Syrian government cracks down on protests

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 12:24 PM - 2 Comments

Syrian security forces have reportedly opened fire on anti-government protesters near the city of Daraa, killing at least 20 people, according to eyewitnesses. “There are more than 20 martyrs …. they (security forces) opened fire haphazardly,” one witness said. The shooting took place after crowds set fire to a statue of the country’s late president. Some residents said the sounds of heavy gunfire could be heard in the city centre and witnesses had reported several casualties. The incident comes as tens of thousands of protesters in Syria took to the streets to demand greater freedom, calling for a “day of dignity” on Friday following a week-long crackdown by pro-regime forces.

Al Jazeera

Huffington Post

Inquiry launched into Fukushima radiation leak

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 12:21 PM - 2 Comments

Japanese officials have launched an inquiry in order to establish the cause of the radioactive leak at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Tests showed that water in the plant’s third reactor had radiation levels that were 10,000 times higher than normal. A revision of safety measures has also been ordered after two workers were hospitalized after it was discovered they had not been wearing the proper corrective footwear and had ignored a radiation alarm. The Japanese Nuclear Safety Agency has gone no further than saying that the reactor may have been damaged, but they denied that the reactor core has cracked. The government has asked that residents within the 20-30km exclusion zone around the plant evacuate volountarily, after being advised to stay indoors.

BBC News

Danny Williams won't attend tribute dinner

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 12:15 PM - 5 Comments

Former Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny WIlliams says he plans to skip next weekend’s special tribute dinner being held in his honour. The snub came as a surprise to WIlliams’s successor, Kathy Dunderdale, who is set to be formally acclaimed as the new leader of the provincial Progressive Conservatives that same weekend. Williams, who left the province on Wednesday, would only say “ask the Premier” when asked whether there was any tension between him and Dunderdale. Dunderdale declined to discuss the matter.

The Globe and Mail

TV News News (Updated)

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 12:12 PM - 0 Comments

1. I’m actually quite surprised that Katie Couric seems likely to leave CBS News so soon. True, she was never a great fit with the network and didn’t help ratings, which is why Les Moonves won’t stop her if she wants to leave. But as David Letterman told her, this is a job that people usually stay at for as long as they can. It’s really a sign of the declining prestige of network news, even as it still has more viewers than cable news. It used to be the highest position a TV reporter could ascend to; now it’s just not much of a job. Late-night talk show host is still a job like that, where people get to host a big show and then they want to stay forever; that’s why Letterman seems genuinely baffled that Couric could consider leaving.

2. I don’t believe I’ve said much about John Stossel before; he doesn’t stand out at Fox Business as much as he did at ABC. His schtick (all regulations are useless and bad) is a bit one-note, but it was sometimes interesting and even enlightening on a show like 20/20. At his new home, he seems to get lost because everybody is doing anti-regulatory stories. But he seems to be trying to make more of a name for himself, and this may be the moment where he really gets back into the limelight again. Or not. But it is definitely one of the top Stosselisms of all time.

Projection puts Tories in majority, first time since 2008

By John Geddes - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 11:46 AM - 115 Comments

In case you were wondering how that new Ipsos poll showing the Conservatives way out in front changes the election outlook,  the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy, known as LISPOP, has a new seat projection today that puts the Tories in majority territory for the first time since the 2008 election.

The research centre at Wilfrid Laurier University plugged the four latest polls from Ipsos, Nanos and Harris-Decima, all conducted this month, into its model for turning votes into seats, and came up with 157 MPs being elected for the Conservatives. The Liberals would have 68, the NDP 32 and the Bloc 51.

Continue…

'It is time for a change'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 11:26 AM - 11 Comments

With all the usual caveats about Mr. Ignatieff’s general willingness to stick to a script, here is the prepared text for his speech to the House of Commons this morning.

Monsieur le Président, avant de commencer, j’aimerais parler de vous.

Vous arrivez à la fin de votre mandat comme Président de la Chambre, et j’aimerais témoigner de l’affection et le respect que nous avons tous pour vous.

Vos règlements et vos jugements ont marqué l’histoire de notre pays.

You have taught us all – sometimes with modest rebuke, sometimes with stern force of argument – to understand, to respect, and to cherish the rules of Canadian democracy, and for that alone, all Canadians will be grateful to you.

This is a historic day in the life of the democracy you have served so well.

I have to inform the House that the Official Opposition has lost confidence in the government.

Continue…

Parting words

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 10:56 AM - 10 Comments

After Question Period yesterday, members who will not be seeking reelection were allowed a few moments to say goodbye to the House of Commons. Eleven MPs rose and spoke of service and politicians turned into human beings before our very eyes. This from Bill Siksay.

My predecessor, Svend Robinson, once remarked that the highest duty of a member of Parliament was love. Love should be our daily agenda, a daring, justice-seeking and tender love. Some day, even here, we will find that path where all that we do we do for love.

