Monday, December 23, 2013

FAST FACTS ABOUT THE NORTHERN GATEWAY PIPELINE

  • The pipeline will create over 3,000 construction jobs and 560 long-term jobs in British Columbia
  • $3 million in core funding for a Gateway Education and Training Fund to support construction skills training.
  • 70% of the route will use previously disturbed lands
  • First Nations and Métis communities were offered to become equity partners providing them a 10% stake in the project.
courtesy cbc.ca

THE BAD (From Forest Ethics.org)
  • The pipeline would bring crude oil tankers to BC’s north coast (where the Great Bear Rainforest is located) for the first time ever
  • Over 130 First Nations have signed on to the Fraser Declaration banning tar sands from being transported through their territories
  • According to a 2010 poll, 80 per cent of British Columbians support a ban on oil tanker traffic on BC’s North Coast.
  • Between 1999 and 2008, Enbridge has had over 610 spills that released approximately 21 million litres (132,000 barrels) of hydrocarbon, the organic compound in oil, gas or bitumen
THE UGLY (From Forest Ethics.org)
  • Between 1999 and 2008, Enbridge has had over 610 spills that released approximately 21 million litres (132,000 barrels) of hydrocarbon, the organic compound in oil, gas or bitumn
  • In July 2010 they spilled nearly 4 million litres of tar sands into the Kalamazoo River that has yet to be re-opened.
  • In 2009, Enbridge had 103 reportable spills, leaks and releases, and 91 spills in 2010.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Edmonton police plan to offer hijab option for female Muslim officers

EDMONTON - Edmonton Police Services has designed and approved a new hijab female police officers can wear as part of their uniform.
A hijab tailor worked with the police tactics training unit, as well as the police equity, diversity and human rights team, to design a head scarf that covers the head and neck of an officer without covering the face.
“After rigorous testing, it was determined that the head scarf did not pose any risk to the officer wearing it, or reduce officer effectiveness, nor interfere with police duties or public interactions,” reads a statement from Edmonton Police Services.
Changes to the uniform policy for police have been approved by various police committees and people in the Muslim community.
“EPS respects a Muslim woman’s choice to wear the head scarf,” the statement reads. “The Edmonton Police Service continues to change with the times, as have a number of police, justice and military organizations in western nations that have already modified their uniforms to accommodate the hijab.”
The police service doesn’t currently have any members or applicants requesting the hijab, but Soraya Zaki Hafez, president of the Edmonton chapter of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, believes some women may now consider being a police officer, where before they did not.
“This makes Muslim women part and parcel of that community,” Hafez said. “To be accepted, I think it’s a great feeling.”
Hafez said some Muslim women wear a head scarf as a way to identify themselves as devout Muslims. It is mentioned in the Qur’an, Hafez said.
“It means that they are following their religion closely,” she said. “Islam is a religion of, we submit to God and they feel that God wants them to be this way, cover up.”
Hafez said the uniform hijab has no excess material, but is tailored to the woman’s head. It’s also tied with a snap button, which means it will come off quickly and safely should someone pull it. Regular hijabs are usually tied with pins or sewn stitches, Hafez said.
“I think we are a pioneer,” Hafez said of the Edmonton police force. “I think other provinces will follow suit and ask to follow the design.”
Edmonton Sikh officers can already wear turbans.
If adopted, the proposed Quebec Charter of Values will forbid public servants from wearing religious symbols, including hijabs, turbans and large crucifixes, among other symbols.

