The BCTF has released the schedule for the third week of rotating strikes in B.C. schools.
On Wednesday, BCTF President Jim Iker said teachers will take a vote next Monday and Tuesday to decide whether or not to escalate job action, up and including a full-scale strike.
BCTF President Jim Iker is threatening a full-scale teachers’ strike within the next two weeks if the government doesn’t put more money on the table.
Iker says teachers will take a strike vote on Monday, June 9 and Tuesday, June 10 to get a mandate for escalated job action.
Rotating strikes will also continue next week, and the schedule will be released tomorrow.
“The time has come to apply even more pressure — it’s time to exert the maximum pressure,” says Iker. “Taking job action is never easy and these decisions are not made lightly. The rotating strikes show that parents understand what we are fighting for, and why we must take it forward.”
Read full release here: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/228206058?access_key=key-E6Uw24g5Euu8ooK6DuO4&allow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll
Is Port Alberni Canada’s Happiest City? If you don’t think so then watch this video!!
Pat Little says, “it was their 10th anniversary owning the Hollies Golf Course. I had seen how many cities had adapted the Happy song, but no golf courses. We loved the lyrics and the music of Pharrell Williams. It seemed a logical way to promote our little course, our city, and uplift the game of golf.”
The Victoria Airport Authority (VAA) is warning airport customers and local residents about a scam involving phone calls from people claiming to be from the Victoria International Airport.
The scammers will call you and identify themselves as being representatives of the Victoria International Airport and say that you have won up to a $1000.00 towards your next trip. You simply only need to meet a couple of eligibility requirements and then you’re asked for personal financial information.
Please do not give out any personal information. We are investigating to see if we have any other options than to make this public warning however, it appears that we are not the only Canadian airport being affected and there is not much we can do to stop it. Most important to note is that the VAA would never solicit any of our customers in this way or ever request any confidential information.
About Victoria International Airport
Victoria International Airport (Airport Code: YYJ) is the 10th busiest airport in Canada with over 1.5 million passengers per year. Victoria is well served with more than 120 daily flights throughout North America and was most recently rated among the top ten most-loved airports in the world by CNNGo and named the 2012 Best Regional Airport in North America by Airports Council International.
May 25, 2014; New York, NY, USA; A general view of the opening puck drop during the first period in game four of the Eastern Conference Final of the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs between the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens at Madison Square Garden. (Andy Marlin-USA TODAY Sports)
If you’re a New York Rangers fan, watching your team take on the Los Angeles Kings on home ice will cost you the same as it would to fly out to LA and see the game.
The Rangers are trying to win their first Stanley Cup since 1994, and the price tag for seats at Madison Square Garden has skyrocketed.
Tickets for Game 3, the first game of the series in New York, are starting at $1,045.50 on StubHub. The lowest price for Game 4 is a cool $1,196.85.
On the other coast, however, a ticket to Game 1 on Wednesday is only $420.00. According to Kayak, if you flew from JFK to Long Beach Airport on Wednesday morning, only a half-hour drive to the Staples Center, and then flew back the next morning after the game, you’d only spend $456.00.
For airfare and the game ticket, it would be cheaper for a fan to fly from New York to LA to watch the game than see it in his hometown arena. According to FiveThirtyEight, the Kings are favored over the Rangers.
Wednesday June 4, 2014 is Camp Day. This is the one day each year when Tim Hortons restaurant owners donate 100 per cent of the proceeds from coffee sales to the Tim Horton Children’s Foundation (THCF), making it the Foundation’s largest fundraiser each year.
What One Cup of Coffee Can Do
Thanks to the generous support of Tim Hortons Restaurant Owners and their loyal guests, Camp Day in 2013 was a huge success, raising an incredible $11.8 million for the Tim Horton Children’s Foundation. Our goal is to raise even more this year to help send over 17,000 economically disadvantaged children on a camp experience of a lifetime.
All children who attend one of the Foundation’s six camps are selected from within the communities where Tim Hortons Restaurants are located. Camp with the Tim Horton Children’s Foundation is more than a fun trip away from home. Camp programs are designed to change the way young people from low-income homes think about themselves and the opportunities that exist for them.
“It’s overwhelming each year to see how our guests come together to support the Foundation,” says Bill Moir, President, Tim Horton Children’s Foundation. “On Camp Day, buying a cup of coffee and participating in the many activities helps contribute to a positive change in a child’s life. And that’s a good feeling.”
