Years after Ontario named a stretch of Highway 401 the same thing in honour of the dead veterans brought back from Afghanistan, Nova Scotia has dedicated Highway 111 in Dartmouth.

The premier says it celebrates all heroes including firefighters, paramedics, police, and everyday heroes, plus, of course, veterans.

Highway 111, known around here as the Circ, starts at the Dartmouth side of the MacKay bridge and ends at Pleasant Street.

BuckyBalls novelty sets contain a number of rare earth element magnets many times more powerful than traditional magnets.

Some children have needed emergency surgery to remove swallowed magnets that can attract one another while moving through the intestines.

The magnets can trap intestinal tissue between them and cause life-threatening blockages or tearing.

Distributors of BuckyBalls are voluntarily recalling the products after a Health Canada risk assessment found they pose a danger to human health and safety.

The federal department says consumers should stop using the magnet sets and contact their municipality for instructions on safe disposal or recycling.

“Canadians expect that products they find on store shelves will be safe,” Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said in a statement Wednesday. “It’s clear that some products containing small, powerful magnets pose a danger to children so we are taking action to have them removed from the marketplace.”

The adult entertainment products typically involve puzzle working, sculpture building, mental stimulation or stress relief.

Online:

Recall advisory: http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2013/29247r-eng.php

The 70-year-old Emmy Award winner is profiled in Barry Avrich’s new film “Quality Balls — the David Steinberg Story,” which opens at Toronto’s Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on Friday and airs on HBO Canada and Movie Central on Saturday. He recently sat down with The Canadian Press to talk about the film.

CP: It seems you never had to change who you were throughout your career — is that a rarity in the comedy world?

DS: In those days it was. You’ve got to remember, the comedians before me — Buddy Hackett and George Burns, Milton Berle — they were all Jewish comedians and they couldn’t even keep their names because you just weren’t allowed to be that ethnic. … When I came out of Second City and people started to notice me and I was on Broadway and started to get crowds coming to see me, the agents came around and said, ‘Steinberg? There is no Steinberg who has a television show. You have to change your name,’ and I thought, ‘That’s ridiculous, I’m not going to do that,’ and they said, ‘Well, OK, you’re limiting your career.’ I thought, ‘What’s the point in my career if I have to be somebody else to start with?’ So that wasn’t difficult for me, that’s just who I was.

CP: There’s a standup bit in the film in which you tell the audience that your parents immigrated from Russia and wound up “in a worse place — Winnipeg.” But you must have a real reverence for the city.

DS: Winnipeg is an amazing place. It doesn’t look like much, it’s cold, as everyone knows, and in the summer the mosquitoes are as large as can be. But it was a great place to grow up, especially in the ’50s. Radio was incredible in Canada, so I was listening to stories that I could create pictures of in my own mind, and that, very frankly, became my standup technique. Every piece of material I had, I created a picture that the audience could see, because that’s what I grew up listening to, and that was my idea of great storytelling.

CP: It’s interesting how your pathway into the entertainment world came when you followed a group of girls into a drama class at the University of Chicago.

DS: I was just an adolescent, hormones raging, and I was interested in girls. I didn’t know if they were interested in me but they led me to the University of Chicago theatre and then I met the head of the theatre. But I could talk. I was in the coffee shop at the University of Chicago every morning, whatever was going on, I would talk about it. I had never seen a comedian, I hadn’t seen any plays at that point. … When I got to the theatre and I started to talk that way, one of the theatre guys was from Second City and he said, ‘You’re made for Second City,’ … and that’s how it all started.

CP: And that’s where you started to do your satirical sermons.

DS: I did a lot of characters at Second City but the sermons seemed to strike a chord. They were very original. To be doing anything on the Bible and especially religion in those days, it was bold. I didn’t think of it as bold, I just thought, ‘This is something I know, I’m just going to trade in on it.’ And then when I started to do standup, you need to have something to start with, you have to have a way to talk to the audience, and I at least had these sermons … where you could give me any suggestion of the Old Testament and I sort of knew it, because that was my background. And from there I started to find a little bit of a story … and before long I had an act.

