three wise monkeys

Why is a man who has sex with a 12 year old girl branded a paedophile, but a woman who does the same is not?

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Sex with boy, 12, woman jailed 15 months

Mar 29, 2007 06:01 PM
Canadian Press

QUEBEC – A woman collapsed and burst into tears today after being sentenced to 15 months in jail for having sex with a 12-year-old boy.
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Undergrads sign up for rare cross-Canada degree
Mar 24, 2007 04:30 AM
Louise Brown
Education Reporter

They’re a bit like Country Mouse and City Mouse, these two Canadian students hoping to trade places for a semester.

Amy Clarke says she’s a “big city girl” who grew up in Toronto. “I’m comfortable downtown,” she shouts over the rumble of the Queen streetcar after biology class at Ryerson University.

Four provinces away, not far from his grandparents’ potato farm, Bobby Cameron crams for history mid-terms at the University of Prince Edward Island and suggests, “You can’t get much more rural than me.”

Both have applied for an unusual exchange program meant to build bridges between two very different universities – and offer a sense of Canada to boot.
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Friday, Mar. 02, 2007
Eating Better Than Organic
By John Cloud

Not long ago I had an apple problem. Wavering in the produce section of a Manhattan grocery store, I was unable to decide between an organic apple and a nonorganic apple (which was labeled conventional, since that sounds better than “sprayed with pesticides that might kill you”). It shouldn’t have been a tough choice–who wants to eat pesticide residue?–but the organic apples had been grown in California. The conventional ones were from right here in New York State. I know I’ve been listening to too much npr because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern oil did it take to get that California apple to me? Which farmer should I support–the one who rejected pesticides in California or the one who was, in some romantic sense, a neighbor? Most important, didn’t the apple’s taste suffer after the fruit was crated and refrigerated and jostled for thousands of miles?
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When vodka is your poison
By John Sweeney
BBC News, Russia

Thousands of Russians may have been poisoned by bootleg alcohol containing medical disinfectant causing drinkers’ skin to turn yellow before they fall dangerously ill or die.

Pskov is the end of the line. I got off the Moscow overnight express and the earth started to buckle in front of me.

On the Pskov express I had played chess with a couple of Russians, the vodka bottles had come out, and soon every move of a pawn was celebrated with a toast.

If you’re interested, I was about to win when the Russian bloke nicked my queen - anyway, I had had enough to drink to kill a small horse.
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Mild weather in early winter meant more cats outdoors, more frisky antics, and a population explosion in the GTA
Mar 09, 2007 04:30 AM
Carola Vyhnak
Staff reporter

It’s raining cats and climate change is to blame.

Milder weather in cold seasons means cats are outdoors more, doing what comes naturally, say animal workers on the frontlines. The result is a population explosion that’s stretching GTA pounds and shelters beyond their limits.
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The traditionally neutral Swiss army has staged an unplanned invasion after troops blundered into Liechtenstein.

A 171-strong Swiss company got two kilometres into its neighbour before realising the mistake and heading back.

Liechtenstein authorities made light of the intrusion, saying they only knew about it when the Swiss told them.
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Liver, part of a head mistakenly delivered to house instead of research lab; 28 other packages, intended for medical research, could have gone astray
Mar 03, 2007 04:32 PM
Associated Press

CASCADE TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Two packages containing human body parts – including a liver and part of a head – meant for a medical research lab instead were delivered to a home.

The body parts, sent from China, were mistakenly dropped off Thursday at Franck and Ludivine Larmande’s home by a DHL express driver who believed the bubble-wrapped items were pieces to a table.

“My husband started to unwrap one and said, ‘This is strange, it looks like a liver,’” Ludivine Larmande said. “He started the second one, but stopped as soon as we saw the ear.
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By Stephen Poloz

Have you ever looked at one of those satellite photos of the earth, taken at night? It is truly a remarkable sight, and full of economic meaning, besides.

What most people see when they look at these photos is the lights – literally billions of them. Of course, they also see massive areas of darkness. But what an economist sees is not the lights, but a map of economic activity. Dense clusters indicate intense economic activity. The photo reveals what might be referred to as economic gravity.
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