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Meftih The Life Line of Eritrean Community Award Winning Independent Monthly Newspaperwww.meftih.ca email: [email protected]
Volum 8 Issue 4 January 2013 መጀመርታ ዓርቢ ናይ ነፍስ-ወከፍ ወርሒ ትሕተም ወርሓዊት ጋዜጣ Printed the first Friday of every month Tel: 416-824-8124 Fax: 416-783-7850
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Editors: Grace CherianPhotographer: Mulugeta Zergaber Contributors: Mohamed Edris Naza HasebenebiMedhin Ghebreslasie, Amleset Tesfay, Bode Odetoy-inbo, Mimi Chandy, Ken NtiamoaSubscription Costs in Canada $39 for a year and $59 for two years. In USA, it costs $45 for a year and $69 for two years.Articles appearing in assorted columns of Meftih newspaper are intended to generate civil & informed public discussions. You don’t have to agree with opinions expressed by the writers. However, that should push you to express your own views. Through that way we generate lively & civil discussions in the community. Rejoinders are not forums for personal insults & we want readers to adhere to these principles.
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Meftih January 2013 Volume 8 Issue 4: page 16
Let me start by saying I don’t condone shoplifting. Seen as a mere nuisance by some, the ‘five-finger-discount’ is a petty crime that exacts a heavy toll year after year on retailers – be they big box chain stores or mom and pop corner variet-ies. The cost is initially born by the store-owner but ultimately passed along to lawful consum-ers by way of increased prices to account for the overhead costs of security and the loss of inven-tory.
Many shoplifters are doubtless serial offenders with a patho-logical disrespect for the lawful property rights of others. How-ever, in my experience having represented hundreds of people accused of shoplifting, a sig-nificant sub-set are often factu-ally innocent having honestly forgotten to pay for a single item in a long list of things they shopped for that day thus never forming the requisite intent to be found guilty of a criminal offence. Even those who did make the unfortunate choice to steal often arrive in my office in tears, overwrought by guilt and terribly ashamed by their out-of-character lapse. The psychology of shoplifting is difficult to com-prehend. There are of course those who shoplift out of des-perate need – the many clients I have represented stealing baby formula or children’s clothing or groceries. But even more com-mon is the middle-class indi-vidual who conceals an item or two from the cashier while pay-ing for dozens of other purchas-
Civil Recoveryes. When store security search them upon arrest, their wallets are stuffed with a healthy wad of cash and bristle with credit and debit cards. When I ques-tion these clients in my office, almost universally I hear a tale of overwhelming stress – a fam-ily illness, marital troubles, or a failed project at work. They cannot articulate why they at-tempted to steal because they cannot understand the decision themselves.
Canadian criminal law address-es this crime with appropriate proportionate justice. Where the quantity of stolen property is relatively small and the offender has little or no prior criminal history, diversion is offered. The accused accepts responsibil-ity and pays their modest debt to society usually by making a charitable donation or perform-ing a short stint of community service. If any of the stolen property is not immediately re-covered, the offender will also be required to make restitution for the loss. Repeat offenders will typically face a discharge coupled with a period of proba-tion or a small fine and the life-time stigma of a criminal record that comes along with that.
But where the victimized store is part of a large retail chain, it is common to see a brazen attempt to gouge the offender and ex-tract a further pound of flesh for their wrongdoing. Shortly after being charged, it is common for the accused to receive a letter in the mail. The vast majority of these missives (at least in On-tario) appear to emanate from a single Toronto lawyer, using a fill-in-the-blank form letter to
demand payment of $595 for damages “based on trespass to goods, trespass to the Retailer’s premises, and conversion.” I’m not sure what to make of the fact that this lawyer demands that cheques be made payable to “CIVIL RECOVERY” at a Streetsville P.O. Box rather than to his own trust account at his Toronto office. In any event, the form letter goes on to assert that
retailers estimate shoplifting costs exceed $4.0 billion and include in this calculation “the cost of apprehension, documen-tation and inventory control, and loss of sales opportunities.” Essentially, the retailer argues: “even though we caught you and recovered 100% of what you tried to take from us, you owe us compensation for all the trouble we went to in catching you. Oh, and throw in a few bucks to cov-er the losses we incur for those folks we don’t catch.”