CP: “The Tonight Show” is a big component of this film, as is your friendship with Johnny Carson. You were on his show the second-most amount of times, next to Bob Hope. As the appearances racked up, did you get a sense of what it was doing for your career?

DS: I didn’t have a sense that I was collecting a kind of material that would be remembered or anything like that, but I did love doing ‘The Tonight Show’ because I did have that Second City background. Johnny could call me in the last minute so I could be on with him and he shared in what I did as much as I did. I would throw up a subject, we would both go at it together, and he was an incredible comedian, not just a listening host. … We were good friends, we laughed at the same things, we read the same things, and he was a sort of mentor of mine.

CP: What do you make of the late-night landscape today?

DS: “The Tonight Show” and Letterman and all of that, it’s different because there are so many late-night shows that you don’t have the tension or you don’t see that special guest that you don’t get to see anywhere else, because when you’re promoting something you go on all the shows. So it sort of diminishes from what it was with only three networks to start with, and even when there was cable, Johnny still sort of ruled. It has sort of levelled out. I think they’re all good hosts in their own way.

CP: What do you think of Jay Leno’s term ending and “The Tonight Show” going to New York City?

DS: I think going back to New York is a good idea, actually, because New York is lively and it’s a different atmosphere. L.A. is a little more laid back and you have Craig Ferguson and you have Jimmy Kimmel, you have a lot of shows in L.A. I think it’s a good idea.

CP: Jerry Seinfeld is also featured in this film, asking you about returning to standup, and we see you doing a standup special throughout the film. Is returning to standup something that you’re thinking of?

DS: Yeah, I worked out for a week in La Jolla Playhouse, which is sort of a well-known way in which to go to Broadway. … I’m sort of challenging myself by doing it. I don’t do standup, I never did jokey standup, so it’s just sort of storytelling. … So I’m exploring being onstage again.

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Answers have been edited and condensed.

The municipal government has released the advisory, which applies to the lower half of the island, after problems at a water-filtration station.

Residents are advised to boil their water for at least a minute, or to use bottled water. They are also asked to avoid brushing their teeth with tap water.

However, tap water can still be used to wash dishes, take a shower or wash clothes.

The city says the advisory was prompted by abnormally low water levels as a filtration plant in the city’s west end, and discoloured water. Tests are being conducted on the water to determine whether it is, in fact, contaminated.

It’s the second major infrastructure problem in the city in less than 24 hours.

The previous evening, the city’s metro system suffered a complete shutdown at the height of rush hour because of a computer problem.

There was yet another glitch today: the city website, which carried the water advisory, appeared to be down.

The 23-year-old, who won the Fox singing series last week after competing for four months, is set to release “Music Speaks” on July 16.

Past “Idol” champs released their debut albums in the fall after winning the contest in the spring, but Glover said she’s ready to capitalize on the insta-fame “Idol” has given her.

“I’ve built a fan base being on this show, and my fan base is interested in me now and they won’t see me every Wednesday and Thursday anymore to admire my singing, so I think it’s a good thing it’s coming out this summer,” she said in an interview this week.

“It’s crazy that I’m even talking about an album because last year I was working at a resort,” she added, laughing.

“Music Speaks” was available on pre-order the day after she won the “Idol” crown, beating out country singer Kree Harrison. Glover’s debut single, the inspirational pop ballad “I Am Beautiful,” sold 48,000 tracks in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The St. Helena Island, S.C., native, who auditioned but didn’t make the cut in seasons nine and 11, said the “Idol” experience has made her more confident.

She said taking risks on the show — like performing Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” and Drake’s “Find Your Love” — is helping her find her true voice.

“(From) day one I was still in the mind-set of pleasing people. In season 11, I was all about pleasing people. … This year I took more chances because I didn’t care anymore,” she said. “I didn’t always have that confidence. I was insecure about how I looked and people would tell me all the time, ‘You don’t look the part.’ And this year I kind of stopped caring about that and just did me.”

Glover said she’s heading to Los Angeles this week to begin work on her album.

