Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
PDAC CONVENTION 2012: Mining Industry’s Leading Investment Show Open to Public, Admission is Free
Toronto, February 27, 2012—The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) Investors Exchange—the leading investment show dedicated solely to the mineral industry—takes place in Toronto, March 4 - 7, 2012, and is open to the general public. The Investors Exchange features over 600 exhibitors including junior exploration companies, mid-size producers, major mining companies, stock exchanges, brokers and financial institutions with mining interests, and prospectors.
“The PDAC Investors Exchange gives an insider’s look at opportunities for business development, joint ventures, property acquisitions and financing within the mineral sector,” says PDAC President Scott Jobin-Bevans. “We see a steady flow of banking executives, brokers and analysts, fund managers, government representatives, retail and institutional investors, senior mining executives, and students attending the Exchange. It’s really a not-to-be-missed event for anyone interested in the sector.”
The Corporate Presentation Forum for Investors, a series of presentations made by a select group of Investors Exchange exhibitors, provides up-to-the-minute information on the investment potential of companies in the mineral industry. Over 130 presenters, including Rob McEwen of McEwen Mining and Jonathan Goodman of Dundee Precious Metals, are scheduled to speak at this year’s forum.
The Investors Exchange, which runs concurrently with the PDAC Convention’s Trade Show, also includes the Prospectors Tent featuring maps, samples and claim results of independent prospectors, and the Core Shack featuring core samples from the latest mineral discoveries from around the world. For more information and a full list of exhibitors, visit mininginvestmentshow.com. The Investor’s Exchange is held in the South Building of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Admission is free to the Investors Exchange, but attendees must register—either online or at the door.
About the PDAC The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) is a national association representing the mineral exploration and development industry. The PDAC has close to 9,000 individual and corporate members.
About the PDAC International Convention, Trade Show and Investors Exchange
The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) Convention is the mineral industry’s largest annual convention. The 2011 convention attracted nearly 28,000 attendees, including 7,000 international delegates from 120 countries. In 2011, the PDAC Convention contributed over $72 million to the local economy.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Carolyn Foster, Communications Specialist
Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC)
416.362.1969 x233 or cfoster@pdac.ca
Monday, February 27, 2012
VIA RAIL TRAGEDY: 3 Via employees die in Ontario derailment
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Via Rail has confirmed that three of its employees, all in the locomotive section, died in a train derailment in the southern Ontario city of Burlington on Sunday afternoon.
"There's no question it's very tragic. We're a relatively small company, we're a family, we know everyone by name," said Via chief operating officer John Marginson, speaking to reporters at the scene."We certainly feel for the families of the colleagues that we lost," said Marginson, who added that there was no fuel leak at the site. The derailment involved five cars as well as the locomotive.
"It's very premature to speculate … but obviously something went very wrong," he said.
One of the engineers who died was a trainee. A fourth Via employee was injured in the derailment.
Halton police Chief Gary Crowell said the bodies of the dead were removed from the train at about 8 p.m. ET.
Thirty-two people were injured, according to a release from Halton Region. Three passengers were airlifted to hospitals in Hamilton, one with a heart attack, another with a broken leg and the third with a back injury. The other passengers suffered less serious injuries and were either treated at the scene or sent to local hospitals.
An official with Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in Burlington said the hospital had seen 20 people from the accident ranging from minor to serious injuries.
None of the injuries are life-threatening and a few people have already been discharged, Mario Joanette told CBC News Network. He said he does not expect any more patients from the crash.
Another 10 patients were brought to the Credit Valley hospital and Trillium Health Centre in Mississauga. Most of them were expected to be discharged Sunday night.
Passenger Eric Berger told CBC News about what it was like to survive the crash.
"My car was still standing up, but off the rails. And the two cars in front of me were on their side," Berger said.
He saw people being taken away on stretchers and others fitted with neck braces.
"I can’t tell too much how injured they were, but it seemed pretty bad," he said.
Passenger Deanna Villella said the derailment sent people and all their belongings flying through the air.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” she told CBC News. “Everybody’s stuff was flying by, people were flying by, everything was crashing, people were screaming.”
Hannah Lemke said the derailment started with “a little bump in the rails” and quickly got worse.
“Things started flying, people were screaming in sheer horror,” Lemke, 22, told CBC News in a telephone interview from Everett, Ont.
“It was terrifying. It was probably the scariest moment of my life.”
Lemke said she was riding in the third car in the train, where most people came out of the derailment unhurt.
