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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• Joni Mitchell suffers 'minor medical emergency'

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.

---

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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New bank fees target kids' accounts and allow 'double-dipping,' say customers

Banking fees are going up at all of Canada's five big banks, but some customers of RBC in particular are outraged about the changes. They're accusing Canada's biggest bank of targeting children and those who can least afford it.​

Gordon and Elaine Murray from Glen Margaret, N.S., have been RBC customers for 20 years. It took one envelope in the mail the other day to get them thinking about changing.

• More Go Public investigative stories​

Inside that envelope, Elaine Murray found the flyer Royal Bank of Canada recently mailed to many of its 16
million clients outlining the fee changes on the way.

"I couldn't believe it — it just seemed outrageous," she says.

Fee hikes June 1

On June 1, RBC is introducing new or higher fees for a variety of accounts and transactions including debit purchases, mortgage and loan payments and children's accounts.

The bank is also increasing the age eligibility for seniors' rebates from 60 to 65. 

Elaine Murray and her husband have several accounts, insurance and a mortgage with RBC. The first thing they noticed is the new fee being added to mortgage payments, on top of the interest already being charged. 

'Double-dipping'

"It looked like double-dipping when I saw that we could be paying on top of our interest a fee for making our mortgage payments," Gordon Murray says.  

The fee increases may only be a dollar here and there, but he says any additional money being taken from customers is too much, especially from a bank that just announced a record $2.46-billion profit.

"You have a multinational corporation that makes billions of dollars … come to its clients and say, 'and we want more,'" Murray says.

The couple say they are less worried about themselves and more troubled by the fees being added to children's accounts and student loans.

"They were reaching into the pockets of young savers and students — it is just wrong," Gordon Murray says.

Martin Weirich has banked with RBC for more than 15 years, and says the bank is 'very sneaky' in disguising the true cost of loans and mortgages. (CBC)

They're not alone. Across the country in Penticton, B.C., Martin Weirich is also a longtime RBC customer. 

"What caught my eye is a lot of the fees that are instituted were zero prior to this notice coming out, and now they are between $1 to $5 for regular payments. Payments like paying your mortgage or paying a loan."

"I think it's an outrageous fee increase for one. I think the bank has now made the cost of their loans and mortgages cost hundreds of dollars more without posting a rate increase, and I think that's very sneaky,"  Weirich says.

RBC says new fees 'cost of doing business'

"We understand that any change in pricing or fees is a sensitive topic for clients and we work hard to keep costs down," says RBC spokesman Andrew Block. 

"On an annual basis, we review our products and services and sometimes adjust the pricing for some of them to reflect the cost of doing business." 

Royal Bank of Canada

But Block also says customers will only be charged the additional fees on children's accounts, mortgages and loans if they exceed the number of free debit transactions allowed per month under individual banking plans.

He says the bank is willing to increase the allowable number of debit transactions for children and students if clients ask.

All 5 big banks increasing fees 

RBC is just the latest bank to introduce fee changes. All of Canada's biggest banks — Scotiabank, CIBC, TD Bank, BMO and RBC — have recently raised fees or will do so in the coming weeks. 

Scott Hannah from the Credit Counselling Society says the increases are small, but they add up.
"I think people in general are being fee'd to death, and not just by financial institutions," Hannah says.

"It seems, a variety of different services, we're hit with any number of fees, and looking at our incomes in Canada we are certainly not keeping up with inflation in many cases," he says.

"There's a sense of frustration, particularly when a person is living very tight to their paycheque." 

Scott Hannah, Credit Counselling Society (CBC)

Hannah says low lending rates are contributing to the banks' moves to increase fees.

"I think the banks listen to their shareholders, and I think the bank, like all corporations, is looking at how do we maximize returns for shareholders," he says.

His advice? First, talk to your bank about reducing or eliminating certain fees.

If that doesn't work, he says, "It pays to shop around, and with all the information available online, we strongly encourage people to have a hard look to make sure you have the right banking package." 

