Jian Ghomeshi to sue CBC for $50M after crown corp cuts ties with radio host

Jian Ghomeshi hosting the CBC Radio 1 show Q. Photo: Handout

Jian Ghomeshi is no longer with the CBC, according to a surprise announcement by the crown corporation on Sunday.

“The CBC is saddened to announce its relationship with Jian Ghomeshi has come to an end,” read a brief statement posted online. “This decision was not made without serious deliberation and careful consideration. Jian has made an immense contribution to the CBC and we wish him well.”

Asked for clarification on Sunday, CBC communications director Chuck Thompson told Postmedia that “information came to our attention recently, that in CBC’s judgement, precludes us from continuing our relationship with Jian Ghomeshi.”

In response, Ghomeshi is planning to sue the public broadcaster for $50 million claiming “breach of confidence and bad faith,” according to a statement from the law firm Dentons Canada LLP sent out Sunday afternoon. His lawyers will file the lawsuit Monday morning.

The spat comes two days after Ghomeshi stepped away from his hosting duties on the popular radio program Q, although the reason was not immediately clear. He later said on Twitter that he was “taking some much needed personal time.”

The 47-year-old radio personality has been one of CBC’s biggest stars since launching his arts and culture program in 2007, making international headlines in 2009 after a testy exchange with actor Billy Bob Thornton. He previously hosted the music show Play on CBC Television and was a founding member of the rock band Moxy Früvous.

While the exact circumstances of the split are not yet known, media critic Jesse Brown says he is ready to report the details of a lengthy investigation into Ghomeshi on his news and podcast site Canadaland.

The Globe and Mail, meanwhile, reports that Ghomeshi has retained the services of Navigator, a communications firm that specializes in “crisis response and reputation recovery.”

Ghomeshi was set to host the Scotiabank Giller Prize gala on Nov. 10, to be broadcast live on CBC Television, but organizers confirmed he will no longer emcee the event. Q will continue to air on CBC Radio One with a series of guest hosts for the time being.

US: Ambassador Power to visit 3 Ebola-ravaged countries in West Africa

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, speaks in a file photo. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

By Cara Anna

The United States ambassador to the United Nations is on her way to visit all three of the West African countries hit hardest by the Ebola outbreak, amid rising calls for travel restrictions back home in the U.S.

Samantha Power will visit Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea “to draw attention to the need for increased support for the international response,” said a statement released late Saturday by the U.S. mission.

A spokesman said Power had already departed and was set to land in the capital of Guinea, Conakry, on Sunday. Earlier Saturday, the ambassador tweeted a photo of herself with Guinea’s ambassador to the United Nations.

The United Nations has repeatedly called for a greater international response to the worst-ever outbreak of the deadly disease, which has killed more than 4,900 people. The U.N. mission to counter Ebola is the first time the world body has set up such an effort in response to a public health crisis.

Power has been vocal about the need for a stronger global response to Ebola’s devastating spread. In a speech a week ago, she even praised Cuba, a country that has been under a U.S. embargo for decades, for having sent 165 doctors to Sierra Leone.

“The international community isn’t just losing the race to Ebola. We are getting lapped,” she said in the speech.

The U.N. repeatedly has expressed concern as airlines and shipping companies cut service to the three most affected countries, making it difficult to deliver aid workers and supplies and causing food prices to soar. Aid workers with the U.N. and elsewhere also have worried openly about the challenges of attracting trained volunteers to come and help out.

Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., speakinin a file photo. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

The U.S. statement said Power will visit national Ebola co-ordinationcentres and meet with U.S. and U.N. personnel on the ground in the Ebola-affected region. That will include workers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the defence department. She’ll also meet with government officials and civil society workers.

The statement did not say whether Power would meet with survivors of the outbreak.

Power also will visit Ghana, the headquarters for the U.N.’s Ebola mission, and Belgium.

The ambassador’s trip was announced shortly after new quarantine policies were put into effect in New York as authorities reacted to the infection of a doctor who had been treating Ebola patients in Guinea. The governors of New York, New Jersey and Illinois on Friday declared mandatory 21-day quarantines for arriving travellers who have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa.

Power flew out of Washington on her way to West Africa. Spokesmen for the U.S. mission did not immediately say whether the ambassador would return through Washington and what precautious she would take while in the Ebola-hit countries.

The U.S. has pledged to send up to 4,000 troops to build treatment units and to train health care workers in the worst-hit region. Obama on Wednesday said the U.S. so far had 100 workers from the CDC and 500 military personnel in West Africa.

B.C. mosque not the locale for Ottawa gunman’s radicalization, says Muslim association

BURNABY, B.C. – The B.C. Muslim Association says it is troubled to learn that the man who killed a soldier at the National War Memorial once attended one of its mosques.

Michael Zehaf Bibeau shot the soldier on Wednesday and then entered Parliament’s Centre Block, where he was shot and killed.

The B.C. Muslim Association says Zehaf Bibeau once attended one of its mosques, but it says the Masjid Al-Salaam mosque is not the locale for what the association believes was the man’s radicalization.

It says it has been working on a preventive program that focuses on minimizing the effect of terrorist and criminal propaganda in Canada.

The association’s Aasim Rashid says Zehaf Bibeau visited the Metro Vancouver mosque for several months in 2011 until he was told not to come back.

Rashid says Zehaf Bibeau complained to administrators that the mosque was too liberal and inclusive, and he was told that’s how the mosque runs.

