The Asian Star December 29 2018

Hayyp New Year www.theasianstar.com Vol 17 - Issue 48

Saturday, December 29, 2018

BC’s population passes 5 million due to high international migration The population of British Columbia has passed the five million mark for the first time, according to a Statistics Canada estimation.

The report says international migration is to thank for the spike — as it is in every province that saw a population increase.

Canada’s population was approximately 37.2 million on Oct. 1, up 184,000 from July 1.

This was the largest population increase in number since 1971. “I don’t find it surprising at all,� licensed immigration consultant Alex Khadempour of CICS Immigration Consulting said. Statistics Canada reported strong immigration levels, an increase in refugee claimants and the arrival of a large number of nonpermanent residents, many of whom are work and study permit holders. ‘We are trying to balance both cultures’: 3 years on, refugee family from Syria applies for citizenship Khadempour said he believes BC’s population increase Continued on page 7

Fiji-born cop killed on duty by illegal immigrant in California A Fijian-born California Police Department officer was killed while on duty on boxing day.

33-year-old Ronil Singh (picutured) had made a traffic stop in Newman.

According to the Stanislaus County Sheriff ’s Department: “At 12:57am, Officer Singh called off on a traffic stop at Merced Street and Eucalyptus Avenue in Newman. A few moments later he called out “shots fired� over the radio. Multiple agencies responded to assist and Singh was found at the scene with gunshot wounds.

He was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced deceased.�

Mr Singh worked for the Newman Police Department since July of 2011.

His family migrated to US in 2002.

The late Mr Singh is survived by his wife Anamika and 5-month old son.

Memorial fund has been set up by the

Number of Indians who got Canadian citizenship this year rose by 50% The number of Indians living in Canada who obtained citizenship increased by 50% this year, The Times of India reported, quoting immigration authorities.

During the 10-month period ending October 2018, as many as 15,016 Indians obtained citizenship after having lived in the country as permanent residents for a certain period of time. This number in the corresponding period last year was 9,992. India

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was only marginally behind the Philippines (15,642) in the number of permanent residents acquiring Canadian citizenship. From January to October this year, 1.39 lakh permanent residents became Canadian citizens, with Indians accounting for 10.7% of them.

While these are preliminary figures, the numbers are expected to rise when final statistics are calculated.

Continued on page 7

California police officer Ronil Singh with his family

Stanislaus County Sheriff ’s Department.

Working on a tip-off, the Stanislaus County Sheriff ’s Department detectives served a search warrant in the 26000 block of River Road just outside of Newman.

The truck has been recovered and is being processed for evidence.

A manhunt has been launched for the suspect.

See more on this developing story, page 6

South Asian man jailed 14-years for setting fire in Richmond that killed son, mother-in-law A Richmond man has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for setting a fire that killed his son and mother-inlaw more than three years ago — the culmination of weeks of increasingly “threatening� and “intimidating� behaviour toward the family, according to the judge. Neighbours phoned 911 after Surjit Singh Dosanjh, 40, lit the fire in the master bedroom of a fourplex in the middle of the night on April 13, 2015. His mother-in-law

and teenage son were sleeping on bunk beds in a room they shared. They both died of carbon monoxide poisoning, despite firefighters’ efforts to revive them. Dosanjh was arrested and charged with two counts of second-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty to both counts when his trial began in January, but was convicted of manslaughter in July. ‘He was angry’ BC Supreme Court Justice

Continued on page 6

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www.theasianstar.com Vol 17 - Issue 48

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Hockey fever in Metro Vancouver gets South Asian kids on the ice Dozens of youth from Metro Vancouver’s South Asian community laced up skates and learned the basics of hockey Sunday in Langley.

The event was hosted

by Hockey Canada and other partners, who hope to use the buzz around the upcoming IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships in Vancouver and Victoria to increase participation in the game.

“Hockey Canada’s goal is to get as many kids on the ice as possible, and the only way to do that is to go out into the community and get kids participating,” said Riley Wiwchar, the director of the IIHF tournament.

Roshan Dosanjh was one of the youth

that participated in the free event, called South Asian Kick Off. “It’s my only opportunity to play hockey on an ice rink. I’ve never played it before,” he said as he prepared to get on the ice at Langley Events Centre.

Robin Dhir was part of the organizing team that brought the World Juniors to B.C., and said there is often a financial or cultural barrier that keeps kids from participating.

“We really wanted to still make sure that kids get an opportunity to get on there, whether they don’t have the financial means, or just don’t understand it because they’re new immigrants and ice hockey is foreign to them,” he said.

University of Calgary varsity hockey

Continued on page 6

Indian golfer Jyoti Randhawa arrested for poaching World-class golfer Jyoti Randhawa was arrested on We d n e s d a y on charges of poaching in the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve’s protected area.

A telescopemounted .22 bore rifle, 80 live cartridges, three empty shells and deer hide were seized from his possession, field officer Ramesh Pandey said. His SUV (HR-26 DN-4299) was impounded.

The Delhi-based golfer was married to

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Tributes pour in for retired police officer killed in collision Tributes from across BC’s policing community poured in on Christmas Eve after a well-known and respected South Asian police officer was killed in a Nanaimo car crash.

Prior to Shinder Kirk’s retirement, he worked with Abbotsford Police Department as a media relations officer and with the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit as a spokesman.

According to Nanaimo RCMP spokesman Const. Gary O’Brien, the collision took place around 1:50pm on Saturday, December 22, on Cedar Road, about a kilometre from the Cedar Road bypass and Highway 1.

Shinder Kirk (Pictured) was driving a Chevrolet pickup west on Cedar Road when his vehicle collided head-on with an eastbound Ford pickup. Kirk was pronounced dead at the scene, while two passengers from his truck were air-

lifted to hospital with serious but non-lifethreatening injuries.

Two other passengers suffered minor injuries.

A 22-year-old male driver and a female passenger in the Ford pickup sustained minor injuries.

“Investigators do not believe alcohol and speed were contributing factors, however, weather and road conditions have not been ruled out,” said O’Brien in a statement shared Monday.

“Both vehicles will undergo mechanical inspections and the roadway was closed for several hours while RCMP Traffic Analyst and Nanaimo RCMP Municipal Traffic officers examined the scene.”

Not long after the news of Kirk’s death was shared, tributes from policing agencies, officers and others began to spread.

Police say targeted Christmas Day shooting leaves North Vancouver man dead

actress Chitrangada Singh for 13 years. They were divorced in 2014. In the top 100 Official World Golf Ranking between 2004 and 2009, Randhawa (46) has a farmhouse in the

Continued on page 7

Homicide detectives are investigating a shooting in North Vancouver that left a 25-year-old man dead on Christmas Day. RCMP were called to an address on Seylynn Crescent following reports of gunshots at around 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday.

Police say they found Rock Habib-Joumaa of North Vancouver with gunshot wounds, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

They say the victim is known to the police

but does not have a criminal record, and they believe the shooting was targeted.

Detectives from the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team are looking for two people who were in the area at the time and may be connected to the shooting.

Police say they continue to gather forensic evidence, while canvassing for additional witnesses and video surveillance.

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OPINION

By Lee Harding, Research Fellow Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Legislation to ensure pay equity for work of equal value falls flat

From conception to implementation, pay equity is a sham.

It’s obscured in double speak, packaged in seemingly laudable goals and promises great results. However, it can’t deliver them because it’s based on false premises. Any good that comes of it is far outweighed by the harm.

That’s why Canadians should be wary of any legislation promoting pay equity including that recently introduced by the federal government. “It’s never as easy as two people - man and woman - doing the same job, the woman being paid less than the man,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explained last February. No, it’s not. But that misconception was how the feminist mantra of “equal pay for work of equal value” got so far.

The public rightfully agrees that a man and a woman doing the same job equally well would be paid the same. But this phrase and its goals are more crafty than that.

Ideologically, equal pay for work of equal

value suggests something else. It would say that if a corporation’s engineers were mostly male and made $80,000 annually, but its clerical staff was mostly female and made only $40,000 annually, clearly that company is sexist. It pays secretaries less because it doesn’t value women and the contributions they make, so clearly they should make more.

Thus, pay equity relies on the same failed analysis as every other Marxist tenet: it sees everyone in relation to their class rather than as an individual. These grievance zealots view the entire world predominantly through a race- or gender-based lens. Some complain that the corporate world doesn’t care about these inequities. What they fail to realize is that since race and sex issues are irrelevant to such employers, they’re not discriminating on that basis in the first place. The only way that equal pay for work of equal value can exist is in a free market. A smart employer will pay employees in proportion to the contribution they make to the company. If they don’t, the

employee will move on to an employer who will or start their own business. If there’s anyone who doesn’t believe in equal pay for work of equal value, it’s unions. They frequently oppose merit pay or right-to-work legislation that allows non-union employees to contend for jobs.

People are all classified and paid according to their band level. Hard work can never be rewarded, nor laziness punished by dismissal or a change in pay. Mediocrity is glorified as virtuous, reinforced by equal pay for work of any value.

Nevertheless, unions will always endorse pay equity for obvious reasons. The first is that it aligns with the left-leaning proletariat bent. The second is that it only makes wages go up, not down. The result of any favourable pay equity decision is that women’s wages go up - and not (at least in the short-term) that men’s wages go down. In addition, pay equity means many more government jobs, usually unionized, as pay equity is enforced. It also means unions can justify more dues on workers, then those organizations hire more staff to pursue the apparent opportunities created by more robust pay equity legislation. And robust it is. The legislation will require employers to be proactive in their pay equity, meaning that all federally-regulated employers and innumerable government departments will have something else to think about, have meetings about, do seminars about and go endlessly on about, burying productivity in yet another process.

It’s woeful to ponder how onerous a proactive process could be when the reactive one was bad enough. It’s almost impossible to prove what’s in an employer’s head, making just decisions dubious. Recently, after 30 years of legal wrangling, Canada’s Supreme Court chief justice wrapped up related to Canada Post in a rare 20-second verbal decision. Beverley McLachlan awarded $248 million in a pay equity decision to past female employees.

Taxpayers paid for courts and lawyers for three decades , and now every Canadian who sends mail through the government monopoly will pay more to cover the gap.

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Saturday, December 29, 2018 South Asian man jailed 14-years for setting fire at Richmond home that killed son & mother-in-law

From page 1

Peter Voith said Dosanjh’s “threatening and violent behaviour” in the days and hours before the fire were an aggravating factor in his sentence, which was handed down in October.

Voith’s reasons for sentencing, which detail the case, were published online Monday.

One month before the fire, a woman — who can’t be identified due to a publication ban — ended a long-term relationship with Dosanjh.

Man found guilty of two counts of manslaughter in “He was angry ... His comments and connection to a fire that killed son & mother-in-law in behaviours when interacting with both Richmond home. [the woman] and others were erratic, irrational, and threatening,” Voith wrote in Dosanjh intended to for his mother-in-law to his reasons for sentencing. die. Voith also said Dosanjh didn’t expect his Surjit Singh Dosanjh was found guilty of son to be home that night. The boy had planned two counts of manslaughter in connection to to spend the night at his grandfather’s, but a fire at a Richmond, B.C., fourplex that killed decided to go to the fourplex around 10:30 p.m. his son and mother-in-law in 2015.

Crown argued Dosanjh should spend 18 The behaviour grew “more volatile” the day years in jail for each count, less time served. The or so before the fire. Voith said Dosanjh broke defence had asked for eight to 10 years, less a a window of his mother-in-law’s vehicle and day-and-a-half for each day already served. shouted at a police officer over the phone.

Dosanjh was sentenced to 14 years on each Eight hours before, the unnamed woman count, served concurrently. With credit for time told police she was scared of Dosanjh and took already served, Dosanjh will spend just under her two-year-old son to a safe house. nine years behind bars.

Surjit Dosanjh charged in Richmond arson The justice said there were “few” mitigating that killed woman, left boy critical factors with relevance, except that Dosanjh “was, Dosanjh was convicted on the lesser offence in many senses, a good father [who] certainly of manslaughter because Voith said he was loves or loved his children.” not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that

Full scale manhunt for illegal immigrant who killed California police officer

From page 1

Authorities are searching for man (pictured) believed to be living in the country illegally who they say gunned down California police officer the day after Christmas, inflaming the nationwide debate on immigration.

President Trump referred to the death of police Cpl. Ronil Singh in a tweet Thursday.

“There is a full scale manhunt going on in California for an illegal immigrant accused of shooting and killing a police officer during a traffic stop,” Trump wrote. “Time to get tough on Border Security. Build the Wall!”

Ronil Singh died on Wednesday after stopping a suspected drunken driver in the tiny town of Newman in California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley. A suspect identified from convenience store video before the killing, remains at large and is considered armed and dangerous.

Ronil Singh of the Newman Police Department was killed by an unidentified suspect during a traffic stop early Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2018, in the town of Newman, Calif. Stanislaus County Sheriff ’s Department via AP Newman’s police chief, Randy Richardson, held back tears Thursday as he described Singh — a native of Fiji — as a patriot who worked hard to serve his adopted country.

“He came to America with one purpose, and that was to serve this country,” Richardson said.

Ronil Singh drove more than two hours each way to attend the police academy in Yuba City, Richardson said. He joined the Merced County sheriff ’s office as a reserve officer and worked as an animal control officer in Turlock before being hired by the Newman force in 2011.

English was Singh’s third language and he had a thick

accent but took speech classes to improve his communication, the police chief said.

His death comes amid a political fight over immigration, with President Donald Trump and Congress at an impasse over funding for a border wall that has forced a partial government shutdown.

Trump tweeted about Ronil Singh’s killing Thursday, saying it’s “time to get tough on Border Security.” He ended the post with: “Build the Wall!” Police investigate the scene of a shooting that took the life of Newman Police Officer Ronil Singh, 33, on Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2018, in Newman, Calif.

Authorities were looking for a man seen in surveillance photos at a convenience store shortly before Singh was killed. Officials pleaded for help from the public and said they were following up on several leads.

“The sheriff ’s office will spare no expense in hunting down this criminal,” Christianson said.

Singh pulled over the attacker as part of a drunken driving investigation and fired back to try to defend himself, Christianson said.

He was shot a few minutes after radioing that he was pulling over a grey pickup truck that had no license plate in Newman, a town of about 10,000 people, officials said. Singh died at a hospital.

A ground and air search began for the heavyset man pictured at the store with short, dark hair and wearing a silver chain, jeans, dark T-shirt and a dark jacket with white Ecko brand patches on the shoulders.

A truck believed to have been the one stopped by Singh was later found in a garage in a mobile home park about 4 miles (6 kilometres) from the shooting, where law enforcement officers were serving a search warrant, The Modesto Bee reported.

Investigators were examining the vehicle, police said.

Hockey fever gets South Asian kids on the ice From page 3 player Priya Sidhu, right, and showcase that anyone ... or any age, talks with youth taking part in any gender ... anyone can play,” she said. an outreach program offered in The list of South Asian hockey Langley by Hockey Canada. (Jon players involved in professional leagues Hernandez/CBC) continues to grow.

Apna Hockey, a South Asian communitybased hockey school, provided the skating, hockey skills and off-ice training to youth at the clinic.

Priya Sidhu, who plays hockey for the University of Calgary, was there to help. She said it’s important to grow the game in the South Asian community.

“The bigger the community is ... it will just bring everyone together

It includes the Edmonton Oilers’ Jujhar Khaira and Manny Malhotra who, after retiring as a player, now coaches with the Vancouver C a n u c k s Organizers of the free outreach program say they plan to offer others for South Asian youth in the future.

The IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships begins Wednesday. Canada plays Denmark at Rogers Arena at 5 p.m. PT.

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Saturday, December 29, 2018

Number of Indians who got Canadian citizenship this year rose by 50%

From page 1

According to Canadian rules, a permanent resident must have lived in the country for at least three of the five years before applying for citizenship. While permanent residents can live and work in the country, get social benefits, and are protected under Canadian laws, they are not allowed to vote or run for political office.

According to the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, almost 1.53 lakh people would have obtained Canadian citizenship by October, an increase of 40% compared to 1.08 lakh people in the corresponding period last year. The number increased after the country introduced new citizenship rules in October 2017.

The highest number of Indians – 51,651 – became permanent residents of Canada in 2017, ahead of the Philippines with 40,857 citizens and China with 30,270. According to the “2018 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration”, a total of 2.86 lakh individuals were admitted to Canada as permanent residents in 2017.

Immigration law specialist Talha Mohani, based in Ontario, said since October 2017 it has become easier to qualify to apply for Canadian citizenship. “In particular, the time period for which a permanent resident must be physically present in Canada before applying

Indian golfer Jyoti Randhawa arrested for poaching From page 3 in the Dudhwa-Katarniaghat forest area.

He and former Navy officer Mahesh Virajdar, who, sources said, was courtmartialled four years ago for financial irregularities, were booked under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and the Indian Forest Act, 1927. Declined bail, they were sent to 14-day judicial custody by a local court. Randhawa has won 16 titles, eight of these on the Asian Tour.

He also has a Japan Tour title to his credit and had topped the Asian Tour Order of Merit in 2002. The Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary, 200 km from Lucknow, is part of the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve. The sanctuary covers an area of 400.6 sq km in the Terai belt of Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich district. Brought under ‘Project Tiger’ in 1987, it provides a link between Dhudwa and Kishanpur tiger habitat in Nepal.

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for citizenship has reduced,” Mohani said. “As compared to a four-year residency requirement out of six years, now a permanent resident needs to be physically present in Canada for three out of five years.”

NPZ Law Group managing attorney David Nachman said a Canadian passport allows citizens to apply for a Trade National visa to enter and work in the United States. This visa is easier to obtain than the H-1B work visa for employees.

