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The shootings came amid heightened concern among Canadians about terrorist attacks

As the police locked down buildings in downtown Ottawa and asked stores to close, an eerie still, broken only by screaming emergency sirens, descended on the district.

The easy access to the grounds of Parliament Hill reflected the general Canadian view that an attack was unlikely. Mr. Harper and other members of his cabinet, however, have frequently warned that terrorist attacks might come to Canada.

“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be

I spent much of that year as an industry spokesman, my last after 20 years in the business, spreading AHIP’s “information” to journalists and lawmakers to create the impression that our health-care system was far superior to Canada’s, which we wanted people to believe was on the verge of collapse.

The campaign worked. Stories began to appear in the press that cast the Canadian system in a negative light. And when Democrats began writing what would become the Affordable Care Act in early 2009, they gave no serious consideration to a publicly financed system like Canada’s.

Today, the respective responses of Canada and the United States to the coronavirus pandemic prove just how false the ideas I helped spread were.

There are more than three times as many coronavirus infections per capita in the United States, and the mortality rate is twice the rate in Canada.

The most effective myth we perpetuated — the industry trots it out whenever major reform is proposed — is that Canadians and people in other single-payer countries have to endure long waits for needed care.

While it’s true that Canadians sometimes have to wait weeks or months for elective procedures (knee replacements are often cited), the truth is that they do not have to wait at all for the vast majority of medical services.

And, contrary to another myth I used to peddle — that Canadian doctors are flocking to the United States — there are more doctors per 1,000 people in Canada than here. Canadians see their doctors an average of 6.8 times a year, compared with just four times a year in this country.

Most important, no one in Canada is turned away from doctors because of a lack of funds, and Canadians can get tested and treated for the coronavirus without fear of receiving a budget-busting medical bill.

In America, exorbitant bills are a defining feature of our health-care system. Despite the assurances from President Trump and members of Congress that covid-19 patients will not be charged for testing or treatment, they are on the hook for big bills, according to numerous reports.

That is not the case in Canada, where there are no co-pays, deductibles or coinsurance for covered benefits. Care is free at the point of service. And those laid off in Canada don’t face the worry of losing their health insurance. In the United States, by contrast, more than 40 million have lost their jobs during this pandemic, and millions of them — along with their families — also lost their coverage.

Then there’s quality of care. By numerous measures, it is better in Canada. Some examples: Canada has far lower rates than the United States of hospitalizations from preventable causes like diabetes (almost twice as common here) and hypertension (more than eight times as common).

And even though Canada spends less than half what we do per capita on health care, life expectancy there is 82 years, compared with 78.6 years in the United States.

Of the many regrets I have about what I once did for a living, one of the biggest is slandering Canada’s health-care system. If the United States had undertaken a different kind of reform in 2009 (or anytime since), one that didn’t rely on private insurance companies that have every incentive to limit what they pay for, we’d be a healthier country today.

Living without insurance dramatically increases your chances of dying unnecessarily. Over the past 13 years, tens of thousands of Americans have probably died prematurely because, unlike our neighbors to the north, they either had no coverage or were so inadequately insured that they couldn’t afford the care they needed. I live with that horror, and my role in it, every day.

here were more specific reasons to be skeptical of those claims. We didn’t know, for example, who conducted that 2004 survey or anything about the sample size or methodology — or even what criteria were used to determine who qualified as a “business leader.” We didn’t know if the assertion about imaging equipment was based on reliable data or was an opinion. You could easily turn up comparable complaints about outdated equipment at U.S. hospitals.

Another bullet point, from the same book, quoted the CEO of the Canadian Association of Radiologists as saying that “the radiology equipment in Canada is so bad that ‘without immediate action radiologists will no longer be able to guarantee the reliability and quality of examinations.’ ”

Here’s an example from one AHIP brief in the binder: “A May 2004 poll found that 87% of Canada’s business leaders would support seeking health care outside the government system if they had a pressing medical concern.” The source was a 2004 book by Sally Pipes, president of the industry-supported Pacific Research Institute,

We enlisted APCO Worldwide, a giant PR firm. Agents there worked with AHIP to put together a binder of laminated talking points for company flacks like me to use in news releases and statements to reporters.

