Holocaust docu-drama 'Inside Hana's Suitcase' revisits child's message of peace

TORONTO — An empty suitcase smeared with white paint bears the name of a young girl, her birth date and the grim word "orphan," scrawled in German.

It is Hana's suitcase, a relic of the Second World War that has fascinated children around the world and, decades after its retrieval from Auschwitz, stands as a symbol of the need for respect and tolerance.

Already the subject of a bestselling book, a play and an award-winning documentary, the remarkable story behind the suitcase and its young owner is revisited in the film, "Inside Hana's Suitcase," a docu-drama released this week that combines historical footage with animation and painstaking recreations of Hana's short life.

For Hana's brother, George Brady, who survived the same Nazi death camp where his sibling died in 1944 at age 13, the film is a tribute to a little sister he wanted to protect.

"I wanted to bring her home alive and in good shape and I didn't succeed," the 81-year-old Brady says in a recent interview.

"And now there is the book and the play and the film.... It's very positive in a way and that's what pleases me because Hana wanted to be a teacher. She would have been a small-town teacher and suddenly she's teaching kids all over the world."

Hana's story was made into a documentary that aired on the CBC in 2001, but it became known to the world through the 2002 book, "Hana's Suitcase," by Karen Levine. It's been translated into 40 languages and sold in 50 countries, and has established itself in the school curriculum of a new generation.

The latest film adaptation is based on the book, and plays out in part like a detective story as it follows the investigative work of a Japanese teacher curious to learn more about Hana.

Fumiko Ishioka traces the suitcase's origins back to Auschwitz, the Brady home in the Czech Republic, and - finally - to Toronto, where she learns that Hana is survived by an older brother, George.

Filmmaker Larry Weinstein spends much of the film focusing on Ishioka's determination to shed light on a piece of history much forgotten in Japan, where he notes the government still refuses to acknowledge its complicity in the massacre as German allies.

Calling her a "brave, brave" woman, Brady notes that Ishioka has toured roughly 900 schools in her efforts to spread Hana's message of peace. Weinstein says her talks in the classroom frequently lead to questions about the Japanese role in the war, a subject not touched upon in the film.

"It actually could be difficult for her in including these things in the film because it's a very tender thing in Japan," Weinstein notes. "Because they haven't officially acknowledged these things and because she relies on certain kinds of funding to do what she's doing."

Comments from Japanese school children, along with impressions from students in Canada and the Czech Republic, are woven in with photographs of a young George and Hana and interviews with surviving relatives and schoolmates.

Brady says the film does a remarkable job of depicting key moments in his family's life with detailed re-enactments. He notes that filmmakers' tracked down a long-haired Russian wolfhound just like one owned by his family and a 1936 black Mercedes that was just like the car the Gestapo used to take his father away.

"They went to such a detail in many things that I just never would have believed that they would even bother to do," he says.

Still, Weinstein says it was important to him to present the film as a hybrid rather than a strict journalistic account. He points to key scenes featuring Hana's drawings, created in a prisoner's camp, that suddenly come to life before Ishioka's eyes.

Weinstein, whose production credits include last year's movie, "Blindness," and the TV series "Slings and Arrows," says the animation illustrates Ishioka's growing connection to Hana, as well as Hana's lingering spirit.

"There's a certain level of artifice, but the artifice is all contributing towards the real story and lending credibility to all that," he says.

"Because the story's real and George is real and Fumiko are real and emotions are real and the Holocaust was real."

Brady says watching the film brought back strong memories of his arrival at Auschwitz at the age of 13. Upon arriving by train with other prisoners, all were split into two groups, he notes.

"I was with two of my best friends and they both went one way and I went the other way and I thought at that time that how lucky they are," he says, recalling the shock of arriving at a camp enclosed by barbed wire, and crawling with armed guards and barking German shepherds.

"Because I thought they go on light labour and I go on heavy labour. As it turned out they went straight to a gas chamber and I was alive. So these things you don't forget."

B.C. Supreme Court upholds fishing rights for bands on Vancouver Island

VANCOUVER, B.C. — The British Columbia Supreme Court has ruled that a group of Vancouver Island First Nations has the right to harvest and sell all species of fish found within its territories.

The decision involves several bands, collectively known as the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations, which have territory on the west coast of the island near Tofino and Clayoquot Sound.

"Today this decision confirms what we've known all along," Cliff Atleo, president of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations, said in a statement.

"We have been stewards of our ocean resources for hundreds of generations and the government of Canada was wrong to push us aside in their attempts to prohibit our access to the sea resources our people depend upon."

The Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations filed a writ of summons against the province of British Columbia and the federal government in 2003 after years of treaty negotiations broke down.

