HELICOPTER DOWN: An overnight rescue operation was underway after a helicopter ferrying 18 people to offshore oil rigs on Newfoundland’s Grand Banks ditched into the Atlantic. One survivor was plucked from the water, another body was recovered and searchers had located two empty life rafts bobbing in the frigid waters.
BANKER BLUES: TD Bank released one of the gloomiest reports yet on the current economic downturn, predicting that half a million Canadians will be thrown out of their jobs, corporate profits will tumble and household wealth will endure a sharp decline during what is destined to be a long and painful recession. The report also contradicted government claims that Canada will lead the U.S. and the rest of the world out of the recession.
FAST-TRACKED BUDGET: The Liberal-dominated Senate quickly passed a budget implementation bill after an abrupt change of course from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff said he made the call after a Liberal senator discovered that some Employment Insurance claimants would be deprived of an extra five weeks of benefits if the bill wasn’t passed immediately.
LEGAL PRECEDENT: Branded by the judge as “a willing and eager participant” in jihadist schemes, Momin Khawaja was sentenced to 10 1/2 years in prison — the first sentence to handed down under the Canada Anti-Terrorism Act. The Ottawa software engineer was convicted of five charges of financing and facilitating terrorism connected to training camps in Pakistan, as well as a plot hatched by a group of British extremists.
The Tories resurrected a dormant anti-terror law that grants authorities extraordinary powers of preventative detention, as well as permitting judges to compel testimony at investigative hearings. Denounced by civil libertarians, the law succumbed to a five-year sunset clause in March 2007.
WATCHMEN: A report into the escape of six inmates from a Regina jail revealed that the escapees toiled away at their plan for four months and dozens of corrections workers failed to take notice. Citing a “significant staff failure,” the report detailed how the inmates dug a hole through a facility wall using a modified nail clipper and other makeshift tools.
TRIGGER MEN: The psychological profile of a German teen whose shooting rampage left 16 people dead began to emerge as officials struggled to authenticate a chat room message that purportedly warned of the massacre. Investigators described 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer as a withdrawn young man who had recently cut off psychiatric treatment for depression.
Tiny Samson, Alabama was also coming to grips with its own deadly rampage, with many residents wondering what prompted one of their own to murder 10 people before turning the gun on himself after a shootout with police. Authorities said Michael McLendon had trouble holding down a job in recent years and had left behind a list of people he though had wronged him.
