Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples for their suffering in the once obligatory residential school system. Harper pointed out that the stated purpose of the system was “to kill the Indian in the child.” However, Harper said, “today we
recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great
harm and has no place in our country.”
General Motors and the Ontario government may have been taking steps towards reconciliation as they met to talk about adding a third line to the automaker’s troubled truck plant in Oshawa, Ontario. A senate report told the government that Canadian diplomats and the military should open talks with the Taliban if they think it would get results.
A senior Conservative cabinet employee resigned after it was revealed that he also dated Julie Couillard. Couillard, who has past associations with criminal bikers, sparked the resignation of foreign minister Maxime Bernier
two weeks ago when she went public with the fact that he had forgotten classified NATO briefing documents at her Montreal home
for more than a month. The RCMP has repeatedly zapped people with Tasers in a steadily rising
percentage of multiple-stun cases despite an internal policy that warns
numerous jolts may be hazardous.
Airbus sent in special investigators after a plane skidded off the runway and caught fire in Sudan, killing at least 30 people. Spain sent in riot police to lift a trucker blockade of a boarder crossing with France. The truckers have disrupted food and fuel supplies in the three-day-old countrywide protests over rising fuel prices.
U.S. President George W. Bush said
he favours a peaceful resolution to the nuclear standoff with
Iran but has not ruled out the possible use of military force. In Austria, a woman born and raised in the cellar where her mother allegedly was
kept captive as a sex slave for 24 years emerged from an almost two-month-long coma. Nepal’s deposed king left his palace forever, ending the world’s last Hindu monarchy after a rein of 239 years.
Portugal became the first team to reach the European Championship
quarter-finals, beating the Czech Republic 3-1 Wednesday and then
advancing after Turkey defeated Switzerland 2-1.
A report said that actor Paul Newman has cancer. Hayden Panettiere of “Heroes” fame was reportedly set to release her debut single in August, and we reviewed Aimee Mann’s 7th studio album.
