2000
>>
Year in Review
Compiled by CRAIG SEGAL
JANUARY
Defining moments of millennial New Year's Eve: Goofy "2000" glasses and slogans like "the Y2K hangover"; ER overcrowding; the Belleville, Ontario man who barricades himself alone in his house with his .303-calibre rifle for 16 hours; the man arrested after zapping two security guards with a stun gun at a Celine Dion concert.
**
Marie-France Dionne, 32, dies in an apartment fire on New Year's Eve, becoming the fifth person associated with the homeless magazine L'Itinéraire who died in 1999. She was a cook at the Café sur la rue.
**
Panama City gets its canal back after nearly a century of imperialistic U.S. control.
**
Moscow's military moves into Chechnya in what will turn out to be an embarrassing, stupid war.
**
Local anti-Iraq-sanctions group, Voices of Conscience, smuggles evil banned pencils and medical equipment to Baghdad.
**
Twenty-five Chinese men in cargo containers are discovered on a ship in Vancouver harbour. They were headed for more grungy living in Seattle.
**
The popular Dr. Martens foot apparel company finally comes out with Vegetarian boots and shoes to the delight of tough guys who don't like to kill animals everywhere.
**
The federal government covertly flies weapons-grade plutonium fuel over Canadian soil, possibly to avoid activist protests and blockades. Such a flight is illegal in the U.S.
**
Elian Gonzalez is ordered returned back to his father in Cuba. Miami protestors go ape.
**
The Loews theatre, an 80-year-old Montreal landmark, is sold to Club Med.
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Porn debate: Canada debates its kiddy-porn law after John Robin Sharpe, 66, is acquitted of possession in two B.C. court rulings that found the Criminal Code violates freedom of expression. Sharpe's case goes to the Supreme Court.
**
Smelly scandal: Turns out most elderly people in Quebec nursing homes are bathed just once a week, and are sometimes charged $10 for a wash.
**
A mystery man donates money to two disabled Paralympians after their sledge-hockey equipment is stolen from their parked car in downtown Montreal. The Team Canada athletes plan to compete in Salt Lake City's Paralympics in 2002.
**
The Université du Quebec à Montréal cancels a 10-year exclusivity deal with Coca-Cola following the arrest of 66 students at a November protest.
**
Ack! Ack! It's a macaque! The first non-human primate cloned is Tetra, a rhesus macaque monkey!
**
Jean-Paul Labaye turns the former Laurentian bank on St-Laurent into a swingers' club after his old pad, Club L'Orage, is shut down on bawdy-house charges. The new place is called Club L'Orage International.
**
Forty-two Inuit sue the Canadian government for $18.7-million for the sexual and psychological abuse they say they endured at federally run residential schools in northern Quebec in the 1960s.
**
CTV NewsNet anchor Avery Haines is fired after making derogatory comments about minorities when she mistakenly thinks the camera is not running. After flubbing her lines, Haines said: "I could be a lesbian, folk-dancing, black woman stutterer in a wheelchair with a gimping rubber leg. Yeah, really. I'd have a succesful career, let me tell you." She later gets a job with Toronto's Citytv.
**
Gino Laplante, a homeless man, dies in the freezing cold three hours after leaving the Old Brewery Mission and minutes after a woman finds him in a sleeping bag asking for help outside Place d'Armes metro station.
**
A Taiwanese bistro called Jail with a Nazi-death-camp theme apologizes for bad taste and redecorates.
**
Crap! The Canadian Alliance is formed 10 months before Montrealers are forced to look at Stockwell Day's photo on every second downtown street corner. Before figuring out the faux-pas, the party decides to call itself CCRAP.
**
Else Smith, the founder and owner of Else's on Roy dies in an apartment fire after having been bedridden for months.
**
Play safe: Ontario bans squeegee kids from city streets with the Safe Streets Act.
FEBRUARY
We're number 1! Quebec ranks as the number-1 province for euthanized pets in Canada. We kill nearly half a million furry friends a year, and adopt less than any other province.
**
William "Pit Bull" Johnson quits leadership of Alliance Quebec, after less than two years as president.
**
Montrealers with an extra $4.75 in their pockets learn they can buy an actual piece of the Olympic Stadium's retired Kevlar roof! The company selling the roof bought it for a buck and then shelled out $136,000 to transport the monster.
**
Edouard Anglade is honoured by the MUC for being Quebec's first black cop. He was hired in 1974.
**
Paul Désilets of Longueuil pleads guilty to masturbating in front of two women after forcing them to remove their shoes and smelling their feet in his latest in a long line of foot-sniffing offences.
**
Alberta NDP leader Pam Barret, 46, quits politics after an out-of-body experience in her dentist's chair.
**
High-profile divorce lawyer Micheline Parizeau is ordered to stop practicing law for seven years over six matters of professional misconduct. It didn't help her case that she referred to notes while on the witness stand, which is illegal.
**
Police discover 30 nearly dead and a bunch of very dead chickens, ducks and goats in a raid on an abandoned farm in Lefebvre.