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BC’s population passes 5 million due to high international migration

From page 1

is partly due to a trend among young international students. Many people who move to provinces like Ontario as foreign students move to B.C. after they graduate, he said. “Compared to other provinces, B.C.’s economy is actually doing well.... There are more jobs and the provincial [permanent residency] program is a little easier to navigate than other provinces’,” said Khadempour.

Khadempour said there are more than 450,000 foreign students in Canada. He said it’s common for foreign students to enter the B.C. hospitality and sales industry and gain sponsorship from their employers.

“That opens up opportunities for them to apply for permanent residency,” Khadempour said. Filling in the population Carlos Teixeira, an associate professor

of geography at UBC’s Okanagan campus who specializes in demographics, race and urban planning, said international migrants with small families have helped Canada’s population tremendously as well.

Immigrant joblessness narrows to 6.4% as Canada looks to newcomers to build workforce “This growth is due to immigrants, and more recently refugees, because the total fertility rates in Canada are not very high,” Teixeira told CBC. He said the Canadian population is aging, a fact confirmed by the Statistics Canada report.

“We don’t have a balanced pyramid of ages in this country.… One way to compensate for that is opening the doors for immigrants to come from all over the world,” said Teixeira.

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Saturday, December 29, 2018

‘She confessed... how can we forgive her?’: Little sympathy for Christian woman accused of blasphemy A decade ago it was an argument among testimony from her accusers and an All maintained that Asia Bibi had confessed A look at Pakistan’s blasphemy such female workers that suddenly flared into apparently forced confession. to insulting the Prophet Mohammed during law over the years an accusation of blasphemy and set in train But even settling her abroad is Yet in Ittan Wali, where it all a quarrel with Muslim co-workers and her bloody events that are still unresolved. not without complications. Wary began, time has not mellowed the conviction should stand. If Pakistan’s harsh The accusation against a Christian mother of a reaction from Britain’s Muslim villagers’ accusations and there is no anti-blasphemy laws decree it, she should of five called Asia Bibi and the death sentence community, Theresa May, the prime forgiveness for a woman who spent hang, they said. that followed divided Pakistan and prompted minister, reportedly shrugged off “I would die in the name of my religion and eight years on death row. religious extremists to assassinate two senior the pleas of cabinet ministers that “She confessed her crime in if someone has committed blasphemy, then politicians who spoke out for her. the U.K. step forward and offer a Asia Bibi front of them, how can they forgive they are not forgiven,” said Shawkat Ali, a In October, the 54-year-old was acquitted route to safety. Canada, Australia, her?” asked Mohammad Bota, the 62-year-old farmer. “If the supreme court has on appeal but remains in protective custody or the U.S. are likely alternatives.

50-year-old elder brother of Mohammad Idris. some faith in religion and if they are Muslims, until the ruling has been reviewed. She is Two Christian brothers sentenced to death Villagers in Ittan Wali were open, hospitable they should execute her.” widely expected to be freed to flee to the West for blasphemy in Pakistan Asia Bibi’s torment began in June 2009, in and insisted their village was not backward. where she will claim asylum.

Pakistani Christian woman who faced the But they were also uncompromising when it the field that was at the time planted with falsa Pakistan’s supreme court demolished Bibi’s death penalty for blasphemy acquitted after came to the former neighbour who had lived bushes rather than lemon trees. conviction saying it was fatally undermined eight years on death row Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who in a small house with a blue painted gate. by procedural problems, contradictory spent eight years on death row for blasphemy.

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The two sides disagree on what is alleged to have happened as Muslim and Christian farmhands worked alongside each other that day harvesting berries, but agree there was a dispute when two women refused to use a drinking water vessel Bibi had used. The dispute became a bitter exchange in which Bibi is alleged to have defamed the Prophet.

Idris, who was elsewhere in the field at the time, says when it became clear his workers were having a religious argument, he sent them home immediately and told them never to return. But the matter was not done.

The Muslim women complained to Qari Muhammad Salam, a local cleric, and a couple of days later, Bibi was summoned before the village to explain herself. It is at this meeting the villagers say she confessed and sealed her fate.

The police were called and Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws swung into action. Yet Bibi denied blasphemy and said that far from being summoned, she was in fact dragged through the streets by a mob and beaten almost senseless. The supreme court agreed that the confession was not voluntary “and nor can it be relied upon to form the basis of a conviction, especially for capital punishment.”

The court also pointed out that Bibi’s accusers had at first not mentioned any argument with her and that of 25 women in the field only two had made the blasphemy accusation.

Many women of the village, when they heard about this judgment, they were in shock The supreme court’s ruling was “very disappointing,” said Qari Salam. “We believe that our case was on merit and she deserves the death sentence according to the law.

“Many women of the village, when they heard about this judgment, they were in shock.

This is how strongly people feel, because this incident was so strong and so clear and in front of so many people.”

The supreme court’s decision was met with an outcry from religious hardliners across Pakistan. Roads and highways were blocked until Imran Khan’s government agreed to allow a petition to review the decision and promised that in the meantime Bibi would stay in Pakistan. Weeks after her release, the aftershocks were still being felt in Ittan Wali. The day after the verdict, villagers had intended to protest, but found Ittan Wali surrounded by police. The blockade lasted eight days, they claim. After clashes in nearby villages in which officers were attacked, police began investigating hundreds of residents.

Scores of them now leave the mud streets of Ittan Wali each night to sleep in their fields in case of police raids. A police spokesman confirmed there was a case against 700 people from nearby villages, including more than 100 from Ittan Wali, for attacking officers and burning a van. Mohammad Boota said the people of Ittan Wali were innocent and blamed other villages for the violence. The one-room house where Asia Bibi lived with her husband and five children still stands in the village.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Alleged phoney doctor in Vancouver asking for cash for surgeries, health authority warns Vancouver’s health authority is warning the public about a man they say is falsely claiming to be a B.C. doctor and asking prospective patients to shell out for surgery.

Vancouver Coastal Health says Asten Nguyen Phong Nguyen — a.k.a. “Dr. Nguyen Nguyen” — is advertising himself as a surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital and requesting deposits on future surgeries.

From rabid dog saliva to ‘Dr. Lipjob,’ these are the top B.C. health stories of 2018 “This individual has no affiliation with VCH, he is not registered with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia, and he is not authorized to practise medicine in the province,” Vancouver Coastal Health said in a statement.

It advises anyone who has paid a deposit to Nguyen to contact the College of Physicians

and Surgeons of B.C. and police.

B.C. College of Physicians wants ‘Dr. Lipjob’ sent to jail VCH spokesperson Tiffany Akins said the authority issued the warning after several members of the public inquired about Nguyen’s credentials.

“They wanted to confirm that an alleged doctor was affiliated with Vancouver Coastal Health as he states on his RateMDs profile,” Akins said. “It’s great that people called us to confirm.”

Why can naturopaths mislead the public about their credentials? Because no one bothers to stop them Akins was not aware if Nguyen had a physical office in the Lower Mainland.

She said further investigation would be left to the college.

BC is getting a new, province-wide area code next year British Columbia’s population grows, the number of available cellphone numbers shrinks. As such, the CRTC has announced that the province will receive a brand new area code in 2019.

Currently, the 604 area code services the Lower Mainland while the 250 one services the rest of the province; area codes 236 and 778 cover all of B.C. Now, the agency will introduce a new area code as of May 4, 2019.

And what will the new B.C. area code be?

“In Telecom Decision 2011-451, the Commission directed the CNA to set aside area code 672 for area code relief in British Columbia,” reads the report.

The 672 area code will provide relief approximately one year before the agency believes that the current numbers will exhaust.

In addition, the commission determined that, “the entire area served by area codes 236, 250, 604, and 778 is to be overlaid with a new area code.”

Maple Ridge shed fire sends one person to hospital One person has been taken to hospital and a building has been reduced to rubble following a commercial structure fire Friday morning in Maple Ridge.

Maple Ridge Fire and Rescue says it received a report of a shed fire near Fisherman Road and McKay Avenue not long after 1 a.m. PT. Upon arrival, fire crews say they found a fully involved fire at the site of a business that rents portable washrooms.

“We had some difficulty accessing the back of the property just because it’s an industrial site. Once it was there, we managed to get the fire out pretty quickly,” said Asst. Fire Chief James Clelland.

Clelland says a woman was located on scene suffering from smoke inhalation.

“Reports are when the crews arrived on scene they were met with someone who said they were in the area; they went inside and saw smoke,” said Clelland.

“That person was transported to hospital.”

‘We were stretched very thin:’ Burnaby firefighters kept busy overnight with multiple incidents He says it’s unclear whether or not the woman lived in the shed.

Approximately 35 firefighters were on scene for the call.

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LOCAL / NATIONAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Brace yourself for new taxes and tax hikes in 2019: taxpayers group New taxes and some tax hikes are expected to impact you and your wallet in the new year.

Kris Sims with the Canadian Tax Payers Federation says next year will cost more than ever because of a string of new taxes, which she says will just add more strain on taxpayers who are already struggling with unaffordability. “Unfortunately for tax payers,

we are going to be facing some pretty steep tax hikes in the new year,” she says. “Taxes are going up in most ways you can turn next year.”Those taxes include the Employer Health tax, the carbon tax hike, increase in TransLink gas tax and new school tax.

The Employer Health tax targets businesses

and employers with a payroll of more than $500,000, which applies to municipal workers as well. “They’re now subject to this brand new employer health tax, and of course, that money needs to come from somewhere,” Sims says. “Unless these city councils are able to find budget savings and budget cuts,

they’re going to jack up property taxes.” Those taxes will also be a blow to business owners, she says.

“Your property taxes could be going up, based on the city you live in, and then the property tax for the building that you do your business out of is going to get an extra property tax hike too.”

Store hours, lost jacket make top 10 nuisance 911 calls list for 2018 A lost jacket, a store not taking back a pair of shoes without the original box, and what time is it — those are just some of the nuisance calls E-Comm took this year.

Following with the annual tradition, the folks at E-Comm have release the top 10 nuisance calls of 2018 that tied up phone lines. Jasmine Bradley with the agency says it is crucial people don’t tie up the lines in case there’s a real emergency.

“We also will frequently get people

calling saying, ‘well this isn’t an emergency, but -‘ and so that’s extremely frustrating for our call-takers, because people clearly know it’s not an emergency, so why are they calling 911?”

Complaining that a fast food restaurant wasn’t open 24-hours-a-day as advertised, is #1 on E-Comm’s top 10 list of calls that don’t belong on 9-1-1 in 2018. At the top of the list is someone calling 911 to complain about a fast

food restaurant not being open 24-hours a day, even though it was advertised that way.

Other silly calls include, asking for first responders to help turn off their car lights, a car’s windshield wipers not working and someone thought it was important enough to call police to complain a store wouldn’t take their coupon. E-Comm’s top 10 reasons not to call 911 in 2018 1. To complain a local fast food restaurant wasn’t open 24-hours-a-day, as advertised 2. To complain a store won’t take shoes back without the original box

3. To complain that a gas station attendant put the wrong type of gas in their car 4. To report a rental company provided the wrong-sized vehicle for a customer’s reservation 5. To report a restaurant wouldn’t redeem a customer’s coupon 6. To ask for help turning off their car lights 7. To report their vehicle’s windshield wipers had stopped working 8. To find out where their car had been towed 9. To report a lost jacket 10. To ask if the clocks move forward or backward during the spring time change

Teacher returned home after arrest in China Global Affairs Canada says Albertan Sarah McIver has been released from custody in China and returned to Canada.

McIver had been detained over a workpermit issue related to her teaching job. Her arrest followed those of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, two Canadians living and working in China, on allegations they were harming China’s national security.

China arrested Kovrig and Spavor separately after Canadian authorities

detained a Chinese technology executive in Vancouver.

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of electronics giant Huawei Technologies, is wanted in the United States on allegations she lied to American banks as part of an effort to get around sanctions on Iran.

Both China and Canada have insisted that McIver’s case is different from Kovrig’s and Spavor’s.

LOCAL / NATIONAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Overdose crisis continues with 120 deaths last month, coroner’s report In November an average of 4 people died per day There were 120 suspected drug overdose deaths in British Columbia last month, representing a 13 per cent increase over the number of deaths in the same month last year.

‘Things are not getting better’: B.C. opioid crisis still raging The B.C. Coroners Service says an average of four people died every day last month from an illicit drug overdose.

The latest figures show 1,380 people died by overdose between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, 2018, almost exactly the same number of dead as between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, 2017.

The service says the majority of those dying from overdoses are men who are 30 to 59 years old, and most overdoses are occurring indoors.

Men, alone and at home, dominate drug overdose deaths The three cities experiencing the highest number of illicit drug overdoses are Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria.

The coroners service says 1,486 people died of overdoses in B.C. last year.

It is expected to announce the overall death toll for 2018 next month.

Vancouver to offer opioid pills in latest effort to prevent overdose deaths Vancouver will begin offering pharmaceutical-grade pills to opioid drug users in the latest attempt to prevent deaths in a city that experiences one lethal overdose every day.

A pilot project set to launch from Vancouver’s largest social-service provider will allow about 50 patients at a time to access the opioid hydromorphone in tablet form and ingest them on site while staff observe them. This offers a safer alternative to an illicit drug supply tainted by deadly fentanyl.

At least 1,380 people died of illicit drug overdoses in British Columbia from January to November of this year, with fentanyl detected in about 84 per cent of deaths.

The PHS Community Services Society program, to launch Jan. 8 at the Molson Overdose Prevention Site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, is an expansion of an

injectable opioid program available on a relatively small scale at four PHS sites and at the Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver. (Surrey also has an injectable hydromorphone program.)

A separate program also expected to roll out early in the new year intended to provide more open access to opioid drug users will allow people to take hydromorphone pills with them.

Hydromorphone is an opioid medication used to treat moderate to severe pain that is commonly used in palliative and acute care.

One Vancouver study found people who use heroin could not differentiate between the two, suggesting hydromorphone could be an affordable and effective substitution therapy.

PHS medical director Christy Sutherland said the idea to dispense the drug in pill form came from patients themselves, who were not satisfied with the injectable program.

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From ride-hailing to hydro rates: Premier Horgan looks back on 2018 It’s been a busy 2018 at the BC Legislature for John Horgan and the NDP. Here’s what the premier had to say about his first full year in office.

BC is heading into 2019 with what so far looks like more than a $1-billion surplus.

Next year, Horgan said his government will be looking into how it can use that money to help British Columbians.

“If we still have a surplus in Quarter 3, we’ll see what we can do to get that into the hands of program deliverers and the infrast ructure people need,” he said.

The anticipated excess comes after a major cash injection for childcare and affordable housing.

Addressing BC Hydro rates Among the challenges the government plans to take on in 2019 are climbing BC Hydro rates, which Horgan said “I thought was going to be our biggest problem when we came into government.”

In March, the BC Utilities Commission rejected a government-promised freeze on hydro rates, which have now grown by 25 per cent since 2013.

The government has since launched a two-phase review of the public hydroelectricity provider in hopes of controlling costs and curbing rate increases.

Perhaps one of the most contentious issues of the past has been the introduction of ride-hailing services into the B.C., which the NDP did not deliver in the timeframe the party campaigned on.

Horgan, however, deflected blame to the former Liberal government.

“Of course we missed the deadline that all parties had run on because there had been no work done by the previous government,” he said.

In November, the province introduced long-awaited legislation that could pave the way for companies such as Uber and Lyft to operate in B.C. If passed, the act would expand Passenger Transportation Board’s authority so that it has control over which companies can enter the B.C. market, where they can operate and how much they can charge.

Exactly when you’ll be able to hop in an

Uber, however, remains about as unclear as before the Passenger Transportation Amendment Act was announced. That’s largely because ICBC has yet to develop a new insurance product that will cover Uber and Lyft drivers, a process that could take another year or more as the public auto insurer also contends with its dire financial situation.

Insurance rate hike Horgan also blamed the Liberals when addressing rising auto insurance rates, but knows his government is now on the hook.

“The public expects us to get things done, and we have to be accountable for our actions and, I fully intend to do my level best,” the premier said.

Earlier this month, ICBC announced it would apply for a 6.3-per-cent increase to basic premiums as the public auto insurer tries to recover from a forecasted $1 billion deficit.

Despite outcry about the rate increase, Attorney General David Eby called the proposed hike a realistic step towards what he has referred to as a “financial dumpster fire.”

Nanaimo byelection Another challenge the government faces in 2019 is a high-stakes byelection in Nanaimo triggered by former MLA Leonard Krog, who left his seat after being elected mayor of the Vancouver Island city.

Despite being considered an NDP stronghold, the Green candidate in that electoral district is the daughter of a longtime former mayor, and splitting up votes on the left could benefit the Liberals.

A Liberal victory would leave the party tied for seats with the NDP-Green coalition at 43 each, disturbing the precarious balance of power in Victoria.

In addition to the crucial vote, the NDP-Green deal that made Horgan premier in the first place is up for review.

And while the partnership has held up so far, Horgan said it hasn’t always been easy.

“We haven’t agreed on everything,” he said. There were a lot of difficult days for us... and we were able to focus on why we’re here.”

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LOCAL / NATIONAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

RCMP leave ‘holiday bait packages’ in two local malls RCMP say a “holiday bait package� project has uncovered the city’s naughty and nice.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, according to a news release from police on Friday (Dec. 28), the Surrey RCMP Property Crime Target Team (PCTT) conducted a “bait package� project in two local malls with “somewhat surprising results.�

Police said PCTT investigators placed packages containing “name brand electronics and jewelry boxes in bags� from local merchants in areas around the shopping mall “such as the food court and seating areas.�

Plainclothes officers kept watch over the packages “to see if any thieves would take advantage of the situation.�

RCMP said that during the five-day project, three men were arrested for alleged theft of a bait package. The three suspects, police said, “had a history of property crime or related criminal code offences.�

The news release added that the men have all since been released to appear in court on later dates while the investigations continue.

