Free Republic

Police in Hillsville are trying to make sense of a possible kidnapping. According to the Carroll County Sheriff's Office, a housekeeper at the Quality Inn hotel found a note that said it was from a child named Jasmine Hines. The note's author says she is "missing and the cops are looking for me." The sheriff's office said a search of databanks showed no signs of a missing child named Jasmine Hines. The incident started, according to the sheriff's office, when a Canadian man named Pierre Morand checked into the hotel near Exit 14 on Interstate 77. He rented a room...

Surgery wait times for deadly ovarian, cervical and breast cancers in Québec are three times longer than government benchmarks, leading some desperate patients to shop around for an operating room. But that’s a waste of time, doctors say, since the problem is spread across Québec hospitals. And doctors are refusing to accept new patients quickly because they can’t treat them, health advocates say. … The worst cases are gynecological cancers, experts say, because usually such a cancer has already spread by the time it is detected. Instead of four weeks from diagnosis to surgery, patients are waiting as long as...

TORONTO — A single junk-food meal rich in saturated fat is detrimental to the health of the arteries, researchers in Canada said. Dr. Anil Nigam and colleagues at the University of Montreal-affiliated EPIC Center of the Montreal Heart Institute compared the effects of a junk-food meal and a typical Mediterranean meal on the vascular endothelium, the inner lining of the blood vessels. Endothelial function is closely linked to the long-term risk of developing coronary artery disease.

The plot thickened Wednesday in the heist of a big dollop of Quebec's strategic maple-syrup reserve. The Canadian province's maple syrup-producers' trade group said Quebec police appear to have found some of the syrup it reported missing just over a month ago. The syrup group said police informed it that authorities seized more than $1.4 million worth of the sticky stuff in neighboring New Brunswick.

Parti Québécois Leader Pauline Marois was rushed off the stage during her victory speech after a starter pistol was fired, prompting a quick response form security officials. She returned a few minutes later and urged supporters who packed Montreal's Metropolis concert hall to leave camly. "There was a little unfortunate incident," she said. Montreal police could be seen taking a man into custody outside the building. After battling back from inner party turmoil and record lows in party support, Pauline Marois and the Parti Québécois have claimed victory over the incumbent Liberals. The PQ will return to power with a...

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.

RAWDON, Que. – A newlywed was getting one final photo shoot in her wedding dress. It would be her last. Rescue teams recovered the body of newlywed realtor Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, Friday after the bride was swept away and drowned in the current near Dorwin Falls in Rawdon, according to CTV News. Pantazopoulos was dipping her toes into the water to pose but the dress became heavy when wet and the current pulled her to the bottom of the deep, eight-meter section of the lake. “The photographer put down his equipment and tried to save her. He grabbed her with...

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...

Anyone wanting to run for public office in a Quebec led by Pauline Marois will have to prove they can speak French first, the Parti Quebecois leader said as she announced her latest language-related campaign promise Tuesday. The PQ leader said anglophones, allophones and aboriginal people will be forbidden from seeking municipal or provincial office unless they have an appropriate knowledge of French. Marois said the idea is reasonable, given that French is the official language of Quebec. "We will present this bill but it is not just for new Quebecers — it is for everyone," Marois said during a...

The 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia has emerged as the world's most powerful crime group due to its obscene profits from the cocaine trade in Europe, and it further has become entrenched in Australia, Canada and the United States with surprisingly little push back from law enforcement in those countries. Indeed, Nicola Gratteri, a top anti-Mafia prosecutor in Italy warns that "this mafia is quickly spreading in the United States, particularly in Florida and New York" as reported by Beatrice Borromeo for The Daily Beast: Gratteri's latest operations have led to the sentencing of 34 'Ndrangheta members and have uncovered a...

How a bizarre legal case involving a mysterious billionaire could force 1.2 million Canadians to be married, against their will. Somewhere in North America, there is a place where little girls don’t give the slightest thought to what kind of wedding dress they’ll wear one day. A place where young men have never heard the expression: “why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free?”—because the milk is always free. A place where no one asks an unmarried couple expecting a baby if they’re getting hitched. This place is the province of Quebec. The French language spoken...

