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University Students Protest Tuition Hikes in Quebec

University students in Quebec have been protesting.

They have been told that the government is going to raise their tuition fees. In this case, “tuition fees” are the fees people pay to attend university.

Traditionally, Quebec has some of the lowest tuition fees in Canada. Only students in two provinces: Newfound and Labrador and Manitoba, pay less to attend university.

However, the increase will be the largest in the province’s history. The government intends to raise tuition by $1,625 by 2017. Students will pay $325 more each year for the next five years.

Student groups say the increase doesn’t go towards improving the quality of the teaching, and the hikes will force some students who can’t pay the extra money to drop out of school or take a second job. They worry that students who come from low-income families won’t be able to afford higher education.

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Canadian Sets World Record At Boston Marathon

April 16 was a very hot day in Boston, Mass. It was a record-setting 27 degrees Celsius.

It was the day of the 116th Boston Marathon.

A marathon is a long-distance race, covering just over 42 kilometres. On this day, many runners (16 per cent of them, in fact) decided to pass on the event because it was too hot. Many other racers posted slower than usual race times.

Except for one participant. Canadian Josh Cassidy, 27, set a world record.

Cassidy won the men’s wheelchair division. He raced in a three-wheel, high-tech wheelchair; he uses his arms to power it.

Cassidy finished with a record time of 1:18:25 (one hour, 18 minutes and 25 seconds). His time was two seconds faster than the previous best time, set by South Africa’s Ernst Van Dyk in 2004.

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Can Tiger Woods Win This Year’s Masters?

The unofficial start of the golfing season begins on Thursday in Augusta, Georgia, with one of the most prestigious events in golf, the Masters Tournament.

The Masters golf tournament goes all the way back to 1934.

However, it is a recent win by Tiger Woods—perhaps the greatest player in the history of golf—that has everyone talking. They want to know: will Woods win his fifth Masters?

Even though he is a great player, if Woods wins the Masters this year it will be a big surprise.

That’s because until last month, Woods hadn’t won a tournament in nearly three years. It was the longest drought of his career.

About three years ago, Tiger Woods’s career—and his personal life—had a melt-down. He had a very public divorce with many problems. He also had issues with his golf form (in other words, the way he swung the club) as well as injuries.

He stopped winning. And many people wrote him off entirely.

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Canada’s Plan To Balance Its Budget By 2015

Last week Canada’s Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, spent $138.98 on a new pair of black dress shoes.

Why? Because he was announcing a new budget.

Flaherty is in charge of presenting Canada’s budget, which is why he bought the new shoes.

It’s a tradition in Canada that the Finance Minister wears new shoes to present the budget.

According to Wikipedia no one really knows why, but it’s something most Canadian Finance Ministers have done since the 1960s. It’s a tradition.

This year, the federal government structured its budget to reduce Canada’s annual deficit to zero by 2015.

A deficit happens when a government spends more than it collects in a year.

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High Park Residents Unite To Rebuild “Castle”

People in the community of High Park in Toronto have come together to rebuild a special playground there.

On March 17, an early-morning blaze destroyed a section of the castle-like wooden playground in the park.

Police and fire officials are investigating to find out the cause of the fire.

In the meantime, local residents and business owners are already actively planning and raising funds to rebuild the one-of-a-kind structure.

The Jamie Bell Adventure Playground, where the “castle” was, is in High Park, just north of Lake Ontario in Toronto.

It opened in 1999 and is named after a Toronto resident whose idea it was to build the unique playground.

Members of the community are pulling together again to rebuild the portions damaged by the fire.

And it’s not just local residents who have offered to assist; Canadian Tire has pledged a significant donation towards the project.

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Toronto Librarians On Strike But Kids’ Website Stays Open

Toronto’s 98 libraries are temporarily closed after talks between representatives for the City of Toronto and the library workers’ union broke down last Sunday.

Last Monday, 2,300 library workers set up picket lines at libraries. A picket line, in this case, is where the library workers march with signs that tell the public what they want from the City of Toronto, which pays their salary. Picketing is a way of letting people know that a deal needs to be made before they will go back to work.

What do both sides want?
Library workers are looking for job security*, especially for part-time workers. Part-timers want the city to let them work more hours during the week, says Maureen O’Reilly, president of the Toronto Library Workers Union. The City wants workers to be part-time because it cannot pay full-time salaries.

The deadline for a deal has come and gone four times but the two parties cannot agree on how to settle their differences. The library workers decided that a strike was the only option left for them.

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Football Superstar Peyton Manning Signs With Denver

Football fans are pretty excited in Denver, Colorado this week.

That’s because football superstar, Peyton Manning, has decided to join the Denver Broncos.

Manning is considered one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game. He is the only player in the NFL to be named Most Valuable Player (MVP) four times.

Because he’s so good, the 35-year-old could choose just about any team to play for. He chose the Broncos because he thinks they can win the Super Bowl. He wants another Super Bowl ring.

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The Robo-Call Scandal Continues

The robo-call scandal is not going away. In fact, it’s getting bigger.

During the last federal election, many Canadian voters said they received automatic voice-mail messages (robo-calls) directing them to the wrong polling station.

CBC News is reporting that they have found voters across Canada who say they got misleading robo-call messages because they were not voting for the Conservative Party.

In other words, according to CBC News, people who weren’t voting Conservative were called and directed to the wrong polling station. (If people can’t find their polling station – the place where they vote – then they may not be able to vote, or they may decide it’s too much of a hassle to find the right polling station.)

This points the finger for the robo-calls at the Conservative Party and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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Two Canadian Political Parties In Hot Water Over Use Of Technology

During elections, people often get a recorded message on their telephone that reminds them to vote and tells them where to go, to vote.

These messages, which use pre-recorded voices, are known as robo-calls.

Canada’s federal Conservative party is being accused of using robo-calls to mislead the public, during last year’s election.

The RCMP and Elections Canada (the group that makes the rules for elections), are looking into accusations that some robo-calls steered voters to the wrong polling station, or to polling stations that didn’t even exist, which would be illegal.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he doesn’t know anything about the illegal robo-calls.

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Scotland May Hold Independence Referendum

For the first time in three centuries, the united part of the United Kingdom may be in trouble.

The Scottish National Party (SNP), the party that runs Scotland day-to-day, is urging the Scottish people to support independence from Britain. However it still wants to keep the Queen as official leader.

Last week, British Prime Minister Gordon Cameron went to Scotland to argue that Scotland should not separate from Great Britain.

Scotland and England have been together since 1707 when the Kingdom of Great Britain was formed under the rule of the British. Ireland and Wales were already under British rule at that time.