Group claims responsibility for Forces blast

TROIS-RIVIERES, Que. - An anti-military group opposed to the "foreign occupation" of Afghanistan claimed responsibility for an explosion that thundered through a Canadian Forces recruitment centre Friday.

The early-morning blast in Trois-Rivieres, Que., blew out windows on the building, showered a road with debris and rattled a downtown neighbourhood.

There were no injuries — primarily because the recruitment centre was closed at the time of the 3 a.m. explosion.

Later in the day, a group calling itself Resistance internationaliste issued a statement in which it also railed against multinationals, imperialism, the "repressive orgy" at the G20 and pipelines in Afghanistan.

"This operation against recruitment centres is our resistance to the brainwashing and the intensive soliciting by the army of youths confronted with the emptiness of a degrading society," the organization said in the communique sent to various media.

"As for the soldiers of the Canadian army, let's be clear — in no way are they 'ours.' They belong to the person they stupidly swear allegiance to: Her Majesty Elizabeth."

The group says it used to be known as Initiative de resistance internationaliste, a group that took credit in 2006 for the explosion of a car that belonged to Carol Montreuil, an executive with the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute.

It also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a Hydro-Quebec tower in December 2004 in the Eastern Townships, near the U.S. border.

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Eloise Cossette said the municipal force in Trois-Rivieres received a bomb threat by telephone "a few minutes" before the blowout. She would not say exactly how much time elapsed between the call and the explosion.

Cossette also declined to release details on the bomb or elaborate on what police know about the organization.

"Yes, a group did claim responsibility but we are still looking at other possibilities," she said.

The recruitment centre is on the ground floor of a high-rise hotel, but the building did not have to be evacuated, Cossette added.

Still, the overnight rumble shook residents in their beds more than two blocks away from the blast site.

A man who lives across the street from the recruitment centre had just turned on his computer to play a video game when he heard the explosion.

"I went outside right away," David Leblanc told The Canadian Press. "I thought my brick wall had fallen down."

Leblanc says shards of broken glass were scattered on the street and on the stairs leading into the building. He smelled smoke in the air, but didn't see any flames.

"I was sure it was (natural) gas," said Leblanc, who didn't want to approach the centre because he thought there could be another eruption.

Around 20 people, who had spilled out of a nearby bar after hearing the explosion, had already gathered in front of the building when he arrived.

The gawkers, most of them inebriated after a long night of partying, thought the incident was pretty cool and were cracking jokes, he added.

"Everybody was saying, 'It's a bombing!' and they were laughing," he said.

Their amusement didn't last long because police arrived at the scene very quickly, Leblanc said.

"They got everyone out of there," he said.

A team of police investigators, the bomb squad and a canine unit searched the scene Friday for clues.

"We have explosives technicians, crime specialists, dogs," Cossette said.

"Our goal is to arrest (someone) and to solve this case rapidly."

A large security perimeter was set up around the building and an adjacent bus station in the heart of the city, which is about 130 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Cossette said it could have been worse.

"It happened during the night, the building was unoccupied and that's why there were no injuries or deaths," she said. "That's the good news."

The Canadian Forces have no immediate plans to tighten security at its recruiting centres, spokeswoman Maj. Paule Poulin said.

"Although the incident is unfortunate, it seemed to be isolated," she said from Ottawa.

But she says the military will take more care inspecting buildings when offices are closed down each day.

Poulin would not comment when asked if the Forces had any previous knowledge of Resistance internationaliste.

Opposition to the Canadian Forces' mission in Afghanistan has been stronger in Quebec than any other province in the country.

A Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll last year found that 54 per cent of Canadians surveyed opposed the government's commitment to have troops in Afghanistan, while 39 per cent supported it. Opposition to Canada's presence in Afghanistan was highest in Quebec, at 73 per cent.

Longtime Trois-Rivieres resident Andre Provost couldn't believe someone set off a bomb in the city of about 140,000.

"Trois-Rivieres is a very quiet town," Provost said as he watched police officers scour the area.

"I don't think the crime rate is very high."

With files from Peter Rakobowchuk in Montreal

Pot Versus Alcohol: Experts Say Booze Is the Bigger Danger

Speaking privately with Richard Nixon in 1971, the late Art Linkletter offered this view on the use of marijuana versus alcohol. "When people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable."

