Canadian changes mind about Taser death

TORONTO - Videotaping the last moments of a Polish immigrant's life, Paul Pritchard thought the police were 100 percent right to use a Taser stun gun to subdue the man.

That was a month ago, before the police returned the videotape they borrowed from Pritchard, a Canadian who had filmed Robert Dziekanski's death.

Now that Pritchard has watched his own tape — and no longer believes Dziekanski posed any threat of violence — he condemns the police use of a stun gun just 46 seconds after confronting Dziekanski at the airport in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Tags: taser death, canada, toronto, airport

U.N. issues landmark report on global warming

VALENCIA, Spain - The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer age at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of species extinction.

The report also offered blueprints to avert the worst catastrophes. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet."

The potential impact of global warming is "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action will do," Ban told the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change after it issued its fourth and final report this year.

Tags: global warming