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Image of a hydro pole fire in Toronto on March 3, 2015.

TORONTO- Utility crews have been busy over the past couple of weeks working to restore power to thousands of homes across the GTA. The culprit in most of these outages has been a single hydro pole fire. One pole fire can affect power tens of thousands of residents in a given community.

The odd thing is, these fires happen when we get rain or drizzle in the winter months.

The unlikely contributor is the road salt we use to melt snow and ice.

John McClean is the Vice President, Operations at Power Stream, whichserves municipalities in the 905 and 705 regions, and saidthe fireshappen every winter when we get an accumulation of contamination on the insulators that carry our conductors typically salt contamination.

Normally, McCleans crews would be washing the salt off the poles but they can only do that when the temperatures warm up above minus 5 degrees Celsius. We didnt get anywhere near that temperature through January and February so the salt built up in the insulators.

When the temperature finally flirted with freezing, we got rain and drizzle. Mix the water with the salt and youve got a nearly perfect conductor. It means the current finds its way into the grounded pole. But the pole is a poor conductor, so it acts like the element in your oven. It resists the current, stores the heat and it combusts.

And youre wondering how that road salt gets all the way to thetop of that hydro pole.

McClean says the salt gets kicked into the air by passing traffic. But he and his team have noticed an increased in pole fire incidents since the province and municipalities have started using a salt solution brine to deal with icy roads.

Read more here:
Power outages in GTA caused by hydro pole fires

These are stories Report on Business is following Thursday, March 12, 2015.

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Company apologizesAn Indonesian company says its going to replace unbelievable washing-instruction labels that suggest men give their jerseys to your woman because its her job.

Salvo Sports, which Reuters reports designed the jersey for soccer club Pusamania Borneo, has apologized profusely on Twitter, saying it didnt mean to denigrate women.

Its just that men arent always competent in caring for their own clothes, and women are more expert in that kind of thing.

(Thats my rough translation from the original tweets.)

Under washing instructions, the original label said: Give this jersey to your woman. Its her job.

(For photos, click here.)

Reuters translated the apologetic response like this:

Theres no intention to humiliate women. In contrast, (we want to tell the men) learn from women on how to take care of clothes because they pay attention to details. Not all men understand/know how to take care of their own clothes, women are more knowledgeable/experts on such matters.

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Indonesian apparel maker in hot water over sexist washing instructions

Territories and Municipal Services Minister Shane Rattenbury aims to free up more unused public land for growing food in Canberra and plans a registration system for backyard beekeepers this year, among measures to boost food self-sufficiency in Canberra.

Mr Rattenbury, head of the ACT Greens, called a roundtable of local producers last year and on Tuesday outlined the ideas to the Assembly. Other ideas included a localabattoir and targets to reduce chemical use in home gardens.

The roundtable heard that 700 hectares would be sufficient to feed a third of the ACT population, and pushed for more government land to be set side for intensive production, such as greenhouses, hydroponics and aquaponics.

It discussed accessing land near creeks, cycle paths, power line easements and road easements for growing food. It suggested a relaxation of restrictions on using nature strips and other land for gardening, providing residents took responsibility for controlling fruit tree pests, he said.

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Canberra had 3.65 hectares in community gardens and that could be expanded, especially on public transport routes, with access to water, electricity and toilets. Walls and roofs could also be used for food production, and areas could be set aside for "agri-hoods", or neighbourhood food production.Land should be set aside when suburbs were being built.

The roundtable also pointed to the need for more bee-friendly plants, registration of beekeepers and reducing pesticide use, Mr Rattenbury said.

Among other ideas, the Molonglo River flats could be considered for market gardens, and a specific agricultural zone could be created. Agriculture should be part of ACT economic planning, he said, with one suggestion that as many as 10,000 or 12,000 people could be employed in the sector.

The roundtable had also looked at areas where Canberra was over-regulated, including a requirement to weigh individual eggs, a specified size for hand-washing sinks and rules covering selling food.

