What’s got rubber tracks and doesn’t cost $20,000 an hour to rent?

“Mining companies tend to be conservative, and there’s no question they’re cutting back right now,” said Theo Peridis, professor of strategic management and international business at York University’s Schulich School of Business, in The Globe and Mail April 8. “[Laura] Areneda, president of Vic Progressive, which provides exploration and water control services to mining clients, needs to be out there doing test-run installations with big miners to demonstrate the savings, because they are not going to spend the money unless they can get a quick payback.” Read full story.

York U campus competition heats up as confidential report on a site goes to Vaughan council
The report comes just more than a month after Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua made a pitch to York University President Mamdouh Shoukri to consider Vaughan as a potential host city should the school get approval from the province to expand into York Region. But Vaughan is facing some stiff competition, reported the Vaughan Citizen April 8. Read full story.

Connected North is providing a fresh perspective for northern students
A Nunavut middle school is experiencing the highest attendance in six years due to a locally run pilot program that connects students to experts in science, technology, engineering and math, reported the Woodstock Sentinel-Review April 8. . . . According to a York University study, preliminary research results show that 89 per cent of the students reported that the experience made learning more enjoyable and 81 per cent said they learned more. Read full story.

Canadians need to know more about the drugs we are taking
“Why is Health Canada only letting doctors and the public know part of the story about the safety and effectiveness of new pharmaceutical drugs? Inadequate information can be as dangerous as misinformation,” co-wrote York University Professor Joel Lexchin in National Newswatch March 27. Read full story.

Canadian Health Coalition hosts meeting on ‘Americanization’ of health care
The end of the latest federal-provincial Health Accord “poses dangerous risks to Medicare” in Canada, says an advocacy group speaking about the future of public health care this Wednesday at a Hindu temple in Scarborough, Ont. Speakers include Alex Himelfarb, director of York University’s Glendon School of Public and International Affairs, reported the Scarborough Mirror April 8. Read full story.

York U’s engineering school, Technion agree to partnership
The Lassonde School of Engineering at York University and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have entered into a strategic partnership that could ultimately see students at the two educational institutions jointly develop commercially viable projects, reported the Canadian Jewish News April 9. Read full story.

What the journalists jailed in Egypt are going through: John Greyson
“I marked the 100th day of Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy’s incarceration in Tora prison by running a 5k in the shape of his chin,” wrote filmmaker and York University Professor John Greyson in the Toronto Star April 8. “Tarek Loubani and I were locked up in the same Cairo prison last fall, in the cellblock two over from Mo, where he’s been held with fellow Al-Jazeera journalists Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed since late December for the crime of doing their job. As I run, I think about similarities and differences.” Read full story.

Review of acne drug related to deaths first of reviews to be released on new website
The four-page synopsis of Health Canada’s 2013 safety review of Diane-35 and its generic equivalents was the first of safety reviews to be made public on a new website unveiled Tuesday by Health Minister Rona Ambrose. . . . “It’s better than nothing. Having said that, that’s about what Health Canada has done up to this point – nothing,” said York University health policy and management Professor Joel Lexchin in The Globe and Mail April 8. Read full story.

Legal or illegal? The 2001 US-British attack on Afghanistan. Never got the U.N. ‘Green Light’
With British forces formally handing over the military command of Helmand to US forces, it seems a good point to look at the legal status of the bombing and US/Nato invasion in October 2001. . . . “The right of unilateral self-defence does not include the right to retaliate once an attack has stopped,” said Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Michael Mandel in Global Research April 8. Read full story.

Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe
We witness that South Africa deciding to keep the state quo, thereby denying the economic benefits to the majority, keeping them more or less in the same miserable status, before independence, reported the Island April 8. . . . What is the way out of this conundrum? Professor John H. Soul of York University, in his article titled “Socialism in Africa”, says: “A socialist aspiration of some kind, a challenge to the illogic of actually existing capitalism, both globally and as it works its malign purposes on the African Continent itself, must be at the core of any meaningful response that Africa is eventually to make to the crisis in which it find itself.” Read full story.