Clearly my colleagues and I would need a robust defense. On a task force for the industry’s biggest trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), we talked about how we might make health-care systems in Canada, France, Britain and even Cuba look just as bad as ours.

That summer, Michael Moore was preparing to release his latest documentary, “Sicko,” contrasting American health care with that in other rich countries. (Naturally, we looked terrible.) I spent months meeting secretly with my counterparts at other big insurers to plot our assault on the film, which contained many anecdotes about patients who had been denied coverage for important treatments.

He conceded defeat and will resign as leader of the party, but said he'll remain in parliament as a lawmaker.

Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, as Harper's Conservatives will now officially be designated, have 99 seats.As the crowd chanted his name, Trudeau said the Liberals won because "we listened.""We beat fear with hope, we beat cynicism with hard work. We beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together," he said. "Most of all we defeated the idea that Canadians should be satisfied with less, and that better isn't possible. My friends, this is Canada, where better is always possible."

The son of Pierre Trudeau and scion of Canada's first, nascent political dynasty, the 43-year-old surged into the lead in recent weeks, largely on the back of anti-Conservative sentiment that saw Harper's party lagging as Canadians went to the polls.Before the grueling, 78-day electioneering cycle began, many dismissed the younger Trudeau as trading off of his father's achievements and the famous family name. But pundits in Canada have praised his campaign and the way he has led the Liberals to what transpired to be a sweeping victory.

The pledge to bring in the refugees was part of a campaign promise by Canada's new prime minister, Justin Trudeau. That promise helped sweep him to power in October's election. Initially, the government wanted to bring in all 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of this year. That ambitious plan had to be scaled back because of the sheer scale and speed of the operation.

Instead, 10,000 Syrians are now due in Canada by the end of this month. Most of them are being sponsored by private groups and citizens. Canada is the only country that allows the private sponsorship of refugees — it's mandated in the country's immigration law.

Sponsors must commit to being responsible for the refugee for one year. It requires providing financial help during that time — about $24,000 US — and help finding housing, employment and schools for children. The Canadian government will provide health care, travel expenses and language classes.

Applications to sponsor Syrian refugees have been pouring in since early September, when a photo appeared of a lifeless 3-year-old boy whose body had been swept ashore at a Turkish beach. Alan Kurdi's parents had applied to Canada for asylum, but the request was turned down.

Resettlement workers say most Canadians have embraced the idea of bringing in the Syrians. Churches, universities and whole communities have been pitching in to raise money and find housing and employment for the refugees.

But the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have led to questions about whether there is a security risk because the government is moving so quickly.

All the Syrians to be resettled in Canada will have been chosen by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Most are currently living in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The refugees will go through various levels of screening, including by Canadian immigration and security officials, before getting on a plane to Canada.

Most of the refugees will be women, children, elderly people, families and those with injuries or medical conditions. Canadian officials say unaccompanied young men will have to wait, for now.

Indians make up the largest group by far, accounting for 40 percent of all international students across the country, according to the Canada Bureau for International Education. China ranks second, at 12 percent.

At Northern College, there were 40 international students in 2014 — now it has 6,140. Enrollment got a further boost after Northern, like other remote public colleges, opened a campus by partnering with a private college in a Toronto suburb in 2015. Today, about one-third of Northern’s foreign students are in Timmins and at three other smaller northern campuses, while the rest are on the Toronto campus.

Maninderjit Kaur said she would probably not have gone to Timmins if the education consultant in India — who arranged her enrollment at Northern — had told her the school’s exact location.

She recalled landing at the airport in Toronto in 2018, and then hopping into an Uber, believing that Northern College was nearby. The eight-hour ride cost 800 Canadian dollars.

Now, Ms. Kaur works in marketing at the college and owns a gas station in town with her fiancé, Karanveer Singh, 28, who also came from India to study at Northern.

Dr. Penner, the college’s president, believed she held an ace: Graduates of Northern and other public colleges may apply for a post-graduation work permit that could lead to permanent residence and citizenship.

