Prior to this month, inmates at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre could make free telephone calls.
However, the jail sometimes didn’t know who inmates were calling or whether they were threatening witnesses.
That all changed at the beginning of June in a controversial step that has upset legal aid lawyers in the Yukon.
The jail installed a system that requires inmates to pay at least $1.35 to make telephone calls from their daily earnings that range from $1.50 to $6.50.
All public calls will now be recorded, except for legal and privileged calls.
Legal aid lawyers and access-to-justice advocates say this policy will prevent inmates from making calls to access legal aid lawyers because of the cost.
Yukon’s legal aid director, Nils Clarke, was not available to speak to the Star on Tuesday, but last week he told the Yukon News that the user telephone system is “utterly perverse.”
“At its worst, they wouldn’t even be able to apply for legal aid because they wouldn’t be able to call us,” Clarke said.
However, Dan Cable, spokesman for the Yukon Department of Justice, defends the user-fee phone system.
He said there are only about 60 to 65 inmates on remand at any given time so the call volume is low.
In addition, Cable said this:
“The indigent phone policy allows for the Whitehorse Correctional Centre to provide a pre-paid phone card charged by the centre for three free calls which can be added to by the Centre should the inmate need it. Inmate phone cards and indeed inmate bank accounts can have money placed into them by family or friends and this has long been a policy of the centre.”
Cable also said that detained inmates are entitled to one free call upon admittance to the correctional centre.
Inmates are also able to make collect calls.
Other free calls can be made to other government services, but not to legal aid lawyers.
Those legal aid lawyers argue they should be exempted as well.
Cable said the issue over charging inmates also relates to fairness bad credit payday advance.
“Inmates are charged for phone use because inmates should not receive a benefit that the general public does not receive,” Cable told the Star in an email. “If an average citizen needs to make a call to a friend or a lawyer, they have to pay for that call.”
Before implementing the secure system, other jurisdictions were consulted on their inmate telephone policies, Cable said.
Prices for making local calls range from $1 to $2.50 and three provinces — Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick — charge inmates for legal calls, Cable added.
In May 2012, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews announced broad measures to make prisoners pay more for telephone calls and room and board as a step to save taxpayers $10 million a year.
However, Cable said the new phone system is not related to the federal initiative.
The new jail in Whitehorse was completed in 2012 at a cost of $75.3 million.
Criminal justice advocate Catherine Latimer, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, argues the government is off-loading costs to those who are “least able to pay.”
This discourages contact between families and loved ones, she told the Star.
She said the John Howard Society gets complaints from inmates and their families about the cost of telephone services.
The issue over inmate telephone calls has also sparked debate in the United States.
The Federal Communications Commission has stated that tens of thousands of consumers have written the FCC pleading for relief on interstate long-distance rates from correctional facilities.
A report by the Prison Policy Initiative, a research group based in Massachusetts, found that in the United States a 15-minute call can cost the family as little as $2.36 or as much as $17.
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A online cash advance is a service provided by most credit card and charge card issuers.
Pacific Investment Management Co. and HSBC Global Asset Management see opportunity in the Indian rupee
Payday loans no faxing fall on the less risky side simply because the money loaned to you is a percentage of your next paycheck.
One resident of the home where Mayor Rob Ford was photographed with murder victim Anthony Smith has been convicted of trafficking cocaine.
Another was found guilty of possessing a prohibited weapon.
In 2011, Elena Johnson, the 51-year-old daughter of homeowner Lina Basso, was convicted of trafficking in cocaine.
Her brother, Fabio Basso, was convicted in 2005 of possessing a prohibited weapon.
Neighbours of 15 Windsor Rd. said Johnson, who lives at the house with her elderly mother and brothers Fabio, 45, and Mario Basso, 40, is known to have drug problems. Police frequently visit the address, which is notorious for drugs, according to people who live in the area.
Officers were at the Etobicoke home on May 21, the same night a 27-year-old man was shot in the leg at a nearby highrise on Dixon Rd.
Police were called to the Windsor Rd. address about 11 p.m. for an assault, police spokesman Mark Pugash said Thursday. A man had forced his way inside the house and assaulted two people with a weapon. He fled on foot eastbound on Kingsview. Blvd.
A Toronto EMS spokesperson confirmed that a man and woman living in the area were taken to hospital with “very minor injuries” at the same time as the Windsor Rd. incident.
No arrests have been made.
It’s not clear whether there’s a link between the highrise shooting and the Windsor Rd. assault. The Star has been told by police the shooting was accidental.
It’s been almost three weeks since the Star revealed two reporters had seen a video of the mayor appearing to smoke crack cocaine and uttering a homophobic slur.
