Thor's Meats and Groceries in Selkirk, Man. is packing up for good after more than 120 years in business.
Owner Danny Thorsteinson said he’s been teasing his retirement to customers for years, but it was finally time to close the store’s doors.
“I’ve been doing it for 53 years,” he said.
Thor's Meats first opened in 1901 and was started by Thorsteinson’s great-grandfather. After moving around town to a couple different locations, it settled at 401 Main Street in 1935.
“Back in those days…it was a blue-collar town,” Thorsteinson said, recalling his childhood growing up around the shop when his grandfather ran the business. He later took over Thor’s Meats from his father in the 1980s.
Over the years, Thorsteinson said the business was shaped by the city’s changing landscape.
Thor's Meats first opened in Selkirk 1901. It's been a staple in the more than 120 years since. (Source: Pearson Family)
“We just started specializing in more and more things,” he said, referring to the store’s decision to cut back on groceries and focus on meat. “The big box stores can never do what I do in meat.”
Now that the meat packer is packing up, it has people feeling down.
“It’s going to be a loss to the community not to have Thor’s Meats,” said Selkirk Mayor Larry Johannson.
Ian McKenzie, a long-time customer, said it will be hard to find another shop like Thor’s.
“You’re going to miss a lot of the good quality meat you can’t get anyplace else in Selkirk,” he said.
Thorsteinson’s daughter, Kristin Thorsteinson said while her dad’s retirement marks the end of the business, it marks the beginning of a long-overdue break.
“I’m going to miss coming here,” Kristin said. “But at least I’ll be able to see my parents a little bit more and they’ll be able to spend more time with their grandchildren.”
The store’s meat cutter said he is also looking forward to taking time off.
“I’m going to try to retire this time,” said Don Miller. “Last time, I was too antsy and couldn’t sit still,” he added, referring to the work he took up at Thor’s Meats after retiring from his previous job eight years ago.
According to Thorsteinson, the store will still be open for at least a couple weeks – there’s no set close date as of yet. But he said he is grateful to all of his customers over the years.
“Our family thanks you,” he said. “I’m glad to be able to serve you. Honoured by it.”
Thorsteinson said it’s an honour Thor’s Meats plans to uphold until it locks up for the last time.
A Nova Scotia fraudster has dodged prison after a Halifax judge agreed to give him more time to at least put a small dent in the amount of money he owes to more than 200 victims of his investment scam.
Last week, Halifax provincial court Judge Elizabeth Buckle extended the time frame, and ordered he pay a minimum of $500 a month for the next 18 months, at which time the case will return to court again.
At a hearing last year, Sponagle testified he and his wife, who live in Upper Vaughan, N.S., earn little income, making less than $25,000 a year combined. He said last week he is currently unemployed.
The hearing was held in Halifax provincial court. (Robert Short/CBC)
Sponagle only paid $10,000 toward the fine at the outset of last year's hearing, and after the five-year deadline had elapsed.
Crown prosecutor Shauna MacDonald said last week it was clear he can't cover the entire $1.1 million, but she was concerned he refused to pay anything over five years, which is counter to the goal of making sure offenders don't profit from their crimes.
MacDonald agreed to the time extension. But if Sponagle violates the terms, the prosecution can return to court to apply to have him incarcerated.
Sponagle's plan
During last year's hearing into his fine payments, Sponagle insisted he would one day pay back the victims through a scenario where currencies around the world would "reset" and money would become available to him.
The court heard from an associate who testified he held "assets" for Sponagle, including "Zim notes," an apparent reference to the trillion-dollar banknotes issued by the southern African nation of Zimbabwe in 2009 during a period of hyperinflation.
While the new fine order requires Sponagle to pay a minimum of $500 a month, Buckle emphasized he was obligated to pay more than that if he had any money left over at the end of each period. If he skirted that requirement, the prosecution could seek to have him jailed.
"Your obligation is to pay as much as you can, whenever you can," she said.
The case returns to court in 2025, at which time Sponagle can make another application to extend the time needed to pay the fine.
Highly mutated COVID variant BA.2.86—close ancestor of globally dominant “Pirola” JN.1—may lead to more severe disease than other Omicron variants, according to two new studies published Monday in the journal Cell.