But Lemke said it appeared people in the first two cars suffered more serious injuries.
The Toronto-bound train was travelling from the Niagara area of southern Ontario when it went off the tracks.
While a passenger manifest suggested that the train carried 75 people at the time of the derailment, officials had located only 50 of those people by the end of Sunday night.
But the Halton police chief said it was not clear if the manifest was accurate and a sweep of the area did not turn up any stray passengers.
Quite often people will leave on their own, he said.
"They'll determine that they don't need to stay at the site or require minimal treatment and will walk away."
Investigators from the federal Transportation Safety Board will examine the train's "black box," which records technical and voice information. Officials say such investigations take at least a year.
TSB spokesperson Chris Krepski said six investigators will be at the scene on Monday.
CBC reporter Charlsie Agro spoke to some passengers. Many were shaken and crying. Agro said one passenger mentioned that a man sitting next to him "flew out the window."
The derailment occurred at about 3:30 p.m. ET near Plains and King Roads in Burlington.
Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring said the crash caused minor damage to nearby buildings.
Ontario Provincial Police closed the Queen Elizabeth Way in both directions to allow air ambulances to reach the scene. The highway was later reopened.
Burlington is located about an hour west of Toronto.
TRAVEL INFORMATION:
VIA RAIL: Customers travelling Monday on the line from Toronto to Niagara should expect to be getting on buses. Customers are also being told to contact the service line: 1 888 842 6141.
GO TRAINS - LAKESHORE WEST LINE: Service will originate and terminate at Burlington for an extended period. GO Bus service will operate in each direction between Burlington and Aldershot. GO Trains will originate from Burlington with a five-to-10-minute delay.
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MEDIA AND MULTICULTURALISM: Voices of NY Teams J-Schools With Ethnic Journalists
Originally called Voices That Must Be Heard, the site was the first online publication in the country to focus exclusively on ethnic media. It was launched after the 9/11 attacks as a way to give a voice and an outlet to Muslims living in New York, but later expanded to include other ethnic groups.
Early last year, the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism assumed ownership of the site from the New York Community Media Alliance and redesigned and relaunched the website as Voices of NY (voicesofny.org). It was a natural fit for the school, which is also establishing a Center for Community and Ethnic Media. The center will be a resource, not only for the school, but for the city’s ethnic journalists, by exploring new digital tools, offering professional training, and promoting activities to strengthen the bonds between different ethnic communities.
So far, more than 200 journalists from about 30 news outlets, such as KoreaDaily, Bangla Batrika, and Caribbean People, have participated in free digital media workshops offered by the school.
Voices of NY gathers journalistic work produced by community and ethnic publications and translates it and Haitian Times publisher Garry Pierre-Pierre said students follow certain websites for stories and then pitch the articles at editorial meetings. Once they are approved, stories are translated, edited, and uploaded to the Voices of NY site. A direct link to the original source is also posted. The result is more website traffic to the publications, Pierre-Pierre said.
About 80 news organizations have partnered with Voices of NY in this endeavor.
“For students, it offers them a chance to explore these kinds of stories and issues being reported,” said Voices of NY assistant editor and Pakistani journalist Jehangir Khattak. “It’s an exciting opportunity to understand the media here and build relationships with community leaders.”
Carmel Delshad was one of those students. She graduated this past winter with a master’s degree in international reporting and helped edit Voices of NY. As an Arab-American, Delshad said it was a necessity to cover the ethnic communities.
“(Voices of NY) is doing something different,” she said. “You don’t see anyone translating these publications. It’s uncharted territory.”
Daily newspapers are also learning from ethnic media. “While some papers are closing, ethnic papers are growing,” Khattak said. “They have strong roots and the support of a community … their spirit is up to the mark.”
According to Pierre-Pierre, Voices of NY has several goals in mind for 2012. Among them are increasing traffic to the website, becoming a resource across the country, adding multimedia such as videos and photos, finding more students to assist with the publication, and commissioning journalists to write original content.
The school is also preparing to host the Ippies awards in April, which will honor excellence in ethnic and community journalism.
Mobile Trends 2012
CANADA AND THE NATIVE RIGHTS: Canada’s treatment of First Nations rapped by United Nations committee
Canada's record of dealing with aboriginal people has come under more criticism, this time from a United Nations panel.
Members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, made up of human-rights experts, questioned why Canada has not made more progress in closing the gap between First Nations communities and the rest of the country, Postmedia News reported."This problem should not continue the same way as it has in the past,'' Noureddine Amir, vice-chairman of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, said at the panel's meeting in Geneva. "How long will this be ongoing?'