"That's right, that's right," Nixon agreed. "A person does not drink to get drunk A person drinks to have fun."

The following year Linkletter announced that he had reversed his position on pot, concluding instead that the drug's social harms were not significant enough to warrant its criminal prohibition. Nixon however stayed the course -- launching the so-called "war" on drugs, a social policy that now results in the arrest of more than 800,000 Americans each year for violating marijuana laws.

Decades later, the social debate regarding the use of marijuana versus alcohol rages on. Yet among objective experts who have studied the issue there remains little debate at all. Despite pot's long-standing criminalization, scientists agree that the drug possesses far less harm than its legal and celebrated companion, alcohol.

For example, in the mid-1990s, the World Health Organization commissioned a team of experts to compare the health and societal consequences of marijuana use compared to other drugs, including alcohol, nicotine, and opiates. After quantifying the harms associated with both drugs, the researchers concluded: "Overall, most of these risks (associated with marijuana) are small to moderate in size. In aggregate they are unlikely to produce public health problems comparable in scale to those currently produced by alcohol and tobacco On existing patterns of use, cannabis poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol and tobacco in Western societies."

French scientists at the state medical research institute INSERM published a similar review in 1998. Researchers categorized legal and illegal drugs into three distinct categories: Those that pose the greatest threat to public health, those that pose moderate harms to the public, and those substances that pose little-to-no danger. Alcohol, heroin, and cocaine were placed in the most dangerous category, while investigators determined that cannabis posed the least danger to public health.

In 2002, a special Canadian Senate Committee completed an exhaustive review of marijuana and health, concluding, "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue."

In 2007, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare hired a team of scientists to assess the impact of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs on public health. Researcher reported that the consumption of alcohol was significant contributors to death and disease. "Alcohol harm was responsible for 3.2 percent of the total burden of disease and injury in Australia," they concluded. By comparison, cannabis use was responsible for zero deaths and only 0.2 percent of the estimated total burden of disease and injury in Australia.

Hackers target Microsoft Windows XP support system

Hi-tech criminals are "escalating" attacks on an unpatched bug in the Windows XP help and support system.

Microsoft said it had seen more than 10,000 machines hit by the attack that, so far, it has not found a fix for.

Windows PCs falling victim will have control of that machine handed over to attackers.

Microsoft said the attacks had gone from theoretical to real very quickly and urged users to take steps to protect themselves.

'Nightmare' attack

Microsoft revealed the upturn in attacks in a blog post saying that it had been monitoring activity around the loophole since it was first revealed on 10 June.

Found by Google engineer Travis Ormandy, the loophole revolves around the Help and Support system built into XP. Mr Ormandy found that it was possible to exploit its ability to give remote aid and apply fixes to ailing machines.

Initially, said Microsoft, it only saw "innocuous" attacks by researchers attempting to replicate what Mr Ormandy had found.

Real exploits turned up on 15 June and these have been enthusiastically adopted by hi-tech criminals.

Writing on the Microsoft Security Centre blog, Holly Stewart said it had started seeing "seemingly-automated, randomly-generated" web pages that host the exploit.

A variety of trojans, spam tools and viruses are being downloaded to compromised machines, she said.

Rik Ferguson, senior security researcher at Trend Micro, said: "It's certainly very serious and is now being actively exploited by what appears to be several different groups as you can see from the multiple payloads being delivered."

Carole Thierault, senior security consultant at Sophos, said attacks like this were a "nightmare" to defend against if people did not regularly update or use anti-virus.

Statistics gathered by Microsoft suggest Portugal was taking the brunt of the attacks but users in Russia and Croatia were also being hit. More than 10,000 machines had been hit at least once by the attack, it found.

To avoid falling victim, Microsoft advised users to turn off the part of the Help and Support system that is vulnerable. It has produced an automated tool that can do this for users.

Mr Ferguson from Trend Micro said there were other steps users could take to stay safe.

"It is important to ensure that your security software is capable of identifying and blocking malicious websites," he said, "as you can be sure that the criminals behind this will be constantly updating their malicious files to try and avoid traditional security."

Microsoft said it was working on a lasting fix for the loophole.

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Time runs out for 1.2 million on unemployment

(CNN) -- With her unemployment benefits coming to a halt, Miriam Cintron is forced to make a difficult choice between health insurance and daily expenses.