This claim has always struck me as legally dubious but to a pan-icked layperson who receives the letter it comes across as frighteningly official. The letter refers to the $595 claim as the “Settlement Amount” and threat-ens that a failure to pay may lead to “the commencement of legal proceedings against you before a civil court, for all damages, plus interest, legal expenses, and other administrative costs incurred by the Retailer in con-nection with this matter.” Clients
are given a 2-3 week window to digest this after which they are warned that the claim amounts will “increase if payment is not made by the noted date.” All of these threats are then given a legal stamp of approval as the letter concludes by saying, “the claiming of civil damages was affirmed by the Divisional Court in Hudson’s Bay v.White.”
No citation is provided for the White case but it’s a safe bet that the letter is referring toHudson’s Bay Company v. David James White, [1997] O.J. No. 307 (O.C.J. Gen. Div.) and its subse-quent appeal at [1998] O.J. No. 2383 (Ont. Div. Ct.) in which The Bay made a claim to re-cover surveillance, investigation and apprehension costs arising from a shoplifting incident. It’s also a safe bet that the authors of these types of demand letters are counting on the fact that none of the recipients of their missives will actually have the means or the desire to readthe case of Hud-son’s Bay Company v. David James White. I say this because, having read both the case and its curt appellate endorsement, one would be hard-pressed to de-scribe this precedent as a victory for retailers.
David White selected five pairs of women’s gloves with a retail value of $200 and attempted to leave The Bay without paying for them. He was stopped by The Bay’s loss prevention offi-
cer and the property was recov-ered. Interestingly, for reasons that are unclear, Mr. White was never charged with any criminal offence. This is significant as judicial commentary in related cases suggests that where a per-son is prosecuted for shoplift-ing in circumstances where the retailer suffers no actual loss (since all the property is im-mediately recovered) the basis
for a civil claim of any kind is substantially weakened. In any event, The Bay took the posi-tion that Mr. White owed them $2000 in damages for trespass to land (the store) and chattels (the gloves). They further sought a lifetime injunction banning Mr. White from entering any Bay stores in the future.
The court conducted a detailed analysis concluding that White’s decision to enter the store for the purposes of shoplifting did indeed constitute the tort of tres-pass as he had no valid reason for being there. This leaves open an intriguing (and disturbing for The Bay) question: in situations where an individual conducts some legitimate shopping but also makes an attempt to steal, can the tort of trespass be made out at all? If not, retailers are left with no civil redress against the high number of shoplifters who actually pay for a portion of their purchases while only concealing a small number of
please see page 17
Meftih January 2013 Volume 8 Issue 4: page 17
2013
items in an attempt to steal. Leaving that aside, the court expresses a great deal of discomfort with the heart of The Bay’s claim raising numerous objections including the question of how The Bay can claim damages for the costs of security and loss preven-tion when, by their own admission, this cost is passed on to consumers by way of higher prices on the goods themselves. “Does The Bay really suffer any loss in the form of loss prevention costs, or do consumers?” asks Justice Lederman.
Justice Lederman concludes that in these unique circumstances – where White entered the store solely for the purposes of shoplifting and where he was never charged with a criminal offence – nominal damages for The Bay should be awarded. The court declined to make any injunction against Mr. White and ordered him to pay the princely sum of $100. Not content with being so badly beaten, The Bay appealed and in a three-line judgment devoid of any reasoning the Divisional Court concluded that the case “cried out for punitive dam-ages” and replaced the $100 award with a whopping $300 recovery.
So what can we learn from the legal odyssey of Mr. White? In some cir-
cumstances, shoplifting can indeed incur modest penalties enforced by the civil courts. The Bay set out to win $2000 in damages and im-pose a lifetime injunction. What they got after a full trial and appeal was no injunction and a cheque for $300. I’m guessing there weren’t too many champagne corks pop-ping over in the legal department at the end of the day. Where does that leave the thousands of people each year who receive a demand for a $595 “Settlement Amount”? Are Retailers really going to launch Small Claims Court actions against people who, in most cases, have al-ready faced criminal prosecution, in the hopes of recovering fees that would barely cover their courthouse parking costs? You do the math.
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From page 16
.... Recovery
Meftih January 2013 Volume 8 Issue 4: page 18Sport
By Grace Cherian
Choosing where to dieToday far too many Ameri-cans do not die in the way they would choose. Surveys indicate, for instance, 90% of people say they want to die at home surrounded by family. Only 10% will say in a hospital or nursing home, according to Donna Wilson, professor of nursing at the University of Alberta and a researcher into dying in Can-ada.
But instead 70% die in hospitals and other health care facilities, often spending their last weeks in intensive care units. In some cases this may be necessary, but in many cases it isn’t.
Wilson’s most recent sur-vey focuses on the dying preferences of Albertans but other research from Canada and around the world over the past two decades confirms these results. The surveys include both healthy and terminally ill people.