In Quebec, the students are revolting. This is both surprising and utterly predictable: surprising because college students in French Canada have by far the best financial deal in the country and should thus be the last people to complain, predictable because the Québécois have a long history of being difficult and demonstrate adroitly that, even when surrounded, the French will be the French. The student protests in the province are now into their third month and, last week in Victoriaville, flared once again into spasmodic violence. Of the 2,000 protesters, 106 were arrested after eleven people — four of them...

QUEBEC—With the clock ticking down on the federal long-gun registry, the Quebec government has taken legal action to save its data. The province announced Tuesday that it has filed a motion in Quebec Superior Court to block the federal government from destroying the registry information. The Quebec government says it wants to maintain its own registry with its share of the records — but can’t do it if the feds destroy the data, as promised, once its anti-registry bill becomes law. Time is running out. The legislation is on the verge of being adopted in the Senate. So Quebec, as...

Unlike the rest of Canada, Quebec must think there are dangerous criminals, and even another Marc Lepine, lurking among law-abiding farmers and hunters whose names are in the doomed long-gun registry. If that is the case, those farmers and hunters should be outraged with the Liberal government of Jean Charest. They're being played as pawns. Why, for example, would Quebec Public Safety Minister Robert Dutil announce his government will go to court if the Conservatives use their majority in Parliament to pass legislation abolishing the 16-year-old registry for rifles, shotguns and varmint-hunting pot-shooters? Does he have an empty chamber in...

Quebec is set to take legal action against the federal government to save data from the soon-to-be-abolished long-gun registry, according to reports. The Canadian Press first reported the Quebec government planned to announce the move Tuesday. Radio-Canada's Quebec City bureau has confirmed the report. Robert Dutil, the province's public security minister, will reveal details of the legal suit while accompanied by police brass, police unions, victims' groups and crime experts. The Conservatives have been working for years to end a registry they call wasteful, ineffective, and which they oppose on principle. The legislation to abolish the registry is expected to...

In an unusual move an Italian magistrate has publicly announced a wide-ranging investigation to target public officials who have become dirty tools for the country's Mafia groups as reported by Michael Day for The Independent: "organised crime was continuing to spread through Italy 'like a cancer' thanks to the 'white-collar mafia' of acquiescent public officials and politicians." Magistrate Ilda Boccassini's bold announcement follows the arrests earlier this week of a cop, a judge and a politician for allegedly servicing the 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia. * * * The 'Ndrangheta has become Italy's most powerful Mafia group due to its obscene...

I wrote about the murders of Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia and their father's first wife Rona over two years ago, when their bodies were found in the Rideau Canal in Kingson, Ontario: Three or so weeks back, a submerged car was found in the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ont., containing the bodies of three teenage girls and their aunt — a story initially reported as Mysterious Death Of 4 Quebecers Baffles Kingston Police. When it emerged that the four female Quebecers were, in fact, Muslim, the tearful parents offered up a strange tale of an impromptu midnight driving lesson...

There are the countless stories of conversions from one religion to another, from atheism to belief and from belief to atheism. All of these leaps of faith are interesting, because the same uniquely human faculty - the ability to critically examine the received wisdom of one's youth, and to reject it in favour of other more compelling resolutions to one's spiritual discomfort - can lead to so many disparate and often contradictory solutions. Whatever the intellectual process that leads to such a dramatic change in a life, the final step is always a leap of faith. On Oct. 1, La...

MONTREAL — Paula Celani will be in a Montreal courtroom Nov. 1 fighting a fine for attending an illegal Roman Catholic Mass.Canadians of all religious faiths – and even those who care only about protecting Charter freedoms – should cross their fingers that she wins.Celani actually showed up to fight the case this week. Alas, three public sector “witnesses” expected to testify against her were no shows so the matter was delayed until the day after Halloween.“I’m not sure why I’m the one who has to make the effort to come back when they’re the ones who didn’t show up,”...

Canada's new favorite couple, Prince William and his new bride Catherine, are in the midst of enjoying their honeymoon tour of our nation. While some of us are following their travels with great enthusiasm and others with indifference, leave it up to the folks in the perpetually-complaining province of Quebec to cause a ruckus. Normally I would ignore the droning of the French - we've all become so accustomed to it. However, one of the 'hard-done-by' protesters had a home made sign that cause great laughter in the Sullivan home: