Harper, Privy Council Office Approved Long Hiring Process For Social Security Tribunal

OTTAWA - The Privy Council Office, the bureaucracy that serves the prime minister and cabinet, played a key role in designing a lengthy 15-month hiring process for members of the government's badly backlogged social security tribunal, an internal memo shows.

The document, obtained by The Canadian Press, says the process was approved by Prime Minister Stephen Harper just six months before the tribunal launched.

Employment Minister Jason Kenney has pointed the finger at the "rigorous pre-screening process" for new tribunal members as one of the reasons why thousands of terminally ill or injured Canadians are waiting years for appeals after being denied Canada Pension Plan disability benefits.

Ontario Gas Plant Scandal: Cops Say Liberals Paid Expert $10K To Wipe Hard Drives

TORONTO - The Ontario Liberal caucus paid the spouse of a top aide to Dalton McGuinty $10,000 to wipe computer hard drives in the premier's office, police alleged in court documents released Thursday.

The information used by Ontario Provincial Police to obtain a search warrant that was executed in November at a provincial government cyber security office in Toronto was made public after media lawyers requested it be unsealed.

The warrant is part of an OPP investigation into deleted documents on the Liberals' decision to cancel two gas plants prior to the 2011 election, at a cost to taxpayers of up to $1.1 billion.

Mass Incarceration’s Collateral Damage: The Children Left Behind

Steven Alexander was in sixth grade when his mother, Carmen Demourelle, was sentenced to twelve years in prison for pickpocketing in New Orleans’s French Quarter. Though she was held in a women’s prison just an hour away, her four children could not telephone her and visited only about once a year.

At the time of her arrest, Demourelle was working sporadically as a beautician, though she was mainly making “fast money” by selling drugs and picking pockets while her children were in school, she said. But after school, she was an engaged and caring mother—until she was sent to prison. “I missed everything about her,” Alexander recalled. “I wanted her home.”

57,000-Gallon Oil Spill In Canada Forces Closure Of Pipeline To U.S.

Canadian energy delivery company Enbridge Inc. has temporarily shut down and isolated one of its crude oil pipelines that connects to the United States after a 1,350-barrel, or 56,700-gallon oil spill, the company reported Wednesday evening.

While the company said it’s not sure how long the cleanup will take or when the pipeline will be re-opened, it insisted that no oil was spilled out of the area within the Regina Terminal in Saskatchewan, where the incident occurred. It’s not yet clear what kind of oil was released — the 796,000 barrel-a-day Line 4 pipeline, which connects to a terminal in Wisconsin, carries heavy, medium, and light sour crude.

‘Human Experimentation Was a Core Feature of the CIA Torture Program’

If journalists and officials began talking about the tests that CIA psychologists conducted on suspected terrorists at U.S. black sites, would Americans demand the prosecution of those responsible?

Beyond a handful of low-level troops and contractors, no one—including the officials in charge—has been held accountable for the grisly tortures that were detailed in the Senate report on the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program, writes Lisa Hajjar, a professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara. “Indeed, impunity has been virtually guaranteed as a result of various Faustian bargains” between the CIA, Congress and the White House, she says. “An American majority, it seems, has come to accept the legacy of torture.

Why Is Ecuador Selling Its Economic and Environmental Future to China?

At the point where the lazy, black-water Cuyabeno runs into the faster currents of the Aguarico, carrying a chill from their Andean source, sandbars stretch out from the verdant banks. These are the Playas de Cuyabeno, and the name has attached itself to the indigenous Cofan community in this region, deep inside Ecuador’s portion of the Amazon Basin. Until very recently, an assortment of thatched, wooden dwellings sat above the river. Today it has been replaced by an orderly hamlet of evenly spaced, two-story, prefab houses, all steel and white plaster, connected by improbably clean roads, and sprinkled with basketball courts and childrens’ playgrounds. This is Ecuador’s first Comunidad de Milenio (Millenium Community), a $21 million benefit from the proceeds of the Pañacocha oil field that borders the community. Under the terms of the country’s 2010 Hydrocarbon Law, a portion of the royalties from oil production must be ploughed back into the communities affected by drilling and extraction.

Qatar's Epidemic Of Migrant Worker Deaths Mars 2022 World Cup Construction

DOHA, Qatar - Men crammed together, dozens to a room, on bunk beds so close they can reach over and shake hands.

Qatar, on paper at least, has rules that forbid such uncomfortable conditions for its massive workforce of migrant labourers. Yet this is how the government-owned transport company, which the Gulf nation will use to ferry visitors around the 2022 World Cup, has housed some of its workers.

Canadians Unhappy With Harper Government's Performance, Poll Suggests

Canadians aren't feeling very positive about the direction of the country under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a new poll suggests.

But according to new numbers from Nanos Research and the Institute for Research on Public Policy, things have improved slightly for Conservatives from their darkest point last year.

The survey, released Thursday, shows 45 per cent of Canadians think the Harper government has performed poorly or very poorly, while 37 per cent rate the performance as good or very good. Last December, in the thick of the Senate expense scandal, 56 per cent of respondents told Nanos they were unhappy with the government's performance.

Avon To Pay $135 Million For China Bribes

NEW YORK (AP) — The world's largest direct seller of cosmetics, Avon Products Inc., will pay $135 million to settle criminal and civil charges after its China unit pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing officials there.

Avon China entered the plea in federal court in Manhattan, admitting it disguised $8 million in gifts its employees gave to Chinese government officials from at least 2004 through late 2008 to gain access to officials who oversaw direct selling regulations. It admitted concealing and disguising cash, non-business meals, travel and entertainment it provided to obtain business benefits.

How Inside Traders Are Rigging America and Contributing to the Savage Inequalities of American Life

A few years ago, hedge fund Level Global Investors made $54 million selling Dell Computer stock based on insider information from a Dell employee. When charged with illegal insider trading, Global Investors’ co-founder Anthony Chiasson claimed he didn’t know where the tip came from.

Chiasson argued that few traders on Wall Street ever know where the inside tips they use come from because confidential information is, in his words, the “coin of the realm in securities markets.”