Government ready to drop copyright bomb
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | 7:25 PM ET Comments256Recommend474
Minister of Industry Jim Prentice retreated on introducing a Copyright Reform bill in December after encountering a raft of opposition from the public. (CBC) The government is ready to introduce controversial new copyright legislation that experts believe will introduce harsh new restrictions on downloading, copying songs to CDs and music players, unlocking cellphones and time-shifting of television shows.
Minister of Industry Jim Prentice and the Minister of Canadian Heritage Josée Verner will unveil the bill to amend the Copyright Act on Thursday at 10:45 a.m. ET with brief statements, followed by a question-and-answer session with the media.
Critics fear the bill will mirror the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which similarly brought in restrictive measures and opened the door for copyright owners to enact huge lawsuits against violators.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/06/11/tech-copyright.html?ref=rss********************************
Power trickles back after Quebec windstorm
Nearly 300,000 households lost electricity after winds tore through province
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | 5:26 PM ET Comments3Recommend16
Wind gusts tore branches off a tree on this Quebec City street. (Catou Mackinnon/CBC)About 125,000 Hydro-Québec customers were still without power Wednesday morning after a violent storm blew through the southern region of the province.
Most of the power outages were in the Montérégie region on Montreal's South Shore, and in the Eastern Townships, Hydro-Québec reported.
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Office workers in downtown Montreal said they watched in horror as two window washers swung precariously on the side of the Place Montreal Trust building where they'd been working 35 storeys above ground.
The washers clambered to safety through a broken window, after spending nearly half an hour in the windstorm.
The storm blew east through Quebec City early Tuesday evening, damaging trees and knocking out power lines feeding about 25,000 homes.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/06/11/qc-windstorm0612.html?ref=rssCheryl Rosebush and Frank Cavallero report for CBC-TV [Runs 5:34]*******************************
Re: The GM Oshwa plant issue
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Tramway on track in Montreal
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | 7:27 PM ET Comments7Recommend12
Montreal will have a tramway system up and running by 2013, Mayor Gérald Tremblay said Wednesday.
The tramway lines are part of Montreal's new transportation policy, which hinges on expanding public transit to take cars off roads and highways, Tremblay said.
One of the proposed tramway lines will run along Parc Avenue. (City of Montreal)
"Gridlock is more and more present every day. People are spending over two hours in their car to come to work … it creates major problems, stress problems, asthma problems, respiratory problems," he said.
"As a result of that, citizens are saying, they told us very clearly: Priority? Public transit."
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Story comments (7)
MileEnder wrote:Posted 2008/06/11
at 7:29 PM ET
Many European cities reintroduced the tram years ago and people love it. Where busses are smelly, get bogged down in traffic, are difficult to get in and out of, and jostle people about, trams are quiet, run on their own lines and bright (large windows) and are very easy to get in and out of, even with carriages etc..
Trams were common in North American and European cities from the late 1800's to the mid 1900's when companies like GM bought them up and dismantled them to make more room on the streets for the product they were selling i.e. cars.
Trams could really work well in Montreal, especially if the city made lots of parking available at the edges of town so people could leave their cars and continue their journey into town via tram.
So trams would be in addition to the Metro, trains and buses which are already in place? What a joke. Want to lessen traffic in the core? You need to make the trains etc more readily available to those who end up driving into the core. For example, I live just off the west Island, on a stat holiday there are only 2 trains for the entire day, that can get me into the core!! No buses or metro is available here. So if I need to get downtown by 8am I have no choice but to drive. Want me to take the train in for a game at the Bell centre, sure...but how am I to get home? The traffic that congests the core is not from the residents of the core, its from all the people outside of the core who have little choice but to drive into it. The saying is you build it, they will come holds true. If there was service from here to there, people will use it.
Beaconsfield Ray wrote:Posted 2008/06/11
at 6:01 PM ETTramways? Bridge tolls?
Once again, the 'public transit' philosophy focuses on people who live 'in the city', specifically the downtown core, to the detriment of all others.
It also does not take into account our climate. Trams share the road with other vehicular traffic. Apart from construction, the other major season we face is winter. When the traffic stops, so will the trams!
The solution for Montreal, which has a terrible public transit system outside the city core, is more trains (with adequate parking at ALL stations) and metros (subways) to get the commuters into the core in a reasonably competitive time frame.
That is of course, if the objective is to efficiently and quickly move people and not just implement a tax grab on commuters (who by the way, support significant amounts of local core businesses with their daily purchases).
The new metro stops in Laval are wildly more popular than anticipated, so my guess is that the "pathetic" commuter train lines to the West Island would likely improve if people were interested in using them, and lobbied for good service, instead of complaining about how "public transit focuses on the downtown core". Downtown's where most of the traffic is; why is it to your (or others') detriment that this is where the focus is? You'd think it'd be to your advantage, trying to make transport easier for you...
Montreal had a wide system of trams until 1959; I'm told that they never stopped in the winter. Indeed, you can see many photos of trams in winter at the McCord website. Probably more reliable getting around on the tram than all those drivers blocking stuff up with their inability to get traction on their "all season" tires, burning rubber to get out of one parking spot just to go find another one.
What commuter in a car stops to shop anywhere where parking is the least bit difficult? What commuter has six bags of groceries from the downtown IGA with them on the train? None of them. They're trying to get home or to the highway to get to a (free suburban mall) parking lot to do their shopping. I don't see what the problem is with highway and bridge tolls. Tax grab? How about paying for what you use? Use the highway? Pay the real cost already, or take the train.
kermitose wrote:Posted 2008/06/11
at 8:57 PM ETHey Beaconsfield Ray, the system has to start somewhere. And why not in the densest part of the city? Granted, a little more support for the pathetic commuter train lines that run out to the West Island would be welcome. I wonder what the mayor plans to do about that....
