Google to launch music store

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 10:29 AM - 0 Comments

Google is steadily edging into Apple’s music domain. Industry sources are reporting that Google is building its own music service that offers song downloads and streaming music. The service is expect to launch as early as this fall. While Google had already hinted it was planning on expanding into music to complement features on its Andriod phone, its plans appear to be even bigger and a Google music store is reportedly in the works. Music insiders say that Google has been in talks with chief music executives including Sony and Universal. Ultimately, however, the web giant’s strength lies within its streaming music assets, including YouTube and Simplify Media.

CNET

America's more friendly face

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 4 Comments

Dadang Tri/Reuters

Barack Obama’s rhetoric on the campaign trail and during his first days in office revolved around the promise of change, notably when it came to how America would relate to the Muslim nations of the Middle East. “We seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” he said in his inauguration speech.

“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

Continue…

What the bleep?

By Katie Engelhart - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 11 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW TOLSON

Dr. Dante Morra likes to say that “in the 1990s, the only people who used pagers were gangs and doctors.” His punchline: “Now, it’s only doctors. The gangs have moved on.” Danielle Kain, a medical resident in Halifax, recently became one of those doctors. At the start of her residency, she was assigned a basic pager—“a big, clunky, ’90s-style thing . . . not quite as big as a deck of cards.” Now Kain says she gets paged for “anything from ‘this patient is nauseated’ to ‘this patient is complaining of chest pain.’ ” Either way, she drops what she is doing and runs to the nearest phone.

There are few professions where the sound of a beeper still inspires panic. A decade ago, Motorola, the industry king, announced it was bowing out of the pager biz because of lagging profits. Tech writers penned obituaries for the corporate toy. “Death of the Pager?”, mused Forbes in 2001.

Continue…

Down to three

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 9:58 AM - 81 Comments

The Afghan detainee document negotiations apparently have come to a conclusion—a deal announced in the House just now—but the NDP is out, citing exemptions in the new deal. They will now put their own proposal to the House, the text of which is here.

The NDP’s claim is that the current deal “excludes legal documents and cabinet records from review, contrary to the intent of the Speaker’s ruling.” The Liberals are countering that such claims to exemption will be reviewed by the panel of jurists.

More to follow, perhaps once the text of the deal is available.

The people will be heard

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 29 Comments

Of all the causes that have inspired a demonstration on Parliament Hill, surely this is the least worthy.

Jason Spezza may have plenty of critics in Ottawa, but he has just as many fans, and on Saturday more than 100 will show their support for him during a rally on Parliament Hill.

The aim of the rally will be to convince the Ottawa Senators to keep the mercurial centre instead of trading him before his no-trade clause kicks in on July 1. “Every time something goes wrong with the Sens, it seems like there’s a need for a whipping boy and we’re sick of it,” said Louise Tremblay, who is organizing the rally. “Jason Spezza is our No. 1 centre and we don’t want to see him go.”

The Accidental Citizen

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 9:04 AM - 20 Comments

One of the most eagerly anticipated exercises in Canadian civics research has been released. Entitled The Accidental Citizen, it’s a report on a series of exit interviews with former MPs, and was conducted by Michael MacMillan and Alison Loat at Samara. Alison was on The Current this morning, you can stream or podcast it from the CBC site if you missed it.

You can download the report or  join the debate on the Samara site. Here’s the link.

The Commons: Marching off to war with an army of strawmen

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 8:51 PM - 92 Comments

The Scene. For sure, this saga may arrive at a happy ending, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Our democracy may yet survive this test. We may yet get through the week with the basic foundation of our society more or less in tact. But will that necessarily atone for this spectacle? Will the end result redeem the process?

Up first at Question Period this afternoon to begin the latest turn in what will either be remembered as a testament to the enduring reasonableness of our system or the most tawdry of charades, was Michael Ignatieff. The leader of the opposition reviewed the facts—that the Speaker had ruled that Parliament could well demand to review documents related to the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, but that the government had so far failed to agree to a process whereby that could occur. Would the Prime Minister, Mr. Ignatieff wondered, instruct the government’s representatives to agree to a suitable arrangement and abide by the Speaker’s ruling?

