Baltimore prepares for 2nd night under curfew as solidarity protest erupts in NYC

Hundreds of people were marching Wednesday night in Baltimore in protest against the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who was fatally injured in police custody earlier this month.

Protesters, many off them college students, marched through downtown and to City Hall calling for swift justice in the case of Gray's death. Many wore black T-shirts that said "Black Lives Matter" — which has become the slogan of a movement against police brutality.

People also chanted, "Tell the truth. Stop the lies. Freddie Gray didn't have to die."

Jacob Kinder, a student at Goucher University in nearby Towson, Md., said Gray's death and the subsequent protests and riots have been a big topic all week on campus.

Hundreds of protesters, many of them students wearing backpacks, marched through downtown Baltimore Wednesday, calling for swift justice in the case of Freddie Gray, a black man fatally injured in police custody. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)

"I think there's a pretty big fault line between students who think that the protests are justified and the riots are justified and people who don't see race as a problem," Kinder said.

Kinder is white, as were many in the group.

A similar protest was happening in New York City, where several hundred people gathered at Union Square in Manhatta, chanting "no justice, no peace" and "hands up, don't shoot." Some were taken away in handcuffs by police officers.

The demonstrations come as Baltimore tries to get back to normal after riots Monday night. A 10 p.m.-5 a.m. ET curfew was put in place Tuesday, and it will continue for the rest of the week.

Police said Wednesday that they arrested 35 people, including one juvenile, after the city imposed the curfew.

Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said more than 100 people are still waiting in jail to be charged in connection with the riots Monday night. He said police have a 48-hour window to charge them or else they will go free. Another 100 people who were also arrested have been charged.

He says the backlog has occurred because officers have to fill out documents and do other work to file the charges. He says if people are released, they may face charges later after officers review video and social media.

Slow return to normal but protests continue

After the curfew was lifted in Baltimore Wednesday, rush-hour traffic began flowing through downtown, including at an intersection where demonstrators and police had faced off Tuesday night.

Protestors demonstrate against the police-custody death of Freddie Gray outside City Hall, Wednesday, April 29, 2015, in Baltimore. Hundreds of protesters marched through downtown calling for swift justice in the case of Gray, a black man who suffered critical injuries while in police custody. (David Goldman/Associated Press)

There were about 15 officers in riot gear protecting a check cashing business that was trashed.

Elsewhere, schools were reopened and tensions seemed to ease.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra  played a free outside concert around lunchtime, and dozens of people gathered and sang the national anthem as the orchestra played along. The concert was part of the city's efforts to return to some sort of normalcy after rioters looted stores and burned businesses on Monday night.

In one of the oddest spectacles in major-league history, the Baltimore Orioles played the Chicago White Sox in a stadium with no fans after officials closed the game to the public because of safety concerns related to the riots.

Freddie Gray report won't be released

There were isolated protests in parts of the city, including outside the office of Baltimore's top prosecutor where a few dozen protesters gathered in the early afternoon to demand swift justice in the Gray case.

Organizers said they were rallying in support of State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who took office in January and pledged during her campaign to address aggressive police practices.

The protesters chanted "No justice, no peace!" and "This is what democracy looks like!" They say the city needs to return to peaceful protests.

Police have said they will turn over their report on the death of Freddie Gray to Mosby's office on Friday. She will then face a decision on whether and how to pursue charges against the police officers who arrested Gray. Six officers have been suspended during the investigation.

But police made it clear Wednesday they would not be releasing the report publicly as had been previously reported in the media.

"We cannot release all of the information from this investigation to the public because if there is a decision to charge in any event by the state's attorney's office, the integrity of that investigation has to be protected," Kowalczyk said.

Attorney general decries 'senseless' violence

Justice Department officials say they have met with the family of Freddie Gray, who died of a spinal injury days after being taken into police custody, and with an injured police officer who remains hospitalized.

The department says the meetings happened Tuesday.

Justice officials also say representatives from a specialized office that mediates conflict between police departments and communities are also in Baltimore and met with residents who shared concerns about a lack of trust in law enforcement.

There were no fans in the stands to witness the Baltimore Orioles' victory over the Chicago White Sox Wednesday after officials barred the public from the game because of Monday's riots. (Gail Burton/Associated Press)

Separately, the department says the results of a federal review of the Baltimore Police Department's use of force practices are expected to be announced in coming weeks. The department also has begun a civil rights investigation into Gray's death.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch decried the rioting in Baltimore Wednesday, calling it "senseless acts of violence" that were counterproductive.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was only sworn into office the day of the riots, said Wednesday that Baltimore is 'struggling to balance great expectations and need with limited resources.' (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

In remarks at the Justice Department, she said while the city is in some ways a symbol of the issues the nation has been talking about when it comes to police use of force against black men, it is more than that. It is a city that police are trying to protect, and that peaceful protesters are trying to improve, she said, while "struggling to balance great expectations and need with limited resources."

