Experts believe the top court is unlikely to proclaim a national right to same-sex marriage in its decisions. The court is set to rule on a challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage and on a provision of federal law denying certain benefits for married same-sex couples.

At issue is California’s 2008 prohibition on same-sex marriage, known as Proposition 8. Lower federal courts struck down the ban, and a high court majority appears likely to rule in a way that would affect only Californians.

A vast array of legal issues, from the procedural question of who can legally defend a ballot proposition to more consequential questions of states’ rights, leaves room for continuing uncertainty over the fate of Proposition 8. That has prompted each side to prepare a Plan B.

California could help to shape the national agenda again.

California voters in 2008 ended a summer of court-approved gay marriage by adopting Proposition 8. The proposal, backed by 52 percent of voters, changed the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

That enraged and energized the national gay rights movement while offering social conservatives proof that their message resonated even in a state known for its liberal leanings.

For gay marriage supporters, buoyed by laws permitting gay marriage in now 12 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, a California ballot initiative would be a chance to recover from their biggest loss.

For gay marriage opponents, it would be a chance to regain momentum.

“It’s the biggest state in the union. It is a state that has twice voted for traditional marriage, and if we were able to prevail here, I think it would be an incredible feat, and would certainly cut the legs out from the inevitability argument,” said Frank Schubert, who led the 2008 campaign to pass the ban.

2014 ELECTION GOAL

Social liberals, who are among the biggest supporters of same-sex marriage, generally turn out to vote most in presidential elections, which would suggest the best time to challenge Prop 8 would be November 2016.

But state gay rights groups don’t want to wait, and they universally predict that if the need arose, they would fight at the ballot box in November 2014 when Americans hold midterm Congressional elections and California elects a governor.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of people in the donor community and outside the donor community,” said John O’Connor, the new head of Equality California, the group which led opposition to Prop 8. “There is a sense of readiness,” he said. Groups are ready to launch a coalition, he added.

The 2008 pro-gay-marriage campaign was generally seen as lacking a clear message, ignoring minority groups and bedeviled by complacency that gay marriage support was assured.

“The lessons of Prop 8 have been learned. The lessons of victories have been internalized,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

An Equality California poll this month found 55 percent of likely voters favored gay marriage. However, that is no guarantee; a Field Poll from September 2008 showed 55 percent of likely voters would oppose the Prop 8 ban. Less than two months later it passed.

Schubert is concerned about same-sex marriage supporters’ recent fundraising success. “We can’t go through another year like we did last year where we get outspent four to one,” he said.

The 2008 ballot fight was one of the most expensive in state history, costing more than $80 million, with both sides raising more than $40 million in 2008.

Both sides aim to reach out to faith groups and minority groups, which are especially important in diverse California, and to do so early on. In fact, California groups have been doing grassroots support-building since 2008, in particular aiming to get gays and lesbians to discuss marriage with straight friends and family.

Gay marriage supporters signal they will seek to avoid a long million-dollar signature-gathering campaign to get an initiative on the ballot. Instead they hope Democrats will use their supermajority in the state legislature to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

(Reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by Howard Goller and Cynthia Osterman)

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s proposals would
apply to both passenger and freight travel, bringing railways in
line with air travel, where flight recorders and automatic pilot
systems have long been required.

The new rules would also bring Canada’s railway regulations
closer to those of the United States, where a 2008 overhaul
means nearly all rail lines must introduce automatic control
systems by the end of 2015.

The board’s recommendations came in its report on the 2012
accident, which killed three engineers and injured 45
passengers.

The board said the train was traveling more than four times
the rated speed for the track near Toronto where the accident
took place, and engineers apparently ignored or misunderstood
track signals that told them to slow down.

“Missed signals are a real risk,” Wendy Tadros, chair of the
Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference. “Every day,
hundreds of freight trains encounter thousands of signals all
over Canada. Those trains carry chemicals. Flammable liquids.
And more and more oil.”

Canada has limited passenger rail service, but railways
carry more than 310 million tonnes of freight a year including
ever-larger volumes of crude oil. Oil accounts for around 5
percent of total rail traffic in Canada, National Bank research
analysts say.

In May, a train spilled 575 barrels of crude oil onto the
Saskatchewan prairie after it derailed.

The TSB said rail operators should install automatic,
fail-safe override systems that can stop or slow a train if it
misses a signal. It also said locomotives should be equipped
with video monitoring systems to make crash investigations
easier.

A spokesman for Canadian National Railway Co, one
of Canada’s two big rail companies, said CN Rail is already
rolling out fail-safe control systems in Canada and the United
States, where it also operates.

But Mark Hallman said it was unwise to move beyond what is
currently mandated in Canada until the system has been proven
reliable. “It’s a technologically complex system that as of yet
has not been proven in any large scale industry implementation,”
Hallman said.

Transport Canada, the industry regulator, now has 90 days to
respond to the TSB recommendations.

A net 9 percent of Canadian employers expect to add jobs in
the third quarter, with the biggest gains seen in the
transportation and public utilities sector, the study from
staffing company Manpower Inc showed.

That was down slightly from a net 12 percent three months
earlier.

The seasonally adjusted number, based on a survey of 1,900
Canadian employers, also represents a drop from the net 12
percent of employers who expected to hire in the same quarter
last year.

“The curvature on our trend is going down,” said Byrne Luft,
a vice president with Manpower Canada. “We had gains in 2012 but
it’s again heading more into negative territory.”

The quarterly Manpower survey measures the difference
between employers who say they will add jobs and those planning
to cut positions, adjusting the numbers for seasonal changes.

The survey follows a report on Friday that showed the
Canadian economy added a much higher than expected 95,000 jobs
in May. This followed a net loss in March and small gain in
April.

