Federal Energy Minister Marcel Masse was winding up a low-key government visit to Bogotá, Colombia, when he cut short his trip to come back to his Ottawa office last week. He returned to attend an emergency meeting Thursday morning with two fellow cabinet ministers and a team of top-level bureaucrats.
The day after a bomb blew apart a crowded bus station in Colombo, Sri Lanka, last week, police were still picking human body parts from the rubble. In a grisly ritual, they stacked the remains in piles amid the smoking ruins. And by week’s end they had pieced together evidence that a total of 106 people had died in the powerful Tuesday rush-hour blast.
Saddled with debts and threatened by bankruptcy, Dale Frombach has little to show for 22 years of labor on his once-sprawling grain farm 35 km northeast of Regina. Since last fall’s harvest, he has sold 2,400 of his 3,200 acres, and last month he disposed of more than half his equipment—including a combine and a four-wheel drive tractor—at an auction that drew 500 onlookers.
The gesture was largely symbolic—but Treasury Board President Robert de Cotret’s personal commitment to the government’s sweeping antismoking policy will likely cause him acute discomfort. At a news conference in Ottawa last week, federal spokesmen revealed plans to ban all tobacco advertising and promotion by 1989, phase out smoking in federal offices and other work areas across the country and force tobacco companies to print blunter warnings about the health hazards of their products.
Chicago, self-declared home of the blues, is an American crossroads of race and culture. But even by local standards, th colors, rhythms and faces on tour recently at the city’s opera house were exotic. Black artists from Africa—the true wellspring of black music—dazzled the mostly white audience with a vibrant rhapsody of rhythm and harmony.By NICHOLAS JENNINGS6 min
I wish to set the record straight concerning your article “The tastes of the Mulroney family,” (Canada, April 27). The directors of PC Canada Fund were in fact fully aware of and approved the “arrangement” between the Prime Minister and PC Canada Fund.
The Bank of British Columbia and Husky Oil Ltd. went to Hong Kong investors. A British conglomerate claimed Ottawa-based Mitel Corp., a high-tech company, while Boeing Co. of Seattle outbid a Canadian rival for de Havilland Aircraft of Canada, one of the country’s money-losing Crown corporations.
Central Capital Corp. laid on smoked trout, lobster and champagne sorbet for 288 shareholders last week. The lavish reception following the annual shareholders’ meeting in Halifax celebrated the company’s successful first year as the nation’s newest financial power.By CHRIS WOOD5 min
Argentina seemed finally to emerge from the shadow of its army last week. The country that has lived through six military regimes since 1930 stood united in support of its civilian president to banish the spectre of a seventh period of rule by the generals.By ANDREW McLEOD5 min
Last April John Shad, wealthy Wall Street investment banker, bequeathed a reported $26.6 million to his alma mater, Harvard University. Shad, who as chairman of Washington’s Securities and Exchange Commission is the head U.S. stock market cop, stipulated that the money be used to fund courses on business leadership and ethics.By Diane Francis5 min
It is so good to know that there are still some alert guardians of our country. Some stout citizens prepared to man the ramparts and save the nation from moral destruction. They stand on guard, for me and thee. This would be your basic good burghers from Charlottetown, downtown Prince Edward Island, who are involved in a furious fight to make sure that the F-word does not make it to the stage where Anne of Green Gables achieved her theatrical fame.By Allan Fotheringham4 min
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