Orion Mars-mission launch delayed for 24 hours

NASA has scrubbed its launch of the Orion Mars-mission spacecraft after delays caused by high winds and equipment problems.

NASA stood poised to usher in a new era of exploration Thursday with the premier launch of its new Orion spacecraft, but the countdown was repeatedly stalled by gusty wind and then a sticky rocket valve.

After halting the countdown twice because of high wind, NASA pushed ahead, only to be thwarted by a valve in the first-stage booster that failed to close on command with just three minutes and nine seconds to go.

About 26,000 guests were expected to attend the historic send-off of NASA's Orion spacecraft. (John Raoux/Associated Press)

Launch controllers hustled to check all six of the so-called "fill and drain" valves in the three booster engines of the unmanned Delta IV rocket, in hopes of getting one last chance Thursday morning to launch. But it wasn't to be.

Thuesday's delay was set to last for 24 hours.

It's the first attempt to send a spacecraft capable of carrying humans beyond a couple hundred miles of Earth since the Apollo moon program.

The ultimate goal, in the decades ahead, is to use Orion to carry people to Mars and back.

For now, NASA's new countdown clock was getting a workout: First a stray boat in the danger zone halted the countdown, then gusty winds repeatedly stalled the count with less than four minutes to go.

NASA anticipated 26,000 guests for the historic send-off — the roads leading into Kennedy Space Center were packed well before dawn — and the atmosphere was reminiscent of the shuttle-flying days. "Go Orion!!" urged a hotel billboard in nearby Cocoa Beach.

Curie noted Thursday was the 16th anniversary of the launch of the first U.S. piece of the International Space Station, by shuttle Endeavour. "That was the beginning of the space station, and today is the dawn of Orion," he said.

Orion is aiming for two orbits on this inaugural run. On the second lap around the home planet, the spacecraft should reach a peak altitude of 5,800 kilometres, high enough to ensure a re-entry speed of 32,000 km/h and an environment of 2,200 Celsius.

Splashdown will be in the Pacific off the Mexican Baja coast, where Navy ships already are waiting.

NASA's Mission Control in Houston was all set to oversee the entire 4½-hour operation once the rocket was in flight. The flight program was loaded into Orion's computers well in advance, allowing the spacecraft to fly essentially on autopilot. Flight controllers could intervene in the event of an emergency breakdown.

The spacecraft is rigged with 1,200 sensors to gauge everything from heat to vibration to radiation. At 3.4 metres tall with a 5-metre base, Orion is bigger than the old-time Apollo capsules and, obviously, more advanced. As NASA's program manager Mark Geyer noted, "The inside of the capsule is totally different."

NASA deliberately kept astronauts off this first Orion.

Managers want to test the riskiest parts of the spacecraft — the heat shield, parachutes, various jettisoning components — before committing to a crew. The earliest Orion might carry passengers is 2021; asteroids are on the space agency's radar sometime in the 2020s and Mars, the grand prize, in the 2030s.

Lockheed Martin Corp., which is handling the $370 million US test flight for NASA, opted for the powerful Delta IV rocket this time around. Future Orion missions will rely on NASA's still-in-development megarocket known as SLS, or Space Launch System. The first Orion-SLS combo launch is targeted for 2018.

NASA's last trip beyond low-Earth orbit in a vessel built for people was Apollo 17 in December 1972.

"It's a thrilling prospect when you think about actually exploring the solar system," space station commander Butch Wilmore said from orbit as the Orion countdown entered its final hour. "Who knows where it will take us, who knows where it will go. We'll find out as time goes forward, but this first step is a huge one."

NASA's new countdown clock got a workout Thursday morning. First a stray boat in the danger zone halted the countdown, then gusty winds held everything up with less than four minutes to go. A new launch time was set nearly an hour later, only to be held up again by winds.

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Is there such a thing as good debt?

Canadians are falling deeper into debt, with Equifax reporting Wednesday that they are carrying an average of $20,891 in non-mortgage loans. But is all debt simply a burden or are some types better than others?

We talked to three experts to find out.

The consensus is that debt that adds to your net worth is "good" — or at least better — debt. This includes loans that fund things such as the purchase of a home, investments, education, home improvements, RRSP contributions and acquisition of investment properties.

'If you are buying anything on credit that you're not paying off immediately, you can't afford it.'—Gail Vaz-Oxlade, author of Debt-Free Forever

"Bad debt is everything that decreases your net worth — so consumer debt, credit card debt, lines of credit used to purchase consumer products," says Gail Vaz-Oxlade, who has written several books on money matters and earned a reputation for her no-nonsense financial advice.