Luft noted the month-to-month numbers don’t always reflect
the longer term outlook.

“Having one month where it spikes is promising, but it’s not
something to be excited about because the trend isn’t exactly
optimistic,” he said.

The Manpower survey also showed some areas of strength.

A net 23 percent of employers in the transportation and
public utilities sector plan to hire in the third quarter. A
weaker Canadian dollar, which makes exports more attractive, is
expected to boost activity in the sector, Luft said.

That’s an increase of five percentage point from the same
period last year and the strongest result since the second
quarter of 2007.

Employers in the sector in Western Canada and Quebec expect
to do the most hiring, with a net 32 percent projecting they
will add to payrolls.

Standard & Poor’s upgraded its credit outlook for the United
States government to “stable” from “negative”, reducing the
threat of a further downgrade to the country’s sovereign debt
rating.

The index’s gains were kept in check by data from China that
indicated weakness in May exports and domestic activity
struggling to pick up, increasing the risk that economic growth
will slow further in the second quarter and that full-year
forecasts may be cut.

Monday’s gain was a minor recovery after six days of decline
for the TSX index. The energy sector, which has been on the
defensive since mid-May, rose 0.2 percent and played the biggest
role of any sector in the rise. Major gainers included Suncor
Energy Inc, which climbed 0.44 percent to C$31.80.

The TSX financials subgroup added 0.2 percent, helped by
data showing Canadian house starts jumped by much more than
expected in May from April.

Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s biggest lender,
rose 0.22 percent to C$60.12, and Bank of Montreal was
up 0.85 percent at C$60.63.

E-L Financial jumped 9.5 percent to C$648 after the
holding company said it had sold its Dominion of Canada General
Insurance unit to U.S. insurer Travelers Co for $1.1
billion.

“The banks recent earning reports have been on balance very
solid,” said Elvis Picardo, vice president of research at Global
Securities. “Given the global decline in the appetite for risky
assets, these groups have been doing well.”

The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index
closed up 9.37 points, or 0.08 percent, at 12,382.67.
Six of the 10 main sectors on the index were higher.

The materials sector, which includes mining stocks, gained
0.1 percent. Gold producers were up 0.36 percent as the price of
bullion edged higher. Barrick Gold Corp rose
more than 1 percent to C$20.81.

Air Canada said it is moving ahead with plans to
trim its costs by up to some 15 percent over the medium term,
even as it pushes to boost its system capacity over the coming
year. The stock was little changed at C$2.28.

Oliver also told a nuclear conference that Canada’s Conservative government intends to increase the period during which compensation claims can be made after a disaster to 30 years from 10 years.

“In Canada, the fundamental principle of our environmental liability regime is polluter pay,” he said, noting that the country’s current rules on civil liability for power plant operators are almost 40 years old.

“Times and standards have changed significantly. The current law limits civil liability for the operator of a nuclear facility to $75 million. This is no longer acceptable.”

Oliver said the legislation to enact the changes would bring Canada, which has never experienced a serious nuclear accident, into line with Britain, France, Spain and other European nations, which he said were adopting liability limits of C$900 million.

“Most importantly, it will continue to require that the liability of the operator be absolute and exclusive. This means there is no need to prove fault and no one else can be held liable,” he said.

Statistics Canada data shows that nuclear power stations produced around 15 percent of all Canadian electricity in March. Canada has 19 working reactors, 18 of them in the populous central province of Ontario.

The Canadian Environmental Law Association said the C$1 billion cap is too low. Executive Director Theresa McClenaghan told Reuters the new legislation also makes no provision for third party liability, which means suppliers cannot be held accountable.

Oliver did not say when the government would introduce the legislation. The House of Commons will suspend work later this month for the annual summer break and legislators are not due back until September.

Oliver noted that “the likelihood of a serious incident in this country is exceedingly small”.

All Canada’s reactors are made by Candu Energy, a subsidiary of Canada’s SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.

The new liability threshold is still tiny compared with the estimated clean-up costs from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, caused when a tsunami flooded a power station.

The Japan Center for Economic Research, a Tokyo-based think tank, has estimated that decontamination costs alone in the Fukushima residential area could reach as much as $600 billion, and there are also huge costs to decommission the reactors and compensate victims.

($1=$1.02 Canadian)

(Additional reporting and writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by Janet Guttsman; and Peter Galloway)

Canada’s Competition Bureau also said that the Canadian arm
of Hershey Co was expected to confess to fixing prices,
but recommended it get lenient treatment because it cooperated
with the investigation.

Nestle could not immediately be reached for comment, but
Mars said in a statement that it intends to vigorously defend
itself against the allegations.

Hershey released a statement expressing regret for its
actions and laying the responsibility at the feet of
now-departed employees.

“The current Hershey Canada senior management team as well
as The Hershey Company and its management had no involvement in
this conduct,” the statement said.

The charges come after a five-year investigation by the
Canadian law enforcement agency.

The criminal charges are the latest development in a scandal
that has already resulted in a major class-action suit. Hershey,
Mars and Nestle all agreed to settlements as part of that suit.

A similar class-action suit in the United States is still
making its way through a Pennsylvania court.

The Competition Bureau said it also charged three
individuals: Robert Leonidas, the former chief executive of
Nestle Canada; Sandra Martinez, former Nestle Canada president
and David Glenn Stevens, president and chief executive of
national grocery distributor ITWAL Limited.

ITWAL Limited, a national network of independent wholesale
distributors, has also been charged.

Because their alleged price fixing occurred before the
recent amendments to Canada’s competition laws, the three
executives face the old penalty of up to five years in prison if
convicted. The companies and the executives could each be fined
up to $10 million if found guilty.