“I Couldn’t Love Him More”: How Romney Steered a Key Olympic Project to a Friend

As Mitt Romney got ready to take his seat in London for the Olympics' opening ceremonies, the focus of the presidential campaign this week shifted to the candidate's time running the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Romney is generally recognized as the take-charge executive who turned the Games around after a massive bribery scandal. But there's another side to that record. Romney's campaigns, as we've previously reported, have taken in $1.5 million in donations from the families and business associates of two central figures in the Salt Lake scandal. And documents obtained by Mother Jones shed new light on another of the candidate's Olympic connections—his personal intervention on behalf of his closest Salt Lake friend, developer Kem Gardner, in connection with a key real estate deal.

Wisconsin Oil Spill: Enbridge Energy Reports Incident

WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. pipeline safety agency launched an investigation on Saturday into an oil spill in Wisconsin on Enbridge Inc's network that forced the partial shutdown of a main artery carrying light sweet Canadian crude to Chicago-area refineries.

Enbridge's 318,000 barrel per day Line 14 pipeline, part of the Lakehead system, was shut after an estimated 1,200 barrels of oil were leaked. This happened almost two years to the day after another major spill in a different section of the line, in Michigan.

Randy Hillier keeps his eye on the goal

He used to blockade highways, stack hay bales in front of government offices and lead farmers on illegal hunts for deer that were eating crops in the Ottawa Valley.

These days, he is organizing academic conferences and drafting legislation. During his transformation from activist to his area’s MPP, Randy Hillier never changed his goal of erecting a barrier to government regulation of private property.

Man vying for broadcast licence urged to donate to Tory fundraiser

The chairman of a proposed new Toronto radio station says he was asked to attend and contribute to a Conservative fundraiser while he was applying for a new federal broadcasting licence.

Stan Antony, who heads a bid for a new station called STAN FM, says he was invited over the phone by the host of a Conservative fundraiser to attend an event in a suburban Richmond Hill basement and make a contribution.

Lori Douglas scandal shows how easy it is to become a judge

WINNIPEG—The checkup into the background of Canadian senior judges before they’re appointed is as light as a feather duster, it emerged at the Lori Douglas inquiry Friday.

And with that revelation alone, the Canadian Judicial Council committee looking into how Douglas was appointed in 2005 — despite the existence of online nude photos and the alleged sexual harassment of her lawyer-husband’s client — has justified its existence.

Douglas’s applications to become a judge had previously been blocked by Manitoba Appeal Court Justice Marc Monnin, who feared that the photos her husband Jack King had posted of her online would lead to embarrassment or blackmail. Eventually he became convinced that they were permanently deleted and the matter was settled.

The provinces shouldn’t hold national projects hostage

A good friend of mine grew up beside the St. Lawrence near Cornwall. The St. Lawrence Seaway was being built, and the family’s beloved summer place had been expropriated to accommodate it. Upset, the boy wondered why his father accepted the loss with such equanimity.

His answer, which so struck my friend and me, was essentially this: The Seaway is a grand project that will benefit people in many parts of this great country that has given us so much. Yes, we will lose something we care about and that is reason to be sad. But when you set against that the progress for the country and all those who will be made better off, it is something that we should support. That’s what being Canadian means.

U.S. securities regulator alleges insider trading ahead of China’s Nexen bid

The U.S. securities regulator filed a complaint in court on Friday against a firm controlled by a Chinese billionaire and other traders, accusing them of making over $13-million (U.S.) from insider trading ahead of a bid by China’s CNOOC for Canadian oil company Nexen Inc.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said the federal court in Manhattan had frozen assets worth over $38-million belonging to Hong Kong-based Well Advantage, controlled by businessman Zhang Zhirong, and other unnamed traders who used accounts in Hong Kong and Singapore to trade in Nexen stock.

First Nations outraged by Clark's Enbridge pipeline 'sales pitch'

First Nations opposed to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project are accusing B.C. Premier Christy Clark of selling out British Columbians and putting a price tag on the future of aboriginal people.

The Yinka Dene Alliance, a group of five First Nations in the B.C. Interior, issued a statement Saturday, saying it rejects Clark’s “sales pitch.”

White congregation bans black couple from marrying at church: Report

JACKSON, MISS.—A Mississippi couple says the church where they planned to get married turned them away because they are black.

Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson say they had set the date and mailed invitations, but the day before their wedding they say they got bad news from the pastor of predominantly white First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs: Some members of the church complained about the black couple having a wedding there.

The Wilsons, who live in nearby Jackson, said they attend the church regularly although they are not members.

A pipeline to provincial politics

In 1966, when Joey Smallwood, then the premier of Newfoundland, was trying to dam the massive Churchill River in Labrador, he got frustrated that Quebec wouldn’t let him build power lines to southern markets.

Smallwood wanted to ask Lester Pearson, then the prime minister, to invoke Clause 10 of Section 92 of the British North America Act, which allows Ottawa to assert jurisdiction over interprovincial projects if parliament declares them to be “for the general advantage of Canada.”

Smallwood later described his meeting with Pearson.