Alberta schools are no longer the best


EDMONTON - Alberta students used to be ranked at the top of the world academically, but they are sliding. At the same time, Edmonton public Grade 12 students are dropping on provincial diploma exams. Yet in our classrooms, we are pushing a fantasy that our students are better than ever.
In the past decade, Grade 12 classroom marks at Edmonton public school board schools have shot up.
Since 2002, the number of EPSB students who have been graded as “excellent” or “acceptable” on provincewide diploma exams has dropped by 1.9 per cent. In the classroom, however, the number who have been graded “excellent” or “acceptable” has gone up by seven per cent.
The generation of kids that got soccer trophies just for showing up at the tournament is now getting passing and honours marks even if they haven’t always earned them.
At the Grade 12 level in math, for example, there was almost no separation between diploma and classroom marks in 2002, but now the gap is wide. In 2013, 78 per cent of EPSB students were graded “acceptable” on the Math 30-1 diploma exam, but 94 were graded “acceptable” in class.
Public school superintendent Darrel Robertson says he expects there would be a gap. One set of grades come from one-shot, pressure-packed exams, Robertson says, but classroom marks are a “richer form of assessment” based on a long term, more intensive look at the student.
That may be, but why is the gap widening? Why the inflation?
Rampant grade inflation does no favours to students. They need a rigorous education. The inflation also hides from parents that our schools have got off track somewhat because of ill-advised changes to our curriculum and to teaching methods.
The drop in our academics achievement isn’t going unnoticed by others, as seen by the gold standard of international academic rankings, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment or PISA.
Hundreds of thousands of 15-year-olds around the world write these tests every three years. In 2000, Alberta ranked top worldwide in reading, third overall in science and math. Our teachers and curriculum were top notch and our accountability, through provincial exams, was state-of-the-art.
Since then, however, Alberta has steadily dropped. This week when the 2012 PISA results came out, we ranked 11th in math, fifth in reading and fourth in science.
Not bad. Pretty good, in fact, but not what we were, especially in math where Alberta is sliding toward the mediocre middle. Of course, this will come as no surprise to parents and educators who have noticed how ineffective our “new math” curriculum is.
Our top-ranked system clearly wasn’t broken, but educational theorists and consultants have been hard at work earning fees and successfully convincing Alberta Education to “improve” our system.
Our new math curriculum no longer focuses on elementary school students mastering the basics of arithmetic. Math drills are out. Math drills are so 2000.
Instead, our children, the new masters of their own learning, are asked to somehow discover the ways of arithmetic by trying to figure out wordy math problems. Today’s math isn’t about numbers, it’s about words and theories, as if the curriculum was written by folks who hate the clear logic of pure mathematics.
It is little wonder that Edmonton parents are flocking to private learning programs like Kumon, or to special public school programs like Cogito, where the slow but satisfying mastery of arithmetic is the focus.
Where does that leave parents who can’t afford Kumon, or others who can’t get their kids into a popular program like Cogito? It leaves them stuck on the second rung of a two-tier educational system.
No doubt, as a result of the “new math” and other quack reforms, high school teachers are getting students increasingly less able to do the work. But the response hasn’t been to fail these students, which would essentially blow the whistle on the botched reforms. Instead, it’s been to refuse to hand out zeros to students who don’t do the work, pass kids through, perpetuate the notion that all is excellent, or at least passable, and even to fire a teacher, Lynden Dorval, who dares question the new orthodoxy.
As Alberta’s previous excellence demonstrates, we have many outstanding teachers and administrators. But it’s time to get rid of unproven theories and get back to what made our academics the envy of the world, back to masterful teaching of fundamental math, reading, writing and composition skills, and back to honest report cards, with more accountability through increased provincial testing.

Alberta hamlet coldest place on Earth on Friday

Traffic is backed up on the Quesnell bridge due to an accident. Traffic was heavy with multiple collisions all over and icy conditions in Edmonton, December 6, 2013.

Edmonton, 6th December, 2013 - It is so cold in Edmonton that the ears fell off the Robbie Burns statue outside the Hotel MacDonald.
OK, they didn’t really. But it is pretty flipping cold.
The good news — sort of — is that Gina Ressler, a meteorologist at the Weather Network in Mississauga, says a slight warming trend is on the way.
Temperatures in Edmonton will rise from -30 or so Saturday morning to about -15 late Saturday night, and will then soar into the minus single digits on Monday.
Then another cold front is expected.
“It’s just crazy,” said Ressler, who earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta. “I feel your pain.”
Here, are a few numbers to mull about that pain:
-25
The high recorded at Edmonton International Airport on Friday. The warmest temperature in Canada on Friday was 12.6 C in Greenwood, N.S. Punks.
-33.7
The bone-chilling low recorded at Edmonton International. That is frosty, but substantially short of the record for the date. That was -41.7 in 1882. The temperature at City Centre Airport bottomed out at -30.3, the coldest reading of 2013.
-42
The estimated wind chill, or temperature it felt like in Edmonton when temperature and wind speed were combined. Lowest estimated wind chill in Edmonton history: -61 on Jan. 26, 1972.
5 to 10 minutes
Amount of time it takes for exposed skin to freeze at -40 C.
-40
The low Friday morning at Leedale, a hamlet in Ponoka County 59 kilometres northwest of Red Deer. It was the lowest temperature Friday recorded anywhere on Earth. Manning, 73 km north of Peace River in northern Alberta, was the next-coldest at -39.8.

A girl child peeks through the frosted front window of Interiors on a very cold Friday, December 6, 2013.

