• By Todd McEwen
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• Jun 12, 2011 - 11:10 AM
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Dufferin Relay for Life raises $131K

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Battling cancer can last a lifetime, but raising money to help find a cure took less than a day.
On Friday (June 10), Dufferin County’s second annual Relay For Life welcomed residents to a 12-hour fundraiser and festival at the Orangeville fairgrounds to celebrate the lives of cancer survivors and its victims, while raising money for the Canadian Cancer Society.
More than 300 supporters and 55 teams walked through the night, and helped raise an estimated $131,000 in pledges and donations, a number Lynn Lowe, chair of Dufferin County Relay For Life, was thrilled to see.
“It’s phenomenal,” she said. “The teams really came to bat this year and the team totals were just fantastic.”
Last year, the event raised $53 million across Canada and just more than $100,000 in Dufferin County. Lowe said she was confident they could beat their previous total this time around, and was proud to see a large number of younger supporters at this years event.
“We had a great youth presence,” she said. “It’s amazing how many of those guys stayed up and partied all night long and just kind of kept this energy going.”
The opening ceremony allowed local cancer survivors to perform a lap in a course lined with homemade lanterns, to a surrounding and cheering crowd consisting mostly of the teams, united in outrageous fashions, that were responsible for the money raised.
“Last year (the teams) got a taste of (Relay For Life),” Lowe said. “But this year so many teams put forth such a great effort.”
From dusk until dawn, multiple bands entertained the committed crowd while various meals and selections of food were continuously served throughout the night.
Games such as a three-legged race and wheelbarrow races were among the activities that kept the festival alive during the wee hours of the night and into morning.
“Cancer does not stop for nighttime,” Lowe said. “Relay For Life is overnight because cancer never sleeps.”
Orangeville District Secondary School student Alexander Watchurst addressed the crowd early on, thanking the volunteers and committee members for organizing Dufferin County’s second Relay For Life, a cancer fundraiser Watchurst has been attending and supporting since 2003.
“When people deal with cancer, they feel alone,” Watchurst said. “But events like Relay For Life can bring together people in only a way that people who have faced cancer can understand. It brings them together to feel like a family.”
Having been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at two years old, Watchurst battled cancer during the early stages of his life. He was forced through treatments for the better part of three years, and at age five, was told he had overcome the disease.
“I was told I could go back to living a normal live,” he said. “But there’s always the risk afterwards that you could relapse and the cancer could come back.”
But the time he spent in hospitals motivated the 18-year-old to continue the fight against cancer, and since his first encounter with Relay For Life in Brampton, it’s been a cause and event he’s proudly supported with his friends and family.
At this year’s event, Watchurst’s team, The Watchurst Basement Dwellers, personally raised $13,000 in pledges and donations and placed first for most money raised among the 55 teams. But Watchurst was just happy to see the community band together through the fundraising process.
“It’s so amazing to see a small community like Orangeville bring in all that money and come together and create such an empowering event,” he said.
Next year’s event will be held in June as well, and Lowe says as of next week, her and the committee will be preparing for Relay For Life 2012.
For more information on how to volunteer or get involved with future Relay For Life events, visit www.relayforlife.ca/dufferin.

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Mark Zuckerberg
Image: AP
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Facebook Says It Doesn't Know Whether The Emails From The Guy Who Says He Owns 50% Of The Company Are Fake

Facebook 700,000,000

BOOM: Facebook Just Nuked The Case Of Paul Ceglia -- The Guy Who Claims He Owns 50% Of Zuckerberg's Stake In The Company

Earlier today, Facebook responded in full to the lawsuit brought by Paul Ceglia, the upstate New York wood-pellet salesman who says Mark Zuckerberg gave him half of the company 7 years ago.
Facebook's response was, in short, a big can of whup-ass.
Last month, when Paul Ceglia filed an amended complaint with dozens of purported emails backing up his story, we thought Facebook might have to dole out a humongous settlement to make Ceglia go away.
Facebook immediately denounced the emails as fake, of course, but the emails didn't read fake, and Facebook did not offer a compelling explanation for how Facebook knew the emails were fake (at the time, it may not have had one). And based on some of Mark Zuckerberg's other behavior as a 19 year old, it seemed conceivable that Ceglia's claim--as preposterous as it sounded--might actually be plausible. Especially because a major law firm, DLA Piper, had examined Ceglia's evidence and concluded that Ceglia's claim was genuine.
Well, after today, we suspect the folks at DLA Piper are wishing they had never heard of Paul Ceglia.
Last fall, after Ceglia filed his original complaint, Facebook did a few things.
First, they hired the investigation firm Kroll to investigate Ceglia and see what else they could dig up on him. Ceglia, of course, had already been charged with fraud in connection with his wood-pellet company, which wasn't an asset to his case, but, hey, everyone makes mistakes, and maybe Ceglia really had intended to deliver the wood pellets that he took cash deposits on.

