Cinemark Is Shaking Down The Colorado Theater Shooting Victims For $700,000

Four years ago, a gunman opened fire on the audience of an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, killing 12 and wounding 70. Now, Cinemark, the movie theater chain where the attack occurred, is asking victims and their families for thousands of dollars.

Last month, a state jury ruled that Cinemark wasn’t liable for massacre. The movie theater chain — which is the nation’s third largest — then filed paperwork seeking $699,187.13 in legal fees from the plaintiffs, as reported by Deadline.

Postmedia’s Godfrey saw total pay rise 50 per cent last year

Postmedia Network Inc. chief executive officer Paul Godfrey saw his total compensation increase by 50 per cent in the last year, as he steered the company through a series of deep cuts intended to reduce the newspaper company’s reliance on print advertising.

Mr. Godfrey, whose contract was recently renewed for another three years, took home $1.7-million in total compensation in fiscal 2013 compared to $1.1-million the year earlier according to documents filed with securities regulators.

The Battle of the NSA Surveillance Bills

On Thursday, the Senate intelligence committee took a step forward toward officially authorizing some of the National Security Agency's more controversial surveillance practices, which have recently come to light thanks to leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The panel passed out of committee a bill allowing broad phone surveillance to continue under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Backed by the committee chair, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the FISA Improvements Act leaves untouched the NSA's internet surveillance dragnet, PRISM, and does little to improve oversight of the government's surveillance powers. Feinstein's bill will face off against legislation introduced earlier this week by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that would significantly curb the government's ability to sweep up the private information of Americans.

America’s Star System

Last year, Bill Clinton earned seventeen million dollars giving speeches, including one before a company in Lagos that paid him seven hundred thousand dollars. Hillary Clinton will be paid two hundred thousand dollars for each speech that she gives to the likes of the American Society of Travel Agents and the National Association of Realtors. David Petraeus, the retired Army general and ex-C.I.A. director, was offered two hundred thousand dollars by the City University of New York to teach one course each semester and to give a couple of public lectures, until a small outcry from faculty and students embarrassed the university into reducing his salary to one dollar. CUNY’s swift retreat suggested that there’s something wrong with public figures commanding and getting spectacular fees for minimal work. But is there?

Shadow of past abuse lingers over First Nations education debate

MONTREAL -- Aboriginal leaders are pointing to past abuses as evidence that the federal government should let their communities craft their own education policies.

When news broke that more than 1,300 aboriginal people, mostly children, were used as subjects of nutritional experiments initiated by the Canadian government in the 1940s and '50s, it struck a chord with aboriginal leaders that was all-too-contemporary.

The Problem with Record Bank Profits

What do these large dollar numbers have in common: $6.5 billion, $5.5 billion, $4.2 billion, and $1.9 billion? They represent the latest quarterly net profits made by too-big-to-fail banks—in order, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs, the last of which reported its second-quarter figures before the market opened on Tuesday.

Five years after being bailed out by the federal government, the U.S. banking system hasn’t merely recovered from the financial crisis that brought it to the brink of collapse. It is generating record profits—the sorts of figures usually associated with oil giants like ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell. During the past twelve months, for example, JPMorgan, the country’s biggest bank, has earned $24.4 billion in net income.

Hospital parking fees in GTA spark grassroots campaign

You could call it an urban humanitarian mission, of sorts.

A grassroots campaign that John Hazelwood and Alan Powell believe will help make the lives of the most vulnerable in the province a little easier, and perhaps a little less painful — especially on the wallet.

The object of their offence couldn’t be any more loathed, or any more complex: hospital parking fees.

Hospital Parking Tickets Incense Dad Of Dying Child

A father who has been enduring the dread of watching his child die of cancer has lashed back at what he calls an insensitive bureaucracy that continues to leave parking tickets on his car outside a St. John's hospital.

"Having a child in this situation is a mix of sadness, of anger, of just frustration," said Robert Thornhill, whose three-year-old daughter, Erica, suffers from acute myeloid leukemia, and is being treated at the Janeway children's hospital.