Few cancer patients have had a “realistic conversa-tion” with health care pro-vidersMore disturbingly, fewer than 40% of advanced cancer patients have had a “realistic conversation” with their own health care providers about what to expect and their op-tions for care.
Consequences: Aggressive futile end-of-life care for cancer patientsThe consequences? The American Society of Clini-cal Oncology says too often patients aren’t told about options like comfort care or even that their chemo has become futile until the bitter end. Patients are increasingly receiving aggressive chemo-therapy in the last two weeks of their life. They’re spend-ing more of their last months hospitalized.
Palliative care seen as giv-ing upDoctors think palliative care—specialized care for pain, nausea and shortness of breath—means giving up when it should be offered with standard anti-tumour care.
Home deaths can be a posi-tive experienceWhen patients and their fam-ilies have adequate support at home the experience of a home death can be very posi-tive for everyone, says Wil-
son.
“Your loved ones are there to talk to; families have an opportunity to talk together and heal wounds or develop strong bonds and dying peo-ple can thank their family members and give final ad-vice.”
Dying at home helps both the dying patient and society as a whole. When more people die comfortably at home, more hospital beds become available for patients who can benefit from hospital services. According to Wilson, ‘…ag-gressive, expensive, painful and futile’ care in hospital is often avoided when patients are able to die at home.
The Conversation Project (TCP)The goal of The Conversation Project is as bold as it is sim-ple: to have every person’s end-of-life (EOL) prefer-ences expressed and respect-
The Gift
Please see page 20
Canada will play for the bronze medal at the world junior hock-ey championship for a second year in a row.
The Canadians fell 5-1 to the United States in Thursday’s semifinal in Ufa, Russia.The Americans will meet the winner of the Sweden-Russia semifinal for gold Saturday. Canada will face the loser for bronze.
“We came a long way and we still have an opportu-nity to get a medal,” head coach Steve Spott said. “It’s not the colour we want, but we owe it to Ca-nadian fans to come home with a medal.”
Canada won bronze last year when the tournament was held in Calgary and Edmonton.
Canada had most of the country’s best 19-year-old players available to it this year because of the NHL lockout, with the exception of a defenceman and a for-ward lost to injury before the tournament.
Canada dominated the tour-naments of 1995 and 2005 en route to gold when the
NHL locked out their play-ers those seasons. There were high expectations of this team that included Edmonton Oiler forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.Lack of desperation
Spott said he chose his 23-player team with speed in mind, but the United States made Canada look like they were standing still for two periods Thursday.
“The start was the differ-ence in the hockey game,” Spott said following the game. “We simply didn’t have the energy or the des-peration that the Ameri-cans had early.”
U.S. captain Jake McCabe and John Gaudreau each scored a pair of goals and Jim Vesey also scored for the Americans.
Trailing 4-0 after 40 min-utes, Ty Rattie scored a short-handed goal for Can-ada early in the third, but Gaudreau scored his sec-ond of the game at 15:41.
Canada had beaten the U.S. 2-1 in a Pool B game on Sunday with just 11 forwards because of sus-pensions. A full comple-ment of 13 should have
Canada falls to U.S. in world junior semifinal
produced more scoring chances even-strength, but didn’t.
U.S. goaltender John Gib-son, who plays for Spott on the Ontario Hockey League’s Kitchener Rang-ers, made 26 saves for the win. Gibson stopped an all-alone Ryan Strome in the second period.
Canadian starter Malcolm Subban was replaced by Jordan Binnington in the second period after the U.S. had scored four goals on 16 shots. Binnington, playing in his first game since Dec. 22, made 25 saves in relief.
“It had nothing to do with Malcolm at all. We left him out to dry and the goals they scored were quality goals,” Spott said. “It was more than anything trying to give our team a little bit of a shot of adrenaline.”
Canada finished first in Pool B at 4-0 and earned the bye to the semifinal.