Paul Ceglia
Image: Classmates.com www.classmates.com
Well, Kroll found that Ceglia had once tried to sell a Florida orange grove he didn't own. Kroll found that Ceglia had sold several plots of land in Florida on eBay that Ceglia represented as "buildable" that weren't buildable and were later declared worthless. Kroll found that, to jack up the prices of these worthless land sales, Ceglia had engaged in shill-bidding on eBay. Kroll found that Ceglia had forged government documents to aid in the Florida land sales. Kroll found that Ceglia had sold land that he didn't own in New York State and pretended to sell land that he did own--taking the money and keeping the land.
In short, Kroll basically found that Ceglia is a career con-artist.
The second thing Facebook did, after Ceglia filed his amended complaint with the purported emails last month, was hire an investigator to analyze Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard email account (the one through which he had presumably corresponded with Ceglia).
The investigator found approximately 175 emails between Zuckerberg and Ceglia in the relevant period, but none of Ceglia's purported emails.
The investigator also found emails showing that, far from Ceglia getting screwed by Zuckerberg (which the purported emails show), Zuckerberg got screwed by Ceglia! Specifically, the real emails, which are still resident in Zuckerberg's Harvard email account, show that Zuckerberg did contract development work for Ceglia and that Ceglia never paid him for it.
Given that Zuckerberg's Harvard email system did not contain the emails that Ceglia filed in his amended complaint, there's only one possible way Ceglia's claim can be genuine: If Mark Zuckerberg selectively deleted every one of the emails cited in the complaint. While this is theoretically possible, it seems highly unlikely--especially in light of the story told by Ceglia's purported emails.

Nice try, fella.
In those "emails," a nervous Mark Zuckerberg is trying to back out of his deal with Ceglia by offering to return the $2,000 Ceglia gave him to develop "the face book."
In the real emails, the one the investigator just found in Harvard's email system, a nervous and grovellingly apologetic Paul Ceglia can't come up with the $11,000 he owes Mark Zuckerberg for developing Ceglia's site, which was called StreetFax.
And Facebook didn't stop there. Facebook also hired a document analyst to examine the "contract" that Ceglia produced last summer. The document expert said the contract is an "amateurish forgery."
And Facebook hired a linguistic expert to analyze the language used in the real Zuckerberg-Ceglia emails (found in Zuckerberg's Harvard email system) and compare it to the language used in the Ceglia emails. The expert concluded that Mark Zuckerberg is not likely the author of the "Mark Zuckerberg" emails that Ceglia produced.
And so on...
Basically, Facebook went nuclear on Paul Ceglia, and they've blown him and his claim to bits.
Facebook filed all this evidence in support of a motion for "expedited discovery," in which they will be allowed to seize all of Ceglia's computers, forensically analyze them, and prove beyond any doubt that Ceglia forged both the "contract" and the "emails." (At which point, in addition to losing his case, Ceglia could easily be charged with criminal fraud and put away for a long while).
Facebook wants the "expedited discovery" in part so Ceglia can't drag the case out and force a settlement, which may well have been his and his lawyer's plan all along.
(Facebook can't go public with litigation like this hanging out there.)
This afternoon, after Facebook launched its missile, the major law firm that gave credence to Ceglia's claim and evidence, DLA Piper, released a statement. The statement said the following:
"Mr. Ceglia welcomes the opportunity to expedite discovery in this case and disagrees with the opinions within the filing, which have been made by those who have not examined the actual contract at issue in this case or any of the other relevant evidence."
Note the wording: "Mr. Ceglia welcomes the opportunity to expedite discovery..." Not DLA Piper. Mr. Ceglia.
That wording suggests one of two things:
Either DLA Piper is already wishing it had never met Ceglia and is distancing itself from him (in preparation for cutting its losses and dropping the case),
or
DLA Piper is doubling down and planning to file a motion against expedited discovery in an attempt to draw the case out and force a settlement.
Either way, based on the evidence Facebook filed today, we're done. Unless DLA Piper and Paul Ceglia can provide an extraordinarily compelling explanation for why we should ignore all of what we learned in Facebook's response, we're going to draw the same conclusion that Facebook has: Paul Ceglia is an inveterate scam artist and this claim is a fraud.
See Also: BOOM: Facebook Just Nuked Paul Ceglia's Claim

