Free Republic

A judge's ruling in Whitehorse Wednesday made Canada's Yukon Territory the fourth jurisdiction in that nation to legalize gay marriages. Yukon Supreme Court Justice Peter McIntyre ordered the territorial government to change its definition of marriage to, the voluntary union for life of two persons, to the exclusion of all others, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported. The court also ruled two gay men, Stephene Dunbar and Rob Edge, should be allowed to marry as scheduled Saturday, the report said. Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia also allow same-sex marriages. Canada's federal government has asked the Supreme Court of Canada for an...

MOSCOW - After more than seven months behind bars, Russia's richest man, oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, briefly appeared in a Moscow court Friday for the first of two important hearings in a case that threatens to bring down the business empire he built. Before Khodorkovsky's lawyers could introduce a series of court challenges, however, tax inspectors asked for more time to study the case and Judge Irina Kolesnikova postponed the trial until June 8, lawyer Yuri Schmidt said. The closed-door session began a process that could ultimately end not with Khodorkovsky serving more than 10 years in prison and the...

WHITEHORSE, Yukon Territory - Yukon technology could be headed to Mars. NASA has contracted Erik Blake of Whitehorse's Icefield Instruments Inc. to design an ice core drill to be tested in May and, perhaps eventually on Mars, if Houston finds no problems. Blake sells ice drill assemblies now for about $130,000 each but wouldn't discuss what the contract with NASA was worth. "It works much like an auger for drilling holes in the lake for ice fishing, but it is actually cutting a doughnut shape and leaving the inside core," he said. The prototype will be built with regular steel...

Melting ice in Yukon reveals ancient hunting artifacts Last Updated Tue Jan 13 12:14:37 2004 WHITEHORSE-- Archeologists working in the Yukon's melting snow fields say they've found some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in the territory. Last year's warm summer further melted the territory's alpine snowfields, which have become a rich source of artifacts from the territory's pre-history. Scientists say tools such as this spear shaft and point are among the oldest evidence of humans in Yukon The sites have been the subject of worldwide attention since scientists discovered the snowfields were once favourite summer hunting grounds. In...

The women of Yukon have defended their North American title in a breastfeeding contest held this weekend. On the second floor of a bakery in Whitehorse, 36 women began a countdown, then simultaneously latched their babies on to their breasts. In two other places in the northern territory -- Dawson City and Haines Junction -- groups of women also placed their children in sucking position at exactly 11 a.m. on Saturday, in a contest referred to as The Great Canadian Breastfeeding Suck-In on one of the organizer's Web site. Yukon beat out other provinces and states, earning the distinction as...

SHOULD WESTERN CANADA JOIN THE UNITED STATES? The best thing for us Western Canadians is to join the US. We have a lot to offer - 2.5 TRILLION barrels of oil in the Alberta oilsands, greater than all the oil in the Middle East. About 300 billion barrels are recoverable using today's technologies. Oil offshore BC estimated at two to three times the size of Alaska's total oil fields. Natural gas, water, minerals and wood coming out of the yingyang. If the three Western provinces and the Yukon territory joined the United States as three states, the US would grow...