“My album will most likely be R&B, soul and a little bit of jazz, almost like a Jazmine Sullivan vibe because I love her. She’s my favourite singer of all time,” Glover said of the Grammy-nominated songstress whose R&B hits include “Need U Bad” and “Holding You Down (Goin’ in Circles).”

When asked what producers and songwriters she would be working with, she said: “I have no idea.”

Glover, who is also influenced by Christina Aguilera, said she wants her album to be full of positive messages, much like her first single.

“I was in school for psychology because I wanted to counsel teenage girls that had those insecurity problems, and I’m glad my music has that connection with people because that’s really what I wanted to do whether I was singing or not,” she said.

The top 11 contestants on “Idol” will kick off a 40-show concert tour June 29 in St. Louis, Miss.

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Online:

http://www.americanidol.com/

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu at http://www.twitter.com/MusicMesfin

“Whenever we open a new store in the U.S., there is a rush of traffic and sales as curious guests shop it for the first time,” chief financial officer John Mulligan told investors during a conference call Wednesday.

“But the rush in Canada exceeded our expectations.”

The results at Target’s Canadian operations were dominated by startup expenses, but the company said they should improve overall earnings by the fourth quarter.

The Canadian stores generated $86 million in sales even though they were, on average, open for just over half of the quarter which ended May 4.

Sales were strongest in home and clothing, categories the company said that shoppers tend to hit on their first trip to a Target.

In March, Target opened its first 24 Canadian stores in southern Ontario — the company’s first foray outside the U.S.

“We experienced an unexpectedly strong surge in sales as guests were eager to see their newly opened Target store,” said Gregg Steinhafel, Target’s chairman, president and chief executive.

Two weeks ago, the chain opened its second wave of 24 Canadian stores in Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia.

Target plans to open 20 more stores in Canada later this quarter. If all goes according to plan, by the end of the year Target will have opened a total of 124 stores.

“This means we expect to open more Target stores in our first year in Canada than we opened in our first 10 years in the United States,” said Steinhafel.

Despite the excitement in Canada, cool temperatures and financial pressures curbed customers’ appetites for spending, and the company’s overall operations saw first-quarter profits drop 26 per cent drop.

The Minneapolis-based company also cut its annual profit outlook, sending its stock down in afternoon trading.

Target is the latest in a string of companies including rival Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that underscore how weather and other pressures on lower- to middle-income shoppers hurt business in the first couple months of the year.

Still, Target, whose sales growth has been uneven since the recession, remains confident in its strategies to attract shoppers.

Target has reached out to customers with two big growth initiatives. It has been offering a larger selection of food and also a program, started in 2010, that gives shoppers a five per cent discount when they pay with Target-branded credit and debit cards.

At the same time, Target continues to team up with new designers for limited-time partnerships. Earlier this month, Target announced its latest designer collaboration, with Phillip Lim. The collection is due out in September.

Last year, Target expanded into urban markets using smaller versions of its big-box stores in Seattle, Los Angeles and Chicago.

“Target’s first- quarter earnings were below expectations as a result of softer-than-expected sales, particularly in apparel and other seasonal and weather-sensitive categories,” Steinhafel said in a statement.

“While we are disappointed in our first-quarter performance, we remain confident in our strategy, and we continue to invest in initiatives, including Canada, our digital channels, and CityTarget, that will drive Target’s long-term growth.”

Target said it earned $498 million, or 77 cents per share, for the three months ended May 4. That compares with $697 million, or $1.04 per share, a year earlier.

Sales rose one per cent to $16.71 billion.

Revenue at stores open at least a year slipped 0.6 per cent. That’s considered an important measure of retail performance because it strips out the effect of stores that open or close during the year.

Analysts had expected earnings of 95 cents per share on revenue of $16.82 billion.

Target expects that adjusted earnings per share will be in a range between $1.09 and $1.19 for the quarter.

For the full year, the company now expects $4.70 per share to $4.90 per share. That’s down from its original guidance of $4.85 per share to $5.05 per share.