The panel's scrutiny comes amid news reports of the housing crisis at the Attawapiskat, in northern Ontario, and concerns of a health crisis among large numbers of aboriginals addicted to OxyContin.
The committee this week was conducting an examination of Canada's record on combating discrimination and heard from several aboriginal groups, including the Assembly of First Nations.
Catrina Tapley, a senior Citizenship and Immigration Canada official, appeared before the panel and acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the past, Postmedia reported.
But Tapley also talked about programs by federal and provincial governments aimed at helping First Nations, including a focus on jobs.
"Increasing aboriginal participation in the economy is the most effective way to improve the well-being and quality of life of aboriginal people in Canada,'' Tapley said in prepared remarks.
"The government of Canada recognizes that its relationship with the aboriginal peoples of Canada is unique and that it has an important role to play in helping to ensure that communities are healthy, vibrant and self-reliant."
While acknowledging Canada has a generally strong human rights record, its dealings with First Nations are a blemish.
"We would be lying if we said everything is perfect,'' said panelist Jose Francisco Cali Tzay, a political activist who fled to Canada from his native Guatemala several decades ago.
"I am struck that despite being sixth in terms of development of the countries of the world, the indigenous peoples (in Canada) are in 66th place.''
Panelist Anwar Kamal, a former Pakistani diplomat who served in Ottawa in the 1980s, pointed to "alarming statistics" showing aboriginal people are vastly over-represented in Canada's prisons, compared with their percentage of the population. He also criticized the level of federal funding for programs.
"It has been noted that growth in funding for aboriginal programs has been limited to two per cent while the population is growing much faster than that,'' Kemal said.
Postmedia reported the UN committee will table a final report with recommendations that would be included in future assessments of Canada's human rights record.
Eurozone Crisis and Global Economy: Three reasons Europe is in crisis and Canada is not
Imagine getting fired, but still collecting your full salary for another three and a half years.
If you’re sitting around the office shuffling papers, that probably sounds like a nice little daydream.But that dreamy-sounding scenario — and other similarly-generous severance benefits — have helped create an economic and fiscal nightmare in Europe.
If Stephen Harper, Dalton McGuinty and Don Drummond ever got their eyes on some of these doozies, they’d probably have a coronary right on the spot. Here are some other signs that you’re not exactly in Kansas…er, Canada any more.
Dutch reform
In the Netherlands, companies who want to get rid of permanent employees face plenty of obstacles. Those obstacles include time, money, paperwork and a quasi-governmental tribunal named the Dismissal Authority (which come to think of it is a pretty good name for a band, or maybe a dominatrix).
If a Dutch company is firing a permanent employee without cause, they either need to come to some kind of voluntary severance agreement, or go to the Dismissal Authority for permission.
The Dismissal Authority then uses the oh-so-catchily-named Dutch Cantonal Court Formula as a guideline to come up with an appropriate severance payment. It takes into account an employee’s years of service, their salary, the employee’s likelihood of getting rehired somewhere else, as well as the financial health of the company doing the firing.
A nice Article
In Italy, there’s basically a two-tier employment market. People with good job protection (let’s be generous and not call it jobs for life, but it’s pretty close), and people with almost no job protection (ciao, most folks under the age of about 30 – the Italian youth unemployment rate hovers around 30 per cent).
The people living the dolce vita are the ones protected by Article 18 of the country’s labour code. The Article, which applies to companies with 15 or more workers, says anyone fired without just cause has the right to be reinstated, with back wages. There are three definitions of “just cause” in the Article, all of which have proven tough to demonstrate in court: Non-performance, frustration or “excessive burden.”
On top of that, the company must pay the Italian unemployment insurance body the equivalent of those back wages as a quasi-fine.
That extra cost, combined with the length of time it takes for fired-worker cases to work their way through the court system, makes most Italian firms reluctant to get rid of employees.
Trying to get rid of Article 18 has proven to be hazardous to your health — two Italian economists have been murdered (one in 1999, the other in 2002) while trying to help national governments revamp labour market rules.
In 2003, then-president Silvio Berlusconi introduced reforms which allowed companies to hire temporary employees, who wouldn’t be subject to Article 18.
Muchos gracias
That 42-month severance package, by the way? You’ll have to be in Spain to get it, and you’ll have to hurry.
