Section: Macleans (Canada)
From Microsoft to Google to Nokia, it’s Big Tech reporting season
This week it’s all about iPhones, tablets, search engine optimization, plus, how many Facebook ads you’re willing to see before you defect to old-fashioned calling and emailing (probably a lot.) That’s right – it’s tech company reporting season. Microsoft will report second-quarter earnings today, and as the week goes on...
Fast talks free trade in Kyiv as fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine
OTTAWA – International Trade Minister Ed Fast arrived in Kyiv on Sunday for two days of meetings as fighting intensifies between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the east of the embattled country. Fast, who has been to Ukraine twice is the last six months, is there to talk free trade his counterpart, Aivaras Abromaviius, but also...
How your brain heals itself
Photograph by Jaime Hogge A South African man with Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative disorder that often leaves its sufferers immobile, walks his symptoms into submission. A Broadway singer, silenced for 30 years by multiple sclerosis, recovers his voice. And in California, a psychiatrist and pain specialist rids himself of 13 years of...
Hillary Clinton calls on Canada to fight terrorist propaganda
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. (John Woods/The Canadian Press) WINNIPEG – Former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton is calling on Canada to continue fighting the “ideology of hate” and extremist propaganda fuelling terrorism. Clinton told about 2,000 people at a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce luncheon that the...
Barack Obama: ‘Tonight, we turn the page’
(Mandal Ngan, AP Photo) Text of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, as prepared for delivery and provided by the White House: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans: We are 15 years into this new century. Fifteen years that dawned with terror touching our shores; that...
IMF cuts forecasts for growth, says slowdowns outweigh cheap oil
TOKYO – The International Monetary Fund lowered its forecasts for global growth over the next two years, warning Tuesday that weakness in most major economies will trump gains from lower oil prices. The IMF’s report was released as China reported its slowest growth in 24 years. The IMF downgraded projections it issued in October by 0.3...
Ukraine leader vows to reassert control as fighting hits new heights in the east
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president vowed Sunday to reassert control over his country’s conflict-shattered eastern regions as fighting there reached a new peak of intensity. Petro Poroshenko told a crowd of several thousand gathered in central Kyiv that Ukraine wouldn’t “give up an inch” of its land to Russian-backed...
Shake it off: These will be the happiest Grammys ever
Photo illustration by Sarah MacKinnon and Richard Redditt “Just think: while you’ve been getting down and out about the liars and dirty, dirty cheats in the world, you could have been getting down to this sick beat.” Thus speaks Taylor Swift on the breakdown of Shake It Off, the perky first single from her 2014 album, 1989. When the song...
BRIC? Bye, BRIC: Another shift in global economic power
Natalie Behring/Bloomberg/Getty Images In late November 2001, while fires still burned in the rubble of the Twin Towers, Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill put out a report reframing the global balance of power. Four countries, he said, would dominate economic growth—China, Russia, India and Brazil. Reaching for a name to call this new...
Ukraine bus attack kills 12, could herald grim future as truce staggers
DONETSK, Ukraine — An attack on a passenger bus in eastern Ukraine killed 12 people Tuesday, likely dealing the final blow to hopes that a short-lived and shaky cease-fire could take hold. Across Donetsk, the city that Russian-backed separatists call their capital, explosions and the sound of shells whistling overhead are again unnerving the...