Vaz-Oxlade gets hundreds of queries on her website and Twitter feed from people desperate to dig themselves out of the red, but she has little patience for those who run up tens of thousands of dollars of debt.

"If you are buying anything on credit that you're not paying off immediately, you can't afford it, so you cannot buy it," she says. "I don't care how much you think you need it.… Credit is not a way to extend your disposable income."

Revolving credit can get out of hand

Even lines of credit, which generally have much lower interest rates than credit cards (around three or four per cent in the best case compared with about 12 to 20 per cent for credit cards), can turn into bad debt since people are more likely to carry a balance on them.​

Popular financial author and TV personality Gail Vaz-Oxlade is insistent that you shouldn't be buying anything on credit that you can't pay off immediately. (Gailvazoxlade.com)

"A line of credit can be a very reasonable vehicle if you have a plan of action to repay it, but if you're just dipping in and out of it all the time and it never gets paid, then it's not a good financial plan," says Laurie Campbell, CEO of Credit Canada Debt Solutions, a non-profit organization that offers free debt counselling. 

Instalment loans, which have a fixed payment term, are a way to avoid the temptation offered by lines of credit and credit cards.

Securing a line of credit with your home can get you a low rate and is one of the cheapest ways to borrow money, but should be used sparingly, says Campbell.

"Make sure you have a plan of attack to get rid of it and not use it again," she said. "If you're dipping into your home equity more than once, that's a problem."

Overdrafts on your bank account, which carry a hefty interest rate of 21 per cent plus fees, and payday loans are some of the most expensive types of debt and should be avoided altogether.

Car loans are bad debt

Some forms of bad debt are hard to avoid. Few people can afford to buy a car outright, for example, even though a car is an asset that depreciates, unlike a house, so borrowing to buy one lowers your net worth. If you have to finance your car, you should ensure you get a reasonable interest rate and pay the loan off within three to four years, says Vaz-Oxlade.

"If you're going longer than that, you're turning the car loan into the worst possible kind of debt," she says.

'If you're going to take on debt, what you want is for it to actually be helping you achieve something or increase your asset base.'— Ayana Forward, financial planner

You should also be factoring in the full, long-term cost of borrowing — which in the case of a car, includes such costs as insurance, gas, future repairs as well as the loan interest and monthly payments.

"The problem is most people look at things from a cash flow basis. They say, 'I can afford this car, because I can pay for it,' but they're not really looking at the interest cost or the long-term cost," says Ayana Forward, a financial planner with Ryan Lamontagne Inc. in Ottawa.

"If you're going to take on debt, what you want is for it to actually be helping you achieve something or increase your asset base as opposed to something that's just going to decrease in value."

What to ask before taking on debt

Ask what the true cost of borrowing is before taking on debt. Some other questions that Campbell and Forward suggest are:

• Is this a planned purchase, and if not, is it an emergency?
• Who benefits the most from me taking on the debt — the lender or me?
• What is the likelihood of the purchase appreciating in value or resulting in an increase to my net worth?
• Is the interest rate the lowest available, and have I compared all my options?
• Is a portion of the interest tax deductible?
• Do I have a means of paying it off over time without getting further in debt?
• Have I exhausted all other ways of finding money? Can I cash in something? Can I rent out part of my house? Can I get a part-time job? Can I borrow from family and friends?
• Will the yield and potential return of my investment outweigh the cost of borrowing?
• Will borrowing money lead to any potential tax savings, such as an RRSP deduction?

Vaz-Oxlade says that these days there is too much focus on minimizing the cost of debt and not enough on getting rid of it. One of the biggest fallacies is that it's cheap to borrow money in the current low-interest-rate environment, she says.

"That's rubbish, because the people who make even a small mistake are not benefiting from the lowest interest rates. They're actually paying interest rates that are quite high relative to the market overall," she said.

Looser financing rules have made it easier to get a car loan, but it's not smart debt since you'll end up paying more over time for something that's going down in value. (David Zalubowski/Associated Press)

​Anything from missing a credit card payment to getting too close to your credit limit can damage your credit score and affect the interest rates you are eligible for.

When it comes to repaying your debt, there are different schools of thought as to whether it's best to pay off the highest-interest debt first or to tackle the smaller, more manageable balances to gain some momentum and confidence and free up some cash to pay off the others.

But there are a few things most advisers agree on:  

• Regardless of what you pay off first, make sure you're making all your regular payments on your other debts.
• Negotiate flexible repayment terms when you get the loan that allow you to pay off the whole sum if you come into some extra cash.
• Consolidate your debts so that you reduce your interest to the lowest rate and have only one monthly payment to make.
• Pay attention to the principal — not just the interest and the minimum payment.
• Make a plan for how you will repay the loan and by what date, with concrete steps for how you will cut back your budget and raise the money you need.