**
Quebec Court of Appeal judges keep rapper K.C. LMNOP in jail for armed sexual assault after squelching his appeal for a new trial. This despite the fact that judges learned the original judge referred to K.C.'s evil lyrics when sentencing him, and made two other errors of law. K.C., or Franç#231;ois Simard, 29, is one of Quebec's first rappers.
**
Cracked! Psychiatrist Philip Alan Barker, 70, whose theories appear in textbooks, is charged with selling crack to an undercover cop at a Calgary hotel.
**
The PQ passes a nearly unanimous resolution at a general council meeting that Quebec buildings must not, under any circumstances, fly a Canadian flag. Unfortunately for them the flag is under federal jurisdiction.
**
Hooray for Finland! Finland elects single mother Tarja Halonen as its first female president.
**
Human Rights Watch accuse NATO of killing 500 civilians in its massive bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Yugoslavia claims the number is closer to 5,000.
**
A poll of 256 male submariners shows that most of them don't want women on Canadian subs. One-third of 237 female sailors polled agreed.
**
Montreal police shut down the Compassion Club, a small shop on Rachel that sells marijuana for pain relief and appetite enhancers to sick people with doctor's notes. One police officer admits he won't be putting the bust on his CV.
**
Charles Schulz, the Peanuts cartoonist and creator of Charlie Brown, dies at 77.
**
Hungry Hochelagans: A police raid on a Hochelaga-Maisonneuve warehouse turns up over $2.5-million-worth of stolen food.
**
Joerg Haider of Austria, one of Europe's most right-wing politicians, is refused a visit to the Montreal Holocaust Centre during his visit to Canada.
**
The RCMP investigates the deaths of two frozen natives amid allegations that Saskatoon police regularly drive natives far from the city and leave them there.
**
Around 700 demonstrators protest Quebec's youth conference in Quebec City, saying it did not adequately represent young people since youth groups, for the most part, were not invited to participate.
**
Montreal police arrest 15 students in what they call the largest drug ring in a Montreal high school. The kids sold pot and LSD in Ecole Secondaire Jeanne-Mance in the Plateau. The drugs supposedly came from the Rockers motorcycle gang, affiliated with the Hell's Angels.
MARCH
The Habs' original forum on Mont-Royal and St-Urbain burns down along with some small business. The Mount Royal Arena was 80 years old.
**
Kids and guns: A six-year-old boy shoots and kills a six-year-old girl in Michigan with a .32-calibre gun in front of his Grade 1 class. His punishment? Expulsion.
**
The federal government finally pays for depleted-uranium tests of Gulf War veterans after dead veteran Joseph Terry Riordon's bones are found to have an extremely high level of DU. About 20 of the 4,000 people who served in the war request the tests to see if their sudden illness is DU-related. DU, which was also used in Kosovo, is a component in nuclear bombs.
**
The bosses and founders of cartoon company Cinar, Micheline Charest and Ron Weinberg, resign after it is divulged that $122-million (U.S.) was invested without permission from stockholders.
**
Mayor Bourque and a delegation attend a carnival in Trinidad and Tobago so that they can teach Caribbean Montrealers how to better organize Montreal's annual Carifiesta parade. The trip was financed by Trinidad and Tobago tax dollars.
**
Two Montreal cops who were fired after beating taxi driver Richard Barnabé so badly in 1993 that he went into a coma and later died, are reinstated by a Quebec Court judge. Two other cops who beat Barnabé had been suspended from work temporarily.
**
A scheme to legalize prostitution in Montreal's Centre-Sud district is killed by outraged residents who fear an increase in drugs and violence.
**
A 43-year-old pedophile in Trois-Rivières asks to be castrated after being convicted of sexual assault and gets his bloody wish fulfilled. Although the man can still get an erection, his desire is supposedly sliced off along with his testicles.
**
A group of young female activists called The Witches vandalizes Mary Queen of the World Cathedral with graffiti, condoms and sanitary pads, and burns crosses on the steps outside the church. Canada's Catholic Civil Rights League calls the young ladies "terrorists."
**
McGill students kick an exclusivity deal with Coca-Cola right out of class with a 54 per cent referendum win. The university, which already has a student hangout called the Coca-Cola Lounge, will reopen negotiations in less than a year.
**
TV test case: Quebec Chief Justice Pierre Michaud allows a television camera into a courtroom for a murder case.
**
Pope mea culpa: In a move that might just get him into heaven, Pope John Paul II apologizes for the sins committed in the name of Roman Catholicism throughout history, including bad stuff done to Jews, women and minorities.
**
An anti-police-brutality protest turns into a downtown riot, with windows smashed at three McDonald's, a bank, a police station and some cop cars. Protesters were pissed that the cops who beat Jean-Pierre Lizotte, a homeless man who later died, were not criminally charged.
**
The city allows the new owners of the old Rialto theatre to turn it into a dance club despite many protesters who say it should be preserved as a heritage site.
**
Seven children die in a minivan crash in St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Nicolet. The driver, daycare operator Jeanne Auger, had packed 10 kids into the seven-passenger car. An eighth child later dies as a result of head injuries.