However, the release reads, investigators were “pleasantly surprised by the number of Good Samaritans� who saw the unattended packages and turned them into a customer service booth or a security guard, “or simply watched over the package in hopes of the owner returning.�

Police said “these simple acts of kindness� happened seven times throughout the bait package project. “This is the first time our Property Crime (Target) Team has done a bait package project in Surrey,� said Staff Sergeant Mike Hall, Acting Pro-Active Enforcement Officer. “Only having three subjects steal the package compared to the seven individuals who did the right thing was quite refreshing, especially around the holiday season.�

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Central BC braces for winter blast as power outages persist after recent wind storm Much of central BC is bracing for the next winter wallop, as Environment Canada posted snowfall or winter-storm warnings for areas from the north coast all the way to Alberta border. Up to 30 centimetres of snow is forecast for some regions as the storm crosses the province, while travel on Highway 1 from Eagle Pass to Rogers Pass is expected to be particularly treacherous before conditions ease late Saturday.

Meanwhile, power remains out for about 1,600 customers on B.C.’s south coast eight days after the strongest wind storm in recent memory swept across the region.

Hundreds of BC Hydro workers have toiled around the clock to fix remaining outages concentrated on several southern Gulf Islands, where damage from fallen trees and toppled power poles is most extreme.

The Crown utility reports power returned to about 2,400 customers Thursday, while it says 70 crews will be working on Galiano, Pender, Mayne, Salt Spring, Gabriola, Thetis, and Saturna islands through Friday.

More than 700,000 homes and businesses were in the dark at the height of the Dec. 20 storm and Hydro says in a social-media message that crews are continually being deployed to rebuild damaged transformers, poles and other infrastructure as repairs wrap up.

17 charges laid against man involved in hit-and-run spree An Abbotsford man is facing 17 charges in connection to a hit-and-run that injured six people and killed one dog.

James Joseph Gordon, 24, appeared in court Friday in Abbotsford. Charges against him include five counts of assault with a weapon, five counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, five counts of failing to stop at the scene of a crash, possession of stolen property, and arson.

Those charges are in addition to previous charges of theft of a vehicle and

breach of a court recognizance order.

This week, police asked again for video of the truck from witnesses or motorists who have dash cams.

The incident happened Dec. 19 around 8 p.m. The driver began speeding through North Langley, allegedly deliberately trying to run down pedestrians, said Cpl. Holly Largy, spokesperson for the Langley RCMP. Between 8:11 and 10:12 p.m., he struck six people in Langley. Two dogs were also hit, one of them dying from the impact.

LOCAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

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Vancouver to get first licensed pot shop A licensed marijuana store is set to open in Vancouver as the number of legal pot shops in BritishColumbiastilllagsbehindotherprovinces.

Evergreen Cannabis owner Mike Babins said the store received its provincial licence this week and plans to open its doors on Saturday.

As long as it receives a municipal licence, it will be the first legal store in the city since recreational cannabis was legalized on Oct. 17.

Babins said the provincial licensing process was “extremely, extremely thorough.”

“They worked really, really, really hard to make sure there’s no organized crime in this industry,” he said.

“They went back 20 years with me and my wife to find out every job we’ve had, every vacation we’ve taken.”

The store co-founded by Babins and his wife Maria Petrucci in the city’s Kitsilano neighbourhood originally opened as a medical marijuana dispensary in September 2015.

It operated for three years with a municipal licence under the city’s old licensing regime.

The couple shut the store’s doors on Oct. 16 while they waited for provincial approval to reopen as a recreational weed shop.

A number of illegal dispensaries remain open in Vancouver despite a court order this month affirming the

city’s authority to shut them down.

The approval of Evergreen brings the total number of licensed marijuana shops in B.C. to five, with the others in Kamloops, Kimberley and Pouce Coupe.

Provincial government websites list 65 licensed pot retailers in Alberta and 20 in New Brunswick, while Ontario will not have any stores until April.

BC Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth has defended the province’s pace on pot shops, saying the government gave more of a voice to municipalities than others.

Babins said he believes B.C. licensing officials are working hard and he understands why it’s taking so long to licence stores.

“Having seen what the process is, I completely understand now,” he said.

The couple paid taxes from Day 1, tracked everything they purchased and never borrowed money, instead using retirement savings to open the store, he said. They also hired a lawyer and consulting firm to help with the application.

“We did everything right. We made it easy for them and it still took this long because they had to check to make sure we were squeaky clean.”

They applied for a provincial licence in mid-August and finally received it on Tuesday.

Two loose barges causing more than $1-million in damages Two large loose barges became unmoored early Boxing Day morning and drifted across Burrard Inlet into Vancouver’s harbour, smashing into two luxury yachts, a seaplane terminal and a waterfront restaurant.

No one was injured in the incident,

but more than a million dollar’s worth of damage occurred, according to local police investigating the incident in tandem with the Transportation Safety Board.

Sergeant Jason Robillard of Vancouver police said the unmanned barges, which are each about the size of a soccer field, broke free from their moorings in North Vancouver at about 5 a.m. Sgt. Robillard said in a news release that a 911 call alerted

the police department’s marine unit to the loose barges just before 6:30 a.m.

Two local tugs, the marine unit vessel and two boats from the Port of Vancouver managed to get both barges under tow about 90 minutes later and returned them to their moorings in North Vancouver.

“The damage caused by the barges is estimated to be well over a million dollars,” the release stated.

Harbour Air, which flies passenger planes across the province, said there was some damage to the docks at the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre and there were minimal delays and route changes for its passengers on Wednesday.

A nearby restaurant also had the glass of its oceanfront patio smashed in the incident.

Mohan Raman, a marine investigator with the Transportation Safety Board, said his agency was notified about the crash Wednesday morning by the Canadian Coast Guard and then by someone connected to one of the two luxury yachts hit by the barges.

Surrey man wins $1M, plans to quit work and visit family Hung Sengsouvanh had to check his lottery ticket several times before realizing he had won $1 million.

Sengsouvanh’s winning ticket was part of the Lotto Max Maxmillion prize in the Dec. 14 draw, according to a media release from the B.C. Lottery Corporation.

“I was at home and I checked the ticket on my phone and I was like ‘oh, is it $100,000?’ and I started counting the zeros,” said Sengsouvanh who lives in Surrey.

“My daughter said it was a million and I started doing the happy dance in front of my wife.”

Sengsouvanh said.

“I have a very tight family and lots of love in my house. Our family spends every weekend together so I want to make sure they are happy as well.”

Sengsouvanh said he buys his tickets every Friday from the Port Kells Petro Canada gas station before going in to

Sengsouvanh, who moved to Canada from Vietnam in 1981, said one of the first things he plans to do with the money is travelling to Laos to see his mother.

“I am the oldest of my eight siblings and the only one in Canada,” he said. “I haven’t been back home in a long time.”

He also has a very close family and plans to help out his children with their loans,

work.

“Now I’m going to stop working, pay everything off and just enjoy life.”

Sengsouvanh is one of 34 British Columbians to win a Lotto Max Maxmillion prize in 2018, according to the release.

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LOCAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Driver comes forward in hit and run that killed Vancouver man A 54-year-old man has come forward as the driver allegedly involved in a fatal hitand-run collision that killed a 39-year-old Vancouver man Thursday morning, police say.

Police received a call around 3 a.m. PT Thursday from a passerby who reported discovering a man suffering from serious injuries on Kingsway near Glen Drive.

“We’re not sure how long the man had been there for,” said Sgt. Jason Robillard at a news conference Thursday.

Charges laid in hit-and-run that killed skateboarder in Vancouver Robillard said investigators believe the vehicle was travelling east on Kingsway when it hit the man.

The victim died shortly after arriving at the hospital.

Robillard earlier said police believed the person was not coming forward and would “likely try to hide their vehicle.”

Later Thursday, however, police issued a statement revealing that the alleged

driver had come forward and collision investigators have seized his vehicle.

“The 54-year-old driver in this case eventually did the right thing by coming forward,” Robillard said in a statement.

“He has been released pending further investigation. Charges will be determined once a thorough investigation has been completed.”

Vancouver police are asking anyone with information about the incident to call the Collision Investigation Unit at 604-717-3012 or, if they wish to remain anonymous, Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

White Rock Polar Bear Swim cancelled due to pier damage Revellers planning to partake in White Rock’s annual New Year’s Day Polar Bear Swim will have to take the plunge elsewhere this year.

In a statement on its website, the White Rock Rotary Club said the event has been cancelled following damage to the city’s historic pier in last week’s windstorm.

White Rock, B.C., mayor vows destroyed pier will be restored No one was hurt when the 104-yearold structure broke apart after being battered by strong wind and waves on Dec. 20, but the public has been asked to stay away from the waterfront and to respect barricades that are in place.

As a result, there will be no splashing about in the ocean on the first morning of 2019.

Record winds caused the collapse

of the middle section of White Rock Pier. (City of White Rock) However, there are other options for brave swimmers seeking an icy dip on New Year’s Day. Delta’s 39th Annual Polar Bear Swim kicks off at 1 p.m. PT at Boundary Bay Regional Park, while the Port Moody Penguin Plunge takes place at the same time at the Rocky Point Boat Launch.

In Vancouver, the 99th Vancouver Park Board Polar Bear Swim starts on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. PT. According to the White Rock Rotary Club, the city’s event will resume for its 50th anniversary in 2020.

According to the City of White Rock, it could take until the end of January to repair the pier.

Missing professor found dead in Colombia Family and colleagues of a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., who went missing in Colombia say he has been found dead.

In a statement to faculty and staff on Wednesday, university president Andrew Petter said Colombian police recovered the body of Ramazan (Ramo) Gencay outside of Medellin.

Petter said that the economics professor will be sorely missed.

Petter said he sends heartfelt condolences to Gencay’s family, friends, students and colleagues.

“Everyone at Simon Fraser University will be saddened by the tragic news of Professor Gencay’s death,” Petter said. “He was an outstanding contributor to the university community.”

Gencay’s wife, Carole Gencay, posted a short statement on Facebook on Thursday confirming her husband died this month.

“You may already know that he suffered an untimely death in Medellin, Colombia. I will be in touch with celebration of life details,” she wrote.

Gencay was in Colombia to attend seminars. His wife has said he was last seen at a salsa night club on Dec. 6.

His friends and family turned to social media earlier this month to spread the word that he was missing.

“Our thoughts are with the family and friends of a Canadian citizen who died in Colombia,” spokesperson Philip Hannan said in a statement.

“Canadian consular officials are in contact with local authorities to gather additional information.Arthur Robson, a colleague of Gencay’s in the economics department, recalled him fondly.

“Ramo was a gentle scholarly man, a prolific researcher, who deserved a better fate,” Robson said in an email.

Petter’s statement to university employees says there are numerous support services available for students, faculty and staff.

“I know how distressing this news is for the SFU community, and I wish to reassure everyone that we will continue to do everything we can to support Ramo’s family at this sad and difficult time,” he said.

Former insurance agent made $650K in commission on fake claims, investigation finds A former life insurance adviser has been banned from the industry after he filed more than 100 fake client applications using made-up names, making around $650,000 in commissions along the way.

Paul Bradbeer has also been fined $10,000 — the highest fine the Insurance Council of BC can give.

The ban and fine are the result of a investigation by the council, which regulates agents in B.C. — but Bradbeer’s former

employer also sued him over the scam.

At one point, Bradbeer was director of sales for the B.C. branch of Foresters Financial.

ICBC warns against fraud after security video allegedly shows faking of injury Foresters took him to B.C. Supreme Court to try to recoup the commission it paid him as a result of the scam, as well as special damages.

That lawsuit was settled out of court in January 2017.

‘He put his interests before everything else’ The council’s investigators found Bradbeer filed the bogus applications in 2015 and 2016, though Foresters claimed the scheme went as far back as 2010.

The investigation found Bradbeer pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission, using some of the money to pay monthly premiums on the fake accounts to keep up appearances.

“Council found the former licensee’s actions were financially motivated and he put his interests before everything else,” reads the discipline order, published online on Friday.

Foresters Financial fired Paul Bradbeer in November 2016 after it found out he’d scammed them for more than half a million dollars in commission. (Shutterstock) Foresters fired Bradbeer in November 2016 — the same month the council finished its investigation. Bradbeer, who has lived and worked in Kelowna and Surrey, gave up his insurance licence after that.

The decision didn’t say what or who tipped off Foresters about the scheme. Lawsuits allege Vancouver tech company a Ponzi scheme and sham Mexican scam costs B.C. couple $1,300 The council decided on the penalty for Bradbeer in August 2017. It was supposed to come into effect that October, but it was held up by Bradbeer’s request for a hearing.

It eventually came into effect on Dec. 19, 2018, after Bradbeer changed his mind.

LOCAL / NATIONAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

BC Hydro focused on Gulf Islands as 1,600 customers remain without power

The “vast majority� of homes on Vancouver Island have had their power restored following last Thursday’s windstorm, with the focus of BC Hydro crews now on the southern Gulf Islands, the utility said Friday.

Around 1,600 customers are still without power since last week — most of them in the southern Gulf Islands or in remote communities — but crews expect to have the lights back on by New Year’s Eve. After a week without power, Salt Spring resident calls for better communication from BC Hydro “There’s still a few small pocket outages on Vancouver Island, but it’s less than 100 customers,� said BC Hydro spokesperson

Mora Scott. “We do have crews working really hard to get those people back up as quickly as we can, but our big focus right now is getting customers on the Gulf Islands restored.�

BC Hydro has restored power to more than 700,000 B.C. homes left in the dark by the storm.

The utility provided a revised list of estimated restoration dates for affected communities: t 1FOEFS *TMBOE %FD t ćFUJT *TMBOE %FD t (BMJBOP *TMBOE %FD t .BZOF *TMBOE %FD t 4BUVSOB *TMBOE %FD t #SVDF 1FBL %FD t 4BMU 4QSJOH *TMBOE

%FD t 1BSLFS *TMBOE %FD *O UPUBM #$ Hydro has about 70 crews working on the Gulf Islands on Friday. The islands were the hardest hit by the storm, with strong winds causing major damage to hydro poles, transformers and power lines. In some areas, crews have had to rebuild parts of the electrical distribution system, BC Hydro said earlier this week.

Some roads were completely covered by trees and vegetation, further complicating repair efforts.

A number of BC Hydro trucks were seen heading to Vancouver Island on Saturday.

The utility said the completion of work on Vancouver Island meant several crews from there were being sent to the Gulf Islands Friday.

Some returning home Crystal Amos said power was restored yesterday to her community after one week without it. Amos is from the Ditidaht First Nation, a small community on Vancouver Island only accessible via a logging road from Port Alberni.

Shesaidtheimpactofthestormwasdevastating. “All of our families lost their food — their freezer food, their fridge food,� said Amos. One friend lost around $1,000 worth of food, she said.

Amos, who was in Port Alberni visiting family when the storm struck, said most of her neighbours were forced to stay in hotels in Port Alberni following the storm while they waited for electricity to be restored.

Schools in BC remain understaffed: Teachers’ union says Four months into the school year, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) is concerned that schools are still anxiously working to fill more than 400 teaching jobs throughout the province. On top of that, the union says the lack of on-call teachers means staff continue to be taken out of essential roles in other parts of their schools to make up for absent teachers, leaving students without promised services. “The same problems that we were seeing this time last year are still persisting,�

Glen Hansman, president of the BCTF, told CBC’s The Early Edition guest host Laura Lynch. Earlier this year, the BCTF filed and won a grievance against the Chilliwack school board for not hiring enough teachers to fill the demand. At the time, Hansman said that ruling would set a precedent for other school boards to hire the correct number of teachers, but now he says districts provincewide are still finding alternative ways to fill the gaps, because they can’t find enough full-time and on-call teachers.

B.C. schools get record funding but teacher shortage remains “What we’re seeing right now in the North and the Interior ‌ school districts there [are] relying almost exclusively on retirees to be teachers teaching on call or are utilizing what we call uncertified people,â€? Hansman said. “So, people who did not get trained as a teacher, who are not certified as a teacher, but might have been a volunteer at the school in the past, might be a parent in the community or someone with a university degree but isn’t actually trained as a teacher, and ... they’re working in the school system right now in regular classrooms.â€? Hansman attributes the struggle to find teachers partly

to the wages for teachers in B.C. He says in other provinces, starting wages for teachers can be up to $20,000 more per year. With the high cost of living in B.C., particularly in the Lower Mainland, he said it’s understandable that people would leave for a more affordable place.

Amos said it’s a huge relief that power has been restored but that those returning will have some work to do. “Everybody’s packing up and going home to clean up their freezers and fridges to restock,� she said.

Others still strande Meanwhile, power outages weren’t the only problem for stranded members of the Penelakut First Nation.

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The ferry service the community relies on for travel between Penalakut Island and Chemainus, on Vancouver Island, has been suspended all week because the storm damaged the dock and the landing area.

A barge carrying dump trucks unloads at Penelakut Island to make repairs to the ferry trestle.

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Saturday, December 29, 2018

Canadian politics in 2018: The year in 12 chapters Of the dozen countries Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited overseas in 2018, how many can you name? What, only India? Odd that nobody seems to recall his jaunts to Peru or Argentina, Latvia or Papua New Guinea. Yet quite a few of us can fake our way through the entire “Twelve Days of Christmas.” Memory is a funny thing.

Speaking of 12, that happens also to be the number of hours Conservative MPs held up parliamentary business last June, by keeping the House voting on sundry motions, as their way of protesting the Liberals’ refusal to release detailed estimates of the cost of a carbon tax.