Lynch, the former federal prosecutor for portions of New York City, was sworn in Monday to replace Eric Holder, becoming the first African-American woman to serve as the nation's top law enforcement official.

Address underlying social issues: Obama

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the Baltimore riots show that police departments need to build more trust in black communities.

In an interview broadcast Wednesday on The Steve Harvey Morning Show, Obama said his heart went out to the Baltimore officers who were injured by rioters. He said there's no excuse for that kind of violence and that Baltimore police showed "appropriate restraint."

But he is calling on police departments "to hold accountable people when they do something wrong." He said Lynch is reaching out to mayors to let them know what resources are available for retraining police and providing body cameras to hold them accountable.

Obama said problems will continue if the response is only to retrain police without dealing with underlying social issues such as poor education, drugs and limited job opportunities. He says tackling those problems will require a broader movement.

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Police killings America's real state of emergency: Neil Macdonald

The first time I heard my father say it, I was trailing along behind him, licking an ice cream on a warm summer night in a Glengarry County town not far from our farm.

"Good evening, officer," he said, as we passed a uniformed patrolman. "Lovely evening tonight."

The cop smiled back and said something kind and reassuring, and the lesson was complete.

The rule in our house was clear: the police protect us and deserve our respect.

The heavens would fall on any of us overheard calling them "pigs," the word the hippies were using where the counterculture was flourishing, in places far from Glengarry.

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Another popular phrase back then was "police brutality," words my father also regarded with suspicion and hostility. (Remember, there were no iPhone videos back then, just he-said, she-said newspaper stories.)

Just recently, I was walking from the White House to the CBC bureau a few blocks away, and as I passed a uniformed Secret Service officer, the old reflex kicked in: "Good afternoon, officer."

This cop, though, stared straight ahead through his sunglasses, wordless, barely acknowledging the greeting.

Clearly, if he was going to speak, it would be to issue some sort of order. Everything in his stance said I am authority. Move along.

Baltimore's turn

Or at least that's how it seemed to me. I don't mind saying it: America's police now frighten me.

Their power and their impunity frighten me. And I'm a white, 58-year-old middle-class man. I can't imagine what I'd be feeling if I were a black or Latino kid in Baltimore.

Baltimore crackled with violence and rage this week. The governor declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard after rioting erupted following the funeral of Freddie Gray, yet another black man who died in police custody.

A cyclist rides by burning police cars during unrest following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. (The Associated Press)

The times really haven't changed so much. Gordon Lightfoot once wrote a famous song about another governor who did the same thing 48 years ago in Detroit.

The public conversation isn't much different, either.

Liberals are worrying about what triggered the rioting ("And they really know the reason, it wasn't just the temperature and it wasn't just the season ...").

Conservatives are pointing out the shameful looting and the rocks and fire, telling us we should be grateful we have brave police to stand between us and anarchy.

Turning the tables

But the reality the modern surveillance society is providing us is impossible to ignore.

Just as the authorities use technology to collect unprecedented data on the citizenry, the citizenry is constantly crowdsourcing video evidence about the authorities, and it's ugly.

It used to be the cop's word against the perp's. Now it's the cop's word against clear video evidence, and the cop still usually prevails.

In Baltimore, as is most often the case these days, bystanders recorded Freddie Gray's takedown by police on their smartphones. Sometime afterward, his spine was nearly severed. He perished in hospital.

But it's improbable that anyone will answer for the killing — that's what it was, after all — in a court of law.

A recent investigation by the Washington Post and Bowling Green State University stated that of the "thousands of people" shot dead by police in America during the last decade, only 54 officers have been charged.

And most of those who were charged were acquitted.

The series examined cases ignored by the national media: a lot of them unarmed people shot at point-blank range. The officers involved always claimed they feared for their lives; juries almost always took their word, even when the victim was shot from behind, execution-style.

The system doesn't really want to document police crime; governments are for obvious reasons reluctant to keep statistics on such shootings ("not necessarily considered an offence") and police close ranks.

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In about a fifth of the cases where charges were laid, prosecutors accused police of planting or destroying evidence.

Crimes of passion?

One needs only consult the iPhone video of the South Carolina cop shooting the fleeing man in the back a few weeks ago, then appearing to plant a Taser on his corpse, to see how it happens.

That officer was charged with murder, but only after the video emerged. A conviction will be another matter entirely.

"To charge an officer in a fatal shooting, it takes something so egregious, so over the top that it cannot be explained in any rational way," said Philip M. Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green who participated in the Washington Post investigation.

And even then, juries tend to give the police officer the benefit of the doubt.

Stinson, a former officer himself, suggested that many of these police shootings are really "crimes of passion."

"They are used to giving commands and people obeying. They don't like it when people don't listen to them, and things can quickly become violent when people don't follow their orders."

Today, though, even the conservative voices that have for so long defended law enforcement are wavering.

