About 200 people took a moment to pray Thursday night for all innocent victims of the conflict in Gaza.

It was a pro-Israel rally, called Freedom from Terror, at the Beth Israel synagogue in Halifax.

“Israel and Palestinians are both the victims of Hamas,” said Rabbi Ari Sherbill. “Their campaign of terror as a result has had innocent lives result in death.

“What separates us from those who celebrate death is our sorrow at all innocent victims.”

There were several local speakers Thursday night before a huge screen showed a satellite feed from a rally in Toronto.

One of the local speakers, Cathy Fox, told the crowd about her son Craig. He’s a 24-year-old Haligonian who went to join the the Israeli Defence Force.

At 3:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning, she got a call from a hospital. Her son told her he was holding a nightlight so they could pound a hole through a wall to shoot from, when his hand was hit with a sledgehammer.

Then the snipers started firing, and a rock dislodged by a bullet struck him just under his helmet.

“He said, ‘I’ve injured my eye, I have scratches on the corneas and cuts.’

“He said, ‘I should be better by Tuesday and I’ll be going back in to join my unit.’”

Cathy told the rally that her son feels what he’s doing there is very important.

“He said it’s gotten so bad over the past couple weeks, the atmosphere has changed, the degree of fear has increased — but the people are behind them.”

In a phone interview, Ismail Zayid, president of the Canada Palestine Association, said there would be two pro-Palestine rallies Friday at the public library on Spring Garden Road and at the Dalhousie campus.

“We believe these are outrageous war crimes being committed against innocent people, supported by governments like the United States, Canada and others,” Zayid said.

Today was supposed to be Mark Parent’s big day.

The former environment minister had spent the past couple years working on the government’s climate change plan. After many delays, it was finally completed and ready to be released today.

But on Wednesday, Premier Rodney MacDonald shuffled his cabinet. Parent was moved out of Environment to Agriculture as former Natural Resources minister David Morse took over his job. Parent is also minister of Labour.

Now the report is delayed yet again, so that Morse has time to catch up and be the go-to guy when it’s released. A lot of people in Parent’s position would be frustrated, but luckily he’s a former pastor.

“There’s a passage in the New Testament where Paul talks about others labouring and him reaping, and him labouring and others reaping,” Parent said. “And so I thought, you know, I’m happy for David.”

Morse had some involvement with the plan in his previous job, but said he wants to study every aspect of it before the release. There is no new release date for the plan, which will be announced alongside the new energy strategy.

But Morse said he hopes it won’t be much more than a week.

“The biggest challenge we face globally is climate change,” said Morse. “You can solve terrorism, poverty and cure cancer, and it’s going to be irrelevant if we’ve allowed the climate to get out of control.”

The plan has already been approved by cabinet, and Morse said he won’t be making any changes to it.

The plan was originally due more than a year ago, but saw repeated delays. Morse said it will be worth the wait.

“You’ve really got to make sure that you’ve got it right. If that means that it takes an extra year, then it’s better to take the year. But make sure that it’s right when you do unveil it,” he said.

Green transportation in the HRM got some federal green yesterday.

Peter MacKay, the minister responsible for the Atlantic Gateway, announced more than $100,000 for the two projects.

The Guaranteed Ride Home Program received $50,000.

It’s an 18-month pilot project run by HRM to provide emergency drives for people who carpool, bike, walk or use other environmentally friendly transportation.

HRM will also get another $55,000 to develop a dedicated municipal fund to encourage greener transportation choices.

The money comes from Transport Canada’s ecoMobility program, which is designed to develop initiatives to encourage commuters to take public transit or use other alternatives to driving.

Provincial court judges in Sydney are setting trial dates in 2010, raising concerns for the president of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, who hopes the province will soon appoint the new judge that has been promised for the hectic court system.

Prominent criminal lawyer Joel Pink, president of the society, said after his last trip to Sydney in November for a court appearance, he wrote to Justice Minister Cecil Clarke about how far into the future trial dates are being scheduled.

“The times that they are now setting down are outside the acceptable limits set down by the Supreme Court of Canada,” he said. “I mean, they are over a year.”

Lawyers seeking earlier court dates may make applications under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for trials within a reasonable time, he said.

“They are going to be successful, which will result in charges being thrown out of court,” he said.

“Everybody is entitled to a trial within a reasonable amount of time.”

There were 65 provincial court trials scheduled for 2010 on Tuesday, including some in April, in the Sydney-based court system.

The provincial government said last year it would appoint new provincial court judges for Sydney (which has three full-time and two visiting judges), Halifax and New Glasgow, and a family court judge for Kentville. A search committee recommended a short list of names on Aug. 5. New judges have been appointed for three of the areas but not yet for Sydney.

The Tories say they will continue with their plan to boost minimum wage despite the economic downturn.

Nova Scotia last saw its minimum wage rise to $8.10 from $7.60 per hour on March 31. It was the first step in a three-year-plan by the province’s minimum wage review committee.

That plan concludes in October 2010 with a minimum wage of $9.65. Meanwhile, Newfoundland and Lab­rador just announced it would increase its minimum wage to $10 per hour over the next 18 months. As of New Year’s Day, it went up to $8.50. New Brunswick and P.E.I. are debating raises of their own.

Labour Minister Mark Parent said some businesses have complained about raising Nova Scotia’s minimum rate to $8.10 during a rough economic period.

“There have been businesses that have come and said that decision was made in light of better economic times and it’s putting pressure on us to have such a high minimum wage. I don’t foresee any changes to the decision that was made,” said Parent.

