Woman fired over treat
An attendant at a restaurant who was sacked for giving a bite-sized doughnut, worth US$0.16, to an agitated toddler was given her job back on Thursday after the case received wide media attention. Nicole Lilliman, a single mother, said she was dismissed from a London, Ontario, outlet of the Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut chain after video cameras captured the 27-year-old giving a Timbit to a toddler. “It was just out of my heart, she [the toddler] was pointing and going ‘ah, ah.’ I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy,” Lilliman told the Toronto Star newspaper. Tim Hortons said on Thursday that the firing was a mistake and an “overzealous decision.”
■UNITED STATES
Victims snap photo
Police say they had no trouble tracking down a Pennsylvania robbery suspect because the victims had taken his picture while chatting with him at a bar a short time before the theft. The suspect, Andre Smith, struck up a conversation with a group of women at a bachelorette party at the Bensalem Township taproom early on Sunday morning, the township’s public safety director, Fred Harran, said on Wednesday. The women were taking photos of each other when Smith jumped in front of the camera, Harran said. Smith later was ejected from the bar for allegedly harassing customers. When two women in the group left the bar to go to a nearby convenience store, Smith robbed them of their purses, Harran said. The women recognized Smith — who apparently did not recognize them — and gave investigators a copy of the photo.
■UNITED STATES
Manson ranch closed
National Park Service officials say the Death Valley ranch where Charles Manson was arrested will be closed for a second time this year to search for possible human remains. A press release on Thursday said Barker Ranch will be closed for up to four days later this month. Manson and his followers hid out in the park after the 1969 killing spree that set Los Angeles on edge. A team of forensic researchers found possible unmarked graves at the site in February that they believe could be the bodies of additional Manson victims.
■CANADA
Head tax remembered
The government announced on Thursday that it would dedicate US$5 million to educate people about the Chinese head tax and other racist government policies in the country’s past. Between 1885 and 1923, the Canadian government collected C$23 million (US$22.6 million) in taxes from Chinese immigrants. About 81,000 immigrants paid the tax. It was discontinued in 1923 when the government banned Chinese immigration outright. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1947.
■BRAZIL
Gang frees prisoners
An armed gang toting rifles and submachine guns burst into a police station in northeastern Brazil to free a pair of prisoners on Thursday, inciting an uprising that left one inmate dead, police said. Two inmates escaped in the firefight — but not the two the gang had sought to free, said Alberto Maraux, spokesman for Bahia’s State Security Secretariat. Fifteen men broke into an overcrowded jail for drug trafficking and homicide suspects before dawn on Thursday in the coastal city of Salvador, the capital of Bahia State, Maraux said. Three inmates fled amid the chaos, but one was shot and killed — although it was not clear by whom, Malraux said.
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