Take some time and browse the libertarian Cato Institute's online National Police Misconduct Reporting Project. 

It's a scholarly work, and evidence gathered is weighed carefully; in fact, the last full year for which they have issued a definitive report is 2010.

That report identified 4,861 formal incidents of police misconduct involving 6,613 law enforcement officers and 247 civilian fatalities for that year alone.

If just a fraction of those fatalities were criminal, then the inescapable conclusion is that more people have been murdered by police in America in the last 10 years than by terrorists.

Of course, we are told, we don't know how many terrorists have been thwarted by vigilant behind-the-scenes enforcement.

Well, true. But given the minuscule number of prosecutions, let alone convictions, neither do we know how many of the people who are supposed to be guarding us have gotten away with murder.

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What's in the Senate report the Crown wants kept from Mike Duffy's trial?

An unexpected outburst of legal wrangling over admissible evidence has forced Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt to put the trial of suspended Senator Mike Duffy on hold until next week.

At issue: whether Duffy's defence lawyer, Donald Bayne, should be permitted to question witnesses on a 2010 report from the Senate internal economy committee on the findings of an independent audit into senators' office and travel expenditures,

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The document at the centre of the dispute is the Annual Report on Internal Audits 2009-2010, which was tabled Dec. 15, 2010.

That report included the findings of three audits that had been carried out over the previous year by independent auditing firm Ernst and Young — including one that dealt specifically with senators' office expenditures.

In its report to the committee, the auditors noted the Senate "should provide clearer guidance and criteria on which activities constitute a parliamentary function."

No 'clear guidance'

"For example, there is no clear guidance made between partisan activities relating to Senate business (allowable expenses) and partisan activities on behalf of political parties which may not be eligible," it notes.

"This issue affects Finance staff responsible for processing claims as well as the level of understanding of the rules by Senators' offices and can lead to inconsistent interpretation and processing of reimbursements."

The audit also recommended:

• Revising the Senate's Living Expenses Policy to "reflect requirements for senators to provide supporting documentation for private accommodation expenses."
• Providing "clearer guidance" on the use of the office research budget, including "criteria on what constitutes a consulting service and a personnel service."
• Ensuring policy changes related to Senate travel, as well as new rules on the use of the travel card, be properly and formally communicated to "all relevant stakeholders," including senators and administration.
• Keeping better records of hospitality expenses, including documenting "the details of each hospitality occasion."

Finally, it called on the Senate to "give consideration for a second-level approval" for senatorial expense claims — which, it notes, is "normal practice within private and public sector organizations."

'Second-level' approval rejected

That particular recommendation was roundly rejected by the Senate committee.

"It was felt that the Senate's rigorous expense claim review process was adequate and that there are effective mechanisms in place to mitigate the typical risks associated with expense claims," the report concludes.

As for the other recommendations, the committee noted "an action plan" had been developed, including a new public disclosure system for all travel, office and hospitality expenses to come into force in January, 2011, new rules for the "timely submission" of travel expense claims and a revised policy on National Capital Region living expenses.

"The Internal Economy Committee is confident that, once all initiatives have been completed, the audit recommendations will have been adequately addressed," the response concludes.

Report could bolster defence case

Given how much emphasis Duffy's defence team has put on its assertion that the Senate's rules were confusing and unclear, it's not hard to see why they would want to see this report added to the body of evidence on which the judge will ultimately base his ruling.

Not only does it bolster their case by repeatedly acknowledging the need for "clear guidance" in several of the areas from whence the charges against Duffy originate — particularly travel claims related to partisan activities and living expenses — it also demonstrates the committee itself was aware that even policies that were in place weren't always communicated to senators, Senate administrators and other "stakeholders."

The Crown, meanwhile, has already signaled it will challenge the report's admissibility on the basis that, despite being a published report by a parliamentary committee, it should still be viewed as hearsay, and as such, not appropriate to put before witnesses during questioning.

The judge has indicated that, while he's prepared to hear arguments next Monday, he likely won't deliver a ruling on the matter until June, when the trial is scheduled to resume following a three-week hiatus set to begin May 9.

Senate Internal Economy Committee - Annual Report on Internal Audits 2009-2010

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'We walked, ran, crawled, scrambled,' say Calgary couple who escaped earthquake

Ancient temples brought to their knees. Foreign rescue teams combing great piles of rubble in search of survivors. And funeral pyres burning 24 hours a day as the dead are counted and cremated.

There are a lot shell-shocked faces wandering the streets of Kathmandu, Nepal, as people struggle to make sense of what's happened here.

Calgarians Jacq Warrell and her husband, Cam Dobranski, were hiking on a mountain in the Langtang region when the earthquake hit. They scrambled to safety from an altitude of 3,300 metres with the help of local villagers. (Sasa Petricic/CBC)

A young woman from Calgary is one of them. Jacq Warrell and her husband, Cam Dobranski, were married in Nepal just two days before the earthquake hit.