Signing into her unemployment benefits account last week, the New Yorker was horrified to see she hadn't received any money for three weeks, she says.

What would the four-year cancer survivor do if she couldn't afford to pay her $650 monthly COBRA payment? Her health insurance helped pay for life-saving treatment before, so giving it up is not an option, she says.

When Cintron was laid off from her job as a case worker at a homeless shelter in late 2008, she never imagined she'd go on unemployment. But even with 17 years experience, she's been unable to land a new job.

Cintron isn't alone. Unemployment benefits are set to run dry for 1.2 million people nationwide Friday after the U.S. Senate decided not to extend a deadline to file for these benefits last week, according to the National Employment Law Project.

Come Saturday, the number of people cut from unemployment benefits will surge to 1.63 million, according to U.S. Department of Labor estimates. By mid-July, about 2 million unemployed Americans could lose their benefits.

Before last month, out-of-work Americans were eligible for extensions once they maxed out at 26 weeks of state benefits. Depenging on the state, people could qualify for up to 73 weeks of federal benefits -- a total of 99 weeks. But, Senate Republicans blocked the extension with a 57-14 vote last week.

Senate Republicans filibustered the bill Wednesday night and the House could vote again as soon as Thursday.

"The reality is that we have the worst job market on record going back to the Great Recession," says Maurice Emsellem, policy co-director at National Employment Law Project.

"There's only one job available for every five unemployed workers."

For people who are apt to say, "Go find a job," Emsellem says the predicament of the unemployed isn't easy to escape.

"For anybody that has a thought in their head that unemployed workers are to blame for their situation, the reality is that workers are struggling hard to find work, but the jobs are just not there."

National Employment Law Project resources for the unemployed

While Cintron has been struggling to make ends meet for the last year-and-a-half, she worries about other people in the same predicament.

"My story is one story and it's unique," she says. "But, there are so many people with children, other issues, that are in dire situations."

Are you one of the 1.2 million? Share your unemployment story

"I'm just shocked that more attention isn't being paid to this story."

She's thankful she doesn't have any children relying on her for support right now. But, she does care for her mother. Part of Cintron's unemployment checks have been going toward her mother's expenses since she moved in with her a few months before Cintron lost her job.

Cintron's $425 unemployment check each week -- or $1,700 each month -- has to stretch a long way. She pitches in for appliances, groceries and whatever else her mother needs. Health insurance payments burn a hole in her wallet at a whopping $650 per month. And then there's the storage fee of $300 she pays for all her excess furniture from her old apartment.

If Congress fails to pass the bill granting the unemployment benefit extensions this week, Cintron says she will only be able to stay afloat for a month. She will have to dip into her 401(k) retirement plan to continue to pay for health care, she says.

As to what happens after that, Cintron says she just doesn't know.

"I will try to survive and see what I can do for paying the health insurance for at least another few months with my 401(k)."

"I don't qualify for Medicaid, I make too much money. I have to pay the $650 to a private health insurer."

Finding the income to support her expensive health insurance hasn't been an easy task. For the last year-and-a-half, Cintron has been applying to jobs at homeless shelters in New York. Even though she has landed several interviews, they haven't amounted to anything.

"The agencies where I'm applying to, they're all cutting back too," she says, citing city funding cutbacks.

Cintron is considering part-time or customer service work as a last resort, but she's worried she may be worse off.

"I certainly don't want to live on unemployment," she says. "The customer service jobs don't pay well, don't have health insurance. I really need insurance because I'm a cancer survivor."

For now, Cintron keeps logging into the unemployment benefits website, typing in her account number and trying to claim benefits.

Cintron says the New York State Department of Labor has instructed her to keep logging in as normal, even though she's not getting a dime. Cintron says the website is confusing and she's unsure of how many extensions she's had.

With all the stress and lack of income, Cintron's been relying on hobbies to try to keep her spirits up.

Ever since she lost her job, she's been an active iReporter, scouting events and stories in her native New York. Videography and photography have become her focus. In this digital age, it's free for her to upload her images, so it's a cheap hobby.

See Cintron's iReports over the years

Her other passion is music. She's sad she's had to nix going to concerts, but says she's lucky to live in a city where so many free shows are going on at any time.

Even though she's found ways to lead a semi-normal life, her time being unemployed is starting to wear her down.

