The Story As Major League Baseball reached its annual deadline for trading players last week, exchanges with much more far-reaching consequences were taking place in the Greater Middle East. On July 23, the United States signed an agreement with Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbour, to use the Turkish air base of Incirlik to launch air strikes against Islamic…
[Ed. Note: In this inaugural “The View From” post, I’ve invited my friend Benjamin, originally from Paris, to write a guest post breaking down a recent current event from a French perspective. He and his partner Aida have a blog called Feuille d’érable et sables bitumineux – a highly entertaining and informative account of life in Alberta as seen…
As we turn the page on the first half of 2015 and the first four months of PineTreeRepublic, we take a look at some of the top news articles of 2015 so far. Each of the journalists in these articles provided an important perspective on some of the year’s most significant developments, and helped further our understanding on the…
The Story Several years from now, the month of June 2015 may be remembered as one of the most significant moments of this generation. While connected to events of the past, and surely to future events and developments, the past 30 days have brought a remarkable collection of watershed moments on key social issues, particularly in the United…
The Story On Friday, June 12, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a bill called Trade Promotion Authority, which would have given President Barack Obama strong negotiating power to conclude a deal known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). In the works for 10 years, the TPP is a proposed free-trade agreement that would more closely link…
The Story On Sunday, June 7, Turks voted in a general parliamentary election whose results will likely ripple across the greater Middle East. Surprisingly, Turkish President (and longtime Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s centre-right Justice and Development Party (AKP) was dealt a relative defeat in winning far fewer seats than expected. While the party retained the highest number of…
The Story A five-year fact finding process on abuses suffered by indigenous people in Canada’s residential schools culminated on Tuesday, June 2, with the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) summary report. Led by Manitoba Justice Murray Sinclair, the commission compiled harrowing testimony from thousands of residential school survivors who shared their experiences of verbal, physical, and sexual…
The Story During the second week of May, the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation in northwestern British Columbia (BC) rejected a proposed $1 billion (CAD) agreement with Pacific Northwest LNG, a joint venture led by the Malaysian energy company Petronas. Pacific Northwest is proposing a multibillion dollar liquified natural gas (LNG) project that would take natural gas…
The Story On Thursday, May 14, President Barack Obama hosted a one-day summit at his Camp David retreat for U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf. Drawing senior government officials from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, the summit was organized against the backdrop of a looming deal between the United…
The Story The city of Calgary, Alberta, is in the midst of the latest round of debate over whether to legalize secondary suites – typically a set of rooms that a homeowner rents to a secondary tenant within their home – as a means of managing booming population growth over the last decade. Calgary’s City Council held…
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