Early childhood education is a popular major among international students because of the high demand for related jobs in the region, said Erin Holmes, who oversees the program at Northern. Dozens of international students are immediately hired after graduating, allowing them to apply for permanent residence, Ms. Holmes said.

Across Canada, the influx of foreign students has been so great that it is blamed for worsening housing shortages. The Canadian government has recently taken measures to stem the increase, including by doubling the level of savings international students must prove they have

Trudeau and his Liberal party came to power after elections in October, ousting the once-entrenched conservative government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Trudeau's cabinet is the most diverse in the country's history; he has reasserted Canada's role at the forefront of climate change policy; his government has brought in more some 25,000 Syrian refugees in the space of just a few months.

As WorldViews has cataloged over the past few months, the Republican debates have been a showcase for crude, simplistic discussions about foreign policy and global challenges, heavy on sound and fury, light on substance.

A lack of understanding of the strictures of the U.S. refugee vetting process led many in the United States to see Syria's destitute refugees as terror threats rather than people desperately fleeing a hideous, brutal war.

he prime minister will always state his values," said a Canadian government official, quoted anonymously in an article by the Canadian Press news agency. "But he’s not interested in stirring up domestic politics."

Hopes remain that the fallout could be contained. Analysts at the research firm Oxford Economics said the economic hit for Europe would be well below 0.1% of GDP, as steel and aluminium only make up a small part of the bloc’s overall exports around the world. However, they warned a tit-for-tat escalation leading to tariffs on other goods, such as cars, would have dire consequences for global trade.

Ross blamed insufficient progress in talks with Mexico and Canada over changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) for the US’s decision to slap tariffs on its two neighbours.

Mr. Stanley was acquitted in 2018 after testifying that he had unintentionally shot Mr. Boushie in the back of the head when his semiautomatic pistol experienced a rare mechanical malfunction. The verdict shocked many Indigenous Canadians.

On Monday Mr. Trudeau told reporters that the treatment of Mr. Boushie’s family and friends “was unacceptable,” adding, “We have seen, unfortunately, examples of systemic racism within the R.C.M.P., within many of our institutions, and we need to do better.”

The National Police Federation, a union representing the mounted police, countered the report’s findings, saying it “advances a perspective that disrespects our members and brings their impartiality, dedication and professionalism into question.”

The killing and the acquittal remain sources of anger for many Indigenous Canadians who have argued the case exposed significant flaws in Canada’s legal system.

The two men came out with guns and also attacked the Escape with a hammer. After Mr. Boushie was killed, the others fled.

As a result, the commission found, police descended on Ms. Baptiste’s house on the Red Pheasant Cree Nation, her Indigenous community, with two goals: to inform her of Mr. Boushie’s death and to search for a member of Mr. Boushie's group of friends as part of a related investigation into theft and attempted theft.

“Ms. Baptiste displayed distress at the news they had just given her, one member told her to ‘get it together,’” the report found. “One or more RCMP members smelled her breath” apparently for signs of alcohol.

The report also noted that the police destroyed recordings and transcripts of their communications from the time of the killing, which did follow standard retention protocols, but occurred knowing that Mr. Boushie’s family and the commission had initiated complaints for which these files would have been relevant.

Schranz’s supporters contended the mystery man had been a French policeman or soldier who had purposely interfered with the run to ensure Killy’s victory. The French hinted Schranz had made up the story."I was descending and I saw a dark shadow ahead of me," Schranz said at a news conference. "I wanted to avoid it, and I stopped. It was apparently a ski policeman."

The women's luge competition at the Grenoble Games was all but a lock for East Germany. Defending champ and gold-medal favorite Ortrun Enderlein stood in first; teammates Anna-Maria Müller and Angela Knösel were second and fourth. 

“A jury member acted immediately,” International Luge Federation president Bert Isatitsch said, according to UPI. "He went to the starting line and put his hands on the runners. They were warm."Isatitsch said East German officials used "foul language" when notified of the disqualification. “One waved his arms around, shouting and screaming," he told UPI. 

