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City of Vancouver staff are recommending that city council force Megaphone, Vancouver’s homeless street paper to register as a charity.

Editor Sean Condon was seeking a license because vendors had been complaining that police and private security guards had been moving them out of public space saying that they did not have a license to sell. The paper has been operating for 16 years without a license.

Condon feels the charity requirement will muzzle the paper’s social advocacy efforts, as the resources registered charities can spend on advocacy are severely limited. “Becoming a registered charity in Canada means we’ll have restrictions on how much time and resources we can spend advocating for political issues. As a media organization, we should have the freedom to speak out on issues that affect marginalized people in Vancouver without any restraints.”

Internationally, the Big Issue, another homeless paper, has street vendors in almost every major city worldwide, and is not a registered charity, although they work with a partner foundation that addresses issues of financial literacy.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some U.S. motorists sick of getting clobbered at the pump seem willing to do just about anything for free fuel, from giving up the right to name their children to stealing from day-care centers to donating blood.

In Orlando, Florida, David Partin pledged to name his son after local radio hosts to win a $100 gas card as part of a contest. Partin will collect the card in December, when his son is born, if he can produce a birth certificate proving the baby is named Dixon Willoughby Partin, after the hosts.

A whole genre of films - such as American Beauty and Twin Peaks just to cite two cult classics – have unveiled the moral ambiguities – and at times the darkness – that lurk behind the bucolic and idyllic façade of American Suburbia. The pretty and prototypical image of such suburbian lifestyle is the seven-bedroom and four-bathroom MacMansion with a driveway where three gas-guzzling SUVs are parked (one for dad, one for mom and one for the kids) and a sprawling green lawn that is perfectly manicured with sprinklers spewing hundreds of gallons of water a day.

Thanks to the worst housing recession since the Great Depression, sky-high gasoline and energy prices and rising water shortages from global warming this suburbian American dream way of life is turning into an economic and financial nightmare. Let us count the ways of this nightmare…

One of the things that has struck me a lot throughout the past five years that I have studied water policy is the absolute disconnect that exists between our understanding of the different elements of the hydrological cycle and their interconnectedness. The social sciences literature has examined in great detail issues of water scarcity, but water quality and wastewater treatment are, for the most part, absent from the discussion.

BALTIMORE — An underground electrical fire in downtown Baltimore that closed streets and caused power outages has been brought under control.

Fire Department spokesman Chief Kevin Cartwright says there were reports of a manhole cover explosion shortly after 5 p.m. Monday in the 300 block of North Charles Street. The fire was brought under control around 3:30 a.m. today.

The Strathcona & Cottonwood Community Gardens is hosting its annual Open House & Plant Sale Sunday. Located at the sunny S.W. corner of Prior & Hawks St. in Vancouver.

Featuring workshops with noted ‘Guerrilla Gardening’ author David Tracey there will also be a spectacular plant sale, live music, free snacks, kids activities, bee keeping demonstrations and sustainable urban gardening & environmental workshops.

Recipients of a City of Vancouver Heritage Award and home to the Environmental Youth Alliance, the 7 acre Gardens feature solar powered buildings, native wetlands, organic gardening, beehives, heritage orchards, and a host of other innovative green projects.

Admission to the Open House & Plant Sale is FREE!!!

Come and have a great time, learn lots, and help make a difference to your Community and your Garden!

Remember - ‘Feed the Community and it will Feed You’

For more information please contact Derek Hodge @ 604-253-5615 or via e mail ‘ + emailE + ‘

Remember those really, really high gas prices of the late 1970s and early 1980s? Well, we’re past that and still climbing. From the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

To quote Stein’s Law, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Of course, when it will stop is the big question.

The really interesting thing in the graph is that until 1998, the long-term trend for real gas prices was down.

The Spring selling season has come to an end, and it appears a dramatic change in our local real estate climate has occurred. No longer a sellers market, the terms “balanced market” and “buyers market” are now common place among home buyers and sellers. Now more than ever when selling a home it is important to be competitively priced amongst the competition and market your home from a variety of different angles.