But let’s not dwell on disputation in this festive season—not even to recall the 12 FBI audio recordings, from Michael Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, that helped U.S. prosecutors send Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer to jail for three years.

Here they are, just one from each month of the calendar about to go into the recycling bin: January: We added the word “attestation” to our political lexicon As 2018 began with the Trudeau government embroiled in a bitter fight with

faith-based groups, angry over, of all things, a new application form for federal summer jobs funding. To qualify, applicants were asked to “attest” that their “core mandate” respected certain rights—specifically including “reproductive rights.” Catholic and evangelical lobbies that oppose abortion protested. And, late in the year, the Liberals relented, dropping the reviled “attestation” requirement. Still, the furor left little doubt about the gap between this government and Canadians who don’t selfidentify as “progressive.”

February: We saw that clothes also sometimes unmake the man Nobody can deny Trudeau wears suits well.

Yet even for him there’s a limit, and he exceeded it repeatedly in his lastingly notorious February trip to India. Opting for a series of celebratory Indian outfits, Trudeau looked plain silly. To make matters worse, Jaspar Atwal, a B.C. man convicted of trying to murder an Indian cabinet minister in 1986, had to be uninvited from events on Trudeau’s official Indian itinerary.

March: We heard a plea to make room for complexity in politics By winning the NDP leadership in late 2017,

Exhibition at No 5 Road Gurdwara Under the banner of Izzat, Duty and Honour, Steven Purewal, Managing Director of Indus Media Foundation, Canada has done extensive research into the role of Indian soldiers in general and Punjabis / Sikhs in particular during the first Great War –World War 1. As part of his research into this almost forgotten contribution by Indian soldiers to the Allied and Commonwealth victory over the Central Powers , Steven Purewal reports that 74,000 South Asians, were killed in WW1 and that more than 1.3 million Indians served during the war ,which is more than that of Canada and Australia combined .

These valiant fighters stood tall as friends in need at the darkest hour winning more than 9,000 awards for gallantry (including 11 Victoria Crosses). He goes on to state: “It is an untold story of diverse communities coming to-gether with common goal. It is a dialogue around the ties that bind and the shared values of courage, integrity and selfless sacrifice. This is common heritage that confronts divisive voices. It is a foundation

for a shared future within a multicultural Canada.” All of this has been beautifully captured in the Exhibit -Duty, Honour and Izzat- which has been admired by educators, students, politicians and historians alike. Mr. Purewal has taken the Exhibit to Victoria and a number of educational institutions in Metro Vancouver. Most recently, City of Richmond hosted the Exhibit and lectures on the Sikh soldiers in WW1 at Richmond City Hall. It was attended by a large number of Sikh war veterans, politicians as well as citizens from across the Metro Vancouver area. In order to make our community aware of this project, India Cultural Centre of Canada Gurdwara Nanak Niwas, 8600 # 5 Road will be hosting the Exhibit from December 28 to January 2 at its premises on Richmond’s Highway to Heaven. Public is cordially invited to take advantage of this excellent opportunity.

Balwant Sanghera Richmond, BC

Jagmeet Singh jumped from Ontario politics to the national stage as the first member of a visible minority group to head a federal party. And in March, his Sikh roots became a big issue. Asked why he participated in Sikh activist meetings where pictures of militant leaders were on show, Singh rejected terrorism, but asked Canadians to see the complexity in India’s history.

April: We noticed that new guy taking a thorny issue to court Not many Canadians had heard of Scott Moe in early 2018 when he took over from Brad Wall as premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the right-of-centre Saskatchewan Party. Only a few more paid attention when, in April, Moe went to court to contest the federal Liberal government’s plan to impose a carbon tax on any province that didn’t implement one of its own.

May: We tried to estimate how much credibility $4.5 billion buys The federal government’s purchase of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5-billion made Trudeau directly responsible for completing the much-delayed tripling of Trans Mountain’s capacity for getting Albertan oil to a tanker port just up the coast from Vancouver. Trudeau’s grand bargain: a national-wide carbon price to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but, during a transition to the promised low-carbon economy, a serious push to sell more of Alberta’s bitumen overseas. It’s a tricky, controversial policy—and a pillar of the Liberals’ 2019 re-election pitch.

June: We watched Trump give Trudeau a (quite unintentional) boost This year’s summit of the Group of Seven leading democratic economic nations, held at Charlevoix, Que., ended with the U.S. president throwing a tantrum about the Canadian Prime Minister on Twitter. Trump didn’t like Trudeau saying Canada “will not be pushed around” by American tariffs on steel and aluminum.

The upshot? Trudeau had what Liberal insiders later said was his best week in the polls. The lesson? Most Canadians really despise Trump. It was a cautionary moment for any Canadian Conservative tempted to tap into Trumpian populism on this side of border.

July: We noted how timely cabinet changes can clarify what matters When a prime minister switches up his cabinet, the moment is often assessed as though politics were a volume business. Not many changes, can’t be too important, right?

But consider Trudeau’s July shuffle. He gave Dominic LeBlanc, his lifelong friend,

Intergovernmental Affairs. Bill Blair, the former Toronto police chief, got the new Border Security portfolio. Thus, LeBlanc would have to finesse Trudeau’s increasingly tense relationship with the provinces.

August: We asked how populist a Tory needs to sound in the Age of Trump Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer went into his party’s big policy convention in Halifax having to react to news that Quebec MP Maxime Bernier was leaving the Tory fold.

Bernier would go on to launch his People’s Party of Canada, bidding for support from Canadian right-wingers feeling the global populist vibe.

How dangerous is that for Scheer? In Halifax, his national campaign manager, Hamish Marshall, urged Conservatives not to lapse into arguments about “ideological purity and who’s more virtuous or not.” Still, Bernier’s potential drain on support will test Scheer in 2019.

September: We were, as usual, suckers for a good nail-biting finale Even though trade talks always seem to go down to the wire, the drama is hard to resist.

So it was with the renegotiation of NAFTA, which finally resulted in a deal late on Sept. 30, with a midnight deadline imposed by Trump’s White House bearing down on the Canadian government.

No task had more dominated the attention of the Trudeau Liberals. Failure to secure a new pact would have jeopardized 1.9 million export-dependent Canadian jobs. Success secured Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland cabinet’s best public-opinion rating, and turned managing Canada-U.S. trade into the Liberals’ top economic bragging point.

October: We cracked stoner jokes about a watershed moment in law When the federal Cannabis Act took effect on Oct. 17, officially making pot legal across Canada, there was a lot of kidding around.

International media treated the story lightheartedly, too. But this was a serious social turning point—and the culmination of the very first major policy goal Trudeau set out when he was only seeking the Liberal leadership.

Of course, there were problems. Too little legal supply. Early uncertainty about what’s allowed when it comes to promoting weed.

But, with many other Trudeau policy initiatives in question, this was an ambitious one that came fully to fruition.

November: We assessed a muted response to Trump’s major tax cuts When Canadians think of Trump’s impact, it’s usually to marvel at the heat of his invective and depth of his dishonesty. In at least one way, though, his challenge to Canada is pure policy: he cut U.S. corporate taxes sharply. Business lobbyists urged the Canadian government to follow suit. In response, Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced, not sweeping tax relief, but three targeted breaks allowing companies to write off capital investments more quickly.

The implicit bet: a more cautious approach from Ottawa will stand the test of time better than Trump’s expensive stimulus, which is what’s heating up the U.S. economy.

December: We caught, just out the corner of our eye, a meeting in Poland Despite another year of increasingly intense forest fires and weirdly violent weather, the full reality of climate change never quite seems to sink in. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report urged much greater efforts to cut fossil-fuel burning in half in less than 15 years, and phase them out almost entirely in 30 years. In December, UN talks in Poland nudged the world closer to real action, with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna representing Canada.

“We’re running out of time,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the meeting Katowice, a coal-mining town. But are Canadians seized with the urgency of the planet’s biggest problem? With climate-change policy looking likely to dominate the 2019 federal election, we’re about to find out.

Deepika ‘Moonwalks’ into 30 Million followers on Instagram

D

eepika Padukone

thanks all her fans as she clocks 30 million on Instagram.

The actress took to her account and shared a video where she does a moonwalk to thank her fans, saying, “moonwalking into #30million ‘‘Thank You for the!!!” One of the most followed women not only in India but also in Asia.

Padukone commands love from fans across the globe.

Having had an eventful year, she ended 2018 with a bang with major accomplishments in December.

She reclaimed her status as the Sexiest Asian Woman for the second time in three years as published by UKbased newspaper “Eastern Eye,” and after shining as one of the 100 most influential people, now the actress has emerged as the only

Celeb 100, which was unveiled recently.

Padukone also graced the last cover of the year for GQ magazine, making heads turn.

In 2018, Padukone, besides marrying Ranveer Singh at an international

female actress in the top 5 on Forbes

destination in November, was titled the first actress to have entered the 300 crore club with a woman-led film in “Padmaavat” and will now make her debut as a producer with Meghna Gulzar’s next, based on the life of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal.

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Saturday, December 29, 2018

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Saturday, December 29, 2018

HOROSCOPE

Akshay, Shankar & Karan in Media Meet of ‘2.0’ Shankar, the whizkid behind “Enthiran� a.k.a. “Robot� (2010) and this sequel, came across as a humble man who answered Karan ’s (who doubled up as anchor) and the media’s questions very simply. He stated that he was waiting to see how the audience is going to receive the film and hoped they would enjoy it.

Rajinikanth was there both in spirit and on-screen. The 3-D trailer shown to the media of “2.0� proved beyond doubt that we have a product of international standards in technology—at a fraction of their cost!

Much less than a week before release (Nov. 29), Karan Johar, who distributes the allIndia version through Dharma Productions, asAkshay Kumar and writer-director Shankar held a media meet at PVR Juhu to have a chat with the media after showcasing both the trailer and a spectacular song featuring Rajinikanth and Amy Jackson.

When Johar lauded him for his vision and raved about the budgets (Rs 543 crore including marketing), Shankar replied, “I do not start with technology. It is about whatever my scripts demand, whether it is new technology or old. The setups needed a lot of time and budget, like the Cell-Man and the bird. The challenging part was in designing them and then giving them emotions. Emotions excite audience and are always more important than

computer graphics,� he said.

Johar hinted at a core message underlying the film, and Shankar smiled and refused to let on what it was. “I should keep the surprise element. If I put myself in the audience’s place, as I always do, I want them to go to watch my movie, enjoy and be surprised!�

Shankar raved about Akshay Kumar.

Calling their collaboration “Really great!� he was amazed by his discipline, performance, and commitment. “It would take him two and a half to four hours to get ready and another 90 minutes to remove his make-up, prosthetics, teeth, and the heavy costume. He had the biggest lens an eye could bear, and with all this, he shot at 40 degrees Celsius in New Delhi. And mind you, with all this torture he had to emote as well!�

With Rajinikanth, he said that the megastar merely became more and more humble and hard-working with age and every film they have done together – “Sivaji - The Boss�

(2007), “Robot� and this one.�Everything Rajini-sir does attracts, even the simplest expression, word or sentence. He has so much style!� Akshay Kumar raved that he had learned a lot “From day one.� When he went to Los Angeles, his body was scanned.

Aries March 21 - April 20 You might be ready to relax and yet be aware of the things you need to get done once this holiday week is over. If there is anything you can do to make life easier in this respect, this is your chance. You can then move into 2019 with greater peace of mind.

However, a confusing and frustrating aspect on Monday could compound any last-minute frustrations unless you refuse to panic.

Taurus April 21 - May 20 This holiday week seems to tick along pleasantly enough despite minor hitches.

With the sun in your sector of far horizons and travel, you might be ready to get away from it all. And if this is your choice, the cosmic picture suggests that you can have a relaxing time. Still, no matter what you’re doing, be sure to check the details on Monday because there is some potential for confusion.

Gemini May 20 - June 21 There will be times this week when you might have to put duty or business before pleasure. However, with careful planning and organization, you should be able to keep this to a minimum.

It pays to be a little careful on Monday because mistakes could be made just as you’re hoping to close up shop and hunker down for the holiday week.

Cancer June 22 - July 23

Actor Kader Khan hospitalized Senior and veteran actor, Kader Khan is battling for life, and is in an extremely critical condition. The actor has been staying with his son Sarfaraz and daughter-in-law Shahista overseas for a few years now. Kader Khan has been complaining of breathlessness and that forced the doctors to put the actor on BiPAP Ventilator.

Apparently, BiPAP ventilator is to ease down the patient as normal ventilator would be very aggressive on him. The portal further adds that there are times when he is conscious and maintains eye contact, but goes still the other moment.

A source informed the website stating that Kader Khan has also stopped talking, and is suffering from pneumonia. “The present condition stems from the PSP ailment he is down with. Kader saab’s son Sarfaraz and his daughter-in-law are looking after him. No stone is being left unturned in his treatment but Kader saab’s health continues to remain delicate,� informed the source.

PSP is Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, is a progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is

an uncommon brain disorder that affects movement, control of walking (gait) and balance, speech, swallowing, vision, mood and behaviour, and thinking. The disease results from damage to nerve cells in the brain.

There were also reports that the veteran’s knee surgery had gone wrong. However, his son, Sarfaraz had quashed this rumour in 2017 to this website by saying, “Yes, my dad is facing difficulty in walking. We have to provide him support from both sides. After a few steps, he demands that he wants to sit again. He is scared that he will fall.� Further adding to it, Sarafaz had said, “The surgery did not go wrong. It was just that my father refused to get up after the surgery.

We were told that he has to make an effort and try to start walking from the next day. He just didn’t do that and...,� he trailed off. He had also mentioned how the change in the film industry also hampered him. “The industry started functioning quite differently.

With the sun in your sector of

various social events and perhaps more formal engagements. Furthermore, you might need to entertain people with whom you don’t have the easiest of relationships. Despite this, a positive blend of energies suggests that you’ll take this in stride and perhaps move a little closer to forging a better bond.

December 25 seems easygoing, with the moon in charismatic Leo making some

Libra Sept. 24 - Oct 22

a chance to relax and unwind. Do check the details regarding your plans on Monday, though, because a confusing aspect hints at the possibility of mistakes. The key is to pace yourself and take everything in stride.

Prior preparation can be a big help. You

to the last minute.

Scorpio Oct 23 - Nov 22 As the sun continues its journey through your communication zone, the week ahead can be an opportunity to get organized before 2019 begins. This could be in small or big ways, depending on the time available and how much you need to do. However, if you have last make, write a to-do list on Monday rather than hope for the best.

Sagitarius Nov 23 - Dec 22 This holiday week can combine the best of both worlds. You might enjoy the company of friends and your social circle as well as that of your family. Your naturally buoyant nature can cheer up any gathering, and you’ll be a welcome guest at key events.

But if you want to make the best impression, check the details of time and place and get your to-do list in order on Monday to avoid any faux pas.

Capricorn Dec 23 - Jan 20 You could take a more spiritual approach to this holiday week, adding a whole new dimension to your experience. With lively Mercury and expansive Jupiter moving through a more secluded sector of your chart, joining a ! you on a deeper level. It’s also possible that you’ll spend Christmas Day in service to others by giving your time to make their day extra special.

Aquarius Jan 21 - Feb 19

Leo June 24 - August 23 You might still have work to do over this holiday week, whether it’s because of your job or because you opted to organize or host key holiday events. However, with a positive blend of energies to back you up, there isn’t much to worry about. And other people may be more than willing to chip in, so don’t feel bad about asking. Be a little careful on Monday, though, as an edgy aspect between thoughtful Mercury

Holiday geniality permeates the week, and with your very buoyant social sector, the good times can begin to roll.

You might have a few things to take care of before you can truly relax, but you’ll likely take these in stride. Even so, with the sun in a more secluded sector of your chart accompanied by sobering Saturn and powerful Pluto, you could be happier relaxing with a few close friends.

Pisces Virgo Christmas at your place could be quite the occasion and something that you, your friends, and family are very much looking forward to. With a riotous blend of energies showing up in your domestic sector, even the biggest culinary fail will be viewed in the kindest way. This doesn’t imply that there will be any, just that a sense of fun will prevail no matter what happens.

Check details on Monday as cheeky Mercury, your ruling planet, forges an angle to nebulous

Feb 20 - March 20 If you’re the one responsible for hosting a key event, be doubly sure you have everything in order. With inquisitive Mercury making an edgy

forget something important. The key is to be prepared, which will make the whole experience a more relaxing one for you. Still, be mindful of

take care of. Check that all is as it should be and then you’ll have your bases covered.

20 For more Updates, Visit our Website

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Saturday, December 29, 2018

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Bollywood

‘I can see the same passion in SRK stil!’ Katrina

S

he’s had an amazing track-record in the15 years she has been in showbiz, with a shining run as a model before that. The best of filmmakers, stars and setups have been Katrina Kaif ’s for the asking. Last Christmas saw her feature in that year’s biggest hit, “Tiger Zinda

experience so extensive, that I am not at all the right person to answer if he has changed if that’s what you mean. But as a person, he still shares the same exuberance, enthusiasm, and passion. This is amazing because one can get complacent over this long period. Shah Rukh,

Hai,” and Diwali this year saw the catastrophe “Thugs Of Hindostan.” But Katrina (it sounds odd to refer to her as ‘Kaif ’) has gone through worse in her career. And she is now poised for one of her finest roles in “Zero.” India-West met her at the Red Chillies Entertainment office (after three rescheduling episodes over a week!) just 30 minutes after our appointment time. And, in an era where interviews can begin anything from 30 to 180 minutes after call-time, it’s like our meeting was virtually happening before schedule!

