Today CBC will be doing an indepth ‘big picture’ look at gambling across Canada.
On CBC Morning in Toronto Harry Forestell will be on location at a Casino for a rare peek inside the world of gambling.
13:30 CBC News: Your Call with Kathleen Petty - In Calgary host Kathleen Petty and a special guest field your calls.
20:00 - The Docket - Host Lisa Taylor will focus on gamblers suing government/casinos for their addiction, and the government’s role in taking responsibility for gambling addicts. The program will feature the story of Gabe Macaluso who wants the province of Ontario and the casino to pay him three million dollars.

I found out last evening that Gabe Macaluso will not be accepting any cash settlements from the casino in question, he is determined to see this dealt with in the Ontario court system. A class action suit in Quebec is also going forward.
The first casino opened in Canada 10 years ago, it has taken years to break through government obfusation and take the issues to a judicial level.

21:00 The National - The award-winning one-hour live newscast anchored by Peter Mansbridge will wrap the days coverage of gambling in Canada.
CBC programming guide

Hospital’s Hygiene ‘Scare’

The hygiene scare spooking Ontario hospital patients widened significantly Wednesday with a total of six health-care facilities in the province now admitting to using improperly sterilized equipment in medical tests. The number of hospitals involved increased from two as government-ordered audits were carried out at facilities across the province, Health Minister George Smitherman said Wednesday.

There has been lobbying in the health care system and by advocacy groups for some time now for hospitals and medical administration to take the step of public reporting problems.
Rather than seeing these delays and flaws in our hospitals as something to be frightened of, I think it is a good thing this is being brought to the attention of the public. I hope there will be more.
It provides incentive to facilities to report and disseminate information that will protect and inform patients, medical staff and enable administrators to see that problems are fixed quickly. Informed consumers make better choices, and public accountability will contribute to improved health care.

Hollinger Inc
Colby Cosh takes a look at Conrad Black and his empire.

The overall verdict against Black must be one of unacceptable carelessness and arrogance. For distantly-placed students of Blackian psychology, this can’t really be surprising. (It’s funny–no?–how all these admirers of Napoleon seem to forget just how the little fellow ended up.) Black clearly had the view–reasonable in all but technical respects, though those are important–that an investor in Hollinger International was an investor in Conrad Black. If you regard investors in your publicly-traded company as having placed their trust, essentially, in you as a person, then naturally you are going to regard any kind of limits on your activity as quarrelsome interruptions.

Michael Jackson
The pop-star’s saga led two of our national newscasts tonight.
I read yesterday that his new CD is #1 in Britian. What people don’t know and perhaps don’t care about is that proceeds from “One More Chance” are going to the hate group Scientology.

Porn fronts
Blogs are being used as fronts for pornography.

Technorati
This is a top-notch tool for bloggers, and has been having a lot of problems lately. Here is what is going on and what is being done.

Not Canada eh?
The mud-slinging and blaming between Canada and the US started within an hour or so after the massive blackout in August that affected 50 million people. Within a day or two a company in Ohio was being looked at. A joint US-Canadian committee released it’s findings yesterday. Human error, outdated technology and untrained workers at FirstEnergy Corp in Akron have been named as the source.

Russia and AIDS
The gap between public awareness and AIDS is growing in Russia with little hope at this time that the spread will stop and treatment for those infected will improve anytime soon.