Wealthy women at higher risk of melanoma: experts

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 10:49 AM - 6 Comments

Wealthier, more educated women seem to be at greatest risk of melanoma, rates of which have more than doubled among young white women in the past three decades, the New York Times reports. The reason isn’t known, but according to a new study, it could be due to the fact that wealthy, educated women are spending more leisure time outside than their lesser-heeled counterparts. In the study, researchers at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California looked at 3,842 cases of melanoma in 3,800 white women under 40 who were diagnosed between 1988 and 1992, and 1998 and 2002. They compared this with census data and ultraviolet radiation exposure measures. Melanoma rates went up significantly during study periods only among higher income women, with highest income women nearly six times as likely to get a diagnosis of malignant melanoma than those in the poorest areas.

New York Times

Curry spice could be used as cheap explosive detector

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 10:34 AM - 2 Comments

The main chemical in turmeric, a curry spice, is already well-known for its antioxidant and cancer-fighting properties, but according to new research, it could replace more complex solutions to pinpoint explosives like TNT. The curcumin molecule can gather molecules of explosive material in the air, and changes in its light-emitting properties can be measured, the BBC reports. Abhishek Kumar of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and colleagues have been working on a way to use the curry ingredient’s fluorescent properties to detect explosives.

BBC News

Three hours to go

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 10:14 AM - 37 Comments

Michael Ignatieff is, at this moment, tabling the Liberal motion of non-confidence.

The House will debate the motion until 11am. After members’ statements and Question Period, debate will resume shortly after noon. The vote will be called shortly after 1pm and a vote will occur around 1:30pm. By 2pm (or so), the Harper government should be defeated.

A mid-April surprise?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 9 Comments

Liberal Dominic LeBlanc says the detainee document review committee will soon be ready to release documents.

“It is our information the process is on track to release a substantial amount of information within the next couple of weeks,” Liberal defence critic MP Dominic LeBlanc, who was also part of the negotiation team with the other parties, told the Toronto Star Thursday.

The NDP’s Jack Harris says an election will make this impossible, but it’s actually not clear to me at the moment, from my rereading of the memorandum of understanding, what the precise mechanism is for the public release of information. Here, for instance, is Clause 6. Continue…

Iggy's coalition problem

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 9:49 AM - 373 Comments

The day-after-the-budget press conference was going rather well for Michael Ignatieff, until the predictable, inevitable question arose: If the Tories failed to win a majority in the coming election, would he form a coalition with the other parties to unseat them and form a government? In other words, is the Tory accusation, repeated at every opportunity, true?

“There’s a blue door and a red door in this election,” he said. Voters can take the blue door (the Conservatives) or the red door (the Liberals), ie they can elect a Conservative government or a Liberal government.

With respect sir, the questioner shouted back, you haven’t answered my question.

Ignatieff began again. “There’s a blue door and a red door…” Continue…

A public check-up

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 10 Comments

Joanna Smith wonders how much we need to know about the health of politicians.

The president of the United States gets to have his business made public every couple of years when he gets a full physical by the White House doctor. The White House publishes the reports online, so Americans learned in February 2010 that President Barack Obama is not only “fit for duty,” but underwent screening for colorectal cancer, got the swine-flu shot and was urged to quit smoking.

Micheal Vonn, policy director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said that would be going too far. “That would probably have a very profound chill on people running for office,” said Vonn, adding that personal health information receives the highest form of privacy protection under the law. “We cannot be cavalier with that kind of privacy promise in suggesting there are entire classes of people who should be required — either normatively or in law — to waive their rights.”

Why the world is wrong to count Japan out

By Nicholas Köhler and Nancy Macdonald with Jason Kirby - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 6:01 AM - 8 Comments

Photograph by Jensen Walker/Getty Images

It’s the Sunday nine days after a 9-magnitude earthquake that triggered a once-in-a-millennium tsunami: 240 km north of here a nuclear power plant is still spewing smoke, 22,000 people are either dead or missing on the northeast coast, and Ace’s, one of the 280 tiny Lilliputian bars that constitute Tokyo’s Golden Gai district, is packed to capacity with eight people.

Crisscrossed by spidery, shoulder-width alleys, Golden Gai was for years a seamy red-light district, then an artists’ and literary hangout. A ramshackle collection of two-storey wooden shacks tossed like dice into the Kabukicho drinking district east of Shinjuku Station, it is today a powerful reminder of Japan’s supersonic rise as an economic power in the latter half of the 20th century, post-Hiroshima, post-Nagasaki. Surrounded on all sides by the modern glitz of neon Tokyo, it has been preserved as a curio of post-Second World War construction—of the days when Japan had nothing but an appetite for more.