Lawyers for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg just introduced a new pile of evidence in their case with Paul Ceglia, the man who claims to own 50% of Zuckerberg's Facebook stake.

The new evidence/allegations are seriously damaging. Ceglia could end up in jail for this.

We've pulled out the key pieces from the new court filing via Forbes' embed of the filing.

In short, Facebook's attorneys say the contracts are "amateurish" forgeries produced by a serial scam artist.

They've also analyzed Mark Zuckerberg's emails from the period and found no trace of the emails Ceglia used to make his case -- emails that Facebook has always contended are fake.

They are asking the court to speed up the discovery phase of the trial, allowing them to seize Ceglia's computers and prove indisputably that, once again, he has committed criminal fraud.

PLEASE READ, PASS ON AND REMEMBER NEXT ELECTION. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Here is what our Premier has done for Ontario in the past seven years. Remember...he had a no tax increaseelection message/campaign. He has increased all the licensing fees from your car to your boat including fishing and hunting. He introduced the health care premium (not called a tax) and some couples pay as much as $1,500.00 a year. He has put an ECO tax on many containers such as paint cans and window washer fluid most and people still don't realize it until they see the bill - he kept that one real quiet. He put a disposal tax on all electronics. He put the disposal tax back on tires. And now he has passed the HST tax - the largest tax on the province ever and the only other tax in Ontario that ever came close to this in the past was the health care premium. He passed this bill even though 76% of the people in Ontario were against it. This HST will provide the Province with an additional THREE BILLION dollars a year. Soon, July 15th, we will all have our S.M.A.R.T. Meters on which we will have to pay perpetual rent and will end up doing our laundry in the middle of the night. We are also going to pay big time for air conditioning from now on because when we need it the most it will be in the prime time of usage. Let us not forget the E-health scandal with 1.2 billion dollars wasted and paid out to friends and relatives. What was Mr. McGuinty's answer to this? Well, if the people of Ontario don't like it, they can show it in the next election.? Nice attitude. This after he fired the CEO and then gave her a severance package of $300,000 - not bad for only being on the job for seven months. And what about the SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS windmill power plant contract that he awarded to KOREA ? One would think there was some place in Canada or North America that could have built these. He also closed the emergency rooms in Port Colburne and Fort Erie because there is not enough money. There have been two deaths since then because by the time they got to St. Catharine's it was too late. But he then awards a hospital in Toronto three million dollars - of course, that was in the riding where there just happens to be a by-election to replace George Smitherman! He has taken the richest most prosperous province in Canada down to one of the 'Have-Nots' and, over the past six & one half years, has increased the budget deficit from $5.6 Billion dollars to TWENTY SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS and he still has a year and a half to go. And don't forget his nice little salaryincrease of $40,000.00 a year - millions of people in the province don't earn even half of that. Have we forgotten all the MP'S who also got a 14% increase? And now that they've hadtheir increases he comes out with a new budget to freeze all provincial employees wages for two years - a bit late don't you think. He increased the hydro tax by 10% in April of 2010. He has increased the tax on liquor and wine by 10% in May of 2010. He continues to permanently 'blight' landscapes across the province with unsightly wind turbines. But, Mr. McGuinty will retire with his nice comfortable pension and all his benefits paid. I hope this gets passed around the province of Ontario and everybody remembers the way we got screwed by Mr. McGuinty and the Liberal party and - remember - not one Liberal MPP had enough guts to vote against any of the above. Wake up Ontario ....!! And all pensioners got no raise at all over the past 18 months!!!!!!!!!