The U.S. finished third in their pool at 2-2 and de-feated the Czech Republic 7-0 on Wednesday to ad-vance to the semifinal.Source: The Canadian Press
Meftih January 2013 Volume 8 Issue 4: page 19DUFFERIN CUSTOM
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Slip Cover & Window Seats.For your old furniture we do:- Re upholstery, Restyle, Restoration & Replace foam cushion
Editors: Grace CherianPhotographer: Mulugeta Zergaber Contributors: Mohamed Edris Naza HasebenebiMedhin Ghebreslasie, Amleset Tesfay, Bode Odetoy-inbo, Mimi Chandy, Ken NtiamoaSubscription Costs in Canada $39 for a year and $59 for two years. In USA, it costs $45 for a year and $69 for two years.Articles appearing in assorted columns of Meftih newspaper are intended to generate civil & informed public discussions. You don’t have to agree with opinions expressed by the writers. However, that should push you to express your own views. Through that way we generate lively & civil discussions in the community. Rejoinders are not forums for personal insults & we want readers to adhere to these principles.
ed. It began when Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist El-len Goodman and a group of colleagues and friends—doc-tors, care providers, clergy, and media—began sharing their stories of “good deaths” and “bad deaths” within their own circle of loved ones. They talked about how they faced a confusing array of medical decisions and un-certainty about the wishes of parents, spouses, and friends.
TCP provides a safe, dynamic and interactive forum where families can learn from each other and care providers can more fully understand how crucial their role is in this important life passage, not by influencing choices but by encouraging the conver-sation. When we open up a
space for this discussion or discussions, we can all make our wishes known for our EOL care.
The Conversation Project has just launched “The Gift” tool designed to help families share the gift of the conversa-tion this holiday season. This is the most important conver-sation you’ll ever have.
Offer yourselves and those you love peace of mind. Share “The Gift” this holi-day season. Download “The Gift” tool and start the con-versation now.
References:CBC. ca news: Choosing where to dieThe American Society of Clinical OncologyThe Conversation Project
. . . GiftFrom page 18
Attawapiskat Chief The-resa Spence is urging unity among protesters and aboriginal leaders in the grassroots Idle No More movement, which has sprung up around her 23-day-long hunger strike aimed at winning a meet-ing with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Spence launched the hun-ger strike after the federal government passed omni-bus budget legislation, Bill C-45, which organizers with Idle No More say vio-late treaty rights.
“We need to continue to encourage and stand in solidarity as Indigenous Nations,” Spence said in a statement Wednesday. “We are at a historical mo-ment in time, and I ask that grassroots, chiefs and all community members come together in one voice.”
Protests have been held in many Canadian communi-ties as well as outside the country, particularly in the United States, since the movement began to last month.On Monday, some of the founding organizers in Saskatchewan posted a statement online saying that elected First Nations chiefs do not represent the movement’s leadership.
“The chiefs have called
Hunger-striking chief urges unity with Idle No More
for action, and anyone who chooses can join with them, however this is not part of the Idle No More movement,” the statement said.
“While we appreciate the individual support we have received from the chiefs and councillors, we have been given a clear mandate by the grassroots to work outside the system of gov-ernment, and that is what we will continue to do.”
New Years Eve Resolutions* A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. My new year’s resolution is to be more optimistic by keep-ing my cup half-full with either rum, vodka, or whiskey.
* My New Year’s resolution is to stop hanging out with people who ask me about my New Year’s resolutions.
* I have only one resolution. To rediscover the difference between wants and needs. May I have all I need and want all I have. Happy New Year!
* If 2012 was a person, I’d sue him for pain and suffering and lost wages.
* People treat New Year’s like some sort of life-changing event. If your life sucked last year, it’s probably still going to suck tomorrow. I’ll remember 2012 like it was yesterday May all your troubles last as long as your New Year resolutions.
* Just heard that in 2013 there will be a new device that can turn thoughts into speech. I have had that for years, it’s called alcohol.
* My New Years Resolution is to break my New Years Resolutions....That way I succeed at something!
* Anyone who says that alcohol is a depressant isn’t drinking enough of it.
* There have been many times in 2012, when I have annoyed you, distubed you, irritated you, and bugged the hell out of you....today I just wanna tell you I plan to continue in 2013!
source: http://www.jokes4us.com/
Meftih January 2013 Volume 8 Issue 4: page 21
Weary U.S. lawmakers pushed at last toward a final vote on emergency legislation to avoid a national “fiscal cliff” of major tax increases and spending cuts in a New Year’s Night culmina-tion of a struggle that tested di-vided government to the limit.
Passage would send the mea-sure to President Barack Obama for his signature and hand him a political triumph less than two months after he secured re-election while campaigning for higher taxes on the wealthy. The extraordinary late-night House vote was coming nearly 24 hours after Senate action spilled over from New Year’s Eve into the pre-dawn hours of 2013.Explainer
4 things to know about the ‘fis-cal cliff’
In addition to neutralizing middle-class tax increases and spending cuts that technically took effect Monday at midnight, the legislation raises tax rates on incomes over $400,000 US for individuals and $450,000 for couples. Remarkably, in a party that swore off tax increases two decades ago, dozens of Repub-licans supported the bill at both ends of the Capitol.