"Otherwise you may find yourself paying perhaps $100 or $200 extra fees each and every year." 

Ottawa looked at bank fees

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada looked at the issue of bank fees in a report that raises questions about how competitive Canada's banking industry is and if it's fair to consumers.

The federal agency looked at service, location and hours, but found Canadians were most dissatisfied with banking fees.

According to the report, the average monthly fee on chequing accounts went up by 13.6 per cent from 2005 to 2013. Not a big increase.

But during the same period, there was a 46 per cent increase in what it calls "variable fees," transactions that exceed or aren't covered by monthly banking plans. 

Yet the report had little to say about this. 

"While most researchers agree that the banking sector in Canada is highly concentrated, the consensus emerging from the literature is also that its market for financial services is relatively competitive."

---

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Baltimore shows police killings America's real state of emergency

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.

• Baltimore riots: governor promises no more unrest
• Freddie Gray should have received medical attention before arrest, police say

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.

• It won't be easy reining in America's chokehold police

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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Is U.S. Fed chair Janet Yellen creating a zombie economy?

Zombies are popular in TV, books and film. Now it seems that economics is imitating art. 

A new theory says that instead of stimulating the economy and getting the world back on track, bargain basement interest rates and handouts to investors in the form of lower taxes may be causing the opposite effect, creating a worldwide plague of walking undead companies.

• Stephen Poloz defends rate cuts in appearance before parliamentarians
• Fitch downgrades Japan's debt

Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz defended his surprise January cut in interest rates, saying that eventually it would help use up Canada's spare capacity. 

Janet Yellen, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, is expected to offer new clues today on when the U.S. central bank will begin to raise interest rates. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

But seen a different way, it may be that record low rates offered by central bankers like the U.S. Federal Reserve's Janet Yellen and Poloz are hurting, not helping. And it means that tax cuts in Canada's federal budget may be misguided.

As Poloz's comments indicate, the theory turns conventional economics upside down. Low rates are supposed to make deflation disappear as companies and consumers borrow and spend. 

But even a conventional pro-market publication like The Economist has observed the phenomenon happening in the past, specifically in Japan.

"The zombies make Japanese business look comedic," said The Economist in 2011. "Around two-thirds of all Japanese firms do not earn a profit (at least for tax purposes)." 

Dead firms walking

The phenomenon was something the magazine had been watching for a decade as explained in a 2004 article called Dead Firms Walking.

"Weak companies and wobbly banks clung to each other in mutual defiance of reality," reported The Economist. "Over time, this led to the emergence of so-called 'zombies' — companies that are competitively dead, but, sustained by their banks, continue to walk the Earth and give healthier firms nightmares."

In the new scenario, the role of Japan's wobbly banks has been taken by central bankers, creating a worldwide plague of companies that are the moaning, groaning walking dead. 

The financial website Zerohedge didn't use the Z-word, but its description of the global phenomenon was almost the same as the one The Economist used for Japan. 

"By keeping rates artificially suppressed," said Zerohedge, "the central banks of the world effectively make it impossible for the market to purge itself of inefficient actors and loss-making enterprises."

Just as in Japan, companies with access to cheap loans continue to borrow and add to output long after the world has enough of the product it is offering. The perfect example? The oil industry. 

• Oil patch earnings likely to be ugly

So far, oil company results have reflected the boom times when oil prices were high and the market had nowhere to go but up. This week, we will see a more realistic picture as oil company financial results reflect plummetting prices.

Production glut

And yet despite low oil prices, those same oil companies continue to produce huge amounts, far more than world markets can absorb. The writers at Zerohedge make the case that financially weak companies, enabled by central banks offering artificially low interest rates, are to blame.

Despite low prices, U.S. oil production is continuing at a rapid pace. (Matthew Brown/Associated Press)

Oil producers large and small have access to dirt cheap lending. Tax breaks make the burden even lighter. So the producers keep filling up storage containers and tankers. New figures show the glut continues to grow.