Mr Rattenbury said he would introduce a registration system this year for beekeepers, most of whom were backyard beekeepers, and was looking to free up open spaces for food production. "There's a lot of community energy out there, with people saying if you just let us go at it there are things we'd like to do," he said, pointing to the approach from the now-established City Farm and work to set up a Lyneham orchard.

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Greens Minister Shane Rattenbury pushes ideas to make Canberra more self-sufficient in food production

Survey of 100,000 people was the largest ever analysis into hand-washing Washroomcompany has nowlaunched a product to promotehygiene Data on hand-washing rates will be displayed on TV screens in bathrooms Company claims seeing the data 'nudges' people into washing their hands

By Madlen Davies for MailOnline

Published: 09:25 EST, 27 February 2015 | Updated: 18:29 EST, 27 February 2015

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If you've ever harboured doubts about the personal hygiene habits of your work colleagues, look away now.

A staggering 62 per cent of men do not wash their hands after going to the bathroom, a survey has revealed.

And while women are slightly better than men, 40 per cent admit they too share this dirty habit.

The survey of 100,000 people, carried out by a washroom services company, was the largest ever analysis into hand-washing habits.

More here:
Do YOU always wash your hands after going to the loo? 62% of men and 40% of women admit they don't bother

Lucas Patchett of charity laundry service Orange Sky hangs out some washing in front of a Yeppoon home damaged by Cyclone Marcia. Photo: Orange Sky

As Tropical Cyclone Marcia crossed the Queensland coast, Lucas Patchett and Nic Marchesi packed up their mobile laundry van and embarked on a 1090km journey to the disaster zone.

The 20-year-old co-founders of Brisbane charity Orange Sky, which provides a mobile laundry service for homeless people, had just set up an operation in far north Queensland when TC Marcia called.

Yeppoon resident Tony makes use of the free laundry service offered by Orange Sky. Photo: Orange Sky

A day on the road later, Orange Sky was in Yeppoon offering its services to people left without power and, sometimes, without roofs in TC Marcia's wake.

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"We pulled up this morning and people who had the walls and the roof of their house ripped off, with all their belongings soaked and no power in the whole of Yeppoon, they were pretty happy to get their clothes cleaned," Mr Patchett said on Saturday.

"I suppose it's one of the things you don't want to worry about when you're doing a big clean-up like that."

Orange Sky Laundry was set up about five months ago in Brisbane and earlier this month expanded into Cairns.

"The original plan was to have it operating up there on a priority basis in case there were any natural disasters," Mr Patchett said.

Go here to see the original:
Cyclone Marcia: Orange Sky cleans up after the storm

Clean up to begin after Queensland faced the full brunt of tropical Cyclone Marcia.

Cyclone Marcia Destroyed house in Yeppoon - Pic Jack Tran Source: Supplied

Cyclone Marcia has damaged homes in Yeppoon and torn iron from buildings in Rockhampton to the south. And its not over yet.

As the tropical cyclone continues to makes its way south were beginning to see the trail of destruction its left in its wake.

WHAT WE KNOW:

* Cyclone Marcia has been downgraded to a category 1 system but many residents are facing a damp and dark night with thousands without electricity.

* Power is expected to be cut for several days and emergency services are calling on residents to use water only when absolutely necessary.

* The severe tropical cyclone made landfall as a category 5 cyclone and has left a trail of destruction over Yeppoon and Rockhampton.

*The cyclone was at category 5 when it grazed Yeppoon battering the coastal town with 285km/h winds. It was downgraded to category 3 when it hit Rockhampton in the afternoon.

* Marcias destructive core with gusts to 155km/h continued southwards towards Biloela.

See the article here:
The cyclone sandwich is coming

To avoid drowning in marital discord, Ben Kaplanseeks insight inthe most logical place he can think of the marriage of a marriagecounsellor

By Ben Kaplan

The couch beside the dining room table is plush and brown and holds an important place for the Nicolson household. They have a bedroom, of course, which is essential. And a room where their one- and three-year-old daughters sleep. But the couch is what keeps every door open, because when Ellis, 38, and his wife Tiffany, 34, experience the painful bits of their marriage though were screwed up by our parents, no one can hurt us quite like our spouse they retire to the couch, kick off their sneakers and take positions facing one another, touch bare feet, and talk it out. Sometimes they stay that way for hours.

