Work stoppage possible as WestJet issues lockout notice to maintenance engineers' union
A lockout notice issued by WestJet to a union representing aircraft maintenance engineers could result in a work stoppage next week.
New York real estate heir Robert Durst is expected to take the stand in his own defense in a Los Angeles County court Thursday in a rare move considered extremely risky for a defendant in a murder trial.
Durst is charged with killing his best friend Susan Berman, who was shot and killed in her home in 2000.
Prosecutors are set to resume their cross-examination of the only other defense witness, false memory expert Elizabeth Loftus, to begin the day, and should defense attorneys go through with their plans to call the 78-year-old Durst, his testimony will follow, and should last several days.
The bold move worked once before.
Durst's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, also represented him in his 2003 Texas murder trial, when he put Durst on the stand. Durst was charged with killing his Galveston neighbor Morris Black while in hiding there after Berman's killing. He said Black was accidentally killed in a struggle after entering Durst's apartment with a gun. He admitted to dismembering and disposing of Black's body. The jury acquitted him of murder.
Prosecutors in the California trial have also been allowed to present evidence from the Texas case, and evidence that Durst killed his wife, who disappeared in New York in 1982. Kathie Durst's body was never found, but she has been declared legally dead. Durst has never been charged in connection with her disappearance, and has denied having anything to do with it.
He has also denied killing Berman, who prosecutors say was about to talk to police about Durst's involvement in his wife's disappearance. Durst's attorneys have said that he found her body, panicked, and fled to Texas, sending a letter to police that read "CADAVER" with Berman's address.
Durst will likely take the stand in the county jail attire he's been wearing in court for the past several weeks, which his attorneys said was necessary because severe health problems make him unable to stand and change into a suit.
Durst has bladder cancer and a urinary tract infection. He has been in a wheelchair and has a catheter inserted. His hair is shaven short because fluid had to be drained from his brain.
He has looked far more frail than he did in his notorious interviews for the 2015 HBO documentary "The Jinx," in which he made several seemingly damning statements that were played for jurors at the trial. Durst was arrested in New Orleans on the eve of the airing of the final episode.
His lawyers have sought delays and a mistrial over his health troubles, but Judge Mark E. Windham has rejected them all, expressing sympathy for Durst's state but emphasizing that jail doctors have declared him fit for trial.
Windham has been determined to finally finish a trial that took years to begin and was paused for more than a year just after it began because of the coronavirus.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and its protection against self-incrimination keeps criminal defendants from having to testify at their trials. They may take the stand if they choose, but it's considered exceedingly risky to put them at the mercy of cross-examining prosecutors, and defense attorneys rarely do it.
A lockout notice issued by WestJet to a union representing aircraft maintenance engineers could result in a work stoppage next week.
A man accused of arson in a January Old Strathcona apartment fire is expected to be charged with manslaughter after a body was discovered in the burned building late last month.
A man was denied a $5,000 payout from his brother after a B.C. tribunal dismissed his claim disputing how many kittens were born in a litter.
Three bodies recovered in an area of Baja California are likely to be those of the two Australians and an American who went missing last weekend during a camping and surfing trip, the state prosecutor’s office said Saturday.
Almost a week after all London Drugs stores across Western Canada abruptly closed amid a cyberattack, they began a "gradual reopening" on Saturday.
Quebec provincial police handed out hundreds of fines to Hells Angels members and other supporting motorcycle clubs who met for their 'first run' in a small town near Sherbrooke, Que.
Auston Matthews was back on the ice with his teammates Saturday.
Russia has put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its wanted list, Russian state media reported Saturday, citing the interior ministry’s database.
According to an X post by the Transportation Security Administration, officers at the Miami International Airport found the small bag of snakes hidden in a passenger's trousers on April 26 at a checkpoint.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.