Ultimately, says Forward, what you want to be doing is using debt to get ahead, not just get by.

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The necessary hypocrisy of America's migrant workers: Neil Macdonald

Moral hazard is something to be avoided in public policy. Where it exists, a good outcome is difficult.

The term is used by economists to describe baked-in incentives that encourage bad behaviour, thus thwarting the intent of the policies they inhabit.

Bank bailouts, for example, encourage banks to keep behaving badly, knowing that government will step in and clean up their wreckage next time.

Paying ransoms to extremist groups in order to free your kidnapped citizens just encourages more kidnappings. You get the idea.

And without much question, Barack Obama's decision not to deport millions of illegal immigrants sends a message to other economic refugees contemplating an illegal border crossing that there might be a similar break for them somewhere down the road.

Republicans are right: With the stroke of his executive pen, Obama effectively made chumps of anyone who's been following the rules, applying from abroad for a treasured American green card.

And the conservative Republican solution — deport all 11 million "illegals," as conservatives so charitably refer to them — is actually the most moral-hazard-free approach, strictly speaking.

But given the American reality, it's also political lunacy, and a perfect example of the far-right's cognitive dissonance with American capitalism.

Craving for cheap labour

Simply put, the American economy — the American way of life, really — demands a pool of cheap labour, and doesn't care where it comes from.

That's why those 11 million, mostly Latin American migrants, are here in the first place.

And that hypocrisy, not Obama's executive order to immunize about a third of them from deportation (those with jobs and children who were born in the U.S.) is the real moral hazard that saturates this issue.

Barack Obama signs two presidential memoranda taking executive action on immigration from his office on Air Force One in November. (Reuters)

Native-born American workers generally won't consider digging ditches or cleaning toilets or picking vegetables. It's actually something of a class issue here.

America first fed its craving for cheap labour with slavery, then turned to what was effectively indentured black and Irish and Chinese labour.

As those groups moved into America's middle class, Latino immigrants took over.

Doubtless, someday, the Latinos will take their legal place under the American sun, and some other region of the world will be providing America with its labourer underclass.

Of course, the whole picture would change if American business were willing to pay better wages and benefits for unskilled labour.

But any government effort to impose those conditions is met with angry accusations of socialism from conservatives — the same people who want to begin the mass deportations.

According to Republican dogma, if government would just get off the back of business and stop imposing ruinous payroll taxes, minimum wage and worker safety regulations, everything would be fine. And, of course, even cheaper for consumers.

The race to rock bottom prices in America has already wiped mom-and-pop businesses off the country's main streets, and is rendering extinct the sort of well-paid union jobs that lifted millions into the middle class during the last century.

The employment of illegal immigrants, people who will break their backs for poverty wages and won't complain to the authorities, is just a natural action of the unshackled market forces to which conservatives attribute almost magical abilities to solve any issue.

And of course, many households here (including conservative households) are happy to overlook the lack of a green card or social security number when hiring a maid or nanny.

But Tea-Party aligned Republicans and their champions are deliberately blind to that sort of law-breaking.

Instead, they demonize the "illegals," and accuse Obama of ripping up the Constitution and behaving like a dictator for trying to alleviate the social pressure of keeping millions in the shadows.

Obama's trap

Republicans will soon control both houses of Congress, and the party's hard-right faction is threatening dire retaliation: shut down the government, says the crusading House Republican Steven King of Iowa.

Starve the administration of its funding, thunders Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

Tea Party favourites Senator Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann (right) announce their plan to "defund the president's executive, unconstitutional amnesty" of migrant workers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014. (Reuters)

But the Republican Party's leadership, while making sympathetic noises, isn't as stupid as its political base or right-wing fringe.

People like House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the incoming Senate majority leader, not only understand America's necessary hypocrisy on immigrant workers, they can see the political trap Obama has set for them.

They know that simply by doing something — whether his executive order is eventually judged legal or not — Obama is daring Republicans to come up with an alternative they'd rather not offer.

They also know that Obama has mightily pleased Latino voters, who, incidentally, happens to be the single fastest-growing voter demographic in the U.S., and one the GOP establishment badly wants to bring over to its side.

None of that matters to House Republicans, whose districts have been painstakingly gerrymandered by state legislatures to maximize white voters and minimize minorities.

But for Senators and presidential candidates, who are elected at large, this is a different story. They need those Latino votes.

