Baird going to UN to oppose Palestinian statehood bid

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says he'll travel to New York Thursday and will oppose any "unilateral" move by the Palestinian Authority for statehood at the United Nations.

The UN General Assembly is set to consider the matter Thursday, a year after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formally asked the UN to consider his application for full membership in the UN.

Stephen Harper out of step on Israel and Palestine

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made it official: His Conservative government will oppose a bid by the Palestinians to have the United Nations recognize Palestine as a non-member “observer state.” No one really expected otherwise.

Yet it hardly follows that Ottawa need adopt a harshly punitive attitude if the General Assembly does vote this week to upgrade the Palestinians’ status, a symbolic measure but one that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fiercely resists. That would only further isolate Canada from some of our closest allies.

A Report From Gaza Under Siege

Gaza City—Casualties mount as the Israeli military continues to bomb the Gaza Strip. On Sunday Gaza’s health minister, Dr. Mofeed Makhlalati, said the death toll had risen to seventy-five killed and more than 680 injured. So far three Israelis have been killed as result of Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza.

Medical sources at Shifa Hospital say that 90 percent of the casualties are civilian. “We are human. We like life, and we would like to live life like other people,” Dr. Makhlalati said at Shifa on Sunday evening. Behind him, more bodies were being moved into the morgue.

19 Percent of Congress Is Female. Why Not Half?

When the new Congress is sworn in next January, women will occupy 19 percent of its seats, a record number in both the House and Senate.

Spirits were high a week after the election when EMILY's List, a political organization dedicated to electing pro-choice women, hosted a press briefing recapping the results. "Can I just start by saying, we won!" said Stephanie Schriock, the group's president. "And we won across the board. It was a historic night."

Human Rights Watch: 'Ban Killer Robots'

'Killer robots' with the ability to attack people without human intervention should be pre-emptively banned, a major human rights group has warned.

Such weapons do not currently exist - at least in a form which is regularly employed on the battlefield by major governments.

In fact the term 'killer robots' still brings to mind science fiction rather than a military reality.

Cone of Silence won't make Albertans any less angry at expense account shenanigans

Aw, geeze! Just when you thought it was safe to say something nice about Alberta's Progressive Conservative government and bury the phrase "culture of corruption" once and for all, another shoe drops in the apartment upstairs.

This time it was yesterday's report by CBC investigative journalist Charles Rusnell that a senior executive at the old Calgary Health Region used public money earmarked for health care to make donations to PC Party fund-raisers in the mid-2000s with more than a little help from her generous expense account.

Some of Rusnell's previous reports, as alert readers will recall, have catalogued similar donations of public funds to the Alberta Tories from school boards, community colleges, universities and health regions -- a sort of long-standing money laundering scheme in which taxpayers' public dollars were routinely converted into private cash for partisan use.

Elections Canada to take unprecedented steps to publicly consult on robocalls

Elections Canada is undertaking an unprecedented level of public consultation as part of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand’s efforts to produce a report to Parliament in March on the misuse of communications technology during the 2011 federal election which resulted in the robocalls and voter suppression scandal.

“Although we have done surveys and recommendations and those kinds of things before, it’s the first time we’ve done this kind of consultation,” said Elections Canada spokesperson John Enright, referring to the Nov. 7 discussion paper, Issues Arising from Improper Telecommunications with Electors.

Morale ‘lowest it could ever be,’ says Transport Canada civil aviation safety inspector

Morale in the federal public service across Canada is at its “lowest” with employees becoming less innovative and questioning what the point of their job is as the federal government continues to cut $5.2-billion from its budget, say union representatives.

“Morale in my workplace, it’s the lowest it could ever be,” said Keith Parsons, a civil aviation safety inspector working for Transport Canada in St. John’s, Nfld.

Liberals to introduce 3,000 amendments to feds’ massive omnibus budget bill, NDP vow to do same; parties say to expect another Commons voting marathon

PARLIAMENT HILL—The federal Liberals plan to table 3,000 amendments to the government’s most recent omnibus budget bill, setting the stage for the same kind of Commons voting marathon the opposition parties mounted last June to protest the first massive omnibus bill from the spring budget.

The NDP says it too will not roll over for the latest omnibus budget implementation act, Bill C-45, which amends more than a dozen other acts and covers a range of measures, including further controversial changes and exemptions to federal environmental protection.

Divided States of America: Obama win sparks secession mania

The talk around Chuck’s Firearms Inc., a strip-mall gun shop in Atlanta, Ga., usually revolves around subjects like Georgia State football or quail hunting. But in this traditionally red state, a new online wave of anti-Obama protest is stoking secession mania — 150 years after the Deep South's original crusade for "states' rights" gave way to a bloody Civil War.

"People want their voices to be heard, and this is how they decided they're going to do it,” gun seller Jack Lesher said, describing the viral activism that began flooding the WhiteHouse.gov website this month with petitions for states to split from the Union.