Jeers: to having to take your own government to court. So, it turns out that Laura Flynn, 75, did indeed meet the criteria to be eligible for compensation for relocating from William’s Harbour, an island off the south coast of Labrador, last fall. At the time the relocation request was made to the 15 souls on the island, in 2013, Flynn had lived there since 1979 and had spent at least 183 days there in each of the prior two years, as required. That would entitle her to about a quarter of a million dollars in compensation. But in what Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador Justice Gillian Butler called “a breach of natural justice,” an independent reviewer deemed Flynn ineligible. Given Butler’s overturning of those findings, the matter will go to the Department of Municipal Affairs for re-evaluation. Let’s hope there’s no heel-dragging.
Jeers: to never learning. As The Guardian observed, you have to be 21 to buy beer in the United States, but a military-style magazine-fed semi-automatic? Eighteen is just fine — the age Nikolas Cruz was when he bought the AR-15 he used to kill 17 people and injure 14 others at his former Florida high school on Feb. 14. “That is a weapon that is meant for destruction,” Frank Fernandez, director of public safety in Coral Gables, Fla., told The Associated Press. Fenandez, who’s also chairman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s firearms committee, should know. “It’s not a weapon that you can use to go hunting. That is a weapon ... used in the theatre of war,” he said. But hey, guns are not the problem, right? In a response that has become all too predictable in the U.S. after a mass shooting, Florida’s Republican Rep. Jose Oliva said there’s no need for gun restrictions. “You don’t take cars off the road because someone got drunk, used one and killed someone. You don’t take a car off the road because someone rented a U-Haul and ran it into some people in New York City.” That’s the kind of head-in-the-sand rationale that will send countless more Americans to premature graves.
Cheers: to a town and three babies. In Tignish, P.E.I., when single mom Hayley Arsenault brought her triplets home from the hospital, townsfolk were ready to spring into action. They’d even set up a sign-up sheet for those willing to take a shift caring for babies Hogan, Rylan and Finn. “We are bonding with them already. They’re just precious,” Alice Mokler, 70, told The Canadian Press. She and her two sisters — all retirees and grandmothers — say they enjoy helping out. “When you see them laying in the same crib — three little heads — it just touches us. … We pick them up, feed them, burp them, change them, cuddle them.”
