Mid-Week Post

Just a few notes...


At least fifty-six people are killed after a train derailment in Spain:

At least 56 people were killed and 70 injured when a train derailed on the outskirts of the northern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday in one of Europe's worst rail disasters. 

Bodies covered in blankets lay next to the overturned carriages as smoke billowed from the wreckage. Firefighters clambered over the twisted metal trying to get survivors out of the windows, while ambulances and fire engines surrounded the scene.

Fire Kathleen Wynne out of a cannon:

Shocking new revelations to the committee investigating the cancellation of two gas-fired power plants show that despite her testimony to the contrary, new Premier Kathleen Wynne was very much part of the conversations surrounding the scandal's coverup.

In a July 22 letter to the Standing Committee on Justice Policy, deputy minister of government services Kevin Costante confirms that 1,233 backup tapes have been found - so far - containing Wynne e-mails about the gas plant cancellations.

The letter doesn't give any clue as to how many gas plant e-mails are on each of these tapes - only that the tapes have been found.

In testimony to the gas plant committee on June 6, Wynne denied any involvement in decisions to break her own government's record-keeping laws by deleting the e-mails.

"Those were decisions that were made by other people in other conversations and I wasn't part of those conversations ... I wasn't in those rooms," she told the committee.

"I can't speak to the motivation and I can't speak to the behind the scenes, because I wasn't in those conversations."

The 1,233 tapes belonging to Wynne's e-mail account are part of some 3,226 "responsive" backup tapes found, including 1,494 tapes containing gas plant e-mails of former energy minister Chris Bentley.

Of course he does:

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has changed his tune on pot — and he's calling for the drug to be legalized to keep it away from Canadian kids. 

The rookie leader is shown endorsing marijuana's legalization in a clip of a Liberal rally in pot-friendly British Columbia that was posted on Youtube Tuesday. 

"I'm actually not in favour of decriminalizing cannabis," he told the enthusiastic crowd of supporters. 

"I'm in favour of legalizing it, tax it, regulate it. It's one of the only ways to keep it out of the hands of our kids because the current war on drugs, the current model is not working. We have to use evidence and science to make sure we're moving forward on that." 

Of course that will happen, just the same way booze and cigarettes are kept away from kids. Sure.

It explains the kind of people who would vote for him.


It's quite sad when an act of heroism must go unnoticed thanks to lynch mobs:

The family rescued from a car accident by George Zimmerman, days after he was cleared of wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, cancelled plans to thank him publicly because they fear being linked to someone reviled by many Americans, Zimmerman’s lawyer said on Wednesday. 

“The family, who really wanted to thank George for doing what he did publicly ... realized that in any way connecting yourself with George Zimmerman is right now very toxic,” Mark O’Mara, Zimmerman’s lead attorney, told CNN.

And this kind of thing wasn't done before because...?

A U.S. bankruptcy court judge on Wednesday dealt a blow to Detroit's public employee unions and pension funds opposed to the city's historic bankruptcy filing by suspending legal challenges in Michigan state courts while he reviews the city's petition for protection from creditors. 

Judge Steven Rhodes ordered three lawsuits filed by city workers, retirees and pension funds be halted and extended that stay to suits against Michigan's governor, treasurer and Detroit's emergency manager. Rhodes' action ensures that the only path to fight the city's Chapter 9 bankruptcy petition runs through his courtroom in downtown Detroit. 

It also sets the stage for what is expected to be a protracted and bruising battle over the city's eligibility to restructure more than $18 billion in debt and pension and healthcare liabilities under the broad protections of federal bankruptcy law.

China's expansionist policies are rattling Japan:

Japan scrambled fighter jets on Wednesday after a Chinese military aircraft flew for the first time through international airspace near its southern islands out over the Pacific, in a move seen by Japan as underlining China's maritime expansion.

Ties between China and Japan have been strained by a territorial dispute over uninhabited East China Sea islets and hawkish Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a decisive victory in upper house elections on Sunday.

Japan's Defense Ministry said a Chinese Y-8 airborne early warning plane flew through airspace between Okinawa prefecture's main island and the smaller Miyako island in southern Japan out over the Pacific at around noon and later took the same route back over the East China Sea.

"I believe this indicates China's move toward further maritime expansion," Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters, in comments carried on public broadcaster NHK.

Chinese government spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines should form a coalition against China. Their survival depends on it. Imagine China controlling the Pacific.


I love this photo. I hope the statue does it justice:

It was an emotional moment, captured on film, when five-year-old Warren Bernard bolted from his mother's side and reached for the outstretched hand of his war-bound father in October 1940, and it will soon be preserved in a public memorial in New Westminster, B.C.

The Metro Vancouver city announced Wednesday it has selected artists Veronica and Edwin Dam de Nogales to create a bronze memorial based on the famous photo, "Wait for me, Daddy," taken by The Province newspaper photographer Claude Dettloff.