Would you prefer to live in Toronto--as I now sadly do--a city that lacks vision and imagination? http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/06/11/qc-tramwaymontreal0612.html?ref=rss*****************************
More Canadians hooking up to faster internet
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 10:40 AM ET
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/06/12/statscan-internet-study.html?ref=rss**************************************
U.S. court deals Guantanamo detainee policy major legal blow
Detainees have 'habeas corpus' rights, judges says
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 11:26 AM ET Comments25Recommend37
The sun rises over Camp Delta detention compound, which has housed foreign prisoners since 2002, at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, on June 6 in Cuba. (Brennan Linsley/AFP/Getty)...
Enemy combatant process legally flawed: court
The Bush administration opened the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hold some of the hundreds of people detained by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies had detained during the invasion of Afghanistan later that year.
The Guantanamo prison has been harshly criticized in the United States and abroad for the detentions themselves and the aggressive interrogations that were conducted there.
Thursday's Supreme Court decision said not only do the detainees have rights under the U.S. constitution, but also the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.
The administration had argued at first that the detainees have no rights. But it also contended that the classification and review process was a sufficient substitute for the civilian court hearings that the detainees seek.
The highest U.S. court has twice struck down central contentions by the Bush administration about the need for restrictions on legal rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
In 2006, the court found the Guantanamo military tribunal process unconstitutional, but the U.S. government re-established it by pushing a law through Congress that set up the current trials process.
Two years earlier, the Supreme Court gave Guantanamo detainees the right to use U.S. courts to fight their continuing detention.
With files from the Associated Press (This kind of blow dealing to the government military is only possible in U.S.A. Correct? --Alex Wang)
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/06/12/uscourt-gitmo.html?ref=rss***********************************
Re: The Maxime Bernier issue
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Aboriginal leaders look to future after historic apology
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | 7:44 PM ET Comments81Recommend61
Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine, right, shakes hands with his nephew Donovan Fontaine as Chief Ray Arcand looks on during a smudging ceremony ("A smudging ceremony"! Well written! It is almost an oxymoronic phrase. --Alex Wang) outside the House of Commons. (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/11/apology-future.html?ref=rss**************************************
Taiwan, China agree to set up cross-border offices
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 6:10 AM ET Comments6Recommend4
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/06/12/china-taiwan.html***********************************
Montreal's Rawi Hage scoops lucrative Dublin book prize
Beirut-born author wins $158,000 Cdn for 1st novel, De Niro's Game
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 9:28 AM ET Comments4Recommended24
Rawy Hage accepts the IMPAC trophy. (CBC) Montreal writer Rawi Hage is the latest winner of the world's richest writing prize for his debut novel, De Niro's Game, organizers of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award announced on Thursday.
Hage, 44, received the $158,000 Cdn cash prize and a Waterford Crystal trophy at a ceremony in Dublin.
De Niro's Game, which follows characters caught in the civil war in Beirut in the 1980s, is "a magnificent achievement for a writer writing in a third language," the five-member international jury said in its citation.
"Its originality, its power, its lyricism, as well as its humane appeal all mark De Niro's Game as the work of a major literary talent and make Rawi Hage a truly deserving winner."
The Beirut-born writer, who lived through nine years of civil war in the Lebanese capital before his family emigrated to Canada, called himself "a fortunate man.
"After a long journey of war, displacement and separation, I feel that I am one of the few wanderers who is privileged enough to have been rewarded, and for that I am very grateful."
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Story comments (4)
Congratulations. It's good when stories like this are reported, as it alerts us to reading possibilities we might otherwise not know. I was looking at my bookshelf the other night and realized how many of my recent books were purchased due to news stories or interviews and recommendations on the air. Do other readers also (like me) buy books due to radio and news broadcasts that mention them? i.e. CBC, NPR, ABC, BBC, etc?
The IMPAC Dublin award should be a lot more prominent than it is. Their choices are consistently amazing--the award introduced me to "The Elementary Particles" by Michel Houellebecq (my favorite novel of the past 10 years) and to "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk (who went on to win the Nobel).
Robert J wrote:Posted 2008/06/12
at 10:16 AM ETSome people criticise awards, but they do raise awareness of our literature. And its interesting to consider what motivated an award after reading the winners and runners-up. I don't listen to NPR, ABC, or BBC, but I like Eleanor Wachtel (and others) on CBC and I sometimes listen to etc. Now to find more reading time...
The Irish are truly dedicated to literature, and this is a tremendous award for Canadian writers
The author, Rawe Hage, came with his parents to Montreal in 1990s and worked as a taxi driver.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2008/06/12/impac-hage.html?ref=rss*************************************
Mars lander finally shakes soil into test oven
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 8:36 AM ET Comments13Recommend26
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/06/12/phoenix-soil.html****************************************
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RCMP watchdog cancels release of final Taser reportHours before the scheduled release of a highly anticipated final report on the use of stun guns by Mounties, the RCMP complaints commission abruptly cancelled the Thursday event.
Scouts scrambled to free friends after Iowa tornado kills 4Dozens of teenage boy scouts caught in a deadly tornado in Iowa immediately put their life-saving skills to use Wednesday night, pulling their friends and leaders out from heaps of rubble.
RCMP fire Tasers multiple times despite health hazards: probeRCMP officers are likely to fire their electronic stun guns multiple times during an altercation, despite being warned that this may pose health risks, according to a joint investigation by the CBC and CP.
Bombardier makes commercial and corporate jets, like the Challenger 604 above. It calls the plane, which can carry up to 12 passengers, a 'high-altitude boardroom.' (Bombardier) 
