Free Republic

A Queen’s University student theatre company has cancelled a production of Shakespeare’s Othello set to open this month following an outcry over the decision to cast a white woman in the title role of a black man. “For the safety and mental health of our entire team we unfortunately feel the need to suspend our production of Othello,” the artistic directors wrote on Facebook Wednesday. They subsequently apologized to the Kingston, Ont., university’s black community for what they called an “oppressive” artistic decision. After September auditions, Queen’s Vagabond Theatre made what its directors acknowledged was a risky decision: Lauren Broadhurst,...

Variety magazine has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, marking the first time in more than 100 years that Hollywood’s oldest entertainment industry trade magazine has made a presidential endorsement. Variety announced their endorsement of Clinton on Tuesday and joins a growing list of publications like The Atlantic and the conservative Arizona Republic newspaper that have made unprecedented or otherwise rare endorsements of the Democratic nominee this election season. The magazine acknowledged it was unusual for a trade publication to make such an endorsement, but said this of all years was the one in which the editors-in-chief and Variety’s publisher, Michelle...

Europe is in chaos. Over the last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has allowed over one million Muslim migrants to come to Germany. Many of these refugees are young, uneducated males, with no skills, no understanding of German, and no plans on assimilating. As terrorist attacks and sexual assaults by these Muslim newcomers become more common throughout Europe, many Germans are regretting inviting these people to their country. Now there are multiple reports of German biker clubs roaming the streets of German cities, attacking Muslim immigrants. Two Pakistani men were recently hospitalized after getting attacked by a group of 20...

Four sentences in a letter to Speaker of the House Todd Richardson are about to turn the Missouri political world upside down. “My name is Cora Faith Walker. I will be in the Capitol in January as the Representative of the 74th District. Earlier this week, I reported a sexual assault to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. I named my rapist as Steven Roberts, Jr., who hopes to be in the Capitol in January as the Representative of the 77th District.” On Friday night, Walker, 31, a Ferguson attorney who won the Democratic primary for her seat in August,...

OTTAWA — The National Film Board spent $96,000 on focus groups and workshops for its own staff between November and June, including $75,000 to determine office layouts and workplace strategy — a bill the Canadian Taxpayers Federation calls “ridiculous.” The agency hired consultants at Grisvert Inc. to conduct focus group research on physical office layouts and “organizational transformation” for two new offices in Montreal and Toronto, each project costing $21,000. It also hired Deloitte LLP to consult with NFB employees on a “digital workplace strategy,” costing $33,000. Just under $20,000 more was spent on several workshops held for staff, though...

Michael Coren, former Catholic apologist and journalist, has been stripped of his papal knighthood following his reception into the Anglican Church of Canada in 2013. Coren is known for his popular work of Catholic apologetics, Why Catholics Are Right, and for his schism from the Church over her doctrine on homosexuality. He is married with four children. Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic made Mr Coren a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre in October 1992, for 'services to Catholic media'. According to an interview with the ultra-liberal Catholic journal, The Tablet, "Coren was stripped of his papal knighthood and asked to return the...

OTTAWA — A longtime refugee advocate says stories such as that of Liberal MP Maryam Monsef are not uncommon as families fleeing war and violence reconstruct their past in a new land. Monsef, widely touted as Canada's first Afghan-born cabinet minister, caused a stir in the capital Thursday when she issued a statement saying she only recently learned from her mother that she was in fact born in Iran. The 31-year-old minister of democratic institutions says she and her two sisters never held Iranian citizenship and were always considered Afghan citizens, but she was not born in Herat, Afghanistan, "as...

TORONTO -- An unabashedly atheist minister who does not believe in the Bible should be defrocked for her beliefs, a United Church committee has recommended in a split decision that seems likely to stir further dissent in the church. In its unprecedented report, the reviewing panel said Gretta Vosper would not be ordained were she applying today given her extreme beliefs. "She is not suitable to continue in ordained ministry because she does not believe in God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit," the report by the Toronto Conference interview committee states. "Ms. Vosper does not recognize the primacy...

OTTAWA—Two-thirds of Canadians want prospective immigrants to be screened for “anti-Canadian” values, a new poll reveals, lending support to an idea that is stirring controversy in political circles. Conservative MP Kellie Leitch, a candidate in her party’s leadership contest, has floated the idea of screening newcomers for their attitudes on intolerance toward other religions, cultures and sexual orientations and reluctance to embrace Canadian freedoms. A new Forum Research Inc. poll for the Star shows that Leitch may be tapping into an idea that Canadians favour with 67 per cent saying immigrants should indeed be screened for “anti-Canadian values.” More importantly...

When music class begins this week at Toronto’s Donwood Park elementary school, Mohammad Nouman Dasu will send a family member to collect his three young children. They will go home for an hour rather than sing and play instruments – a mandatory part of the Ontario curriculum he believes violates his Muslim faith. The Scarborough school and the Toronto District School Board originally had offered an accommodation – suggesting students could just clap their hands in place of playing instruments or listen to acapella versions of O Canada – but not a full exemption from the class. After a bitter...