From an interview: Q: This is your second film with Shah Rukh Khan. How different and how same is he from the “Jab Tak Hai Jaan” days?

A: He has been around for so long, his

however, wants to try and do something new even today. He keeps saying that the fate of a film is not important, but we must keep trying to make the kind of quality cinema that is on par with international movies.

Q: Both Shah Rukh and Anushka have spoken about theirs and your character. How do YOU interpret it?

A: I think Aanand (director Aanand L. Rai)-sir wanted to show all these people’s journeys. With Babita Kumari, my character, there was the angle that things are often not what they seem on the outside. My character can’t find completion in herself. Deep down she is incomplete, and she cannot pinpoint the exact reason, but something is missing.

604-566-3111 7233 - Fraser St., Vancouver, BC

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Bollywood

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Year-end 2018: Bollywood Scoreboard 11. Arjun Kapoor: Namaste England Here is the list of stars and how they 12. Sidharth Malhotra: Aiyaary fared in 2018. The Hits and Successes are 13.

Ayushmann Khurrana: in CAPITALS and the super-hits in BOLD ANDHADHUN, BADHAAI HO Score: 100% and disasters in bold.

14. Sushant Singh Rajput: KEDARNATH It is clear that Sonam Kapoor and Sara Ali 15. Shahid Kapoor: Baati Gul Meter Chalu, Khan leading in the female category. And PADMAAVAT Score: 50% Ranveer Singh, kshay Kumar are leading 16. Rajkummar Rao: STREE, Fanney the male roster along with John Abraham Khan, Omerta, 5 Weddings Score: 25% and Ayushmann Khurrana, with The lowest 17. Kartik Aaryan: SONU KE TITU KA ranking was for Taapsee Pannu, Sonakshi Sinha, Anil Kapoor and the Deol brothers Sunny and Bobby.

1. Salman Khan: Race 3, Zero, Welcome To New York, Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se (all disasters in cameos) Score: 0% 2. Akshay Kumar: PAD MAN, GOLD, 2.0, SIMMBA (Cameo) Score: 100% 3. Ranveer Singh: PA D M A AVAT, SIMMBA Score: 100% Sonam Kapoor and Sara Ali Khan (right) leading the 4. Ajay Devgn: RAID, female category.

SIMMBA (Cameo), Helicopter Eela (producer) Score: 100% (as SWEETY 18. Saif Ali Khan: Kaalakandi, actor) Baazaar Score: 0% 5. Aamir Khan:Thugs Of Hindostan 19. Irrfan Khan: Blackmail, Karwaan 6. Shah Rukh Khan: Zero Score: 0% 7. Ranbir Kapoor: SANJU 20. Anil Kapoor: Race 3, Fanney Khan 8. Tiger Shroff: BAAGHI 2 Score: 0% 9. Varun Dhawan:October, SUI DHAAGA-MADE IN INDIA Score: 50% 21. Rishi Kapoor: 102 NOT OUT, Mulk 10. John Abraham: PARMANU, Score: 50% SATYAMEVA JAYATE Score: 100%

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Community news

23

Kartarpur border opening celebrations

Pakistani Canadian Cultural Association in BC organized an event to celebrate opening of Kartarpur border in Pakistan, seasons greetings and birth anniversary of founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The event was started with national anthems of Canada and Pakistan, and introduction of the guests by MC Naveed Warraich. The guests were present at the

occasion including MLA Harry Bains, MLA Jagrup Brar, MLA Rachna Singh, MLA Marvin Hunt, MP Randeep Sarai, Dr Gulzar S. Cheema, Baldev S. Bath, Jaspinder Brar of Punjabi Business Association of Canada, Shinder Purewal and many more.

All expressed thier views in appreciation of

Press release

Wilkinson calls for open and transparent process in mountain caribou conservation agreement Leader of the Official Opposition Andrew Wilkinson is calling on the NDP to provide answers as they refuse to release their plan for the proposed mountain caribou conservation agreement. “I find it extremely disappointing that over the past nine months, British Columbians have been kept in the dark on what the NDP is planning for mountain caribou,� said Wilkinson. “The minister responsible is from rural British Columbia and has completely evaded the issue. Efforts to save remaining caribou populations could affect everything from industry to recreational activity and yet there is no information available for the public. Everyone wants to protect caribou and their habitat, but we need discussions at the local level to come up with solutions that can work for all communities, and these just aren’t happening.�

Sixteen BC Liberal MLAs from across the province wrote to Doug Donaldson, Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural

Development, and George Heyman, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy, requesting that the government immediately starts a broad public consultation process on this issue. Local MLAs have been advocating for a meeting with Minister Donaldson for months to no avail. Wilkinson insists that First Nations, local governments and stakeholders in the resource and tourism industries should have the opportunity to voice their concerns and be a part of the caribou recovery process. “We want a solution that is based on science and takes into account all of the land uses that could be affected by a heavy-handed response by the NDP,�

Wilkinson added. “Local governments have been calling for greater involvement since the UBCM meeting last September and like local MLAs, have been ignored.

The preservation and survival of caribou populations is important but the general public has to be a part of the solution.�

up Kartarpur border in Punjab, Pakistan.

Punjabi Business General of Pakistan Fahad Amjad. The Association of Canada presented event was held on Tuesday, December 18

in Surrey.

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Vol. 9 No. 48

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Saturday - December 29, 2018

In BC’s rugged north as Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s $31 billion (US) liquefied natural gas project sparks an economic boom in the remote region. BC’s housing boom is set to shift to the BC’s North Coast, a sparsely populated region usually synonymous with untamed wilderness, black bears and glacial fjords — is set for a turnaround as Shell and its four partners ramp up activity on Canada’s largest infrastructure project ever, according to

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North of BC becoming real estate boom Bryan Yu, deputy chief economist at Central 1 Credit Union. Residential home prices in the North Coast are set to surge faster than any other region in the province through 2020 as the project in Kitimat prepares to employ as many as 7,500 people at its peak, according to forecasts from Yu. In contrast, prices in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland area — once one of the hottest housing markets in North America — will fall, keeping the overall

provincial median price flat. More broadly, the real estate slowdown in Greater Vancouver — the province’s largest metropolitan area — will dampen British Columbia’s overall prospects.

The province’s annual economic growth will slow to a range of about 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent through 2020, down from 3.8 per cent in 2017, Central 1 said in a report Tuesday.

That reflects a shift in fortunes. Three years ago when Vancouver’s economy was roaring

along as housing prices surged, the resourcedependent north was suffering a downturn.

Lumber exports were falling, mining projects faced dismal commodity prices, and more than a dozen LNG projects were stalled amid a global gas glut. In addition to the LNG project announced last month, the North Coast region is also benefiting from firmer demand for wood products and a booming port in nearby Prince Rupert, according to Central 1.

Falling real estate market projected to bring national home sales down to nearly 10-year low Falling home sales in B.C. are set to drag national sales down to lows not seen in nearly a decade, according to projections released by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) on Monday.

The association’s latest quarterly forecast projects B.C.’s market to take another 5.2-per-cent hit in 2019, bringing home sales in the province down nearly 30 per cent since 2017, when sales exceeded 100,000 units.

Rising interest rates and strict mortgage stress-test rules are being blamed for the nationwide slump, which is expected to fall 0.5 per cent in 2019 to a nine-year low of 456,200 units sold, after dropping just over 11 per cent in 2018 to 458,200 units, which was

already a five-year low.

Nearly 4 in 10 in Metro Vancouver see real estate industry as ‘extremely corrupt’ In the west, the CREA is holding B.C.’s rising foreign buyers tax and oil price declines in Alberta responsible for falling sales there, which are expected to continue well into the new year. “In the Lower Mainland, we have a higher supply than we’ve

seen in three or four years because everyone’s been taking the waitand-see approach,� said Phil Moore, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. “The spring is usually a good time for people to buy so we’ll have to wait until then to see if we’re going to see sales numbers like this over the long term.�

The fall across Canada comes despite forecasted

gains in Quebec and Ontario next year, the latter of which the CREA says will rebound from slumping sales in 2018 that were largely felt in the Greater Toronto Area and which helped B.C. bring sales down across Canada.

Housing slowdown continues, says Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver Quebec has been on an upward swing recently, the CREA noted, while also calling sales in New Brunswick and the Maritimes “historically strong.�

The forecast from CREA, which represents 125,000 realtors across the country, also projects the average price for a home will climb yet again next year, this time by 1.7 per cent to $496,800.

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Saturday, December 29, 2018 The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says home supply is rising and reaching levels not seen in roughly four years, even as the average price inches up year-over-year.

The board says the composite benchmark price for all homes was $1,062,100 in October -- up one per cent since October 2017, but down 3.3 per cent over the last three months.

Sales of all types of homes -- detached, townhomes and condos -- in October fell 34.9 per cent compared with the same month last year, dropping 26.8 per cent below the 10year October sales average.

Prices easing but Canada’s housing

Vancouver home sales drop below average last month market still ‘highly vulnerable’: CMHC Interest rates and anxiety on the rise in B.C. Meanwhile, nearly 4,900 new properties were listed for sale last month, up 7.4 per cent compared with October last year.

Nearly 13,000 homes are listed in Metro Vancouver or 42.1 per cent more than in October 2017. Board president Phil Moore says the additional supply gives home buyers more choice and home sellers more competition. Detached home sales fell 32.2 per cent in October compared with the same month last year, while the benchmark

Real estate market expected to mederate over next 2 years

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the country’s real estate market is expected to moderate over the next two years as the growth in housing prices is expected to slow to more in line with economic fundamentals.In its 2018 housing market outlook released today, the national housing agency projects housing starts and sales are both expected to decline

price fell to $1,524,000 marking a 5.1 per cent drop year-overyear and 3.9 per cent fall over the last three months.

Sales of townhomes declined 37.5 per cent and condos fell 35.7 per cent year-over-year.

The benchmark price for townhomes rose 4.4 per cent from last year to $829,200, while condo prices jumped 5.8 per cent to $683,500.

Over the past three months, townhome

in 2019 and 2020.It predicts housing starts for single and multi-unit starts will fall to between 193,700 and 204,500 in 2019, while sales are anticipated to be between 478,400 and 497,400 units. Prices are anticipated to range between $501,400 and $521,600.

CMHC says it expects economic indicators

#106 - 7565 132 St. Surrey, BC 604.572.3005

prices fell 2.8 per cent and condo prices dropped 3.1.

The threemonth price drop “is providing a little relief for those looking to buy compared to the all-time highs we’ve experienced over the last year,” says Moore.

26

Classifieds / Jobs " #

I,Nandani Mudaliar presently residing at 9990 124 A Street Surrey BC V3V 4W5 changed my name from Nandani Mudaliar to Nandani Nand

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Matrimonial Permanent Resident Ramgarhia Sikh Born In 1975 Is Looking For A Suitable Wife. Girl Should Be From A Good And Respectable

Family Presently In Canada. Leave Message At 604 377 2890

27

Saturday, December 29, 2018 South Asian Seniors - Bingo On The House December 30th 2018 ( Sunday ) from 2.00 pm to 3.30 pm.

Vedic Seniors Parivar Centre of vedic Hindu Cultural Society Surrey invites South Asian Adults/ Senior members and nonmembers also to come and play Bingo for the sake of entertainment and make some new friends, on December 30th 2018( Sunday ) from 2.00 pm to 3.30 pm at Shanti Niketan hall 8321 - 140th street Surrey B.C. Please bring only two dollars with you to play 2 games, do not worry if you do not know how to play, members will explain you the game just for the sake of fun. Tea & light snacks will be served after the game is over.

Project funded by Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program for Hindi speaking seniors. Please contact Surendra Handa Coordinator Tel. 604 - 507 - 9945 for further information.

South Asian Seniors - Antakshari Hindi Songs Competition Sunday, 2.00 pm to 3.30 pm at Shanti Niketan.

Vedic Seniors Parivar Center of Vedic Hindu Cultural Society Surrey invites South Asian Adults, Senior members & nonmembers also to join us for Antakshari Songs Competition with Hindi songs on Sunday from 2.00 pm to 3.30 pm at Shanti Niketan hall of Lakshmi Narayan Hindu Temple 8321 - 140th street Surrey BC. The participants will be divided in to two groups, could be male members against female members or combined both.

The game is of ending words of the song sung by the last singer, to be continued by the song by the next singer of the opposite group, if one group fails to sing for the last word of the song then the opponent can sing the song and the group who failed to sing is eliminated, No song is repeated in the game by both groups.

Tea & snacks will be served to all participants after the game is over. Project funded by Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program for Hindi speaking seniors.

Please contact Surendra Handa Coordinator Tel. 604 - 507 - 9945 for further information.

For more Updates, Visit our Website

Contact Brent or Wayne

604-377-5429 Email: fraservalleygolf@shaw.ca Video link: www.cotala.com/28804

www.theasianstar.com

28

Saturday, December 29, 2018

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LOCAL / NATIONAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Abbotsford hemp harvest takes a hit from misinformed thieves A field of cannabis plants proved irresistible to thieves who likely mistook the hemp for marijuana and made off with part of Abbotsford farmer Nick Warmerdam’s harvest this fall.

“We had a lot of volunteer help in the middle of the night,” he said.

Low in THC, but high in cannabidiol (CBD), the plants probably didn’t give the thieves the high they were hoping for.

“It’s hard to imagine they were stealing it for the CBD oil,” said Warmerdam.

Theft was just one of several problems the farmer had to deal with while trying to grow one of Canada’s newest agricultural products.

On Oct. 17, growing hemp for CBD oil became legal along with marijuana cultivation.

Hemp plants, like marijuana, contain CBD, but they contain minimal amounts of THC

(0.3% or less). The distinction isn’t wellknown, and the sight of cannabis growing in an open field was a shock to several passersby who assumed it was marijuana. “(Cannabis cultivation is) still very new.

People don’t really understand it. I’m not sure theft is a problem that’s going to go away any time soon,” said Warmerdam.

BC study underway to help create safe and effective marijuana drinks Trend of low potency products expected in legal recreational cannabis market BC defines rules on use, possession and sale of cannabis The farmer is also dealing with other growing pains. While he is allowed to grow hemp, he cannot legally extract the oil under Canadian law. It must be

Abbotsford woman & two children sent hospital after carbon monoxide detected in the vehicle A woman and two children have been rushed to hospital following a suspected case of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Abbotsford Police Department says the three were found in a vehicle in a rural area of Abbotsford at about 8:30pm on Boxing Day after what is described as a single-vehicle collision.

Sgt. Judy Bird confirmed by email that the collision occurred at slow speed as the vehicle rolled into a fence, but everyone in the car was found unconscious.

One woman and two children rushed to hospital after suspected carbon-monoxide poisoning in the car.

Police respond to a single-vehicle crash in Abbotsford, B.C. on Dec. 26, 2018. A woman and two children were found unresponsive in the vehicle.

“The three remain in hospital.

It is not believed that they will be released today,” Bird said in the email.

She could not update the conditions of any of the victims early Thursday.

Although the adult and children are believed to have been overcome by the odourless, colourless gas, Bird said it would be “quite some time” before there would be an update on a vehicle inspection that could determine how they were exposed.

Investigators have not named the victims or said how they may be related.

Officers remain at the scene and Bird said police are appealing for information from anyone who may have seen the vehicle before it rolled to a stop.

AbbyPD is on-scene at a single veh collision where a woman & 2 children were locateunresponsive & possibly suffering from CO poisoning. All 3 were transported to hosipital for medical treatment. AbbyPD continues to investigate the cause of this collision.

Here’s what BC looking like sprinkled with snow over the holiday season

Not everyone across British Columbia had a picture-perfect white Christmas, but by Boxing Day the flakes were coming down in many parts of the province.

It spurred many to get outdoors and take some striking pictures of the snowfall.

Now, more snow is on the way, with Environment Canada posting snowfall warnings for much of Central B.C. As much as 25 centimetres is expected to fall inland, with a winter storm forecast to dump 30 centimetres over the Columbia Mountains and Shuswap. Wet snow or rain is forecast for the Lower Mainland, while a rainfall warning for the central and north coast predicts up to 100 millimetres of rain.

LOCAL / NATIONAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Canadian woman creates app that lands her spot on Forbes 30 Under 30, has big-name brands lining up It looks like 28-year-old Nadia Masri (pictured) won’t be asking Santa for anything else this holiday season.

This tech CEO from Toronto made Forbes 30 Under 30, a prestigious year-end list recognizing the brightest, young, influential figures in top industries in Canada and the U.S. Masri was featured in Forbes magazine 2019 ‘30 Under 30 list,’ which recognizes the top influential young people of the coming year in 30 different industries.

The young entrepreneur created the app Perksy, a real-time research platform, which targets Millenialls and Gen-Z users and rewards them for answering surveys.

“We realized that the way that it was currently being done didn’t really make any sense,” Masri told Metro Morning’s David Common Monday.

“Our belief is that if you want to reach a younger audience you have to live where they live, and that’s mobile.”

While studying at Harvard University in a marketing management class, Masri said she discovered how difficult it was for brands to understand their audiences, especially young consumers.

Through the app, users rack up points by answering questions, and those points convert directly to cash and discount coupons to companies like Nike, Sephora, and even Uber.

Although surveys have moved from in-person, to phone, to online, to email, Masri says they best still only gain about a three per cent response rate.

Perksy is “game-ified,” and aims to answer simple questions like why consumers would choose one sweater over another, one brand or another, each catered to the specific user.

Masri seen onstage with judges after winning the Oracle Startup Pitch Competition at Ascent Conference in New York City.

“Brands want to hear from younger

China silent on Canadian awaiting drug smuggling trial, while feds provide ‘consular services’ A Canadian citizen is set to be tried on drug charges in, after being arrested in China around four years ago, according to Canadian government officials.

