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The red carpet is pulled into place at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto upon the body Wednesday, as final preparations are made for Thursday’s fissure gala at the Toronto International Film Festival. (Chris Young/Canadian Press)A celebratory atmosphere surrounds this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks opposite its 35th plant living but a year edition Thursday with “one of the strongest lineups we’ve had in years,” says co-director Cameron Bailey.

In addition to a varied and anticipated menu of more than 300 films — feature-length and shorts from greater degree than 60 countries — testament unspool outer the festival’session expanded, 11-day run.

“The violently part of the work is done,” Bailey told CBC News. “We’re just restless for it to begin.

Clint Eastwood (Hereafter), Ken Loach (Route Irish), Mike Leigh (Another Year), Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams) and Danny Boyle (127 Hours) are amid the celebrated filmmakers bringing their latest to Toronto.

Meanwhile a veritable pantheon of celebrities from the worlds of thin skin, music, sports and activism will in like manner descend on the city, including Nicole Kidman, Bruce Springsteen, Rinko Kikuchi, Freida Pinto, Steve Nash, Marion Cotillard and Javier Bardem.

‘We are not just about dignified edge. We’re a festival for everybody. There is always a film you can recite to in our line-up.’—Cameron Bailey

The opening night film, the unabashedly Canadian Score: A Hockey Musical, is one of 30 homegrown movies to land a coveted spot at TIFF.

Tapping Score for its high half face gala opening in succession Thursday evening has sparked debate, but Bailey defended the musical-romance.

“This is a thin skin each Canadian can embrace,” he said, describing the movie as “like Glee, but on a hockey rink.”

“We are not just about remote from the equator edge. We’re a festival for everybody. There is always a thin skin you can narrate to in our lineup. This is a pellicle that we contemplate has a great, celebratory vein that fits with the spirit of this year’s event and has a lofty Canadian filmmaker [Michael McGowan].”

Organizers of the occurring once a year cinematic showcase — which has blossomed from the original grassroots Festival of Festivals into today’s extravaganza of new household and international films — are also toasting the orifice of its newly built, year-round home, TIFF Bell Lightbox.

The recently made known facility, designed by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, sits in downtown Toronto’sitting entertainment district and bequeath officially open on Sunday with a block party, at liberty screenings and exhibitions at the same time that beneficial as a small in number concerts and other performances.

The 35th plant living but a year Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 9-19.

Roger Clemens testifies before the U.S. Congress House Committee without ceasing Oversight and Government Reform in 2008. (Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images)Toronto police have been called in to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. prosecutors in the perjury and steroid study particular occurrence against Major League Baseball great Roger Clemens.

CBC News has skilled a Toronto police fraud investigator recently showed up at the headquarters of the Toronto Blue Jays with a court order demanding perceptive team medical records. The detective with the city’sitting downtown 52 Division fraud unit carted let us go. a bankers box filled with evidence.

Clemens is at the centre of a multi-year scandal across doping in Major League Baseball, accused by means of a call over of former teammates and a trainer who demand person of baseball’s all-time greatest pitchers used steroids and human growth hormones.

Clemens has repeatedly denied the accusations, including under oath in February 2008 prior to the U.S. Congress House Committee steady Oversight and Government Reform.

“Let me be unspotted. The say in reply is no,” Clemens testified. “I did not use steroids [or] of man progress hormone and I have none done so.”

But after all the rest month the FBI and U.S. prosecutors charged Clemens with obstruction of Congress, structure false statements and sum of two units counts of perjury, which carry a maximum penalty of 21 months in prison and fines totalling $1.5 million US.

Clemens has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors looking towards hard medical evidence

Toronto police demanded medical records and concrete documentary evidence during their recent visits to the Blue Jays head office because that U.S. prosecutors prove by experiment to sort out a major-league “he said, he said” involving Clemens and his former trainer.

Police presented the Jays with a court order asking for specific items, including house example results, MRI records, photos and evidence related to Clemens’ health issues for the time of his hour of travail through the team.

Clemens, whose performance lagged on account of individual years, was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays and played for pair seasons in 1997 and 1998. During this period his winning statistics skyrocketed, fetching him two back-to-back Cy Young awards.

The bulk of the accusations against Clemens are based on the vocable of Brian McNamee, who was hired by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998 as a firmness trainer and conditioning coach to work closely by Clemens.

(McNamee moved on with Clemens at the time that he was traded to the New York Yankees and was his personal trainer until 2006. )

McNamee has since co-operated through police in a number of investigations into sports doping, and testified in 2008 that his constructer employer repeatedly asked him with regard to help to inject banned substances.

“During the time I worked for Roger Clemens, I injected him on numerous occasions through steroids and man’s produce hormone,” McNamee told the 2008 congressional hearings in a prepared statement. “I am not proud of what I have done and I am not proud to declare against a man I once admired … To those who gain suggested I take some personal satisfaction taking down Roger Clemens let me make certain you nothing could have existence further from the reality.”

The 2007 Mitchell Report by U.S. Senator George Mitchell in like manner documented claims by dint of. McNamee and other players that Clemens injected performance-enhancing drugs.

Any tips in continuance this story be possible to be sent to dave.seglins@cbc.ca.

The number of detainees transferred to Afghan forces from the Canadian military a little while ago exceeds 400, CBC News has learned.

A November 2009 Defence Department briefing official communication to Defence Minister Peter MacKay, obtained by the agency of the CBC through an Access to Information supplication, states that “in undue amount of 350 detainees” had been handed besides to Afghan forces since 2007.

A man Afghan officials guess of insurgency-related activities is interrogated for the period of a combined Canadian-Afghan military force patrol in the Panjwaii District of Kandahar province. (Colin Perkel/Canadian Press)

The memorandum brings the full number of known transfers to more than 400, given that several dozen detainee transfers were confirmed in 2006.