Republicans did their best to minimize the tax increases in the measure.
Congressman David Dreier, of California, in the final days of a 32-year-career in Congress, said the legislation was “not the grand bargain we’d hoped for” to reduce federal deficits. “But it is an essential bridge to what
I hope will be a comprehensive and long-term solution. It will bring us back from the edge of the fiscal cliff and implement tax cuts for 99 per cent of tax-payers.”
Declared Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, of Ohio: “This is a great victory for the middle class, whose taxes will not go up tomorrow.”
It would also:
Prevent an expiration of ex-tended unemployment benefits for an estimated two million jobless. Block a 27 per cent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients. Stop a $900 US pay increase for lawmakers from taking ef-fect in March. Head off a threatened spike in milk prices. Stop $24 billion in spending cuts.
The spending cuts are set to take effect over the next two months, although only about half of that total would be offset with spend-ing reductions elsewhere in the budget.
Even with enactment of the leg-islation, taxes are on the rise for millions.
A two percentage point tempo-rary cut in the Social Security payroll tax, originally enacted two years ago to stimulate the economy, expired with the end of 2012. Neither Obama nor Re-publicans made a significant ef-fort to extend it.
The fiscal cliff measure had
cleared the Senate on a lopsided pre-dawn New Year’s vote of 89-8, and House Republicans spent much of the day struggling to escape a political corner they found themselves in.
“I personally hate it,” said Con-gressman John Campbell of California.
“The speaker the day after the election said we would give on taxes and we have. But we wanted spending cuts. This bill has spending increases. Are you kidding me? So we get tax in-creases and spending increases? Come on.”
“I do not support the bill. We are looking, though, for the best path forward,” said House Ma-jority Leader Republican Eric Cantor, from Virginia, earlier Tuesday.
Within hours, Republicans abandoned demands for changes and agreed to a simple yes-or-no vote on the Senate-passed bill.
They feared that otherwise the Senate would refuse to con-sider any alterations, sending the bill into limbo and saddling Republicans with the blame for a whopping middle class tax in-crease. One Senate Democratic leadership aide said Majority Leader Harry Reid would “ab-solutely not take up the bill” if the House changed it. The aide spoke on condition of anonym-ity, citing a requirement to keep internal deliberations private.
Source: CBC
U.S. House pushing to final ‘fiscal cliff’ vote
The Ontario govern-ment will attempt to end a months-long dispute by imposing contracts on its public school teachers, Education Minister Lau-rel Broten announced this morning.
Using powers the govern-ment gained under contro-versial Bill 115 last fall, Broten said the govern-ment will force contracts on about 130,000 elemen-tary and secondary school teachers.
The agreements will be similar to deals signed by Catholic and French-lan-guage teachers last year. They will include:
Freezing wages for most teachers. A reduction in sick days. A limit on the amount of unclaimed sick days that teachers can cash out when they retire.
The imposed contracts will expire in August 2014.
Broten said the move to im-pose contracts was needed to avoid pay increases the province can’t afford as it struggles to pare back a $14-billion deficit.
The move comes after months of stalled negotia-tions and a series of rotat-ing one-day walkouts by elementary teachers in the weeks leading up to the Christmas break.Further strike action ille-gal
Broten also said Thursday the government will repeal Bill 115 once the contracts are in place, saying the bill has become a “lightning rod” in the dispute between the province and teachers.
She said the bill has served its purpose by leading to
contracts with teachers, and described the move to repeal it by month’s end as an act of “good faith” by the province.
Teachers’ unions have warned that the Liber-als would be asking for trouble if they force new agreements on their mem-bers, and have vowed to stage “days of protest” to fight it.
It’s not clear whether those protests will involve more walkouts, but Broten said Thursday any strike action by teachers is now illegal until the imposed contracts expire.
Some teachers have also stopped supervising ex-tracurricular activities and coaching sports teams.
“I urge teachers not to move to illegal strikes,” said Broten.NDP criticizes government move
NDP education critic Cheri DiNovo said the govern-ment’s move to use and then repeal Bill 115 is an example of “Liberal back-room cynical politics at its worst.”
“You don’t impose agree-ments; you come to agree-ments,” said DiNovo, who also pointed out that the legislation is the subject of a court challenge.
The fight with teachers will be key to the fortunes of Ontario’s minority Liberal government as the party prepares to select a new leader later this month.
The Liberals could also find themselves on the campaign trail early in 2013 if the new premier fails to get support from opposition members.