**
Health Canada tightens its sperm-bank testing regulations after a fertilized woman gets chlamydia along with her little white guys.
**
A four-tonne orca whale that washes ashore in Tsawwassen, B.C., is so full of PCBs that it rates as toxic waste.
**
Now that's a shock: Canadian comedian Tom Green is diagnosed with testicular cancer. He decides to film his operation and keep his removed testicle.
**
Health Minister Pauline Marois is adamant that a Laval man with only one leg and a toe should not receive a wheelchair from the province. She would have granted David Murray, 66, a wheelchair if only he didn't have that pesky toe.
**
Canadian astronaut Judith Lapierre, partaking in an isolation experiment on a replica of Russian space station Mir, complains that a Russian pulled her out of camera range and French kissed her after 110 days alone. c
APRIL
A hundred Montrealers beat drums during a march in the Plateau to protest the city's lack of public consultation on development projects.
**
Another protest by 100 St-Henri residents postpones the construction of a garbage-transfer depot (read: dump) in their neighbourhood. They flee when police show up.
**
No smooching in Westmount: In an effort to stop Montreal couples from pressing flesh in the privacy of their own automobiles as they gaze upon their scenic city from lofty heights, Westmount blocks off the Summit Lookout on Summit Circle with a single-file line of concrete flower pots.
**
Pie throwers, who think Deputy Premier Bernard Landry puts sovereignty ahead of social policy, pie Landry on the shoulder while aiming for his face. Landry calls the pie throwers "dangerous."
**
The city refuses to clear snow because it budgeted for a less-than-average snowfall. Meanwhile drivers--like the guy who drove up a snow bank on the Bonaventure Autoroute and flipped his car onto its side--end up having accidents. Expect more this winter.
**
University Inc.: The Université de Montréal launches a campaign to raise $125-million through corporate investment.
**
The federal government votes in favour of Bill C-23, which means they think gay couples should have the same social and tax benefits as straight couples.
**
After one too many mochaccinos, Torontonians debate holding a referendum to see if the population wants to separate Toronto from Ontario.
**
Quick, run to the window and see if there's a nuclear missile coming! America threatens to stop protecting all of Canada if we do not join their global missile-defence system, otherwise known as the Star Wars project that President Reagan started.
**
Armed by the government, 50,000 black squatters take control of over 900 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe. Some of the white farmers are killed.
**
Alanis Morissette's investor, Scott Welch, rips off $9-million from the shaggy star. Welch is later caught trying to leave New Jersey with 80 plane tickets to European cities, $4,500 in cash and a fake passport.
**
Protesters vs. the IMF: American police crack down on 10,000 demonstrators protesting an International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington D.C. The protesters are not able to shut down the meetings. Five hundred are arrested.
**
Police raid the new Club L'Orage International swingers' club on St-Laurent and seize 40 bottles of liquor.
**
In an effort to help us keep our reality as virtual as possible, Britain's Press Association news agency creates Avanova, an androgynous-looking cyber-anchor.
**
Montreal's Native Friendship Centre celebrates its 25th anniversary.
**
He can't handle the truth! Michel Prescott, the leader of the official opposition at city hall, is thrown out of city council by police after saying Mayor Pierre Bourque sleeps with developers (!).
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Université du Québec à Montréal cancels its Hasidic program after complaints by the professors' union that classes are taught in English and divided by sex.
**
O no! Over one-million issues of Oprah's magazine, O, hit news-stands.
**
The RCMP arrests a Montreal teenager called Mafiaboy after he disables numerous Internet sites.
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A 15-year-old student stabs and slashes four students and a teacher at Cairine Wilson Secondary School in Orleans, an Ottawa suburb. He then slits his wrists. No one dies.
**
A cop and a doorman are charged with the manslaughter of Jean-Pierre Lizotte, a homeless man they beat to death outside Shed Café on St-Laurent.
**
Nguyen Thi Hiep, a Toronto seamstress, is executed by firing squad in Vietnam for allegedly smuggling heroin. c
MAY
Two hundred youngsters protest globalization in 0Westmount as part of worldwide May Day demonstrations. One hundred are arrested, including the editor of Ici, Yves Schaë#235;ffner, who was there as a journalist.
**
The Robin Hood Rabbi, a guy called Joseph Prushinowski who swindled $200-million from banks and donated the money to Hasidic communities, is arrested after eluding police for 13 years. He'll later be sentenced to seven years in jail.
**
Canada Post makes a stamp allowing you to stick your very own ugly mug on an envelope for just 54 more cents than a regular stamp.
**
TV's The Friendly Giant, Bob Homme, dies at 81. The children's show ran on the CBC from 1958-1985.
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Saturday Night magazine, put out by Conrad Black's media empire, goes weekly. If you haven't read it, it's because it's only available in the National Post.
**
Love hurts: Computer systems around the world crash after employees open e-mail with the subject heading "ILOVEYOU."
**
Marc-Boris St-Maurice, the leader of provincial pro-marijuana party Bloc Pot, announces plans to take his party federal. It'll be called the Marijuana Party, and it'll garner 66,278 votes in the next federal election, thank you very much.
