“Here we are just a group of guys sitting at a startup in Toronto and we woke up one morning realizing that we had this massive spike in Asia,” said Bryan Friedman, one of three of MavenSay’s founders. “We rose to become the No. 1 free iPhone app across all categories in Indonesia. And we sort of sat at the top of the charts for five days, beating out Angry Birds, the Iron Man app, Facebook, Twitter, everyone.”

Friedman, who started the company with his former University of Toronto classmates Mike Wagman and Jesse Dallal, said they were floored when they saw the 15,000 downloads that first day, which continued the following week as well.

MavenSay, built by a seven-person team, had initially focused garnering its users from cities like New York, L.A. and San Francisco. Celebrities, including Samantha and Charlotte Ronson, are sharing their likes. Maple Leaf Joffrey Lupul has recommended the Harbour Sixty Steakhouse, among other things.

Things were going well, said Friedman, but nothing could have prepared them for breakout success half way around the world. Looking back at the data, he chalks it up to some early adopters in Jakarta who had massive Instagram followings. Indonesia is home to an extremely tech savvy culture with high usage of social media platforms. At the end of 2012, Jakarta was the city with the most posted tweets in the world, and was the No. 5 country in the world for Twitter usage.

“We’ve tried to retrace the steps and find the exact person or group of people who started it,” he said. “The night this all started happening we noticed that a couple of these big Instagram users, who had about 16,000 followers each, and one of things you can do is publish your MavenSay profile on Instagram. So they cross-posted their profiles and it just went from there.”

A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at the right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday.

NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program.

Some 300 lunar impact events have been logged over the years but this latest impact, from March 17, is considered many orders of magnitude brighter than anything else observed.

“We have seen a couple of others in the ‘wow’ category but not this bright,” said Robert Suggs, manager of NASA’s Lunar Impact Monitoring Program at Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The blast lasted only about a single second and shone like a 4th magnitude star—making it bright enough to see with just the unaided eye.

The NASA monitoring program’s 14-inch telescope was the first to snag an image of the lunar explosion. Analyzing the images, researchers estimate that the object probably weighed in at 40 kg (88 pounds) and was about 0.4 meters (1.4 feet) wide. It crashed into the moon at speeds of 56,000 miles (90,000 km) per hour, releasing as much energy as five tons of TNT.

The soft-spoken former chief of the Ojibwa-Cree Red Sucker Lake Indian band in Manitoba was an NDP opposition member of the legislature when he prevented the accord from being ratified by Ottawa's deadline.

He said the deal, crafted to win Quebec's signature on the Constitution, ignored aboriginal rights. Last-minute scrambling by federal officials failed to appease Harper and other native leaders.

Brian Mulroney, who was prime minister at the time, was applying pressure on dissenting premiers to go along with the accord by approving it in their legislatures. Voting in Manitoba came late in the national debate.

Harper refused to allow legislature rules to be waived to speed debate of the resolution. He delayed it long enough to make it impossible to meet the deadline.

[. . .]

"I stalled and killed it because I didn't think it offered anything to the aboriginal people," Harper said simply of his decision.

[. . .]

He was the first status Indian elected to the Manitoba legislature where he served from 1981 to 1992. That included a two-year stint as minister of native affairs in former NDP premier Howard Pawley's cabinet. Harper's duties were interrupted briefly when he sought counselling for drunk driving.

Harper resigned from the legislature in 1992 and a year later left the New Democrats to run for the Liberals federally. He won a seat representing the sprawling northern Manitoba riding of Churchill.

Today, as they do every May 17, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) held ceremonies internationally to mark International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The Toronto ceremony takes place at the flagpole on the rooftop podium at City Hall—today a more frantic place than usual. As the event unfolded PFLAG president Irene Miller spoke about love and acceptance; as she ended a moving address on acceptance of sexual and gender diversity, Miller urged those in attendance, “hug one another, do not leave without a hug today!”

Then she went directly over to Mayor Rob Ford and embraced him.

[. . .]

After reading a proclamation to open the event, an extremely red-faced Ford stood off to the side, literally cornered near the flagpole on the east side of City Hall. Following his brief embrace with Miller, Ford marched back to a second floor entrance to the building, ignoring questions from the phalanx of reporters asking questions about his alleged drug use and discriminatory comments.

[. . .]

In a conversation with us after the event, Councillor Kristyn Wong Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) applauded the inclusion of two trans speakers, TK and well-known trans activist Enza Anderson. “It’s not often that trans people are able to share the stage publicly and express their pride,” Wong-Tam said. “They are really brave.”

