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US and Canada Scramble to Restore Power to Half a Million Homes Following Deadly Ice Storm

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Photo Credit: Angelika Cox/Demotix/Corbis

Photo Credit: Angelika Cox/Demotix/Corbis

Utility crews from Maine to Michigan and into Canada worked on Wednesday to restore power to more than half a million homes that were left in the dark by last weekend’s ice storm, which has been linked to 27 deaths.

In the United States, the death toll from the storm reached at least 17 on Wednesday, from traffic accidents and carbon monoxide fatalities.

Ten people were reported dead in Canada, including five from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning.

Police said two people in Ontario died after using a gas generator to heat their blacked-out home north-east of Toronto. Police in Quebec said carbon monoxide poisoning was believed to be the cause of three deaths in a chalet on the province’s North Shore. Earlier, five people were killed in eastern Canada in highway crashes blamed on severe weather conditions.

The ice storm last weekend was one of the worst to hit during a Christmas week, and repair crews were working around the clock to restore service.

Read more from this story HERE.

Canada Allowed Widespread NSA Surveillance at 2010 G20 Summit

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Photo Credit: REUTERSCanada allowed the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct widespread surveillance during the 2010 Group of 20 summit in Toronto, according to a media report that cited documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp is the latest potential embarrassment for the NSA as a result of Snowden’s leaks, although it remains unclear precisely what information the agency was looking for during the summit.

Snowden has already revealed the agency spied on close allies such as Germany and Brazil, prompting heated diplomatic spats with Washington.

The CBC report, first aired late on Wednesday, cited briefing notes it said showed the United States turned its Ottawa embassy into a security command post during a six-day spying operation by the top-secret U.S. agency as President Barack Obama and other world leaders met that June.

Reuters has not seen the documents and cannot verify their authenticity. One of the bylines on the CBC report was Glenn Greenwald, the U.S. journalist who has worked with Snowden on several other NSA stories.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fifth Grader Who is Just 12-Years-Old Admits to Charges of Major Computer Hacking Targeting Government Websites

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Photo Credit: Alamy A 12-year-old Canadian boy has pleaded guilty to three charges of hacking government websites under the affiliation of ‘hacktavist’ initiative Anonymous.

A court heard on Thursday how the fifth grader – from the Montreal suburb of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – wreaked computer havoc during the Quebec student uprising in 2012, with some sites out of service for two days.

He has pleaded guilty to three charges related to hacking websites that included those of Montreal police, the Quebec Institute of Public Health, the Chilean government and some non-public sites.

The attacks took some of the sites offline for up to two days, at what police estimated as a cost of $60,000 in damages…

Even though most of the attacks took place during the Quebec student protests in 2012 – sparked by an outrage at proposed tuition hikes that eventually escalated into a riot – the boy’s lawyers maintained he was not politically motivated.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Cruz to Renounce Canadian Citizenship: ‘Nothing Against Canada, but I’m an American’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Jason Howerton.

Less than 24 hours after the Dallas Morning News reported that he likely maintains dual citizenship to the U.S. and Canada, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced Monday evening that he will renounce his Canadian citizenship.

“Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship. Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. senator; I believe I should be only an American,” Cruz said in a statement.

Several legal experts apparently determined that Cruz remains a Canadian citizen because his mother gave birth to him in the country and he never renounced it…

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Dallas News

Photo Credit: Dallas News

Dual citizenship may pose problem if Ted Cruz seeks presidency

By Todd Gillman.

Born in Canada to an American mother, Ted Cruz became an instant U.S. citizen. But under Canadian law, he also became a citizen of that country the moment he was born.

Unless the Texas Republican senator formally renounces that citizenship, he will remain a citizen of both countries, legal experts say.

That means he could assert the right to vote in Canada or even run for Parliament. On a lunch break from the U.S. Senate, he could head to the nearby embassy — the one flying a bright red maple leaf flag — pull out his Calgary, Alberta, birth certificate and obtain a passport.

“He’s a Canadian,” said Toronto lawyer Stephen Green, past chairman of the Canadian Bar Association’s Citizenship and Immigration Section.

The circumstances of Cruz’s birth have fueled a simmering debate over his eligibility to run for president. Knowingly or not, dual citizenship is an apparent if inconvenient truth for the tea party firebrand, who shows every sign he’s angling for the White House.

Read more from this story HERE.

Snake Escaped from Pet Shop ‘Strangles’ Two Young Boys to Death in Canada

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Photo Credit: ALAMYThe two young boys, aged five and seven, were sleeping at a friend’s apartment late on Sunday in the small town of Campbellton when they were surprised by the snake.

It had escaped from a pet store that specialised in exotic animals located on the floor below the apartment.

“The preliminary investigation has led police to believe that a large exotic snake had escaped its enclosure at the store sometime overnight, and got into the ventilation system, then into the upstairs apartment,” police said in a statement.

“It’s believed the two boys were strangled by the snake.”

A New Brunswick police spokesman declined to give further details on the size of the snake or whether signs of strangulation were apparent on the boys.

Read more from this story HERE.

Blind No More: ‘It’s Like I’m a Child All Over Again’

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Photo Credit: The Montreal GazetteWhen Pierre-Paul Thomas was a boy, he could not play hockey with his brothers and it broke his heart.