The Canadian, who has been identified as Robert Lloyd Schellenberg by Global Times, a tabloid operated by the Communist Party of China, is set to head to trial Saturday in the Chinese port city of Dalian.

The news comes amid already heightened tensions between Beijing and Ottawa, after two Canadians were detained in China earlier this month.

A Global Affairs Canada spokesperson said it has been following the case for several years and has been providing “consular assistance to the Canadian citizen since they were first detained in Liaoning, China.”

The spokesperson added that the Canadian government will continue to provide “consular services to them and their family.” No other information was given due to privacy concerns.

Schellenberg was arrested for smuggling “an enormous amount of drugs” into China, according to Dalian.runsky.com, a news portal operated by Dalian authorities.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said in a daily briefing Thursday that she didn’t know much about

the case, suggesting it’s not related to the arrests of two other Canadians on nationalsecurity grounds earlier this month.

“I am not aware of the specifics of this case and I would refer you to the competent authority,” she said, according to an English transcript posted to the ministry website.

But, she added: “As to the diplomatic tensions between China and Canada, I think you are very clear about the reason for that. I have made clear China’s solemn position on it many times before.”

The Dalian government news portal stated sarcastically that Schellenberg’s audacity was to be admired given that he “actually dared to smuggle drugs into China.” It pointed out that Chinese criminal law offers “no sympathy” for drug crimes.

China has some of the harshest drug laws in the world.

People found guilty of smuggling large quantities of drugs face sentences ranging from 15 years’ imprisonment to life imprisonment and even the death penalty, the Global Times reported.

In 2009, China executed British citizen Akmal Shaikh after he was caught smuggling heroin. Shaikh’s death prompted outrage in the U.K. over the apparent lack of any mental health assessment.

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Calgarians’ debt-to-income ratio is running lower than country’s average, finds CMHC report While Canadians are collectively more indebted than they’ve ever been, Calgarians appear to be bucking the trend, according to a recent report by a federal agency.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. released its latest Housing Observer report this month, which examined household debt-to-income ratios.

And it found Canadians as a whole are again near an all-time high for indebtedness relative to their income.

“We typically get the debt-to-income ratio from Stats Canada every quarter, and the number often is around 170 per cent, meaning we have $1.70 worth of debt for every $1 of disposable income,” says Brent Weimer, senior specialist for socio-economic analysis with CMHC. In fact, after increasing for a number of quarters, the ratio for the second quarter of 2018 stalled 170 per cent for all of Canada in part because of Alberta’s two largest cities.

The report found Calgary households were down eight per cent year over year for the second quarter of 2018 to 162 per cent. In other words, the average household in the city owed just $1.62 of debt, which includes mortgages, car loans, lines of credit and credit cards, for every $1 of disposable income (earnings after taxes).

The report also noted Edmonton saw a similar decline.

“Most of the decline was due to increases in disposable income for those two cities,” Weimer says. “Definitely, the province of Alberta is in recovery mode compared to the recession we saw when energy prices plummeted.”

That picture could change, however, with the energy industry again hit by lower oil prices in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Still the province has typically shown strength in wages. For example Statistics Canada labour force data from last year show Alberta municipalities paid among the highest wages in Canada with Calgary in third spot behind Wood Buffalo-Cold Lake and the Northwest Territories.

Debt levels in the city, Weimer noted, were down marginally. With regard to mortgage costs among all Canadian cities, Calgary sits in the middle of the pack with respect to its mortgage debt-to-income ratio of 110 per cent. By contrast, Vancouver had the highest mortgage debt-to-income ratio at 176.9 per cent. Overall, Vancouver residents had a total debt-to-income ratio of 242 per cent, followed by Toronto at 209 per cent.

Weimer adds the situation may worsen if the Bank of Canada continues to hike interest rates.

“The concern is once we enter an era of rising rates, we could see a lot of households renewing their mortgages and other debt at higher interest rates than what they’ve been used to.”

That could spell trouble for heavily indebted households, he adds.

is

Yet the picture painted in the report rather rosy for house-hunters.

“If incomes are on the rise, and prices are pretty flat, then relatively speaking, a smaller share of your income has to go toward servicing a mortgage,” Weimer says. “That’s a good news story.”

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NATIONAL

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Prime Minister Trudeau says it’s worth ‘pointing out’ similarities between Scheer & Harper

PM Trudeau says Andrew Scheer’s Conservative party is in the exact same place it was under Stephen Harper’s leadership and that’s why he and his Liberals will continue “pointing out” the similarities.

The Liberal party put the Harper stamp on Scheer the day he was elected leader of the Conservative party, billing him as a far-right social conservative. The Liberals raise Harper frequently and drop his name in fundraising emails to supporters.

“We are focused on what is truly important while Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are stepping up the same divisive and negative politics we saw from Stephen Harper,” wrote Liberal party president Suzanne Cowan in an email blast sent this week.

In an interview, Trudeau told The Canadian Press that the Conservative party’s

approach to a range of issues shows that it does not have plans or ideas that differ from Harper’s.

“Canadians so clearly rejected Stephen Harper’s approach to government, the approach in the 2015 election, and yet on climate, on the economy, on international engagement, on migration issues, on Indigenous issues, they are very much still in the exact same mode that they were pre the 2015 election.”

“I think that’s sort of something that is worthwhile pointing out to Canadians,” said Trudeau.In almost the same breath Trudeau said that in the next election he’s not going to try to “vilify” or “demonize” his opponents. But he suggested that he

doesn’t view his comparison of Scheer to Harper as vilifying him.

Trudeau said when he was emphasizing his “sunny ways” during the last campaign, people were quick to point out any time he said something critical of Harper. But, he said, he’s going to be very sharp any time there are clear distinctions of policy between him and Scheer, or when he thinks Conservatives are trying to divide the country.

“I will make no apologies for being very passionate, sometimes overly enthusiastic, in the way I engage in robust debate but I am as much as possible going to keep it on a substantive level.”

He also said Scheer himself has not been able to articulate his differences from his

predecessor. He pointed to an Assembly of First Nations meeting earlier this year where a chief directly asked Scheer how he’s different from Harper and Scheer asked for “a little bit of patience for when our platform gets released.”

Brock Harrison, a spokesman for Scheer, said if anyone is stuck in 2015, it’s Trudeau.

“He wants to re-fight the 2015 campaign because virtually everything he and his government have done since then has been a failure,” said Harrison, adding that Trudeau will have to explain why he’s “failed to balance the budget, secure the border, build pipelines, and provide relief for Canadian families.”

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre made similar comments in an interview recently, suggesting Trudeau points to Harper to deflect from his faults and because he’s feeling nervous about his chief opponent.

Liberals hope funding change solves infrastructure spending, cost concerns Federal Infrastructure Minister FrancoisPhilippe Champagne says an overhaul of how the government approves funding for projects should solve concerns about construction delays and escalating costs.

The government has been criticized for the slower-than-anticipated pace of infrastructure dollars leaving the federal treasury.

For the rest of the winter, federal officials will sign off on plans so money and work are

ready to roll come spring, which Champagne says will finally align bureaucratic processes with Canada’s construction season.

The backroom change is one Champagne hopes will address public concerns that cities hold off work until they are sure the Liberals will chip in money, which also worsens cost overruns.

Under the Liberals, planned federal spending on new roads, bridges, highways,

It’s never been this expensive to own a single-family home in Canada: RBC As we close out 2018, the Royal Bank of Canada is leaving us with some unwelcome news: It’s never been this expensive, relative to income, to own a detached home in Canada. RBC’s latest housing affordability report showed it now takes 59.2 per cent of an average household’s income to afford an average single-family home. That’s the highest in records going back to the mid-1980s, and miles above the long-run average of 44.7 per cent. Royal Bank of Canada’s measure of housing affordability has reached its highest (worst) levels since 1990. For detached homes, the cost of ownership is at a record high. For years, soaring house prices in many markets were behind the trend, but these days rising interest rates are “the main culprit” pushing home af ford abi l it y out of reach, economists Craig Wright and Robert Hogue wrote.

For the housing market overall, including condos, affordability deteriorated to its worst levels since 1990, with an average-earning household now having to spend 53.9 per cent of its income to afford an average home.

That includes monthly mortgage payments, as well as property taxes and utilities. It assumes a 25-year mortgage with a five-year fixed rate and 25 per cent down.

“Are only the rich able to buy a home these days?” Wright and Hogue asked in the report.

“That certainly looks like it in Canada’s most expensive markets. Buyers in Vancouver, Toronto and Victoria needed between two and three times the median household income to qualify to purchase an average home.” But it’s Montreal that

has seen the fastest deterioration in home affordability, the RBC report showed.

“The area has been one of the stronger markets in Canada in the past year — another being Ottawa — that saw solid price gains amplify the effect of higher interest rates on ownership costs.” The economists noted that “despite some deterioration in the latest period, owning a home remains affordable in the majority of other markets in Canada.”

The report also showed the profound impact the new mortgage “stress tests” have had on the market, particularly in the priciest cities. In Vancouver, the stress test added almost $36,000 to the qualifying income needed to buy an average priced home. You now need a household income of $211,000 to buy an average home at $1.1 million.

I n Toronto, the stress test added $27,000 to the qualifying income for an average house, and households there need to earn $167,000 to afford an average home.

The RBC economists also noted that, unlike the price hikes that were concentrated in certain cities, the mortgage stress test affected the entire country.

“Thousands of dollars more in income are now needed to buy a home with a mortgage in every market across the country because of the stress test,” they noted.

Looking forward to 2019, the RBC economists see little in the way of relief.

“We expect that further interest rate hikes will keep upward pressure on ownership costs in 2019. Softening prices in key markets and rising household income increases will provide some offset, however.”

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Canadian economy was resilient in 2018, but troubling signs ahead The Canadian economy entered 2018 on an unexpectedly impressive run, and will begin 2019 on a healthy note. But signs of weakness have raised a key question: How long before the good times end?

Through much of 2018, Canada’s unemployment rate hovered near a 40-year low and job creation remained strong as the evidence pointed to an economy going at close to full tilt.

The handoff was a good one, too — the country had posted three per cent growth for all of 2017, largely thanks to strong household spending. We’ll have to wait a little for the final numbers, but forecasters say 2018 has likely delivered still-sturdy growth of about two per cent.

Canada’s economy expands by 0.3% in October, beating expectations But as 2019 approaches, there are worries the solid economic expansion is starting

to show its age. Last month, the federal government’s fall economic statement projected two per cent growth again for 2019, but many predict the number will likely come in lower following a recent drop in oil prices.

In addition to the pullback in crude prices, experts point to jitters in the financial markets, predictions the American economy — a key contributor to Canadian growth — will start to cool off and the United Kingdom’s difficult divorce from the European Union, which could ripple across the global economy.

There’s also potential for an even bigger threat: an escalation of the trade war between Washington and Beijing.

On trade, Canada made it through a year filled with significant uncertainty, including the difficult negotiation and signing of an update to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

PM Trudeau blames Canada’s illegal immigration woes on the US Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is blaming President Donald Trump and the United States’ stricter policies on immigration for Canada’s burgeoning “immigration crisis,” even though Trudeau himself told migrants he’d welcome them with “open arms.”

In an interview Trudeau absolved himself of all responsibility over the influx of illegal immigrants who’ve made their way into Canada through the United States, claiming instead that the United States has failed to welcome migrants with open arms, thus sending them packing for Canada.

Back in 2017, Trudeau famously tweeted, in response to President Trump’s call to heavily restrict immigration to the United States, that Canada would continue to be a destination for the world’s downtrodden, even if the U.S. wasn’t interested.

“Your tweet saying ‘welcome to Canada’ is often cited as the reason why these people are pouring across the border.

Do you ever regret that tweet?” the interviewer asked Trudeau.

“No,” Trudeau answered, adding, “If people are in the midst of migration around the world right now, it’s not because of a tweet restating — almost word for word — Canadian policy on refugees, because that’s exactly what it was.”

“And certainly, if people are fleeing the United States right now and are choosing to leave the United States right now, it’s not something I said,” Trudeau continued. “It is perhaps domestic realities within the political context in the United States that is driving people to move or to make those certain decisions.” In other words, it’s all Donald Trump’s fault.

BC Liberal leader looks back on 1st year in opposition Andrew Wilkinson is coming up on one year in his role as leader of the BC Liberal Party and the voice of opposition to a minority government — which he says has not been without its challenges.

In particular, he blasts the Greens for being a “non-party” by always falling in line with the NDP. But the Liberals have yet to offer up much criticism of strategies like the CleanBC climate plan. And how does he justify open discussion of the legislature suspensions scandal amid a criminal investigation?

Excerpts from an interview with Andrew Wilkinson: Looking back over the past year, what are you most proud of? What would you change if you could do it all over again?

The thing that’s worked really well is bringing together our caucus and our party in a way that’s been stronger than I think it has been in years.

People are feeling a real sense of cohesion, a real sense of purpose, and we’ve come together as a great team.

In terms of something to perhaps do better the next time, it’s getting off the ground sooner, I suppose.

I was new in the job as of Feb. 3 and it takes a while to find your feet, but it’s gone really well overall.

The B.C. Liberals haven’t voiced much substantial concern with the CleanBC strategy. What is your main criticism of the climate plan?

The core thing about the climate action plan that the NDP have introduced — with the Greens in their back pocket — is that they’ve talked only about 75 per cent of the changes.

There’s still a quarter of the tonnage of gas they’ve got to get rid of that they haven’t accounted for because they don’t want to talk about how it might actually affect people’s daily lives. Rebates, industry incentives at centre of B.C.’s long-term climate plan They talk in very grand terms but the arithmetic isn’t there; there’s no business plan, there’s no plan to actually execute on this thing.

So it remains to be seen if they’re actually going to deliver anything with this because if they get three-quarters of the way to the finish line, it’s still not there. It’s incomplete.

The NDP and Greens have said it’s not appropriate to discuss the suspensions of the B.C. Legislature’s clerk and sergeant-at-arms because of an ongoing RCMP investigation.

How can you argue that?

That’s true in terms of the actual allegations that might arise against the two individuals who were removed from their positions.

But the auditor general has an overriding obligation to make sure that the financial credibility of British Columbia is intact and that taxpayers are being told the truth about their finances. There are a lot of questions about the legislature right now, and the highhanded behaviour of the speaker has not helped.

NATIONAL

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INDIA

Saturday, December 29, 2018

All vehicles in India to come fitted with high security number plates from April 1, 2019 All motor vehicles will come fitted with tamper-proof high-security registration plates (HSRPs) from April 1 to protect against counterfeiting, Parliament was informed earlier today. “The ministry has notified ... mandating that HSRP including the third registration mark, wherever required, shall be supplied by vehicle manufacturers along with the vehicle manufactured on or after April 1, 2019 to their dealers,” Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari told Lok Sabha in a written reply. Gadkari said the proposal to amend the concerned rule in Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989 and revision of the HSRP Order, 2001 was placed in the public domain for soliciting objections/suggestions and was discussed in a meeting on June 5, 2018.

He said transport department officials of states, representatives from testing agencies

like Automotive Research Association of India, Central Institute of Road Transport, Central Road Research Institute, and Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, attended the meet and supported the proposal.

“HSRPs have certain security features and are protected against counterfeiting. The plates are fastened with non-removable/nonreusable snap lock fitting system,” Gadkari said. Manufacturers or suppliers of HSRPs, if so authorised by the state concerned, may also supply the HSRP for old vehicles after placing the registration mark, he said.

An HSRP is a chromium-based hologram applied by hot stamping on the number plates both at the front and back besides laser-branding of a permanent identification number, an official said. Third registration mark refers to a chromium-based hologram

Why did Modi dodge question on middle class, Rahul asks Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his response to a question at his interaction with BJP workers from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

“Vanakam Puducherry! That’s NaMo’s answer to the struggling middle class. Forget a press conference he can’t even string together a polling booth worker’s conference. BJP-vetted questions is a superb idea. Consider vetted answers as well,” Mr. Gandhi wrote on Twitter. On December 19, a booth worker, who identified himself as Nirmal Kumar Jain, told Mr. Modi at the interaction that though his government was doing a good work, the “middle-class sections feel that the government is collecting all manners of taxes, and are not

getting much relief.” He emphasised that the middle class formed the core of the BJP’s support and the government should look after them. “Thank you, Nirmalji. You are a trader, so it’s normal that you will talk business. I favour taking care of the common people and the common people will be taken care of.

I can assure you,” Mr. Modi replied.

Caught in an unexpected situation, the Prime Minister then turned to the audience and said Chaliye Puducherry ko Vanakam.

As the clip went viral on social media, Mr. Gandhi used it again to question the Prime Minister over his failure to address a press conference after he entered office in May 2014.

India to conduct first test launch of new missile wrapped in secrecy India is all set to conduct the maiden launch of Pralay, a tactical Short Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM) developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under a classified project, Livefist has reported. The missile, which has remained wrapped in secrecy till now, is reportedly capable of carrying a 1000 kg payload to a distance of 350 km. Its range can be increased to 500 km if the payload is halved. Work on it started in 2015 after the Army sought a 500-km range SRBM to go head-to-head against China’s rocket force.

DRDO recently postponed the missile’s maiden test launch due to Cyclone Phethai.

According to a report in The New Indian

Express, the missile will be launched from a mobile canister launcher. The Ministry of Defence may evacuate people residing in three km area of the launching complex. The banks under the prompt corrective action (PCA) framework of the Reserve Bank of India are piling up cash even as the banking system faces a liquidity crisis, The Hindu has reported. Under the PAC framework, banks are facing restrictions on lending. The RBI has put 11 public sector banks under the PCA framework, which have a market share of 25 per cent among commercial banks.