That's why the Senate, with Republican and Democratic support, has already passed a proper immigration reform bill, the one that was stopped dead in the House.

And that is why you will not see the next Republican presidential candidate vowing to tear up Obama's executive order on deportations.

There will, instead, be vague mutterings about a comprehensive Republican plan to "fix" the issue (just as the GOP promised a plan, never presented, to replace Obamacare).

One thing is certain, though: Republicans will never deprive Americans of their cheap, exploitable labour. That would be un-American.

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'Ferguson, now us': NYC chokehold death sparks protest as civil-rights probe ordered

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says federal prosecutors are launching their own inquiry into the videotaped death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who was stopped for selling loose cigarettes in New York City and placed in an apparent chokehold by a white police officer.

The announcement about a separate civil rights investigation came after a grand jury on Wednesday cleared officer Daniel Pantaleo in the July 17 incident. The ruling triggered protests in the streets by hundreds of New Yorkers who likened the case to the deadly police shooting in Ferguson, Mo.

Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan said the grand jury found "no reasonable cause" to bring charges, but unlike the chief prosecutor in the Ferguson case, he gave no details on how the panel arrived at its decision. The grand jury could have considered a range of charges, from reckless endangerment to murder.

Protesters gathered in Times Square and converged on the heavily secured area around the annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting with a combination of professional-looking signs and hand-scrawled placards reading, "Black lives matter" and "Fellow white people, wake up." And in the Staten Island neighbourhood where Garner died, people reacted with angry disbelief and chanted, "I can't breathe!" and "Hands up — don't choke!"

Protesters, demanding justice for the death of Eric Garner, shout at police at a roadblock in midtown Manhattan, on Wednesday. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, said the grand jury decision "just tore me up."

"I couldn't see how a grand jury could vote and say there was no probable cause," she said. "What were they looking at? Were they looking at the same video the rest of the world was looking at?"

In his first public comments, Pantaleo said he prays for Garner's family and hopes they accept his condolences.

"I became a police officer to help people and to protect those who can't protect themselves," he said in the statement. "It is never my intention to harm anyone, and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner."

Police union officials and Pantaleo's lawyer argued that the officer used a takedown move taught by the police department, not a banned manoeuvre, because Garner was resisting arrest. They said his poor health was the main reason he died.

'A man who should be with us': NYC mayor

Mayor Bill de Blasio cancelled an appearance at the tree lighting and met with Garner's father and other community leaders. At a Staten Island church, he said, "So many people in this city are feeling pain right now. And we're grieving, again, over the loss of Eric Garner, who was a father, a husband, a son, a good man — a man who should be with us, and isn't. That pain, that simple fact, is felt again so sharply today."

A video shot by an onlooker and widely viewed on the internet showed the 43-year-old Garner telling a group of police officers to leave him alone as they tried to arrest him. Pantaleo responded by wrapping his arm around Garner's neck in what appeared to be a chokehold, which is banned under New York Police Department policy.

The heavyset Garner, who had asthma, was heard repeatedly gasping, "I can't breathe!"

Experts said that without knowing how prosecutors presented the case, it's difficult to theorize how the grand jury reached its decision. To find Pantaleo criminally negligent, the panel would have had to determine he knew there was a "substantial risk" that Garner would have died.

Eric Garner, right, shown posing with his children during a family outing. The 43-year-old died after an officer wrapped his arm around Garner's neck in what appeared to be a chokehold, which is banned under NYPD policy. (Family photo via National Action Network/Associated Press)

Critics of the outcome in Ferguson — where a grand jury refused last week to indict a white police officer who shot unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown — complained that prosecutors there allowed the officer to give a self-serving account without challenging inconsistencies.

The Garner video "speaks for itself," said Jeffrey Fagan, a professor at Columbia Law School. "It appears to show negligence. But if we learned anything from the Brown case, it's the power of prosecutors to construct and manage a narrative in a way that can shape the outcome."

Grand jury investigation details could be released

While details on the grand jurors were not disclosed, Staten Island is the most politically conservative of the city's five boroughs and home to many police and firefighters. The district attorney said he will seek to have information on the investigation released.

The medical examiner ruled Garner's death a homicide and found that a chokehold contributed to it. A forensic pathologist hired by Garner's family agreed with those findings, saying there was hemorrhaging on Garner's neck indicative of neck compressions.

Pantaleo was stripped of his gun and badge and will remain on desk duty pending an internal police investigation that could result in administrative charges.

As the grand jury decision drew near, police officials met with community leaders on Staten Island to head off the kind of violence seen in Ferguson, where arson and looting resulted in more than 100 arrests and the destruction of 12 commercial buildings by fire.