A month before the 1994 Winter Games, a man wielding a metal baton attacked gold- medal favorite Kerrigan during a practice at the U.S. Nationals, paving the way for Harding to win the event and to qualify for the Olympics. Soon afterward, however, it was discovered that Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, had planned the attack. With Kerrigan recovered—and Harding allowed to compete despite her not-yet-confirmed connection to the crime—the women’s figure skating competition became the hottest event at the Olympics. TV ratings soared.

Ice dancing got a dose of spy games in Nagano, Japan, when a Canadian judge secretly taped a conversation with another judge about picking winners before the competition.After her complaints to officials had been brushed aside, Jean Senft recorded Ukrainian judge Yuri Balkov discussing skater placements as proof of her accusations. During the call, Balkov said he would vote for Canadians if Senft voted for a Ukrainian pair."The athletes are not competing on a fair playing field," Senft later told CBC News. "This isn't sport. Somebody had to get proof."

were made. (Ice dancing was not removed from Olympic competition.) "If [cheating] happens at the world championships in some small town, nobody notices," Pound said, according to The New York Times. "But in the Olympics, hundreds of millions of people are watching."

The Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze edged Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier for the gold medal. But Marie-Reine Le Gougne, a French judge, came forward, saying she was pressured by the French ice sports federation to put the Russians first. “I knew very well who would vote in favor of the Russians and who would vote in favor of the Canadians," she told Reuters. "I was almost certain that I was the one who would award the Olympic title. What I feared would happen really did.”

Le Gougne was suspended from judging for three years and banned from the 2006 Winter Games. The scandal led to sweeping judging reforms in the sport. 

The plan also appears to enjoy widespread public support. All of the refugees on the first flight have been sponsored to come to Canada, either by individual Canadians or by small groups. Sponsors have had to raise just over 28,000 Canadian dollars for each family.

“We suffered a lot,” said Kevork Jamkossian, who arrived with his wife, Georgina Zires, and their 16-month-old daughter, Madeleine. “Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise.”

To avoid a crush that might overwhelm the exhausted refugees, the government asked the public not to go the airport to see the flight arrive

The building has been converted into a special processing center, where arriving refugees will not only go through the usual customs, immigration and health screenings, but will also be given all of the other paperwork necessary for their new lives, including public health insurance cards

But 43 will be flying again on Friday, to meet sponsors in British Columbia or Alberta, and a small number will head to other parts of Ontario.

Some have already been arriving on scheduled commercial flights — some 400 since the Liberals took power last month. The government said earlier this week that more than 11,000 refugees’ applications had been processed, and that chartered civilian flights would be used for most of the airlift.

In a December New York Times interview, Trump claimed that "[We lost] $17 billion with Canada — Canada says we broke even. But they don't include lumber and they don't include oil. Oh, that's not. ... [Inaudible] ... My friend Justin [Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister] he says, 'No, no, we break even.' I said, 'Yeah, but you're not including oil, and you're not including lumber.' When you do, you lose $17 billion, and with the other one, we're losing $71 billion."

Justin Trudeau could have never imagined this time last year that he'd be fighting for a political future. He has been humiliated and diminished by scandals in recent months, all of them unforced errors. In 2015, he managed to awaken the 'Trudeaumania' that brought his late father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to power in the 1960s. But this time there's no mania, just moodiness -- even among those in his base.

In a humiliating act of contrition last month, Trudeau had to apologize not just for wearing blackface during a school event nearly 2 decades ago, but admitting he had no idea how many times he had chosen to do so in his life. It was an embarrassing look for his campaign, which has focused on digging up dirt opponents, and the revelations disappointed many voters and likely contributed to the Liberals losing ground in the last few weeks.

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer has tried and failed to capitalize on the scandal and other criticisms of Trudeau. His campaign has fiercely and consistently attacked Trudeau, but the negative emphasis hasn't engaged voters the way Scheer had hoped. Nor has it made his policies more appealing -- he is fiscally and socially conservative, offering a no-nonsense, stable government with tax cuts and eventually, balanced budgets. Crucially, voters in Quebec and Ontario, Canada's two largest provinces, haven't warmed much to him or his policies.