Energy is only an obvious example. There are also record stockpiles of cotton, hitting their highest level since the U.S. government started counting. There are gluts of iron and steel.

It is harder to measure gluts in other products and services, but it is likely that access to cash far below natural market rates means companies everywhere are producing too much. 

In Japan, where The Economist first saw the problem emerging, it hasn't gone away. When the wobbly banks got into trouble, the Japanese government did the same thing for them that they had done for the zombie companies.

If The Economist was right about Japanese zombie companies more than a decade ago, then the entire country has now become a zombie economy. 

Wary consumers

This week, the rating agency Fitch downgraded Japan's credit rating again. It is now five notches below the AAA rating that rich stable countries like Canada normally expect. 

The danger is that Japan's problems may be a warning of what is beginning to happen in the wider world.

Despite that economy's huge capacity to produce goods and services, consumers are unwilling or unable to spend. And unlike companies, ordinary people are unwilling to borrow more.

In Japan, and increasingly everywhere else as well, the only way to get consumers to buy more is to push prices down. A general decline in prices has a name. It is called deflation, and it is supposed to be what banks are using low interest rates to fight.

This is not what most worry-warts had expected.

It is well-known that longer-term government interference in an economy causes distortions.The fear used to be that artificially low rates would create an overheated economy, sending inflation soaring and wiping out the value of money.

That may happen eventually. But in the meantime, those low rates may be having the opposite effect.

If so, we are creating a world economy swarmed with companies that just can't die, producing more than the world can consume. And if it continues, at some point, something's got to give. 

Follow Don Pittis on Twitter:@don_pittis.

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Secure jobs in short supply in Canada's new tough labour market

At 40, the self-employed worker we'll call Natalie is one of a growing number of Canadians shut out of the world of stable, full-time work.

She has three bookkeeping jobs, she's watching every penny and still she makes just half of Canada's average industrial wage of $49,500. She's had to move back home with her 10-year-old daughter because she can't find full-time work.

'It became a way of keeping down wages, and companies became addicted to it.'—Wayne Lewchuk, McMaster University professor

"The way I'm going, I'm never going to get my own place for my daughter and I won't be able to afford a car; I won't be able to afford a dentist appointment for my daughter, or something she may need, braces," she told CBC News.

Like an increasing number of Canadians, she's in precarious work, without security, benefits, vacation pay or the prospect of a pension.

People in temp positions, part-time workers and contract workers all fall into the insecure employment category. And the number is growing.

Secure jobs a vanishing breed

A study by the United Way and McMaster University in 2013 found 18.3 per cent of the workforce in the Hamilton-Toronto area had insecure employment. And only a little over half — 50.3 per cent — had standard, full-time jobs.

They may be doing the same job, but temporary workers and part-time workers often have less pay than full-timers and no benefits. (Shutterstock)

Across Canada, the category of self-employed workers increased almost 45 per cent between 1989 and 2007, according to the Statistics Canada labour survey.

Precarious workers aren't just minimum-wage employees with irregular hours, says Wayne Lewchuk, a professor at the school of labour studies at McMaster University. They're also high-tech workers hired for projects, accountants who must seek one job after another, social-service sector workers employed by temp agencies and university lecturers hired on contract.

A lot of these jobs used to be secure, Lewchuk points out, but not anymore.

"It became a way of keeping down wages and companies became addicted to it," says Lewchuk, who has been studying precarious employment for seven years.

There's no career path for temp or flex workers — they lurch from one job to the next, get neither training nor benefits nor paid leave and are expected to save for their own pension.

Sitting by the phone

"Often they don't know their schedule until the day before or their schedule changes at the last minute  They don't know where they have to be until just before their shift," Lewchuk says.

Over a working life, the penalty for precarious work is financial — those in insecure employment earned about 46 per cent less than workers in the same field who had standard jobs.

