TransCanada Corp. has written to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arguing that new Canadian rules on emissions should persuade him to approve the construction of the much-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. Keystone XL is strongly opposed by environmentalists both in the United States and Canada, and President Obama says he won’t approve the project until he’s convinced it won’t seriously contribute to climate change. 

Of all the Canadiana on display near his desk, few stir in Prof. Tomasz Soroka the same kind of animated pride that the Governor General's medallion does.

Last year, Gov. Gen. David Johnston, on an official visit to Krakow, presented the medallion himself to the Polish Association of Canadian Studies (in which Soroka is secretary and a very active member), for its "outstanding contribution to the Canada-Poland bilateral relationship."

Stephen Harper once said that meeting celebrities wasn't his ``shtick'' -- but it seems he's had a change of heart. The prime minister is granting an audience to U-2 frontman Bono, who's coming to Ottawa on Monday. Bono, who's known as much for his humanitarian efforts and AIDS activism as he is for his music, will also meet with N-D-P Leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

Hands clasped and eyes squeezed shut, the students stand in two lines near the back of a spacious monastery classroom. Several suppress a smile as they wait for an “electric pulse” to make its way down each line, passed from one person to the next with a quick squeeze of the hand. When it reaches a young woman at the end of one row, she races to grab a water bottle from the seat of a plastic chair nearby.

Ken Taylor, the former Canadian ambassador for Iran and centre of the so-called Canadian caper in 1979, gave a speech to the school’s graduating class at the Jubilee Auditorium last week. Born in Calgary, Taylor graduated from Crescent Heights in the 1950s. He played basketball and football for the school (“I wasn’t drafted,” he jokes) but yearned to travel the world. He got his wish, embarking on a globe-trotting career in the foreign service.