December 31, 2012 (ADDIS ABABA) – Israel’s Interior Minister has requested for legal approval to allow au-thorities to carryout the mass deportation of tens and thou-sands of Eritrean and Suda-nese asylum-seekers and mi-grants.
According to Israeli news outlets, interior minister, Eli Yishai, has called on the jus-tice and foreign ministries to give him the authority to de-port the remaining estimated 50,000 Sudanese and Eritrean refugees.
Yishai made the calls shortly after an Eritrean migrant al-leged raped an elderly wom-an in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
Yishai said the shocking rape against the 83 year old lady demonstrates Israelis’ “lost sense of security” due to the presence of what he referred to as “infiltrators.”
He called on the ministries to permit him to wrap up his plans aimed “to stop the flow in of infiltrators and return them to their countries.”
“Completion of the security barrier, the installation of detention center and pass-ing a law that will allow the imprisonment of infiltrators” hinge on moves from the For-
eign and Justice Ministries’ he said.
Currently there are some 30,000 Eritrean refugees in Israel and some 15,000 from Sudan.
According to ministry fig-ures, the refugees from the two East African countries make up more than 80 per-cent of the total refugees Is-rael hosts.
All Eritreans between the age of 17 and 50 are required to do a mandatory national or military service for nearly two years however, refugees say the service is usually ex-tended indefinitely.
Eritrea considers its fleeing nationals as traitors and de-serters from the army and those who return often end up behind bars secret prison facilities in harsh conditions for an indefinite period with-out charges being pressed against them.
Risk analysts, Maplecroft, in 2012 ranked Sudan as the country with the world’s worst human rights index score and Eritrea with the 16th worst.
In June month hundreds of African asylum seekers marched on the UN offices in
Tel Aviv, calling for fair treat-ment in the face of incendiary political rhetoric.
Israel’s prime minister, Benja-min Netanyahu, has said that “the breach of our borders by infiltrators could threaten the Jewish and democratic state […] we will begin by re-moving the infiltrators from South Sudan and move on to others.”
Also, Israel’s interior min-ister, Eli Yishai, has said “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.”
Amid violent, 1,000-strong anti-immigrant protests in May in which African resi-dents were attacked, Miri Re-gev, a legislator and member of Knesset (the legislative arm of the Israeli govern-ment), said that Sudanese refugees are a “cancer in our body.”
Despite the clear danger posed against the refugees, Israel however keeps threat-ening and deporting the Af-rican migrants, contrary to international law.
Israeli minister seeks approv-al to deport all Sudanese,
Eritrean refugeesNeuroscience is the new black, when it comes to fash-ion in scientific research.
“The gene was the central is-sue in biology in 20th centu-ry,” Nobel Laureate Dr. Eric Kandel, neuroscientist at Co-lumbia University said in an interview in Toronto recently. “The mind is the essential is-sue for biology in the 21st century.”
“And certainly if you think of public health consequences, the diseases, pain, schizo-phrenia, depression, manic depressive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, God knows what, so many miser-ies of humankind come from psychiatric and neurological disorders,” Kandel added.
Back in the 1960’s, when Kandel began his Nobel prize winning work search-ing for the biological source of memory, neuroscience was a lonely field. “It didn’t inter-est many biologists. Anatomy was considered boring, and
electrophysiology was too technically complicated for most scientists to pay atten-tion to,” he said.
Richard Beninger is a be-havioural neuroscientist at Queen’s University, who recalls that as a student he studied the brain as a collec-tion of parts. “You could see white matter and dark matter and lots of fine detail, right down to the neuron level, but it was all morphology, struc-ture,” he said.
“But all of that changed, once scientists began to under-stand the chemical pathways in the brain. The morphol-ogy is still there, but now we know what the transmitter systems are. So we have a whole new brain only in the last 40 years to work with,” Beninger said.
Today’s technology al-lows scientists to put liv-ing, breathing humans into a magnetic resonance imaging machine, tell them to think about something, and watch as the biological traces of thought appear and disappear
in colorful bursts, measured by changes in blood oxygen
Ancient systems in the brain drive human cravings
Please see page 23
Meftih January 2013 Volume 8 Issue 4: page 23
By Xiyan Cao
For further info, please contact Dr. Cao at 416-733-7660
levels. It means scientists can now explore the neural land-scape in real time, and chart the cognitive forces that have shaped our species from our earliest days.
As they investigate this neu-ral wonderland, scientists are probing the very essence of what makes us human. It’s as though they are lifting the hood of humanity, and tin-kering with the wiring to find how what makes us do what we do. And they are discov-ering that the secret to every-thing we do, think, or feel, is in that wiring, a constantly changing network of neuronal connections sculpted by evo-lution and fired by electrical and chemical interactions.