The Prime Minister was not present, so over then to the Justice Minister, who rose with a pair of strawmen by his side. Continue…

How do you feel about Quebecor’s plan to launch a conservative news network in Canada?

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 5:59 PM - 94 Comments

Crowding out the dead

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 5:42 PM - 1 Comment

Even the dead have to jostle for space in India’s teeming cities. Hindus cremate their loved ones, but the country’s Muslim and Christian minorities usually choose burial—and they fear the practice is under threat. About 185 million Indians belong to the two faiths, with census figures recording 13 per cent of the population as Muslim and two per cent as Christian. “Go anywhere in India and see the graveyards, they are all full,” said Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, chairman of the All India Imam Organization in New Delhi. “The government has been overlooking this issue for decades.” Muslims bury the dead as fast as possible, and disapprove of cremation as they believe there will be a physical resurrection on the Day of Judgment. India’s relatively small Christian community—like many of their faith around the world—are increasingly choosing cremation over burial for reasons of both space and cost. But Father Rebello, chairman of the Delhi Cemetery Committee, said many Indian Christians were hesitant to abandon the tradition of burial. “Several families are turning one grave into a family grave to accommodate all the members—at least four more can be buried in the same place,” he said. “We are suggesting families should start cremating the bodies and recently a priest in Delhi was cremated to promote it but we cannot force anyone.” The concept of family graves, or the “tier” system, where coffins are placed one above the other, originated in India in the southern state of Kerala and has slowly gained more acceptance. Some graves in the city of Chennai have been repeatedly reopened to add more family members, said Francis Fernandes, a local priest. “One family went into a state of shock when seeing a half-decomposed body when they were trying to place the second coffin in their family grave,” he said. But for the country’s Muslims and Christians, the government offers little hope of new graveyards as urban development picks up pace.

AFP

The real Armageddon

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 9 Comments

While fringe believers in the Mayan calendar bunker down for the imagined apocalypse of 2012, modern scientific minds are looking to the distant future to find what might really destroy humankind, the earth, and everything else in the universe. Writing for the Independent, astronomer Chris Impey explains that small meteors smash into mankind’s home planet fairly frequently, but about every 100,000 years a massive projectile strikes, causing global tidal waves and creating a dust cloud capable of killing off all of the world’s vegetation. Every 100 million years an even more massive asteroid hits home, immediately killing all large land animals and soon after destroying everything in the sea as photosynthesis stops. Scientists carefully monitor the skies to make sure we know of these huge space projectiles while they’re still far off, giving us enough time to send up spaceships that could gently tug them off their collision course. But, scientists warn, while an asteroid could come along any day, and be prevented from hitting earth, there are much larger scale disasters looming that can’t be stopped. The sun will sputter out in 5 billion years, although by then the force of gravity itself could be turned into a source of energy that may keep mankind alive, and the Milky Way will fall apart as more of it’s stars turn to white dwarfs and black holes. Over trillions of years the same thing will happen across the universe, but its death could come even sooner. As cosmic expansion, spurred on by mysterious dark matter, continues to accelerate, plants, stars and galaxies will be torn apart and what scientists have coined “the big rip” will destroy the universe, and all energy and life within it. However, if researchers are wrong and that doesn’t happen, the universe could last for about 10^35 years, by which time protons will have become unstable, and existence itself will no longer exist.

Independent

Deal or no deal

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 4:57 PM - 18 Comments

The parties are presently together at an undisclosed location in hopes of negotiating the release of Afghan detainee documents. The meeting apparently began as scheduled around 4:15pm and, seemingly, continues as of this writing. More to follow, one assumes.

***

The meeting seems to have ended without a deal, but with some intention to meet again tomorrow. On CTV just now, Joe Comartin’s said the government has made two concessions, but two other points are apparently outstanding.