Additional Fundraising and Special Guests
On Camp Day, guests can expect additional fundraising activities at many of their local Tim Hortons Restaurants. For example, funds are also raised at Restaurants through the ‘Rent-a-Tent’ and ‘Rent-a-Cabin’ program where guests can personalize paper cut-out tents and cabins and post them in the restaurant for a donation. Other activities may include: indoor and outdoor games; silent auctions; face-painting; and drive-thru window washing. Some restaurants will invite special guests, including sports and media personalities, to greet guests and pour coffee throughout the day.
On the right, Courtney Brown, Coroner, British Columbia Coroners Service; on the left, Laurel Clegg, Casualty Identification, Department of National Defence. Conducting an initial survey and recovery of remains near the cockpit. May 5, 2014. Photograph by: Corporal Brandon O’Connell, Joint Task Force Pacific J36 – Imagery
More than 70 years after a Second World War aircraft disappeared on a training flight over B.C., the wreckage has been found and four servicemen have been identified.
It was during World War 2, October 30th 1942, when the Avro Anson plane took off from Patricia Bay airbase, now Victoria Internaional Airport. A Canadian and three British airmen were aboard. Foggy weather set in, a radio call went out to recall the plane but the aircraft disappeared.
I Love Vancouver Island fan, Georgia Andrews, says her dad, Sgt. George Topp, was scheduled to be on a flight from Pat Bay during WWII. He was called off , and into a meeting, just as he was setting foot on the aircraft. He often told the story about his missing plane that was never found and that it was fate that he lived to tell the story. Could this have been his flight? Her father passed away in 2007.
The BC Coroners Service says what was left of the Avro Anson was discovered last October by a logging crew working on a remote mountainside near Port Renfrew, B.C., on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
Human remains were found at the scene, but bad weather prevented recovery of Royal Canadian Air Force Sgt. William Baird and British air force Pilot Officer Charles Fox, Pilot Officer Anthony Lawrence and Sgt. Robert Luckock.
Officials with the coroners service and Department of National Defence returned to the heavily-forested mountainside on May 5 and removed, analysed and identified the remains.
Canadian military officials and Britain’s Ministry of Defence have contacted surviving family members, and plans for an interment ceremony are under discussion.
(Mashable) You know you’re an influential company when even the slightest change to your logo causes people to take notice.
Google updated its logo with an almost imperceivable tweak over the weekend, which was noticed by users on Reddit and quickly picked up by multiple publications.
Just how slight is the change? Google moved the second “g” slightly to the right and the “l” slightly to the right and lower. Here’s a GIF of the logo, before and after:
The search giant acknowledged the change. “Great to see people notice and appreciate even single-pixel changes — we tweaked the logo a little while ago to make sure it looks its sharpest regardless of your screen resolution.”
This isn’t the first time Google has made a slight tweak to its logo. Here’s a quick look back at how the logo has evolved — barely — over time:
If something isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Or at least don’t fix it too much.
True to his name he launches this ceremonial first pitch of the Mets-Pirates game, 50 feet outside. We haven’t seen a musician shame the opening of a ballgame like this since Carly Rae Jepsen.
The Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit and VicPD are investigating the suspicious death of an infant yesterday morning.
An Esquimalt man has been charged with manslaughter after the suspicious death of an infant Saturday, according to Victoria police.
VicPD was called at approximately 8 a.m. to assist the Provincial Ambulance Service for a call of an infant that was not breathing. Officers responded to a restaurant in the 1200-block of Douglas Street where the infant was. All attempts to save the infant were unsuccessful.
A 21-year-old Esquimalt man was taken into custody. Detectives learned that the man traveled with the infant from a residence in Esquimalt to downtown by bus. It is not known what relationship the man had with the infant, if any. No information on the victim has been released.
The man remains in custody and has since been charged with manslaughter.
Detectives continue to investigate and are asking anyone who may have been riding on BC Transit double decker bus route #14 between 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m., from the 800-block of Craigflower Road to the downtown bus stop at View and Douglas streets to come forward. Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Constable Phil Davies at 250-380-6273..
WATCH: BCTF President Jim Iker fired back at Premier Christy Clark and the Liberal government over the imposed lockouts
(Global News) The B.C. Teachers’ Federation says the provincial government is putting its own political agenda before students and families.