Only Golden Gai’s rickety second-storey bars felt the effects of the massive temblor on March 11, as hundreds of liquor bottles fell from shelves and shattered. The laconic Japanese here make the quake seem like it’s already as old as the neighourhood itself. One young woman at the bar, an office worker, describes spending that night sleeping communally in a school gymnasium after the train lines shuddered to a halt; she shrugs her shoulders like it’s a not especially unpleasant childhood memory and continues sipping her beer.

Continue…

Signing away your savings

By Risha Gotlieb - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 8 Comments

Skip Nall/GETTY IMAGES

At 85 and with failing eyesight, Donna (not her real name) was relieved when her daughter returned to Toronto to assist her. Eventually, she added her daughter’s name to her bank accounts to facilitate bill payments. A year and a half later, Donna’s eldest son, who works overseas, hired Jayne-Ann Steele, a long-term care specialist, to surrogate some of his sister’s duties. “One day Donna asked me to read her bank statements aloud,” says Steele. “She was shocked when I read out the huge sums of money being withdrawn like clockwork every month—to the tune of over $200,000″ in the span of 18 months. When I saw her daughter’s name beside hers, I instinctively knew who was taking the money.” Today Donna no longer speaks to her daughter. She must rely on her other three children to subsidize her retirement expenses. “These families never recover from the betrayal,” says Steele.

Joint bank accounts are increasingly being used as a vehicle to defraud Canadian seniors. Although the banking industry recognizes the problem, most banks do little to curtail it, say experts. Toronto lawyer Jan Goddard, an estate and elder law specialist, says banks are making it dangerously easy for their senior clients to add others to their accounts. In fact, sometimes the bank staff “steers” them into this arrangement, she says, because they recognize they need help with the simplest of banking tasks. (Raising the question: are seniors giving informed consent if they can’t even decipher a bank statement?) It’s a process that can take mere minutes, ruin lives, and yet seniors may be encouraged to do it without the benefit of legal advice.

Continue…

Let the games begin

By Paul Wells - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 92 Comments

Chris Wattie/Reuters

“Canada needs a principled, stable government,” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told the House of Commons. “Now is not the time for instability.”

Instability would “drive investment away.” It would “jeopardize the gains we have made.” The choice facing Parliament was “between stability and uncertainty.” Between “principle and opportunism.”

Jack Layton took one look at it all and chose opportunistic instability to jeopardize gains and drive investment away. That’s not quite how he phrased it. The first surprise of Campaign 2011 was that the guy making the bold move wasn’t Stephen Harper. In fact, as budget day turned into the apparent kickoff of an election campaign, the Prime Minister was the one in the corner trying to make himself small.

Harper, of course, is notorious for his bold moves. He leads a party he sewed together from the corpses of the damned. His promises—elected Senate, fixed elections, a Quebec unadorned by designations of special status—lie in tatters at his feet. But unlike some partisans of the grand gesture, Harper has often opted for another kind of gambit: the gesture so small it amounts to a critique of everyone else’s grand gestures.

Continue…

The very brief political career of Dale Saip

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 9:11 PM - 24 Comments

Though not yet begun, the 2011 election has its first revelation-induced candidate exit. Nominated to run on Monday night, Conservative candidate Dale Saip resigned (or was fired) today after revelations of previous financial issues.

33 Men: Inside The Miraculous Survival And Dramatic Rescue Of The Chilean Miners

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 9:06 PM - 1 Comment

If you avoid quickie books about major news events, consider an exception for Franklin’s hour-by-hour account of the Chilean mine disaster, which may go down as both the rough draft and final word on this slice of history. 33 Men is the product of solid research and privileged access, as Franklin, who covered the story for the Guardian and Washington Post, was among a handful of reporters granted an up-close look at the international rescue effort at the San José mine. All of the trapped workers gave him interviews. A few told their stories in magnificent detail.

So the prurient questions are addressed: yes, the miners had thoughts of cannibalism during their 17 days without food; some tried joking about it, but as a group, they never discussed it. And no, the miners did not engage in homosexual activity (though rescue teams supplied them with porn). More fascinating is the eventual deterioration of relations between the above-ground teams and those stuck below in the fetid, 40° C death trap. Enraged by officials who censored their mail and inspected their care packages, the miners effectively overthrew the psychologist charged with maintaining their mental health. A less fastidious subordinate took over and a stream of amphetamines and pot began finding its way down supply shafts.

Franklin also has a few chestnuts for the annals of media manipulation. In the midst of the rescue, with only 16 miners above ground, another rock collapse severed a video link to the depths of the mine, which was broadcasting live on Chilean TV. Fearful of public panic, communications specialists subbed the feed with a previously taped loop until crews could re-establish contact with the miners. No harm, no foul, one supposes. But worth remembering next time history unfolds via satellite.