***

Mr. Comartin raises the possibility of a government deal with the Liberals and Bloc.

MS Society of Canada “a house divided,” CEO says

By Anne Kingston - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 2:07 PM - 49 Comments

Italian vascular surgeon Paulo Zamboni: the man behind the new treatment for CCSVI (CP/NATHAN DENETTE)

Tensions boiled over at the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada’s annual meeting on Saturday as MS patients and their advocates turned up in unprecedented numbers to demand the organization help them gain access to treatment for chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, or CCSVI.

In past years the charity has had difficulty rounding up the 15 members required to achieve quorum. This year, more than 60 people showed up at a mid-town Toronto hotel, many with proxies to support Linda Molyneux and Brock Winterton, two rogue board nominees who support CCSVI treatment being made immediately available in Canada. After votes were tallied, neither came close to unseating the five board nominees on a slate proposed by the society’s governance committee.

The attempted putsch reflected frustration among its 31,000 members over the society’s resistance to supporting treatment for CCSVI, a condition identified by Italian vascular surgeon Paulo Zamboni that made headlines after a CTV broadcast last November. Zamboni had discovered blockages in the neck and thorax veins of MS patients. After they received balloon angioplasties to restore blood flow, a routine procedure in cardiac medicine, many saw their symptoms improve; some saw the disease’s progression halt.

The MS Society has taken the position that CCSVI treatment is “experimental,” that Zamboni’s research is yet to be scientifically tested, and that the results of clinical trials, which could take years, are necessary before CCSVI treatment be given the green light.

“It’s an exciting time in MS research,” Linda Lumsden, chair of the national board of directors for the MS Society, told the crowd, noting “CCSVI has consumed the interest of the membership.” On Friday the Canadian and U.S. MS societies announced $2.4 million for four research studies in the U.S. and three in Canada; all will research CCSVI but not test possible treatment. The society has also requested $10 million for CCSVI research from the federal government, Lumsden said. She was particularly buoyed by the charity’s recent partnering with A&W expected to net some $400,000: “Go out and buy a hamburger on August 26,” she instructed the crowd.

But she couldn’t ignore the anger percolating in the room: “I know there is a level of frustration but we are working aggressively to get scientific evidence,” she said. “Then we can advocate.”

The stance infuriated many. “People with MS don’t have the luxury of time,” said Brock Winterton, a Toronto financial analyst who spoke of the “growing sense of despair” watching the disease weaken his wife, Janet Heisey. “There was nothing until we found out about Dr. Zamboni’s work,” he said. “And we had something and it was called hope.” After the meeting, the couple flew to Bulgaria where Heisey was booked for CCSVI treatment. People with MS “don’t understand why something so low-risk should be denied to them,” Winterton said, criticizing the “modest” $350,000 the society has allocated annually for each CCSVI study, noting it’s a mere 2 per cent of its total research funding.

Linda Molyneux, whose 22-year-old son received CCSVI treatment in Bulgaria earlier this week, blasted the society for being unresponsive to its constituency: “It has become clear MS societies have lost touch with their membership,” she said. “Are they here to serve neurologists and drug companies? Or are they here to serve people with MS?” she asked, noting: “Patients feel the single greatest impediment that stands between them and this treatment is the MS Society.” She spoke of the toll the disease took on her son, such as the crushing fatigue that caused him to drop out of university. Days after his CCSVI procedure, she added, he was out sight-seeing with his father.

Practice v. preach

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 1:59 PM - 81 Comments

Michael Ignatieff surveys the state of affairs.

“I think we’ve got a politics of division (and) I think we’ve got a politics of spite,” Ignatieff told reporters outside the museum. ”It looks pretty mean, sometimes, in the House of Commons. We’ve got to all raise our game as politicians and appeal to the best in Canadians, not their worst.”

