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Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Email Comments More . Susan Stewart collects fresh human placentas, takes them home and steams them with lemon, ginger and cayenne pepper. Once cooked, she puts the organs in a dehydrator overnight then grinds them and measures the powder out into gel capsules. The service – the Calgary single mother makes a living at this – costs about $200. Within a day, she presents new moms with their placentas in pill form – an average human placenta yields about 150 capsules – with promises of renewed energy, better lactation and no post-partum depression. They keep indefinitely. Placenta-eating...

This morning, Margaret Thatcher died at age 87 owing to complications from a stroke. One of the lesser-known accomplishments of Britain's first female prime minister is her role in the creation of soft-serve. Thatcher, an Oxford chemistry grad, supported herself financially in the fifties by working at food manufacturer J. Lyons and Co. There, she became part of a team of chemists that developed key emulsifiers for ice cream. By increasing the amount of air and making it possible to churn soft-serve out of a machine, Thatcher paved the way for Britain's Mr. Whippy trucks. Her work also had financial...

A former student at Oakland University in the suburbs of Detroit is suing the school for over $2.2 million after he was kicked out in September 2011 for penning a salacious essay entitled “Hot for Teacher.” Joseph Corlett, 57, a builder who now resides in Florida, filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, reports the Detroit Free Press. He claims the public university violated his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. He says he also suffered mental anguish and humiliation when he was forced to leave the school. The suit names the school’s board of trustees...

One year after Toronto subway fare collector William Anderson was shot and badly wounded in a botched robbery at the downtown Dupont station, a $25,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the masked gunman - or gunwoman - was renewed Tuesday, with a fresh appeal for tips. Now 53, Mr. Anderson remains off the job, still recovering from being shot in the neck and shoulder by his balaclava-clad assailant, who’s believed to have targeted that same station twice before. The description of that person, glimpsed on video, has been revised and the perpetrator may be male or female,...

The first people affected by the Canadian government’s decision to close the Iranian embassy in Ottawa were Iranian international students who had come to the capital to renew their visas. Canada announced it would close Iran’s embassy in Ottawa on Friday and asked all embassy staff to leave the country within five days citing, among other reasons, Iran’s “increasing military assistance to (Syria’s) Assad regime.” According to the Citizenship and Immigration Canada, in 2010 (the most recent statistics available) 3,247 international students from Iran were studying at the university level in Canada. .... For international students, some of whom receive...

Catherine Hakim is a controversialist. She says prostitutes are role models, most women don’t want to work in career jobs and feminists are an elitist minority whose battles are irrelevant to all but a small group. In her latest book The New Rules: Internet Dating, Playfairs and Erotic Power, she argues in favour of adultery. In what is probably the first academic guide to what she calls “good infidelity,” Hakim, a social scientist at the Centre for Policy Studies, says a love affair “requires some skill and savoire faire. A successful affair while married is one that makes both parties...

A large quantity of maple syrup in a Quebec warehouse has gone missing. Following a routine inventory check, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syup Producers found empty barrels at the St-Louis-de-Blandford warehouse, where the syrup is temporarily being held, suggesting that their contents had been emptied into other containers before being taken away for illegal distribution. The warehouse held over 10 million pounds of maple syrup worth more than $30-million. .... The FQMSP is responsible for the global strategic maple syrup reserve and represents approximately 10,000 maple syrup producers from within Quebec.

OTTAWA — The Liberal leadership in the Senate allowed a veteran senator to vote on legislation and spend public dollars for four months after she was diagnosed with dementia and declared legally incompetent. Sen. Joyce Fairbairn regularly attended Senate sittings and voted along party lines before the Upper Chamber rose for the summer at the end of June. Fairbairn was diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type by her geriatric psychiatrist in February, according to a letter sent to Senate officials by her niece, Patricia McCullagh. It is unclear when the Liberals knew about the diagnosis, but by April, the...

RAWDON, Que. - A bride-to-be has plunged to her death, tumbling down from a cliff into a waterfall while wearing her wedding dress. The woman was being photographed Friday at Dorwin Falls in Rawdon, Que., which she had chosen as the backdrop for her wedding pictures. During the photo shoot, around 2 p.m., she slipped on some rocks and plummeted into the water. The falls, at their highest point, are just over 18 metres high. The immediate rescue team included firefighters and provincial police, and divers were soon on their way. The woman's body was found several hours later. A...

CAMBRIDGE BAY, Nunavut — The search for the remnants of an ill-fated British expedition that failed to cross the Northwest Passage — and a seminal moment in Canada’s history on Arctic sovereignty — will start anew. In the coming weeks, a group of researchers will scour Canada’s Arctic waters to find Sir John Franklin’s two ships, Erebus and the Terror, led by a ship named for an Arctic researcher who perished in a plane crash last year. The renewal of Parks Canada’s search for the lost Franklin vessels, anticipated last week by Postmedia News, follows three recent federal expeditions that...