The aboriginals say they filed the litigation to have their rights and title to sea resources recognized, respected and implemented. They argued more than one hundred years of regulations by Canada diminished Nuu-chah-nulth access to sea resources and forced them out of the West Coast fishery.

"First the government said we didn't need much land because we were ocean-going peoples, then they took away our access to those ocean resources," Atleo said.

Justice Nicole Garson agreed, ruling that Canada presented evidence to justify the entirety of its fisheries regime but not to justify its failure to permit the Nuu-chah-nulth to exercise their aboriginal fishing rights.

"I conclude that the plaintiffs have proved that Canada's fisheries regulatory regime . . . infringes their aboriginal rights to fish and to sell fish by their preferred means, both legislatively and operationally," she said, adding that nations do not have the unrestricted right to the commercial selling of fish.

And while the decision upholds the bands' right to fish, Garson dismissed a claim to aboriginal title to the fishing territories, saying that issue must be settled separately.

The decision upholds the federal government's control over all fisheries and urges the band to negotiate with Ottawa on how native fishing and fish sales can be handled while recognizing the need to regulate the fishery and accommodate other fishing interests.

Garson said these talks could even help the two sides make progress on treaty negotiations by addressing the issue of aboriginal title.

Garson said if the two sides can't come to a fisheries settlement within two years, another trial could be held to sort out the matter.

A spokesman for the British Columbia attorney general said the province is still studying the lengthy ruling and cannot comment.

Crosses line Calgary's Memorial Drive

Hundreds of white crosses now line Memorial Drive in Calgary in honour of the soldiers who have fallen through the decades.

So far, the Calgary Poppy Fund, the group behind the idea, has been able to trace 506 soldiers from the Calgary area whose names will be displayed on the crosses.

"It is a tremendous eye opener for me because you actually see the names and you see where they were killed and when they were killed," said George Bittman, one of the organizers.

He and a group of veteran volunteers are behind the idea, which was made a reality thanks to a $100,000 donation from a Calgary businessman.

The donation is enough to set up 3,000 white plastic crosses along busy Memorial Drive this year to remind Calgarians of soldiers from the area who have died in battle from the First World War to present day.

"If you are just throwing a number out … that's just a number, but when you see a name attached to that number, it will stand out," said Klaus Rimke of the Canadian Veterans Motorcycle Unit.

Among those being honoured is Nathan Hornburg, 24, who was killed in 2007 in Afghanistan.

"I think he would be very proud of this because he had studied and read about heroes all of his life," said his dad, Michael Hornburg.

The latest cross to be added belongs to Sapper Steven Marshall, 24, who was killed Friday in Afghanistan.

The Memorial Drive display is temporary and will be taken down after Remembrance Day. Organizers plan to set it up every November.

NASA: Booster rocket damaged in test flight

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The booster rocket used in a test flight was badly dented when it fell into the Atlantic because of a deflated parachute, NASA said Thursday.

The new Ares I-X — the precursor to NASA's planned moon rockets — completed a two-minute flight Wednesday. The launch itself went well, officials said, but one of the three parachutes on the booster failed to work properly.

All three parachutes opened, but one ended up deflating for unknown reasons, said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel. That caused the booster to hit the ocean with extra force.

The first-stage booster — similar to what's used for the space shuttles — was found to be dented near the bottom when it was recovered from the ocean. It was expected back on shore Friday.

The Ares I-X is a prototype of what's supposed to replace the space shuttles and ultimately fly to the moon. The White House, though, may nix those plans.

Shuttle managers, meanwhile, have chosen Nov. 16 for the launch of Atlantis on a space station delivery mission. That assumes an unmanned rocket flies Nov. 14 with a communication satellite; a one-day postponement for that launch would bump the Atlantis flight to the 17th.

NASA's space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, said the Ares I-X parachute trouble will not impact the Atlantis launch. They are different parachute designs, he noted.

The shuttle program has had its share of parachute trouble.

During Discovery's launch in August, a parachute on one of the two boosters ripped slightly. The other parachute compensated, however, and the retrieved booster was not damaged. Engineers still do not know what caused the problem.

On the Net:

• NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/aresIX

Pakistan kills 42 militants in anti-Taliban push

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan pressed an offensive deeper into Taliban territory along the Afghan border Tuesday, claiming to have killed 42 militants in the latest stage of an assault seen as crucial in defeating extremism in the nuclear-armed country.

The assault into South Waziristan's unforgiving mountains has triggered a bloody backlash from militants, who are determined to bring the war out of the remote, northwestern region and into the country's cities in hopes of eroding public and political support.