Obama's first Oval Office speech to target BP

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 1:12 PM - 5 Comments

President Obama will use his first speech from the Oval Office to compel BP to compensate businesses and individuals for losses incurred from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama seeks to distribute BP’s $10.5 billion annual dividend fairly saying that the money should not be going to the stockholders, rather, it should go towards fishermen, oil workers and small business owners who haven’t received loss claims from the company. The nationally televised address, scheduled for tomorrow, prime-time, is part of a week-long campaign by the Obama administration to convince the public of a secure and effective presidential command.

New York Times

Flemish separatists win Belgian election

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 12:32 PM - 4 Comments

It’s expected to be months before politicians in seemingly ungovernable Belgium figure out a way to cobble together their disparate parties into a workable coalition. Flemish nationalists finished with the most seats (27 of the country’s 150) in the country’s general elections, finishing one seat ahead of the French-speaking socialists. The election dropped the ruling Christian Democrats to fourth place. Whatever hodge-podge government does end up coming together will have to deal with Belgium’s near-crippling level of debt. With the third-highest debt relative to gross domestic product in the euro region, Belgium will need to cut spending or raise taxes by 8.7 billion euros in the next two years to lower its budget deficit to less than 3 percent of GDP.

Businessweek

Renewed ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 1 Comment

Kyrgyzstan is facing the deadliest ethnic violence in decades as city blocks are burned and over one hundred people are reported dead, along with 1,500 injured, according to the Globe and Mail. The violence has been flaring for three days between Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks. Thousands of Uzbeks have been forced to flee the country, waiting at the border of of Uzbekistan for entry. The AFP reports that up to 100,000 people have already entered Uzbekistan, and now the PM of the country said the border will be closed. The interim government, which took power following the April ousting of Prime Minister Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has been unable to stop the violence and accused Mr. Bakiyev’s family of instigating it. Uzbeks have backed the interim government, while many Kyrgyz in the south have supported the ousted president.

AFP

Globe and Mail

Teen sailor’s dad planned reality show

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 12:15 PM - 2 Comments

The father of Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old who attempted to sail round the world solo before being rescued after her boat was felled by a wave, revealed he’d signed a contract to do a reality show called “Adventures in Sunderland” about his family of daredevil kids. Her voyage was heavily criticized for its high risk and poor planning, but Sunderland said he was broke and thought the show, called “Adventures in Sunderland,” would “be a good idea if it was encouraging to kids to get out there and do things,” the New York Post reports. Magnetic Entertainment of Studio City, CA is already promoting the show on its website.

New York Post

Bye-bye Canada?

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 12:12 PM - 1 Comment

Canada’s Yannick Nézet-Séguin, currently the artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal, has signed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, becoming the eighth music director after legends such as Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy and Riccardo Muti. The conductor’s job had been open since the last full-time occupant was told to leave in 2006. The New York Times reports that 35-year-old Montrealer was “signed to an unusually long, seven-year contract. His title will be music director-designate for the next two seasons, and he will take over formally in fall 2012. He will conduct two weeks next season, five the following season and eight at the start of his formal term.” His rise since leading the Montreal orchestra in 2000 has been meteoric. He’s currently music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic in the Netherlands and principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic. The Metropolitcan Opera assigned him the next production of Don Carlo next season after his debut Carmen last year. Left unsaid in the announcement of the Philadelphia gig is his role in Montreal.

New York Times

Hate crimes on the rise

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 12:08 PM - 25 Comments

According to new Statistics Canada data, hate crimes reported to police increased by one-third in 2008. The Globe and Mail reports that incidents motivated by race, ethnicity and sexual orientation grew in that year. Police forces logged 1,036 hate crimes in 2008, up 35 per cent from 2007. Hate crimes motivated by religion increased by 53 per cent between 2007 and 2008 while those related to race or ethnicity grew by 15 per cent. But the biggest rise came in violence motivated by sexual orientation, which more than doubled and were the most violent in nature.

Globe and Mail

The brink

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 11:55 AM - 41 Comments

The latest, and perhaps last, meeting of all parties to negotiate a release of Afghan detainee documents will be this afternoon at 4:15pm. The Bloc and NDP indicated last week that this would likely be their last day before returning to the House. Over the weekend, while trying to sound as unthreatening as possible, Michael Ignatieff put an onus on today’s meeting.

