February of this year was a turning point in Egypt, when President Mubarak was overthrown. Civilans over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend decided to protest against the 2am curfew, killing 24 people and injuring over 300. Violence has been a common occurrence every since the revolution, however, the security forces did not run citizens over with vehicles in the past. Most of those killed were Coptic Christians, a minority in Cairo. Hate crimes were being committed against the Coptic’s and nothing was being done about it, and in the end most of the 24 killed were of that religion. Protests ending negatively and deadly such as this one are a key example as to how there are still some groups who are not accepting of other religions, or races, forcing the minorities to protest and riot. If groups did not have a reason to feel the need to protest, then there would be the outcomes such as this one over this past weekend in Cairo. It makes me wonder why an actual neutral body, such as the UN hasn’t stepped in, or someone else in order to save the lives of civilians.

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Germany and France gave investors light at the end of the tunnel. There were no details to the plan, other than getting closer to euro zone integration in hopes of freeing Greece from the billions in debt. Although this is positive for investors, there is still the question of what this deal entails. The goal is to aid the non-existant european economy and bring it to a place where stability exists. The German candidate for the European Central Bank’s executive board said “that all systemically important banks in the 27-nation EU should be made to raise fresh capital simultaneously to avoid singling out individual lenders.”, bringing up what I think is a very important point, forcing those in debt to find capital instead of drying out and wiping clean one sole lender. The question now exists as to whether or not governments and banks and nations as a whole, have learned their lesson. Sending a whole country into bankruptcy should be considered as learning the hard way, but if greed gets in the way again, and regulations are not being followed or established the chances of seeing this re-occur are high.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/european/stocks-rise-on-optimism-over-eu-crisis-plans/article2196458/

In October of last year, the bike lanes were voted in and approved for downtown Vancouver. Within 24 hours, construction had already begun, raising a red flag that the cote was not a fair vote. As a twice-a-day commuter through the downtown core, I quickly saw the effects of firstly the construction, and secondly the removal of lanes for automobiles replaced with bike lanes. Hornby Street was my route home from school, which I chose based on the massive amount of congestion on Burrard, the street parallel. As luck would have it, the bike lanes were being installed on Hornby Street. This caused for one lane removed of paid-meter parking which allowed for now only 2 lanes of driving. Right hand turns were either limited or all together illegal, thus, causing for even more backups. The question is how effective are these lanes and how many people actually use them to commute instead of driving. To me the answer was simple, it was rare anyone would be using them at all. Not only is the city losing parking money, but the cost for the lanes was 3.2 million(http://www.vancourier.com/Vancouver+Hornby+Street+bike+lane+price+tops+million/3592236/story.html). Now, I don’t see how this can be paying off financially. Bikes don’t have to be insured, nor are licences needed. In order to make the lanes more efficient licences for bikes should be necessary.

In this video you can see just how busy the lanes are.

http://www.news1130.com/news/local/article/282254–bike-lanes-are-here-to-stay-anton

Apple has been the leading company in innovative and technological advancements since making a mark in the world with the first iPod in 2001. Since then, unforeseen pressure has been put on the company to invent and release products better than before and most definitely more advanced than competitors, such as Google or RIM. It is interesting to see what has happened to stocks after the unveiling of a new product. The jump from the iPhone 3G to iPhone 4 lead the stocks of Apple to rise to the highest they had ever been. On Monday, October 3rd, Apple disappointed consumers and investors by bringing out the iPhone 4S, which looks the exact same as the 4. With increasing competition with Google’s Android, Apple was expected to release the iPhone 5, offering quicker services and more applications to satisfy the demanding market of technology crazy consumers. With this being said, it comes as no surprise that stocks fell more than 4 percent  after closing due to the disappointment the iPhone 4S that was felt towards investors. It will be interesting to see how this will contrast to the future release to the iPhone 5, perhaps making it even more profitable since the iPhone 4G fell short. The question is, was this a planned tactic of Apple’s?

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Apple+iPhone+fails+investors+fans/5501262/story.html