Beijing takes dog off the menu for Olympics
July 11, 2008
Beijing takes dog off the menu for Olympics
BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing has asked hotels and restaurants in the city to take dog meat off the menu for the duration of next month’s Olympics and September’s Paralympics.
Dog is eaten not only by the large Korean community in China’s capital but is also popular in Yunnan and Guizhou restaurants.
A directive from the Beijing Food Safety Office issued last month ordered Olympic contractor hotels not to provide any dishes made with dog meat and said any canine material used in traditional medicated diets must be clearly labeled.
Get ready to pay for incoming text messages
July 7, 2008
Get ready to pay for incoming text messages
OTTAWA – Cellphone users are about to be hit with new fees as two of Canada’s telecommunications giants plan to bring in a levy on incoming text messages.
Bell Mobility will begin charging customers 15 cents per incoming text message on Aug. 8. Telus Mobility is moving to the same billing practice effective Aug. 24. Until now, their pay-per-use customers who send text messages have been charged a 15-cent fee per message, but it hasn’t cost anything to receive them.
Canadian consumers are really getting screwed these days. At least it Robbers Rogers is not involved in this new pricing scheme.
This isn’t exactly new though. They used to charge for text messaging at Fido back in the day. It was 10 cents to send or receive (they changed it 5 or so years ago). Although, their unlimited text message plan was only $2 back then! I miss the pre-Rogers Fido. We had Fido Pro ($9 for unlimited text, caller ID, voicemail, fax, etc), City Fido ($40 unlimited calling with no SAF) and even unlimited data for $50 (you read that right, unlimited). The CRTC really effed it up by letting Rogers buy Fido.
Lawyers could go the way of the dodo, magazine suggests
OTTAWA – Lawyers have to come to grips with the prospect that they are a “luxury good” that may no longer be needed in the country’s courtrooms as more litigants represent themselves, warns a leading Canadian legal publication.
The National, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association, makes the bold assertion in an editorial, entitled Life After Lawyers, published in the current edition.
The editorial focuses mainly on the growing number of people who are showing up in family courts to fight over their children and marriage breakdowns without hiring lawyers.
“There is reason to believe that lawyers will not be an essential part of the legal system in the future,” writes editor Jordan Furlong, a lawyer and longtime tracker of legal trends.
Canadians prefer Obama to their own PM: poll
July 1, 2008
Canadians prefer Obama to their own PM: poll
OTTAWA — Canadians hold US presidential hopeful Barack Obama in higher esteem than any of their own politicians, including their prime minister, a public opinion poll suggests.
Twenty-six percent of respondents to the survey for the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper and CTV television identified Obama as the politician they “admire most”.
In second place was conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper at 21 percent, followed by Obama’s former rival for Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, who easily bested all Canadian opposition leaders with 16 percent.
“It’s one of those relatively rare moments when we look south of the border at their politics with something approaching envy,” said pollster Peter Donolo of Strategic Counsel, which conducted the poll.
North Pole may have no ice this summer: scientist
June 28, 2008
North Pole may have no ice this summer: scientist
WASHINGTON – There could briefly be no ice at the North Pole this summer, a US scientist said Friday, an event that would mark a new stage in the melting of the Arctic ice sheets due to global warming.
“We could have no ice at the North Pole at the end of this summer,” Mark Serreze, a scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, told AFP in an interview.
“And the reason here is that the North Pole area right now is covered with very thin ice and this ice we call first-year ice, the ice that tends to melt out in the summer.”
If the ice, albeit briefly, were to break up completely this summer it would be the first time this had happened in human history.
Al Gore will not be happy.
Chinese school to build ‘Vancouver resort’
June 26, 2008
Chinese school to build ‘Vancouver resort’
A B.C.-certified high school in China is creating a “Vancouver” resort on a lake near Shanghai, complete with its own Coal Harbour, Robson Street and Royal Yacht Club.
The Sino-Canada high school says its upscale resort will include an international education park, lakeside apartments and Canadian-style wooden cottages. But the main drawing card is the elite school, which offers the B.C. curriculum taught by B.C. teachers to students of wealthy families who want their kids to graduate with B.C. certificates.
“Who wants his or her children losing at the first place?” promotional ads on the school’s website ask. “Every moment is crucial to a student. Choosing Sino-Canada High School is an express way to experience the authentic Canadian education; one step closer to the University of British Columbia.”
If getting into UBC wasn’t competitive enough.
I met someone who went to one of these schools in China. It might have been this one, I can’t remember the name. What most impressed me was his English.. or rather his English accent. It was quite good for someone who’s only been in Vancouver for a year and has lived in China all his life.
229 dead in Philippines typhoon: official
June 22, 2008
229 dead in Philippines typhoon: official
ILOILO, Philippines — At least 229 people are confirmed dead and at least six missing after Typhoon Fengshen ravaged the central and southern Philippines, Red Cross and civil defence officials said on Sunday.
The toll does not include those dead or missing from a ferry that sank in the central Philippines with about 747 people aboard. Four people have been confirmed dead and there are four survivors from that accident.
The rest are unaccounted for.The central province of Iloilo has suffered the heaviest losses after being hit by the typhoon on Saturday, with 101 dead, Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon said.