In one study, researchers from Ohio State University performed a variety of experiments using a BA.2.86 pseudovirus—a lab-created version that isn’t infectious. They found that BA.2.86 can fuse to human cells more efficiently and infect cells that line the lower lung—traits that may make it more similar to initial, pre-Omicron strains that were more deadly.
In the other study, researchers in Germany and France came to the same conclusion. “BA.2.86 has regained a trait characteristic of early SARS-CoV-2 lineages: robust lung cell entry,” the authors wrote. The variant “might constitute an elevated health threat as compared to previous Omicron sublineages,” they added.
While illness caused by the initial Omicron strain was typically considered more mild than that caused by earlier variants, it’s impossible to say definitively, experts say. That’s because those sickened by Omicron had generally already been infected with an earlier version of the virus, likely softening the blow. Additionally, many had been vaccinated, to the same effect.
Still, Omicron had a penchant for infecting the upper airway versus the lower airway, where prior versions of the virus tended to accumulate, causing more severe disease. The new studies offer proof that this trend may very well be reversing, the authors contend. If true, it’s bad news for those who hoped the virus was slowly attenuating to the equivalent of a common cold.
“We cannot ignore the evidence” that Omicron may be evolving into a more severe form of itself, Dr. Shan-Lu Liu—professor and co-director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program at Ohio State University, and lead author on the first study—told Fortune.
Increasing COVID hospitalizations in the U.S. and around the globe potentially bolster the argument, he added.
It’s tough to tell if disease caused by COVID is again becoming more severe because waning immunity muddles matters, experts say. Antibody immunity to COVID from vaccination or prior infection—which can reduce the severity of the disease or prevent infection altogether—declines after three to six months. Globally, uptake of the latest COVID booster, released this past fall, leaves much to be desired. In the U.S., it sits under 20%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In theory, the longer it’s been since someone was infected with COVID or received a booster, the greater their risk for severe outcomes like hospitalization and death.
Is JN.1 more severe than Omicron?
As for what the studies might mean regarding the severity of JN.1 infection, the jury is still out. But the new findings—combined with expert speculation that JN.1 may be showing a preference for infecting the GI tract—warrant more study into the evolving nature of the virus, according to Liu.
Another concern of his: the possibility of COVID recombining with another coronavirus in animals, then transitioning back over to humans—throwing another viral plot twist into the pandemic’s narrative.
Some experts contend that Omicron—highly mutated compared to previous strains—originated in animals, then spilled back over into humans (as opposed to developing in a human with a long-term infection, as others contend). Regardless, animals serve as an underappreciated wild card, Liu contends. Case in point: Many of Ohio’s white-tailed deer have tested positive for COVID, affording the virus an additional population in which to mutate.
Another, perhaps larger concern of Liu: the possibility that COVID recombines with another, more deadly coronavirus like SARS or MERS, which had case fatality rates around 10% and 34%, respectively. In contrast, COVID’s case fatality rate, among unvaccinated Americans, sat around 1% prior to Omicron, and around 0.11% after.
“Anything can happen,” Liu said. “It’s really hard to predict what’s going to come next, but nature can do amazing things.”
The bottom line when it comes to the power of animals to further evolve the virus and send another curveball flying humanity’s way: “Humans, watch out.”
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STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in 2011, will try for the second time Monday to sue the Norwegian state for allegedly breaching his human rights.
Norway’s worst peacetime killer claims his solitary confinement since being imprisoned in 2012 amounts to inhumane treatment under the European Convention of Human Rights.
A new batch of unsealed documents pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls was released Thursday, adding several hundred pages to a trove of information detailing how the financier leveraged connections to the rich, powerful and famous to recruit his victims and cover up his crimes.
The 19 documents, or about 300 pages, were half as many as the over 40 released Wednesday. The documents so far — with more to come — were sprinkled with names of celebrities and politicians who socialized with Epstein or worked with him in the years before he was publicly accused nearly two decades ago of paying underage girls for sex.
They also contained the accounts of some of Epstein’s young victims, many of whom were high school students who took payments of $200 to give him illicit massages.