When it did, they say, they had little time to think of anything beyond survival.

'When we were calling from the mountain, trying to save our lives, they just put us on hold and gave us an email [address].'— Jacq Warrell and Cam Dobranski

"We were at about probably 3,300 metres on the side of the mountain when the quake struck, and we were actually pretty lucky where we were. We watched a lot of rock slides happen around us, and we crawled over rock slides to get out," said Warrell. 

"We've been in refugee camps and watched people die, and it's time to go home."

'We walked, ran, crawled, scrambled'

The pair were hiking in the Langtang region of Nepal, which stretches north of Kathmandu up to the border with Tibet.

"The mountains literally shook," said Dobranski. "It was like Jell-O. You had to lie down."

Five days later, they have made it down from the mountain.

"We walked, ran, crawled, scrambled," they said, until they made it here — to a city they expected to be flattened.

Soldiers examine earthquake damage in Kathmandu's Durbar Square. (Margaret Evans/CBC)

Their time on the mountain was an informational black hole, they said.

They were not impressed with Canada's services for citizens abroad, despite managing to get through to the emergency help line when their cellphone found a signal.

"But when we were calling from the mountain, trying to save our lives, they just put us on hold and gave us an email [address] to email them," they said.  

The consular service is much better now that they're in the city, they said.

"To sit on a mountain and have no information. Everybody's scared. There's people screaming, dying. It's scary," said Dobranski. "We know of four Canadians still out there."

Hard-to-reach areas wait for help

The focus on trekkers in Nepal has so far been on those trapped near or on Mount Everest. But the Calgary pair say there are many hikers — not to mention the local population — stuck in the Langtang Valley.

People from nearby villages helped the couple, offering them food, even though their own homes had been swept away.

The Calgary couple's testimony paints a picture of the devastation wrought by the quake in areas still difficult to access.  

People in Kathmandu pitch in to clear earthquake debris from the streets of the Nepalese capital. (Margaret Evans/CBC)

"All the houses are destroyed." said Dobranski of the village they had been staying in. "It looks kind of somewhat normal here. [But]

everything where we were is destroyed … every village is destroyed, every house is destroyed or damaged."

The couple had decided to leave Nepal on a commercial flight instead of the military plane offered up by the Canadian government, which will fly citizens to New Delhi. But that flight fell victim to congestion at Kathmandu's tiny airport and was cancelled.  So Wednesday night, along with 96 other passengers of different nationalities, they boarded the C-177 sent by Canada.

How will they remember their wedding?

"Maybe in 10 years for our anniversary, we'll come back and complete the trek," Warrell said.

For now, their thoughts are with those they met on the trail who didn't make it and for the people of Nepal.

"We get to leave, we get to get on a plane and get home … but to think about all the people who are still here and have to deal with the devastation and rebuild … that's hard," Warrell said. 

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California drought has thirsty cities craving saltwater solutions

Walking into the old control room is like opening the "hatch" on the TV show Lost. Inside, there are dot matrix printers, floppy disks, even a tape drive. The manual for this reverse osmosis water desalination plant is dated 1993.

"This is state-of-the-art early-'90s technology here," says Santa Barbara's manager of water resources Joshua Haggmark. He points to the computer. "The hard drive in here is smaller than what's in my iPhone. So needless to say we won't be re-utilizing this this time around."

The city of Santa Barbara built the Charles E. Meyer desalination plant in the 1990s during the last long drought.

They ran it for four months. Then the drought ended, so they mothballed the plant but didn't take it apart. Just in case.

"Even though it wasn't producing water for the last 20 years, it was still an existing facility. We kept its permits up," says Santa Barbara's mayor Helen Schneider. "Because we know that drought is going to happen again. It's a cyclical thing."

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That's why the city is reactivating a plant that was shut down when the last Canadian team won a Stanley Cup. They kept it for a worst-case scenario. Which is now.

"It's the four driest years of California history," Schneider says. "We are in the most exceptional drought I think we've ever experienced.

"One of our main sources of water, Lake Cachuma ... it's under 28 per cent capacity. Another water source is effectively dry. In a year and a few months, we would need the desal plant for 30 per cent of our water supply."

Cheaper than a new plant

For Santa Barbara, a coastal city of over 90,000 about 150 kilometres north of L.A., the problem is that parts of the plant are so old they can't be re-used. The filters that remove all the major particulates, for instance. And of course, as Haggmark points out, the computers.

"All of this technology will be pulled out, we'll be using more state-of-the-art technology," he says.

Some may laugh at the idea of recycling a decades-old plant, but even at $40 million US to refurbish and another $5 million a year to run, it's a lot cheaper than building a new one.

"If we had to start from scratch, find the patch of land where it could go, do all the piping behind me from scratch," Schneider says, gesturing at the kilometres of fibreglass pipes that surround her, "we'd be looking at two, three times as much to put a desal plant together."

