StoneMtn

Black carbon casts a deadly shadow worldwide…and it is one of the biggest causes of warming in the Canadian Arctic. The fragile Arctic is home to polar bears, caribou and indigenous cultures that have prospered for thousands of years. But the region is dramatically changing—nearly 40 percent of sea ice that was present in the 1970s has since melted.

Canada can and should lead the world in protecting the Arctic from climate change. And quick action to cut black carbon is one of the strongest actions we can take to slow Arctic melting, fight global warming and save lives.

The chief culprit in global warming is carbon dioxide. But recent studies show that black carbon—microscopic airborne particles commonly known as soot—is a big factor and may account for as much as half of the warming taking place in the Canadian Arctic. Black carbon comes from diesel engines, industrial smokestacks and residential cooking and heating stoves. Along with deep cuts in carbon dioxide, curbing black carbon is crucial for slowing Arctic and global warming, and for averting catastrophic tipping points such as the melting of sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet.

Black carbon is also a leading cause of respiratory illness and death, so controlling emissions will save lives and improve health around the world. In India alone, black carbon-laden indoor smoke is responsible for over 400,000 premature deaths annually, mostly women and children.

In the environment, the direct absorption of sunlight by black carbon heats the atmosphere. When black carbon falls on snow and ice, it reduces reflectivity and speeds up melting. The good news: Because black carbon stays in the atmosphere for only days or weeks, moving quickly to expand existing technology can be an effective rapid response to slow warming and buy critical time to achieve reductions in CO2.

Canada and other developed nations must lead on this issue by creating stricter standards at home for diesel engines and other sources of black carbon pollution, and by committing to increased assistance to the developing world to reduce black carbon pollution from diesel, home cooking, indoor heating and other sources.

This is a climate change solution that Canada can and should lead. Please do your part to help and send this letter.

Link to send note to Canadian Government

Oh, okay. I guess the word just keeps getting used, despite that.

A court was convinced a no contact order was appropriate after reviewing the circumstances. I gave you one example of when that would happen. In every case that such an order is handed down, someone had to convince a court it was appropriate under the circumstances, such as the example I gave you.

How many scenarios do you need me to prove it in?

Yes.

That's brilliant. How could anyone argue with that? ...

Unless even the most basic example were considered...

... for instance, a woman is tortured by a man for years. She escapes. He continues to call her, send her letters, drive by her house... She can't sleep. She is afraid to go out. She fears for her children...

Ultimately she gets a court order, after years of hell. The court order says he cannot contact her. She finally begins to feel safe.

She logs into Facebook. He's poked her.

She should just get over it, eh? Just block his account and move on.

Killers trusted to tell the truth in return for welfare

Posted: October 20, 2009, 2:00 PM by NP Editor

Kelly McParland

In Canada we don't trust government to tell us the truth, we don't trust police officers to abide by citizens' charter rights and we don't trust adults enough to let them make their own health decisions.

But we do trust rapists and murderers to voluntarily disclose outstanding warrants when applying for welfare:

People with outstanding warrants will be denied income assistance in British Columbia as soon as next year if legislation introduced yesterday is passed into law, said Rich Coleman, Minister of Housing and Social Development. "People who have outstanding warrants shouldn't be getting welfare until they clean up the problem," said Mr. Coleman, adding that to qualify, warrants must be for indictable offences such as murder, sexual assault and drug trafficking. But Mr. Coleman said the government will not run criminal background checks on welfare applicants to enforce the policy. Instead, it will rely on criminals to disclose their outstanding legal issues when they make an application.

Link

He was not charged with murder (aka homicide in Canada).

I have no way of knowing what you are referring to.

You are speaking very vaguely about something specific. It makes it difficult to clarify things.

Who are these lawyers? Which laws? What discussions?

Nope. Not good ones who like to win.

If you're referring to the odd anomalous contractual interpretation case, in which punctuation is found to matter, that is the exception.

In almost any case that someone tries to skirt the "spirit" of a court order by way of an overly restrictive interpretation, though, the court will tend to find in favour of the wider interpretation.

Thanks everyone!

... and although BradM just explained why this is obviously contact, consider this: Is poking someone not something more than "no contact".

Of course.

Judges don't generally go for overly-restrictive semantical distinctions.

Let's put this in perspective. She was busted for a breach of a court order not to contact this person. It really doesn't matter whether it is a phone call, Facebook poke, or singing telegram. She violated the court order by contacting the person.

Big Brother comments are not applicable here. It was simply enforcement of a court order, as in any other case.

I wish I could say this type of thing is limited to the academic life.

They've had a bit of a lineup change; and so far I think I like their old sound better, but here's their current album, so see what you think:

http://www.themotet.com/digdeep/motet-dig.deep.zip

Sorry what was the news again? I'm having trouble reading this site off my Blackberry, right now, while I drive.

YoursTruly, Dr. Evil Mouse hit the nail on the head. No one needs, or should have, nuclear arms.

Nuclear power-plants, at least, have utility. Nuclear missiles just destroy the planet.

Iran tests longest-range missiles

Iran has successfully test-fired some of the longest range missiles in its arsenal, state media says.

The Revolutionary Guards tested the Shahab-3 and Sajjil rockets, which are believed to have ranges of up to 2,000km (1,240 miles), reports said.

The missiles' range could potentially reach Israel and US bases in the Gulf, analysts say.