In the capital Islamabad, gunmen attacked a high-ranking Pakistani army officer in the second targeted shooting against top military brass in less than a week. The army officer, and his mother who was traveling with him, escaped unhurt.

The fight in South Waziristan is seen as a major test of Pakistan's will and ability to tackle the northwestern strongholds of al-Qaida-allied extremists. The army already has been beaten back from the region three times since 2004.

Pakistan has been criticized in the past for not cracking down on Islamist militant groups it once nurtured as proxies to fight in India and Afghanistan. It remains unclear whether the army has committed enough troops to the current campaign to hold the territory it is seizing.

An army statement said troops were progressing well on three fronts in South Waziristan, but were meeting resistance.

It said that over the last 24 hours, 42 militants and one solider had been killed. Since the assault began, the army claims to have killed 231 insurgents and lost 29 soldiers. It has given no figures for civilian casualties, but those fleeing have said they have also occurred.

Independent verification of army claims in the region is all but impossible because the military has blocked access for journalists and humanitarian workers.

On Tuesday in Islamabad, gunmen attacked an army brigadier, equivalent to a brigadier general in the U.S. Army, as he was driving to a bank in a residential area. Muhammad Imran, who runs a business nearby, said he saw a young man take out a weapon from beneath his shawl and unleash a hail of bullets as the car slowed down for a speed bump.

"He was firing relentlessly. He was targeting the front seat of the car," Imran said.

Another young man on a motorcycle then appeared and the two sped away, Imran said.

Senior police officer Bin Yamin said the army officer, who was not identified, was not in uniform but was driving a government car.

Last Thursday, gunmen on a motorcycle fired on an army jeep in Islamabad, killing a brigadier and a soldier in what was believed to be the first assassination of an army officer in the capital.

Militant attacks in Pakistan have surged this month, killing more than 200 people.

The army has deployed some 30,000 troops to South Waziristan against an estimated 12,000 militants, including up to 1,500 foreign fighters, among them Uzbeks and Arabs. The U.N. says some 155,000 civilians have fled the region.

Meanwhile, authorities announced the arrest of previously unknown man they described as the head of the Pakistani Taliban in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province.

Qari Ishtiaq was detained in Bahawalpur, a city in the Punjab closely associated with a militant group once harnessed by the state to attack targets in India, said Mian Mohammad Mushtaq, the head of the civil administration in Bahawalpur district.

Authorities had not previously named Qari Ishtiaq in public as a suspected militant leader.

Afghan poll rivals rule out deal

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his challenger Abdullah Abdullah have ruled out a power-sharing deal, ahead of a run-off vote due in two weeks.

There had been suggestions that some in the US favoured a deal because of the challenges of holding a second vote.

But both candidates told American media they were committed to another poll.

The BBC Kabul correspondent says many Afghans hope for a deal to obviate a second vote as winter is coming and the Taliban have vowed to disrupt voting.

Mr Karzai, who bowed to international pressure to hold a run-off, said a deal would be "an insult to democracy".

Speaking on CNN on Sunday, Mr Karzai said: "It has to be held. I made sure to have agreement from all the international players before agreeing to a run-off, to have a second round absolutely surely agreed upon and promised."

Former Foreign Minister Mr Abdullah too, in an interview on Fox News, said he would rule out a deal ahead of the vote, and that he was "ready for a run-off".

Back-room deal?

After a series of high-level diplomatic interventions - including phone calls and personal visits to Kabul - Mr Karzai agreed on Tuesday to a second round following August's fraud-marred election.

The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) deducted hundreds of thousands of votes from the main candidates, pushing Mr Karzai beneath the 50% threshold needed for outright victory.

The panel also recommended replacing thousands of corrupt officials, and scrapping polling stations where the fraud was worst.

But, as campaigning officially began in Afghanistan, the Taliban threatened to launch a fresh wave of violence, urging people not to vote in what they called an "American process".

The BBC's Andrew North, in the capital, Kabul, says there has been almost no electioneering in public so far.

This is partly, our correspondent explains, because the candidates are putting more effort into behind-the-scenes discussions, largely over the shape of a new Afghan government after the vote, which most analysts forecast Mr Karzai will win.

But, he adds, Mr Abdullah himself has said he does not want to be in any Karzai-led government again, fuelling rumours that some kind of deal could still emerge before the vote.

At 37, Paul Simon's son makes his musical mark

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Having suffered more than 15 years of false starts, failures and musical disappointments, singer-songwriter Harper Simon admits he has hardly charted the ideal path to pop stardom like his father, Paul Simon.