Other fatalities were recorded in the neighbouring provinces of Romblon, Cotabato, Antique and Capiz, Gordon added.The civil defence office recorded 26 fatalities in the southern island of Mindanao.
“This (toll) will definitely rise dramatically when we get the listings from the ship,” he said, referring to the Princess of the Stars ferry that sank off Sibuyan island amid rough seas on Saturday.
Floodwaters in Iloilo rose so swiftly that many residents were forced to take refuge on rooftops or in the branches of tall trees, said provincial administrator Manuel Mejorada.
I was born in Iloilo City and still have plenty of extended family living in the area, so I’ve been hearing a lot about this over the last couple days. This morning has been especially newsworthy when a ship carrying 700+ people capsized. The typhoon has been pretty devastating. The news was all over my Google Reader feeds. Iloilo is a relatively small city (though densely populated as any city is in the Philippines) and I don’t remember the last time it has garnered this much international attention.
Strong quake jolts northern Japan, two dead
June 13, 2008
Strong quake jolts northern Japan, two dead
TOKYO – A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 jolted northern Japan on Saturday, killing two people, injuring scores, and sending landslides sweeping across roads.
The quake, at 8:43 a.m. (2343 GMT), was centred in Iwate, a mountainous rural area around 300 km (190 miles) north of Tokyo, where the tremor was also felt.
One of those killed was a person caught in a landslide, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters. A second was killed as he ran out of his house and was run over by a car.
Linden hangs up his blades after 19-year career
June 11, 2008
Linden hangs up his blades after 19-year career
Vancouver Canucks forward Trevor Linden has retired from hockey, ending a 19-year National Hockey League career.
The 38-year-old made a formal announcement at GM Place in Vancouver on Wednesday afternoon, but the move was expected after Linden was given a standing ovation during a farewell lap after the Canucks final regular-season game this season.
I’ve had someone call me Trevor before…
Antarctica base gets 16,500 condoms before darkness
June 9, 2008
Antarctica base gets 16,500 condoms before darkness
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – One of the last shipments to a U.S. research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness was a year’s supply of condoms, a New Zealand newspaper reported on Monday.
Bill Henriksen, the manager of the McMurdo base station, said nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered last month and would be made available, free of charge, to staff throughout the year to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to buy them.
Ont. woman shaves head for cancer; loses job
June 6, 2008
Ont. woman shaves head for cancer; loses job
A 36-year-old woman who shaved her head to help raise money for cancer research says she lost her job at a high-end Owen Sound, Ont., restaurant this week because her boss didn’t like her new appearance.
“I was mad that I lost my job in trying to do something that was important to me,” Stacey Fearnall said Thursday. “I was so upset and hurt. My feelings were hurt.”
Arriving Tuesday for her afternoon waiting shift at the upscale steak and seafood eatery where she had worked for two years, Fearnall said it was clear her new look was of concern to her boss and manager – who ignored her, she said, before suggesting that she go home because the restaurant wasn’t busy.
B.C. residential construction investment up
June 2, 2008
B.C. residential construction investment up
VANCOUVER – B.C. has recorded the biggest increases in residential construction investment so far this year, according to a survey released Monday by Statistics Canada.
The survey concluded that B.C. saw a 21.2-per-cent increase in the first quarter of 2008 over the first quarter of 2007 to $4.0 billion in investment.
That compares to a national increase of 7.5 per cent to a total value of $19.8 billion.
Japanese man finds woman living in his closet
May 30, 2008
Japanese man finds woman living in his closet
TOKYO – A Japanese man who was mystified when food kept disappearing from his kitchen, set up a hidden camera and found an unknown woman living secretly in his closet, Japanese media said on Friday.
The 57-year-old unemployed man of Fukuoka in southern Japan called police on Wednesday when the camera sent pictures to his mobile phone of an intruder in his home while he was out on Wednesday, the Asahi newspaper said on its Website.
Vancouver parents offered their baby for sale
May 27, 2008
Vancouver parents offered their baby for sale
VANCOUVER – A Vancouver couple were arrested by police after posting an Internet ad on Craiglist, offering their seven-day-old baby for $10,000, police said today.
Vancouver police Const. Tim Fanning said he had never heard of such a thing in his 27 years as a police officer.
He said 10 police officers worked on the case, tracking the Craiglist posting to a West End apartment.
Caffeine before bowl of cereal an a.m. mistake
May 20, 2008
Caffeine before bowl of cereal an a.m. mistake
Canadian researchers say drinking coffee before eating your morning cereal can affect the body’s blood-sugar response and cause blood glucose levels to rise dramatically — especially when eating low-sugar cereals.
According to the study by University of Guelph researchers, blood-sugar levels in people who ate low-sugar cereal were 250% higher if they drank caffeinated coffee before or with breakfast, compared to decaf.
Earlier research has shown that, “whether you’re a healthy individual, obese or a Type 2 diabetic, when you ingest caffeine and then follow that with some food that’s carbohydrate-based, for a prolonged period of time — certainly six hours at least — your body becomes insulin resistant,” says Terry Graham, professor of human health and nutritional sciences at the University of Guelph.