For Thomas had been born blind. He endured the triple misfortune of suffering from congenital nystagmus — a condition in which the eyes move from side to side involuntarily — along with damaged optic nerves and cataracts bulging behind his pupils…

But two years ago, at the age of 66, Thomas fell down the stairs in a St-Henri apartment building and fractured the bones of his thin face, including those around his eye sockets. He was rushed to the Montreal General Hospital with severe swelling around his eye.

A team of doctors operated on him and repaired those bones. One day, months later, he was examined by a plastic surgeon at the Montreal General, Lucie Lessard, renowned for her skills in micro-suturing.

During the consultation about repairing his scalp, Lessard asked matter-of-factly, “Oh, while we’re at it, do you want us to fix your eyes, too?”

…And so during two dates in February, Thomas underwent surgery at the Montreal General to remove the cataracts from his eyes. The operations, to put it mildly, were a success, for Thomas could now truly see for the first time in his life.

Read more from this story HERE.

Canada Warns Obama: It’s Trains or the Keystone Pipeline

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On 6 July, a Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train carrying 72 tank cars filled with oil exploded after its brakes apparently failed, sending it rolling into the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, where it derailed and then exploded. In the conflagration that followed, an estimated 47 people were killed.

Whether Canadians like it or not, the use of such trains has soared in recent years. The Railway Association of Canada reports that as recently as four years ago Canadian railways moved just 500 carloads of crude oil, but that number has now soared to about 140,000 carloads annually.

While currently only about three percent of Canadian crude is currently transported by rail, one industry predicts railway carriage of oil products rising to as high as 25 percent by 2035.

Now, in a breathtaking display of chutzpah, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. is warning President Obama if he does not approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, then he can expect similar oil trains and even trucks to enter the U.S. Ambassador Gary Doer said, “His choice is to have it come down by a pipeline that he approves, or without his approval, it comes down on trains. That’s just the raw common sense of this thing, and we’ve been saying it for two years and we’ve been proven correct. At the end of the day, it’s trains or pipelines.”

Read more from this story HERE.

First Open Source Airplane Could Cost Just $15,000

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Photo Credit: WiredThere’s an open source airplane being developed in Canada, and now its designers are looking to double down on the digital trends, turning to crowdsourced funding to finish the project. The goal of Maker Plane is to develop a small, two-seat airplane that qualifies as a light sport aircraft and is affordable, safe, and easy to fly. But unlike other home-built aircraft, where companies or individuals charge for their plans or kits, Maker Plane will give its design away for free.

The group behind the project consists of pilots and engineers who are designing the airplane, allowing it to be built using the kind of personal manufacturing equipment somebody in the maker community might already have at home or can easily purchase. The idea of a home-built airplane is nothing new. It dates back to the earliest days of flight, after Orville and Wilbur made and flew their own airplanes (and engine), the homemade plane movement — literally — took off…

In the spirit of the open source and maker movements, the Maker Plane group is including components from many designers and builders outside their circle. As they focus on the design of the airplane (fuselage, wings, etc.), the Maker Plane team helps connect those interested in building their own with other open source components such as an air data computer and radios. They even show you where you can get plans to build your own traffic and collision avoidance system.

Read more from this story HERE.

World’s First Fully 3D Printed Rifle Shot for the First Time (+video)

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Less than two months after the debut of the first almost entirely 3D-printed handgun, a Canadian gunsmith has created the first 3D printed rifle.

The gun maker, who goes by the online handle CanadianGunNut, is an active user on DEFCAD, the primary online forum for 3D-printed firearms. He is also known online as “Maker Matthew,” or “Koa Soprano.” Previously, CanadianGunNut successfully printed a ukelele, and he currently appears to run a private message board for printing related musical instruments. Ars’ attempt to contact CanadianGunNut through his YouTube channel was not immediately successful.

In his video, CanadianGunNut—whose actual name is unknown to Ars—noted that the gun fired a single shot, but the barrel split.

Legality questionable

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the federal law enforcement agency in Canada, seems to suggest that making such a firearm would likely be illegal in Canada, under current law.

Read more from this story HERE.

Insanity of Environmentalists’ Opposition to Keystone Pipeline Revealed in Last Week’s Canadian Explosion

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Photo Credit: Paul Chiasson/APAs environmental disasters go, the explosion Saturday of a runaway train that destroyed much of the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, about 20 miles from the Maine border, will probably go down the memory hole.

It lacks the correct moral and contains an inconvenient truth.

Not that the disaster lacks the usual ingredients of such a moral. The derailed 72-car train belonged to a subsidiary of Illinois-based multinational Rail World, whose self-declared aim is to “promote rail industry privatization.” The train was carrying North Dakota shale oil (likely extracted by fracking) to the massive Irving Oil refinery in the port city of Saint John, to be shipped to the global market. At least five people were killed in the blast (a number that’s likely to rise) and 1,000 people were forced to evacuate. Quebec’s environment minister reports that some 100,000 liters (26,000 gallons) of crude have spilled into the Chaudière River, meaning it could reach Quebec City and the St. Lawrence River before too long.

Environmentalists should be howling. But this brings us to the inconvenient truth.

The reason oil is moved on trains from places like North Dakota and Alberta is because there aren’t enough pipelines to carry it. The provincial governments of Alberta and New Brunswick are talking about building a pipeline to cover the 3,000-odd mile distance. But last month President Obama put the future of the Keystone XL pipeline again in doubt, telling a Georgetown University audience “our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

Read more from this story HERE.