Around Canada

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This article was published 17/10/2013 (4382 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canadian feared dead

BANGKOK, Thailand — A domestic flight crashed Wednesday in Laos and all 49 people on board, including a Canadian, are feared dead, said the government of the Southeast Asian nation.

The Ministry of Public Works and Transport said 44 passengers from 11 countries and five crew members were aboard Laos Airlines flight QV301 travelling from the Lao capital, Vientiane, to Pakse in the country’s south.

“Upon preparing to land at Pakse Airport the aircraft ran into extreme bad weather conditions and was reportedly crashed into the Mekong River,” the ministry said in a statement.

A Foreign Affairs spokesman in Ottawa said the department is working closely with local authorities to confirm if Canadian citizens “have been affected.”

The state-owned airline flies an ATR 72-600 twin-engine turboprop plane on the 467-kilometre route.

The Lao government said the airline “is taking all necessary steps to co-ordinate and dispatch all rescue units to the accident site in the hope of finding survivors.”

 

Pet killer loses appeal

VANCOUVER — A 23-year-old woman who was described by a psychiatrist as an “affectionless psychopath” after she butchered two family pets and expressed a desire to murder a homeless person has lost an appeal of a lifetime ban on owning animals.

Kayla Bourque has also failed to have a series of strict probation conditions lifted that prevent her from being around children or using the Internet.

The gruesome details of Bourque’s case made headlines in January of this year, when the B.C. Justice Ministry issued a public warning a dangerous, high-risk offender had been released and planned to live in the Vancouver area.

Bourque had pleaded guilty two months earlier to charges of causing suffering and unlawfully killing animals, admitting to killing a family cat and dog between 2009 and 2010. She also pleaded guilty to possessing a knife for a dangerous purpose.

Court decisions related to the case describe Bourque as a sexual sadist with antisocial personality disorder who finds joy in torturing and killing animals. She is an “affectionless psychopath” who isn’t able to show affection or concern for others, according to those decisions, and she has expressed no remorse.

 

Papers got it right: ruling

TORONTO — Canada’s two largest newspapers acted responsibly and in the public interest in reporting on drug allegations against Mayor Rob Ford and his brother, Coun. Doug Ford, the Ontario Press Council ruled Wednesday.

In dismissing two separate public complaints, the council found the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail had engaged in responsible, ethical investigative reporting.

The Ford brothers, the council said, were given more than ample opportunity to respond before the papers published their stories in May.

“The panel concluded that the Star and the Globe both followed appropriate journalistic guidelines in their reporting on the Fords,” George Thomson, chairman of the panel that heard the complaints, said in a statement.

 

— from the news services