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LET THE GAMES BEGIN
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Red Deer Advocate FRIDAY, FEB. 7, 2014
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Family victims of homicide REMAINS FOUND AFTER HOUSE FIRE NEAR CASTOR BY RENÉE FRANCOEUR ADVOCATE STAFF Two family members found dead after a house blaze near Castor, and a third member of the family who has not been located, are victims of homicide, RCMP said on Thursday.
The Mounties also say that they believe the fire was intentionally set, although they’re not revealing how it started. The remains of Gordon Klaus, 61, and his daughter, Monica Klaus, 40, were found in the farmhouse after the Dec. 8 fire. Sandra Klaus, Gordon’s wife and Monica’s mother, has still not been found but police say their investi-
gation suggests she was also a murder victim. “Our investigators are most certain that she was a victim of a homicide as well,” RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Josee Valiquette said at a news conference in Edmonton. It’s possible that Sandra Klaus’s body could have been destroyed in the fire, she said.
Valiquette said the home was heated by coal and there was a significant amount of the fuel in the home’s basement, which made the fire hot and its damage severe. “It was very intense and the remains are not necessarily easy to analyze.”
Please see HOMICIDE on Page A2
OLYMPIC PRIDE
DISCOVERY WILDLIFE PARK
Da bears of Innisfail Super Bowl stars » SEE MORE ONLINE AT WWW.REDDEERADVOCATE.COM BY MYLES FISH ADVOCATE STAFF The Super Bowl itself may not have been a roaring contest, but at least one of the commercials during the big game provided some entertainment and tension, thanks to two local bears. Whopper, a 16-year-old 600-plus-kg male grizzly, and Ursula, an 11-yearold female — both residents of Innisfail’s Discovery Wildlife Park — were some hungry bears in an ad for Chobani Greek yogurt that aired during Sunday’s NFL championship game. Filmed in B.C., the ad portrays a bucolic small town main street in the mountains where a relaxed policeman greets passersby as he lounges on his car and where denizens browse the general store’s wares at a leisurely pace — at least until a giant grizzly walks into the store. That bear, though, is hungry neither for flesh nor any of the salamis or hams prominently displayed. Rather, the bear is after a single container of the yogurt, tossing aside other foodstuffs and knocking over shelves to get to the creamy treat. Like any good customer, the bear then rings the bell on the counter, attempting to pay for his selection, but the terrified shopkeeper stays in hiding as Bob Dylan’s classic I Want You plays and the bear saunters off. The two bears shared the starring role — Whopper’s specialty as an actor is to portray a standing, intimidating bear, while Ursula is more adept at intricate actions. And the spot was far from their first acting gig. Both have appeared in movies, and Whopper has appeared in as many Super Bowls (three) as Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning — and on Sunday, the ursine actor’s performance was undoubtedly better.
Please see BEARS on Page A2
WEATHER Increasing cloudiness. High -17. Low -22.
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Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff
Showing his Olympic pride, David Bates of Red Deer waves his hockey stick mounted Canadian Flag in his front yard in Grandview where he has built an Inuksuk and a maple leaf out of the solid piles of snow. Bates can hardly wait to begin watching the Olympics and cheer for Team Canada as they take on the world in Sochi, Russia.
Cold snap hits pine beetles where it hurts BY RENÉE FRANCOEUR ADVOCATE STAFF The return of cold weather isn’t all bad news. Unless you’re a mountain pine beetle. Some Albertans, like Duncan MacDonnell, are celebrating the plunge back into frigid digits as the beetle, the most damaging insect pest of pine trees in western North America, is more of a fair weather friend. “The scientific knowledge we have right now says the best way to kill a beetle is for temperatures to get down to at least -40C for at least 24 hours, preferably 48 hours,” said MacDon-
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nell, a public affairs officer with Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development. “But this is more ideal in November, when they’re still at the early stages of their life cycle and not really winter-hardened yet.” For this time of the year, the best weather weapon against the beetle is warming periods snapped up by deep cold spells, much like what Central Alberta and the beetle-infected forests around Slave Lake, Grande Prairie and Hinton have been experiencing these past two weeks. “A week and a half ago we had temperatures in the highs. Now we’re in -20C in most parts. Tremendous fluc-
tuations in temperature are in our favour. It’s called the yo-yo effect, warming followed by cold followed by warming and this fools the beetles into converting some of their natural glycerol, or antifreeze, into energy so then when you return to that cold snap, they’re not as hardy as before,” MacDonnell said. The result is the potential for good “overwinter kill” of the pesky insects. Researchers are digging deeper into what exactly the yo-yo effect means for the beetle, MacDonnell said, with work recently commissioned with Natural Resources Canada at a lab in Victoria.
Please see BEETLE on Page A2
Eyes on the gold Cassie Campbell-Pascall provides analysis for the Canada-U.S. women’s ice hockey matchup at the XXII Winter Olympics, airing Wednesday on CBC Television.
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