I start to feel something physically, when Im starting to ramp up, I feel frustrated, and thats when I know weve got to go to the couch, says Ellis, who is boyish-looking, blond, and has a sensitive, relaxed disposition, as if hes never worn uncomfortable shoes. Even if resolution doesnt happen at that moment, the idea is to walk away knowing that were OK and can move on from here in a positive way.

Sometimes conflict cant be resolved because people dont feel safe enough to say whats really happening, and know that their partner wont leave

This summer, the couch played a pivotal role in the Nicolson marriage. With both of their children facing potentially serious health problems, Tiffany in chronic pain from an old neck injury, and both husband and wife sleep-deprived and on edge, Ellis had grown withdrawn and Tiffany was internalizing her negative emotions. It was Tiffany who suggested a session on the couch.

I dont want to be judged and I dont want to be seen as weak, but I had to tell him: Im really not doing well, says Tiffany, who is a veterinarian and a priests daughter, and makes charcoal portraits after her girls go to sleep. After our talk, nothing changed that much, but I felt better because I allowed myself to be vulnerable. Sometimes conflict cant be resolved because people dont feel safe enough to say whats really happening, and know that their partner wont leave.

The Nicolsons, who live in Mississauga, Ont., shop at Costco; they drink soda; they let their kids watch the same crap everyone else does on TV. Theyre normal, and like all normal married people, that means sometimes they go to bed angry. Sometimes Tiffany takes a whole day and stews. Ellis sometimes strikes blows with his silence. But what makes their marriage unique is Elliss profession: hes a marriage counsellor, and spends up to 12 hours a day hearing domestic dramas unfold. Raised by a single mother who had a strong connection to the church, Ellis was studying aviation when he realized two things: that people were coming to him for advice, and that the root of most everyones problems tended to stem from their family life. Kids get a sense of who they are from the nature of the relationship between their parents, he says. I wanted my life to be meaningful relationships were where I wanted to make my mark.

The problems that he sees in his practice tend to deal with a low-humming dissatisfaction with life. His clients are generally in their thirties and forties and face not so much big single issues cheating, addiction, abuse but rather a mixed cocktail of grievances, often ignored to the breaking point. People in marriage or couples counselling (Ellis sees married and unmarried pairs) are grappling with the disconnect between their relationship ideals and the realities of their own partnerships. And Ellis is careful to be mindful of this in his own love life. A registered marriage and family therapist, he says he leaves work at work when hes home with his family, but both he and Tiffany say theyve benefited from his job. They dont see themselves as having the perfect marriage, they see themselves engaged in a realistic one. Wed for six years they met through a Christian website and dated for a year and a half Ellis and Tiffany dont expect bliss. Contentment is enough.

Your relationship is not doomed because you have problems

Read this article:
Preserve & protect: The power and importance of marriage counsellors

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War

by James Risen

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 285 pp., $28.00

In early 2003, James Risen, an investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, prepared a story about a covert CIA effort to undermine Irans nuclear program. Before publishing it, he informed the CIA of his findings and asked for comment. On April 30, 2003, according to a subsequent Justice Department court filing, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice met with Risen and Jill Abramson, then the Timess Washington bureau chief. Tenet and Rice urged the Times to hold Risens story because, they said, it would compromise national security and endanger the life of a particular CIA recruit. (The agent is referred to in the Justice filing as Human Asset No. 1.) Eventually, the Times informed the CIA that it would not publish Risens story.1 Abramson said recently that she regrets the decision.

The following year, Risen and a colleague, Eric Lichtblau, learned of a National Security Agency surveillance program that collected details of Americans telephone and e-mail communications without reference to a search warrant. Some of Risens sources inside the NSA thought that the program was unconstitutional, because it violated the Fourth Amendments prohibition of unlawful search. Risen felt that he had come across my biggest story of the post-9/11 age, as he puts it in Pay Any Price, his revealing, diverse collection of investigations of greed, incompetence, and mendacity in the American national security state.