The young Simon had always shown musical promise. At age 4 he sang with his dad on the "Sesame Street" children's TV show. He also attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Now, at 37, the son of one of America's best known singer-songwriters has finally released his first album.

"Obviously I don't have the ideal career arch," Simon told Reuters in a recent interview, adding, "I'm in the game now."

Critics say it was worth waiting for the younger Simon's self-titled offering, released on October 13.

American Songwriter magazine wrote, "Harper Simon's debut tantalizes right now" and called him "a real star in the making." Rolling Stone called "Shooting Star," the first single from the album, "gorgeous." The magazine declared, "It was worth the wait."

Simon admits he was surprised at how long it all took.

"I didn't think this is how long it would take when I was 21 years old. I thought it would all fall into place, but it didn't happen that way," Simon said. "I suppose different kinds of artists find their voices at different times and when it's their moment, it's their moment."

Simon's setbacks began when he dropped out of Berklee after two years without graduating.

"You've got to be a pretty big loser to drop out of a music school," he said.

He did not respect the school, even though it has turned out everyone from Quincy Jones to Diana Krall: "Berklee is really like a trade school, it's how to make a living playing bar mitzvahs."

Returning to New York, Simon toiled to become a star to no avail, saying it was a decade of, "Trying and failing and trying again and failing some more."

He worked in the mid-1990s with Don Fleming, who produced Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub, and The Posies, but he never secured a record deal. He scored some movie soundtracks.

He moved to England to escape the pressure of living up to his heritage. He joined the band Menlo Park, which never hit the big time. He recorded with his father's wife, Edie Brickell. The pair released an album in 2008, featuring Brickell on vocals, under the name "The Heavy Circles."

"From every failed project I took away something which contributed to this album being out on the world," he said.

The solo album finds Simon playing with some big names.

Bob Johnston -- famed for producing Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde," Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" and many other legendary records -- came out of retirement to co-produce the album.

As a backing band, Simon was joined by a group of session musicians from Nashville who had played with everyone from Dylan and Elvis Presley to Patsy Cline and Aretha Franklin.

Other guest musicians include childhood friend Sean Lennon, drummer Steve Gadd and Simon's father, who plays guitar on one song and contributed lyrics to another.

The record was self-financed, is released on his own record label and was a labor of love which took three years to finish. Diminutive and self-deprecating, Simon joked that the finished work was great, except for his own contributions.

"I am happy with all aspects of it that don't have to do with myself," he said. "I'm just not that much of a pleased-with-myself kind of person."

Accused was at drug house party the night NWT Mountie slain: Crown

YELLOWKNIFE — A man accused in the slaying of a Mountie in the Northwest Territories was staying at a known drug house the night before the officer was shot.

The son of the man who owned the house has told court that there were two parties going on with a considerable amount of drinking.

Court heard the house in Hay River was a place where people would go to buy marijuana and cocaine.

Emrah Bulatci would stay at the house and sometimes cooked up crack cocaine when he came up from the Edmonton-area to deal drugs.

Bulatci, who is 25, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Const. Chris Worden.

Worden was shot four times after he responded to a call in the early hours of Oct. 6, 2007.

Inquiry into death of Howard Hyde examining jailhouse security video

HALIFAX, N.S. — The final minutes of Howard Hyde's life, recorded by surveillance cameras inside a Halifax-area jail, have an unsettling, surreal quality that sometimes make them difficult to watch.

An inquiry investigating the death of the mentally ill man has yet to see footage taken inside the cell where he died on Nov. 22, 2007.

However, images showing the first of two struggles Hyde had with guards before he entered the cell at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth were shown for the first time Thursday.

The eerie scene in one video opens with two shadowy figures standing at the end of a long, windowless hallway. The image is overexposed, making it look as if the two are standing in a white void.

At the time, Hyde was under arrest for an alleged assault on his common-law wife, who had warned police her husband needed psychiatric help. She also told them he had stopped taking medication to control psychotic episodes caused by schizophrenia.

The inquiry, which started in July, is trying to determine why Hyde never received the help he needed and what can be done to prevent similar deaths in the future.

Hyde's case has attracted national attention largely because his death came 30 hours after he was Tasered up to five times as he tried to escape a police station in downtown Halifax.

In the silent videos shown Thursday, a corrections officer can be seen raising his arm and pointing five times as he instructs Hyde to walk down the bleak hallway.

At one point, the officer appears to summon a colleague, corrections officer Renee Jones, who approaches and places her hand on Hyde's back.

"That's when he pulled away, completely and abruptly," Jones told the inquiry. "He was attempting to flee the admitting area."

Within seconds, the two officers bring down Hyde and cuff his hands behind his back, though it is hard to tell what is going on because the picture quality is so poor.