In the hours after the decision, several dozen demonstrators at the site of Garner's arrest scattered cigarettes on the ground in homage to him and lit candles.

"Cold-blooded murder!" said Jennie Chambers, who works nearby and saw Garner daily. "We saw it on TV. It's on video. The whole world saw it. Ferguson, now us."

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Accused teen jihadist from Quebec charged with terrorism offences

A Montreal teenager has been charged with terrorism-related offences after allegedly robbing a convenience store to get money for a plane ride overseas to join a jihadist group.

The 15-year-old Montreal boy was arrested in October after a West Island dépanneur was held up by an assailant with a knife.

The teen's father turned him in to police after reportedly finding money inside his son's bag.

Investigators soon discovered there was more to it, however. They called in the RCMP after suspecting the teen robbed the store to pay for a plane ticket — reportedly to join militants overseas.

About $2,200 was stolen from the dépanneur.

Neither the organization he was planning to join nor the country he had planned to travel to was clear, but police said they found jihadist propaganda on his computer.

Martin Couture-Rouleau was shot by police after running over two soldiers in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent died in the violence. (Facebook)

The teen told investigators he was living in sin because he is in Canada and not a Muslim country.

"The RCMP is relentless in its pursuit of those who would seek to participate in terrorist activity. We are determined to take action to protect Canadians and to keep our communities safe and resilient," James Malizia, assistant commissioner and officer in charge of RCMP Federal Policing Operations, said in a statement.

The teen appeared in court Wednesday on the charges of:

• Commission of an offence for a terrorist group.
• Leaving Canada to participate in activity of a terrorist group. 

If convicted, he could face a life sentence in prison.

The RCMP would not divulge specific details because of the suspect's age, but a spokesperson confirmed the boy tried to get into contact with Martin Couture-Rouleau — the man responsible for the attack of two Canadian soldiers in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., on Oct. 20. Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was killed.

The teen is in a youth detention centre awaiting his next court date.

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Why it's so rare for people to intervene in hostile situations

The case of a German woman who died while protecting two teenage girls from harassment has captivated the world, but sociologists say these sorts of interventions are actually quite rare.

Most people "want to preserve the smooth flow of interaction" and will typically go out of their way to ignore uncomfortable social situations, says Arthur McLuhan, a social psychology professor at York University in Toronto.

"The most common response to any sort of deviance is doing nothing."

The fact that she didn't do nothing makes Tugce Albayrak's actions appear all the more heroic. Last month, the 23-year-old university student stepped in to protect two teenage girls from male harassers at a McDonald's in Offenbach, Germany.

The argument migrated to the restaurant's parking lot, where one of the men allegedly struck Albayrak on the head, causing her to collapse. After two weeks in a coma, her parents took Albayrak off life support on Nov. 28.

The case has received worldwide coverage. A petition to award Albayrak Germany's national order of merit posthumously has garnered 100,000 signatures.

"Where other people looked away, Tugce showed exemplary bravery and civil courage and stood up for victims of violence," German President Joachim Gauck wrote in a letter to Albayrak's family.

Few step up

Gauck's sentiment about exemplary bravery is echoed in a recent social experiment conducted in Sweden by an organization called STHLM Panda.

Over the course of two days, the group secretly filmed a scenario in which a male actor pretended to verbally and physically assault his girlfriend in an elevator while another passenger was present.

Of the 53 passengers who witnessed the seemingly real assaults, only one intervened.

VIDEO: Swedish social experiment

ON MOBILE? Click here to see the video.

According to Philip Zimbardo, a noted U.S. psychologist currently researching the impulses behind heroism, most people are unwilling to intervene.

"On the bell curve of humanity, villains and heroes are outliers," he said in a 2010 TED Talk to explain his Heroic Imagination Project.

"In between them is the general population — generally passive and different."

Still, while Tugce Albayrak's actions may not be the norm, people have a strong reaction when they perceive injustice, says Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director at the Greater Good Science Centre at the University of California Berkeley.

"Human beings and our primate predecessors are wired for fairness," says Simon-Thomas. "We do not like things that are unfair and when we come across them, we feel very strongly motivated to address the unfairness in any way that we can."

Even so, a number of psychological factors can constrain us from acting in a case of harassment or violence, leading to what is known as the "bystander effect," says Simon-Thomas.

The bystander effect

The most obvious, she says, is the perception that if you intervene, you yourself could be physically threatened.

You may also decide against action if there is a group around, and no one else has acted.