The rest of the contenders wouldn't normally be very consequential. But this time around, as a minority government is the most likely outcome, the smaller parties and their leaders could be election day spoilers.

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, is trying to convince Canadians that she and her party are about much more than the environment. Support for them has been growing steadily -- even if they win only a few seats, the Green Party could have a strong voice in Canada's next parliament. And then there is Quebec. Always a singular, distinctive place where voters often surprise. This time is no different. In Quebec, Bloc party leader Yves-Francois Blancet, a Quebec separatist, is nearly tied with Trudeau and the Liberal party. Blancet has made short work of the both the Liberals and the Conservatives in this campaign. And his popularity in a vast province a pivotal reason why it's unlikely any party will win a majority of seats this time around.

Deaton and the economist Anne Case, who is also his wife, coined the term “deaths of despair” to describe the surge of mortality from alcohol, drugs and suicide.

“The meaningfulness of the working-class life seems to have evaporated,” Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, told us. “The economy just seems to have stopped delivering for these people.”

Only in America has life expectancy now fallen three years in a row, for the first time in a century, because of “deaths of despair.”

Even in this presidential campaign, the unraveling of working-class communities receives little attention. There is talk about the middle class, but very little about the working class

The suffering was invisible to affluent Americans, but the consequences are now evident to all: The survivors mostly voted for Trump, some in hopes that he would rescue them

The stock market is near record highs, but working-class Americans (often defined as those without college degrees) continue to struggle. If you’re only a high school graduate, or worse, a dropout, work no longer pays.

If the federal minimum wage in 1968 had kept up with inflation and productivity, it would now be $22 an hour. Instead, it’s $7.25.

we would return to the Kristof family farm in Yamhill and see a humanitarian crisis unfolding in a community we loved — and a similar unraveling was happening in towns across the country. This was not one town’s problem, but a crisis in the American system.

“I’m a capitalist, and even I think capitalism is broken,” says Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund.

One consequence is that the bottom end of America’s labor force is not very productive, in ways that reduce our country’s competitiveness

we discuss college access but not the one in seven children who don’t graduate from high school.

“We have to stop being obsessed over impeachment and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place,”

We have to treat America’s cancer.

the situation is worsening, because families have imploded under the pressure of drug and alcohol abuse, and children are growing up in desperate circumstances

In the 1970s and ’80s it was common to hear derogatory suggestions that the forces ripping apart African-American communities were rooted in “black culture.” The idea was that “deadbeat dads,” self-destructive drug abuse and family breakdown were the fundamental causes, and that all people needed to do was show “personal responsibility.

A Harvard sociologist, William Julius Wilson, countered that the true underlying problem was lost jobs, and he turned out to be right. When good jobs left white towns like Yamhill a couple of decades later because of globalization and automation, the same pathologies unfolded there.

Men in particular felt the loss not only of income but also of dignity that accompanied a good job. Lonely and troubled, they self-medicated with alcohol or drugs, and they accumulated criminal records that left them less employable and less marriageable.

Family structure collapsed.

The problems are also rooted in disastrous policy choices over 50 years

The kids on the No. 6 bus rode into a cataclysm as working-class communities disintegrated across America because of lost jobs, broken families, gloom — and failed policies.

The United States wrested power from labor and gave it to business, and it suppressed wages and cut taxes rather than invest in human capital, as our peer countries did.

Americans also bought into a misconceived “personal responsibility” narrative that blamed people for being poor.

It’s true, of course, that personal responsibility matters: People we spoke to often acknowledged engaging in self-destructive behaviors.

But when you can predict wretched outcomes based on the ZIP code where a child is born, the problem is not bad choices the infant is making.

If we’re going to obsess about personal responsibility, let’s also have a conversation about social responsibility.

Why did deaths of despair claim Farlan, Zealan, Nathan, Rogena and so many others?

First, well-paying jobs disappeared

Second, there was an explosion of drugs

Third, the war on drugs sent fathers and mothers to jail, shattering families.