Still, despite the high cost of building and operating desalination plants, this historic drought means that for some desiccated California communities they've become a good investment.

"These systems will work," says Bill Croyle, the drought manager of California's Department of Water Resources. "It does come down to that unit cost of water provided to the end user.

"But I think when you don't have water, the unit cost of water becomes very valuable and then those projects become more viable."

A dozen new plants 

California Governor Jerry Brown recently announced the state would provide $270 million to help build more water recycling projects. California is already evaluating more than a dozen proposed desalination plants.

"The desalination process doesn't need to be just for those large urban areas along the coast," Croyle says. "It can be used inland in various sectors to deal with critical water needs."

But for every gallon of drinking water these plants create, there is another gallon of super-salty brine water, which is piped back into the ocean and can threaten marine life.

Hence the frequent lawsuits from environmental groups hoping to stop them, notes Sarah Sikich, the vice-president of the Santa Monica-based Heal the Bay environmental group.

"Many of the desalination proposals we're seeing in California rely on what's called an open ocean intake," Sikich says. "This is basically just a pipe straight out into the ocean, and in doing so it's drawing in sea water but also all the marine life associated with that seawater."

Santa Barbara's water manager shows me a copper filter with holes the size of your average window screen.

"It will keep any significant marine life from being sucked into the tube line," Haggmark says. But Sikich says these types of screens haven't been tested in an ocean environment. And she believes even a small filter could still create big problems.

"We're concerned about the things getting stuck on that pipe," Sikich says. "So the fish eggs, the fish larvae potentially getting stuck up against those pipes, clogging it."

Santa Barbara mayor Helene Schneider has been working with council to reactivate the plant (Kim Brunhuber)

Instead, she's calling for slant wells, which run underneath the ocean and rely on water to percolate down.

Santa Barbara is studying the feasibility of this system when it awards a contract to reactivate the facility in June. Schneider says they will do what they can to minimize the environmental impact. But the city waited 25 years to re-start this, she says, it can't stop now.

"We need to be prepared," Schneider says, "so that we don't go into this crisis mode of decommissioning, recommissioning, and look long-term."

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Baltimore Orioles defeat White Sox with no fans in stands

A first-pitch strike by Ubaldo Jimenez to Chicago White Sox leadoff hitter Adam Eaton to begin Wednesday afternoon's game in Baltimore drew the same reaction as a called third strike to Jose Abreu to complete a 1-2-3 top of the first inning.

The same sound after Orioles' slugger Chris Davis deposited a Jeff Samardzija pitch into the seats beyond the wall in centre-field and Camden Yards and later when teammate Jimmy Paredes grounded out to second base to end a six-run first for Baltimore.

The sound of crickets.

Well, there were claps from fans standing outside the stadium gates above and behind the outfield wall as well as cheering in the Baltimore dugout. Orioles fans could also be spotted lined up on the deck of a nearby hotel that overlooks the stadium.

---

That's because the game was closed to the public, believed to be the first game played behind closed doors in the 145-year history of the major leagues.

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Evening games on Monday and Tuesday were postponed after rioting in Baltimore. Rioters looted stores and threw rocks and bricks at local police near the stadium in the wake of the mysterious death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died April 19 after he suffered a severe spinal injury in police custody.

Manny Machado added a solo homer in the fifth inning among his three hits Wednesday to help the Orioles to a 8-2 victory.

Besides the umpires and players on the field and others in the respective teams' dugouts, there were a few scouts sitting behind home plate.

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Prior to first pitch, the public address announcer announced the playing of National Anthem, informing "ladies and gentlemen" what was to follow. A recorded version was played while the White Sox stood in a line outside their dugout and the Orioles stood at attention in their dugout.

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A custom in Baltimore is shouting "O!" when the song reaches "Oh say can you see?"

No one did it, although one person in the press box carried on the tradition by saying it under his breath.

The Orioles organist played the ballpark staple "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" to an empty ballpark after the top of the seventh.

Later, the Orioles proceeded with another baseball tradition: announcing the attendance. For the first time in major league history it went, "Today's official paid attendance is zero."

Playing the game before no fans was an unusual move by Major League Baseball, which usually errs on the side of caution in the wake of tragedy.

Baseball games were cancelled after riots ignited in Los Angeles and terrorists attacked New York and Washington. Baseball put off the World Series in 1989 after an earthquake hit San Francisco.

In Baltimore, they played a game because this was the only planned visit by this season by the White Sox. The postponed games on Monday and Tuesday were to be made up as part of a doubleheader on May 28, but there was seemingly nowhere to go on the schedule with Wednesday's game.

So they moved up the starting time by five hours to 2:05 p.m. ET to beat the 10 p.m. curfew and had the teams go at it before 47,000 empty seats.

Before the game, Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph pretended to sign autographs for imaginary fans and thank them for their support.

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At the end of an inning, Davis chose to flip a ball into the empty seats, which would usually attract a large crowd. But not on this day.

