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In brief

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 09/25/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Embassy share blasted

OTTAWA -- The plan by Canada and Britain to consolidate consular services in some embassies sparked criticism Monday the Harper government is turning back the clock on the country's relationship with its former colonial master.

By all appearances, the Canada-Britain agreement to share some consular services in each others' embassies represented little change from the status quo of traditional diplomacy. Canadian travellers in trouble, for instance, have routinely been able to turn to British or Australian diplomatic missions for assistance where their own country has no embassy.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird played down the new agreement on Monday as a small "administrative" matter.

But the fanfare associated with the announcement raised questions about whether Canada was compromising its foreign policy interests abroad.

Baird and his British counterpart, William Hague, discussed the plan together on Monday in Ottawa after a bilateral meeting. A day earlier, Hague scooped Baird and generated hype by announcing it himself.

Feds cut outside Ottawa

OTTAWA -- Cuts to the federal public service appear to be occurring mostly outside Ottawa -- which is not how the federal government cast its job reductions when it first announced them earlier this year.

The vast majority of those federal job cuts, two-thirds of them, appear to be taking place elsewhere across Canada.

The Flaherty budget tabled last March forecast 19,200 jobs eliminated and it promised that a heavy burden would be shouldered by the national capital region.

The regional distribution has inflicted most of the pain outside Ottawa, based on the notices sent so far to more than 18,000 federal public servants that they could lose their jobs.

According to statistics compiled by the federal public-sector union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, 35 per cent of those notices have gone out in the national capital region. Sixty-five per cent have gone out elsewhere in the country.

Fourteen per cent of the notices have gone to employees in Ontario, 13 per cent were issued in Quebec, 12 per cent went to the Prairies and Atlantic Canada received 10 per cent.

Cemetery visitor crushed

MONTREAL -- A freak accident killed a woman visiting a cemetery Monday.

The 44-year-old woman was at the cemetery on Montreal's Mountain Sights Avenue when she was crushed by a backhoe performing work at the site.

She was instantly declared dead.

The victim's mother was taken to hospital to be treated for nervous shock.

An investigation is underway.

Sister holding out hope

KATMANDU, Nepal -- The sister of a Canadian cardiologist missing since an avalanche smashed into his climbing expedition on a Himalayan peak says she has no choice but to cling to the faint hope he will be found alive.

Quebec heart specialist Dominique Ouimet, 48, was among several people still missing Monday in northern Nepal on Mount Manaslu, the world's eighth-tallest peak.

Officials say at least nine people are dead after the avalanche roared through their camp around 4 a.m. Sunday, while more than two dozen climbers were still sleeping in their tents.

Rescue teams scoured the area Monday for six missing climbers.

The doctor's sister, Isabelle Ouimet, told Radio-Canada she had not given up on the possibility that her brother is still alive.

Bounty on filmmaker's head

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The Pakistani government on Monday distanced itself from an offer by one of its cabinet ministers to pay $100,000 to anyone who kills the maker of an anti-Islam film that has sparked violent protests across the Muslim world.

The film, Innocence of Muslims, has enraged many Muslims for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester. Bilour said he would pay $100,000 out of his own pocket to anyone who kills the man behind the inflammatory film, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. The filmmaker was forced into hiding after the 14-minute movie trailer rose to prominence.

Bad implant unsurvivable

JACKSON, Miss. -- An investigator says a woman had little chance of surviving an illegal cosmetic procedure in Mississippi because so much of a silicone-like substance was injected in her buttocks that it caused blood clots.

Lee McDivitt, an investigator with the Mississippi attorney general's office, testified during a preliminary hearing Monday for 52-year-old Morris Garner. Garner is charged with murder in the death of 37-year-old Karima Gordon of Atlanta. Garner has had gender-changing procedures and goes by the name Tracey Lynn Garner,

County Judge Houston Patton ordered Garner to remain jailed without bond. He sent the case to a grand jury.

University shooter gets life

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- A Harvard-educated biologist was sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday after being convicted of going on a shooting rampage during a faculty meeting at an Alabama university, killing three colleagues and wounding three others in 2010.

The jury deliberated for about 20 minutes before convicting Amy Bishop. The former professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville showed no reaction as the verdict was read. She did not speak in court, but her attorney said she has often expressed great remorse to the victims and their families.

-- from the news services

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 25, 2012 A8

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