A petition in Germany to give Tugce Albayrak a posthumous national medal of merit has collected 100,000 signatures. (Hannelore Foerster/Getty Images )

Simon-Thomas says a person may assume the group "must know that this isn't really a problem, this is some theatrical program, and I'm the fool who's being drawn into it."

To illustrate this point, many psychologists cite the case of Kitty Genovese, a New Yorker who was stabbed to death in the courtyard of her New York apartment complex in 1964. Reports say a number of her neighbours heard the attack in progress and failed to act.

Today there is considerable dispute over whether the incident unfolded the way it's been described, but many social psychologists use it to illustrate the concept of "the diffusion of responsibility" — that is, deciding not to intervene because others around you have failed to act, or a fear that you might look foolish in front of a group.

We may also decide not to act if we believe that doing so would jeopardize our social standing — for example, a high-school student who risks being ostracized for calling out a more popular student for sexual harassment.

The Good Samaritan study

Time is another factor, as evidenced by a landmark study conducted by John Darley and Daniel Batson in 1973.

In the study, a group of students from the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey was asked to fill out a personality questionnaire and told to give a short talk afterwards. Some were instructed to talk about jobs for seminary graduates, while others were told to discuss the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan.

The experiment was orchestrated in such a way that on their way to the talk, the students would encounter a person doubled over in a doorway.

Expecting that time would be a factor in whether the students intervened, the experimenters told some students that they were late for their talk, some that they had just enough time to get there and some that they had a fair amount of free time before their talk.

The results showed that 63 per cent of those who had ample time stopped to help the man, while only 10 per cent of those who were late did so.

The study also looked at how the topic of each student's talk affected their actions. Fifty-three per cent of those giving a talk about the Good Samaritan stopped to help, while only 29 per cent of those talking about seminary careers did so.

The Good Samaritan study showed that personality and religiosity were not as important in determining action as circumstances.

"There's this assumption in psychology that your personality, your personal attributes, are what cause behaviour," says York University's McLuhan.

"But that 1973 study shows that situational factors have a high degree of influence on your behaviour," and that your inclination to act is less a reflection of your character.

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RCMP officer shot in B.C. in serious condition

RCMP in Kamloops, B.C., are searching for a suspect after a police officer was shot early this morning.

Police say when the officer stopped a vehicle around 2:45 a.m. PT  Wednesday at Bachelor Drive and North River Drive, there was an exchange of gunfire and the officer was hit.

The officer was rushed to Royal Inland Hospital with serious injuries and is undergoing surgery.

Police are looking for a 1998 white, four-door Chrysler Intrepid with B.C. licence plate AF7 65A attached to it at the time

They warn that the car's occupants should be considered armed and dangerous.

Google Maps: North River Drive and Batchelor Drive, Kamloops

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Habs icon Jean Béliveau hailed as 'true legend'

Tragedy has hit the hockey community again. Following the sad news of Jean Béliveau's passing at the age of 83, many people took to social media to extend their condolences and honour a true gentleman of the game. 

Béliveau died at the age of 83, the NHL team announced Tuesday night.

One of the finest centres who ever played, Béliveau helped lead the Montreal Canadiens to an unprecedented five straight Stanley Cups during the 1950s and 1960s — 10 in all over a nearly 20-year career.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre summed up the feeling surrounding the passing of the Canadiens legend when he announced that the hockey world and the entire country would be mourning this great loss.

Flags will remain at half mast in the city of Montreal to honour Béliveau. 

Farewell Mr Béliveau, you were an inspiration for us all. A true gentleman. A role model, one of our greatest Habs, benchmark for "C" #RIP

— @DenisCoderre

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The NHL put together a video tribute in the wake of the news. 

Remembering @CanadiensMTL legend Jean Beliveau. http://t.co/VPhW3DWwIn

— @NHL

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper called him a 'true legend.'

It is with sadness that I learned of the passing of Jean Béliveau. He was a true legend and a class act. My thoughts are with his family.

— @pmharper

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Former and current Montreal Canadiens players were quick to respond with condolences, and mentioned what a role model No. 4 always was within the organization. 

Jean Beliveau, @CanadiensMTL great, dies at 83. http://t.co/LijImV8zAV

— @NHL

I met Jean Béliveau when I was 10 years old..That's when I knew I wanted to play for the @CanadiensMTL… http://t.co/6xz2SCoXBa

— @PKSubban1

A true legend has passed away. Honoured to say I wore the same colours as the man.. Condolences to the Beliveau family

— @BrandonPrust8

​

Sad day in the hockey world with the passing of a Mtl legend Mr. Jean Beliveau. He was a role model, idol and the definition of class #RIP

— @jgorges26

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Players around the league were praising the legend too.

