Four dead in Canada school shooting, suspect caught

(Reuters) - The gunman suspected of killing four people and injuring several others in Canada's worst school violence in a decade first shot his two brothers at home before opening fire at the remote community high school, a family friend and the town's acting mayor said on Friday.

Police said a suspect was arrested after the shooting in La Loche, Saskatchewan, an impoverished community about 600 km (375 miles) north of the city of Saskatoon.

The town's acting mayor, Kevin Janvier, told the Associated Press that his 23-year-old daughter Marie, a teacher, was shot to death.

He also said police told him that the gunman first shot two of his siblings at home and then made his way to the school.

Officials have not given a motivation for the shooting or named the suspect or victims.

Mass shootings are rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States. In the country's worst school shooting, 14 college students were killed at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. A shooting in 1992 at Concordia University in Montreal killed four. (Full Story)

Spain: Baby contracts scurvy after vegan almond milk diet

(thelocal.es) - An eleven month-old baby in Spain has been diagnosed with scurvy after he was fed on almond milk alone.

The infant suffered fractures in his back and legs as a result of vitamin C deficiency and cried whenever his legs were moved.

The diagnosis emerged in a case study published this week in the journal Pediatrics and highlights the dangers of restricting infants to plant-based only diets.

The infant was switched to an almond-based mixture at two and a half months of age after developing an allergic reaction to cow milk-based formula.

The mother had tried to introduce pureed fruit and vegetables when the child reached six months old but the baby refused anything but the almond milk bottle.

But at eleven months of age, the child was unable to stand on his legs and cried if someone tried to move them.

Doctors discovered that he had fractures in his femurs and suffered vitamin C deficiency and was diagnosed with scurvy, a disease best known for afflicting sailors who were deprived of fresh fruit and vegetables while on long sea voyages.

Doctors who treated the child at Valencia’s Hospital Universitari i Politècnic La Fe warned that the case served to underscore that “plant-based beverages are not a complete food”.

“This case presents scurvy as a new and severe complication of improper use of almond beverage in the first year of life,” the case study authors wrote.

“When plant-based beverages are the exclusive diet in the first year of life and not consumed as a supplement to formula or breastfeeding, it can result in severe nutritional problems.”

Wal-Mart to Boost Wages for Most U.S. Store Workers

THE HORROR!

(wallstreetjournal) Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will give nearly all its U.S. hourly store employees—and not just minimum-wage earners—a raise next month, as the nation’s largest private employer tries to combat a tighter labor market and the turnover endemic in the retailing industry.

Wal-Mart previously said it planned to boost its minimum wage in February to $10 an hour. But the giant retailer said Wednesday that hourly workers employed in its stores as of Dec. 31 would get at least a 2% pay bump. The wage increase will affect nearly 1.2 million U.S. employees at the company’s Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores.

The across-the-board pay increase is aimed at addressing complaints by some longtime store workers about Wal-Mart’s more-generous starting wages for new hires. The company also is hoping to stem defections and the sums it spends to hire and train new employees. Wal-Mart loses about half a million store workers a year.

Minimum-wage increases took effect in 20 states last year, and several of the biggest employers of hourly workers, including McDonald’s Corp. and Starbucks Corp., have raised their starting pay.

Retail workers in the U.S. earned an average of $14.95 an hour in December, up 3.6% from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the raises planned for February, average hourly earnings will be $13.38 for Wal-Mart’s full-time store employees and $10.58 for part-time workers, the company said.

Some rivals, including Target Corp., are expected to follow Wal-Mart’s lead, especially in markets where the starting wage is below $10 an hour. “We constantly evaluate our hourly wage rates and adjust based on changing conditions in each market,” a Target spokesman said.

Wal-Mart is in the costly process of trying to improve its 4,600 U.S. stores while also investing heavily to boost e-commerce sales. It has said the wage boost—including the 2% increase for those who earn more than the minimum wage—would cost about $2.7 billion over fiscal years 2016 and 2017, driving down next fiscal year’s profit by as much as 12%. Last week, in a rare retreat, Wal-Mart said it would close 154 stores in the U.S. and another 115 globally, as it weeds out weaker-performing locations.

Wealth inequality rising fast, Oxfam says

seattletimes.com - Just 62 people own as much wealth as the 3.5 billion people in the bottom half of the world’s income scale, the charity Oxfam reported Monday in its annual study of inequality, which found the gap between rich and poor has continued to widen at an alarming rate. As recently as five years ago, the fortunes of 388 billionaires were needed to reach that halfway mark.

The study — released before the world’s business and government elite gather at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week — noted that a global network of tax havens contributed to the divide by allowing the rich to hide trillions of dollars in assets from their countries’ governments.

“Tax havens are at the core of a global system that allows large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, “depriving governments, rich and poor, of the resources they need to provide vital public services and tackle rising inequality.”

Oxfam said publicly available data on some 200 companies — about half of them described by the World Economic Forum as its strategic partners — showed that 9 out of 10 had a presence in at least one tax haven, including the Cayman Islands and Switzerland itself.

The banking sector plays an essential role in the tax-haven issue, the report notes — just 50 big banks manage a majority of offshore wealth. At the same time, the financial sector is a prime source of rising inequality; 1 in 5 billionaires comes from that industry.

