Tuesday May 13, 2008
Ottawa ready to apologize for Komagata Maru incident
Gurcharan Singh Gill's grandfather was a stout man - and could just barely see over the rails of the Komagata Maru when it docked in Burrard Inlet 94 years ago.
Under watchful eyes, sick boy endures chemo and a visit from dad
Lying on his hospital bed, the boy stared up at the security guard. The guard was holding a magazine with a fold-out ad for the coming Harry Potter movie.
U.S. paid bounty for Khadr arrest in Pakistan
A U.S. intelligence agency paid a bounty of $500,000 (U.S.) to Pakistani military officials who arrested a Canadian citizen wanted for links to al-Qaeda, according to a new Federal Court ruling.
Myanmar's generals are ruled by paranoia
To the outside world, the reaction of Myanmar's military regime to last week's devastating cyclone seems not just obscene, but inexplicable. Instead of rushing to help its desperate people, the regime of General Than Shwe all but shut off the country from foreign assistance while pushing ahead with a referendum on a new constitution. But to those who know the regime, its reaction is perfectly in character.
Earthquake kills thousands in China
An earthquake devastated southwestern China, killing close to 10,000 people and trapping hundreds of others under schools, factories and houses, while the worst-hit area was still cut off from rescuers today.
Report on Business 
Put your finger on a more efficient system
Like many workers who are paid hourly, employees at Dynamic Team Sports Canada Co. in Toronto used to punch time clocks. The sportswear company's human resources staff had to prepare time cards for more than 200 employees, calculate hours manually and enter the data in a payroll system.
TSX at record, but few are partying
Canada's benchmark stock index clawed its way back to a record yesterday, but you won't find a lot of high-fives on Bay Street.''I wouldn't call it a party here. The journey has been long and hard,'' said Ian Nakamoto, director of research at MacDougall MacDougall and MacTier. ''The sectors that still have clouds overhanging them, such as the financials, are still way off their highs.''
On the road again
Peng-Sang Cau figures that mobility is the ideal way to appease her guilt on the work and the home front. ''It seems that working moms feel guilty about everything in our lives - either we feel we don't do enough on the job or we don't do enough for our kids.''
WestJet grows up
By itself, WestJet Airlines Ltd.'s $20 one-way fuel surcharge on short-haul flights may seem like small potatoes to shareholders who have watched their stock tumble 31 per cent from a record high over the past five months.
Forty-year mortgages spark concerns
Canadians are flocking to 40-year mortgages, often without a down payment, and the rapidly developing trend is beginning to ring alarm bells for policy makers in Ottawa.Both the Finance Minister and the Governor of the Bank of Canada are expressing concern about the situation, as the U.S. economy continues to reel from a crisis triggered by mortgage holders who were in over their heads.
Globe Sports
IOC offers support
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has written to Chinese President Hu Jintao, offering the IOC's support and condolences over the ''major disaster'' of yesterday's massive earthquake and loss of life in Sichuan province.
Talbot puts the pop in popular
When Michel Therrien and his Pittsburgh Penguins coaching staff were sorting out the rooming assignments for their players at the beginning of the NHL season, one of the easier decisions was to put Maxime Talbot with developing star Evgeni Malkin.
International competitions to leave Toronto FC short-handed as well
Forget about David Beckham for a bit. Please.Toronto FC head coach John Carver will soon have his own problems with players missing games because of international commitments.Marvell Wynne and Maurice Edu, for instance, will be away to represent the United States at the Beijing Olympics in August. That's only for starters. There will be World Cup qualifiers coming up and exhibition matches to prepare for those.
Blue Jays earn split in Cleveland
J.P. Ricciardi has surveyed the major-league baseball landscape, and while he does not relish the view from the basement, he does not anticipate any more tinkering in an effort to improve the sagging Toronto Blue Jays.
Wings take stranglehold on series
They needed a good early push - and got it. For the first seven or so minutes of play, or until the first television timeout, the Dallas Stars didn't surrender a single shot on goal and had the Detroit Red Wings on their heels for a time.
Globe Life
YOUR MORNING SMILE
What do levitation artists listen to when they're performing?Elevator music.- Edwin Kobe, Vancouver
Avoiding the step-parent trap
The term ''blended family'' has a nice ring to it. Different ingredients mixed together into a tasty concoction. Sort of like an orange-pineapple-banana smoothie.Not quite.In my experience, when second families fail, it is often because of conflicts involving children, especially teenaged children.
As food costs skyrocket, the restaurant generation pays a hefty tab
On any weeknight you can see them - parents and kids of all ages dining out in a packed sushi joint or low-key Italian bistro - and it's not even a celebration. It's just ... dinner.
The wave he couldn't weather
Glenn Wakefield was sleeping when the first big wave hit. He'd gone to bed in a squall. Winds topped 90 kilometres an hour. Waves towered 10 metres high. Six hundred kilometres north of the Falkland Islands, the storm lashing at the 57-year-old carpenter and his 40-year-old sailboat was so loud that he couldn't sleep without industrial-strength earplugs.
FRANCO BALDOCCHI
Franco had a keen eye for the finer things in life: the perfect tie for a new outfit; a fresh tomato to accompany a meal; a glass of single malt scotch; a good joke.
