, distance of ejaculation and number of sex partners. In the second, he surveyed customers at a Toronto shopping mall, paying 50 white people, 50 black people and 50 Asians five dollars apiece to answer questions about their sexual habits.

Rushton took his ideas on the road in 1989. He presented his views to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

It did not go well.

Association officials called a news conference the same day to attack what the association’s president called Rushton’s “highly suspect” research. A spokesman for the AAAS, Earl Lane, said Thursday: “For now, I think we’ll have to just say that the quick actions of the association officials, in holding a press conference to refute Rushton’s research and his ‘highly suspect’ views, speak for themselves.”

Not everyone saw Rushton that way.

In a 1,219-word tribute to Rushton upon his death, Greg Johnson on the North American New Right website said what he admired about “good old Phil’’ was his “manner of stating the most radical claims in a calm and unapologetic way.” “Because of his scientific and political convictions,” Johnson added: “Rushton endured decades of social ostracism, professional discrimination, grotesque smears, mentally unhinged stalkers, attempts to have him fired from his job, and even physical assaults at the hands of Canada’s egalitarian peace-and-love-mongers.’’

Born in Bournemouth, England, Rushton earned his Ph.D. in social psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Author of a handful of academic tomes, numerous articles, and a one-time fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Rushton’s major published work is Race, Evolution and Behavior. His findings: black people have larger genitals, breasts and buttocks — characteristics that Rushton alleged have an inverse relationship to brain size and, thus, intelligence.

In recent years, Rushton spoke on the alleged IQ deficiencies of minorities at conferences of the racist American Renaissance magazine and website, and published a number of articles in that magazine. His work also is often published on racist websites, including the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE.com. In 2002, after renting several academic mailing lists, Rushton mailed an abridged version of Race, Evolution and Behavior to 40,000 people — a mailing paid for by the Pioneer Fund, the race science outfit that he led for several years.

Reacting to complaints from scientists who had received the mailing, the book’s original publisher, Transaction, disavowed the smaller booklet and said that the abridged version had been “purged” of any “evidentiary basis.”

In 2002, Rushton became president of the Pioneer Fund, which has for decades funded dubious studies linking race to characteristics like criminality, sexuality and intelligence. Pioneer has long promoted eugenics, or the “science” of creating “better” humans through selective breeding. Set up in 1937 and headed by Nazi sympathizers, the group strove to “improve the character of the American people” through eugenics and procreation by people of white colonial stock. Pioneer has financed a number of leading race scientists, lavishing large sums each year on those who work to “prove” inherent racial differences that the vast majority of scientists regard as nonsense.

As a teacher, Rushton was given several positive reviews on the RateMyProfessor.com website, like the student who wrote, “Cutting edge research into race differences. One of the few professors not afraid to undertake ground breaking research.’’

But a majority of the reviewers rated him “poor quality.’’

“He epitomizes the overall capacity of the human species to rationalize superficial ignorance towards others,” one student wrote. “Not a good prof,” another wrote. “His work on race and ethnicity makes me wonder if I’m in the 19th. Don’t take him if you want to keep your sanity.”

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The Canadian Hurricane Centre was predicting at least 12 hours of intense rain over the northeastern province's hilly terrain, which could generate rapid runoffs, said the agency's program supervisor Chris Fogarty. The center was warning of possible damage from toppled trees, flooded streets and downed power lines.

At midnight, the storm was about 350 miles (565 kilometers) southwest of Cape Race, Newfoundland, and had maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph), the center said. The system is heading north-northeast at about 40 mph (65 kph).

Forecaster Bob Robichaud said Leslie is gaining strength as it moves over warm waters, but its massive size may prevent it from reaching hurricane status. Storm watches were in effect for most of Newfoundland.

"If it was a smaller storm, there would most definitely be strengthening and we'd almost certainly have a hurricane at landfall," he said. "But given the size of the storm, it takes a lot more to spin it up."

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The Mehr news agency on Monday quoted Hasan Sobhaninia from Iran's influential parliament committee on national security and foreign policy as saying that there "is the possibility" of others making the same decision as Ottawa.

Canada shut its embassy in Tehran on Friday, severed diplomatic relations and ordered Iranian diplomats to leave, accusing the Islamic Republic of being the most significant threat to world peace. The surprise action reinforced Canada's close ties with Tehran's arch foe Israel.

Iran called the decision "hasty and unwise" and said it would react in the near future.

Sobhaninia did not say which countries he expects to follow Canada's example.

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Bronner's company, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, spends over $100,000 to buy over 20 tons of hemp seed oil from Canada each year to use in its soaps. Bronner wants to give that money to American farmers instead.

If it's legal to use in soaps – and even to eat – then why is it illegal to grow here? Because according to the government, hemp is a drug. Specifically, it's considered identical to its close cousin, marijuana. But Bronner says it is no more a drug than a poppyseed bagel. The plants he gathered seed from to press his oil in front of the White House had been tested to confirm they contained less than 0.3 percent THC, which means it would be “impossible to get a high of any kind” even from smoking extremely large quantities of it. A more likely result from smoking that much industrial hemp would be a bad headache or perhaps a sore throat.

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The peaceful protest turned more violent in the evening as demonstrators set off fireworks and threw beer bottles at police. Riot police responded with pepper spray. Police spokesman Simon Delorme said at least 100 people were arrested. Two police officers were injured, and four people were taken to the hospital. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known

Since the emergency law was passed Friday, nightly protests have often turned violent, resulting in some 300 arrests Sunday alone. The new law requires that a detailed agenda be provided for protests of more than 50 people.

Police declared the Tuesday night protest illegal after no one provided an itinerary. "They didn't share the route, demonstrators were wearing masks and projectiles were thrown at police officers," the Montreal police said on their Twitter feed.

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The landmark decision taken Monday, decided that the dangerous work of prostitution could be made more safe if it occurred under one roof with security staff, reported the Globe and Mail.

The Appeals Court of Ontario said that some of the country's anti-prostitution laws were unconstitutional as they restricted the prostitute's ability to protect themselves -- a ruling already made by a lower court in 2010 but appealed by the provincial and federal governments.

The court also said that it would re-model the law against pimps, which prohibits living off the work of others by adding "in circumstances of exploitation," reported PostMedia News.

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Harper capped a week-long attack on U.S. environmentalists with a nationally televised interview Monday night, essentially telling American opponents of the proposed pipeline to butt out of Canada’s affairs.

The 731-mile Northern Gateway pipeline would run west from the massive oil sands deposits of northern Alberta — across pristine wilderness and more than 700 rivers and streams — to a proposed supertanker port on the Pacific coast of British Columbia.

Harper accused American groups of hijacking public hearings by a federal regulatory agency, which is assessing the environmental impact of the $6.6 billion pipeline project. Decisions on the development of Alberta’s oil sands should be left to Canadians, he said.

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