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Just felt our whole office building shake here in Northern Ohio. Lasted about 10 seconds. Anyone else feel anything??

A thin layer of smoke is covering much of New Hampshire today, spillover from more than 50 wildfires that are burning out of control in Quebec. The fires have been burning since last week over about 150,000 acres in central Quebec, north of Montreal and Quebec City, and about 500 miles north of Manchester.

SNIPPET: "Quebec provincial police have arrested four people in connection with an alleged fraud ring that appears to have international ties. Officers with la Sûreté du Québec carried out a handful of search warrants in and around Montreal Wednesday morning. Police said they have seized almost $50 million in assets. While no biker gang members were among those arrested, police alleged the fraud ring is tied to the Hells Angels." SNIPPET: "Police say Wednesday's arrests are also tied to a money-laundering plan. However, in this case, police allege the money being laundered was subsequently lent to companies and individuals based...

SAINT-JUDE, Quebec – Four people, including two children, are missing after the land beneath their home gave way and swallowed their house northeast of Montreal, officials said Tuesday. Rescue authorities said the house partially collapsed Monday night in Saint-Jude, a town of 1,000 near the Yamaska River, when a sinkhole formed. "It's a pretty gigantic crater," said Francois Gregoire, a Quebec fire department spokesman. "It's hard imagining something like this. It's pretty impressive." Gregoire said the house was quite far from the river before the land gave way but that part of it ended up in the water.

Note: The following text is a quote: Heads of Canadian alien smuggling organization sentenced BURLINGTON, Vt. - On May 3, Jose Manuel Galdamez-Serrano, 56, Norvin Gonzalez-Morales, 29, Ruben Damas-Hernandez, 31, and Emmanuel Antonio Galdamez, 27, of Montreal, Quebec, were sentenced in U.S. District Court in Burlington following their guilty pleas to alien smuggling offenses. The defendants were extradited to the United States from Canada to face the charges contained in the indictment. Chief U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III sentenced Jose Manual Galdamez-Serrano to 60 months imprisonment and three years of probation following his guilty plea to one count...

Suppose for a moment that 15 million Americans -- the population of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined -- sneaked across the border into Quebec. Suppose that these illegal immigrants refused to learn to speak French, that they applied for Canadian welfare, that they reproduced at a rate higher than Quebec's residents, and that they bankrupted Canada's socialized medical system. Suppose that they sent their children to Canadian schools in such large numbers that Quebec's school system had to teach "French as a Second Language" courses. Suppose that the 15 million illegal American aliens included large...

Quebecers must thank God for the internet. Thanks to the virtual world of instantaneous communications, they can get their whining and crying out to the rest of us much faster than before. In the old days, the ever-disgruntled in la Belle province had to rely on entities such as the leftist Globe & Mail or the ever-eager C.B.C. as vehicles to dictate their terms to the rest of Canada. Now, they can almost rapid-fire their bitching online.

MONTREAL -- In recent years, the few fully veiled Muslim women who had dealings with Quebec's health-insurance board could choose to be served by a woman to avoid exposing their faces to a man outside their family. But in the latest example of the province's growing resistance to the accommodation of minority religious practices, the insurance board on Tuesday announced the end of the policy after the provincial human rights commission said it has no duty to acquiesce. "From now on, for a woman who is veiled with a niqab or a burka and comes to our office asking to...

MONTREAL -- Police say there’s a link between the seizure of explosives several hundred kilometres northeast of Quebec City and the evacuation of several homes in Montreal today. A school was also locked down as police carried out a search warrant in a nearby apartment building. Provincial police spokesman Claude Ross says three people were arrested and one ton of explosives was found in a van in Mont Joli, about 350 kilometres east of Quebec City. He says the vehicle was intercepted by police outside a doughnut shop, adding that the explosives were stolen from a local contractor.

February 13, 2009 SNIPPET: "He was a small-time hoodlum with a big chip on his shoulders, a man who spoke of Jihad, researched bomb-making techniques and looked at a nuclear plant, the Montreal Stock Exchange and a military base as possible terrorism targets. In the end, Omar Bulphred, a 23-year-old native of Algeria, and an accomplice settled for firebombing two Jewish institutions before getting arrested after police heard them talk about abducting a gay man at random to rob him and cut his throat. The troubling story of the two Montreal terrorist wannabes can be told following Mr. Bulphred's guilty...