"I'm a glass half-full kind of person. I'm a very positive person. It's very hard for me to get into this feeling sorry for myself, what-am-I-going-to-do mode," she says.

"But I am getting there."

Millions of Swine Flu Vaccine Doses Have Expired and Will Be Burned

Atlanta (AP) - About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired -- meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million is being written off as trash.

"It's a lot, by historical standards," said Jerry Weir, who oversees vaccine research and review for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The outdated vaccine, some of which expired Wednesday, will be incinerated. The amount, more than twice the usual leftovers, likely sets a record. And that's not even all of it.

About 30 million more doses will expire later and may go unused, according to one government estimate. If all that vaccine expires, more than 43 percent of the supply for the U.S. public will have gone to waste.

Federal officials defended the huge purchase as a necessary risk in the face of a never-before-seen virus. Many health experts had feared the new flu could be the deadly global epidemic they had long warned about, but it ended up killing fewer people than seasonal flu.

"Although there were many doses of vaccine that went unused, it was much more appropriate to have been prepared for the worst case scenario than to have had too few doses," said Bill Hall, spokesman for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Most leading health experts generally agree with that.

Millions of doses of flu vaccine generally go unused every year and are marked for burning, but in recent years the leftovers amounted to closer to 10 percent of the supply, rather than the 25 percent expiring now. Government flu experts couldn't recall throwing away anything close to 40 million doses before.

The new H1N1 swine flu emerged in April last year, hitting children and young adults particularly hard. It was difficult to predict how deadly it might be or how easily it might spread. Federal health officials pushed five vaccine manufacturers to produce a vaccine as quickly as possible. What's more, they wanted a lot of it -- many experts thought most people would need two doses for it to work.

The government placed three orders last year for a combined total of nearly 200 million doses -- an unprecedented amount and almost double the amount of vaccine produced in recent years for seasonal flu.

About 162 million doses were meant for the general public. Another 36 million included doses for the military and other countries.

But demand never took off, for several reasons:

--Tests of the vaccine soon showed only one dose was enough to protect most people.

--Much of the vaccine was not ready until late 2009, after the largest wave of swine flu illnesses passed.

--Swine flu turned out not to be as deadly as was first feared. About 12,000 deaths have been attributed to it -- or roughly a third of the estimated annual deaths from seasonal flu.

So while people were waiting hours for swine flu vaccinations in some cities in October and November, by January local health departments were trying gimmicks to get anyone at all to come in for a shot.

Government officials have known for months that they were looking at a huge surplus. According to an Associated Press calculation based on federal purchasing information, the dollar value of the 40 million expired doses is about $261 million. The government didn't release an official figure, but Hall said the AP estimate was approximately correct.

In Europe, where nations also found themselves with millions of unused doses, some commentators have attacked the World Health Organization, which declared swine flu a global epidemic, or pandemic. The critics have questioned the motivation of some WHO advisers who had links to the pharmaceutical industry.

Some critics have simply lamented that a lot of anxiety was raised and money wasted, not just during the swine flu scare but also in government responses to bird flu and SARS, a respiratory virus that swept parts of Asia in 2003.

"Each time the so-called experts told us that millions of people would be killed worldwide by the respective viruses. We have learned that the experts were utterly wrong," said Dr. Ulrich Keil, a professor at Germany's prestigious University of Muenster and a WHO adviser.

"This behavior is irresponsible because the angst campaigns ... confuse the priority setting in public health," he said. The death toll from influenza epidemics is much smaller than the number killed annually by chronic illnesses like heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes, he added, in an e-mail.

Unused flu vaccine is a common problem. The June 30 expiration date is set by the FDA and has less to do with the vaccine's shelf life than the desire to tweak the recipe each year to protect against the three flu strains expected to cause the most illness.

"It's not necessarily because it's degraded or not potent," said Dr. Mark Mulligan, an Emory University vaccine researcher.

In the past year, about 114 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine were distributed. The government thinks most of that was used -- demand was unusually high because of fears about swine flu.

In the flu vaccination campaign for this coming fall, swine flu vaccine is being combined with two seasonal strains in single doses. Manufacturers have told the government they expect to make about 170 million doses.

An influential government advisory panel this year recommended that virtually all Americans get flu shots each year. Still, that doesn't mean it will all get used.

"No doubt there will be unused doses. This happens every time," said Dr. John Treanor, an immunology specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

(Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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