Wong-Tam also expressed strong feelings about the mayor’s attendance at the ceremony. “I was fairly conflicted when I saw him,” said Wong-Tam. She said that while the queer community is constantly trying to reach out to Ford, he rarely responds. “It’s not good enough for someone to show up once a year and then just expect us to applaud him,” she said. “There’s more to being an ally than reading a proclamation prepared for you by staff.”

Wallin, a former journalist who now represents Saskatchewan in the Senate, has claimed about $321,000 in travel expenses since September 2010 that are the subject of an audit by an outside firm.

"I have been involved in the external audit process since December 2012 and I have been co-operating fully and willingly with the auditors," Wallin said in a statement. "I have met with the auditors, answered all the questions and provided all requested documentation.

"I had anticipated that the audit process would be complete by now, but given that it continues, I have decided to recuse myself from the Conservative caucus and I will have no further comment until the audit process is complete," she said.

[. . .]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has defended Wallin in the past over her travel claims.

"Her travel costs are comparable to any parliamentarian travelling from that particular area of the country over that period of time," Harper said in the House of Commons in February. "For instance, last year Senator Wallin spent almost half of her time in the province she represents in the Senate."

How Much Do We Need? $200,000. That's what the owners of the video want. That sounds like a lot of money. The good people at Indiegogo believe that, with the appropriate amount of virality, that goal is achievable.

Christ, That's a Lot of Money. Yes, it is. But they've got the video! And it's not all about greed, though of course most of it is. The owners of this video fear for their safety, and want enough money to pay for a chance to get out of Toronto and set up in a new town. Their fear is not entirely unwarranted. Rob Ford is a powerful if buffoonish man, and he was wrapped up in a drug scene that purportedly involved many other prominent Toronto figures.

What Will We Get? A crystal clear, well-lit video of the mayor of Toronto smoking crack cocaine, published on Gawker for the world to see. We will also be throwing in some perks, for specific donation amounts. But the main thing is the video of the mayor of Toronto smoking crack cocaine.

How Does This Work, Exactly? We're using Indiegogo. We've set a target of $200,000, to be reached within 10 days. If we reach the target, we get the money. If we don't reach the target, you get your money back. If we do reach the target, we will pay the money to the people who have the video. They will give us the video. We will publish the video. You will watch the video.

What If This Whole Thing Goes South? We are mindful that people who hang out with and surreptitiously record crack-smoking mayors may not always be reliable. The people we've been dealing with have so far honored every commitment they've made. And they have pledged to sell it to us for $200,000 if this Crackstarter works. But if they disappear, or sell it elsewhere, we will donate every penny we receive to a Canadian non-profit that helps people suffering from addiction and its consequences.

In a video clip less than two minutes long, an incoherent and rambling Mayor Rob Ford can clearly be seen smoking what appears to be crack cocaine.

He is sitting on a chair holding a glass pipe with a blackened top and a lighter. Ford is the only person on the video, but there are at least two other people in the room — one, a man who said he is his dealer, secretly recording him, and another, an anonymous voice asking him questions.

The footage begins with the mayor mumbling. His eyes are half-closed. He waves his arms around erratically. A man’s voice tells him he should be coaching football because that’s what he’s good at.

Ford agrees and nods his head, bobbing on his chair.

He says something like “Yeah, I take these kids . . . minorities” but soon he rambles off again.

Ford says something like: “Everyone expects me to be right-wing, I’m . . .” and again he trails off.

At one point he raises the lighter and moves it in a circle motion beneath the pipe, inhaling deeply.

Next, the voice raises the name of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. The man says he can’t stand him and that he wants to shove his foot up the young leader’s “ass so far it comes out the other end.”

Ford nods and bobs on his chair and appears to say, “Justin Trudeau’s a fag.”

The man taping the mayor keeps the video trained on him. Then the phone rings. Ford looks at the camera and says something like “that better not be on.”

The phone shuts off.

Rumours about Rob Ford’s drug use have been swirling around City Hall for almost as long as he’s been mayor. More publicly, his long record of making off-putting, erratic, and sometimes detestable statements has made many wonder—sometimes idly, sometimes less so—about his judgment, and whether it might be impaired. Rob Ford has driven drunk, has been kicked out of a hockey game for drunken rowdiness, and most recently was asked to leave a public event apparently because he was drunk. For almost everyone hearing about this video, surprised though they might be by its gravity, there’s also an extent to which it seems to fit into a larger narrative, and to that extent, it is widely being accepted not only as plausible but as unquestionably true.