Sources later told the Star that Ford blurted out to staff the video could be located in an apartment on the 17th floor of 320 Dixon Rd. — the same floor where the shooting occurred, according to sources.
Ford has denied he smokes crack cocaine and that the video exists.
The image of Ford in front of the Basso house with three young men is not part of the video, but was provided to the Star by men attempting to sell the video. Two of the men in the picture were shot outside a nightclub in March. One victim, Anthony Smith, was killed while the other was shot in the arm and back but survived.
In the weeks since the Star located the house in the photo, reporters have tried to speak to the residents of 15 Windsor Rd low fee pay day loans. on numerous occasions. Johnson called Star reporters “scavengers.” Fabio Basso refused to comment when approached by the Star while leaving a TD Canada Trust bank. He jumped on a bike and peddled away, turning back to give an obscene gesture.
Fabio went to high school with Ford, according to friend David Profitt.
In 2005, Fabio was convicted of possessing a spring-activated knife, a prohibited weapon. He was fined $250. In the same incident, he was charged with stealing “a quantity of Brad Nails” from a Home Depot. That charge was withdrawn.
And in January 2012, court records show he was arrested after stealing “multiple blu-ray DVDs and TV wall mounts” from a Walmart store and defrauding the company “of fabric softener.” The theft charge was withdrawn the next month, but Fabio Basso paid a $500 fine in connection with the fraud.
Johnson was charged with the cocaine trafficking offence in February 2006, pleaded guilty in March 2011 and was given a suspended sentence and six months’ probation. On the same day, she also pleaded guilty to stealing a lipstick from The Bay in a different 2006 incident.
The rundown bungalow is on a pleasant street of well-kept homes.
In 2011, concerns about people with drugs and guns leaving the Dixon Rd. apartment building and walking north onto Windsor Rd. led to a request to ward councillor Doug Ford to close the walkway.
“Windsor Road residents maintain that the presence of this pedestrian connection aggravates crime and vandalism in the area, and have asked the Ward Councillor to have it closed,” a city report from October 2011 states.
The walkway was closed. The report to the city noted that about 300 children attending schools in the area typically used the walkway from the Dixon Rd. apartments.
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American-born Bollywood actress Jiah Khan is reported to have committed suicide in Mumbai on Monday night.
The 25-year-old, who grew up in London, hanged herself at home, the Times of India reported. It quoted sources saying the actress was struggling with depression.
Indian media quoted unnamed police sources as saying no suicide note was found. They did not report on how or when the death was ruled as suicide.
The actress, whose real name is Nafisa, debuted in Hindi-language cinema in 2007 opposite Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan, 70. The film Nishabd, was controversial for its portrayal of illicit relationship between the two cash advance no faxing.
Her death was greeted with shock and sadness in the acting fraternity.
Bachchan tweeted, “WHAT …!!! Jiah Khan ??? what has happened ? is this correct ? unbelievable !!!”
Actor Arshad Warsi tweeted, “Shocked to hear about Jiah Khan, she was too young to give up on life… RIP.”
MOOSONEE, ONT.—Seri Mutswairo shut the tarmac lights off at Moosonee Airport and walked in the dark to the end of one of the airport’s two runways.
The airport manager desperately hoped he could hear or see something, the thumping of a helicopter’s rotor blades or the glare of its lights.
But he saw and heard nothing. All he could do was wait.
Across the Moose River, in a small town called Moose Factory, Jos
The Filipino nanny who was granted permanent residency while she lay in a vegetative state from a brain tumour in an Oakville hospital, has died.
A funeral service was held Friday at Glen Oaks Memorial Gardens for Maricon Gerente, who passed away peacefully this week after staff at Oakville-Trafalgar Hospital, with the consent of her family, removed her from life support in early May, said community worker Esel Panlaqui.
A live-in caregiver since 2008, Gerente, 44, had been in a coma since November after undergoing surgery for a benign brain tumour. She had been waiting to become a permanent resident since 2011.
In a rare move, Citizenship and Immigration dispatched two officers to the hospital in April to issue her landing papers after the Star published a story about her tragic circumstances.
Gerente’s dying wish was to reunite in Canada with the two daughters — Lean, 14, and Saniel, 11 — she left behind in the Philippines. But her two girls could not join her as dependants until she became a permanent resident.
Both Lean and Saniel managed to visit their mother with help from Gerente’s former employers, Eli and Jodie Gilbert, but they were not granted permanent resident status as their divorced mother had hoped, Panlaqui said.