10 ISIS-inspired men arrested by National Investigation Agency The National Investigation Agency (NIA) claimed to have busted a “highly radicalised” suspected IS-inspired terror module “Harkat-Ul-Harb-e-Islam” (war for the cause of Islam) allegedly planning suicide attacks on vital installations, sensitive locations and crowded places in and around Delhi and NCR. The agency arrested 10 suspects in early morning searches across 17 locations in New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh with support of the Anti-Terrorism Squad besides Delhi Police and their UP counterparts. Six persons reportedly associated with the module are being interrogated.

“The members were in an advanced stage of preparation. They were just waiting for the successful assembly of bombs and wanted

to hit multiple locations using remotecontrolled IEDs, fidayeen attacks using suicide vests and pipe bombs,” Alok Mittal, NIA spokesperson and Inspector General, told mediapersons.

A homemade rocket launcher, material for suicide vests, 100 alarm clocks (to be used as timers), 25 kg of bomb-making material like potassium nitrate, potassium chlorate and sulphur were recovered during the raids. A cache of handmade weapons, 12 pistols, hundreds of live bullets rounds, 100 mobile phones, 135 SIM cards and Rs 7.5 lakh in cash were also seized, said Mittal.

Of the 10 arrested, five are from Amroha and the rest from Seelampur and Jafrabad localities of northeast Delhi.

5 parliamentarians resign from Lok Sabha after being elected as lawmakers Three Lok Sabha members, who were elected on the BJP’s ticket, and two Congress parliamentarians have resigned from the lower house after being elected as legislators in state assemblies, according to government notification. The resignations of all the five parliamentarians have been accepted by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

Two Congress leaders Tamradhwaj Sahu and Raghu Sharma resigned after they were elected as lawmakers during recently-held assembly polls in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan

respectively.

Harish Chandra Meena, who won from Dausa parliamentary constituency in Rajasthan as Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate, later joined the Congress and elected as lawmaker in the state assembly elections held earlier this month.

While the other two BJP lawmakers -- Manohar Untwal and Nagendra Singh -- both from Madhya Pradesh, resigned after being elected as MLAs in the recentlyheld state assembly polls in the same state.

21 Women arrested for drinking at kitty party in Surat, foreign-made liquor seized As many as 21 women were arrested for allegedly consuming liquor at a party organised at a hotel here in Gujarat, the police said on Saturday. Police raided the hotel located in Piplod locality of the city late on Friday night after receiving a tipoff about an ongoing liquor party, an Umra police station official said.

The women were part of a kitty party, he said, adding that the police have recovered four empty bottles of IMFL. The women were taken to civil hospital

for blood test after the raid and booked under provisions of Prohibition Law. The women were produced in court on Saturday and were released on bail.

In a separate case, six women and eight men were arrested from an apartment in Athwa Lines in Surat for allegedly consuming liquor, police said.

Under the Gujarat Prohibition Law, manufacture, storage, sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages is a punishable offence.

PUNJAB

Saturday, December 29, 2018

MLA’s daughter disqualified from ‘Sarpanch’ elections political career as a sarpanch in With the post of sarpanch the 1950s. His son and former remaining in the family for minister Chaudhary Jagjit Singh almost three decades, Congress too had opted to be sarpanch MLA from Kartarpur Chaudhary first before taking bigger roles.

Surinder Singh could not gather After the two stalwarts, unanimous support for his Chaudhary Jagjit Singh’s daughter Navinder from his native wife Gurbachan Kaur too village Dhaliwal Qadian. Her remained the sarpanch. In 1980, papers were ultimately withdrawn.

Chaudhary Surinder Singh The village that falls in Jalandhar became sarpanch and remained West block has 1,522 voters, of whom on the post for 18 years. When about 5 per cent are reportedly he became the Zila Parishad settled abroad. Other than Navinder, daughter of Navinder, two more candidates — MLA Surinder Chaudhary chairman, his wife Varinder Kaur too joined the bandwagon.

Ram Kumar, a lyricist, and Mandeep Since the MLA’s elder daughter Yashwinder is Kumar, who has been panch earlier — filed their papers. Since the MLA wanted his daughter to married and her husband is a DSP in Kharar, she win without a contest, he took her papers back. could not contest this time. “My son Damanvir If Navinder, who is a graduate, made it to the was just two months short of being 21, so he was post, she would have been the sixth member ineligible. When I picked my daughter for the of her family to have become the sarpanch of polls, two more people came insisting that they the village. The MLA’s grandfather and former wanted to contest. Then I thought it would be minister Master Gurbanta Singh had started his better to withdraw Navinder’s papers,” he said.

Potato farmers reap heavy losses Bags of potato line up both sides of the road at Alwalpur village in Jandu Singha.

Distressed by glut for the third consecutive season, farmers are unable to find buyers for the produce. In desperation, they are giving away sacks of potatoes for free. At least 12 of them have stopped cultivating the crop. “Either we let the crop rot on village streets or give it away to Gujjars for free,” says a local farmer. In Jandu Singha alone, as many as 10 famers have given up potato farming since they are unable to meet the input cost.

Liquor smuggling from Haryana rising The smuggling of liquor is witnessing a surge through the porous interstate border between Punjab and Haryana in view of the upcoming panchayat elections in Bathinda, Mansa and Muktsar districts. A liquor contractor has even announced a reward of Rs 300 per liquor box for anyone helping in making seizure of illicit liquor being smuggled from Haryana. After the announcement of panchayat elections, the police range, compromising the three districts, has witnessed a record seizure of liquor smuggled from Haryana. This month till December 25, the police have recovered 2,264 boxes of liquor against the recovery of 1,490 boxes last month.

Duty of CEO, DGP to ensure fair poll: HC Punjab and Haryana High Court has put the onus of ensuring transparent and impartial panchayat elections across the state on the state Chief Election Officer and the Director-General of Police.

Acting on a petition alleging political influence in the impending panchayat elections in the state, a Division Bench of the High Court has also ordered videography at the time of counting votes to maintain transparency and fairness in the election process for a gram panchayat in Tarn Taran district.

The directions by the Division Bench of Justice Rajiv Sharma and Justice Harinder Singh Sidhu came on a petition filed against the state of Punjab and other respondents by candidate Manjinder Singh through his counsel Harpreet Singh Brar.

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Won’t tolerate attempts to create rift between communities: CM Amrinder Singh Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said his government will not tolerate anybody trying to create a rift between communities and disturb the state’s secular fabric.

His reaction comes in the background of a statue of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi being vandalised in Ludhiana by some persons on Tuesday.

Singh had claimed that the vandals owed allegiance to opposition Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and had asked its chief Sukhbir Singh Badal to apologise to the people of Punjab for the incident.

In an informal interaction with reporters on the second day of the threeday Shaheedi Jor Mel here, he said Sikh religion propagated communal harmony, which nobody would be allowed to disturb.

Recalling the sacrifice of 10th Sikh Guru Gobind Singh, his youngest sons—Sahibzada Zorawar Singh and Sahibzada Fateh Singh—and his mother Mata Gujri, the chief minister said the peace for which they had laid their lives will be sustained at all costs.

He was responding to questions on the incident in Ludhiana.

Amarinder Singh accused the SAD for the Ludhiana incident and warned it to not to repeat such things, saying there were statues of several senior SAD leaders in various parts of Punjab.

The present Punjab Government is committed and will protect statues of all leaders, he asserted.

36

INDIA

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Train 18 ‘officially’ becomes India’s fastest at 180 kmph / hour Days ahead of flag off, Train 18, India’s first engineless-train, “officially became the fastest train in the country” to travel at a sustained speed of 180 kilometers per hour (kmph) during a trial run, Union Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal said. The train has outsped Gatiman Express which currently holds the record of being the fastest train with a top speed of 160 kmph.

Taking to Twitter, the minister on Wednesday said, “Need for Speed: Train 18 seen cruising at a sustained 180Km/h, officially becoming the fastest train in India.” Need for Speed: Train 18 seen cruising at a sustained 180Km/h, officially becoming the fastest train in India The train, which will replace Shatabdi trains and will run between New Delhi and Varanasi, will be flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra

Modi on December 29. According to the event schedule, the train will start from New Delhi station at 6 am and is expected to reach Varanasi at 2 pm. For the return journey, the train will start at 2.30 pm from Varanasi and reach the national capital at 10.30 pm on the same day.

Manufactured by ICF Chennai at a cost of Rs 100 crore, the gleaming blue-nosed train comes fitted with amenities at par with the best in the world — from on-board WiFi to a GPS-based passenger information system, touch-free bio-vacuum toilets, LED lighting, mobile charging points and a climate control system that adjusts the temperature according to occupancy and weather. The train will have two executive compartments which will have 52 seats each and trailer coaches will have 78 seats each.

India curbs power of Amazon & Walmart to sell products online The Indian government dealt a surprise blow on Wednesday to the e-commerce ambitions of Amazon and Walmart, effectively barring the American companies from selling products supplied by affiliated companies on their Indian shopping sites and from offering their customers special discounts or exclusive products. If strictly interpreted, the new policies could force significant changes in the India strategies of the retail giants.

Amazon might have to stop competing with independent sellers and end its offerings of proprietary products like its Echo smart speakers in India, its top emerging market.

For Walmart, which spent $16 billion this year to buy 77 percent of Flipkart, India’s leading online retailer, the new rules could hamper its strategy of selling clothing and other products under its own private brands and prevent it from using its supply-chain expertise and clout with retailers to drive down prices for Indian consumers.

Representatives for Amazon and Flipkart in India declined to comment on the new rules, saying the companies were still assessing them. The government posted the changes,

which go into effect Feb. 1, without warning on Wednesday evening in New Delhi, while much of the business world in both countries was on vacation. “Ultimately, the customer is going to suffer because Indian sellers are not at the scale where they can provide a good experience to customers,” said Satish Meena, a senior forecaster in New Delhi for Forrester, a global technology research firm.

“This is a very regressive strategy by the government.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India initially courted foreign companies to invest more in the country after his 2014 election victory, but his administration has turned protectionist as his party’s re-election prospects have dimmed in recent months.

Mr. Modi has increasingly sought to bolster Indian firms and curb foreign ones through new policies, including one that requires foreign companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express to store all data about Indians on computers inside the country.

The government has also declared its intention to impose tough new rules on the technology industry.

Cricket fans slam Australian commentator for racist remarks on debutant Mayank Agarwal Mayank Agarwal who became only the second debut Indian batsman to open the innings at the ongoing Test in Australia, joining Amir Elahi at Sydney in 1947, played really well and went onto to become the second Indian opener to score 50 runs on his debut away from home after the great Sunil Gavaskar. While fans from both sides appreciated Agarwal’s knock, Australian commentator and former cricketer Kerry O’Keefe came under fire for

his ‘racist’ remarks. Doing commentary for Fox Sports, along side Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, during the third Test match between India and Australia, O’Keefe remarked that the triple century that Agarwal had scored earlier in the Ranji Trophy, came against some team like ‘Canteen XI’, where the bowlers were some chefs and waiters. He was also critical of India’s domestic cricket scene, and even Waugh was heard saying that 50 runs for India is 40 runs for Australia.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

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SOUTH ASIA

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Bangladesh gov’t not happy with US embassy’s statement Sheikh Hasina government is unhappy with the US embassy in Dhaka as the embassy issued a press release criticising Bangladesh for failing to issue visa and credentials to members of an UN funded NGO to work as election observer for the next elections.

Members of ANFREL NGOs are yet to get the visa for which US embassy criticizing

Sri Lankan President hints 2019 may be the election year

Dhaka as the members of that NGO cancelled their trip to Bangladesh.

Govt officials felt this as an intrusion in internal affairs of Bangladesh.

For which Bangladesh foreign ministry has also issued a statement on its website describing it as a disheartening act and thus there had been a war of words between the two countries.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has held a meeting with his party’s electoral organisers, fuelling speculation that the SLPF Chairman, who was recently at the centre of an unprecedented political standoff, may be hoping for a possible presidential re-run in 2019.

The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLPF) organisers were summoned on Monday for the special meeting at the President’s house and were briefed about the party’s future plans and restructuring activities.

“We discussed the party’s future reform drive which will be kick started in January,” said party’s general secretary Rohana Laxman. “The president told the organisers

that they need to be dedicated to the reform programme,” Laxman said.

Sirisena could call a snap presidential election after January 8 next year.

Courts in Pakistan prosecute dozens of death sentences ‘are funded by UK’ British taxpayers are funding prosecutions in Pakistan that have led to dozens of death sentences, according to newly disclosed details of a secretive UK aid programme.

The documents reveal that the Foreign Office is supporting specialist civilian courts that prosecute terrorist suspects in what the UK government’s global security strategy calls a “rule of law” programme in Pakistan.

They reveal that the UK government has supported the project since 2016, during which time the courts have handed down 59 death sentences, some of which are likely to be unsafe convictions.

A parliamentary response last week said the UK government had spent £10.39m on the Pakistan programme, the bulk of the money – £9.32m – coming from the overseas aid budget.

One strand of the project, the “counter terrorism associated prosecutorial reforms initiative” (Capri) “aims to increase Pakistan’s

India takes over operations of strategic Chabahar Port, can bypass Pakistan on way to Afghanistan

civilian capacity to investigate, detain, prosecute and try terrorists in line with international standards and human rights norms”. However legal charity Reprieve says it is impossible for the UK support civilian terrorism courts in Pakistan in accordance with international law because the courts do not meet recognised standards.

Campaigners for Reprieve say death sentences are imposed for offences such as kidnapping, despite international law prohibiting the death sentence for anything but murder. Pakistan’s anti-terrorism act defines terrorism as any crime or threat designed to create a “sense of fear or insecurity in society” – leading to prosecutions of people who have no connection with extremism.

The UN Human Rights Committee said last year that it “remains concerned by the very broad definition of terrorism” and “absence of procedural safeguards”.

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India formally took over operations at Chabahar port in Iran, giving a major boost to the country’s efforts to support war-torn Afghanistan, people familiar with developments said.

New Delhi’s efforts to develop the port, which allows India to ship supplies to Afghanistan while bypassing Pakistan, received a fillip recently when Washington exempted Chabahar from Iran-related sanctions in November.

Iran formally handed over the port to India during a first meeting of the followup committee for the implementation of the Chabahar Agreement between Iran, Afghanistan, and India in the port city Tehran.

The Indian side at the meeting was led by joint secretary (Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran) Deepak Mittal of the external affairs ministry, while

the Iranian team was led by Mohammad Ali Hassanzadeh, the deputy head of the Ports and Maritime Organisation, the people said.

“This is a major step forward in India’s efforts to support Afghanistan and also for regional cooperation,” an official in New Delhi said.

Behrouz Aqaei, director general of SistanBaluchestan Ports and Maritime Organisation, was quoted by Irna news agency as saying that India Ports Global Limited (IPGL) has “officially started to run Shahid Beheshti port in Chabahar” and the company’s major tasks include loading and unloading operations, procurement and marketing. The meeting discussed matters such customs tariffs, promoting customs transactions and rail transit, and the transportation process, Aqaei said.

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SOUTH ASIA

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Election campaign attacks biggest fear for Bangladesh elections New clashes marred the deadly Bangladesh election campaign on Wednesday as opposition leaders stepped up complaints over the organisation of what they consider a onesided vote. Youths on motorbikes carrying a banner of the ruling Awami League attacked an opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party candidate with knives, hours after a BNP leader was wounded in clashes between rival party activists, police said. Habibur Rahman Habib, a BNP candidate for parliament, was attacked by 15 men on motorbikes in the northern town of Ishwardi on Wednesday, according to police.

Bangladesh EC allows hardline Islamist party to contest election

“He was hacked three times on his thigh. He was grievously injured but is out of danger,” local police chief Bahauddin Faruqi told AFP. Late Tuesday, senior BNP leader Goyeshwar Roy was injured as BNP and Awami League activists clashed in Dhaka district, police superintendent S.M. Shafiur Rahman told AFP. Media images showed blood pouring down Roy’s face. The campaign for Sunday’s vote has seen daily confrontations between supporters of the two main parties, which has further soured their bitter constitutional showdown.

Another tsunami & volcano alert in Indonesia Indonesia on Thursday raised the danger alert level for a volcano that sparked a killer tsunami at the weekend, after previously warning that fresh activity at the crater threatened to trigger another deadly wave.

Authorities also widened a no-go zone around Anak Krakatoa to five kilometres (three miles) -- up from a previous two kilometres—and warned shell-shocked residents to stay away from the coast, after more than 400 were killed by Saturday night’s killer wave.

Plumes of ash burst into the sky as pyroclastic flows—hot gas and other volcanic material—flowed down the crater, raising the risk of rough seas for boats in the vicinity.

Authorities raised the crater’s status to high alert, the second-highest danger warning, while aviation officials ordered flights to be redirected away from the area.

“We’ve raised the status of (the volcano) since this morning because there’s been a change in the eruption pattern,” Kus Hendratno, a senior official at the Krakatoa observatory, told AFP

Thursday. The new flows posed no immediate danger to area towns as the volcano sits in the middle of the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra islands. But the status change sparked new fears with many local residents already scared and refusing to return to their

communities over fears of another tsunami.

“This worries me,” said Ugi Sugiarti, a cook at the Augusta Hotel in hard-hit Carita. “I’ve already left.” Sukma, a security guard at the shattered Mutiara Carita Cottages, added: “Just please pray for us and that everything will be okay.”

Bangladesh’s Election Commission on Sunday allowed Jamaat-e-Islami, a crucial ally of jailed former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Opposition BNP, to contest the December 30 general elections, two months after it scraped the fundamentalist party’s registration.