Dr. Kandel calls it the most complex organizational structure in the universe. “So we’re far from understanding it completely, very far, but the beginning has been quite dramatic,” he says.
“It’s certainly extraordinary, our entire experience of life, all of our mental experi-ences, if they all result from the activity of chemistry in our brain, the activity of neu-rotransmitters and neurocir-cuits, it’s amazing,” Beninger said.Dopamine key to behaviour
For Beninger, dopamine is the most fascinating neu-rotransmitter, allowing us to interact with our environ-ment, sending us in search of the things we need for sur-vival. “Something that’s bio-logically valuable, food, for example, water, sexual part-ner, social companion, social cooperation, those are things that activate the dopamine system,” he says.
“These systems are ancient, you know, fruit flies have sim-ilar systems, and worms,” he says. “They’re found in fish and all vertebrates, they’re very old, these dopamine neurons,” Beninger said.
Which means the same chem-ical impulses that lead a fruit fly to dive into your wine-
glass also makes you reach for the bottle and pour that second glass.
“When dopamine neurons are activated, whatever’s be-ing encountered at the time gets a stronger ability to at-tract in the future,” Beninger says. “So for an animal in the wild, food-related stimuli, things that signal food, like a particular place, a particular object, then acquire the abil-ity to draw the animal in the future.”Dopamine does its work through a form of uncon-scious learning, teaching the brain to recognize environ-mental cues, sights sounds, smells, feelings that lead back to the thing that first excited the reward pathway, even if that ‘thing’ is dangerous. “So drugs that are abused by peo-ple, all of them activate the dopamine system,” Beninger explains.
Increasingly scientists also believe food can hijack the brain’s reward system. At York University, Profes-sor Caroline Davis is study-ing the biological basis of food addiction. She says the brain’s reward system can be particularly sensitive to high-ly processed food with com-binations of salt, sugar, fat and flavours found nowhere in nature.The brain and food addiction
“Because they’re so palat-able, we tend to eat a lot of them and they give us a great-er dopamine boost than broc-coli does,” Davis said. “The things loaded with sugar, loaded with fat, salt, in com-bination they’re very, very hard to resist and there’s evi-dence that if you eat enough of these foods, in some vul-nerable people, they display behaviour that is very similar to the behaviour that we see in other addicts.”
When lab rats are given ac-cess to sugary food, they binge, and when the sugar is taken away they show physi-cal withdrawal systems that resemble the animal’s with-drawal from heroin. Research has shown that dopamine is
one of the pathways activated in these sugar-addicted mice.
Caroline Davis has discov-ered a dopamine link in food-addicted humans, a genetic profile that is associated with stronger dopamine signal-ling, and she believes those genes might make some peo-ple more vulnerable to dop-amine’s cues.
“People that tend to be very sensitive to reward, our data suggests, it may be more dif-ficult for them, in this envi-ronment. In another era, it would have been quite adap-tive because they would have gotten a great pleasure out of food and they would have been the ones to pack on the pounds and survived longer. But it doesn’t work so well in this environment.”Dopamine linked to motiva-tion
Back at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., Richard Beninger is watching a se-ries of videos of laboratory rats on a chin up bar, taken by his students. When a nor-mal rat is placed on the bar, it gets down immediately. But something amazing happens when researchers give the animal a drug that blocks the dopamine receptors. Now the rat stays on the chin up bar, longer and longer after every dose.
“The animal will just sit there if their dopamine is blocked. It’s not that they can’t move, they are just not motivated to move,” Beninger said. “It seems that you need dop-amine to engage in the envi-ronment.”
“I’m still struggling to un-derstand the implications of this condition, ‘catalepsy,’ he said. But he calls it an excit-ing finding. “I think there’s some new, valuable informa-tion in this phenomenon.”
“I think the cues that are around us, the things we in-teract with day to day, all that we are able to respond to, pick up, and handle, all
From page 22
Ancient systems in . . .
Please see page 24
Dichroa febrifuga, commonly known as chang shan, is one of the 50 fundamental herbs of traditional Chinese medi-cine and has been used as a malarial agent for more than 2,000 years. In the course of a study, Malcolm Whitman, Professor of Developmental Biology at Harvard School of Medicine, and his colleagues found that halofuginone (HF), a natural quinazolinone alkaloid occurring in the herb could be used to treat autoim-mune disorders.