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Playing the game without any fans in attendance was both a good and a bad thing. The team didn't divert any police from doing their job around the city, but the people of Baltimore didn't get a chance to turn the page by watching the home team play at Camden Yards.

"We're doing the right thing," Davis said. "I'm not real happy about playing in an empty stadium. That's one of the reasons that we look forward to coming home so much, playing in front of our fans. But we also understand that there's a bigger picture here."

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'We are hungry:' Aid reaches Nepal quake's epicentre

Hands pressed together in supplication, the Nepalese women pleaded for food, shelter and anything else the helicopter might have brought on an in-and-out run Wednesday to the smashed mountain village of Gumda near the epicentre of last weekend's mammoth earthquake that killed more than 5,000 people.

Unlike in Nepal's capital, where most buildings were spared complete collapse, the tiny hamlets clinging to the remote mountainsides of Gorkha District have been ravaged. Entire clusters of homes were reduced to piles of stone and splintered wood. Orange plastic tarps used for shelter now dot the cliff sides and terraced rice paddies carved into the land.

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"We are hungry," cried a woman who gave her name only as Deumaya, gesturing toward her stomach and opening her mouth to emphasize her desperation. Another woman, Ramayana, her eyes hollow and haunted, repeated the plea: "Hungry! We are hungry!"

But food is not the only necessity in short supply out here beyond the reaches of paved roads, electricity poles and other benefits of the modern world. These days, even water is scarce. Communication is a challenge. And modern medical care is a luxury many have never received.

Gumda is one of a handful of villages identified as the worst hit by Saturday's 7.8-magnitude earthquake, from which it will almost certainly take years to recover.

A female villager named Ramaya clasps her hands as she pleads for food after an aid relief helicopter lands at the remote mountain village of Gumda, near the epicentre of Saturday's massive earthquake in the Gorkha District of Nepal, Wednesday, April 29, 2015. (Wally Santana/Associated Press)

As in many villages, though, the death toll in Gumda was far lower than feared, since many villagers were working outdoors when the quake struck at midday. Of Gumda's 1,300 people, five were killed in the quake and 20 more were injured.

As the helicopter landed Wednesday with 40-kilogram sacks of rice, wind and rain whipped across the crest of the mountain. Seeing the conditions, the UN World Food Program's Geoff Pinnock shouted over the roar of the propellers, "the next shipment has to be plastic sheets. These people need shelter more than they need food."

About 200 villagers huddled under a few umbrellas and plastic tarps as they waited to receive the aid, some with runny noses and chattering teeth. With the erratic Himalayan weather, aid workers are worried about keeping people warm, fed and safe.

"More helicopters, more personnel and certainly more relief supplies including medical teams, shelter, tents, water and sanitation and food are obviously needed," said Pinnock, who was coordinating the aid relief flights.

With 8 million Nepalese affected by the earthquake, including 1.4 million needing immediate food assistance, Pinnock said the relief effort would stretch on for months.

"It doesn't happen overnight," he said.

Nepalese police said Wednesday the death toll from the quake had reached 5,027. Another 18 were killed on the slopes of Mount Everest, while 61 died in neighbouring India, and China's official Xinhua News Agency reported 25 dead in Tibet.

The disaster also injured more than 10,000, police said, and rendered thousands more homeless. The UN says the disaster has affected 8.1 million people — more than a fourth of Nepal's population of 27.8 million — and that 1.4 million needed food assistance.

Planes carrying food and other supplies have been steadily arriving at Kathmandu's small airport, but the aid distribution process remains fairly chaotic, with Nepalese officials having difficulty directing the flow of emergency supplies.

Amid an influx of foreign aid and rescue teams into Nepal, a Canadian Forces transport plane carrying relief supplies and an advance crew from a disaster-assistance team landed late Wednesday afternoon at Kathmandu airport . The plane will pick up Canadians who want to leave the city and take them to New Delhi. 

A second Canadian plane is expected to land on Thursday.

About 200 people blocked traffic in the capital Wednesday to protest the slow pace of aid delivery. The protesters faced off with police and there were minor scuffles but no arrests were made.

Police arrested dozens of people on suspicion of looting abandoned homes as well as causing panic by spreading rumors of another big quake. Police official Bigyan Raj Sharma said 27 people were detained for stealing.

But in a sign that life was inching back to normal, banks in Kathmandu opened for a few hours Wednesday and stuffed their ATMs with cash, giving people access to money.

Thousands of people lined up at bus stations in the capital, hoping to reach their hometowns in rural areas. Some have had little news of family and loved ones since Saturday's quake. Others are scared of staying close to the epicentre, northwest of Kathmandu.

"I am hoping to get on a bus, any bus heading out of Kathmandu. I am too scared to be staying in Kathmandu," said Raja Gurung, who wanted to get to his home in western Nepal. "The house near my rented apartment collapsed. It was horrible. I have not gone indoors in many days. I would rather leave than a live a life of fear in Kathmandu."