And now, adding to the drama, new documents emerge indicating Canadian military officials were displeased with Richard Colvin’s reporting.

Israel to probe flotilla raid

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 11:48 AM - 4 Comments

Israel has retained retired Brigadier General Ken Watkin, Canada’s former judge advocate general, as one of two observers for a proposed inquiry into the raid of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. The investigation is expected to be presented for approval to Israel’s cabinet on Monday and would be chaired by retired Israeli Supreme Court justice Yaakov Turkel. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon welcomed the commission, as well as Watkin’s selection, and re-emphasized Ottawa’s support for Israel’s security concerns. “While we fully support the importance of delivering humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” he said, “we also fully support Israel’s right to inspect ships to ensure military material and armaments do not reach the hands of Hamas terrorists.”

Globe and Mail

BP & the politics of energy: in bar graphs

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 11:18 AM - 9 Comments

Politico reports that Obama’s pollster is making the case on the Hill that the BP spill has primed public opinion for a major energy-and-climate bill. Ben Smith has posted the stats and graphs pollster Joel Benenson is using to make the case.

Obama is expected to call for energy legislation in his Oval Office address on Tuesday night. Climate change provisions will still have an uphill battle in the Senate.

But the president sounded emboldened by the spill in an interview with Roger Simon, (a columnist who recently lost both feet, but not his sense of humour):

“Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much.

Continue…

Afghanistan, the “Saudi Arabia of lithium”

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 11:17 AM - 1 Comment

The United States has discovered $1 trillion in previously unknown mineral deposits in Afghanistan, the New York Times reports. The deposits, discovered by Pentagon officials and American geologists, are so vast they could alter the war and turn Afghanistan into the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” It’s also been speculated that this discovery may cause the Taliban to fight harder for control of the country, invite China to get involved in the development of the resources, and amplify corruption as a result of new wealth. At the very least, though, the economy—which now relies on opium production, foreign aid, and narcotic trafficking—will be transformed. An adviser to the Afghan minister of mines Jalil Jumriany said, “This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy.”

New York Times

Vince Gilligan, Fly Boy

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 11:11 AM - 4 Comments

After the season finale of Breaking Bad and the announcement of its renewal for a fourth season, two big interviews with creator Vince Gilligan were posted: one at The Hollywood Reporter and one at The AV Club. Both are worth reading, though both inevitably cover some of the same ground. For example, in both interviews he mentions his unwillingness to take the regular supporting players away from the show, either by killing them off or by moving Walt and Jesse too far away from the main setting.

(Actually, the “anybody can die” idea, once so revolutionary, has become enough of a cliche that Breaking Bad benefits from not using it: there have been moments when it looked like someone was being set up to die, and where we could spot all the bits that usually lead up to a “shocking” death, only to have them survive. In the wake of Lost and 24 it’s almost more surprising when somebody lives.)

Both interviews also mention the fact that the season was not planned out step-by-step and that the writers sometimes paint themselves into a corner and have to figure out how their characters get out of this jam. That’s true of all shows, but it’s nice to hear someone admit it like it’s nothing to be ashamed of (because it’s nothing to be ashamed of).

Also, both interviews mention what in my opinion was the best episode of the season, “Fly.” That’s a personal reaction that’s shaped largely by the fact that it so perfectly provided the things I like best: an episode that has its own flavour and style unique in the season, a tightly-focused look at two characters (sort of like some of the best episodes of The X-Files, where Gilligan learned his trade), and a mixture of humour and drama that doesn’t clearly delineate where the comedy begins and the drama leaves off. But whether or not it’s the best episode of the season, it certainly is an important episode, and — with all due respect — it surprises me at the THR interviewer was “impatient” with it. I’m glad Gilligan stands up for it. A show usually can’t build tension throughout a season without some change-of-pace episodes that show us the characters in greater depth; otherwise, the season becomes a perpetual-motion machine of suspense.