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In the news today: Pauline Marois, Justin Trudeau, ebola, a jailed journalist and must-see TV

Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois, right, arrives with women's rights activist Janette Bertrand during a Quebec provincial election campaign stop in Laval, Que., Sunday March 30, 2014. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois, right, with women’s rights activist Janette Bertrand during a Quebec provincial election campaign stop in Laval, Que. on Sunday March 30, 2014. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

Pauline Marois would use the notwithstanding clause to save the charter of values. As the Quebec provincial election campaign enters its final week (voters go to the polls on April 7), PQ leader Pauline Marois is trying to shift the conversation from talk of another referendum back to the so-called Quebec charter of values. This morning, Marois promised that if the PQ is elected with a majority, it will immediately reintroduce the secular charter of values, a law which would ban public employees from wearing religious symbols. (Muslim women would not be permitted to cover their heads and Sikh men would not be allowed to wear turbans while at work, for example.) Marois took her pledge a step further Monday, saying that she would use the notwithstanding clause, should the constitutionality of the proposed law be challenged in court—something which would almost certainly happen in short order, were such a bill to be passed.

Justin Trudeau swore and now he’s kind of sorry for it. The Liberal leader dropped the f-bomb at a charity boxing match he was hosting Saturday evening. Monday, the Conservatives were trying to make the most of the curse, telling CBC is was just another example of Trudeau’s poor judgement. Meanwhile, more news continued to emerge over the, perhaps, poor judgement of now former Conservative Party executive director Dimitri Soudas. The Conservtives weren’t the only ones who gave the Liberal leader a hard time over his salty language. His wife was none too happy, either. “If you had seen the scolding that Sophie gave me, you would have wished you’d used a different adjective as well,” Trudeau told reporters Monday after an appearance at the Ajax-Pickering Board of Trade.

Don’t panic, but Ebola is spreading in West Africa. Guinea is facing a epidemic of ebola “of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the distribution of cases in the country,” a doctor with Médecins sans Frontières told the Gaurdian. More than 80 people are suspected to have died from the virus so far, with 22 of these deaths laboratory-confirmed. There is no known vaccine or cure for ebola, which is spread through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids or tissues. It has a mortality rate of around 90 per cent. More bad news: neighbouring Liberia has now confirmed two cases of the disease, meaning it has spread across the border.

Mohamed Fahmy remains in an Egyptian jail. The Al-Jazeera English journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who has Canadian citizenship, was again denied bail by an Egyptian judge Monday. Fahmy and two of his co-workers, Australian Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohammed, face charges of terrorism and have remained in prison since they were first detained on Dec. 29. They have been accused of giving a platform to the Muslim Brotherhood. All three journalists maintain that they were just doing their jobs at the time of their arrests.

The final episode of How I Met Your Mother airs tonight. Set your PVRs, after nine years the hit sitcom starring Josh Radnor, Jason Segal, Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris is coming to a close, with its final episode airing on City at 8 p.m. EST. Maclean’s associate editor Jaime Weinman looks at the show, and its unlikely success during a time when sitcoms are on the decline, over here.

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