In some heartening news, French rescuers freed a man from the ruins of a three-story Kathmandu hotel more than three days after the quake. Rishi Khanal, 27, said he drank his own urine to survive.

Nepal military personnel throw a box of relief supplies onto a truck at the Gorkha district office following early Wednesday in Gorkha, Nepal. (Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Khanal had just finished lunch at a hotel on Saturday and had gone up to the second floor when everything suddenly started moving and falling. He was struck by falling masonry and trapped with his foot crushed under rubble.

"I had some hope but by yesterday I'd given up. My nails went all white and my lips cracked ... I was sure no one was coming for me. I was certain I was going to die," he told The Associated Press from his hospital bed on Wednesday.

Khanal said he was surrounded by dead people and a terrible smell. But he kept banging on the rubble all around him and eventually this brought a French rescue team that extracted him after being trapped for 82 hours.

"I am thankful," he said.

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Joni Mitchell alert and expected to recover, says singer's website

The health of Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell was the subject of conflicting information with her website stating she is alert and expected to make a full recovery, while a longtime friend stated in a court filing that she was unconscious and unable to care for herself.

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The Grammy winner has been hospitalized since March 31 for undisclosed reasons. Her friend Leslie Morris filed a petition to become Mitchell's guardian on Tuesday, stating that the singer-songwriter was unable to care for herself.

Full recovery 'expected'

Within hours, Mitchell's official website stated that "She comprehends, she's alert and she has her full senses. A full recovery is expected."

Morris' court filing was accompanied by a doctor's declaration stating that Mitchell would be unable to attend a court hearing for four to six months, but it included no additional details on her condition or prognosis. Dr. Paul Vespa checked a box signed on Saturday indicating that Mitchell was unable to participate in her medical care.

"At this time (Mitchell) remains unconscious and unable to make any responses, and is therefore unable to provide for any of her personal needs," states Morris' filing, which was signed by her on Sunday and by her attorney on Monday.

Morris sought a court order because Mitchell does not have any family who can serve as her conservator and assist with her care and medical decisions. Her filing does not seek any control over Mitchell's finances.

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Mitchell's website states Morris' filing seeks to get authority to make decisions for the singer once she leaves the hospital and is isn't under the 24 hour care of a doctor.

"As we all know, Joni is a strong-willed woman and is nowhere near giving up the fight," reads the statement, that is said to have been approved by Morris.

A court hearing on the filing is scheduled for July 8.

Phone messages for Morris and her attorney, Alan Watenmaker, were not returned.

Started on the streets

The Saskatchewan-raised Mitchell has received eight Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement award in 2002. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

18th September 1968: Canadian folk singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell, strumming her guitar outside The Revolution club in London. (Central Press/Getty)

She started her career as a street musician in Canada before moving to Southern California, where she became part of the flourishing folk scene in the late 1960s. Her second album, Clouds, was a breakthrough with such songs as Both Sides Now and Chelsea Morning, winning Mitchell the Grammy for best folk performance.

Her 1970 album, Ladies of the Canyon, featured the hit single Big Yellow Taxi and the era-defining Woodstock. The following year, she released Blue, which ranks 30th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time."

Her musical style integrates folk and jazz elements, and she counts jazz giants Charles Mingus and Pat Metheny among her past collaborators.

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Nigeria moves girls rescued from Boko Haram, won't say where

Nigeria's military says it is moving 200 girls and 93 women from a northeastern forest where they were rescued from Boko Haram extremists.

Army spokesman Col. Sani Usman says many are traumatized. He says the military on Wednesday is flying in medical and intelligence teams to establish their psychological and physical health.

He says they started evacuating them from the Sambisa Forest on Tuesday but would not say to where.

• Nigeria says hundreds of girls rescued from Boko Haram

Military operations continue in the forest where it was announced Tuesday the women and girls were rescued while troops were destroying four Boko Haram camps.

An intelligence officer and a soldier say Boko Haram used some of the women as armed human shields, a first line of defence who fired at troops. They demanded anonymity because the issue is sensitive.

Nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped from Chibok in northeastern Nigeria by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram in April 2014. The militants took the schoolgirls in trucks into the Sambisa Forest. Dozens escaped on their own but 219 remain missing.

The plight of the schoolgirls, who have become known as "the Chibok girls," has garnered international attention and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

Their kidnapping brought Boko Haram to the attention of the world, arousing outrage and even U.S. first lady Michelle Obama got engaged, tweeting a photograph of herself with the campaign sign.

The Nigerian army announced two weeks ago that it would go into Sambisa Forest, which is a centre for the Boko Haram fighters, and that it believed the schoolgirls might still be there.

Boko Haram has kidnapped an unknown number of girls, women and young men to be used as sex slaves and fighters. Many have escaped or been released as a multinational offensive mounted at the end of January has driven Nigeria's home-grown Islamic militants from almost all towns of the northeast.