That context may certainly incline us to believe the story, but it isn’t actually decisive. The allegations, not just about drug use, but about the remarks Ford made—that he called Justin Trudeau a “fag” and that he said, of the players on the high school football team he coaches, that they are “just fucking minorities”—are serious. If true they would render Ford unfit for public office by almost any standard, but especially in a city which is widely known as one of the most diverse in the world, and which prides itself on its leadership in this regard. Toronto cannot and should not abide an elected official who says such things.

If he said them.

The allegations are serious, and they need to be treated as such. We can’t sacrifice evidenciary standards just because the story sounds right, or because it comes on the heels of other lapses, or because we disagree with Rob Ford’s politics and would be glad to see him forced out of City Hall. And we should not, no matter our politics, and no matter how fed up we are with a mayor whose term of office has been a long sequence of fiascoes and failures, stoop to the level of celebrating this ending, if an ending it proves to be.

Consider what it would all mean, if the allegations turn out to be true. We’d have one man, a drug dealer, secretly making a tape to either extort a large amount of money from one of his customers or to sell, paparazzi-style, to the highest bidder. We’d have another man, our mayor, in the midst of utter collapse, and possibly battling serious drug addiction. And we’d have an entire city left even more rudderless than it already is, the past two years of bad governance compounded by personal tragedy.

Senator Mike Duffy resigned from the Conservative caucus to sit as an independent Thursday night amid a controversy over his housing claims, leaving a trail of unanswered questions about the expenses and why the prime minister backed him for so long.

The employment status of Stephen Harper's chief of staff, Nigel Wright, remains unchanged — despite his secret gift to Duffy to help repay the improper expenses.

Duffy resigned before what would have been a humiliating showdown for him next week. Conservative sources said the vast majority of his Senate colleagues had signed a petition calling for his ouster from caucus and they were prepared to confront Duffy with that petition at a meeting next Tuesday evening.

It's a stunning change of attitude for the Conservatives, who for the past four years have used Duffy at myriad party events to raise money, promote candidates and slag the opposition.

[. . .]

Only a week ago, the Conservative government hailed Duffy's leadership for repaying the funds the Senate said he owed. Senate Leader Majory LeBreton declared the matter closed.

But then it came to light that Wright had cut Duffy a personal cheque to cover the repayment in March. Harper's office characterized it as a personal gift, but this week Duffy called it a loan.

The Canadian Press reported Thursday that Duffy campaigned for the Conservatives during the April 2011 election while claiming to be on Senate business. That report was said to be the last straw, according to one senior Conservative.

"There are a growing number of questions about Mr. Duffy’s conduct that don't have answers," said one government official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. "Mr. Duffy will have to answer as an independent Senator."

Breaking with just about every precedent of his mayoralty thus far, Rob Ford has decided to call it quits on an issue he’s championed rather than fight it out (and lose) on the floor of the council chamber: today he proclaimed proposals to build a casino in downtown Toronto “dead” and cancelled the special meeting of city council that had been scheduled for Tuesday, May 21 to debate the issue.

Seeking to overturn his cancellation, just minutes later several councillors said they were going to try and hold the meeting anyway. Those councillors, all opposed to a casino, aren’t satisfied with a cancelled meeting: they want to make sure the matter is well and thoroughly settled, and decidedly vote against the proposal. Officially, it won’t be dead until and unless they do.

Speaking at greater length than he usually does, the mayor convened a press conference this afternoon to say that he remains committed to the idea that a major “entertainment complex” including a casino is a good choice for Toronto if it meets certain conditions, and in particular if the province guarantees to give the municipal government a “fair share” of the revenue it generates—at least $100 million a year. The province has been dragging its feet on confirming how much revenue Toronto would receive, however, and in the wake of today’s announcement by Finance Minister Charles Sousa that the province might not be able to commit to a hosting fee formula before city council met, Ford decided to cancel the debate altogether[.]

While the big political story in the country Tuesday was a Liberal election victory in B.C., a much smaller scene played out in Toronto the same evening, as reporters followed Mayor Rob Ford around a suburban church parking lot as the mayor of Canada’s biggest city slapped fridge magnets adorned with his name and phone number on parked cars.

Though the next Toronto election isn’t until 2014, Ford appeared to get a very early start on campaigning when he left a community council meeting in Etobicoke, a west-of-downtown part of the city, to plaster cars with fridge magnets that read “Rob Ford Mayor.”

