Global National: May 18

RCMP in Calgary announced on Friday they had linked Gary Allen Srery to the murders of four young women in the Calgary area in the mid-to-late 1970s. Now, officers on the West Coast are looking into other cold cases and whether Srery’s murder spree may have spread to B.C. as well. The federal government has rejected requests from the City of Toronto to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of illegal drugs for personal use in the city, citing concerns for public health and safety. The growing threat of wildfires year after year has ripple effects beyond the anxiety associated with forced evacuations and lost property, and those fires are also indirectly affecting those who don’t live anywhere near a fire line. Plus, convicted murderers Luka Magnotta and Paul Bernardo captured national headlines for their high-profile and horrific crimes. But their secretive transfers from maximum-security prisons to a medium-security institution was something else they had in common. Finally, as some Canadian colleges and universities face daunting deficits and decisions on where to cut spending, a critical examination of the sector’s viability is emerging.