Globe Review
Celebrity defence barks up wrong tree
Life has just got a little better and a little worse for man's best friend.Better and worse because as we begin to cohere, as a society, and recognize the virulence of animal abuse, we learn so many hideous details of its wanton occurrence.
Young Lantos follows in father's footsteps
As his father is preparing to step off a plane and onto the white pebbled beaches of the south of France, young Ari Lantos is watching a wizened pig roast on a spit in the heart of Canada's malodorous steel town.
If a Sweeps stunt falls in the forest, does anybody hear?
Hey, where'd everybody go? That's the question today.''May Sweeps Stats Soft'' said the headline in the daily version of Media Week magazine yesterday. No kiddin', Sherlock.In the aftermath of the writers strike, the American networks have, together, about seven million fewer viewers in prime time than they had last November. To be specific, high-profile shows are drawing fewer viewers: CSI is down three million viewers, Grey's Anatomy is down four million and House is down two million.
He was Fredericton's man
LEONARD COHENAt the Playhousein Fredericton on SundayLeonard Cohen may have 48 dates in 14 countries over the next several months, including Switzerland's prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival and Britain's Big Chill fest, but first he took Fredericton in an accomplished performance Sunday night.
Their arresting new album
I walked west to the setting sun, every single step I grow another second young. - Tokyo Police Club's In a Cave.Fifteen minutes? Shoot, that's a coffee break. For Tokyo Police Club, it was nearly long enough for seven songs - the seven succinct songs that made up their career-launching A Lesson in Crime, an EP from 2006 that took the young Toronto indie rockers touring around the world and plopped them on the pages of Rolling Stone magazine, on the stages of Coachella and Glastonbury, and in front of the cameras of Late Show With David Letterman. No band had done as much in such a small space of time, ticking within the fame constraints as set out by Andy Warhol.
Editorials
A CHILD CAN'T WEIGH LIFE AND DEATH
Children who are dying of cancer do not, and should not have, the right to reject potentially life-saving medical treatment. Child-welfare authorities in Hamilton were right to ask for a court order forcing an 11-year-old boy to receive chemotherapy. And the court was right to give the order.
WISE CHANGE OF COURSE
Rarely does the federal NDP, let alone the Bloc Quebecois, serve as a model of restraint. But with some healthy skepticism toward the ethanol fad, those two parties have set an example that the Conservatives and Liberals would do well to follow.
AULD ACQUAINTANCE FORGOT?
As Pakistan learned last year, it is meant to be a punishment to be suspended from the Commonwealth. Yet the Commonwealth's historical and cultural linkages matter so little now that the senior member, Britain, can no longer be bothered to maintain a small existing expense that has done much to perpetuate the bonds.
Comment
The best chance at life
Decisions about medical treatment for critically ill children open up a world of competing sorrows. The case of the 11-year-old Ontario boy with leukemia, whose father refused a second round of chemotherapy for him, is no exception.
The ethics commissioner goes too far
A pesky Member of Parliament is looking into your affairs and you want it to stop? Sue him. That's right, just file a statement of claim. Once you do that, according to Federal Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson, the MP must formally disclose the lawsuit's existence and then skedaddle.
Even the redoubtable Premier Campbell struggles with health care
Call him principled, tough, stubborn, headstrong, arrogant, visionary. British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell, when he sets his mind to something, is not easily pushed off stride.Health care, however, has defeated him. Defeated, in the sense of the province's budget consuming an ever-larger share of government revenues.
Mr. Dion's really great idea
The compact fluorescent light bulb has finally gone off over Stephane Dion's head. What he's been needing is a really big idea to make an impression on the public. Something to show them he's decisive - not just a pointy-headed nerd with a backpack, but a bold and visionary man of action who really stands for something. He's been looking and looking, and now at last he's found it.
Obituaries
Tool maker became an inventor to found a firm that led the world
An industrial innovator whose mind never seemed to sleep, William (Bill) Fisher created machines that have been used to make everything from monopoly pieces and bicycle gears, to car parts and the blades for jet engines.
ARTHUR KROEGER
Carleton University graduate student Nora Addario Draper writes about Arthur Kroeger, whose obituary appeared yesterday. Arthur Kroeger gave more than just his name to the college of public affairs and policy management at Carleton University. Insisting that the students call him Arthur, he was present each September to meet first-year entrants to the college. He also attended each convocation ceremony to applaud jubilant graduates and found ample opportunity to support and engage with individual students.
DOTTIE RAMBO: 74
Dottie Rambo, a gospel singer and songwriter whose songs have been recorded by Dolly Parton, died Sunday when her tour bus ran off the highway and struck an embankment. She was 74.
LAST WORDS
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.Bertrand Russell 1872-1970
Globe Real Estate
Education
New batch of northern students is just what the doctor ordered
By the spring of 2000, doctors across northern British Columbia had had enough.Fed up with long days with no time off because of a physician shortage in many rural areas of the province, doctors began resigning their hospital privileges in protest.
Canada's debt to Arthur Kroeger
I was incensed over my morning coffee to read Gwyn Morgan's dismissive critique of the value of university degrees in the fine arts, humanities and ''so-called social sciences'' (Poor Choices In Education Can Make You A Statistic - Report on Business, May 12).
