Toronto Former Mayor Rob Ford's Crack Necktie Sells For $16,100 on eBay

Rob Ford's tie went up for sale on eBay on Feb. 25, 2015. Bidding closed on the item on Wednesday. (eBay.ca)

The price of owning the tie Rob Ford wore on the day he first admitted to smoking crack cocaine is $16,100. That was the winning bid listed on Ford's eBay page, when bidding ended just after 5 p.m. ET Wednesday.

The city's former mayor and current Ward 2 councillor has been selling off some of his belongings on eBay.

His crack-confession necktie went up for sale on the auction website a week ago.

Ford is also selling a coat he wore as a football coach, several sports jerseys and a familiar-looking sweatshirt. But so far, the bidding for those items has not been close to bids placed on the tie.

Aww! Student agrees to marry disabled man 3 DAYS after they met online

Sarah Ridley | Mirror
Attractive Xiao Dan, 22, has decided to leave college and now hopes to get a job so she can look after her husband-to-be.

A love-struck student is giving up her studies to marry a disabled man she met online - despite only knowing him for three days.

Pretty Xiao Dan, 22, started chatting to Kong Chuang, 23, on the messaging app service, WeChat.

And she was so impressed with his zest for life that she decided to leave college so she can look after him.

She said: "Talking to him was not like talking to anybody else I met online.

"He seemed to be a really amazing person and we stayed up long into the night chatting.

"The next day we talked again and I decided that even though it meant missing lecturers, I was going to go and see him.

British Woman fakes own DEATH to get out of dating man she met online

According to the UK Mirror, 29-year-old Ann-Marie Gray faked her own death to avoid seeing a man she had decided wasn't Mr. Right.

After a third date with the poor fellow whom she had met on an online dating site, Gray decided that she didn't want to see him again. But when she tried to let him down gently, he didn't get the hint.

Even when she flat-out told him it wasn't working, he persisted.

"He continued to message me and the day came when he sent one stating 'I think we need to have a date tonight! I will be around your house in 30 minutes.'"

Taking matters into her own hands, the quick-thinking Gray responded:

Heritage Canada called out for not using Canadian art on website

 (Screengrab via Canadian Heritage)

Matthew Coutts | Daily Brew

Imagine a world where a website committed to promoting Canadian arts and culture was outsourcing the job to foreign professionals, and then open your eyes and log onto the Heritage Canada website.

The Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor noted on Tuesday that the department’s website is filled with stock photography purchased from foreign artists and used to promote “Canada’s cultural industries.”

“A search of images appearing on the department’s site turned up numerous examples of pictures purchased online, without any apparent regard for using work created by Canadian photographers or artists,” he writes.

Here is a shortened list of some of the indiscretions noted in the article:

• A German photograph of a cheering concert audience found on the Canada Music Fund site
• A Russian photo of moviegoers watching a 3D film on the Film and Video site
• A photo of a group of young, smiling white people posted to the Youth Exchanges site coming from an artist in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Canadians To Start Receiving Copyright Infringement Notices For Online Downloads

Canadian ISPs are now required to forward copyright violation notices to customers. FOTOLIA

Patrick O'Rourke Canada.com
The final part of the Canadian federal Copyright Modernization Act went into effect on Jan. 1, requiring internet service providers (ISPs) and website hosts to relay letters from copyright holders to customers associated with a specific Internet Protocol (IP) address, when an illegal copyright infringing download has occurred.

While these notices don’t carry immediate legal ramifications, they serve as a warning that the copyright holder is aware of your IP address’ downloading activity and could potentially take legal action.

Previously ISPs were able to decide if they wanted to inform their customers a copyright holder is aware of their illegal downloading. Internet service providers like Bell and Rogers have been periodically sending out these notifications for the last few years, but as of Jan. 1, doing so is now a legal requirement in Canada.

Sarah Palin Facebook Photos Of Son Stepping On Dog Trigger Online Outrage

Reuters
Facebook photos posted by Sarah Palin showing her son Trig using the family dog as a step stool unleashed online fury on Friday reminiscent of the public reaction to the disclosure that Mitt Romney had once driven with his dog strapped on the car's roof.

