Tuesday, December 29, 2009 – Globe and Mail
TU THANH HA AND ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Montreal’s underworld is facing troubled times after its dominant Mafia family, already undermined by arrests and rivals, was struck yesterday by the targeted daylight killing of the eldest son of its godfather.
The gangland shooting of Nicolo Rizzuto Jr., 42, came as his father, Vito, is in a U.S. prison, the clan’s top leaders are also behind bars, and the 85-year-old family patriarch, Nicolo Sr., is living under tight probation restrictions.
In the three decades since they rose to power, the Rizzuto family had never been hit so closely within its secretive inner circle.
Friday, December 18, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
So it’s official: After hinting at it for years, Ottawa’s selling off the family reactor business.
But what happens to the other part of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. – the multi-purpose facility in Chalk River, Ont., that was once one of the world’s nuclear leaders but has more recently been plagued by technical difficulties that have given Canada a black eye in the world of nuclear medicine?
Hard to say.
Friday, December 18, 2009 – Globe and Mail
BILL CURRY, KAREN HOWLETT AND ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
OTTAWA and TORONTO – Stephen Harper travelled the world pitching Canada’s “state-of-the-art” – and state-owned – nuclear reactor technology, but finding no takers at home or abroad and facing record budget deficits, the Prime Minister is selling off the Crown-owned Candus.
The Harper government confirmed yesterday it is calling for bids on the reactor wing of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
With interest coming from a mix of foreign and domestic firms, opposition critics say they’re concerned technology created at public expense is at risk of leaving the country.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Painkillers are causing twice the number of overdose deaths they were two decades ago, a new study has revealed. And most of those who died obtained the medications through a doctor’s prescription and had seen a physician within the last month of their life.
The increase mirrors a dramatic rise in prescriptions for oxycodone. The potent opiate, found in OxyContin and Percocet, has proliferated in an epidemic of chronic pain turning Canadians into a nation of pill-poppers – using more prescription opioids per capita than any country but the United States and Belgium.
It’s an indication that many doctors have underestimated the power and complexity of prescription opioids, and their ability to harm as well as help, said Irfan Dhalla, a doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and the report’s primary author.
Saturday, December 5, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
They can talk about the environment at a United Nations summit, but the action is at your local recycling depot and bus stop, and in your water taps, light bulbs and street-side bike stands. That’s why the real show during the Copenhagen talks might be on the sidelines – at a parallel summit of cities. And there, Canadians are at the forefront.
Cities argue that in an urbanizing world where at least half of emissions are created in municipalities, they are best suited to fight climate change. Just give them the resources and clout.
“We want to show the international community that cities are acting,” says Martha Delgado Peralta, environment minister for Mexico City, once the most polluted municipality in the world.
Friday, December 4, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Canada has been told to act swiftly and aggressively by building a new billion-dollar multipurpose reactor to secure its isotope supply for the next several decades and to prevent another global isotope shortage.
An expert-panel report commissioned by the federal Department of Natural Resources also recommended adopting supplementary production methods. The panel convened in June in the midst of a global shortage of the radioactive material and as Ottawa was musing about getting out of the isotope-producing business.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
As the fate of Canada’s nuclear industry hangs in the limbo of unreleased government-commissioned reports, workers at the Chalk River reactor are taking matters into their own hands.
Fearing a looming, but still vague, restructuring of the Crown corporation that operates the reactor, they’ve submitted their own proposal to Ottawa – an ambitious plan that would see Chalk River independent of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s reactor business and become a nuclear research giant in its own right.
“The silence” from Natural Resources Canada, says Gordon Tapp, president of Chalk River Technicians and Technologists, “is deafening.”