The Spanish government recently introduced legislation to cut compensation for workers fired without cause from 45 days salary per year of service, up to a maximum of 42 months salary. The new rules would cut that to 33 days salary per year of service, capping the payout at 24 months salary. Even if companies can prove the firings were because of economic conditions, they still have to pay the departing workers 20 days of salary per year of service.
Not that we’re saying there’s a connection, but in Spain, the unemployment rate is just under 24 per cent.
Meanwhile, back in Ontario
In Ontario, workers fired without cause can only dream of getting two years salary in compensation. Here, the most you’re legally entitled to is either eight weeks notice, or eight weeks salary. And you can only get to that exalted status after having worked at the same job for (you guessed it), eight years. Until then, it’s one week’s notice or salary for each year you’ve worked.
REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES 2012: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum battle for Michigan — and look to Super Tuesday
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is tied with Mitt Romney in polls heading into Tuesday's primary in Michigan.
Romney and Santorum are virtually tied heading into the critical Michigan vote where the outcome could further boost Romney's tenuous front-runner position or upend the race for the party's nomination to challenge President Barack Obama in November. Michiganders vote on the same day as Arizona Republicans. Polls show Romney with a clear lead in the conservative far-Western state.
Mitt Romney misremembers Michigan
The Michigan showdown will be a warmup to the one looming March 6 in neighbouring Ohio, one of the 10 states that hold nominating contests on what is know as Super Tuesday.
Santorum, who is banking on a move to the hard right, called Obama a “snob” over the weekend for promoting higher education for all young Americans who want to continue their education.
“President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob,” Santorum said. “There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor to try to indoctrinate them. Oh I understand why he wants you to go to college he wants to remake you in his image.”
Speaking at the White House to Democratic governors on Monday, Obama took up the education issue but did not mention Santorum.
Obama said many states are cutting too deeply into education funding as a way to balance their budgets, and he urged governors to hire more teachers and restore funding to public education.
Obama said that education funding is critical if the U.S. is to remain competitive with other nations, saying that other countries are “doubling down” on education funding.
Santorum also again played to conservative Christian Republicans on Monday. He said Obama had turned freedom of religion “on its head.”
“I'm for separation of church and state. The state has no business telling the church what to do,” Santorum said in a speech to a business organization in suburban Detroit.
Romney, meanwhile, shifted his line of attack from the cultural issues and conservative rhetoric he used over the weekend and instead insisted that Santorum doesn't know how to create jobs.
“I understand why jobs go, why they come, I understand what happens to corporate profit, where it goes if the government takes it,” Romney told a crowd at an electrical warehouse.
Romney currently leads in the race to amass the most delegates with 123. Santorum has 72, while former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul have 32 and 19, respectively. The totals include endorsements from Republican National Committee members who will automatically attend the party's national convention and can support any candidate they choose.
A candidate needs 1,144 delegates to secure the nomination.
Both Arizona and Michigan each lost half their delegates for defying the national Republican party by holding their votes before March 6.
The winner in Arizona, where Romney is favoured, will take all 29 of the state's delegates. But Michigan will divide its 30 delegates by giving 2 to the winner of each of the 14 congressional districts in the state. The final 2 delegates are awarded in proportion to the statewide vote, probably to the top two candidates, if both get more than 25 per cent of the vote.
Before Super Tuesday, Washington state holds caucuses on Saturday. Forty delegates are at stake. In the March 6 Super Tuesday vote 419 delegates are up for grabs.
The vote in Michigan on Tuesday will test former Pennsylvania senator Santorum's far-right message on social issues and determine how badly Romney has damaged his chances in his native state by continuing to insist that Obama was wrong to bailout the U.S. auto industry, the heart of the state's ailing industrial base.
The auto giants General Motors and Chrysler Corp. have come roaring back from near-collapse after a huge infusion of federal money, managed bankruptcy and wrenching reorganization. Romney's opposition to that Obama program has hurt him in Michigan, where even the Republican governor and GM chief, also a Republican, flatly disagree with Romney. Polls show Obama with a double-digit lead over both Romney and Santorum in the Midwestern state.
As the Republicans battle for the nomination, all of them, including Gingrich and Paul, now trail Obama in national polls. The president has seen his approval ratings improve in tandem with signs that the struggling U.S. economy is finally on the way toward a robust, albeit still shaky, recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
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Blunt force trauma killed Joanna Ramos, 10-year-old girl’s death after fight with classmate ruled homicide
A photo of Joanna Ramos, 10,with a note, is left at a memorial outside Willard Elementary school in Long Beach, Calif. on Monday.
