TransCanada Pipeline Safety Audit Underscores Concerns: Council Of Canadians

CALGARY - Problems flagged in the National Energy Board's audit of TransCanada Corp.'s pipeline safety practices should have Canadians worried, a group fighting that company's proposed Energy East pipeline said Tuesday.

The audit report, released Monday, found TransCanada (TSX:TRP) to be non-compliant in four of nine areas it examined: hazard identification, risk assessment and control; operational control in upset or abnormal operating condition; inspection, measurement and monitoring, and management review.

Canada's Richest Have Gotten Richer. The Poorest? Well...

A new report on Canadian finances shows the rich have nearly doubled their net wealth over the span of 13 years while the poor have -- you guessed it -- gotten poorer.

Statistics Canada’s survey of financial security, conducted between September and November 2012, revealed the poorest 20 per cent of Canadians have seen their median net worth remain unchanged since 2005, and decline since 1999.

Three apartheid policies enforced by Israel today

As previously discussed, apartheid refers to a system of discriminatory polices which divide a population along racial lines and give superior treatment to one race over another. The objective of these inhumane laws is to maintain the domination of one race. The system of apartheid implemented by Israel in the Palestinian territories is designed to oppress Palestinian Arabs and give preferential treatment to Israeli Jews. We will now explore the different apartheid policies enforced by Israel (Note: Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) refers to East Jerusalem, West Bank and the Gaza Strip which have been under Israeli occupation since 1967)

Supreme Court Makes Big Decision On When Cops Can Enter Your Home

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police may search a home without a warrant when two occupants disagree about allowing officers to enter, and the resident who refuses access is then arrested.

The justices declined to extend an earlier ruling denying entry to police when the occupants disagree and both are present.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court's 6-3 decision holding that an occupant may not object to a search when he is not at home.

Toward a nuanced, feminist discussion on Venezuela

If you’re paying attention to international news, you may have noticed that there’s something happening in Venezuela. And depending on what news sources you’re reading, you might be hearing extremely different things. What you’ll have trouble hearing, though, is a nuanced perspective that doesn’t either dismiss or glorify my homeland’s socialist government. So I guess I’m gonna try to write it.

To be honest, I’m quite hesitant to talk Venezuelan politics publicly. I’ve found people’s reactions to be extremely polarized, and the subject matter too deeply personal for me to easily brush off. But the last week has been so brutal, and the coverage so extremely lacking, that it feels imperative to put fear aside and share the little piece I have to contribute. I’m particularly interested in leftist movements’ ability to hold leftist governments accountable when their actions are oppressive, in our ability to have a nuanced conversation about the ways the folks we prop up as heroes fail us. And I’m interested in talking about how, even in the face of complete failure on major issues of gender equity and justice, leftist projects can remain darlings in the eyes of our social movements.

Stephen Harper's Income Splitting Tune Shifts Again

OTTAWA - The Conservative caucus appears to have put some woolly socks on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cold feet on income splitting, convincing him to stick with a key campaign promise despite his finance minister's public reservations.

After Harper suggested earlier this month that he might be having second thoughts, the message from the prime minister changed this week to one of again embracing the concept.

Who Are We to Define Democracy for the Ukraine?

As a preeminent journalist of unquestionable pedigree, I am puzzled by the lack of context offered by the National Post's editor-at-large Diane Francis in her most recent Huffington Post blog.

A distinguished professor at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center, a Media Fellow at the World Economic Forum, a media advisor to graduate student teams at Singularity University in the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, she doesn't mention that Ukraine is a country cut in half by cultural and economic division.

There are the Russian speaking, Orthodox people in the eastern part of the country, in the economic driving centers of Ukraine like Kharkiv, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk. And the more impoverished, largely Catholic, places in the West such as Lviv and Uzhgorod. The capital Kyiv is smack dab in the middle of the country that is divided geographically by the river Dnieper which runs through the center of Ukraine. The people in Crimea, in the south, are pro-Russian.

Medvedev Questions Legitimacy Of Ukraine's New Government

MOSCOW (AP) — A successful Olympics behind him, President Vladimir Putin is facing what may become the most dramatic challenge of his rule: how to respond to the turmoil in Ukraine, a country he has declared vital for Russia's interests, which is home to millions of Russian-speakers and hosts a major Russian navy base.

Some in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east and south already have begged the Kremlin to help protect them against what they fear could be violence by the victorious protesters who toppled Ukraine's Moscow-backed leader. Putin has refrained from taking a public stance on Ukraine amid the Sochi Games, but the mounting tensions could quickly leave him with a stark choice: Stick to diplomacy and risk losing face at home, or open a Pandora's box by entering the fray.

Canada leads World Bank corruption list

More corrupt isn’t the kind of reputation Canada is looking for on the global stage.

Unfortunately, Canada leads on the World Bank's running list of people and companies barred from receiving financing under its fraud and corruption policy.

As it stands today, Canada has the most new entries on the list, with the addition of 119 people and companies. All but two of those total entries are from SNC-Lavalin and affiliated companies, a World Bank spokesman said Wednesday.

David Samson’s Tangled Web at the Port

Here’s an ironic example, uncovered by Christie Watch, of how tangled is the web involving Chris Christie, the Port Authority, its chairman David Samson, and Wolff & Samson: A key former member of Governor Chris Christie’s cabinet, who now works for the powerhouse and well-connected law firm Wolff & Samson, is overseeing a contract handed out to Wolff & Samson in August 2013 to audit the distribution of Sandy aid. Lori Grifa, who once headed Christie’s Department of Community Affairs, is the Wolff & Samson attorney in question, and it turns out that she also lobbied for the approval of the $1 billion development project in Hoboken that is at the center of charges that the administration threatened to withhold Sandy aid to Hoboken unless Mayor Dawn Zimmer approved the project.