Today U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the distribution of $2.5 billion for high-speed rail projects nationwide, and the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) released the results of a large travel survey which shows that nearly two-thirds of adults (62 percent) said they would definitely or probably use high-speed rail service for leisure or business travel if it were an option. The survey, among 24, 711 adults, was conducted for APTA by Synovate.Read the full results of the survey here.
Dedicated high-speed rail lines are ridiculously efficient -- at least in Japan. Officials there point out that trains are punctual down-to-the-minute, even with 300 million riders a year.Read more at CTV.
They're safe. There has not been a single fatality in either the Japanese or French system. An average of seven Canadians die in road accidents every day.
Environmentally, there is no better way to move a large amount of people, unless someone builds a really, big bike.
Former environment minister Jim Prentice privately told U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson more than a year ago that he was prepared to impose new regulations on the oil sands if the industry and province did not improve their environmental performance, newly released Wikileaks documents reveal.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
“The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’ – given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched’ with.”And the Princeton Review then remarked that the University of Maryland was among the "Best Northeastern Colleges" and was actually nineteenth on the list of "Best Party Schools." No wonder Fox News viewers are misinformed. We do not need this in Canada.
News organizations can educate voters about public policy and economic conditions, but they can also misinform voters. As if to prove the point, a study released Friday found that “substantial levels of misinformation” seeped out to the electorate of the United States at the time of the midterm elections this year.Read more at the New York Times.
“I don’t care who you love,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said as the debate opened. “If you love this country enough to risk your life for it, you shouldn’t have to hide who you are.”I still cannot believe some of the opposition arguments. Apparently, repealing this policy will harm the battle effectiveness of the military. It mocks itself! Fourteen thousand soldiers had to leave the army because of this policy. I do not see how a loss of this many people can be effective. It's really amazing how much Republicans will do to try to stop discrimination. Some even hinted that they might block an arms treaty with Russia. The US has finally joined the many other countries, some not as rich as it, that allow gays to serve openly in the military. Congratulations!
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Saturday struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.Read more at the New York Times.
His end-of-the-year survey, released Thursday night, has the Tories with 32 per cent support. The Liberals are at 26.5 per cent compared to 17.1 per cent for the NDP, 10.9 per cent for the Greens and 10.6 per cent for the Bloc Quebecois.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
OTTAWA — The past year in Parliament was dominated by "empty rhetoric and wasteful spending" from the Conservative government, according to the Liberals who said Wednesday their party will be a clear and compelling alternative in the next election.
At a news conference called to review the past year in federal politics, Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale and house leader David McGuinty laid heaps of blame on the Conservatives and accused them of ignoring the priorities of Canadians.Read more at the Calgary Herald.
Washington (CNN) -- The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to overturn the ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers serving in the U.S. military, passing legislation repealing the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
The bill -- a so-called "stand alone" measure not tied to any other legislative items -- passed 250 to 175 on mostly partisan lines. It now advances to the Senate.Read more at CNN.
OTTAWA—The Conservatives and Liberals appear to be ending the year the same way they started it — in a dead heat.
A new poll by The Canadian Press Harris-Decima suggests the Tories have the support of 31 per cent of Canadians, statistically tied with the Liberals at 29 per cent.Read more at the Toronto Star.
The verdicts are in, and all parties are calling the Cancun climate talks a success although the meeting concluded with no binding agreement for reducing greenhouse gases.
The NDP’s environment critic Linda Duncan arrived in Ottawa early Sunday morning, just hours after the environmental summit had wrapped up, calling the agreement that was reached a “breakthrough.”Read more at the Globe and Mail.
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| Prime Minister Stephen Harper, pictured at an event in Nova Scotia on Friday, says he wants to see the world achieve a legally binding agreement to regulate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (CBC) |
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada would support a binding international agreement to reduce greenhouse gases.Read more at CBC.
CANCUN, Mexico — While Canada is being raked over the coals at the UN Climate Summit, Quebec is picking up accolades: a forest in Australia is being named for the province's premier.
The Jean Charest urban forest, on the outskirts of Adelaide, is to highlight the premier's commitment to fighting climate change.Read more at CTV.
The Harper government has once again delayed implementation of regulations that police say they need to quickly trace guns used in crimes.
The government quietly posted a notice last Tuesday — one day before the firearms marking regulations were to have come into force — disclosing that implementation has been postponed until Dec. 1, 2012.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
In a report released Thursday at the climate summit in Cancun, the United Nations agency said the global average temperature in 2010 was tracking to be one of the three warmest since readings began to be taken in 1850, just behind 1998 and 2005.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
The Copenhagen ad agency, working for the city zoo, took “very high res pictures” of all sides of a “normal city bus” and melded them with a picture of a very large boa constrictor, said Schack.Read more at the Toronto Star.
At that point, his JdeM colleagues advised him to “choose his fights carefully and to make pretend.” And he did just that by pretending to phone the protagonists, and later to tell his editors that he’d come up with nothing….Read more at the Globe and Mail.
“I’ll just say this: I’m proud of our Charter, I’m proud of our courts. I’m proud of the fact that there are limits on what agencies and our government can do,” Ignatieff said. “That’s always been our position. We’re a country of freedom. We’re a country of democracy.”Read more at the Toronto Star.
This does not make the Superior Court of Justice a "censor." What it does is to remove the "rights-shield" from defamatory speech, thus protecting Vigna's rights and, for that matter, the rights of anyone similarly situated. The point, to borrow a phrase, is that people's reputations and rights should not become roadkill on the path to free speech.Read more at the Ottawa Citizen.
Mr. Baird noted that the new regulations apply only to new plants and major expansions. To be effective, regulations will have to require that existing plants start to adapt to the best available technology, he said.
It now appears that efforts to pass a U.S. bill that would create a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse-gas emissions are doomed, so the Obama administration has taken steps toward regulating polluters with its own executive power, through the Environmental Protection Agency.
U.S. conservative standard bearer Sarah Palin has accused critics of unfairly singling her out after a slip of the tongue reignited debate over her grasp of world affairs.Read more at the Calgary Herald.
Sun TV is now set to launch in mid-March, said Luc Lavoie, the head of the project. The launch was originally set for Jan. 1, but technical delays including later-than-expected equipment deliveries have slowed things down somewhat, he said.
The upcoming channel has been surrounded by some controversy, including an online activist group that objected to its launch.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
Despite heavy coverage by the media and calls for a boycott against the procedures, a USA Today/Gallup survey indicates that 71 percent of Americans who consider themselves air travelers say that a potential loss of personal privacy from such screening is worth it as a method to prevent terrorist acts, with 27 percent disagreeing.
According to the poll, 18 percent of people who say they've flown at least twice in the past year say going through a full body scan would make them angry, with 24 percent saying they would be bothered but not angry and 57 percent saying they would not be angered.Read more here
Montreal’s métro lines will be not be renamed after corporations or change their colours, and stations will not be plastered with advertising if the Société de transport de Montréal allows the private sector to “sponsor” lines, the STM said Tuesday.
“It will have to be discreet or we won’t do it,” STM executive director Yves Devin told reporters.Read more at the Montreal Gazette.
An independent cost-benefit analysis of Conservative legislation to kill the federal long-gun registry has found the public savings could amount to just over $1.5-million annually – and that there are only two good reasons to scrap the program.
One is a reduced burden on gun owners. The other is a lighter load for taxpayers.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