**
André (Dédé) Fortin, the lead singer of Quebec rock group, Les Colocs, stabs himself to death. He was 38.
**
Over 1,000 taxis block up traffic downtown for four hours to protest changes to the Quebec taxi industry, which would abolish their 18 leagues in favour of a single Quebec super-league. The leagues, some of which make a point of hiring immigrants, fear that Quebec will only hire white French Canadians, like they do in the civil service.
**
Kind of a letdown: The Vatican reveals the Third Secret of Fatima, which conspiracy theorists have gone wacko about for the longest time. Here it is: In 1917, three shepherd children were told by the Virgin Mary that someone would try to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.
**
Fighting in the West Bank that kills four Palestinians and injures 320 marks the beginning of unrest that will see hundreds of Palestinians, and dozens of Israelis, killed.
**
David Suzuki, the environmentalist who stripped down to a fig leaf to promote his television show, tells natives they should not build casinos to make money and encourages them to stick to traditional activities like carving coffins.
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Moon nukes: The United States considered detonating a nuclear bomb on the moon to show their supreme strength during the Cold War, a physicist involved in the scheme admits.
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Montreal waits with bated breath until it is announced that the city's official bird is the... American Golden Finch!
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The House of Commons environment committee says all of Canada should be like Hudson and ban pesticides.
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Eight thousand bikers storm the Quebec Coliseum to protest Transport Minister Guy Chevrette's move to double the cost of a motorcycle permit.
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Two protesters are arrested when they try to label genetically modified foods at the Provigo on Parc.
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Concordia and the Université de Montréal ban ads in their bathrooms by a company called Zoom Media that places them at eye level in urinals and stalls.
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A Kingston English professor says the Canadian classic Anne of Green Gables was actually a book of steamy covert lesbian erotica.
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Seven people in Walkerton, Ontario die in Canada's worst water-contamination catastrophe after E. coli bacteria gets in the water. Critics speculate that unnecessary cost-cutting created the problem.
**
The prime minister of Dominica, Rosie Douglas, who led an anti-racism riot at Concordia in 1969, visits Montreal shortly before he dies.
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Getting to Toronto gets a whole lot more expensive when Allô-Stop, the Quebec company that allows you to cheaply hitch rides to different cities with registered drivers, is banned in Ontario.
**
Maurice "Rocket" Richard dies at 78. As many as 115,000 people pay their respects at the Molson Centre.
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The federal government says it is "dismantling" a massive database of information on Canadians after an angry public reaction. This calms people down who don't realize that "dismantle" does not mean the same thing as "destroy."
JUNE
A group of Montreal sex workers form a federal political party called the Popular Party of Prostitutes--which does not end up entering any candidates in the federal election.
**
Quebec Crees fight Home Depot, which purchases $700-million of Quebec lumber products annually. Much of this lumber is attained by clear-cutting trees on Cree land, which they say kills animals they need to survive and goes against Home Depot's commitment to support ecological forestry practices.
**
While Quebec and B.C. debate over which province has to cover the medical expenses for 76-year-old ex-Quebecer Erwin Lubosh's heart surgery, his pace-maker partially forces itself out of his chest.
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The federal government rules that natives must pay taxes on their salary for traditional work like fishing, if their work is done outside native territory.
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Tito Puente, the lord and ruler of all things mambo, dies at 77.
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Over 3,000 anti-globalization demonstrators protest the Organization of the American States in Windsor, Ontario.
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Flesh for fantasy: Nine high-school boys from Cornwall, Ontario, are suspended after spending their lunch hour at Hooters restaurant on a class trip to Ottawa. The suspensions are later erased from their records.
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Sorry Bill: An American judge rules that Microsoft must be split in two because it acted illegally by bullying other companies out of its market.
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With the help of police, Montreal public works shut-down the St-Laurent street festival at 5 p.m., six hours before it is scheduled to close.
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Health Canada reveals that natives are five times more likely to get HIV than other Canadians.
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Does he do it on purpose? Prime Minister Chrétien tells CBC TV reporter Christina Lawand that she's a nice girl who should go and get herself pregnant. He later apologizes.
**
If you say so: Sinéad O'Connor reveals she is a lesbian in an interview in Curve magazine.
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So that's how the Queen Mom is staying alive: A small amount of marijuana is found in a Buckingham Palace kitchen.
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Biker menace: Members of the Rockers motorcycle gang wreck three afterhours bars in the Plateau.
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Constable Marc St-Germain testifies that the reason he crashed his unmarked SQ cruiser in 1994, killing four fellow officers who were in the car, was because they were bugging him--it had nothing to do with the three beers, three glasses of red wine and two of white that he had just drank. The accident happened the night the cops were celebrating the end of a 10-day breathalyzer-machine course. A jury finds St-Germain, a breathalyzer-test instructor, negligent but not drunk. He later gets sentenced to two years in prison.
**
The Port of Montreal rejects the Reichman family's bid to build a $1-billion amusement park project called the Technodôme in the Bikerdike Basin.