Both political parties embraced mass incarceration and the war on drugs, which was particularly devastating for black Americans, and ignored an education system that often consigned the poor — especially children of color — to failing schools

Since 1988, American schools have become increasingly segregated by race, and kids in poor districts perform on average four grade levels behind those in rich districts.

Women in Recovery has a recidivism rate after three years of only 4 percent, and consequently has saved Oklahoma $70 million in prison spending,

ob training and retraining give people dignity as well as an economic lifeline. Such jobs programs are common in other countries.

For instance, autoworkers were laid off during the 2008-9 economic crisis both in Detroit and across the Canadian border in nearby Windsor, Ontario. As the scholar Victor Tan Chen has showed, the two countries responded differently

The United States focused on money, providing extended unemployment benefits. Canada emphasized job retraining, rapidly steering workers into new jobs in fields like health care, and Canadian workers also did not have to worry about losing health insurance.

The focus on job placement meant that Canadian workers were ushered more quickly back into workaday society and thus today seem less entangled in drugs and family breakdown.

Another successful strategy is investing not just in prisons but also in human capital to keep people out of prisons.

We attended a thrilling graduation in Tulsa, Okla., for 17 women completing an impressive local drug treatment program called Women in Recovery.

The graduates had an average of 15 years of addiction each, and all were on probation after committing crimes. Yet they had quit drugs and started jobs

Yet it’s not hopeless. America is polarized with ferocious arguments about social issues, but we should be able to agree on what doesn’t work: neglect and underinvestment in children. Here’s what does work.

Bravo for philanthropy, but the United States would never build interstate highways through volunteers and donations, and we can’t build a national preschool program or a national drug recovery program with private money.

For individuals trying to break an addiction, a first step is to face up to the problem — and that’s what America should do as well

The FBI and Haitian police are in contact with the kidnappers, adding that negotiations could take weeks

The kidnapped missionaries are affiliated with the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, which confirmed the kidnapping on Sunday in a statement, saying the abducted group was made up of five men, seven women and five children.Read More

the five children abducted included an 8-month-old baby and minors ages 3, 6, 14 and 15.

Their abduction is part of a wave of indiscriminate kidnappings that has become more brazen as the country suffers from political instability, civil unrest, lack of quality healthcare and severe poverty.

The 400 Mawozo has been growing in strength for the past three years, numbering up to 150 members, and has essentially taken control of Croix des Bouquets

Kidnapping for ransom is a hallmark activity of the gang. They have abducted dozens of people this year alone, including foreign nationals

kidnappings have surged in Haiti this year -- with a nearly 300% increase since July, CARDH said.

The 400 Mawozo has typically demanded ransoms of around $20,000

Growth in annual average economic output per capita has slowed from the century-long average of 2 percent, to 1.3 percent over the past 25 years, to a mere 0.7 percent over the past decade.

The gains in income since the 2007-9 Great Recession have flowed overwhelmingly to those at the top, as has been widely noted. Real median family income was lower last year than in 1998.

There are numerous causes of the less-than-satisfying economic growth in America: the retirement of the baby boomers, the withdrawal of working-age men from the labor force, the relentless rise in the inequality of the income distribution and, as I have written about elsewhere, a slowdown in technological innovation.

Education deserves particular focus because its effects are so long-lasting. Every high school dropout becomes a worker who likely won’t earn much more than minimum wage, at best, for the rest of his or her life.

The surge in high school graduation rates — from less than 10 percent of youth in 1900 to 80 percent by 1970 — was a central driver of 20th-century economic growth. But the percentage of 18-year-olds receiving bona fide high school diplomas fell to 74 percent in 2000

the holders of G.E.D.’s performed no better economically than high school dropouts and that the rising share of young people who are in prison rather than in school plays a small but important role in the drop in graduation rates.

For most of the postwar period, the G.I. Bill, public and land-grant universities and junior colleges made a low-cost education more accessible in the United States than anywhere in the world. But after leading the world in college completion, America has dropped to 16th.