Wal Mart does it again. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in favor of the chain store. In 2005, the store in Jonquiree, Quebec was closed because of the recent union certification of the stores employees. This, of course, led to various court runs by the displaced employees of the store. At the end of 2005, the Quebec Labor Board ordered Wal Mart to compensate the former employees. (http://wakeupwalmart.com/facts/) Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada has seen fit to rule 4-3 in favor of the company. As usual

We promise to keep French on our cereal boxes if we don’t have to subject our children to the joys of ‘French immersion’ programs in our schools. And no Celine Dion. Ever.

Namouh was arrested in September 2007 for engaging in more than 1,000 online conversations and producing videos praising violent attacks on US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as helping distribute ransom demands for kidnappers of a British journalist in Gaza. In online postings, he also touted his explosives expertise and threatened future attacks in Germany and Austria because of their military roles in Afghanistan. According to prosecutors, Namouh was a member of the Global Islamic Media Front, which is said to be involved in propaganda and jihad recruitment for Al-Qaeda. He faces possible life in prison.

Health Care Systems: A return to private health care is rising from the grass roots north of the border. While we rush headlong toward socialized medicine, Canadians are saying, "No, thanks — been there, done that." We recently told the story of Ava Isabella Stinson, born 13 weeks premature at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. She weighed all of two pounds and had no time to be put on a waiting list. But there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario it seems. Canada's perfectly...

A Beaconsfield, Que., church has gone to the dogs. Really. Christ Church Beaurepaire in the community on the Island of Montreal is about to begin offering a monthly church service that will include dogs. Called Paws and Pray, the communion service will feature bread and wine, as well as doggie treats and bowls of water for the four-legged 'parishioners.' The church's minister, Michael Johnson, said he has always enjoyed doing a pet blessing once a year, so he was open to the suggestion made by an animal-rights activist to include dogs in a church service. "It's to recognize the value...

MONTREAL, August 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An Angus Reid-La Presse poll carried out on August 4 and 5 has found that more than three quarters of Quebecers agree that euthanasia should be legalized in Quebec.Jaideep Mukerji, Vice President of Public Affairs at Angus Reid Strategies, said he was surprised by the results of the poll of 800 adults in Quebec."You'd be surprised how Quebecers are in favor of euthanasia and that their opinion on the subject is clear," Mukerji told La Presse, adding that support for the legalized killing was consistent across most social and economic strata."The responses of Quebecers...

Canada has recorded a case of Tamiflu-resistant swine flu virus, in a Quebec man who had been given the drug to prevent infection. Meanwhile, Japan revealed Tuesday it had found a second such case of Tamiflu resistance, in a person who has no ties to the country’s earlier reported case.

ONE evening last week, almost every seat was occupied at Au Cinquième Péché, a bistro in the bustling neighborhood called the Plateau. And almost every table was sampling an appetizer plate that included a specialty of the restaurant’s French-born chef, Benoît Lenglet: a seared, rare loin, dark red in color, with a texture and taste akin to beef tenderloin. But the meat was not beef. It was seal. Across town, at Les Îles en Ville, Andrée Garcia, an owner and chef, has elevated seal from an occasional specialty to a regular feature. The most frequent preparation there, Ms. Garcia said,...

Divisions, based mostly on historical events and stereotypes, have become entrenched in the very fabric of our culture. West versus East, English versus French, Native Canadians versus the federal government, Quebec versus Ottawa, Alberta versus everybody… Tough love being what it is and all that, here’s five ways to save Canada – or at least make it better.

A Canadian scientist has been arrested for smuggling 22 vials stolen from Canada's National Microbiology Lab, used in Ebola and HIV research, into the United States, Canadian and US officials said Wednesday. Konan Michel Yao, 42, "was taken into custody" while crossing from Manitoba into North Dakota A Public Health Agency of Canada spokeswoman [said] Yao "was working on vaccines for the Ebola virus and HIV, among other things." The Ivory Coast-born scientist is said to have studied at Laval University in Quebec and briefly worked at the University of Manitoba's plant sciences department.