• Post-secondary students turn to 'survival jobs' as youth unemployment rises
• Job quality in Canada at 25-year low, says CIBC

But on a day-to-day basis, the toll is often personal.

"All of this makes sustaining a household and a family difficult," Lewchuk says.

If they think they're going to be sitting by the phone waiting for a call to work, they often can't enrol their children in extracurricular activities or make it to the parent-teacher conference, Lewchuk says. There's no option to coach Little League or volunteer at the local seniors' home.

"People that are in precarious work delay making significant life plans," says Micheline Laflèche, with the United Way, who is part of a group of researchers updating the 2013 report.

"They don't feel confident enough to establish an ongoing relationship or have children."

Socially isolated

Men in particular may feel socially isolated, she says.

"Men were the ones who were much more likely to be in standard employment relationships [permanent full-time work], and they built their social relationships through their work," she says.

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"They're no longer in those kinds of job;, men are more likely to have no one to talk to."

Laflèche says people in insecure employment tend to be less engaged with their community, a trend that could weaken the fabric of Canadian life.

"It hurts our democratic commonality and our democratic values because people don't feel like they belong. We don't have a healthy society," she says.

In the face of the rise of precarious work and the expansion of low-paid work, the Ontario government has said it will review employment standards and the labour code. 

Laflèche and the United Way will be among the parties trying to suggest innovative ways to address precarious work.

She argues Canada's employment insurance system, which is a federal responsibility, is geared to a world where people had an industrial job for years, and if that was eliminated, they got another permanent job, a scenario that now rarely happens. She recommends a more realistic approach to employment insurance for part-time or contract workers.

Changing labour laws

She points to some of the ways other countries are addressing precarious work:

• A minimum wage "premium": an extra payment from employers for low-wage workers who don't have benefits or secure work.
• "Flexicurity": Denmark has a social contract between employers, the government and individuals that helps people who don't have secure work. Opportunities for training are provided when they can't find work and there is support, similar to employment insurance, but which kicks in even if people haven't worked for the required minimum time.
• Parity legislation: There are variations on this throughout the European Union with laws that ask employers to give temporary or contract workers the same pay, vacation and benefits as permanent employees doing the same jobs.
• Creating better training opportunities for those in marginal employment.
• Providing more flexible child-care solutions (instead of always full-time, five days a week, allowing part-time child care).

Businesses have also put forward voluntary solutions, among them temp agencies or groups of employers combining forces to provide full-time hours to part-time workers and better social inclusion in work events for temp and part-time workers.

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Military sexual misconduct report expected to blast leadership

An external investigation of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces will target military leadership for failing to better manage the problems of discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual assault in the ranks, CBC News has learned.

Sources familiar with the report say the language used by former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps in her report is "quite inflammatory."

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Officers at the highest level of the Forces are bracing for the report, which was described as "pretty nasty."

"The report is pretty bad … and won't be good for the Canadian Armed Forces, especially the leadership," one source said.

The military has been preparing for the report's publication for more than a month, and CBC News has learned the government intends to make it public by the end of the week, likely as soon as Thursday, barring any change in plans.

Several senior military officials, including Gen. Tom Lawson, outgoing chief of the defence staff, will be part of a Defence Department presentation of the damning report.

Whatever Deschamps learned has apparently shaken the senior ranks of the military. 

"The report is not something [the chief of defence staff] will take lightly," one source said. 

Top female general to lead response

In February, Lawson established the Canadian Forces Strategic Response Team on Sexual Misconduct. It's led by Canada's highest-ranking woman, Maj.-Gen. Christine Whitecross, and supported by a top female sergeant-major, Chief Warrant Officer Helen Wheeler.

It's expected Whitecross will be there when the report is released this week and will offer her plan to solve the problems it highlights.

Lawson ordered the external review of sexual misconduct within the Canadian military more than a year ago after a spate of stories in the media suggested the military did not take seriously its responsibility to prevent and investigate misconduct against female soldiers. Some reports suggested sexual assault had reached epidemic proportions in the military.

