It's worth speculating whether news the Department of Canadian Heritage subsidizes francophone lad magazine Summum will hurt or help Heritage Minister James Moore's reputation in the arts and culture community.

Moore gets pretty good reviews from the artistic set, despite a general perception the Conservative government is composed of Philistines.

But a report by CBC Radio-Canada that Moore's department approved federal grants of more than $190,000 for Summum and Summum Girls, published by Les Editions Genex, has sparked a minor flap.

Summum, dubbed by one news report as "le Playboy du Quebec," is a glossy magazine that mixes articles aimed at guys with photos of scantily clad young Quebecoise.

A department news release shows Summum received $114,478 from the Canadian Periodical Fund, while Summum Girl received $77,241.

"When we see private companies like Genex get financial support and it's for magazines like Summum and Summum Girl, we have to ask ourselves serious questions about

For the second time in four months a deadly explosion, followed by a fire has leveled a B.C. sawmill and provincial safety regulators want to know why.

The two incidents has some observers speculating a buildup of highly flammable sawdust triggered a dust explosion.

WorksafeBC has launched an investigation of Monday's blast at the Lakeland Mills operation in Prince George, B.C., which killed two employees and injured about two dozen others.

The safety watchdog said it will begin work as soon as the RCMP and Coroners Service release the accident site.

"In addition, WorkSafeBC will immediately be issuing orders to all sawmill employers in B.C., directing them to conduct a full hazard identification, risk assessment, and safety review, with particular focus on combustible dust; dust accumulation; and potential ignition sources," the agency said in a news release.

WorkSafeBC, which will send inspectors to ensure the company reviews are carried out, added there are no "reasonable legal

A Toronto high school has taken an unconventional approach to handling its bullying problem, and as the Toronto Star reports, the tactic appears to be working.

Since Weston Collegiate Institute adopted "restorative conferences" — whereby students in conflict discuss their actions, its consequences, and draft a penance solution together in face-to-face meetings — the school's suspension rate, once among the worst in the city, has effectively dropped in half.

And in the four years since the school introduced its "Weston Restores" program, staff members have gone from breaking up fights every day to reporting four brawls since September.

But beyond the physical expressions of aggression, the program appears to be shifting the way students relate to one another — and to staff.

The Star notes that the traffic outside the principal's office, once backed up like Toronto's Don Valley Parkway by misbehaving students, has effectively slowed down to a trickle. The teens report an improved

High stress, longer hours, and less people to take on more tasks. These are the factors that, according to a major study conducted by Ottawa's Carleton University, are contributing to Canadian police officers feeling over-worked, understaffed, and stressed out.

The study on officer wellness is believed to be the first of its kind in the country, says a report by Postmedia News. Linda Duxbury, a professor and work-life balance authority at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business, and her research partner Christopher Higgins, a professor at Western University's Richard Ivey School of Business, collected survey data from 4,500 officers across 25 police agencies.

The authors concluded that Canadian police officers are "stressed-out and stretched thin like never before — facing long hours, constantly changing shifts, understaffing, more complex caseloads and a lack of career-development opportunities, as well as growing family pressures at home".

As a result, said the study, police

In the year since an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan's Pacific coast, cameras have tracked a "mountain" of floating debris headed toward British Columbia's western coast.

News reports have documented the efforts of Tofino, B.C. residents who have already started clearing away what they believe to be the first wave of material goods — everything from plastic drink bottles and lumber to sports equipment has washed up on the shore near Vancouver Island.

While a few are motivated to restore these items to their original owners, most of the debris will likely find its way into a dump.

But, as the Globe and Mail reports, a Tofino artist has discovered a more constructive use for these objects.

Since he arrived on Vancouver Island in 1998, Peter Clarkson has fashioned sculptures from the garbage that washes up along the beach.

Five years ago, Clarkson began building a seven-metre-tall totem pole with what ultimately constitutes ocean trash: crab traps, rope, and even fishing boats

A new report by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada singles out Saskatchewan for having Canada's worst per-capita rate of impaired driving deaths and apparently doing little about it.

The group's 2012 Provincial and Territorial Legislative Review, completed last month, reports the prairie province's impaired driving death rate of 8.44 per 100,000 population in 2009 (the last year for which comprehensive data is available) was more than double the national average of 3.18.

The rate in Saskatchewan has stayed above 6.50 since 2000, the report notes.

"Given its poor record, it is troubling that Saskatchewan has not introduced any significant impaired driving initiatives in the last three years," the report states, according to the Regina Leader-Post.

MADD called on Saskatchewan to implement major reforms to reduce the death rate covering licensing, short-term licence suspensions, the use of vehicle ignition locks and the impounding and forfeiture of vehicles.

But Tim McMillan,

The head of Canada's spy agency is warning that al-Qaeda appears to be changing tactics and as many as 60 Canadians have journeyed abroad to train with the Islamic terrorist group.

Richard Fadden, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told a Senate committee al-Qaeda's shift to so-called lone-wolf attacks, which are harder to detect, is presenting a problem for anti-terrorism units.

"This really makes things very complicated for us," Fadden said, according to the Globe and Mail.

Al-Qaeda began encouraging lone-wolf attacks after increased pressure on its networks in the wake of the 9/11 attacks made it harder to carry out complex operations, Reuters reported.

Fadden told the committee western intelligence agencies, including Canada, are devoting more resources to better understand what motivates individual attackers.

"It's not easy … because these individuals seem to be a mix of (ideologically driven) terrorists and people who simply have very big personal problems,"

Amid all the cuts springing from the Conservative government's austerity budget, the one shutting down Assisted Human Reproduction Canada was largely ignored.

But experts in the field say the six-year-old regulatory agency's demise does nothing to clarify the murky rules governing Canada's fertility industry.

The federal government's 2004 legislation covering ethical issues such as human cloning, the sale of sperm and eggs and other dilemmas raised by new reproductive technologies was largely gutted by a Supreme Court decision that upheld provincial rights governing health care.

Other provisions of the law that survived the top court's ruling were never enacted because the rules were not set down, Toronto lawyer Sherry Levitan, who specializes in assisted human reproduction technology, told CBC News. The provinces have not stepped into the breach.

It's left women seeking help to have a child in a legal limbo while the technically illegal sale of human eggs flourishes, said Maureen