Instead, the girls and their guardian and aunt, Aileen Banzon Tan, who left Canada on May 19 after a four-week visit, were issued temporary resident permits that will allow them to return and live here on a temporary basis.
They can then apply to stay permanently on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. The girls and their aunt plan to return in September.
The price of oil fell below $95 a barrel Wednesday as investors worried about ample supplies ahead of a meeting of the world’s key exporters of crude.
By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark oil for July delivery was down 66 cents to $94.35 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 86 cents to close at $95.01 a barrel in New York on Tuesday. It was the first gain for oil in five trading sessions.
Positive signs for the U.S. economy helped oil prices break a falling streak on Tuesday. U.S. home prices rose the most in seven years and consumer confidence reached a five-year high. But the reality of ample supplies and run-of-the-mill demand worked in tandem to keep energy prices in check, traders said.
“We all know that the US supply is near record highs and demand is playing catch up as slow as the economy is recovering,” said Carl Larry of Oil Outlooks and Opinions. “So now we’re stuck with moderate demand, consistent and steady supply and no real worry about where the next barrel of oil is coming from.”
Also weighing on prices were expectations that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which is meeting Friday at its headquarters in Vienna, will keep its official production target steady at 30 million barrels a day, even though its output has been surpassing that voluntary limit for many months.
The latest information about U.S. stockpiles of crude and refined products is also on the horizon.
Data for the week ending May 24 is expected to show draws of 1.5 million barrels in crude oil stocks and of 800,000 barrels in gasoline stocks, according to a survey of analysts by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos instant credit reports.
The American Petroleum Institute will release its report on oil stocks later Wednesday, while the report from the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration _ the market benchmark _ will be out on Thursday. Both reports come a day later than usual because of Monday’s Memorial Day holiday.
Analysts said oil prices were also supported by the possibility that the conflict in Syria could escalate should EU countries start providing weapons to rebel forces. The EU decided Monday to let its arms embargo against Syria expire, but no weapons shipments from European countries are expected in the near future.
“There is therefore no end in sight to the civil war in Syria, a country which plays a key role in terms of regional stability,” said a report from Commerzbank in Frankfurt. “This indicates that the risk premium on the oil price may well rise.”
Brent crude, a benchmark for many international oil varieties, was down 36 cents to $103.87 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
In other energy futures trading on Nymex:
_ Wholesale gasoline dropped 1.35 cents to $2.8319 a gallon.
_ Heating oil fell 0.9 cent to $2.895 per gallon.
_ Natural gas shed 1.6 cents to $4.158 per 1,000 cubic feet.
GE said the problem with with a gearbox inside 118 of the engines that were built between September 2012 to March 2013. The engine maker said there were two in-flight shutdowns of the engines due to gear separation within the gearbox, one on an Aeroflot flight in February, the other on an Air China flight on May 9.
In both cases, the aircraft were able to continue flying using the power in the other engine. But GE said there are 25 jets in service that have the suspect gearbox in both of their engines, and those jets will need to be grounded and fixed in the next five days to avoid the risk of both engines shutting down during a flight.
The other planes with the suspect gearbox only have them in one of their engines.
GE said early analysis of problem gearboxes has revealed a “material anomaly,” but it said its investigation is ongoing. It said more than 1,150 of the engines are in service, and that the gearboxes have a history of 15 years of high reliability over 40 million flight hours.
The news of the problem comes as Boeing works to fix a more serious problem with lithium batteries overheating that led to the grounding of its full fleet of 787 Dreamliners in January. It took months of investigation to come up with a fix to that problem, and Boeing and its airline customers are just now returning those planes to service.
United Airlines, the unit of , Fortune 500) that is the only U.S. carrier to have Dreamliners in its fleet, expects to return its 787s to service on May 20.
Shares of , Fortune 500) and , Fortune 500) were both lower in early trading Thursday.
While it’s only the first day of the month, investors have already taken a step back … and the latest statement from the Federal Reserve didn’t help matters.
The Dow Jones industrial average dropped almost 140 points, or 0.9%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also fell 0.9%.
“There are certain things we have gotten used to counting on each spring: the season changes and the weather warms, baseball games bring fans to the stadiums, the economy weakens, and investors ’sell in May and go away,’” said Jeffery Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial in a recent note to clients.
Fears of a pullback have been growing for two major reasons.
First off, recent economic reports have been signaling that a spring swoon could be just around the corner, for the fourth year in a row.
The latest jobs data have been particularly disappointing, with the March jobs report as well as Wednesday’s report from payroll processor ADP signaling a sharp slowdown in hiring. That’s particularly concerning ahead of the government’s April jobs report due Friday. Economists expect a gain of 155,000 jobs.