Inside, residents were discussing a proposed highrise condo development called Humbertown, which many in the community objected to, saying it didn’t mesh with their suburban neighbourhood.

[. . .]

Ford was aided in his magnet-blanketing by David Price, reports The Star, his recently hired director of operations and logistics, who was also his high school football coach at one time. Price also ran interference as journalists followed Ford to ask just what he was doing and why he wasn’t listening to the depositions that he had, presumably, attended the community meeting to hear.

Usually, it takes a few years for governments to beat themselves – typically more than one term in office. As time goes by, they accumulate mistakes, disappoint people and end up looking stale. The Parti Québécois government, however, is not even nine months old, yet poll after poll reflects widespread voter disenchantment.

The rate of dissatisfaction with the government is in the high 60s – as high as it was during the miserable last years of Jean Charest’s third mandate. And according to a recent Léger Marketing poll, the Liberals are now leading with 35-per-cent support, with the PQ at 27 per cent. This wouldn’t be enough to ensure a majority for the Liberals but it’d certainly be enough for the PQ to lose the next election.

[. . .]

Neither the French Socialists nor the PQ enjoyed the honeymoon usually granted to newly elected governments. Both have been characterized by erratic leadership, broken promises, botched policies followed by humiliating retreats, and cabinets in which too many ministers have been gaffe-prone neophytes or just plain incompetent. Both have been plagued with harsh criticism from left and right.

The PQ is in a worse situation, though, since it’s a minority government and has very little time to revamp its image. The party’s “anti-business” rhetoric has eroded its middle-class support, and its many turnabouts and compromises on key issues have alienated left-leaning supporters and hard-line secessionists. The PQ finds itself bleeding from both left and right flanks, as some of its supporters flock toward small ideological parties such as Québec Solidaire and Option Nationale while others go back into the Liberal fold.

BlackBerry was busy Tuesday, offering a smorgasbord of news. There was the device announcement in the form of the budget-friendly BlackBerry Q5. There was the updated BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10.1 for the business-minded. There was the milestone of 120,000 apps available in BlackBerry World. Most surprising was the company's decision to open up BlackBerry Messenger to multiple platforms, starting with iOS and Android.

All of those announcements are meant to convey a sense of building momentum at BlackBerry. Indeed, over the last several months, the company has launched a brand new platform, worked to repair its wounded reputation, and fleshed out its product portfolio to three products.

"I remember being right here one year ago on this stage," [CEO Thorsten Heins] said. "This year feels very, very different."

At the last show -- Heins' first as CEO -- critics predicted that he wouldn't be back on stage this year. The company's sales were eroding and it began losing money. Its market share almost entirely evaporated, particularly in the U.S., and it didn't have any new products to show off, aside from a developer test unit. Shareholders were already shell-shocked, having seen most of the value of their investment vanish.

[. . .]

Not everyone is as comfortable with BlackBerry's prospects. Shares of the company fell 4 percent after its announcements. There's still little indication of just how well its BlackBerry 10 devices have fared, and the company was conspicuously silent on the matter. There remain questions about whether its injured brands can actually be rehabilitated.

[Hadfield's] conversion began several years ago — long before Hadfield's mission to the International Space Station, which ended with great fanfare this week.

He initially balked when his sons began preaching the merits of Twitter and Facebook more than three years ago.

During a family Christmas get-together in 2009 his son Evan, who now lives in Germany, and Kyle, who's in China, pointed out that they relied on the Internet to find out what's going on.

They got on his case again when his five-month mission was announced in early September 2010. It was then that they decided to set up his two social-media sites.

A few months later, in January 2011, Hadfield only had about 1,000 followers on Twitter and about 600 Facebook friends — a drop in the bucket compared to now.

[. . .]

He had only 20,000 Twitter followers when he blasted off with Russian space colleague Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn on Dec. 19, 2012.

Upon his return to Earth this week, Hadfield was hovering around one million Twitter followers and more than 325,000 "Likes" on Facebook. His photography and music, distributed mainly through social media, eventually earned him mainstream news coverage around the world.

Chris Hadfield -- nom de tweet: @cmdr_hadfield -- has been doing more than inspiring people, though. He has also been entertaining them. And delighting them. He has chatted with Captain Kirk. He has covered Bowie. He has written his own music, and performed it. He has publicly celebrated Valentine's Day, and Easter, and St. Patrick's Day, and April Fool's. He has done a mind-boggling number of live chats and Q&As and video explainers. He has led Canada in a national sing-along. And all of these things have shared a remarkable predicate: They have been done, you know, from space. Hadfield has kept a running dialogue with Earth, documenting not just the numinous -- those amazing views! -- but also the mundane: the food. The fun. The exercise. The sleep. The tears. The bathroom situation.