'I need to know if barriers exist in reporting incidents of sexual misconduct or sexual harassment.'–Gen. Tom Lawson, May 2014

An article published by Maclean's and L'actualité reviewed military statistics and said an average of about 178 incidents of sexual misconduct are investigated every year. The magazine suggested only about one in 10 assaults is typically reported, suggesting the number of incidents inside the military each year is likely more than 1,780, or about five per day.

The fallout from that report led the Commons defence committee last May to question the military's top general. Lawson conceded he needed more information about the scope of the problem.

"I need to know if barriers exist in reporting incidents of sexual misconduct or sexual harassment and need to be certain that the chain of command is reacting to complaints appropriately," he told MPs.

Review looked at rules, procedures

Lawson said the external review he ordered would look at the rules, procedures and the processes the military uses to respond to complaints of sexual misconduct so that more women will trust the military to take them seriously and treat them fairly.

"My heart goes out to them, those individuals need to be well-protected and brought back into an organization that they can trust, so we need to make sure that they can report and that we follow up with investigations and prosecutions," Lawson told reporters last May.

The former justice was appointed by Lawson to lead the external review. That work began in earnest in June last year and her investigation concluded in January.

Deschamps visited with hundreds of soldiers at bases across the country. In some cases, she held separate sessions for soldiers based on rank and gender.

Deschamps has refused several requests to be interviewed, but said by email she was convinced the military would be forthcoming about her report.

"I am convinced the Armed Forces will do their best to ensure that both the report and their position are well understood," she said.

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Some Baltimore protesters remain on streets as curfew goes into effect

A line of police behind riot shields hurled smoke grenades and fired pepper balls at dozens of protesters Tuesday night to enforce a citywide curfew.

Demonstrators threw bottles at police, and picked up the smoke grenades and hurled them back at officers at Pennsylvania and North. No immediate arrests or serious injuries were reported.

Police announced through Twitter that they were deploying the pepper balls about a half-hour after the 10 p.m curfew. About 20 minutes after that, military vehicles travelled through the street trying to disperse the last of the crowd. There were still dozens of people, but further back from an intersection as police continue to hold their line and slowly advance.

The clash came after a day of high tension but relative peace in Baltimore, as thousands of police officers and National Guardsmen poured into the city to prevent another round of rioting like the one that rocked the city on Monday.

Earlier, a line of self-appointed peacekeepers could be seen pushing back a crowd that had assembled near where a CVS pharmacy was looted Monday and where a line of police had been blocking the street all day.

A local pastor could be heard on a loud speaker urging residents to go home and respect the curfew.

"Let's show the world, because the eyes of the world are on Baltimore right now," he said.

Earlier, Baltimore police spokesman Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said that officers will allow some exceptions to the curfew.

"Our officers have discretion, which means if we see you, and you explain you just got off of an airplane and you're headed home, they have the ability to exercise discretion and they don't have to arrest you," he said.

"This is about preserving the public peace."

Police with riot shields are lined shoulder to shoulder around the time curfew went into effect in Baltimore on Tuesday night. (CBC News)

'The city has been calm today'

Baltimore's mayor and police commissioner had earlier expressed their hope for a calm night in the city after a day spent cleaning up the rubble and damage leftover from violent riots and looting Monday that left the city in disarray.

"For the most part, the city has been calm today," said Commissioner Anthony Batts at a joint press conference with the mayor late Tuesday.

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He said police made several arrests after some "opportunists" tried to loot some businesses in the eastern part of the city, but in general, residents pulled together to bring "calm and peace" back to the city, which remains under a state of emergency.

Batts said the presence of law enforcement in the city has been boosted by the arrival of state troops, the Maryland National Guard as well as officers from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the D.C. area and several Maryland counties.

"The numbers are growing to make sure everyone is safe," he said.

The entire city will be under curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. ET, but groups of demonstrators were still on the streets with less than a half hour to go until the curfew. Many of them gathered in front of City Hall.