The tests come amid heightened tension with the big international powers over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Last week, Iran disclosed it was building a second uranium enrichment plant, despite UN demands that it cease its enrichment activities.

Iran is due to hold crucial talks with the five UN Security Council members plus Germany on Thursday on a wide range of security issues, including its nuclear programme.

Sanctions threat

"An improved version of Shahab-3 and the two-stage Sajjil, powered by solid fuel, were fired," the Guards' air force commander Hossein Salami was quoted as saying by the state-owned Arabic language TV channel Al-Alam.

ANALYSIS

Jon Leyne, BBC Tehran correspondent

The big fear is that ultimately Iran will have a fully-fledged inter-continental ballistic missile.

These missiles already cover pretty much the whole of the Middle East and a good chunk of Turkey as well, and maybe the fringes of Europe.

I think Iran would say with some justice its missile programme is the strongest deterrent it has got.

It probably cannot prevent Western jets getting through and Western missiles getting through.

But it could - and I think Israel knows for example - that if it did strike Iran, it would have to take into account the possibility of really substantial casualties if Iran did unleash its long-range missile pack.

Footage of the test-firing of the Shahab-3 in desert terrain was broadcast by another state-owned channel, Press TV.

The Shahab-3 (Meteor-3) is classed as a medium range ballistic missile but is the longest-range rocket Iran has successfully tested in public.

Iran says the missile, which it first tested in July 2008, can fly some 2,000km, although Western defence experts have put the strike range at 1,300km (807 miles).

The surface-to-surface Sajjil is a new, two-stage missile using solid fuel, which is considered to give a more accurate delivery than liquid fuel rockets.

It has been tested by Iran twice, in November 2008 and May 2009.

The BBC's Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne says Iran's enemies might be most worried by the test-firing of the Sajjil missile.

It is more advanced, and multiple stage rockets offer the potential for longer ranges, he says.

The Shahab-3 and Sajjil rockets are currently believed to be capable of reaching not only Israel and US bases in the Gulf, but also parts of Europe.

These tests are part of several days of military war game exercises known as Sacred Defence Week.

On Sunday, the medium-range Shahab-1 and 2 missiles with a range of 300 to 700km (186 to 434 miles) were tested.

The short-range Tondar-69 and Fateh-110 type, with a range of up to 170km (100 miles), were also tested.

Although the tests are likely to have been planned in advance, Iran will not be unhappy if they are seen as a gesture of defiance by the West, our correspondent adds.

Iran is under increasingly pressure to co-operate fully over its nuclear ambitions - particularly since the revelation of a previously undisclosed uranium enrichment plant.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has insisted that the plant, near the holy city of Qom, does not breach UN regulations and says it is open for inspection by UN experts.

But leaders of the US, Britain and France accuse Tehran of keeping the plant secret in breach of UN rules.

They have raised the prospect of new, tougher sanctions against Iran if Thursday's meeting with the so-called P5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany) yields little progress.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8278026.stm

Published: 2009/09/28 10:06:37 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Why? Enough already!

Link

At his age, anything can turn serious pretty quickly. I could see him getting more hurt from falling, though, than from a little indigestion.

Anyway, it's terrible news (especially because he was only on stage, touring, to make a living after all his money was stolen).

I hope he bounces right back.

I'll bet the person sitting next to him would be pretty thrilled; and I presume he'd at least have a wireless mic.

Not if you're Bono Vox.

I'm a general litigator. I have a pretty large part of my practice dedicated to defamation, but I also litigate in a crazily varied number of areas. I do, practically, no criminal law - the occasional favour, but few and far between.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

A critical victory for Canada’s endangered species

A tiny minnow may have provided the key to protecting species at risk across the country - from the smallest fish all the way up to endangered humpback and killer whales.

In a landslide win, the Federal Court ruled in our favour and admonished the Minister of Fisheries of Oceans (DFO) for breaking the law and failing to identify the habitat of the Nooksack dace – an endangered minnow found in just four streams in BC’s Lower Mainland. In his judgment, Justice Campbell said our lawsuit was “absolutely necessary†and described the case as “a story about the creation and application of policy by the (DFO) Minister in clear contravention of the law, and a reluctance to be held accountable for failure to follow the law.†In short, the judge ruled that:

For the reasons provided in conclusion of the present Application, pursuant to s. 18.1(3) of the Federal Courts Act, I declare that the Minister acted contrary to law by failing to meet the mandatory requirements of s. 41(1)© of SARA in the Final Recovery Strategy for the Nooksack Dace.

In this case, recovering the Nooksack dace means protecting a series of streams in the Lower Mainland of BC – putting it mildly, a politically unsavoury move – which may explain that in addition to removing critical habitat from the Nooksack dace’s recovery strategy, the Minister also directed that this information should be removed or suppressed from all 20 aquatic species facing extinction in the province. With this win, we’ll be looking to the Minister to make substantial improvements to the way all of Canada’s at risk species are protected, including the dace.

Ecojustice is putting DFO on formal notice that it has 90 days to rewrite BC species’ recovery strategies that have failed to identify critical habitat, and we’ll continue to monitor the government’s progress in the coming months. For now, we’re happy to celebrate this win with our clients - David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence, Georgia Strait Alliance and the Wilderness Committee.

You mean this topic continued, even though we cannot possibly know the "entire story", other than what is reported, yet? People are still posting opinions?

Oh no.

Davey Boy must be very upset.