Sad to see such a legend in Jean Béliveau pass away. What a legacy he left behind, pure class

— @Matt9Duchene

• Can't view on mobile? See Matt Duchene's tweet here.

Canadian athletes outside of the NHL also had fond memories of the 10-time Stanley Cup winner. 

Jean Beliveau was the classiest man.Returned every piece of fan mail with a hand written letter.nicest autograph in hockey. #ripmrbeliveau

— @wick_22

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The NDP leader, who represents Outremount, was the first of the federal leaders to pay tribute

Une légende s'est éteinte ce soir. Repose en paix Jean Béliveau.

— @ThomasMulcair

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Police distrust in riot-torn Ferguson flows from a city run on fines: Keith Boag

One way to improve the mood in Ferguson, Missouri, might be to just get rid of its police force and let the county police take over.

Or even better, perhaps, do like St. George, another small town down the road in St. Louis Country.

A few years ago a woman named Carmen Wilkerson ran for mayor of St. George. She was a single issue candidate who promised, if elected, she would do her best to destroy the city.

The argument wasn't complicated. St. George didn't do much for its population of 1,337 — no schools, no fire department, no public library. It really had no reason for being.

It had already shut down its police department figuring that it didn't need three officers whose main job was to write traffic tickets so that the town could collect the fines to cover the cost of the officers' salaries.

That left St. George's city council in charge of one snowplow and not much else.

Wilkerson won the election and immediately got to work making sure she would be the last mayor St. George ever had.

She engineered a referendum and, by the end of the year, she had persuaded enough people to vote to abolish their town. St. George disappeared into St. Louis County as an unincorporated territory.

Such reasonableness is rare in St. Louis County where the landscape is stuffed with tiny towns that make no sense.

Like Ferguson, the place that has been at the epicentre of racial tension since a black teenager, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, back in August.

Micro-burgs

In St. Louis County, two-thirds of the population, about 650,000 people, live in what are called "incorporated municipalities. There are 90 of them.

A few have city-sized populations. Ferguson's is about 21,000.

Fourteen have populations of fewer than 500. The smallest is Champ, population 12. The smallest area-wise is MacKenzie, which is about the size of 10 football fields.

Most stunning of all is that 58 of the 90 municipalities have their own police departments, which is where the perniciousness of the micro-burgs comes into view.

St. Louis County is littered with police whose main preoccupations seem to be writing traffic tickets and/or arresting people for not paying the tickets.

Ferguson, of course, is in it up to its eyeballs.

Fines and court fees are Ferguson's second largest source of revenue, bringing in just over $2.5 million last year.

How did all this happen?

Much of it began decades ago with the flight of people from the city of St. Louis to the fledgling suburbs.

At that time it was easier in St. Louis County than in other places for a small residential subdivision to turn itself into a city. Once that was done, the townsfolk controlled their own zoning and development.

Student activists stage a 'die-in' at Washington University in St. Louis on Monday as part of the nationwide "Hands up, walk out" protest, demanding justice for the fatal Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. (Reuters)

In those pre-civil-rights days a city would write covenants restricting who could buy or lease property within its boundaries.

The new city people were almost all white (Ferguson was 99 per cent white in 1970) and the people they wanted to keep out were black. So that's what they wrote into their covenants: no selling, renting or conveying in any way to Negroes.

When restrictive covenants were made unenforceable and blacks were free to move into new neighbourhoods, whites moved out leaving behind the mosaic of tiny jurisdictions that exists today.

In many cases populations are too small to provide the tax base for a city, and so some of the tiniest towns have the most highly aggressive policing. They try to make up in traffic fines what they can't generate in property or sales taxes.

Bella Villa, for instance, a city with a population of about 800, is a tiny little speed trap. It has reportedly collected almost 60 per cent of its yearly budget through traffic fines.

Tax on the poor

The burden of such hyperactive traffic policing falls most heavily on the poorest.

It's they who have trouble finding the money to pay fines. It's they who may have to choose between driving illegally to work or not working. It's they who may be struggling just to feed a family.

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson speaks to reporters in August following the shooting of Michael Brown by then officer Darren Wilson. The city of 21,000 had 82 police department personnel, almost all of them white. (Mario Anzuoni / Reuters)

A Washington Post investigation found community police and courts issuing minor traffic violations, then piling court fees on top of them, then arrest warrants, more fees, and eventually, though not finally, imprisonment.

All that for a traffic offence.

In those circumstances you don't have to be poor to start believing that the police are there not to protect and serve you, but to pinch and squeeze every nickel out of you in any way they can.