Parent said the demographic profile of Nova Scotia means employers have to pay more anyway. He said fewer young people and a smaller labour force puts upward pressure on wages.

“I found when we raised the minimum wage this time that many of the companies were already paying that. They had to pay that or above in order to attract workers,” he said.

New Brunswick currently has the lowest minimum wage rate in the country at $7.75 per hour. Nova Scotia’s rate is the fourth lowest.

Sorry, folks: you probably won’t be picking up an extraterrestrial pen pal before you die.

But way before that, we’ll know where the planets are that could support life, says Saint Mary’s University astronomy and physics professor Rob Thacker.

“By the time the 30-year-olds of today are 50, we’ll know a good deal about life on other planets,” Thacker said.

“Someone was saying to me, ‘Do you think they’ll be able to join us on Facebook?’ But if they’re that intelligent, they’ve probably moved on to the next thing past it.”

Currently, we don’t know how many Earth-sized planets there are, because the telescopes we have can’t see them. We can see larger planets, but anything the size of Jupiter or Saturn is too big to support life — they don’t have solid ground or atmosphere.

By 2015, there’ll be a new telescope — appropriately named the Extremely Large Telescope, or ELT — that will be able to detect Earth-sized planets. By 2025, we’ll be able to train our new terrestrial planet-finder on those to see which ones have oxygen.

If there’s oxygen, there may be life. But that could be something as small as a single-cell amoeba. And if there’s a more evolved species that wants to keep to itself, we’ll never know.

“I’ll be surprised if we find any basic life forms within 100 to 150 light years,” Thacker said.

So, could it turn out the species that brought you Paris Hilton and Sarah Palin is the only intelligent life in the universe?

“It’s a real possibility. If that’s the case, then we have a real responsibility to preserve intelligent life in the galaxy.”

Thacker and McMaster University professor Doug Welch will be talking about this issue Friday Saturday night, from 7-9 p.m., at the Uncommon Grounds coffee shop on South Park Street.

When a human skull was discovered beneath a Parrsboro church in November, Nova Scotia’s medical examiner called upon the same expert used by the Miami-Dade Police Department.

No, it’s not the fictional Horatio Caine.

Every two years, the real Miami-Dade Police call upon Saint Mary’s University to send forensic anthropologist Dr. Tanya Peckmann and her graduate students to the Florida city to assist with the excavation of suspected crime scenes. As the tapes roll nearby on another episode of the popular TV show CSI Miami, Peckmann is handling the real cases.

In November, Dr. Peckmann arrived in Parrsboro with four of her grad students. to handle the excavation of a human skull found beneath the church  

Peckmann began to conclude she had an archeological investigation on her hands, not a forensic one.

“What happens,” said Peckmann, “and it happens often in rural communities that were farmland — someone says, ‘I want to be buried under the oak tree,’ and the site goes without a tombstone.”

There was frustration and some acceptance at the pumps Thursday.

The price of gas was expected to go up nearly nine cents per litre at midnight, boosting the price to about 78 cents per litre from 69 cents per litre. Some gas stations around the city were busy with motorists filling up before the price jump.

“Accepting is the best way to put it. We prefer to keep it low, but if it’s going up, we hope it will go down the next day,” said Joseph Briand of Halifax.

When gas spiked to $1.40 per litre, Briand said he drove slower to save on gas.

“I drive mainly for business, so it didn’t affect how I do business. I just drove slower.”

Jim Guild of Halifax said it seems the more expensive gas is, the more people economize.

“I wouldn’t mind if it was going up if I felt the oil companies weren’t ripping us off,” Guild said. “I’m glad we have gas regulation. I think the companies would be even worse if they weren’t regulated.”

His mistrust extends to the gas pumps, too. He said many of them need some work in their accuracy.

“There’s no certification of when this was checked so I don’t know when they checked them,” he said, gesturing to the gas pump. “I think if the government wanted to regulate one thing, I think they should make sure all the pumps are working.”

Trish McLaren of Hubley said price fluctuations don’t change her driving habits, but it’s frustrating not knowing why it’s so much more expensive one day to the next.

“I can’t cut back on the amount of driving I’m doing anyway. I like it when the prices are low — but even when the prices go up, it doesn’t impact how much driving I do,” she said.

“It’s just frustrating because it jumps up that big, but do we know why? The reasons they tell us I don’t believe are the actual reasons, like the hurricane or whatever.”

A 15-year-old boy known to police was arrested yesterday in relation to the recent drive-by shooting in Halifax.

The victim and three of his friends were walking along Bayers Road at the intersection at Romans Avenue just before 6 p.m. on Tuesday night when a car they described as a silver Honda Civic drove past. The boys described a popping sound and the victim thought firecrackers were thrown down the back of his coat.

When they got to the Halifax Shopping Centre, he realized he was grazed by a bullet. He was taken to the hospital and released later.

Then early yesterday morning, police made an arrest.

“Parents of a youth stepped forward and the youth stepped forward as well and we were provided with the information we needed to make an arrest and lay a charge,” said Const. Jeff Carr with the Halifax Regional Police.

He wouldn’t say how the informant was related to the case.

At 3:40 a.m. yesterday, police arrived at a Lakeside residence and arrested a 15-year-old boy. He’s charged with attempted murder, firearms offences and a breach of probation.

Carr said the boy was arrested without incident and they also seized a silver Toyota.

“It’s very close to what was provided in the description,” Carr said. “It could have easily been mistaken for a Civic.”

But the investigation isn’t over.

“There’s information at this point that leads investigators to believe the incident may not have been random, but we still cannot say with absolute certainty. However, that should not be interpreted to imply the boys in the group are involved in the criminal element,” Carr said.