Saturday, October 07, 2006

NOTES FROM THE SATURDAY PAPER

I have spent a relaxing moring (and early afternoon) with coffee, bagels, and the Saturday Star. Following are a few quick links of interest to me:

Why we fight:

"We are so scared. The Taliban want to come back. And we are breaking their law by coming to school. Totally, they want to kill us."
From an interview with young Afghan women going to school in Khandahar.

Harper, Bush and Arar:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has launched an official complaint with the United States over its mistreatment of Maher Arar, and personally told President George W. Bush the Americans must explain why the Canadian citizen was deported to Syria and tortured.
I have difficulty imagining Paul Martin handling this situation as diplomatically as the Prime Minister. Would the President have taken Martin's phone call?

McGill number 1 in Canadian research universities:
Montreal's McGill University, the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver each cracked the top 50 of an annual list compiled by The Times of London.
[...]
In a list dominated by American and British schools, Canada had more top-50 universities than France and Japan, two each, but less [sic] than Australia, which had seven.
It is great to see McGill's quality acknowledged in this way, however its overall placing (21st) and the performance of Canadian universities in general is not terribly impressive.

Posted by Matthew @ 1:15 p.m.