1. SASKATCHEWAN LOVES PIPELINES! The provincial government is happy that the federal government has conditionally approved Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline. Even Saskatchewan’s Opposition NDP supports it Saskatchewan NDP leader Cam Broten supports Keystone XL but has said of Northern Gateway, “Looking at the facts, I don’t think it’s a wise project.” Still, I suspect the majority of Saskatchewanians back this pipeline. But I’ll bet that if we could send 100 randomly picked Saskatchewanians to the Great Bear Rainforest — the pristine region that, sooner or later, WILL be devastated by this development — 80 to 85 of them would come back opposed. And that’s without even getting into the pipeline’s climate change downside.
2. AND IN OTHER ENVIRONMENT NEWS U.S. President Barack Obama orders an expansion of a Pacific marine sanctuary, India tells Coke it’s using too much water and, wait, let me just copy and paste this quote: “The UN has expressed alarm at Australia’s proposal to dump 3m cubic metres of dredged material into the Great Barrier Reef world heritage site.” Barbaric!
3. THE U.S. PATENT OFFICE HAS CANCELLED THE “REDSKINS” TRADEMARK Huh. Too bad team ownership didn’t get out in front of this by changing the team’s racist name voluntarily.
4. QUEEN CITY MACHETE RAMPAGE Ugh.
5. WASCANA PARK GETS NEW FROGS Hey, here’s some nice news: Grey tree frog calls have been recorded in Regina. The frogs haven’t been found here before. Pretty darn cool!
6. OUR TROUBLED WORLD The world has become a less peaceful place. There’s violence in Ukraine and chaos in Iraq (which is now asking the U.S. for air strikes). Meanwhile, former U.S. vice president and Iraq war architect Dick Cheney said a bunch of evil garbage.
7. WILL YOUTUBE BLOCK ALL THE GOOD MUSIC VIDEOS? Idiots. How is it good for YouTube to block stuff like this? Maybe YouTube should be a public utility rather than a private service.