Paul Champ, a human rights solicitor based in Ottawa, said the records obtained by the CBC are the first and foremost proof he’s seen in government documents about the number of transferred detainees.

This knowledge of facts comes as the Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC) resumes its public hearings Thursday into allegations that military police failed to investigate higher officers responsible in the place of transfers allegedly involving a put in peril of torture.

Champ represents the complainants who sparked the MPCC hearings — Amnesty International Canada and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

‘Extremely high number’

Champ calls the 350-figure an “extremely high number.”

“It’s very troubling given that, in our explore, in that place has been a jeopardy of torture throughout this determination,” Champ said. “Very likely numerous of these prisoners have been tortured.”

Little information on the sum up of Canadian-transferred detainees has trickled out through the whole extent of the years.

In November 2009, the Globe and Mail reported 130 detainees had been turned over in Canada’session first 14 months of combat operations in Kandahar office, Afghanistan, which began in early 2006.

The Defence Department has refused to free the statistics, saying that it could endanger troops in succession the ground and account the Taliban.

But Champ questions the government’s motives.

“It seems the only reason the Government of Canada has kept this numeral secret is to in more way avoid embarrassment or accountability.”

Calling it the “national over-secrecy reach,” he explained that Canada’s allies, like the United States and the United Kingdom, wish openly disclosed the contain of detainees their soldiers have handed over to Afghan officials.

Backs up Colvin declaration

The 2009 briefing minute backs up the testimony diplomat Richard Colvin gave to the House of Commons Special Committee on the Mission in Afghanistan, when he stressed the number of transferred detainees was high.

“As of May 2007, Canada had transferred to the Afghan persons cited as vouchers six seasons as many detainees as the British, who were conducting military operations upright being of the kind which invading as ours and had twice as many troops in theatre,” Colvin told the committee in November 2009.

Colvin served in Afghanistan for 17 months from May 2006 to October 2007.

Champ related Colvin’s statements and the recent documents obtained by the CBC suggest the government did not put its taking captive tactics after 2007.

“We have seen internal control documents where there has been recommendations that the Canadian Forces take steps to make an effort to reduce the numbers of people that they capture,” Champ said.

The 350 figure “would show that those recommendations were not followed at every one of.”

The army briefing note also refers to an natural last May in which an Afghan official allegedly bragged to Canadians about “torturing” and “beating” detainees.

The alleged colloquy was enough to force Canadian commanders to suspend transfers for the sake of sundry weeks.

If you have some tips relating to this story please contact investigations@cbc.ca

Members of Parliament, their spouses and staff consider received closely $2 million worth of free make an excursion and gifts from extraneous nationals and lobby groups betwixt 2005 and 2009, CBC News has learned.

The all-expenses-paid trips, exempt from federal ethics rules, are never audited and logged only in thin detail with the Ethics Commissioner.

Last year, toward example, 54 MPs, or nearly common in six, accepted sponsored trips.

Israel and Taiwan are the most popular destinations. In the five-year period, MPs have taken 101 munificent trips to Taiwan, 79 trips to Israel and 11 to China.

In the box of Israel, it was not Israeli agencies or individuals who paid with regard to the trips. Rather, MPs were flown to Israel good-breeding of the Canada-Israel Committee, a registered lobby group funded by the agency of Canadian donors.

Some of the trips to Taiwan were funded by the Chinese International Economic Co-operation Association, a Taiwanese business association devoted to promoting with two sides economic ties by foreign countries.

‘Recipe for corruption,’ says CSIS

Such sponsored trips have raised concern in Canada’s spy mediation, CSIS. The agency’sitting superintendent, Richard Fadden, has warned of growing attempts to influence all levels of Canadian politics.

“It’s surpassingly much a wide-open system that’s a recipe for want of principle and dangerous to democracy and dangerously unethical,” said Duff Conacher, chair of the group Democracy Watch and a carper of free travel by MPs.

Conacher said foreign interests have not to be mistaken targets.

‘I am not going to look for Stephen Harper … to say “Yeah, you have power to go on this trip.”‘—Bob Rae, Liberal MP

“Whether it’s changing a law, a regulation, a policy, a program, a tax, a aid or take turn with or trade, policies and actions — all those things are in the interest of various organizations and countries,” he uttered. “And those are the kind of things they’re trying to change the direction of.”

No ring opposes the free travel loophole, aim the public rarely learns for what reason extensive such gifts are.

Liberal foreign affairs caviller Bob Rae said a better system is needed no more than that the reality is that MPs require no other way to travel abroad.

“As private members, we get nay open funding with regard to trips that we procure,” Rae declared. “I am not going to stay during Stephen Harper or Lawrence Cannon to say ‘Yeah, you have power to go on this excursion.’ I mean, if I waited for that, I’first attempt be a framework without ceasing the prevail over of the House of Commons.”

“So, we’re going to answer it ourselves.”

Alex Chapman says he wasted his job at a Manitoba insurance body over allegations he’session made about a judge and her barrister husband. (CBC)The Winnipeg man who went public with sexual allegations about Manitoba Judge Lori Douglas and her lawyer husband says he has been fired from his job in part because of the explicit photos of her he kept on his moil computer.

Alex Chapman, 44, had been a computer programmer for Great-West Life Assurance Co. for the past three years but was fired on Tuesday, he told CBC News adhering Wednesday.

Judge faces 2nd disease

The Canadian Judicial Council confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating a second complaint about Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Judge Lori Douglas. However, the ministry would not reveal the world of the lamentation, which was made by a woman.

The council related it is investigating whether the complainant should appeal her original subject of discussion in inclosed area or whether her charge is a legitimate house regarding Douglas that should subsist considered by the meeting.