Analysts had forecast $1.11 per share for the second quarter and $4.63 per share for the year.

Target’s stock dropped 3.67 per cent to $68.65 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

—With files from the Associated Press

Striker Melissa Tancredi returns for the first time since the 2012 Olympics and joins 13 other members of that bronze-winning team.

The June 2 sellout game at BMO Field in Toronto will effectively be a rematch of the semifinal loss to the United States that kept Canada out of the gold-medal game.

Coach John Herdman says it was important to blend youth and experience, but the weight seems to be on the experience side.

The United States has also announced its roster and Carli Lloyd will be rejoining the team for the first time since breaking her shoulder in March.

The network on Thursday will begin airing “Does Someone Have to Go?” a series where cameras go into small businesses and employees are compelled to rat out underperforming colleagues. At the end, they choose one co-worker to recommend for firing.

“This is the thing they promise to do in retreats but nobody really does it,” said Mike Darnell, executive in charge of alternative programming for Fox.

Darnell and Fox have pushed the boundaries of reality TV since it was first recognized as a genre, from the highs of “American Idol” to the lows of “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?” He said he sees “Does Someone Have to Go?” as a new direction for a programming form dominated by singing and dancing competitions.

It’s a revamped version of a show, then called “Someone’s Gotta Go,” that Fox had been working on with the Endemol production company four years ago. In its initial incarnation, employees were given the power to determine who should be laid off within companies that needed to shrink for economic reasons. The show drew awful advance publicity — one magazine called it a step toward public executions — and never aired.

“The network decided the heat was too intense given the economic climate,” Darnell said. “We never lost our affinity for the idea.”

Along with the softer name, the new version takes the economy out of it; productivity and personality are at the roots of employment decisions. A firing isn’t necessarily mandated — probation or options like anger management counselling are considered. Within the three companies profiled for the six episodes, Darnell said that people are fired.

Thursday’s first episode focuses on Velocity Merchant Services, a company based in the Chicago suburbs that sells credit card processing machines. Sixteen employees participate, and the show quickly labels them: There’s the procrastinator, the motor mouth, the jerk, the slacker and the tattle-tale.

Each employee is interviewed on camera talking about colleagues, then everyone is called into a conference room to see what the others said. They are also told each other’s salaries, before voting on three of their colleagues that most deserve firing, a process that reduces one woman to tears.

Then, in the ultimate reality show twist, the 16 employees are brought into a conference room where the video screen shows portraits of each of them. One by one, a picture is removed, until only the three “losers” remain onscreen. One is the mother of company founder Dema Barakat, judged by her colleagues to be a management mole who is paid too much.

Next week: choosing who among the three get to keep their jobs.

The show’s executive producer, Chris Abrego, said it is “absolutely not cruel. It’s not like a random firing … It really is a process of them proving their value to the company.”

Why would a company put itself through this? Publicity is alluring, particularly for a small firm, and a show like “Undercover Boss” on CBS has proven beneficial to many companies that have participated, said Geoff Wilson, president and CEO of 352 Media Group, a digital marketing agency based in Gainesville, Fla., that seriously considered being part of the show. Producers offered to pay the company $25,000 to participate and would spruce up the office to make it more camera-friendly. Each employee who agreed to be part of it would be paid $1,500. Producers would contribute $10,000 toward a severance package for anyone fired, he said.

Velocity, or VMS, is a family-run company that had hit a plateau, said Danoush Khairkhah, CEO and Barakat’s husband. Its biggest problems were with personalities, not with business, he said.

“Opportunity knocks only several times in your life,” Khairkhah said.

He was interested to see how his employees would perform when given the chance to take issues into their own hands. They knew what they were getting into, he said, although they didn’t know specifically they would see film of colleagues criticizing them or learn their salaries.

“It’s not bad to sit there and hear what your colleagues think of you,” he said. “How many times in your life does someone sit you down and say, ‘Here are the things I don’t like about you?’ That’s great. Now you can correct them and go on the right path. Some people can, and some people crumble when they hear negative things.”

