Top headlines from Vancouver and beyond for October 13 2011:

Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, has indicated his group will be joining the Occupy Vancouver protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery this Saturday, upping the ante considerably. “The Occupy Wall Street movement expresses an underlying desire for fairness and equality in the economy and our society. The B.C. Federation of Labour stands in solidarity with that desire, and calls on the governments of British Columbia and Canada to act swiftly and decisively to narrow the gap,” a statement on the federation’s website reads.

The Harper government is endorsing a research project that will administer free heroin to Vancouver drug addicts, just days after their hardline stance on supervised injection was rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada. The SALOME project will test whether drug addicts can be weaned off heroin using a high-powered, legal alternative, known as hydromorphone.

BC Hydro is set to slash 300 jobs this week, part of their plan to reduce staff by 700 over the next three years.

A Burnaby man claims he lost his job following rumours on Facebook that he murdered 18-year old Jamie Kehoe, who was stabbed to death while attempting to break up a fight on public transit. The incident has shadows of the public shaming movement spawned earlier this year by the Stanley Cup riots.

And finally, embattled RIM announced that service outages affecting Blackberry customers worldwide have been resolved, with company CEO Jim Balsillie offering a rare public apology.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: “Portugal’s market has died. Banks aren’t lending. Everything is blocked.”