The global economy has more than doubled in size in the last 30 years. Its value reached nearly $78 trillion in 2014. But even as countries like China and India have built a vast middle class almost from scratch, those gains have disproportionately flowed to those at the very top of the income ladder.

Workers in nearly all of the world’s most developed nations and in most developing countries have been getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie, Oxfam notes.

In a separate report released on Monday, the Dutch research firm Motivaction International said that at least some of the world’s high earners could be recruited to join a campaign to reduce inequality. The firm surveyed more than 48,000 people in 20 countries who are part of the top 5 percent of income earners.

“There’s a huge divide not between the rich and the rest of the population but between the social- and the self-oriented rich,” said Martijn Lampert, Motivaction’s research director. The self-oriented “do not like to step outside the rich bubble,” he said, but the social-oriented “get more involved, have more compassion and have more contact with what is happening elsewhere in society.”

“They are in a position to work together with mainstream segments to make change happen,” Lampert said.

Jeffrey A. Winters, a political scientist at Northwestern University who studies economic elites, said the Oxfam report highlighted what has been an acceleration of wealth accumulation among a few individuals. Even within the tiny slice of the top 1 percent, the gap between the ultrawealthy and everyone else in that group has been growing, he noted.

“These are unprecedented levels of stratification in all of human history,” Winters said, whether compared with ancient Rome or authoritarian dictatorships that exert near-total control of a country’s resources. “No other system has concentrated wealth as much as this system has.”

Oxfam pointed to a number of trends including deregulation, privatization and financial secrecy that had “supercharged the age-old ability of the rich and powerful to use their position to further concentrate their wealth.” (Source)

Lip Balm Maker Faces Class Action Lawsuit

sciencetimes.com

EOS lip balm endorsed by famous artists like Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears is facing a class action case. A lawsuit was reportedly filed against the lip balm maker after the product allegedly caused negative effects to a user.

The complainant, Rachel Cronin, filed a lawsuit in California against EOS lip balm maker. In her affidavit, she stated that following several hours from using the lip balm for the first time, she felt her lips were like sandpaper—extremely dry and irritated. She then reapplied again to smoother her skin, only to find out that her lips started cracking, flaking and bleeding. The next day, blisters and rashes started sprouting all over her mouth, and manifestations lasted for 10 days.

Cronin, who is from Los Angeles, further claimed that after posting her photos on Facebook, there were several other people who claim to have the same experience. Her lawyer, Mark Geragos, said they will be gathering all individuals who have the same complaints. In addition to seeking damage, he is also asking the company to address the health issue that might have affected hundreds or even thousands more.

Meanwhile in a statement released by EOS, it claims that the class action lawsuit is without merit. In defense, it claims that its products are only made from the highest quality ingredients proven safe and approved by the FDA and Cosmetic Ingredient Review Board without warning labels, have complied with the standard set by the industry and have undergone rigorous clinical testing.

Furthermore, they stated that from the millions of pieces sold, the company has received 40 complaints so far that is only a 0.001% rate. Out of these customers, 35 agreed to get a replacement coupon, while the other five have unknown whereabouts.

"The health and well-being of our customers is our top priority and millions of satisfied customers use our products every day, many of whom take the time to share their experiences with us," EOS stated. (Source)

Taiwan elects its first female president; China warns of 'grave challenges'

*eye roll*

Taipei (CNN) Taiwan has elected its first female president in a landmark election that could unsettle relations with Beijing.

Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won the presidency with 56.1% of the vote, the official Central News Agency said, after eight years under the government of the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party.

Eric Chu, the Nationalist Party candidate in Taiwan's presidential election conceded defeat late Saturday and congratulated rival Tsai Ing-wen on her victory, the agency added.

Her supporters filled streets, waving party banners and cheering to victory announcements made from a stage.

The election also marked the first time the KMT has lost control of the island's legislature. The DPP took 68 of the 113 seats in Taiwan's parliament compared to the DPP's 35.

At a post-election news conference, Tsai underscored Taiwan's commitment to democracy, calling it a value "deeply engrained in the Taiwanese people."

"Our democratic way of life is forever the resolve of Taiwan's 23 million people," she said.

But later in her speech, she also acknowledged the tenuous relationship with Beijing, saying both sides "have a responsibility to do their utmost to find mutually acceptable ways to interact ... and ensure no provocation and no surprises." (Full Story)

Retail Giant Walmart is closing hundreds of stores and laying off thousands of employees

(businessinsider.com) - Walmart is closing 269 stores and laying off thousands of employees.

The move will affect more than 16,000 employees, including 10,000 in the US.

The closings include 154 locations in the US — 102 of which are the company's smallest stores, called Walmart Express, which have been in pilot since 2011.

Walmart is closing the stores to shift resources to Walmart's Supercenters and smaller-format Neighborhood Market stores.

Walmart will also shut down 23 Neighborhood Markets, 12 Supercenters, seven stores in Puerto Rico, six discount centers, and four Sam's Clubs. All the stores will close by the end of January.

Here's the list of stores that are shutting down.

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Related: America's most iconic retailers are shutting down stores and laying off thousands — and this could be just the beginning