The situation is just one of those things in St. Louis County that "everybody knows."

What the shooting death of Michael Brown did was put a big, bright national spotlight on this municipal racket, and that is having an impact.

On Oct. 1, the city of St. Louis, which isn't part of St. Louis County, announced it had wiped roughly 220,000 outstanding arrest warrants from its files. These were warrants for non-violent law-breaking such as traffic violations.

"In light of Ferguson, we were thinking of how we could be more fair," said a spokesman for the mayor.

And in Ferguson itself the city council has announced plans to reform its court system and get rid of some of the penalties that have trapped people in a spiral of ever-increasing fines and fees.

That, at least, recognizes that there are aspects to law and order in St. Louis County that are really just played as nudge-nudge, wink-wink games at the tragic expense of poor people.

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North Korea not likely behind Sony hacking, despite 'merciless' retaliation threats

Some cybersecurity experts say it is unlikely North Korea was behind the cyberattack that crippled Sony Pictures' computers and possibly leaked unreleased movies online.

Speculation has been rampant that the hard-line communist state sponsored last week's hack in anger over the new Sony movie The Interview, in which Seth Rogen and James Franco play television journalists assigned by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

"State-sponsored attackers don't create cool names for themselves like 'Guardians of Peace' and promote their activity to the public," said cybersecurity expert Lucas Zaichkowsky.

He said the details he has seen point instead to hacktivists, who break into computers to make a political point, often one involving the free exchange of information on the internet. Hacktivists have targeted Sony in the past.

The Interview comes out on Christmas. Over the summer, North Korea warned that the release of the comedy would be an "act of war that we will never tolerate." It said the U.S. will face "merciless" retaliation.

Social security numbers among hacked material

FBI spokesman Joshua Campbell would not comment Tuesday on whether North Korea or another country was behind the attack. The FBI is investigating.

It would be unusual if North Korea was behind the breach, said Darren Hayes, director of cybersecurity at Pace University's computer science school.

North Korea is angry over a soon-to-be-released film, The Interview, starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. The movie mocks North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. (Fred Prouser/Reuters)

"However, there are numerous hackers for hire" in some of the shadowy corners of the internet, he said. "If Kim Jong-un has developed his own rank-and-file cyberattack unit, with sophisticated capabilities, then we should be very concerned."

Sony Pictures hasn't said how the hackers breached its system. But such attacks often start with "phishing" attempts, a compromised website or a malicious insider, said cybersecurity researcher Craig Young at Tripwire, a security software company that works with such businesses as Visa, Mastercard, Walmart and Starbucks.

Given that the hackers were apparently able to obtain unreleased movies as well as personnel records, Social Security numbers, passport photos, technical documents and other material, Young said it is unlikely they used just a single point of access.

"It's much more likely that attackers were able to exploit a series of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and poor network architecture to continuously increase their level of access over time," he said.

A security expert who was part of the South Korean government's investigation into March 2013 cyberattacks blamed on North Korea said there is not enough evidence to point the finger at the North for the Sony incident even though there are similarities.

The expert, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized by his employer to speak about the matter, said that when South Korean authorities concluded that Pyongyang was behind the attacks that paralyzed servers at financial institutions and media companies, they had not just malicious computer code but also IP addresses and other evidence.

"We cannot rule out the possibility that some other groups have imitated" North Korea's cyberattacks, he said.

Cloud technology dependence increases vulnerability

The increased dependence on cloud technology by nearly all major businesses to store their information has made them more vulnerable, said Carson Sweet, CEO of data-protection firm CloudPassage.

'If Kim Jong-un has developed his own rank-and-file cyberattack unit, with sophisticated capabilities, then we should be very concerned.'- Darren Hayes, of Pace University's computer science school

Sony workers last week logged on to see a message on their computer screens that said "Hacked by .GOP," which may be the initials of a group calling itself Guardians of Peace, according to Variety.

Some unreleased Sony movies such as Still Alice, Annie, Mr. Turner and To Write Love on Her Arms were later distributed online, along with the still-in-theatres Fury, though a direct connection to the hacking hasn't been confirmed.

Culver City, California-based Sony Pictures said Monday that it is still dealing with the effects of the cyberattack and is working closely with law enforcement officials to investigate.

Sony has brought in forensic experts from the Mandiant division of FireEye, a Silicon Valley cybersecurity company, according to a person familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because the companies have not yet announced the arrangement.

Mandiant helps companies determine the extent of breaches and repair the damage. It has worked on other high-profile computer break-ins, including the one at Target last year.

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