+52
Temperature at Santa Elena de Uaren, Venezuela, the warmest recorded place on Earth on Friday.
-5
Ah, for the balmy breezes of Siberia. That was Friday’s temperature in Tomsk.
4,242
The number of service calls logged as of 5 p.m. Friday by the Alberta Motor Association. Most calls in Edmonton were for battery boosts. The average wait was seven hours.
16 hours, 39 minutes
The average wait time in Edmonton for a tow or a winch at 4 p.m., according to the AMA.
300
The number of people waiting for the doors to open Friday morning at the water park at West Edmonton Mall. Inside, it was 31 C. Also, the number of vehicles requiring a boost at Edmonton International Airport. The number of vehicles needing assistance on a normal winter day is 75 to 100.
1 hour, 20 minutes
Length of time it took for a medium double-double from Tim Hortons to freeze on the fifth-floor balcony at the Edmonton Journal. The 15-ounce cup was 85 C at the start.
500
Approximate number of students attending an impromptu sock hop at Greenfield School in Edmonton. The lunch-hour dance was arranged by parents Fred and Melody Mah to reward students who had to skip recess all week due to cold weather. Selections played: will.i.am’s I Like to Move It, Kool & The Gang’s Celebration and PSY’s Gangnam Style.
$739.50
Cost of a round trip flight leaving Edmonton for Maui on Saturday, Dec. 7. with a return on Dec. 14. As quoted on Cheapoair.com. Don Ho is calling.

Alberta hamlet coldest place on Earth on Friday

Alberta hamlet coldest place on Earth on Friday

Alberta hamlet coldest place on Earth on Friday

Alberta hamlet coldest place on Earth on Friday

Driver charged with drug trafficking following collision that killed teen near Rocky Mountain House

EDMONTON - The driver of a pickup truck that struck and killed a 14-year-old girl on a highway near Rocky Mountain House has been charged with trafficking after RCMP found marijuana worth an estimated $600,000 in his truck.
The collision occurred Nov. 22 around 9:45 p.m. on Highway 11, about 40 kilometres west of the town.
On Nov. 27, RCMP executed a search warrant on the vehicle. Following an extensive search of more than 350 items, police found 171 pounds (77.5 kilograms) of packaged marijuana concealed within the box of the truck.
The shipment was believed to be travelling from British Columbia to Alberta, RCMP said.
The 51-year-old driver, whose name has not yet been released, has been charged with possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking, RCMP said Friday.
The collision happened when a teen was travelling with a group of intoxicated people in an SUV. The vehicle was stopped on the shoulder and the teen was walking on the highway when she was hit by a pickup truck.
The truck’s driver pulled over immediately after the crash to give help, but then wound up in a fight with the group in the SUV.
A short time later, the group put the injured girl in the SUV and began driving east toward Rocky Mountain House. But before making it to town, the SUV went into the ditch.
Officers witnessed that accident and immediately responded to the SUV. They found the 14-year-old inside the vehicle in critical condition. She was pronounced dead at the scene a short time later.
Three occupants of the SUV are now facing charges. A 17-year-old man is charged with one count of assault with a weapon, mischief against the driver of the truck, and three counts of breach of probation.
Delphine Dixon, 48, is charged with one count of assault against the driver of the truck, and Hysteria Simeon, 23, is charged with impaired driving and provincial driving offences.
RCMP said the deceased teen was from Eden Valley, but have not released her name.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

The NRI Post - Largest NRI News Portal: Nobel laureate and human rights campaigner Nelson ...


The NRI Post - Largest NRI News Portal: Nobel laureate and human rights campaigner Nelson ...: Johannesburg, 5th December 2013 - Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid icon who became the first president of a democratic South Africa, p...

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Opening of Edmonton’s NAIT LRT line delayed

EDMONTON – The opening of the NAIT LRT line will be delayed a few months, and is now expected to open in June 2014.
Officials say there have been delays in developing the software needed for a computerized train control system.
“We’re trying to implement a new system,” explained LRT Director Dave Geake. “It’s a computerized train controlled system that comes into the middle of the line… Belgravia is the start of it, through to the Stadium station on the existing line, as well as controls train movements up on the line towards NAIT.”
“We’ve had some delays in developing the software and in getting our cars retrofitted with the equipment that we need to make the system work. We’re still working very hard with the supplier to get that addressed.”
The system will control how trains move along the tracks and coordinate where two lines meet.
“It controls the train movements through where you bring the NAIT line into the existing line so you’re actually affecting both lines if you don’t have some kind of system to control those trains through there,” explained Geake. “So you could run the risk then of having two trains collide. And so, that’s what we’re not going to do.”
Crews will also need more time to test the system.
“With this type of a system, there is an extensive amount of testing that needs to be done to prove it all out. So that’s one of the factors,” said Geake.
“Some of that actually has to be done in the middle of the night when we’re not operating, so that we don’t have a major impact back on the existing line.”
The NAIT LRT line was originally scheduled to open in April 2014. Now, it’s scheduled to open at the end of June.