The Ottawa teacher’s aide who sexually exploited a vulnerable high school student for two years was jailed on Tuesday for 14 months in what the judge called a significant breach of trust. Ontario Court Justice Celynne Dorval didn’t buy Katherine Kitts’s defence that it was just an awful lapse in judgment and noted the planning and duration of the sexual exploitation was anything but spontaneous. Kitts, 46, would sometimes furnish her minivan with an air mattress for planned sexual encounters in parking lots and parks near the boy’s home. “Had there been one or two sexual encounters before she ended...

Egypt’s state-run television has suspended eight of its female presenters for being overweight — telling them they can return to the air only after they go on a diet. The move sparked outrage among women’s groups and members of parliament but state television authorities show no sign of backing down. The presenters were given a month to lose weight and told they will not be allowed back on screen until they have an “appropriate appearance,” according to the Youm7 newspaper. The decision was made by Safaa Hegazi, the female chief of Egypt’s ERTU public broadcaster. .... Khadija Khatab, one of...

Police in Quebec have another maple syrup heist on their hands. First, there was the Great Maple Syrup Heist of 2011-2012, in which $18 million worth of the sweet sap went missing. Then, earlier this week, thieves made off with 20,000 litres of Quebec's sweetest export, worth an estimated $150,000, from a storage facility near Montreal's Trudeau airport in Dorval. abuzz Alfredo Monaco, a vice-president at Mexuscan Cargo, said the thieves broke into the warehouse and stole a shipping container loaded with 20 pallets of Kirkland brand one-litre bottles of syrup. The syrup was destined for the Japanese market. The...

Justin Trudeau has become the first sitting prime minister to participate in Vancouver’s annual Pride parade. He and his family waved to cheering crowds as they led the procession along the rainbow-decorated streets of the city’s downtown on Sunday. Trudeau says Pride is about celebrating community, family and the diversity that he says makes Canada strong. The prime minister is no stranger to Vancouver Pride — this is the third year in a row he’s taken part in the event.

A Viscountess has blamed badgers for the slaughter of 200 lambs on her family’s estate, as she called for a widespread cull of the animals. Helene, Viscountess Scarsdale, a formidable aristocrat, said the lambs had been killed in three years, while also accusing the National Trust, which now owns historic Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, of allowing the badgers to “wreak havoc”. She said 500 acres of “beautiful” parkland at Kedleston, which has been in the family for almost 1,000 years, had been allowed to turn into “thistles and nettles” by the trust, which in turn had let badgers thrive. The...

Every stallion has a “tell,” says Bridgette Jablonsky, and, in this moment, in a dimly lit barn at Hanover Shoe Farms in Hanover, Pa., Somebeachsomewhere, the legendary Canadian harness racing champion and international Hall of Fame horse, is telling Jablonsky he is ready to perform. Somebeachsomewhere’s readiness is never a certainty. He is a finicky and, at times, apathetic lover. To hasten his readiness Chiptease, a mare in heat, is in the barn, standing idly by as her would-be mate nips at her hindquarters, throws back his head, inhales deeply and, after 10 minutes, starts dancing about on his hooves....

A senior in Truro, N.S., is thanking police after an officer recovered a bag of beets from an intoxicated cyclist which may have been stolen from her community garden plot. Olga McCabe-Cain said she arrived at the King Street community garden on the site of the former St. Mary's Elementary School in Truro at around 7 p.m. on Wednesday, only to discover that a number of her beet plants were missing. "It was so disappointing," McCabe-Cain said. "They cleaned the row right out nicely — even padded it over — and left one bunch of beets at the end." She...

PARIS — Police in Nice have questioned a 73-year-old man described as the Bastille Day killer’s “main lover” as investigators described him as a “sex maniac” and “ultra-violent sadist,” according to French reports. The revelation came amid revelations that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had displayed a “clear, recent interest in the radical jihadist movement,” growing a beard only in the last eight days after a previous life drinking alcohol and eating pork. Francois Molins, the French prosecutor, said the Tunisian, who killed 84 people when he plowed into crowds on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais last Thursday, had searched on the Internet...

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met several people following his weekly General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, including 26 year-old Lena Bröder – Miss Germany 2016 – who also happens to be a teacher of religion and home economics in Germany’s school system. Bröder is also the author of a volume, Das Schöne in mir - Mit Glaube zum Erfolg – “The Beautiful in me: with faith to success” – due on bookshelves in Germany later this month. German wire service reports quote Bröder as calling the meeting with Pope Francis, “moving,” and as saying that she told the Holy...

OTTAWA — The Canadian Forces has distributed 120,000 wallet-size cards to military personnel to remind them that sexual assault is an “inappropriate” behaviour. The cards are to be carried by military staff on the job, including when they are sent overseas. But a critic of how the Canadian Forces has been handling its response to what has been labelled a sexual misconduct crisis says such reminder cards are absurd. “It is disgusting to label sexual assault as simply something that is inappropriate — it is a criminal act and if you don’t understand that then you have real problems,”...