Opinion

In a move that almost nobody was asking for, the Harper Government has decided to continue its rebranding crusade by reinstating the original royal titles to the armed forces ... four decades after most Canadians stopped caring.

Edmonton leads the country with 33 homicides this year, and the city's new plan to combat violent crime is hopelessly lacklustre at best.

To some of us, the UK riots defy explanation. To most, however, the explanation’s simple: it’s gangs, thugs, opportunistic thieves, and low-lifes, out for all they can get and all they can wreck. Just like in Vancouver, it was a select few individuals and groups that took something innocuous and turned it into an excuse for violence.

Canada's one of those countries where if you don't have a car, you're not going to find it easy to get around — especially if you are unfortunate enough to find yourself living outside of an urban area.

In the wake of the nightmarish massacre of 76 people in Norway, it's easy to characterize the tragedy as a single instance of insanity, or an anomaly within an otherwise peaceful Nordic social democracy. But the event is as symptom of a larger problem: an unpleasant direction in European politics.

After years of sprawl and outward growth, Edmonton is finally trying to innovate. It's nice to now see a city administration that wants to take a step back and consider the implications of unchecked growth; or, at the very least, make Edmonton more livable.

Ted Morton wants to run this province. In an attempt to look good to supporters of the proposed Edmonton downtown arena, he's got a solution to the $100 million funding gap that the province rightly declined to hand over. He's calling it a "penny tax."

This is a horrible idea.

It's a shame when science and discovery take a back seat to political and economic realities, but that's exactly what happened last week. Friday marked the final mission of the ground-breaking NASA shuttle program with the last launch of Atlantis, ending 30 years of regular trips into orbit, and plunging the future of manned American space flight into uncertainty.