In October 2004, Risen and Lichtblau drafted their NSA story. They again informed the Bush administration of what they had discovered. The White House launched an intense lobbying campaign to persuade senior Times editors that the story would severely damage national security, Risen recalls. The decision about whether to publish fell to Bill Keller, then the Timess executive editor. Risen, Lichtblau, and Rebecca Corbett, their editor, argued that the paper should go forward, but Keller ultimately decided against them. That left Risen, as he writes, frustrated and deeply concerned.

He then took a leave of absence from the newspaper to write a book. In the summer of 2005, he finished his manuscript. He included in it his reporting about the CIAs Iran operation and, with Lichtblaus consent, their discoveries about the NSAs warrantless surveillance program. Risen found a willing publisher at Free Press. When he informed his editors at the Times about his book-publishing plans, he recalls, They were furious.

Rather than be scooped by their reporter and Free Press, the Timess executives reconsidered their decision not to publish his story about the NSAs warrantless surveillance. According to Risen, the deliberations culminated in an Oval Office meeting between President Bush and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., then and now the Timess publisher. In December 2005 the Times printed Risen and Lichtblaus account. It caused an immediate sensation and later won a Pulitzer Prize. Yet the Times did not reverse its decision to withhold Risens reporting about the CIAs covert operation to undermine Irans nuclear program.

On January 5, 2006, Free Press brought out State of War, Risens first book, which contained, in Chapter Nine, a critical account of Operation Merlin. In this covert action of the Clinton administration, according to Risen, the CIA recruited a Russian scientist to provide flawed nuclear weapons designs to Iran, in hopes of delaying the countrys progress toward constructing a bomb. Instead, the scientist pointed out the design flaws to the Iranians, which may have helped them.

From this tangled history of investigative reporting and espionage has arisen one of the most consequential confrontations between the government and the press in a generation. The Obama administration inherited the case from the Bush administration. The Obama administration then pressured Risen aggressively to reveal the sources he relied upon in describing Operation Merlin. The result, as his book and other evidence make clear, was that the Justice Departments actions damaged the First Amendment and the rights of journalists.

More here:
The Reporter Resists His Government

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The recent news of hacking attack on Sony was alleged to be a state-sponsored attempt by North Korea in retaliation for the movie The Interview. Following that, North Korea suffered a severe Internet outage which it blames on the US. These developments have led to new hostilities between US and North Korea and new US sanctions (in addition to existing ones) on the communist country. Apart from sanctions from US, North Korea is also having sanctions imposed by multilateral organizations like the United Nations, as well as other countries like Japan. (See related: Countries sanctioned by US and Why) These sanctions impact various industries in both countries. Though North Korea remains a closed economy, the US is also losing out. (See related: How North Korean Economy Works?)

US Relations with North Korea

US and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) do not have any formal diplomatic relations. Since the Korean War, the US has maintained sanctions and regularly reinforced them with new additions under its Trading with the Enemy Act. As of today, North Korea remains on the US' most restrictive list (Country Group E) with complete restriction on various economic activities between the two countries. US federal regulations either impose a complete ban or a require strict licensing for items to be exported/re-exported as listed on the Commerce Control List (CCL) and for related services, including repairs associated with such products. The list and industry sectors listed below either need a license, need to adhere to strict specifications of products and services, or are completely banned.

Defense Sector

Essentially, the entire defense sector is banned from business with North Korea. It overlaps with a few other civilian restrictions, such as the ban on sale of large vessels, including those for sea, air, or land transport.

Chemicals

On the banned list are a large list of chemicals, including compositions and solutions. Additionally, associated apparatus and equipment for chemical operations, as well as for health and safety are also banned. The covered chemicals and associated apparatus are used in, but not restricted to, the following areas: mining, quarrying, agriculture, pharmaceutical, fertilizers, medical, veterinary, environmental, waste management, and the food industry.

Materials

The following materials are banned from export to the DPRK: metals and alloys, including wrought or fabricated materials, casting materials, fibrous or filamentary materials, ceramic materials, high energy materials and packaging materials.

Medical Sector

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Sectors Hit by Sanctions on North Korea