Jones testified that Hyde, a 45-year-old musician with a portly build, demonstrated great strength during the brief tussle.

"All I can recall is trying to control his arm," she said, adding that Hyde was on his back at one point, grabbing at the two officers before another eight guards rushed to their aid.

She said that at no time did she see any of the officers place their weight on Hyde's back.

In the video, Hyde is quickly raised to his feet, then pulled backward down the hallway toward the camera. Two guards have their arms interlocked with Hyde's in what is called the "high-profile" position.

The inquiry has heard evidence that Hyde continued to struggle and was again forced to the floor in a nearby cell, Search Room No. 2, where he blacked out and never regained consciousness.

A coroner later listed the cause of death as excited delirium stemming from paranoid schizophrenia.

Jones said she recalled seeing the officer who subdued Hyde, Todd Henwood, kneeling next to the man with his hands on the handcuffs.

But lawyer Kevin MacDonald, who represents Hyde's sister and brother-in-law, pointed out that Jones failed to mention that key detail when she gave a statement to the RCMP shortly after Hyde's death.

Still, Jones insisted that her recollection was clear.

In earlier testimony, corrections officer Chris Dixon said he saw Henwood place his hands on the handcuffs, but he described the officer "straddling" Hyde's legs.

Dixon also testified that before the first scuffle, Hyde shouted that he didn't want to enter the hallway because there were "demons" there.

On Thursday, Jones testified that she heard Hyde yell something about being unable to join the RCMP because of his hair. But she said she didn't recall Hyde saying anything about demons.

Like most of the corrections officers who have testified at the inquiry, Jones said she was not formally trained to deal with the mentally ill.

Other corrections officers have testified that Hyde did not sleep the night before he died, instead pacing in circles while shouting and talking to himself.

On Wednesday, the nurse who admitted Hyde to the correctional facility, Sandra McLeod, confirmed she knew about a doctor's note saying Hyde needed a psychiatric assessment, but she said she didn't consider it an official physician's order.

UN details 'devastating' impact of Afghan opium

VIENNA — Afghan opium is unleashing a "devastating" impact across the world, according to a new UN report, funding the Taliban and other terror groups and killing thousands in consumer countries.

Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium in a trade that is worth some 65 billion dollars (43 billion euros), feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually, the report said.

"We have identified the global consequences of the Afghan opium trade. Some are devastating," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

"I urge the friends of Afghanistan to recognize that, to a large extent, these uncomfortable truths may be the result of their benign neglect," he said at Wednesday's unveiling of the report.

Western nations have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan battling Taliban insurgents, but the report said the failure to crack down on production of opium -- the basis of heroin -- has allowed the militants to thrive.

"The Taliban's direct involvement in the opium trade allows them to fund a war machine that is becoming technologically more complex and increasingly widespread," said Costa.

The UNODC estimates the Taliban earned 90-160 million dollars a year from taxing the production and smuggling of opium and heroin between 2005 and 2009, as much as double the amount they earned while in power nearly a decade ago.

Costa described the Afghan-Pakistani border as "the world's largest free trade zone in anything and everything that is illicit", blighted by drugs, weapons and illegal immigration.

And the "perfect storm of drugs and terrorism" may be on the move along drug trafficking routes through Central Asia.

Profits made from opium are being funnelled into militant groups in Central Asia and "a big part of the region could be engulfed in large-scale terrorism, endangering its massive energy resources", Costa said.

But Central Asian states intercept just five percent of the drugs flowing across their territory, the report said, compared to 20 percent in Iran and 17 percent in Pakistan.

And as opiates reach the more lucrative markets of Europe, interdiction rates fall as low as two percent in European Union members such as Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, the UNODC said.

The drugs also have a devastating impact in consumer countries.

Heroin overdoses kill more than 10,000 people in NATO countries every year -- five times the total number of alliance troops that have been killed in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of 2001.

And the report said there was an unaccounted stockpile of 12,000 tons of Afghan opium -- enough to meet more than two years of worldwide heroin demand.

"With so much opium in evil hands, the need to locate and destroy these stocks is more urgent than ever," Costa said.

But the UN agency said the international community was not devoting enough resources to fighting drug production in Afghanistan.

"Seizing Afghan opium where it is produced is infinitely more efficient and cheaper than trying to do so where it is consumed," Costa said.

"This is not just a shared responsibility: it's hard-headed self-interest."

The UN report said many of Afghanistan's drug barons with links to the insurgency "are known to Afghan and foreign intelligence services".

But their names have not been submitted to the UN Security Council, despite two resolutions designed to ban their foreign travel and seize their assets, it said.