Nick Ut/AP Girl dies after fight
Blunt force trauma killed Joanna Ramos, who collapsed at home after a fight on Friday, coroner's Lt. Fred Corral says Monday.
The girl's older sister said Joanna died after surgery for a blood clot on the brain after the fight in an alley with an 11-year-old girl.
Joanna Ramos' mother rushed her to the hospital Friday evening after the girl began vomiting and complained of a headache, said Vanessa Urbina, 17, who was at the hospital with her sister.
Joanna was unconscious by the time she arrived at the emergency room, but hospital staff revived her three times before she went into surgery for the blood clot, Urbina told The Associated Press.
“They did surgery on her brain because she had a blood clot, and after surgery the doctor said she was still alive, and then a few minutes later he comes back and tells us that her heart stopped and they couldn't bring her back,” Urbina said, crying as she sat on the steps of her school near a memorial of flowers and balloons.
In the hospital, “She was covered up, you could only see her face,” Urbina said.
Joanna was pronounced dead at Friday evening, about six hours after she and another 11-year-old girl had a pre-planned fight near the school.
No arrests have been made.
The circumstances left family, friends and authorities seeking answers.
There were seven witnesses to the fight, which lasted less than a minute, police said. It didn't involve any weapons and no one was knocked to the ground.
Detectives have interviewed family and friends of both girls, but there is no indication that Joanna was bullied, police said.
“I personally don't hear of 11-year-old fights like this, especially girls. I can't say they never happen but I think everyone was completely caught off-guard by this event,” police spokeswoman Nancy Pratt said Sunday.
Joanna returned to her after-school program after the fight, where her friend saw her with blood on her knuckles from wiping at a bloody nose, said Cristina Perez, the friend's mother.
Perez and other mothers outside the school said their children told them the fight was over a boy.
“They took off their backpacks, and they put their hair in a bun, and then that's when they said 'go' and that's when they started hitting each other,” Joanna's friend and classmate Maggie Martinez, who watched the fight, told KNBC.
Martinez and other friends said they tried to stop the fight, but were held back by boys who were watching and wanted it to continue.
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Thursday, February 23, 2012
JOURNALISM AND WAR ZONES: El bombardeo contra Homs se cobra la vida de dos periodistas occidentales
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El Cairo, 22 feb (EFE).- El bombardeo diario al que somete el régimen sirio al barrio de Baba Amro, en la ciudad central de Homs, se cobró hoy la vida de la periodista estadounidense Marie Colvin y del fotógrafo francés Rémi Ochlik.
Colvin, que trabajaba para el periódico "Sunday Times", y Ochlik, de la revista "Paris Match", se encontraban en un edificio de Baba Amro utilizado como centro de prensa que fue alcanzado por los bombardeos, según informaron activistas sirios a Efe, que señalaron que otros cuatro reporteros resultaron heridos.En un vídeo difundido en la red por grupos opositores, dos médicos sirios aparecen junto a dos de los periodistas heridos y explican que el cuerpo de Colvin resultó carbonizado en el ataque.
Los cuatro heridos son la periodista francesa del diario "Le Figaro" Edith Bouvier, que se encuentra en estado grave; el reportero gráfico británico Paul Conroy, el francés William Daniel y un fotógrafo sirio cuya identidad no se facilitó.
Bouvier y Conroy, tumbados en camillas y con las piernas vendadas, se identifican en la cinta, mientras que los médicos detallan que la mujer tiene una herida en el muslo y necesita ser trasladada rápidamente a un hospital, y que el hombre resultó herido por las esquirlas de un proyectil.
Con estas nuevas víctimas se eleva a siete el total de periodistas fallecidos en Siria, la mayoría en Homs, desde el inicio de la revuelta contra el régimen del presidente sirio, Bachar al Asad, en marzo pasado, según la organización Reporteros Sin Fronteras (RSF).
RSF denunció en un comunicado que los periodistas están "atrapados en el infierno de Homs" y condenó que Damasco continúe "con su sangrienta política de censura y de represión de la información".
Por su parte, el Comité para la Protección de los Periodistas (CPJ) lamentó el alto precio que los corresponsales tienen que pagar por hacer su trabajo y afirmó que Colvin y Ochlik "dieron sus vidas para informar de una historia de gran importancia que el Gobierno sirio trata de ocultar al resto del mundo".