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A court convicts steamy French actress Brigitte Bardot for inciting racial violence following negative remarks about a Muslim festival where sheep are slaughtered.
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Where do our tax dollars go again? A Highway 15 overpass in Laval collapses. One person dies and two are injured. It was under construction.
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Canadians learn once again that Medicare is in a royal mess when the UN ranks Canada's health-care system 30th out of 191 United Nations member states.
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Poor forgotten Tom Long apologizes for adding 700 memberships to the Canadian Alliance for people who don't exist as part of his Quebec campaign. Stockwell Day soon becomes leader of the party.
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Cross-dressing isn't good enough. The Supreme Court of Canada refuses to officially allow Pierre Montreuil, a Quebecer, to change his name to Micheline until he replaces his penis with a vagina.
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Scientists announce they have mapped the human genome, a kind of blueprint of human genetic make-up.
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Molson Inc. announces that it is selling the Canadiens.
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The Mirror turns 15! If you don't have the anniversary issue, you'll have to wait another five years when we may--or may not--do it all over again.
JULY
Pretty liberal for a state full of farmers and pick-up trucks: On July 2, Vermont becomes the first state to legalize gay marriage.
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Three downtown Montreal homeless shelters that deal largely with the mentally ill and drug abusers assert that increasing levels of violence in the shelters are the result of the city cutting their funding to zero.
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Walter Matthau, the star of movies like The Odd Couple and Grumpy Old Men, dies at 79.
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One boy dies and 24 are sent to hospital after a botched circumcision ceremony in Bizana, South Africa. Old, unsterilized instruments may be to blame.
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Quebec is rated 10th of all the provinces for its shameful environmental protection practices. Less than 4.5 per cent of the province's green spaces are protected from industrial development, compared to Ontario's 36.4 per cent.
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Leather boys on motorcycles lead 70,000 gays and lesbians through Rome for the World Pride Roma 2000 festival. Pope John Paul II reacts by calling homosexuality a "disorder contrary to natural law."
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Quebecers feel their French roots when France beats Italy 2-1 in the Euro 2000 soccer final.
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Canadian biathelete Mary Beth Miller, 24, is killed by a bear while training in Valcartier, feeding anti-bear fever across the country.
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Tastes like chicken: Thailand drafts a law that will make it illegal to eat cats and dogs after animals rights groups plan a ban on Thai leather products.
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The Federal Defence Department shelves the combat bra, an army-issue boulder holder that all female officers would have been forced to wear. Female officers figured the device simply would not come in enough shapes and sizes.
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Nine people die by suffocation at a Pearl Jam concert near Copenhagen.
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In an odd twist on The Godfather, cops call in the bomb squad after an anonymous criminal mastermind leaves a green garbage bag on the hood of a cop car at Montreal's Station 23. Turns out the bag contained a pig's head.
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Two Vancouver cops are suspended for a year for shooting a dog at a child's birthday party in the house they were raiding for drugs. The blood from the shot pit bull apparently sprinkled children eating birthday cake.
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Diana Ross and her reunited Supremes cancel their tour due to crappy ticket sales.
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Two hundred British Columbians march and plant wooden crosses to call attention to the province's 2,000 overdose deaths in eight years. There are roughly 9,000 junkies in 30 square blocks in Vancouver's downtown eastside.
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July 12 marks the 10-year anniversary of the Oka crisis.
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Matthew Coon Come is the first Quebec Cree elected leader of the Assembly of First Nations, which represents over 600 native communities.
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Mayor Pierre Bourque's Montreal Garden project in Shanghai is criticized after CBC airs photos of the workers living on site in piles of dirt.
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Police subduing 43-year-old Luc Aubert accidentally kill him in his Papineau St. apartment. Police critics say they were too quick to use pepper spray on him, which is deadly to asthmatics. Two days later police accidentally kill Sébastien McNicoll, 26, while subduing him with liberal amounts of pepper spray in St-Léonard.
**
An explosion at a Vaudreuil-Dorion chemical plant forces 8,000 people from their homes.
**
An 18-year-old driver working for an unlicensed commuter company crashes his van on the 401, killing five Quebecers.
**
The Ontario Court of Appeals rules that forcing employees to pee in a bottle to check for drug use is a violation of human rights.
**
Mayor Pierre Bourque promises to get rid of the crazy Pins-Parc interchange.
**
It could never work in Quebec, where pepper spray is just too popular: British Columbia police successfully use a bean-bag gun to apprehend a suspect.
AUGUST
Better the devil you don't know? Archconservative monopolist Conrad Black sells off 149 of his Canadian newspapers to CanWest Global.
**
The countdown continues: An Ontario judge declares the law prohibiting marijuana possession as unconstitutional, and gives Ottawa a year to amend it or lose it.
**
Wasn't it supposed to be harsher in the old days? A new Statistics Canada study finds that, for crimes that are not extremely serious, teens get harsher sentences than adults guilty of the same crimes.
**
Sex visits for prisoners are suspended while the Federal Court debates a case about a prisoner at the Drummond Institution who wanted a private romp not with someone from the outside world, but with a fellow prisoner. Visits can last up to 72 hours.