Manufacturing activity and retail sales have also been slowing. Housing has been a bright spot as of late, but construction spending unexpectedly dropped almost 2% in March. And while a majority of U.S. companies have been exceeding earnings growth forecasts, they’ve largely been falling short of revenue growth expectations.
Then there’s the additional pressure from overseas. The eurozone remains in recession and China’s economy grew at a slower pace at the start the year than economists had expected.
Secondly, stocks have been on a tear for the past several months. The S&P 500 closed April at a record high, while Nasdaq finished at its highest level in more than 12 years. And the Dow ended just a hair below its all-time high.
Milestones can be alluring, but there’s also a chance that enthusiasm can be overdone considering the still-fragile economy my credit score. And it’s important to note that stocks also peaked in April in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
The one key difference between then and now is the Fed’s open-ended stimulus program.
Fed in focus: The Fed’s policies have widely been given credit for boosting stocks. In previous years, the rally and the economy lost steam as the Fed neared the end of its bond buying programs: QE1 in 2010, QE2 in 2011 and Operation Twist in 2012.
But the current bond buying program — $85 billion a month — is not expected to taper off until later this year at the earliest, said Kleintop.
In fact, the Fed said Wednesday afternoon that while it is sticking to the current pace for now, it is “prepared to increase or reduce” the amount it buys in bonds each month based on the outlook for the job market and changes in inflation.
In addition to indicating that it may do more to stimulate the economy, the Fed also took a jab at Congress, highlighting that “fiscal policy is restraining economic growth.”
Stocks to watch: ) stock declined in after-hours trading after the company’s first-quarter earnings came in below expectations. Revenues were slightly higher than forecasts.
Shares of ) rose as they made their debut on the New York Stock Exchange following the merger with MetroPCS.
, Fortune 500) stock price edged down, a day after rising more than 3% ahead of it record $17 billion bond sale.
, Fortune 500) shares jumped after the health care company delivered a strong first-quarter profit thanks to lower benefit expenses and increased membership. , Fortune 500) shares surged after the company said that its quarterly profit more than doubled. Humana and Genworth were among the biggest winners in the S&P 500 Wednesday.
A veteran Toronto police officer found guilty of assaulting his then-girlfriend, a prominent defence lawyer, and damaging her condo will be given a conditional discharge after 18 months of probation, a judge ruled Tuesday morning.
Const. Jason Peacock, 40, will also have to pay $4,300 in restitution and perform 100 hours of community service.
“He is a good man who, but for his involvement with Ms Wells (the complainant), led not only an unblemished but exemplary life,” said Justice Michael Epstein, noting that Peacock is attending counselling and been demoted from sergeant to constable.
He remains suspended from the Toronto Police force with pay, facing seven charges of failure to comply with a court order, one charge of criminal harassment against Wells and one charge of witness intimidation. Those charges, laid last year, were not taken into account in the sentencing hearing.
A friend of Kathryn Wells read out a victim impact statement to the court on her behalf, describing the events that occurred early Christmas Eve morning in 2010 as a “nightmare.”
Wells had repeatedly asked Peacock to leave her condo but he refused, she had testified.
He swore at her, shook her hard by the shoulders, punched holes in her walls, smashed drinking glasses and overturned her marble-topped kitchen island.
“It was not the first time Jason had taken out his rage on me but it was the worst . . . there was a period where I thought he was going to kill me,” Wells wrote in the statement.
The statement described her feelings of shame and humiliation in the aftermath of the assault, and the impact of that on her family and job payday loans.
“Being completely put down, screamed at, lied to and manipulated brought my self-esteem to an all-time low,” she wrote. “Jason crushed me and I was supposedly the girl he loved.”
The statement also expressed her continued outrage at Peacock’s legal fees being covered by the police union, despite the case pertaining to off-duty domestic assault charges.
“The Toronto Police Association automatically assumed I was a liar and paid for Jason’s legal fees,” she wrote.
Peacock refused to comment Tuesday on whether the union paid his legal fees.
When given an opportunity to address the court, he took a deep breath and said: “This has been an incredibly difficult process.”
“I respect the court’s decision,” Wells told the Star after the hearing. “I think the bigger issue here is the attitude of the union towards domestic violence going forward . . . If the Toronto Police Association is genuinely concerned for victims, and a ‘strong advocate against domestic violence,’ I would think Mr. McCormack (the union president) would have no hesitation in assuring the public that going forward, the Toronto Police Association will not fund the defences of police officers charged with off-duty domestic violence.”
McCormack says the union does not comment publicly on “who we fund or don’t fund. It’s an association matter.”
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