The only area left in control of Boko Haram was the Sambisa Forest, a national game reserve.

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Liberal lead in Atlantic Canada still wide, but shrinking

A recent poll shows the incumbent Liberals in Prince Edward Island, while still favoured to win, have seen their lead over the provincial Tories reduced significantly.

The province may be a microcosm of a wider federal trend taking place in Atlantic Canada.

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The Corporate Research Associates poll, commissioned and published by The Guardian, showed a drop of 14 points for Wade MacLauchlan's Liberals compared to CRA's previous poll from February. The Progressive Conservative opposition saw its support rise significantly.

The gap between the parties shrunk from 32 points to just nine. It makes for a tense final week, with the voting takes place on May 4.

The federal Liberals under leader Justin Trudeau are experiencing a similar softening in support in Atlantic Canada.

As recently as early March, the federal Liberal party held a very comfortable advantage over its rivals in the region. The party was polling at 52 per cent in ThreeHundredEight.com's March 2 projection, with the Conservatives at 23 per cent, the New Democrats at 17 per cent, and the Greens at 5.5 per cent.

That 29-point edge for the Liberals signaled a landslide victory. The party could have captured between 22 and 24 of the region's 32 seats with those levels of support. The Conservatives would have been reduced dramatically, with Peter MacKay potentially being the only Conservative outside of New Brunswick to survive the cull. For the New Democrats, only Jack Harris and Peter Stoffer looked like a lock for re-election.

But fortunes have changed in Atlantic Canada.

The Liberals are now averaging just 44.5 per cent support, their worst performance in the region in almost two years. The Conservatives, at 26 per cent, are putting up their best numbers since then. And the NDP, at 20 per cent, is at its highest level of support since last fall.

These estimates are based on an aggregate of polls stretching back several weeks, with newer surveys weighted more heavily. And those surveys are taking a negative turn for the Liberals.

Of the last five, the Liberals have registered just 42 to 44 per cent support. The last time the party put together numbers like that in five consecutive polls was before Trudeau became leader in 2013.

Instead of winning three-quarters of Atlantic Canada's seats, the Liberals might instead win just over half. While that is a big improvement over the 12 seats the party won in 2011, it is nevertheless far below some of the high expectations the party might have had last year. With the potential to win between 17 and 22 seats at these levels, the Liberals will have to make good those prospective losses in provinces like Ontario and Quebec, where their poll numbers are slumping.

The Conservatives could win between seven and 11 seats with these levels of support, still below the 14 seats they took in 2011, while the New Democrats could win between three and five. The NDP won six in the last election.

But despite the relative improvement of the Conservatives' position, the prospects for further Tory growth may be slim. Stephen Harper's approval rating in Atlantic Canada is his worst in the country. In the last three polls, he has averaged just 22 per cent approval. His 72 per cent average disapproval rating suggests he has little room for growth in the region. Instead, the recent bump limits his losses.

Thomas Mulcair of the NDP, however, does have the potential for some serious inroads. His average approval rating is 54 per cent in recent polls in Atlantic Canada, with his disapproval rating at just 24 per cent. So Mulcair is polling significantly higher than his own party.

That may be the reason why the NDP has not yet made important gains in the region. With the Liberals still leading, they may appear to many Atlantic Canadians as the better alternative to the governing party. Trudeau himself is not the problem, as his approval rating of 55 per cent in recent polls, compared to a 31 per cent disapproval rating, has been holding steady since the beginning of the year. This suggests his party's numbers are unlikely to dip much more.

But the Liberal landslide in Atlantic Canada that looked inevitable just a few months ago is gone, for now at least. While the Liberals should still do well in the region, the Conservatives and New Democrats are no longer fighting for their lives.

As bad news goes, it could be much worse for the Liberals.

A victory by Wade MacLauchlan's Liberals in P.E.I. next week would continue the party's impressive run of provincial victories in the region. But if the margin of victory turns out to be closer than even the CRA poll suggested, it would send a strong sign to the Liberals that Atlantic Canada cannot be taken for granted.

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ThreeHundredEight.com's vote and seat projection model aggregates all publicly released polls, weighing them by sample size, date, and the polling firm's accuracy record. Upper and lower ranges are based on how polls have performed in other recent elections. The seat projection model makes individual projections for all ridings in the country, based on regional shifts in support since the 2011 election and taking into account other factors such as incumbency. The projections are subject to the margins of error of the opinion polls included in the model, as well as the unpredictable nature of politics at the riding level. The polls included in the model vary in size, date, and method, and have not been individually verified by the CBC. You can read the full methodology here.

The poll by the Corporate Research Associates was conducted for The Guardian between April 19 and 23, interviewing 579 Prince Edward Islanders over the telephone. The margin of error associated with the poll is +/- 4.1%, 19 times out of 20.

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