**
Montreal City Hall allows the creation of a Haitian council--the Conseil élu par les Haïtiens--to better represent Montreal's 100,000 Haitians.
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Exporting garbage: Toronto council votes to send 1.3-million tonnes of garbage to an abandoned open-pit mine near Kirkland Lake in Ontario's north, population 10,000. The deal later dies when the company that would have been responsible pulls out over liability issues.
**
It's okay to have fun in Toronto when, after banning raves, Toronto council re-legalizes them in a 50-4 vote.
**
A protest by 80 Montrealers against police brutality ends with in a standoff between a police blockade and a protester sit-in.
**
Meanwhile, 100 other Montrealers march to protest the Canadian government's support of sanctions against Iraq, organized by local anti-sanctions group Voices of Conscience.
**
Half-a-million people celebrate the Montreal's gay-pride parade Divers/Cité.
**
Eaten by America, like everything else: Humongous bug-eyed American bullfrogs, whose torsos measure 20 cm from nose-to-butt, invade Vancouver ponds and lakes, eating up our widdle Canadian fwoggies. Frog lovers fear this could spell doom for two Canadian species.
**
An Ottawa Management student sues the Ottawa Civic Hospital for removing one of his testicles. He claims they misdiagnosed him when he was admitted to hospital after being punched in the balls by a stripper.
**
Tire trouble: Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. recalls tires implicated in the deaths of 46 people and the injuries of 80 in the U.S.
**
Russian nuclear submarine the Kursk sinks to the bottom of the Arctic with 118 sailors on board. A chaotic rescue effort finally leads to the discovery that all the sailors are dead.
**
Assault with a funny weapon: A 23-year-old man pies Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in Charleton, PEI.
**
UFOs made him do it: Quebec's leading UFO expert, Richard Glenn, is sentenced to a year in jail for molesting little boys.
**
C'mon mom, you're embarrassing me! A Rimouski mom sues the Rimouski Minor Hockey Association because her 14-year-old son was denied ice-time in the final game.
**
Montreal activist Lea Roback dies at 96 after falling down stairs at her seniors' home. Roback fought her whole life for labour rights and feminism. As a member of the Communist Party, she organized a 5,000-strong garment workers' strike, which led to the first collective agreement with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and was a key player in earning Quebec women the right to vote.
**
Snowjob: Five local snow-removal firms plead guilty to forming a cartel in 1997 to drive up prices as well as keeping other companies from getting $4.6-million in contracts. But it doesn't matter, the provincial Transport Agency rehires them anyway. c
SEPTEMBER
BBC Symphony Orchestra conductor Leonard Slatkin gets into some hot water when he proposes stricter dress regulations so he can be spared the site of women violinists' flapping, flabby arms. He'd also ban pants for women, because some of those disrespectful females who are so audacious as to allow themselves to grow big bottoms.
**
An 11-year-old Edmonton boy robs a bank. His 42-year-old mother and a 22-year-old man are also charged with armed robbery.
**
Evan Harris, a British MP, volunteers to be injected with a new AIDS vaccine for the first clinical trial on a human.
**
Send the Titanic lady! Documents reveal China begged the Canadian government to pressure Celine Dion into touring the country where shiny Titanic button-down shirts are all the rage. Ottawa complied, but Dion refused.
**
The Hemp Olympix open in Sydney, Australia to draw attention to the country's drug laws. Events include the bong toss and a joint-rolling competition.
**
Who let the dogs out? According to Pierre Barnoti, executive director of the SPCA, over 40,000 puppies per year are being bred in overcrowded, unhealthy conditions all over Quebec.
**
Three hundred LaSalle residents are forced onto the street when their apartment building burns down. Many suspect the 148-unit building, located on the Lachine Canal across from a calm park, was burned down on purpose. It would coincidentally be a good spot to build a fancy expensive condo building.
**
Tommy's Bar and Grill in Maple Ridge, B.C. gets a lot of attention when it offers breast implants as a contest prize.
**
Over 100 natives who attended St. Anne's Residential School in Fort Albany, Ontario, sue the federal government for physical, sexual, and psychological abuse.
**
The Italian Supreme Court rules wives can be adulteresses--but only during the daytime.
**
Journal de Montréal crime reporter Michel Auger is shot five times in the back in the newspaper's parking lot. He survives after calling 911 himself.
**
Well, she wasn't going to marry you: Former prime minister Brian Mulroney's daughter Caroline marries Andrew Lapham, the son of Harper's editor Lewis Lapham.
**
The Olympics begin in Sydney, filled with all the usual stories of doping and commercialization of sports.
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The son did it: The 1999 murderer of Journal de Montréal reporter Daniel Brosseau turns out to be his son, Félix.
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Twenty thousand Montrealers march to raise awareness about AIDS as part of the annual C#231;a Marche fundraiser.
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To fish and annihilate fish stocks or not to fish: Natives in Burnt Church, New Brunswick have a standoff with federal Fisheries officers over lobster fishing. Shots are fired but no one is hurt. Natives claim they have a right to fish off-season. Ottawa says fishing off-season will only kill off dwindling lobster stocks.