On Wednesday, the BC Public School Employers’ Association (BCPSEA) sent a letter to the BCTF in response to their escalation of strike activities to Stage 2, which involves rotating strikes.
The letter states that effective May 26 and continuing until further notice, BCTF members will be locked out from doing any work during recess or lunch, or doing administrative tasks. It says a secondary school lockout will be in effect for June 25 and 26 with a general lockout happening on June 27.
In addition to the partial lockout, BCPSEA says salaries will be reduced by five per cent for all employees in the BCTF bargaining unit who are scheduled to work, beginning May 26. And if the union moves to Stage 2 activities, the salary reduction will be 10 per cent.
BCTF president Jim Iker says they have referred the matter to the Labour Relations Board.
“It is more of the same behavior from the Premier and the government that the B.C. Supreme Court ruled had bargained in bad faith with us,” he says.
Iker says a series of partial lockouts imposed by the government will have wide-ranging impact on students, parents and teachers.
“It will shut down schools completely, and put the marking of province wide exams for senior grades as well as report cards at risk.”
Iker says on June 24, all grade 10 English students and Social Studies 11 students are writing their provincial exams.
“Christy Clark’s lockout starts the next day, and that will prevent thousands of students’ exams from being marked,” he says.
Extracurricular activities, field trips and sport tournaments will be at risk because teachers will be locked out of their work sites, according to Iker.
Graduation ceremonies may also be impacted.
Iker says by directive, teachers will now be prohibited from interacting with students during lunch hour, stripping them of valuable one-on-one time with their teachers.
“Christy Clark’s lockout means that teachers will be insubordinate if they helped a struggling child or a child with special needs during lunch hour. Shameful,” he says.
(Reuters) – EBay Inc said on Wednesday that a cyber attack carried out three months ago has compromised customer data, and the company urged 145 million users of its online commerce platform to change their passwords.
The company said unknown hackers stole email addresses, encrypted passwords, birth dates, mailing addresses and other information in an attack carried out between late February and early March. The files did not contain financial information.
An eBay spokeswoman said a large number of accounts may have been compromised, but declined to say how many. EBay said it found no evidence of unauthorized access to financial or credit card information at its PayPal payments subsidiary, which encrypts and stores its data separately.
EBay shares were down 0.2 percent late Wednesday afternoon, compared with a 0.9 percent rise in the Nasdaq Composite Index.
The e-commerce company’s stock has steadily fallen since late March as part of a broader slide in technology shares. Last month, eBay reached an accord with activist investor Carl Icahn, who had been calling for the company to spin out PayPal, which is growing quickly.
FRAUD ALERT
Security experts advised EBay customers to be on the alert for fraud, especially if they used the same passwords for other accounts.
“This is not a breach that only hurts EBay. This is a breach that hurts all websites,” said Michael Coates, director of product security with Shape Security.
He said that companies typically only ask users to change passwords if they believes there is a reasonable chance attackers may unscramble encrypted passwords.
Once the passwords are unscrambled, attackers could use automated software that seeks to log into thousands of popular services, including Facebook, Twitter, popular email services and online banking sites, he said.
EBay spokeswoman Amanda Miller said the company was making the request “out of an abundance of caution” and that it used “sophisticated,” proprietary hashing and salting technology to protect the passwords.
Amit Yoran, senior vice president of EMC Corp’s RSA security division, said that cyber criminals sometimes take data from multiple breaches, combining them into detailed portfolios that fraudsters can use for scams.
“We are seeing a level of sophistication in the cybercrime world where they are able to pull data from multiple exploits to create stronger profiles of individuals,” Yoran said. “The more detailed information fraudsters have, the better their ability to successfully perpetrate fraud.”
NO SIGNS OF FRAUD
EBay said its investigation of the breach is ongoing, with assistance from law enforcement.
“For the time being, we cannot comment on the specific number of accounts impacted,” eBay spokeswoman Kari Ramirez said. “However, we believe there may be a large number of accounts involved.”
The company said it had not seen any indication of increased fraudulent activity on eBay and that there was no evidence its PayPal online payment service had been breached.
EBay provided little information about how the hackers got in. It said they obtained login credentials for “a small number” of employees, allowing them to access eBay’s corporate network.
It said it discovered the breach in early May and immediately brought in security experts and law enforcement to investigate.