Over the course of 144 days spent on the International Space Station (encompassing 2,336 orbits of the Earth and covering nearly 62 million miles), Hadfield didn't merely do his day job -- conducting more than 130 scientific experiments testing the effects of microgravity on masses of various types. He also helped to change our concept of what it means to be an astronaut in the first place. Hadfield is a space explorer in the Gagarin/Glenn/Armstrong model, but he is something else, too: just a guy. A guy who happens to be in space. Hadfield, availing himself of new technologies that are just beginning to be widely adopted, made space travel seem accessible. He made it seem normal (or, in astronaut-speak, "nominal"). He took it out of the realm of the awe-inspiring and placed it squarely in the realm of the awesome.

[. . .]

What Hadfield used to his advantage, [. . .] was the copious combination of social media tools that are just now coming into their prime, tools that transform documentation into conversation: Hadfield had Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Reddit, not to mention a public excited, especially after the successful landing the Curiosity rover last year, about space again. Not to mention a 20-person social media team eager to remind the world about Canada's role in the space program. Not to mention a doppelgänger son, Evan, who handled Hadfield's accounts when he couldn't. Not to mention a good deal of luck. (William Shatner's casual tweet to Hadfield back in January won him a flood of followers, Quartz notes, after which his popularity "became self-sustaining.")

Hadfield also had ... Chris Hadfield. He was the right guy at the right time -- and in, wow, the right place: He's a natural performer who seemed truly excited to share his sublime stage with the rest of us. But his performances were intimate rather than epic: He subtly rejected the aura of distant heroism we normally associate with space flyers. Instead, he was nerdy. He was excited. He was delightfully, winkily mustachioed. He was your dad, or your uncle, or your mentor, the kind of guy who probably gets a little choked up when he makes toasts at weddings. Which is to say: He is quirky and real, and he made a point of putting those facts to use. He took all the corporate logic of social media -- the ethos of the "personal brand," the edict of "conversation rather than presentation" -- and applied it, seamlessly, to his life in space.

"Communications tools don't get socially interesting," Clay Shirky has argued, "until they get technologically boring." The same may be said of space. As a destination --- as a place, as a dream -- space may be, ever so slightly, losing its former mantle of foreignness, its old patina of awe. The final frontier may now be experiencing the fate that befalls any frontier: It ceases to be a frontier. Its settlers come to think of it, more and more, as an extension of what they know ... until it becomes, simply, all that they know. Until it becomes the most basic thing in the world: home.

Archaeologists first posited that the Minoans came to the Greek island of Crete from northern Africa, establishing themselves on the island about 5,000 years ago. Subsequent theories suggested Balkan or Middle Eastern origins for the civilization. But research published today in Nature Communications reveals both a more European, and home-grown, development.

Researchers obtained mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the skeletons of 37 well-preserved ancient Minoans found in a cave in east-central Crete. The team compared the mtDNA from the remains with that of 135 modern and ancient populations.

None of the ancient Minoans carried characteristic African mtDNA haplotypes, or stretches of DNA. That rules out a northern African origin, which was first espoused by British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans in the early 20th century. Evans famously excavated the Minoan palace of Knossos and based his theory on similarities he saw between Minoan and Egyptian art.

Instead, the ancient Minoan mtDNA samples shared the greatest percentage of haplotypes with both ancient and modern European populations. Researchers noted the island of Crete was first settled about 9,000 years ago, which coincides with the development and widespread adoption of agricultural practices in the Middle East and Anatolia. Looking for new land to cultivate, these new farmers spread into Europe—and, it now appears, to Crete.

The authorities in Brazil have ruled that marriage licenses should not be denied to same-sex couples.

The council that oversees the country's judiciary said it was wrong for some offices just to issue civil union documents when the couple wanted full marriage certificates.

Correspondents say the decision in effect authorises gay marriage.

However full legalisation depends on approval of a bill being examined by the Congress.

Tuesday's resolution by Brazil's National Council of Justice was based on a 2011 Supreme Court ruling that recognised same-sex civil unions.

However, notaries public were not legally bound to converting such union into marriage when asked by gay couples.

This led to some being denied marriage certificates at certain places, but being granted the document at others. That would be illegal, according to the new resolution.

"If a notary public officer rejects a gay marriage, he could eventually face disciplinary sanctions", NCJ judge Guilherme Calmon told BBC Brasil.