Obama Student Loan Policy Reaping $51 Billion Profit

The Obama administration is forecast to turn a record $51 billion profit this year from student loan borrowers, a sum greater than the earnings of the nation's most profitable companies and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.

Figures made public Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office show that the nonpartisan agency increased its 2013 fiscal year profit forecast for the Department of Education by 43 percent to $50.6 billion from its February estimate of $35.5 billion.

CEO-To-Worker Pay Ratio Ballooned 1,000 Percent Since 1950: Report

We’ve made progress on a lot of things since the 1950s and so have CEOs -- in their quest for more money that is.

The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950, according to data from Bloomberg. Today Fortune 500 CEOs make 204 times regular workers on average, Bloomberg found. The ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950.

Can Obama Stop the Uprising at Gitmo?

The revolt at Gitmo is growing.

A hunger strike at the detention center has now swelled to what may be the largest act of civil disobedience in the camp's history, with at least 100 of the camp's 166 detainees refusing to eat. Beginning in February after detainees claimed guards were searching their holy books, the protest has since broadened into what observers have called an "act of despair" over being held indefinitely without trial. "The fact that so many detainees have now been held at Guantanamo for over a decade and their belief that there is still no end in sight for them is a reason there is a growing problem of more and more detainees on a hunger strike," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, wrote in a letter to National Security Director Tom Donilon last Thursday.

Ottawa admits it approved request for foreign workers to replace RBC employees

How an overseas outsourcing firm managed to get Ottawa’s nod to bring in foreign workers to replace 45 Canadian employees at the Royal Bank has become the centre of an official probe.

On Monday, the federal government confirmed iGate, based in Fremont, Calif., was granted a positive labour market opinion (LMO), which is supposed to be issued only when an assessment determines the hiring will not take jobs away from available and qualified Canadians.

Tax changes mean families with single earner will lose nearly £4,000 a year

Families with children where one parent works will be hardest hit by new tax changes that come into force on Saturday, according to shadow chancellor Ed Balls, who says gains from a higher personal allowance of nearly £10,000 are "swamped" by higher VAT and cuts to tax credits.

Balls said prime minister David Cameron had prioritised tax cuts for millionaires over "squeezed" workers after new figures commissioned by the Labour party from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) show that a one-earner family with children will lose an average of just under £4,000.

Hundreds of bankers to save average £54,000 a year through tax cut

Hundreds of millionaires working in Britain's banks will save an average of almost £54,000 when the top rate of tax is cut this weekend, according to figures compiled by the Labour party.

The changes mean that 643 bankers, each earning more than £1m, could get a combined tax cut worth at least £34.6m.

Labour's figures were derived from details of published accounts by banks showing the number of employees earning more than £1m in the past year. It is not known what proportion of these – other than the employees of HSBC – currently pay taxes in the UK.

Robert Dutton, Former Rona CEO, Got $4.5 Million Severance Package

MONTREAL - Hardware and lumber retailer Rona Inc. says it paid former CEO Robert Dutton a severance package worth more than $4.5 million as part of nearly $6.9 million in total compensation last year.

In regulatory documents it filed ahead of its annual meeting in May, the Quebec-based company said Dutton's severance package included $1.8 million in cash representing two years of base salary and the vesting of more than 224,000 options granted since 2009.

Retired professor wants apology after being bashed by police during tuition protest

Retired professor Charles Castonguay had good reason to take part in a student protest in Gatineau last April 19 over proposed tuition hikes for Quebec universities.

Castonguay, who has many issues with the province’s education system, opposed the hikes and even argues that university should be free, at least until the first undergraduate degree.

Not long after he got there that morning, Castonguay found himself on his back after he was knocked down by riot police. The incident still angers him, he says, because it was unnecessary. Here he was, says Castonguay, an elderly man of 72, being bashed to the ground with a riot shield because he was standing a couple of feet within the perimeter of where police were moving forward.

Hospital parking rates a 'tax' on sick Canadians

Rising hospital parking rates amount to a tax on ailing Canadians, says one medical specialist.

A CBC Marketplace report found many Canadians are missing hospital appointments and experiencing added stress due to the costs of parking at their local health centre.