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Metro Snapshot: April 6, 2009 – Metro US

Metro Snapshot: April 6, 2009

MISSILE FIZZLE: President Barack Obama faced his first global security crisis as the U.S. and its allies sought punishment for North Korea’s defiant
launch of a rocket
that apparently fizzled into the Pacific, holding an
emergency UN meeting in response to the “provocative act” that some
believe was a long-range missile test.

ROWDY OVER MULRONEY: Prime Minster Stephen Harper faced a party unity crisis as party members bickered behind closed doors over Brian Mulroney – the former prime minister who divides them still. MPs
and senators feuded privately over the Harper government’s treatment of
the former leader as a public inquiry begins looking into his business
dealings with arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber. Some are now going
public.

STOP, I HAVE A STOP SIGN: Warding off suspected pirates and coming to the aid of Somali refugees
was all in a weekend’s work for the crew of the Canadian Navy’s HMCS
Winnipeg. “The
helicopter actually has a large ‘Stop’ sign, written in Somali, and
they were able to hang it out the cargo door next to the C-6
machine-gun,” Baines said in a telephone interview. “As soon as the (suspected) pirates saw the sign, they immediately stopped what they were doing.”

CANADIAN KIDNAPPED: A Canadian and a French woman from
International Medical Aid (Aide Medicale Internationale) were seized
late Saturday along with two Sudanese security guards, who were later
released in Ed al-Fursan in South Darfur, said Gen. Fatah al-Rahman,
police chief in South Darfur. Two foreign aid workers, one of them a Canadian, have been kidnapped in
the Darfur region of Sudan
, their France-based employer and Sudanese
officials said Sunday.

EXECUTION CHARGES EXECUTED: Police laid more charges Saturday in the execution of six men in an
apartment
in 2007, a horrific crime that awoke residents in the
Vancouver area to the ugly reality of the brutal gang war that
continues to be waged on their streets.

PAY IT BACKWARD DAY: More than 600 Torontonians lined up at a Queen Street West coffee shop
Saturday to buy a cup of joe for the person behind them, breaking the
record of 490 people set in Seattle in 2007.

DISCLOSURE: The guilty verdict for a Hamilton man convicted of killing two women
through the transmission of HIV sets a bad precedent and will cause
HIV-positive people to think twice about disclosing their status
, the
man’s lawyer said Sunday.

ITALYQUAKE: A powerful earthquake struck central Italy early Monday, killing at
least 20 people, causing entire blocks of buildings to collapse as
residents slept inside and leaving thousands of people homeless,
officials said.

DEFENDING THEIR RESPONCE: Even if police officers had immediately entered the immigrant centre
where a gunman had just shot 13 people, the victims’ injuries were so
severe that none would have survived
, a county prosecutor said Sunday. The
shooting at the American Civic Association stopped shortly after the
first 911 calls came in at 10:30 a.m. Friday, but police didn’t enter
the building until nearly 45 minutes later.

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO: The European Space Agency is warning that a massive ice shelf anchored
to the Antarctic coast by a narrow and quickly deteriorating ice bridge
could break away soon.