Things have improved at VMS since the show was filmed over five days last December, he said. Employees are taking more initiative and aren’t afraid to speak up about problems. Khairkhah and his employees haven’t seen the show yet. They plan a party Thursday night to all watch it together.

He does have some concerns after seeing commercials promoting the show.

“No one wants to see a commercial about your business saying ‘toxic office,’” he said. “If it was toxic, we wouldn’t be here 15 years. When I saw that I was kind of shocked. But I understand this is show business and they’ve got to build up drama.”

352 Media Group was very close to participating, Wilson said. Most of his employees wanted to, although there was a vocal minority. He was told the show was called “Office Life,” he said, but noticed a clause in the contract that gave producers the right to change the title if they wanted.

Hmmmm. That made him suspicious.

“I wouldn’t say the producers lied to us,” he said. “I would say that they creatively represented the facts.” (Abrego said that dealings with the companies have been “100 per cent above board.”)

After Wilson turned Endemol down, producers sent him a copy of a show pilot to see what it was like and offer advice. He breathed a sigh of relief; his company depends on teams working well together and a public airing of dirty laundry would have been devastating, he said.

“I am unbelievably happy that our sixth sense told us to stay away from this,” Wilson said.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — David Bauder can be reached at dbauder(at)ap.org or on Twitter (at)dbauder. His work can be found at http:bigstory.ap.org/content/david-bauder.

The eight-time Pro Bowl player announced his retirement on his Twitter account Wednesday. In a statement, he said, “After spending a lot of time this spring thinking about my NFL future, I have made a decision to retire.”

“Although I could continue playing, I’m not sure I would bring a level of performance or passion that’s up to my standards,” he said. “When considering this, along with the fact that I could retire after a 13-year career wearing only one jersey for such a storied franchise, my decision became pretty clear.”

Urlacher was the face of the Bears’ franchise and leaves as one of the game’s great linebackers. In March, he and the Bears were unable to reach a contract agreement and he became a free agent.

He started 180 games from 2000 through 2012, and recorded a team-record 1,779 tackles. He has 41 1/2 sacks, 22 interceptions, 16 fumble recoveries and 11 forced fumbles. He was the AP’s defensive player of the year in 2005 and helped the 2006 team to the Super Bowl.

Last year, he was slowed by a knee problem and then missed the final four games with a hamstring injury.

He had posted pictures on Twitter indicating he was working his way back into shape before the split with the Bears, but when they announced he would not be back, it was hardly a surprise.

Urlacher told the team’s flagship radio station at the time that he was not shocked and that the offer he received was “more like an ultimatum” in which they were telling him, “Sign this contract or we are going to move on.”

The split with Urlacher was one of many moves in a busy off-season for the Bears.

They fired coach Lovie Smith after a second straight late collapse left them out of the playoffs for the fifth time in six years even though they did finish with 10 wins.

They replaced him with the offensive-minded Marc Trestman, hoping he could get the most out of quarterback Jay Cutler, and revamped their offensive line.

On defence, the only starting linebacker returning is Lance Briggs. Veteran free agent acquisition D.J. Williams and second-round draft pick Jon Bostic are expected to compete for the middle linebacker job with Urlacher gone.

A safety with lightning speed, the 6-foot-4 Urlacher initially lined up at strong side linebacker for the Bears but lost the job to Roosevelt Colvin. He made the switch to middle linebacker during his first season when Barry Minter was injured and went on to become the NFL’s defensive rookie of the year, the start of a long run that saw him anchor a defence that consistently ranked among the league’s best.

But he clearly wasn’t his old explosive self last year. The speed and quickness that allowed him to wreak havoc for years simply wasn’t there.

Urlacher sprained his medial collateral ligament and partially sprained the posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during the 2011 regular-season finale against Minnesota and hasn’t been the same since then.

He barely participated in training camp, had an arthroscopic procedure in mid-August to relieve the swelling, and spent most of the season trying to regain his old form.

Then, he came up lame in coverage on the second-to-last snap of the Bears’ overtime loss to Seattle in early December, an injury that ended his season and, ultimately, his career.