Trig, 6, who has Down Syndrome, is shown stepping on the back of the family's black Labrador while it lies on the kitchen floor in order to reach the sink. The dog appears unruffled.

The Facebook post by Palin, who was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, drew more than 12,000 comments by midday Friday, ranging from cries of animal abuse to those seconding Palin's praise for the youngest of her five children.

"May 2015 see every stumbling block turned into a stepping stone on the path forward," Palin wrote on her Facebook page.

"Trig just reminded me. He, determined to help wash dishes with an oblivious mama not acknowledging his signs for 'up!', found me and a lazy dog blocking his way. He made his stepping stone," Palin wrote.

More Than 1,000 Chinese Cat Rescued Thanks to the Internet

Brendan O'Connor | GAWKER
More than 1,000 cats stolen by cat traffickers in northeast China were rescued after their owners found each other on the Internet and collaborated with local law enforcement, Sky News reports.

According to Sky News, the suspected traffickers arrived in Dalian City earlier this month and had been searching the city for cats every night, "before being noticed by a group of pet lovers who share their pet raising experiences online."

The pet lovers alerted police, who were able to locate a "cat den" in a nearby village, arresting six suspects. The cats were likely to be sold for their meat and fur, the Daily News reports.

More than 300 of the cats have been returned to their owners.

NorthKorea Back Online After Widespread Internet Outage

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un looks at a computer, surrounded by army

Prominent North Korean websites were back online Tuesday after an hours-long shutdown that led to speculation by some researchers and web watchers that the country's Internet connections could be under cyberattack.

South Korean officials told the Associated Press that Internet access to the North's official Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper were working normally Tuesday after being inaccessible earlier.

 Those sites are the main channels for official North Korea news, with servers located abroad.

Mom Who Lost Weight To Spite Ex By Posting Photo On Instagram, Now An Online Star

A stay-at-home single mum has had the last laugh on her former fiancé by rocketing to online stardom thanks to a series of raunchy selfies.

Tracy Kiss originally began posting images of herself in a bid to show her ex who walked out on her, what he was missing. Miss Kiss, 27, from Wendover, Bucks, was forced to undergo three life-saving ops in 2013 after it was discovered her silicone breast implants were leaking.

About that NorthKorea internet brouhaha

Many believe the genesis of North Korea's internet that went down was a retaliation from US. Sony Pictures released a movie called The Interview, a comedy about a fictional assassination of North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un.. North Korean didn't find it funny and hacked into Sony's computers, rendering thousands of computers inoperable and forced Sony to take its entire computer network offline. That wasn't enough, they then threatened terror attack on US citizens if Sony doesn't cancel showing the movie, forcing Sony to pull the interview from theaters and losing almost $200m. Then the US govt got involved and told Sony to go ahead and release the movie, that they don't take lightly to threats and promised to retaliate for the attack on Sony. 

"Internet connectivity between North Korea and the outside world is currently suffering one of its worst outages in recent memory, suggesting that the country may be enduring a mass cyber attack a few days after President Obama warned the US would launch a "proportional response" to North Korea's hack against Sony

North Korea, which has four official networks connecting the country to the Internet -- all of which route through China -- began experiencing intermittent problems yesterday and today went completely black, according to Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research in Hanover, New Hampshire." Bloomberg reports.

Russia Creating Its Own Version Of Wikipedia

VLADIVOSTOK, RUSSIA - NOVEMBER 13: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting on shipbuilding on November 13, 2014 in Vladivostok, Russia. Putin is on a two-day trip on the way to the G20 Leaders Summit in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images) | Sasha Mordovets via Getty Images

Thomas Grove | Reuters
Russia plans to create its own "Wikipedia" to ensure its citizens have access to more "detailed and reliable" information about their country, the presidential library said on Friday.

Citing Western threats, the Kremlin has asserted more control over the Internet this year in what critics call moves to censor the web, and has introduced more pro-Kremlin content similar to closely controlled state media such as television.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia assembled and written by Internet users around the world, has pages dedicated to nearly every region or major city within Russia's 11 time zones, but the Kremlin library said this was not good enough.

"Analysis of this resource showed that it is not capable of providing information about the region and life of the country in a detailed or sufficient way," the state news agency RIA quoted a statement from the presidential library as saying.