My Father's Fortune: A Life

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 7:05 PM - 0 Comments

Our first glimpse of Tom Frayn captures something of the mystery that fathers—those at times tyrannical, frequently magical, often all-too-human beings—tend to present to most of us. “The door opens a few inches. Around the edge of it, with a certain deferential caution, comes a hat. A black homburg.” It is 1969 and Frayn, the British playwright best known for Noises Off, is in his mid-30s. “The hat is followed by a pair of spectacles—a hearing aid—a trim gray moustache. And my father’s smile, like the sun coming up.”

What follows, for the better part of 300 pages, is Frayn’s thoughtful, obsessive, darkly funny exegesis of his father’s life. Now years older than Tom when he died, Frayn is wistful but hard-nosed in outlining his history, and My Father’s Fortune, complete with references to birth certificates and census returns, is a heroic recreation of a vanished world. Young Tom is a quick-witted asbestos salesman, a natty scrimp, a teller of tall tales in Cockney slang, whose early life unspools like a 20th-century Dickens story. He shares two rooms with his parents and four siblings, all six of them deaf (Tom loses his hearing only later), but emerges from this penury, with salesman’s patter and all-embracing grin, to marry well, raise a family through the Blitz and much else beyond.

It’s an admiring portrait, not just of Tom but of a son’s evolving love for his father. If the details occasionally drag (one chapter is devoted to the Frayns’ furniture), they’re all in the service of this striving to salvage time gone. Frayn is candid—about tormenting his nerve-worn granny, his lack of gratitude for his father, his snobbery as a budding aesthete—self-deprecation that’s wonderfully wry. Above all, the book is exquisitely written and almost too intimate. Near death, in hospice and unable to speak, his father still smiles—as though, writes Frayn, he has “faded, like the Cheshire Cat, until only his smile remains.”

They're worth taking seriously. Seriously.

By John Geddes - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 6:26 PM - 101 Comments

There’s going to be a lot to wince about in the coming weeks. Attack ads ad nauseum. Big issues blown off, small ones blown out of proportion. Five weeks of weak rhetoric.

For all that, though, it’s too easy to slip into the faux-sophisticated, eye-rolling, I-see-right-through-it mode that so often passes for political commentary. Better to start off leaning against that lazy tendency by explicitly acknowledging the considerable achievements of the leaders we’re about to find so lacking.

Continue…

The Commons: Repeat after them

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 6:19 PM - 54 Comments

The Scene. Yesterday and again today, the Prime Minister apparently decided that it was in “Canadians’ interests” that he excuse himself from Question Period. If the House of Commons isn’t going to listen to him, it seems he isn’t going to listen to it. Indeed, given yesterday’s unpleasantness, it seems possible that he has decided to seal himself inside his campaign bubble a bit early.

In his place these last two days, Mr. Harper has sent John Baird, now seeming the human equivalent of a television ad. In the space of 45 minutes and 16 responses, Mr. Baird managed this day to use the word “coalition” nine times. This was followed in frequency by the words “unnecessary” and “unstable” with four appearances each. Not to be outdone were “risky” and “reckless,” which were each employed thrice.

But first, a word of support for the troops. Continue…

You're invited

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 4:54 PM - 26 Comments

It’s funny the things you get invited to by people who have “friended” you on Facebook.

For instance, while the parties have not yet officially released their campaign schedules, a moment ago, I received an invitation to a “Campaign Kickoff Rally with Jack Layton.” It’s scheduled for Saturday at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton.

A job-creating election

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 3:40 PM - 12 Comments

Eric Beauchesne surveys the economic ramifications of an election.

In fact, Statistics Canada’s analysis of changes in employment in the wake of the October 2008 election campaign, suggests an election would create thousands of temporary jobs. ”With the federal election in mid-October, there were large employment gains in public administration, spread across most provinces,” Statistics Canada said in its analysis of what was a 40,000 increase in full-time employment in October 2008. ”Most of the increase was among occupations related to the election process,” it added, noting there were no job gains in other areas to explain the surge in employment that month.

Mr. Speaker

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 1:51 PM - 64 Comments

When the government falls tomorrow afternoon and Parliament is subsequently dissolved, Peter Milliken‘s time as Speaker of the House of Commons will come to an end, Mr. Milliken having already decided that he will not seek reelection as the MP for Kingston and the Islands. First elected to the post in January 2001, he will retire as the longest-serving Speaker in the history of the House.

His tenure will be remembered as historic on a number of fronts, but his ruling last year on Afghan detainee documents and his rulings this year on statements made by International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda and the government’s refusal to turn over documents requested by the House will likely be of significant and lasting consequence. Amid much gnashing of teeth over the state of our parliamentary democracy, Mr. Milliken reasserted the power and preeminence of the House of Commons. As a legacy, a Speaker could not ask for much greater.