Canada

Joint Declaration by Canada and France (No. 341 – October 20, 2010 – 1:15 p.m. ET) The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, and Bernard Kouchner (pictured), Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of France, made the following statement today concerning Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, who is detained in Iran. Mr. Derakhshan is a Canadian citizen and his companion is a French national. “We are jointly requesting that the Iranian authorities release Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, who…

I emailed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa and received this statement back from Melissa Lantsman, on behalf of Canada’s Foreign Minister, Lawrence Cannon. “We are deeply concerned about the news of this severe sentence. Our officials continue to seek confirmation of these reports from Tehran. If true, this is completely unacceptable and unjustifiable. Canada believes that no one should be punished anywhere for simply exercising one’s inherent right to freedom of expression. His situation is complicated by his…

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the arrest of Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan. I’ve been covering this issue on my blog and also for three media outlets: PRI’s The World, in a piece that aired on Wednesday, TVO’s Search Engine (in an episode airing tomorrow), and for PBS’ MediaShift in a piece that will be airing later this week. The CBC also came out with a piece late Thursday night that I’ve just now seen. I have also been in regular…

Dear Friends, I’ve been informed that my radio commentary on how the Internet made me “culturally lazy” while living in France is airing this week on CBC’s Spark! It will be available on CBC Radio 1 at the following times: Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m. (12:00 NT) Saturdays at 4:00 p.m. (4:30 NT) If you find yourself outside the reach of the CBC’s antennae, feel free to listen to it online, here, or of course, via podcast.

The Toronto Star: ANDREW CHUNG QUEBEC BUREAU CHIEF MONTREAL – In Lara Croft’s latest action adventure, part of the wildly popular Tomb Raider video game series, the lithe heroine can demand of her evil doppelganger either, “What the hell are you?” or, “Qu’est-ce que tu es, exactement?” And that’s exactly the way Quebec wants it, from now on. French language rules on video games come into force today prohibiting the sale of new English-only video games in Quebec if a…