Earlier in the evening, musicians, marching bands and cheerleaders tried to lighten the mood after a tense two days. 

"We have a long night ahead of us," said Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan at an earlier press conference.

Hogan said authorities have "a lot of manpower on the streets" to ensure that officers "don't get overwhelmed as happened last night." He said about 1,700 members of the National Guard and 1,000 law enforcement officers would be in place overnight.

Hogan said that so far, people have welcomed the presence of National Guard and state troops on Baltimore streets.

"People are concerned. They want us to restore law and order," he said. "Despite the tension, a lot of people are thanking us for being here."

Orioles bar public from Wednesday's game 

Baltimore spent Tuesday cleaning up after riots that kicked off soon after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in Baltimore police custody. Hundreds of volunteers swept the streets of broken glass and other debris and boarded up the windows of looted and burned-out businesses and buildings.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake thanked all those who "have spent all day yesterday, all day today trying to figure how we can come together as a city, how we can heal."

She said she was forced to keep public schools closed Tuesday because many teachers had called to say they would not come to work. They will reopen Wednesday.

Many businesses and government offices were closed Tuesday. The Baltimore Orioles cancelled their Tuesday game at Camden Yards and — in what may be a first in baseball's 145-year history — said their Wednesday night game against the White Sox would be closed to the public.

Protesters continued to gather on the streets of Baltimore as the 10 p.m. curfew approached Tuesday. City authorities have boosted the law enforcement presence, with about 1,700 National Guard members and 1,000 police officers to be deployed overnight. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

By contrast, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announced it would give a free noontime concert Wednesday.

Authorities remained vigilant against the possibility of another outbreak of looting and arson overnight. 

"We're not going to leave the city unprotected," Hogan said earlier in the day during a visit to a West Baltimore intersection where cars were burned and windows smashed the night before.

Commissioner Batts responded to criticism that police had been unprepared for Tuesday's escalation of violence and looting by saying that several hundred officers had been deployed to the area around Mondawmin Mall in West Baltimore where posts on social media had urged demonstrators to gather even before the riots began but had deliberately held back when clashes broke out because those participating were teenagers.

"Do you want people using force against 14-,15-, 16-year-old kids?" he said. "They're old enough to know better. They're old enough to be accountable. But they're still kids."

State police and law officers from other jurisdictions joined Baltimore police in patrolling the streets Tuesday. National Guardsmen in riot helmets with face shields surrounded City Hall, standing behind bicycle-rack barriers.

It was the first time the National Guard was called out to quell unrest in Baltimore since 1968, when some of the same neighbourhoods burned after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

As it got closer to evening Tuesday, the street protests took on a more festive air, with dancers, musicians and marching bands all joining in. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)

As firefighters doused smoldering fires around the city, many lamented the damage done by the rioters to their own neighbourhoods.

Hundreds of volunteers helped shopkeepers clean up as helmeted officers blocked a stretch of North Avenue in the neighbourhood where Gray was arrested earlier in this month in a case that has become the latest flashpoint in the national debate over the police use of deadly force against black men.

Residents of communities across Baltimore rallied Tuesday to help clean up the destruction wrought by rioters. (Eric Thayer/Reuters)

Hardware stores donated trash bags and brooms, and city workers brought in trucks to haul away mounds of trash and broken glass.

With schools closed, Blanca Tapahuasco brought her three sons, ages 2 to 8, from another part of the city to help sweep the brick-and-pavement courtyard outside a looted CVS pharmacy.

"We're helping the neighbourhood build back up," she said. "This is an encouragement to them to know the rest of the city is not just looking on and wondering what to do."

CVS store manager Haywood McMorris said the destruction didn't make sense: "We work here, man. This is where we stand, and this is where people actually make a living."

Obama calls for national 'soul searching'

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said there have been too many troubling police interactions with black citizens across American in what he called "a slow-rolling crisis." But he said there was no excuse for rioters to engage in senseless violence.