TUNIS, Tunisia — Islamist extremists have targeted two Tunisian Olympic medalists for behaviour and dress seen as un-Islamic, as debate grows over the role of religion and women in the country that unleashed the Arab Spring uprisings. Radicals on social media networks called on the government to strip Habiba Ghribi, the first Tunisian woman to win an Olympic medal, of her nationality because her running gear was too revealing. She won the silver in the 3,000-metre steeplechase.

OTTAWA — In a historic vote, the United Church of Canada has elected its first openly gay moderator. After six ballots and nearly eight hours of voting at the church’s 41st general council in Ottawa Thursday, Rev. Gary Paterson emerged from a record field of 15 candidates to win the top job at Canada’s largest Protestant church. He is thought to be the first openly gay person to head any mainstream Christian denomination. The 350 voting commissioners at the general council greeted the announcement with cheers and a prolonged standing ovation, and quickly voted to make Paterson’s election unanimous. “I...

The daughter-in-law of Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, who has served as a volunteer high school track and field coach in Oregon, was fired on Monday after an investigation proved that she escorted a 17-year-old member of her boys track squad to the school's prom. As reported by the Associated Press, 41-year-old Melissa Bowerman, the daughter-in-law of waffle-sole inventor Bill Bowerman, escorted an unnamed 17-year-old on the Condon (Ore.) High track team to the school's prom after the runner told her he lacked a date for the prom. Bowerman, who is married to 73-year-old co-coach Jon Bowerman and also has a...

The CBC is planning some counter-programming for female non-hockey fans who might be forced to tune into the Stanley Cup final next week. Viewers can go online to listen to an alternate commentary from Lena Sutherland and Jules Mancuso, who run WhileTheMenWatch.com. They describe their site as a sports talk show for women, “Sex and the City” meets ESPN, with banter “from a woman’s point of view.” “One afternoon while (our husbands) were both watching the same game on TV Jules and I were on the phone and we started just making comments to each other like, ‘Did you see...

Nelson Mandela's grandson will tie the knot with a third wife in a traditional ceremony Saturday despite a court ban on the wedding, according to a report. All systems were go for chief Mandla Mandela's union with Swazi princess Mbali Makhathini at the Mvezo Royal Palace in rural Eastern Cape province, family spokesman Sidima Mnqanqeni told Sapa news agency. "We are confident that there will be no disturbance and the marriage is on," said Mnqanqeni. Mandla is a grandson of former South African president Nelson Mandela and also a member of parliament. He heads the Mandela family clan. A South...

TORONTO – A Toronto school is no longer allowing children to play with most balls during recess. Earl Beatty Public School sent a letter to student’s homes on Monday informing them of the decision to ban most balls from use on school grounds. According to the letter, over the past few weeks, there have been “a few serious incidents of parents, staff and students being hit by a hard ball or nearly being hit by a hard ball” in the schoolyard. There was no information as to injuries of people hit by hard balls. The students are still allowed to...

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia's government asked Saudi Arabia on Sunday whether its exiled former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is dead, and demanded his extradition if he is still alive, as thousands of people protested in the capital demanding that the caretaker government resigns. The 74-year-old Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14, following a massive popular uprising that ended his 23-year rule and prompted a wave of protest against other autocratic leaders across the Arab world. Tunisia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement it had asked Saudi Arabia to provide information "as soon as possible"...

Striking down Canada’s polygamy law would make the country a magnet for polygamous immigrant families and open the door to societal harms resulting from the practice, a lawyer for the B.C. government said in opening remarks for a landmark case. “The challengers [to the law] all urge the court to make Canada the sole Western nation to decriminalize polygamy,” Crown lawyer Craig Jones told a packed Vancouver courtroom Monday. “The reasonably apprehended result would be an influx of polygamous families who are presently barred from the country in addition to the practice’s domestic growth.” Evidence to be heard in the...

MONTREAL — A man charged with uttering death threats on Facebook armed himself with high-powered weapons because he feared he was being stalked by elves, a Montreal court was told Wednesday. Quebec provincial police told David Abitbol's bail hearing that he told a friend on the Internet that his .12-gauge shotgun was just what he needed to kill the mythical creatures. A disturbing portrait emerged of the 28-year-old Abitbol during Wednesday's proceedings in which the Crown reported that an initial evaluation indicated that he was fit to stand trial. "There's nothing at this point to make us doubt his ability...

PRINCE ALBERT, SASK.—A man who sent his semi-naked wife into the cold on Christmas Day after an argument over turkey stuffing has been sentenced to five years in prison. Clifford Arnold Daniels, 52, was convicted of assault causing bodily harm, unlawful confinement and uttering threats. Crown prosecutor Maureen Longworth argued the Christmas incident was a calculated and premeditated assault that took place within a couple of hours. Court was told Daniels and his common-law wife, Beverley Ermine, argued after Daniels started drinking whiskey. At the time, she was preparing turkey stuffing for dinner the next day, but he told her...