The cost of a university education has risen faster than the rate of inflation for decades. Between 2008 and 2012 state financing for higher education declined by 28 percent

Two-year community colleges enroll 42 percent of American undergraduates. The Center on International Education Benchmarking reports that only 13 percent of students in two-year colleges graduate in two years; that figure rises to a still-dismal 28 percent after four year

Compared with other nations where students learn several languages and have math homework in elementary school, the American system expects too little. Parental expectations also matter: homework should be emphasized more, and sports less.

family breakdown is now biracial.” Among lower-income whites, the proportion of children living with both parents has plummeted over the past half-century

research has shown that high-discipline, “no-excuses” charter schools, like those run by the Knowledge Is Power Program and the Harlem Children’s Zone, have erased racial achievement gaps. This model suggests that a complete departure from the traditional public school model, rather than pouring in more money per se, is needed.

Lacking in the American system is a well-organized funnel between community colleges and potential blue-collar employers, as in the renowned apprenticeship system in Germany.

In Canada, each province manages and finances education at the elementary, secondary and college levels, thus avoiding the inequality inherent in America’s system of local property-tax financing for public schools. Tuition at the University of Toronto was a mere $5,695 for Canadian arts and science undergraduates last year, compared with $37,576 at Harvard. It should not be surprising that the Canadian college completion rate is about 15 percentage points above the American rate.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who slammed the deal as "a historic mistake."

"I'll find us new friends" -- an apparent jab at the United States and other allies that supported the deal.

This deal doesn't represent the fact we're dealing with the most thuggish people in the whole world."

Even though it's only a six-month deal, world leaders hope it'll pave the way to a long-term guarantee that Iran won't produce nuclear weapons. And Iran hopes to recoup some of the billions of dollars it's lost as a result of international sanctions.

Iran has stumbled from one economic crisis to the next under the sanctions, and unemployment currently runs over 24%. But not every country is following suit. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said his country will maintain its sanctions on Iran. "People of #Iran deserve freedom & prosperity denied them by regime's nuclear ambitions," Baird tweeted. "Until then, Canadian sanctions remain in full force."

It's also unclear whether Congress will agree to the deal. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a prominent Republican on the Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget, and Judiciary committees, called Monday for a new round of sanctions that can be relieved only if Iran dismantles its plutonium reactor.

Netanyahu said, "must lead to one result: The dismantling of Iran's military nuclear capability. I remind you that only last week, during the talks, the leaders of Iran repeated their commitment to destroy the State of Israel, and I reiterate here today my commitment, as Prime Minister of Israel, to prevent them from achieving the ability to do so."

"Its success hinges on whether or not it leads to a bigger agreement to "put Iran's nuclear weapons program to rest."

"We are pleased after 10 years that an agreement on this level has been reached," he said.

Now that sanctions are working, Netanyahu wants to see them tightened, not loosened, until Iran shuts down much of its nuclear capability.

by the end of the century, the historian Henry Adams was depicting the war as an aimless exercise in blunder, arrogance and human folly.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, American commentators painted the battles of 1812-15 as part of a glorious “second war for independence.”

In this postmodern narrative about American selfhood, the “enemy” in the war—Britain—almost disappeared entirely.

Not surprisingly, the Canadian history of the war began with a completely different set of heroes and villains.

By contrast, the British historiography of the War of 1812 has generally consisted of short chapters squeezed between the grand sweeping narratives of the Napoleonic Wars. The justification for this begins with the numbers: Roughly 20,000 on all sides died fighting the War of 1812 compared with over 3.5 million in the Napoleonic.

The truth is, the British were never happy. In fact, their feelings ranged from disbelief and betrayal at the beginning of the war to outright fury and resentment at the end. They regarded the U.S. protests against Royal Navy impressment of American seamen as exaggerated whining at best, and a transparent pretext for an attempt on Canada at worst.

Ottawa plans to accept Syrians from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey

UN High Commissioner for Refugees had referred 8,554 Syrians to Canadian officials for interviews.

As of 7 December, there were 1,451 Syrian refugees who had received permanent resident visas to come to Canada but had not arrived. McCallum said Canadian officials were now interviewing a total of 800 refugees each day in Amman and Beirut.