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The Quebec government proposes a special mandatory voter I.D. card or a voluntary universal identification card.
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So-so-so-solidarité! One hundred Montrealers protest in solidarity with 10,000 anti-globalization protesters in Prague.
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The Canadian Alliance announces its first gay candidate, Stéphane Prud'homme, who will run in Laurier/Ste-Marie, which includes the gay village.
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Karla Homolka, who is in prison for the sexual-torture deaths of two Ontario schoolgirls, is transferred to a maximum-security psychiatric prison after the Gazette publishes photos of her partying with other prisoners at the medium-security Joliette Institution.
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Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau dies at 80.
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The driver of a ferry that crashed into a rock and sunk in Greece admits he was sleeping at the wheel. At least 75 people died.
OCTOBER
For the first time in 17 years, the fundraising organization Centraide does not donate money to the NDG Black Community Association, who says they disagreed with the stuff Centraide wanted them to do in order to get the money.
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In Denver, Colorado, 147 protesters are arrested at the first Christopher Columbus anniversary celebration in nine years. Protesters said things like "Indians discovered Columbus" and poured fake blood symbolizing the blood of millions of ancestors who died with the European settlement of America.
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CTV NewsNet reporter Mike Duffy causes Margaret Trudeau to collapse at a funeral ceremony for Pierre Trudeau after reminding her of her dead son's birthday, one day before.
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Looking funny in a dark suit instead of his trademark green military fatigues, Cuban President Fidel Castro flies to Montreal to pay his respects to Trudeau.
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Canadians get stuck with the $40-million cleanup bill of Building 200, one of five nuclear disposal plants in Chalk River, Ontario that show dangerously high levels of radiation.
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Furry justice: Frenchmen smuggle in at least 500 illegal Barbary apes to guard their homes. Unlike dogs, the super-strong apes go straight for the head.
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Firebombs are placed at three Plateau Second Cup outlets by Separatists called Brigade d'autodéfense du franç#231;ais who don't like English names. Only one bomb goes off successfully. No one is hurt. No word on what they thought of the coffee.
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Big Boss of the Hells Angels Maurice (Mom) Boucher is arrested after a Quebec Court judge orders a new trial on charges for the murder of two prison guards in 1997.
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Five thousand Montrealers march in support of Palestine, claiming the U.S. blindly backs Israel despite the increasing death toll of Palestinians in crazy Middle East violence.
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Unknown sailors bomb a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Middle East, killing 17 sailors and wounding 35.
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Thirty thousand people march through Montreal as part of the World March for Women, a demonstration for equal rights.
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There's hope for Walt Disney yet: Bacteria that was sleeping for 250 million years in a salt crystal is reawakened.
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Speaking of Concordia... Someone on the Concordia Student Union is responsible for a missing $200,000, but no one's saying who. It's the beginning of major financial problems for the activist student reps.
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Flipping the bird: A Bavarian court rules against a German motorist who raises his middle finger to a traffic camera, since it's like telling a cop to fuck off.
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Twenty thousand Harry Potter fans cram into the Sky Dome to watch author J.K. Rowling read from her books.
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Club-wielding police chase down and pepper spray 100 protesters of the G-20 meeting downtown. Thirty-nine anti-globalization protesters are arrested.
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Voting vagrants: Elections Canada allows the country's estimated 250,000 homeless to vote for the first time. The homeless respond by entering Michel Laporte, of the Acceuil Bonneau Homeless Men's Choir, as an independent candidate in Westmount/Ville-Marie. Laporte comes in eighth of 10.
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Attorney General Jim Flaherty, a guy with a lot of pull in Ontario immigration, fights to keep rapper Eminem out of Canada--unsuccessfully.
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Shameful! Michael Martin, the new speaker of the British House of Lords--a kind of political mediator--chooses not to wear one of those goofy white wigs that all the other politicians do.
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Dark Ages anyone? Ontario eliminates the evolution theory from the new elementary and high-school curricula almost entirely, claiming the theory is considered "controversial" and they don't have time to teach it anyway. c
NOVEMBER
CBS axes the shit-talking, homophobic Dr. Laura's daytime slot, and relegates her to 4:30 a.m. purgatory after only nine weeks on the air.
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The Quebec government blocks a company called Canderel from building a mega condo tower on the western slope of Mount Royal between the Gleneagles and Trafalgar. Mayor Pierre "development-at-any-cost" Bourque was really into the big tower.
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They get knocked down but they get up again: The Montreal Compassion Club, which distributed marijuana to sick people before being shut down by police in February, holds a four-day awareness campaign and fundraiser for two volunteers arrested in the raid. One of those guys is Marc-Boris St-Maurice, leader of the Marijuana Party. Four of the club's members died of their illness while the club was closed.
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What's a brother for? Local grass-roots Cyclo Nord-Sud--which collects and soups up bicycles--ships 500 of the refurbished transports to Cuba.
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Meanwhile, the United Nations votes overwhelmingly against the sanctions against Cuba, 167-3 (U.S., Israel and the Marshall Islands), with four abstentions.
