Wednesday-Night

(Sierra Club) Environmental Impacts of Tar Sands Development; (Pembina Institute) Tar Sands Watch; Oil Notes on WednesdayNight.com; (National Geographic March 2009) The Canadian Oil Boom - Scraping bottom; More on oil & tar sands

The tar sands consist of a mixture of silica sand, minerals, clay, water, and most importantly, crude bitumen. The process of converting bitumen […]

A lighter look at the European debt situation

Greece on Wednesday-Night.com ; Europe & EU
Europa Gateway to the European Union; EU Observer ; Special: European Union ;
What to Read on the European Union
Q&A: The Lisbon Treaty
The Lisbon Treaty could finally come into effect in 2009, eight years after European leaders launched a process to […]

(NOAA) HURRICANE KATRINA — MOST DESTRUCTIVE HURRICANE EVER TO STRIKE THE U.S.
NYT Times Topics - Hurricane Katrina
Wednesday Night #1227 (7 September 2005)
(MSNBC) Rising from ruin Since early October 2005, MSNBC.com journalists have been documenting the efforts of the coastal Mississippi towns of Bay St. Louis and Waveland to rebuild from the devastation wrought by Hurricane […]

More on Biofuels and clean energy
Race for biofuels heats up in Africa
The drive to produce crops such as sugar cane and palm oil that can be converted into biofuels is spurring land grabs across Africa that may contribute to food shortages and deforestation, Friends of the Earth says in a new report. […]

See also Iraq 5 years later ; U.S. Foreign Policy ; Iraq news on Wednesday-Night.com
U.S. mission in Iraq switches from combat to assist
(Reuters) - The U.S. military is on track to cut numbers in Iraq to 50,000 by end August, when the 7-1/2-year combat mission launched by former President George W. Bush ends and operations […]

See Westmount on Wednesday-Night.com ; Westmount Examiner ; City of Westmount ; Westmount Independent
We commend the Westmount Independent for their excellent coverage of the arena issue, although we still dislike their PDF format which requires lots of scrolling.
More on the arena project from Don Wedge’s interview with Patrick Martin (PDF, scroll to page 5)
Excellent […]

How We Ranked the World
In NEWSWEEK’s first-ever Best Countries special issue, we set out to answer a question that is at once simple and incredibly complex—if you were born today, which country would provide you the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life? Many […]

Here is the wonderful  Montreal City Weblog that does 99.9% of our Montreal-focused work for us. It is full of current news and information, along with some excellent links and several years’ worth of weekly archives. The latter make entertaining if discouraging reading as one is reminded how many are recurrent and unresolved topics. Grateful […]

See also M.S. Arctic Sea; The crypto machines of the NSA museum (photos)

Spies, secrets and smart-phones
(The Economist) SOME sort of a deal seems to have been thrashed out over the weekend, according to reports from Saudi Arabia, under which its spooks will be able to snoop to their heart’s content on messages sent over […]

E. J. Dionne: Chris Dodd and the Politics of Joy
When I sat down last week at the Capitol with Dodd to talk about his 36 years in Congress, he didn’t change my attitude toward the longest-winded legislative body in the world. But he reminded me of something missing in our public life: an ebullient joy […]