The Jamaat will contest from 25 seats in the parliamentary polls with ‘sheaf of paddy’, the electoral symbol of the BNP. “The Commission does not have a legal option to cancel their (Jamaat leaders) candidacies. Their candidatures will, therefore, stay in place,” EC secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed told reporters here.

The EC’s decision came after the High Court earlier this week directed it to swiftly decide on a plea of 25 leaders of the unregistered party to

contest the election as independent candidates on behalf of their alliance partners.

On October 29, the EC formally scrapped Jamaat’s registration as a political party in compliance with an order of the Supreme Court. A high court bench in 2013 declared Jamaat’s registration with the EC illegal on a writ petition filed by several Islamic groups, saying the party’s ideology was contrary to Bangladesh’s Constitution.

The Supreme Court upheld the high court judgment when Jamaat challenged the verdict in the apex court. The hardline Islamist party, however, is now in a dilapidated state with most of its senior leaders executed in the past five years after being convicted by special tribunals on 1971 war crimes charges.

US offers safety & job security to Taliban in Afghanistan: report US is eager to persuade the Taliban to join the peace process in Afghanistan and is offering a safety network that includes job opportunities for the insurgents, a media report said on Thursday.

As the US, Pakistan, China, Russia and other world powers expedite efforts to encourage the Taliban to join the Afghan peace process the US Defence Department has also outlined a plan for rehabilitating the rebels in a new Afghanistan, the Dawn reported.

“Although some members of the Taliban may be weary of fighting and ready to lay down their weapons, they will only rejoin society if they believe their safety and the safety of their families are guaranteed, and if they have an opportunity to earn enough money to provide for their families,” the report said, quoting a Pentagon plan sent to Congress this week, along with the proposals for addressing US security concerns and the interests of Afghanistan’s neighbours.

The Pentagon, however, notes that while local leaders are developing programmes that may offer a path to peace on a small scale, “The Afghan government has not developed a national reintegration programme,” it said.

Eager to persuade Taliban to join the Afghan peace process, the US is offering them a safety network that includes creating job opportunities for the insurgents, the report said. While the Trump administration appears keen to start withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, the Pentagon advocates maintaining enough troops in Afghanistan to force the Taliban to join peace talks.

Over the past 16 months, the US and its allies have used military force to drive Taliban towards “a durable and inclusive political settlement”, report said.

This selective method persuaded the Taliban to accept ‘Eid ul Fitr ceasefire’ in June.

Even though the Taliban did not publicly accept the second ceasefire offer.

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FIJI

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Parents of gunned down officer travel back to California from Fiji after hearing tragic news It was a difficult way to finish Boxing Day for the Singh family of Naitata, Navua after receiving news of their son, Ronil Singh being shot in the line of duty in California.

Singh’s parents who were in Fiji till last

night for the festive season are currently travelling back to Newman, California after receiving the tragic news.

Speaking to Fijivillage, Singh’s cousin Shivy Singh says that Ronil Singh who attended Vashist Muni Memorial Primary School and Vashist Muni College had

moved to the United States of America after completing his Form 6 Education.

She says that Singh always had the dream of becoming a Police Officer and worked hard to complete his education in Criminal Justice before joining the Newman Police Department in 2011.

Shivy has revealed that once Singh’s parents arrive in California they will they be able to confirm funeral details for the late Newman police Officer.

Sad news to report: Newman police Officer Ronil Singh has been shot dead during a traffic stop, according to the Stanislaus County sheriff ’s department.

Investigators need your help finding this suspected gunman and the Dodge truck he was seen in.

Gov’t housing project for the ‘rich, not poor’ People living at Jittu Estate in Raiwaqa, Suva have labelled the Lagilagi Housing Project as an initiative to provide homes for the rich and not the poor.

A team from this newspaper visited families in the area who are still waiting for their flats from the People’s Community Network.

It’s been five years since the project was opened by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and hundreds of families are still waiting for their chance of getting a decent home. Luisa Madden, 50, claimed her husband was informed by the network’s national director that they would be given the keys to their flat a few weeks ago and that they had saved about $20,000 with the network.

“We were all looking forward to getting our keys and to celebrate Christmas in our new flat.

But on the day we went to get our keys, we were informed that our flat was reserved for someone else. “I was in Taveuni with my children to spend the holidays when my husband called me to come to Suva because PCN was going to give us the keys to our flat, but when I got here they came up with a lot of excuses,” she claimed. PCN national director Semiti Qalowasa said they weren’t able to give the Madden family the flat they had requested because it wasn’t available.

“For the Madden family, I had put them in one of the two-bedroom flats, but I think they didn’t want it because they wanted the threebedroom flat. They should understand we don’t have three-bedroom flats available at the moment,” he claimed.

Woman’s body found in Suva considered homicide Police have now classified the case of the woman whose body was found in Muanikau in Suva on Monday as murder.

This is after the post mortem examination was done.

The woman was reported missing by her father last Sunday after she left home last Saturday and failed to return home.

Investigations continue.

Prime Minister taken to hospital for check-up There is nothing wrong with Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

This was confirmed to media by the permanent secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office, Yogesh Karan, in the last hour.

Mr Karan said the PM was taken for some observations at the MIOT Pacific Hospital and was home now.

He said Mr Bainimarama needed

some rest as he had been on duty travel a lot.

“There is nothing wrong with him. Nothing to be worried about,” Mr Karan said.

Bainimarama is sports enthusiast, with a particular passion for rugby and athletics; he became president of the Fiji Rugby Union on 31 May 2014.

PM Voreqe Bainimarama

Cane farm fire damages Rarawai, Vatukoula, Tavua transmission line A canefarm fire has burnt and damaged a wooden power pole that supports the high voltage 33,000 volts Rarawai – Vatukoula – Tavua transmission line.

In a statement, Energy Fiji Limited (EFL) said the power pole poses an imminent safety risk and needs to be replaced immediately.

The EFL team will be replacing the power pole with a new pole from 4:00pm to mid-night today, Wednesday 29th August, 2018.

“In order to carry out the emergency repairs, we will need to de-energise this 33,000 volts Rarawai – Vatukoula – Tavua transmission line.” This will affect the power supply to customers in the following areas:

Tagitagi Area, Maqere, Qelela, Waikona, Matalevu, Yasiyasi, Whole of Tavua Town Area, Tavua Hospital, Higgins Depot, Yaladro, Malele, Davota, Balata, Toko, Matanigata, Vatukoula, MR Dayal Factory, Vuqele, Masimasi, Vunivaivai, Koro No 1&2, South Ridge Repeater, Korovou Weir, Taunabe Village, Nadarivatu, Nadala, Navai, Korosoi, Waimoqi, Yauyau, Soroni, Wainiqia, Tavurase, Lovo, Wailailai Settlement, Waidradra, Navosalailai, Vatusogo, Nadrano, Naga, Ravoravo, Nadrau, Nabawaqa, Naiyaca, Lewa, Lewavou, Buyabuya, Drala, Koro Village, Portal House, FSC Rakiraki, Part of Rakiraki interconnector, Natokita Settlement, Togovere,

Gov’t blamed for housing delay The delay of the Lagilagi Housing Project at Jittu Estate in Raiwaqa, Suva is on the Government, says People’s Community Network (PCN) national director Semiti Qalowasa.

His comments came after residents of Veiquwawa settlement and Yararata settlement were unhappy with what they claimed to be false promises by PCN to provide them with decent homes once the project was completed. Mr Qalowasa claimed they were waiting for a $1.2 million funding from Government to complete phase 2 of the project before they began works on phase 3.

There are about six phases in the project which will consist of 10,000 flats, Mr Qalowasa said. “As much as we want to accommodate them into these flats, the problem is Government. They are late in funding. People should know that it’s not us who are moving in families from outside of Jittu Estate into those flats, that is the list from Government.

“These are families that lost their homes in fires and Government relocated them to these flats so we can’t do anything about it.”

Mr Qalowasa said they were trying to accommodate families from the two settlements.

“I do understand their frustration after raising their hopes. The problem is we only have two-bedroom flats available for phase two and some of them don’t want it because they want three-bedroom flats so I can’t do much about it,” he said.

Mr Qalowasa said they were looking at issuing eviction notices to families living in the flats that have failed to make their payments to PCN as per the housing agreement.

“We have defaulters in those flats and we have given a grace period to update their payments, but they fail to do so. Our plan now is to issue a notice for them to move out so that we can move in those other families into the flats,” he said.

PAKISTAN

Saturday, December 29, 2018

41

In view of Joint Former president Zardari placed under Exit Control List (ECL) as fake bank accounts probe continues the Supreme Court Investigation Team (JIT) Minister Murad Ali Shah, and 168 more people the national exchequer will be recovered,” said stated that government resources were used for report on fake bank accounts, the federal on the Exit Control List (ECL).

Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry money laundering. The JIT report indicting government has decided to place former The decision was taken during a meeting of while addressing a press conference after Zardari, Omni group “It is not the old Pakistan president Asif Zardari, his sister Faryal, the federal cabinet on Thursday. “They will be attending the meeting.

Federal Minister where two big fish compromise and live Party chairman Bilawal Zardari, Sindh Chief held accountable and each and every penny of Chaudhry Fawad hoped that Zardari would happily,” said the information minister. “From take Joint Investigation report seriously. outside the corrupt are laughing, but from the “The accountability process will continue inside, they are crying.” When asked about the 7-year-jail for former PM Sharif in notorious Al-Azizia corruption case without any fear,” said the information minister, arrest of Zardari before December 31, Fawad Former disqualified prime minister National Accountability Bureau (NAB). adding that after the JIT report was submitted, Chaudhry said, “Inshallah”.

The court also ordered Sharif ’s properties Nawaz Sharif was shifted to Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail amid tight security on Tuesday, to be seized, and imposed a fine of $25 British-Pakistani man convicted of trying to join ISIS a day after anti-corruption court sentenced million in the Steel Mill case, according to A British-Pakistani man who made plans when he arrived in Libya. former PM to seven years in prison in media reports. Judge Muhammad Arshad to join the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group is “The idea was that Rahman would kill the Al-Azizia corruption case linked to the Malik of accountability court had reserved facing a lengthy jail term aft er he was convicted prime minister and Imran would subsequently the judgment last week. Sharif had said high-profile Panama of preparing an act of terrorism by a court have a video from a martyr recommending he prior to the judgment Papers. Sharif, 69, was here on Thursday. Mohammad Aqib Imran, be accepted into the terrorist organisation. that his conscience sentenced to seven a 22-year-old from Birmingham, was arrested Such a video would have held weight with was clear. “I do not years of rigorous after an investigation into his friend, 20-yearDaesh (ISIS),” said Acting Commander for have any sort of fear; imprisonment in old British-Bangladeshi Naa’imur Rahman, the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism my conscience is clear.

Al-Azizia Steel Mills who was earlier this year convicted of a plot to Command, Alexis Boon. “Of course, this I have done nothing corruption case but kill Prime Minister Theresa May. was never going to happen because MI5 and that would force me was acquitted in the While Imran was not charged in relation to the Counter Terrorism Command had been to bow my head. (I) Flagship Investments that assassination plot, police identified that investigating the pair for some time and in have always served the case by National they had been interacting online and met on fact a covert police officer had been meeting country and this nation Accountability two occasions. Rahman recorded a “sponsor” with Rahman to establish how serious his According to jail administration, Nawaz Sharif with absolute honesty,” Bureau. Former Prime video and sent it to Imran to show terrorists plans were,” he said. is provided with “better class” facilities. he had said. As per Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif has been sentenced to 7 years reports, Sharif could not prove his source Pakistan & UK sign treaty of prisoners swap in jail in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills graft of income for the ownership of a steel mill their sentences in their case. He has been acquitted in the Flagship in Saudi Arabia. The court convicted him to British High home country.

Investments case related to the Panama 10 years in prison in September on charges Commissioner Thomas State Minister for the Drew and Interior papers scandal, but a fine of Rs1.5 billion connected to the purchase of properties in Interior Shehryar Afridi Secretary Azam was imposed. The cases were filed by the London. and Special Assistant Suleman Khan signed to the Prime Minister UK-Pakistan Prisoner Militant wanted in Chinese conusulate office attack killed in Afghanistan on Accountability Transfer Agreement on Aslam Achu the militant with seven other were killed Thursday.

Shazad Akbar were also mastermind behind the and three wounded in suicide present.

The federal The agreement means attack on Chinese consulate attack over his residence prisoners of both the cabinet approved the offices in Karachi was killed in Kandahar. Achu was at countries will serve their treaty on swapping British High Commissioner in Islamabad in Kandahar along with his the house along with his sentences in their home Thomas Drew signing the treaty with Secretary prisoners with England companion on Tuesday. accomplices at the time of the country. Drew called it in early November this Interior Azam Suleman Khan.

According to media reports, attack. He was the mastermind an “important step” for year.

Aslam Achu (pictured) behind the attack on Chinese both countries.

Pakistan signs the declaration with UK Kareem Mari, Taju, Rostu, and Fareed along consulate offices in Karachi.

An important step for both countries, which in effort to bring looted wealth and money will allow prisoners of each country to serve cheaters back home.

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Saturday, December 29, 2018

Car crash kills 3 of Indian origin family in Iceland Seven members of a UK-based NRI family were involved in a freak accident in Iceland when their SUV crashed off a bridge on Thursday, killing two women and a child.

Four others, including two British Indian brothers and two young children, remain in critical condition after being airlifted to a hospital in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik.

Three siblings from Telangana killed in house fire in US two days before Christmas

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Three siblings from Telangana, who were missionary students, were killed in a house fire in the United States on Sunday, just two days before Christmas. The children — identified as Aaron Naik (17), Sharron (14) and Joy (15) (pictured) were guests of the Coudriet family for the holidays. They were killed along with 46-year-old Kari Coudriet, the owner of the house, in the suburb of Memphis, Tennessee, news agency UNI reported. A Facebook post by the Town of French Camp confirmed the tragedy. “Friends and family, please pray for Pastor Naik and his wife. They sent their three precious children to America from India to keep them safe, and during the break, a fire took their lives,” it read.

The missionary town also said the children “have been a blessing to the French Camp community and are loved by our whole town.

I cannot fathom the grief of their parents as I

know how much our town is grieving”.

A statement by the Coudriets’ church, the Collierville Bible Church, said only two persons — Kari’s husband Daniel Coudriet and their youngest son Cole — were able to run out of the house and survived.

Urging people to donate for emergency flight expenses and other costs, the church said the parents were on their way to the US and were yet to learn all the details of the tragedy.

British home secretary defends deportation of grooming gang members in October about “sick Asian paedophiles” in British home secretary, Sajid Javid, defends a Huddersfield gang. Javid told Today: “I’m potential deportation of convicted grooming very much aware of the need for politicians gang members to Pakistan even if it risks them to be careful with language as well as what reoffending. Speaking to the media, Javid they do. When it comes to gang-based child said stripping offenders of British citizenship exploitation it is self-evident to anyone who would happen only in extreme cases involving cares to look that if you look at all the recent individuals with dual nationality. high-profile cases there is a high proportion of He was pressed on the issue by the men that are of Pakistani heritage.” Ignoring programme’s guest editor, the Pakistani-British this, he added, would fuel extremists. “Let’s writer Kamila Shamsie, who pointed out that not ignore it when we are trying to work out the lack of sex offender registers in Pakistan what might be the causes. There would make it easier for offenders could be some cultural reasons, deported from the UK to repeat their from the communities that those crimes.

Javid responded: “I’m the men came from that could lead British home secretary. My job is to to this type of behaviour. “If I protect the British public.” Seeking had ignored it, or had been seen to clarify, Shamsie asked: “If you are to ignore it, that is exactly what sending members of grooming gangs I think extremists would like to to Pakistan, knowing that there is not see in this country. It would give a sex offenders registry, what they do them oxygen and I refuse to do there is not anything to do with you?”

British home secretary, that.” Javid also highlighted the Sajid Javid said: “My job is to Sajid Javid benefits of immigration. “It might protect the British public.”

In sound strange coming from a home secretary August, three members of a Rochdale grooming – I’m a big fan of immigration and what it gang, who had Pakistani backgrounds, lost means for our country, in terms of how it an appeal against a decision to strip them of makes us stronger … I see people all the time their British citizenship. Javid, who was born today and they really don’t care if their doctor in Rochdale, was asked whether he took such is of Pakistani origin, what they care about is cases personally. He said: “When I heard about that they are getting a good service and these grooming gangs where almost every individual are people that they do really see as British. I involved is of Pakistani heritage, I can’t help do think society has changed very positively noting that. But I can’t helping noting the fact like that.” He said Islam was compatible with that Rochdale is a town that means something British values. “There are many Muslims that to me and I’m also of Pakistani heritage.” He I know who are very devout ... that are model faced criticism over a Twitter message he posted citizens in terms of what they do their job,

NRI girl who planned to livestream suicide online rescued in Sharjah A 20-year-old Indian girl in Sharjah, upset over comments mocking her picture on social media, planned to commit suicide and livestream it, but was saved in time by the police.

According to media reports on Saturday, the cyber crime patrols of the Dubai Police notified their counterparts in Sharjah about a message circulating in the social media wherein a girl had declared that she would commit suicide and make a live video of it during midnight on Friday. Police officials said that the girl, who was not named, was severely depressed after being trolled and cyber bullied on social media

that drove her on the brink of suicide.

The Sharjah Police swung into action to save the girl. It managed to identify the source and location from where the message was sent.

The police officers and patrols department reached the girl’s flat in Sharjah’s Al Nahda area. They told the girl’s father about her plans to kill herself. When they entered the girl’s room, she was apparently preparing herself to end her life, the report said. The police said they calmed her down and told her they were there to help her. The girl was later given psychological support and counselling.

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