World Health Organization: Number of people believed to have Ebola has risen above 10,000

DAKAR, Senegal – More than 10,000 people have been infected with Ebola, according to figures released Saturday by the World Health Organization, as the outbreak continues to spread.

Of those cases, 4,922 people have died.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa is the largest ever outbreak of the disease with a rapidly rising death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. There have also been cases in three other West African countries, Spain and the United States.

The U.N. health agency said Saturday that the number of confirmed, probable and suspected cases has risen to 10,141. Its figures show about 200 new cases since the last report, four days ago.

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2014, a health worker takes the temperature of a man, right, as part of the countries fight against the spread of the Ebola virus, on the Masiaka Highway, forming part of a trans-West African highway, which links all West African States, on the outskirts of the capital city of Conakry, Guinea. (AP Photo/ Youssouf Bah)

Even those grisly tolls are likely an underestimate, WHO has warned, as many people in the hardest hit countries have been unable or too frightened to seek medical care. A shortage of labs capable of handling potentially infected blood samples has also made it difficult to track the outbreak. For example, the latest numbers show no change in Liberia’s case toll, suggesting the numbers may be lagging behind reality.

On Thursday, authorities confirmed that the disease had spread to Mali, the sixth West African country affected, and on the same day a new case was confirmed in New York, in a doctor recently returned from Guinea.

Mali had long been considered highly vulnerable to the disease, since it shares a border with Guinea. The disease arrived there in a 2-year-old, who travelled from Guinea with her grandmother by bus and died Friday.

The toddler, who was bleeding from her nose during the journey, may have had high-risk contact with many people, the World Health Organization warned. So far, 43 people are being monitored in isolation for signs of the disease, and WHO said Saturday that authorities are continuing to look for more people at risk.

To help fight Ebola, the U.N. humanitarian flight service airlifted about 1 ton of medical supplies to Mali late Friday. The seats of the plane were removed to make room for the cargo, which included hazard suits for health workers, surgical gloves, face shields and buckets, according to the World Food Program, which runs the flights.

“Speed is of the essence in this Ebola crisis. Agencies such as WFP and WHO are working every hour to confront together the virus as a matter of priority,” said Denise Brown, the West Africa regional director for the U.N. food agency.

Sarah Dilorenzo

Cpl. Cirillo makes final journey along the Highway of Heroes

Cpl. Nathan Cirillo has begun his final journey home to Hamilton down the Highway of Heroes.

The 24-year-old’s body departed Ottawa’s McEvoy-Shields Funeral Home and Chapel shortly before 1:30 p.m., escorted by Ottawa Police. Other policing departments, including the Ontario Provincial Police, will escort the procession along different legs of the journey.

Cpl. Nathan Cirillio’s mother, Kathy Cirillo (centre) follows the casket carrying her son as it leaves a funeral home in Ottawa. (Julie Oliver / Ottawa Citizen)

The motorcade will pass through the stretch of Highway 401 between Trenton and Toronto known as the Highway of Heroes. As when other fallen soldiers pass along the route, mourners have gathered on overpasses with flags and messages of condolence.

A man in uniform salutes the motorcade carrying Cpl. Cirillo as moves along the Veterans Memorial Highway in Ottawa. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle)

An Ottawa firefighter waves a Canadian Flag as crowds wait on an overpass at the Veterans Memorial Highway. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle)

Canadians are sharing images of those gathered using the hashtag #CanadaStrong.

Cirillo’s body will arrive in Hamilton sometime after 7 p.m. and the young reservist will receive a full military funeral in Hamilton. Markey-Dermody Funeral Home in Hamilton will host visitation hours, open to the public, on Sunday from 6 to 9 p.m. and Monday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Canadian reservist Cpl. Nathan Cirillo will receive a full regimental funeral.

Cirillo was gunned down Wednesday while standing guard at the National War Memorial in Ottawa in a shooting that has shaken the nation’s capital. Guard duty resumed at the memorial on Friday with a ceremony attended by the Prime Minister as well as hundreds of onlookers. At one point, the crowd began singing the national anthem as yet more flowers were laid by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Canadians across the country have lain flowers and flags at cenotaphs and war memorials in their cities to honour the fallen reservist, a father and husband from Ontario’s steel town.

Paul Rogers, a delivery person with Jean’s Flower Shop, lays flowers in front of the locked gates of the John W. Foote VC Armoury in Hamilton shortly after the news broke that Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, a reservist from the Ontario city, was shot and killed in Ottawa. (Sheryl Nadler/ Postmedia News)

Yellow ribbons line the street to his family home, where his dogs have been captured poking their noses out from under the fence, waiting for their master to come home as tributes to the fallen soldier pile up.

Cpl. Nathan Cirillo’s dogs peek out from under a gate at the Cirillo family home. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Power

Cirillo served with Hamilton’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlander, who have promised a full regimental funeral. He had aspirations of joining the Canadian Forces and serving oversees. But instead, he was killed while standing before a tribute to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who fell before him on the mantel of our democracy and freedom.

Described as a man who “always had a smile on his face” and a “dog’s best friend,” Cirillo’s passing, his young face, younger family and tragic passing have captured Canadians hearts. Not since the passing of former finance minister Jim Flaherty has the country mourned so collectively.

The Highway of Heroes was named for the fallen soldiers from Afghanistan, whose bodies traced the route on their final journey home. Now Cirillo, who hoped to join their ranks but not share their fate, will follow the same final course.

The man who shot and killed him has been identified as Michael Zehaf Bibeau, who made it into Parliament’s Centre Block after shooting Cirillo before being shot and killed himself by parliamentary security.