“We worked aggressively and as quickly as possible to insure accurate and thorough disclosure of the nature and extent of the compromise,” Miller said when asked why the company had not immediately notified users.
When asked who was behind the attack, she said: “We will not speculate on who is responsible at this time.”
ASSESSING RESPONSIBILITY
Research analysts said there was not enough information available to assess whether eBay had been negligent.
“The real key question going forward will be if any money has been stolen, or any unauthorized activity been performed,” Wedbush Securities analyst Gil Luria said. “As long as this is not the case, this thing will come and go and will not be an issue for eBay.”
Security experts say that virtually every major corporation, government agency and other organization has been hacked at one time.
They say it is almost impossible to prevent hackers from getting into networks using social engineering techniques such as sending carefully crafted phishing emails that lure targets to tainted websites or entice them to click on malicious links. In some cases they infect websites frequented by their targets, such as the sandwich shop of a local restaurant or professional organizations.
EBay’s shares fell as low as $50.30 in early trading on the Nasdaq before recovering to $51.83 in late afternoon.
EBay has been attacked before. In February, the Syrian Electronic Army hacking group breached and defaced websites belonging to PayPal UK and eBay.
One of the biggest breaches at a U.S. company was at retailer Target Corp, where hackers last year stole some 40 million credit card numbers and another 70 million customer records.
Last month, U.S. web media company AOL Inc urged its tens of millions of email account holders to change their passwords and security questions, saying a cyber attack compromised about 2 percent of its accounts.
BCTF President Jim Iker says government threats are nothing new. He says the BCTF will discuss them at the Labour Relations Board. (CBC)
As a result of the unwillingness of the provincial government and the BC Public School Employers’ Association to offer any improvements to class size, class composition, and other important learning conditions for students, as well as the employer’s unfair wage demands, teachers will begin rotating strikes on Monday, May 26, 2014.
“Last week, teachers were hopeful when they saw the government and BCPSEA put out an olive branch by backing off the unrealistic 10-year term,” said BC Teachers’ Federation President Jim Iker. “But the next day, hope that this government would start negotiating in good faith faded when the employer announced a series of threats around wage rollbacks, lockouts, and attempts to divide teachers, parents, and students.
“BC teachers began low-level job action to put pressure on government and BCPSEA to bring fair offers to the table. Unfortunately, the employer has steadfastly refused to table any improvements to class size, class composition, and staffing levels for specialist teachers. Teachers have twice won the right to negotiate our working conditions, which are also students’ learning conditions, in BC Supreme Court. We expect government to bring new funding to the table to make those improvements happen.”
The rotating strikes will begin on Monday, May 26 and continue May 27, 28, and 29. All school districts will be impacted on one of those days. All schools will be open on Friday, May 30. Any extension of the rotating job action will depend on events at the bargaining table.
The rotating closures are part of a two-stage strike plan voted on by teachers in March. During that vote, teachers gave their bargaining team an overwhelming mandate to begin low-level job action and then move to rotating strikes if meaningful progress was not made in negotiations. In all, 29,301 teachers cast ballots—89% voted in favour of the two-stage job action plan.
“Teachers do not take job action of any kind lightly,” said Iker. “As teachers, we care deeply about our students and their education, but with another round of brutal cuts looming, we need to act now. With BC funding education $1,000 per student less than the national average, British Columbians must take a strong stand and convince Christy Clark’s government to reinvest in our students. It is time for government to make education a funding priority.
“Teachers remain committed to reaching a fair deal at the negotiating table that respects our work and provides better support for our students. If this government is serious about labour peace they should offer teachers a fair deal and show some good faith. We will remain at the bargaining table. There are six days left before the first schools shut down. I encourage Christy Clark and Peter Fassbender to be in touch, move off their unreasonable demands, and empower BCPSEA to negotiate a fair deal.”
The planned schedule of school closures (by school district name) is as follows:
School District #93 (Conseil Scolaire Francophone) schools will be closed with others in their local communities throughout the week. Learn more about the issues at
On Saturday, May 17, Tim Hortons locations across the country will be giving out free donuts to celebrate the chain’s 50th anniversary.
Canadians can receive a special ‘birthday cake donut’ for free – while supplies last. The offer is available for one day only and is limited to one donut per guest.
On Saturday, May 17, Tim Hortons locations across the country will be giving out free donuts to celebrate the chain’s 50th anniversary.