Colvin, que ayer mismo contaba a la BBC cómo había visto morir a un bebé en Baba Amro, era una veterana corresponsal de guerra curtida en conflictos como el de Chechenia, Kosovo, Sierra Leona y Sri Lanka, donde perdió un ojo en una emboscada tendida por soldados gubernamentales.
Mientras, Ochlik, ganador del prestigioso premio World Press Photo por su trabajo durante la revolución libia, fotografió en 2008 la guerra en la República Democrática del Congo y la epidemia de cólera y las elecciones presenciales en Haití, en 2010.
El ministro sirio de Información, Adnan Mahmud, aseguró hoy que no tenía constancia de la presencia en Siria de estos periodistas y exigió a "los informadores extranjeros que han entrado en Siria de manera ilegal recurrir a los centros de extranjería para regularizar su situación".
En este sentido, una fuente del ministerio dijo a Efe que los periodistas fallecidos habían entrado de modo ilegal en el país y que en la actualidad el departamento no está facilitando visados a los reporteros extranjeros.
Al suceso de hoy se suma la muerte anoche del periodista ciudadano de la red siria "Shaam News Network", Ramy al Sayed, que perdió la vida después de que un bombardeo alcanzase su vehículo en Homs.
El primer periodista occidental fallecido en Siria fue el francés Guilles Jacquier, prestigioso reportero de la televisión pública francesa France 2, que murió el pasado 11 de enero en Homs al caer un proyectil cuando cubría una manifestación a favor del régimen.
La cruenta ofensiva contra Homs, que desde comienzos de mes ha dejado cientos de víctimas, causó hoy la muerte también a otras dieciocho personas, entre ellas un líder kurdo, señalaron los Comités de Coordinación Local (CCL).
El portavoz de los CCL Emad Hosari denunció en una conversación telefónica con Efe "la gran escasez de alimentos y medicinas" que sufre la ciudad, así como el corte de la electricidad, las comunicaciones y el agua potable.
Pese al aumento de la presión internacional y la propuesta de la Liga Árabe de enviar a Siria una fuerza de paz conjunta con la ONU, la violencia se ha recrudecido en las últimas semanas.
Los CCL documentaron solo hoy la muerte de al menos 60 personas, entre ellas dos menores. Además de las 20 víctimas de Homs, perecieron 22 personas en Idleb (norte), trece en Hama (centro), dos en los alrededores de Damasco, dos en Alepo (norte) y una en Deraa (sur).
Esta situación ha llevado al Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja (CICR) a entrar en contacto con las autoridades de Damasco y con líderes de la oposición para tratar de negociar un alto el fuego de dos horas al día, que permita llevar asistencia humanitaria a la población civil. EFE
mv/aj/er/fpa
BREAKING NEWS: Toronto police officer charged with murder
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Enlarge Photo Toronto police Const. David Cavanagh, centre, is charged with second-degree murd …
A Toronto police officer has been charged with second-degree murder — the first time a member of the force has faced a murder charge for actions taken while on duty.
Crown prosecutors laid the charge against Const. David Cavanagh in a Toronto courtroom Thursday, after an investigation involving Ontario's police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit. Cavanagh had originally been charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of 26-year-old Eric Osawe in late 2010.
Osawe was shot in the early hours of Sept. 29, 2010, during a police search at an Etobicoke apartment near Dundas Street West and Kipling Avenue that led to the arrest of Osawe's younger brother, Ebony, on firearms-related offences.
The SIU alleges Cavanagh fatally shot Eric Osawe during that search, which was carried out by officers from the Emergency Task Force as well as the guns and gangs squad. Osawe was taken to St. Michael's Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The SIU, an independent civilian agency, investigates whenever a citizen is seriously injured or killed during incidents with police.
Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General brought in Ottawa lawyer Robert Morrison to prosecute this case. He has been working closely with the SIU.
The murder charge implies that the Crown believes there is evidence the accused intended to kill the victim. A homicide committed without intent to kill is considered manslaughter.
Cavanagh has been out on bail since being charged in December 2010. He has been suspended with pay.
The SIU said in a news release that a preliminary inquiry will start on Oct. 1.
At the original bail hearing on the manslaughter charge, Osawe's family gave an emotional statement saying they had "lost all trust and faith in the criminal justice and law enforcement systems in Ontario."
Osawe left behind two children.
Cavanagh was also in the public spotlight in 2005 for the armed takedown of two suspects who fled from Yonge Street following the Boxing Day killing of teenager Jane Creba.
The arrest by Cavanagh and three other officers helped secure arrests and the conviction of one of the accused in the Creba case.
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