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Quebecers want a new party: The federal elections clogged the papers all month. But in case you slept through it, like many Canadians, the biggest surprise was that the Bloc Québécois lost seats this year, and everyone's saying that means Separatism is losing its attraction.
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He rather looks like a Doris: The Canadian comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes creates a Web-based petition demanding the government force Stockwell Day to change his name to Doris, after the 1950s actress. The petition garnered over 900,000 signatures.
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Vegetarianism's not lookin' so bad when Spain reports its first case of mad cow disease.
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Clintons: Hillary Clinton is elected governor of New York, becoming the first president's wife elected to public office. The American president will not be determined for a month due to ballot buggery.
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Nieto shirt-o, Nieto bra-o: Dona Nieto, nicknamed "La Tigressa," bares her baubles to protest a lumber company cutting California redwood trees.
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Quebec announces plans to make the island of Montreal one city. It's not sure whether this will negatively affect Montrealers, but the suburbs fear they will be badly managed in a stormy sea of corrupt bureaucracy.
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Newfoundland Innu leaders ask the federal government to send 40 gas-sniffing kids to an underage treatment centre. Problem is, there is no such treatment centre.
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Ex-football star O.J. Simpson, still searching for the real killer, visits Montreal for a movie he may be making. It's not yet known whether it's a slasher.
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Asian invasion: Manitoba Canadian Alliance candidate Betty Granger says Asian student immigrants have flooded the university system, that Tamil immigrants in Toronto support terrorist groups, and that Asian boat people are not good for Canada. She says her words were taken out of context, but soon submits her resignation.
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Jean Chrétien is re-elected Prime Minister, just as everyone expected.
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Well, there's always that risk: The Canadian Food Inspection Agency warns Canadians they may have eaten Taco Bell taco shells and chips made with genetically modified corn intended for animals and considered unfit for human consumption.
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Michel Garneau, a cop, pleads guilty in the shooting of shoplifter Martin Suazo, who was surrounded by 12 cops, handcuffed and on his knees at the time. Suazo died.
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Man bites dog! San Francisco guy Stephen Maul goes to jail after punishing his dog for leaping from his truck and darting into traffic. Maul chased down his 80-pound pup, turned it onto its back and bit its neck.
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Gay money: A new survey by the Crop Institute reveals that Montreal's gay pride celebration, Divers/Cité, attracted 10,000 tourists and generated $40-million in economic offshoots for the city.
DECEMBER
A Montreal judge finally forces Victor-Miguel Sebastian-Rosales to take medication for tuberculosis, a highly contagious disease, after a well-publicized fight.
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Did they just find out about them or what? Sùreté du Québec raids dozens of highway strip clubs and makes loads of arrests on prostitution and drug-trafficking charges.
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A CBC producer says Stockwell Day's daughter-in-law, 20, has "tits that'd stop a..." accidentally during live election-night coverage, before being cut from the air. She accepts his apology. He is suspended for 10 days.
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Newly elected Mexican president Vicente Fox, a charismatic devil, is sworn into office.
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Britain promises to cancel debts owed to it by 20 of the world's poorest countries, as part of something called the Jubilee 2000 campaign--but only if they follow some of Mama Britain's leadership instructions.
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Three thousand Quebecers protest forced mergers on the South Shore. In response to anti-merger sentiment, Mayor Pierre Bourque goes on the offensive with a pro-merger petition. So far he's only got about 30,000 signatures.
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Too bad there isn't a superhero group to train him to use his powers for good instead of evil: Miscreant teen Mafiaboy, who hacked into major Internet sites like CNN and eBay, is forced to stay in jail for bad behaviour.
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Seventy-five thousand Quebecers protest forced Quebec mergers in downtown Montreal, leading some to believe that demonstrations might have some effect. Ha Ha. Just kidding.
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Japan debuts women-only train cars, since so many women get fondled against their will on those packed high-speed vehicles--especially during the holiday season, when Japanese people have this rule that allows them to do almost anything they want, so long as they are drunk.
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The Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals warns pet owners in NDG and Westmount to keep their cats indoors after some unknown sicko makes around 125 pussies disappear.
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The guy who pied former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau, Bruno Caron, 21, pleads guilty to assault and receives a conditional discharge so he doesn't have to go to jail.
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Next, it'll be pigs flying first-class: A Canadian Transport Agency report says airlines should consider obese people disabled and give them a second seat for free.
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Jew 2 Jew: Forty Montreal Jews who want Israel to leave the West Bank demonstrate outside the Israeli consulate.
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Hot for pot: Alberta judge Darlene Acton strikes down the law that says it's illegal to grow marijuana because it doesn't permit cultivation for medical use and there is no legal marijuana supply. She, too, gives the federal government a year to change the law.
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Russian nuclear disaster site Chernobyl is turned off once and for all, 14 years after meltdown.
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After a lengthy coup d'état involving the Florida Secretary of State, the Republican legislators, the U. S. Supreme Court and his loyal brother Jeb, George W. Bush finally weasles his way into the presidency.
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