Here’s the timeline as taken from CBC News:

May 21 she tries to leave Kenya after her two week visit but Kenya immigration officials prevented her from boarding her flight saying that she did not look like the photo in her Canadian Passport. Apparently it was her lips that looked different.

May 22 The High Commission of Canada in Nairobi takes and voids her passport, despite her producing her Canadian driver’s licence (photo identification), fingerprints and other documents.

May 28 After spending eight days in a Kenyan jail,she is released on bail. Liliane Khadour, the Canadian High Commission’s first secretary, tells Kenyan government officials a thorough investigation has determined Mohamud is an impostor and recommends that she be prosecuted. She is then charged with identity fraud and would spend parts of the next 2½ months living in Nairobi slum hotels.

July 22 The Canadian government, after negotiating a settlement to a Federal Court motion filed by Mohamud’s lawyer, Raoul Boulakia, agrees to ask Kenyan authorities to delay her trial until a DNA test can be conducted to confirm her identity.

July 24: After the Kenyan government agrees to delay Mohamud’s trial, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon tells reporters in Ottawa

“there is no tangible proof” Mohamud is Canadian.
“All Canadians who hold passports generally have a picture that is identical in their passport to what they claim to be,”

(absolute nonsense, just change your hair or grow a beard and you are now someone else)

July 29: Mohamud’s former husband, Hussein Asbscir, and her son, Mohamed Hussein, 12, submit to DNA testing in order to help resolve her case.

Aug. 10: The results of a DNA test conducted on Mohamud are released and confirm her identity. The test results show there’s a 99.99 per cent chance that she is the mother of her son in Toronto, Boulakia says.

Aug. 11: A day after the DNA test results emerge, the Canadian Border Services Agency says it is working on issuing Mohamud emergency travel documents so she can return to Canada. Spokeswoman Tracie LeBlanc declines to specify whether the documents include an emergency passport or when Mohamud would return.

Aug. 12: Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says the federal government has “no excuse” for failing to come to Mohamud’s aid, saying there’s something “fundamentally wrong” when Ottawa can’t be counted on to stand up for Canadians.

The Foreign Affairs spokesperson says the Canadian government has asked Kenyan authorities to drop the charges against Mohamud. Kenyan officials say a motion to drop the charges will be filed on Aug. 14.

Aug. 13: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had yet to publicly comment on the case, tells reporters that the government’s priorities are now “to see her get on a flight back to Canada.”

It actually took this long to verify her identity! This woman produced all sorts of legal documents to prove her identity and was still ignored. I can understand that if an official cannot verify your identity through your passport photo that you may at the very least delayed. When you are genuinely shocked and eagerly produce many other forms of identification confirming your identity including your family back in Canada, that alone should raise a flag that maybe you are who you profess to be. From that point on the investigation should move in the direction of proving that you are who you are rather than proving you are not who you are.

It gets better as on May 28 Liliane Khadour, the Canadian High Commission’s first secretary, tells Kenyan government officials a thorough investigation has determined Mohamud is an impostor and recommends that she be prosecuted.

This story should be a wake up call for all Canadians traveling abroad. If you get into any trouble will the Canadian government do anything to help you? It appears not. Not only will they not help you, but in this case literally hand you over to foreign authorities to be placed under arrest. I have seen this woman’s picture on the news and with it her passport photo and although she is wearing what appears to be a hijab in her passport photo, I did not have any difficulty recognizing her in that photo.

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The latest and craziest so far happened in Glenrock Wyoming when a 76 year old man on a 1958 John Deere tractor accidentally bumped a police car in the annual Deer Creek Days parade on August 1. He was apparently riding on the fender controlling the speed and the clutch while a friend’s 9 year old son was at the wheel. He failed to obey police directions they say. Now that deserves a good old fashioned shocking doesn’t it?

The people of the small town of Glenrock are clearly outraged at the incident and are calling for the town to fire the two police officers involved. The response from the police department is that both officers have been put on paid leave. The chief has issued a statement saying, “I’ll be the first to admit, we probably didn’t do things the best way we could have,”

I come across many elderly people in my job that are not in the best of spirits shall I say and some with quite a temper. I have a partner with me and if the elderly person doesn’t have a weapon on them, I have never had any problem dealing with the situation. This 76 year old man was riding in a parade with a friend’s son and bumped a police car and he gets tasered multiple times.

I definitely file this one under Overdone

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When it comes to these big news events, we all want straight facts and all of them. It’s at these times we become news hounds and can’t seem to get enough. This is where CNN comes in and as I cringe they are good at it. There are sides however to CNN that I can’t and will never be able to digest. One of these sides is their love for over dramatizing their reporting of just about any event. Let’s take for example a hurricane. Not that they can ever be over dramatized, but it’s not the event, it’s the reporting that makes me say “I hate this, but I love it”.

A number of years ago, not too long ago actually, I had the misfortune of having to ride out a very powerful hurricane in Mexico, you may remember Hurricane Wilma that landed as a category 5 and moved very slowly for 24 hours. If you’ve ever been in a Hurricane and I know that many have, it’s a powerful experience even when you are perfectly safe as we were. During the storm I was able to move around a little within my hurricane resistant resort, take a lot of photos, and get a feel of the power and destruction of a powerful hurricane.

To make a long story short, the winds are not survivable if you’re out in the open. First, they will pick you up and throw you into the nearest solid piece of whatever and then you are dead and secondly if it matters at that point, the wind creates a vacuum in your lungs and you can’t breath. These are two very simple reasons you can’t be out in a hurricane without protection. Getting back to my point, CNN reporters on the ground in a hurricane seem to defy these things and make it sound like they are actually fully out and surviving the full brunt of the storm. Impossible I say, but I love it anyway.

Another thing that actually keeps me from watching their regular news broadcasts, the ones without a big event is the anchor people themselves. Often they are joined by an expert on a subject who is let’s say in New York while they are in Atlanta. After the introductions, the questions begin, but what happens time and time again is once the expert begins to answer, they are constantly cut off or interrupted altogether by the news person. If that’s not bad enough, they sometimes disagree with their invited expert as if they know absolutely everything there is to know about the subject. That being so, then why bring on an expert.

Listen CNN, you guys are reporters not nuclear scientists, but when it comes to the big news stories you can bet I will be glued to CNN.

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