The records being unsealed were part of a lawsuit filed by one of those victims, Virginia Giuffre, against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s former girlfriend, household manager and chief recruiter of young, vulnerable females. That lawsuit was settled in 2017, but documents in the case are still being released years later.
Most of the names in those records are familiar to anyone who has followed the scandal closely.
Jeffrey Epstein: List of alleged clients, associates to be unsealed by court order
It was during Maxwell’s criminal trial two years ago that Epstein’s victims, some of whom aspired to be models or artists, described how he dropped the names of his famous and influential friends to suggest that he was the victims’ ticket to reaching their dreams. Maxwell, 62, was convicted of sex-trafficking charges and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Epstein killed himself in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on sex- trafficking charges. The roughly 250 documents being unsealed, starting this week, mostly rehash what has long been known about a man who traveled in elite circles until his arrest.
But they have included a few fresh details about a pyramid of abuse that grew over three decades and damaged dozens of teenage girls and young women.
The documents unsealed Thursday included an excerpt from the deposition of one those victims, a girl who was in high school when she went to his house, thinking she had been hired to give him a massage.
“I don’t recall exactly how I was propositioned to get there. I was just there, and all of a sudden something horrible happened to me,” she said, adding that Epstein removed her clothes without her consent the first time she met him.
She said she had worked “very, very hard” over the years to forget the details of her sexual encounters.
Ghislaine Maxwell sentenced to 20 years in jail a ‘big victory,’ says Epstein accuser
The victim, whose name remained sealed, said that a high school classmate had suggested the job to her. Later, she learned that girls who referred other girls to Epstein were paid kickbacks.
She herself brought other girls from her high school to Epstein’s house. None of them were her friends, she said.
“Sometimes I would go over and I would just swim and I would get paid, or I would take a nap and I’d get paid, or I would just hang out and I’d get paid,” she said. “It wasn’t my assumption that they were coming over to do anything. I did not know, once the door was closed or once they went to another area of the home. I often just went over and did my own thing while they were doing whatever they were doing. It was none of my business.”
Other documents released Thursday largely focused on legal squabbles over Giuffre’s lawsuit and her connection to a British tabloid reporter whom Maxwell’s lawyers accused of compelling her to fabricate some of her allegations.
Among the famous people in Epstein’s orbit before he was exposed as a sexual predator were former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, singer Michael Jackson and magician David Copperfield, according to the accounts of his victims and other witnesses quoted in newly released documents. None of those men were accused of wrongdoing.
There were also repetitions of well-known stories about Britain’s Prince Andrew. He was sued by Giuffre, who said she had sexual encounters with the royal when she was 17. The prince, who denied the allegations, settled the lawsuit in 2022.
Prince Andrew settles sexual assault case with accuser Virginia Giuffre
Thousands of documents in Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell had been made public previously, but some sections had been blacked out because of privacy concerns. U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska ordered last month that those redactions be lifted, mostly because names in the documents had already been made public through news coverage or through other court proceedings.
Clinton previously said through a spokesperson that although he traveled on Epstein’s jet several times, he never visited his homes, had no knowledge of his crimes, and hadn’t spoken to him since his conviction. Trump has also said he once thought Epstein was a “terrific guy,” but that they later had a falling-out.
While many of the people whose names appear in the court records aren’t accused of doing anything wrong, there are also many references to Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent who was close to Epstein and who killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges that he raped underage girls. Giuffre was among the women who accused Brunel of sexual abuse.
Separately, Brunel’s estate was sued this week by a woman who alleges that he and others sexually assaulted her while she was working as a model in New York. She says that on one occasion, she was driven to a home in Canada and kept there for several days while men abused her. The lawsuit, filed in state court in California, does not mention Epstein or Maxwell.
More documents were expected to be released on Friday and Monday.
Associated Press Writers David B. Caruso and Jim Mustian contributed to this story.
Nasrallah again pledges retaliation for killing of Hamas deputy chief al-Arouri, says Hezbollah ‘cannot be silent’.
The head of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has said that all of Lebanon will be exposed if the group does not react to the assassination of Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut this week.
