At least 14 people were arrested on Friday as Canadian police evicted protesters from a Halifax park — the second camp of demonstrators decrying corporate greed to be cleared in the country this week.
The Occupy Nova Scotia activists had only been camped out in Halifax’s Victoria park for a few days, after agreeing to leave a nearby site used for the city’s annual Remembrance Day ceremonies on Friday.
The 14 people arrested were cited for obstruction of justice, public CBC News reported, citing local police. The move to clear the park came after demonstrators were told to leave for engaging in “illegal camping.”
“The time has come for the encampment to end,” Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly said in a statement. “Our parks are for all of the public, not an unregulated campground for some.”
The same rationale was used by officials in the Ontario town of London to justify the clearing of a public park early on Wednesday.
Kelly said the Halifax protesters had the right to assemble, saying: “We support that, but we don’t support the use of tents.”
Canadian protesters — inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement that erupted in New York’s Zuccotti Park in September — have camped out in cities across the vast country to decry perceived unfairness in the economy.
A Nanos poll conducted last month and released this week showed that 58 percent of Canadians say they support the protesters.
In Vancouver, authorities vowed to shut down a protest camp after a 23-year-old woman died of an apparent drug overdose in a tent at the site on Nov. 5.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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