When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they're not protesting.- U.S. President Barack Obama

​Obama said those in Baltimore who stole from businesses and burned buildings and cars should be treated as criminals.

"There's no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday," Obama said. "It is counterproductive. When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they're not protesting, they're not making a statement. They're stealing."

Maryland National Guardsmen patrol near downtown businesses in Baltimore, Tuesday, a day after looting and arson erupted. (Patrick Semansk/Associated Press)

Obama said rioters distracted from days of peaceful protests focused on legitimate concerns "over the possibility that our laws were not applied evenly in the case of Mr. Gray and that accountability needs to exist."

He said he can't force police departments across the country to retrain their officers, but he can work with them and help pay for body cameras to improve accountability.

Obama said the Gray case should prompt some "soul searching" in America about communities where young men are more likely to end up in jail or dead than completing school. He said solutions should involve early education, criminal justice reform and job training.

15 officers hurt, 250 people arrested

The rioting started in West Baltimore on Monday afternoon — less than 2 km from where Gray was arrested — and by midnight had spread to East Baltimore and neighbourhoods close to downtown and near the baseball stadium.

People gather at North Ave and Pennsylvania Ave, where some of the worst rioting occurred. Tuesday was a day of sober reflection on the previous days events. (Eric Thayer/Reuters)

The rioters set police cars and buildings on fire, looted a mall and liquor stores and hurled rocks, bottles and cinderblocks at police in riot gear. Police responded occasionally with pepper spray or cleared the streets by moving in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder.

At least 15 officers were hurt. There were 144 vehicle fires, 15 structure fires and about 250 arrests over Monday and Tuesday.

The same community they say they care about, they're destroying. You can't have it both ways.- Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

"They just outnumbered us and outflanked us," Batts said earlier Tuesday. "We needed to have more resources out there."

The rioting was the worst such violence in the U.S. since the turbulent protests that broke out over the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old who was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., last summer.

"I understand anger, but what we're seeing isn't anger," Rawlings-Blake lamented. "It's disruption of a community. The same community they say they care about, they're destroying. You can't have it both ways."

Officials criticized for delaying response

State and local authorities found themselves responding to questions about whether their initial response had been adequate.

Rawlings-Blake waited hours to ask the governor to declare a state of emergency, and the governor hinted she should have come to him earlier.

A ransacked and looted wig shop a day after rioters laid waste to several businesses in what were already struggling parts of Baltimore. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

"We were all in the command centre in the second floor of the state House in constant communication, and we were trying to get in touch with the mayor for quite some time," Hogan said at a Monday evening news conference. "She finally made that call, and we immediately took action."

Rawlings-Blake said officials initially thought they had gotten the unrest under control.

Maryland National Guard spokesman Lt. Charles Kohler said that about 2,000 members would be deployed through the day and that the force could build to 5,000.

We are going to be out in massive force.- Maj.-Gen. Linda Singh, Maryland National Guard

"We are going to be out in massive force, and that just means basically that we are going to be patrolling the streets and out to ensure that we are protecting property," said Maj.-Gen. Linda Singh, adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard.

Also, State police said they were putting out a call for up to 500 additional law enforcement officers from Maryland and as many as 5,000 from around the mid-Atlantic region.

Gray was arrested April 12 after running away at the sight of police, authorities said. He was held down, handcuffed and loaded into a police van. Leg cuffs were put on him when he became irate inside. He died of a spinal cord injury a week later.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake tours the city Tuesday in the aftermath of Monday's rioting. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)

Authorities said they are still investigating how and when he suffered the injury — during the arrest or while he was in the van, where authorities say he was riding without being belted in, a violation of department policy. A report into the death is expected Friday, CNN reported.

Six officers have been suspended with pay while the investigation continues.

While they are angry about what happened to Gray, his family said riots are not the answer.

"I think the violence is wrong," Gray's twin sister, Fredericka Gray, said late Monday. "I don't like it at all."

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