Their findings about the small-molecule compound could also be relevant for dental autoimmune immune disorders, such as chronic ulcerative stomatitis. U.S. re-searchers found in 2011 that painful oral lesions associat-ed with the disease are most likely caused by an autoim-mune response.
Earlier studies conducted by Whitman’s team in 2009 had already demonstrated that HF activates a response pathway that blocks the development of harmful T helper 17 cells (Th17), which play a key role in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, and that in this regard HF is very se-lective in its effect. A series of experiments demonstrated that HF inhibits the develop-ment of Th17 cells, but does not affect other kinds of T-cells involved in regular im-mune function.
HF acts by triggering a bio-chemical pathway known as amino-acid starvation re-sponse (ARR), which typi-cally prevents cells from forming when amino acids are in short supply. By deplet-ing amino acids, research-ers were able to induce ARR and inhibit differentiation of Th17 cells.
In the current study, Whit-man’s research team investi-
gated how HF activates the AAR pathway by looking at the most basic process that cells use to translate DNA into the amino-acid chain that makes up a protein. Experi-ments demonstrated that HF targets a particular enzyme that incorporates the amino acid proline into proteins. It was observed that whenever proline was in short supply, ARR kicked in and produced the therapeutic effects of HF treatment.
According to Whitman, “This compound could inspire nov-el therapeutic approaches to a variety of autoimmune disor-ders.”
With regard to the treatment of autoimmune disorders, the challenge has been suppress-ing inflammatory attacks by the immune system on body tissue without generally sup-pressing immune function. In instances of chronic ul-cerative stomatitis, treatment was only successful using hydroxychloroquine, a pre-scription drug primarily used to prevent malaria and rheu-matoid arthritis.
“This study is an existing example of how solving the molecular mechanism of tra-ditional herbal medicine can lead both to new insights into physiological regulation and to novel approaches to the treatment of diseases,” said Tracy Kelly, an instructor in Whitman’s lab.
However, researchers do not yet fully understand the role that amino-acid limitation plays in disease response or why restricting proline inhib-its Th17 cell production.
Chinese herb may provide
relief for autoimmune
disorders
Meftih January 2013 Volume 8 Issue 4: page 24
that requires a certain level of dopamine. And if we repeat-edly are exposed to stimuli, with dopamine reduced, we lose our ability to respond to those particular stimuli. It seems that dopamine gives you a reason to move, get off the bar, act on a stimuli, and without it, you have no inter-est in reacting the stimuli or environment.”
Beninger says it resembles the movement disruption in people with Parkinson’s dis-ease, which is associated with reduced dopamine activity, something he is also studying in his lab.Dopamine’s role in relation-ships
Beninger is also studying how dopamine shapes our relationships. It seems that when someone is nice to us, our dopamine will draw us back to that person.
“So when I interact coop-eratively with someone else and they interact coopera-tively with me, that person, which is a representation in my brain, by the action of dopamine, gains an enhanced ability to attract me in the fu-ture,” Beninger says. “So the dopamine sculpts our social landscape.”
I think it’s an absolute marvel, you can only marvel more as you begin to learn more about the chemical neuroanatomy of the brain,” Beninger says. “It’s all of that working to-gether that creates my mental experience, my whole life. It’s an absolute marvel.”
If they understand brain chemistry neuroscientists be-lieve they will be able to of-fer therapies to fight mental illness and improve the entire human experience. And Dr. Eric Kandel says discoveries are inevitable, in part because there are now so many scien-
tists in the field.
“When I was a medical stu-dent, I wanted to take an elective in brain cell science, but there was only one lab in New York City that had a good person I could work with. It was unheard of. Now you go in the street and every other person you meet is do-ing brain science.”
“I was working in a lab for the first time in 1955. By 1969, a society had formed in North America, called the So-ciety of Neuroscience, and it had 600 members. Now it has 35,000 members. The num-ber of people now working in brain science has grown enormously. It’s gone from an arcane discipline. Now it’s one of the most exciting, if not the most exciting area in biology.”
Ancient systems in . . .From page 23
Canada produced a surpris-ing 40,000 new jobs in De-cember, built on the back of a larger-than-expected 30,000 uptick in Ontario.
Statistics Canada reported Friday in its Labour Force Survey that Canada’s un-employment rate dropped to 7.1 per cent last month, the lowest level in four years.
All the job gains came in
full-time work.
All in all, 1,400 part-time jobs were lost, but that was offset by 41,200 new full-
time jobs.
Ontario, Manitoba, Sas-katchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island all posted job gains, although On-tario stood out with 33,000 net new jobs, the second straight month that prov-ince has posted such a strong showing.