Speaking in a televised address for the second time in less than a week, Hassan Nasrallah reaffirmed that Hezbollah “cannot be silent about a violation of this level”.
“This means that all of Lebanon will become exposed, all cities, villages, and figures will become exposed,” he said on Friday.
“The murder of al-Arouri … will certainly not go without reaction and punishment,” he added.
Nasrallah’s comments come as Lebanon filed a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over the assassination of al-Arouri, calling it the “most dangerous phase” of Israeli attacks on the country.
The complaint said Israel used six missiles in the attack that killed al-Arouri and added that Israel uses Lebanese airspace to bomb Syria, the Reuters news agency said, citing the document dated January 4.
This is not the first time that Nasrallah promised retaliation. He had on Wednesday warned Israel against expanding its war, saying there would be “no ceilings” and “no rules” to his group’s fighting if Israel chose to launch a war on Lebanon.
“Whoever thinks of war with us – in one word, he will regret it,” Nasrallah said.
‘670 military operations’
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Beirut, said Nasrallah reiterated a promise to retaliate.
Nasrallah said al-Arouri’s killing “will not go unanswered or unpunished”, and that Hezbollah fighters will use the “right place and the right time, and the field will respond”, Khan said.
Nasrallah also said “We have full knowledge of where Israeli military positions are,” and the Israelis “aren’t revealing the true number of their casualties, and the destruction of their equipment”, our correspondent added.
In his remarks, the Hezbollah leader said Lebanon’s southern border with Israel was a “key part” of the war, and that the group’s current operations along the border opened a “historic opportunity” for Lebanon to liberate its land occupied by Israel.
He added that the Islamic resistance in Iraq also has a “historic opportunity” to get rid of the United States presence in that country.
Nasrallah said Hezbollah fighters had conducted approximately 670 military operations on the Lebanon-Israel border, adding that the group destroyed a “large number of Israeli vehicles and tanks”.
He also said if the Israeli military managed to achieve its military goals in Gaza, it would then turn to Lebanon.
Since October 8 – a day after Israel launched its war on the Gaza Strip – continuing clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border have resulted in the deaths of dozens of Lebanese civilians and more than 140 Hezbollah members.
Israel and armed groups in southern Lebanon, particularly Hezbollah, have engaged in frequent back-and-forth exchanges across the United Nations-patrolled border.
The Toronto Raptors already traded OG Anunoby to the New York Knicks, and Pascal Siakam appears to be the next in line to be moved this winter.
Siakam is expected to be dealt by the Feb. 8 trade deadline, according to ESPN's Tim Bontemps.
Yahoo Sports' Jake Fischer reported that "chatter among NBA executives surrounding Siakam's potential landing spots has now centered on" the Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers and Sacramento Kings.
He added: "Other teams mentioned, such as Dallas and Philadelphia, don't appear as viable destinations at this juncture, although Toronto officials have suggested to inquiring front offices as many as 10 teams hold legitimate interest in Siakam."
Siakam has been one of the hottest names on the trade market this winter as the Raptors enter a likely rebuild. However, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported Saturday that there has been "no traction" in trade talks involving the veteran following the Anunoby deal.
Siakam is set to become a free agent after the 2023-24 campaign. However, he's only eligible to sign a two-year contract extension if he's traded at the deadline.
NBA insider Marc Stein reported Monday that if traded, Siakam "would prefer, again, to proceed to unrestricted free agency … meaning that any team that trades for him now must be daring enough to roll those dice."
Siakam has spent his entire eight-year career in Toronto, helping the franchise capture the 2019 NBA title. He has also earned the 2018-19 Most Improved Player award, two All-Star selections and two All-NBA selections.
Despite Toronto's struggles this season, the 29-year-old is still having a solid campaign—although his numbers are down across the board. He's averaging 22.4 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.9 assists in 34 games while shooting 52.1 percent from the floor and 28.8 percent from deep.
While Siakam's numbers are down by his standards, he would still be a great addition for any contending team this year, and it's going to be interesting to see where he ends up.
Thor's Meats first opened in Selkirk 1901. It's been a staple in the more than 120 years since. (Source: Pearson Family)
