Jack's Newswatch

Throughout the pressure cooker of a long strike, Mayor David Miller has been steady, poised and disciplined. Thursday, for the first time, his anger boiled over.

Red in the face, sweat beading on his upper lip, the mayor lit into the right-leaning councillors who are threatening to vote against what they consider his sellout deal with city unions. Their behaviour, he said, was “appalling,” “cavalier,” “disgraceful,” “irresponsible” – oh yes, and “beneath contempt.” City hall veterans say they can’t remember seeing him so mad.

Welcome to the re-elect Miller campaign. It’s going to be a lively one. With his bid for a third term just 16 months away, Mr. Miller is fighting for his political life. The strike is the biggest story of his current term – an all-out struggle between powerful city unions and a leftish mayor – and he has come out of it poorly.

Residents who backed him on the crucial sick-pay issue now denounce him for letting them down in his deal with the unions.

The mayor’s opponents say they are being flooded with e-mails and phone messages – more than 1,000 to one group of councillors – asking them to vote down the deal at city council Friday.

It will almost certainly pass anyway. No one wants to take the blame for putting the strikers back on the picket line just as garbage pickup is about to resume. But the mayor’s rivals see a chance to inflict a fatal wound and they are doing their best to portray Mr. Miller as the man who caved in to the unions.

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Police, firefighers and paramedics refused to go to the aid of an accident victim lying in just 18 inches of water because they believed it was too dangerous.

A senior fire officer banned his men from using ropes and ladders to climb down a 15-foot-bank to the victim, who drowned, after carrying out a ‘risk assessment’.

Acting on advice, ten police officers who attended the emergency also failed to rescue father-of-three Karl Malton, 32, as he lay head-down in the shallow water.

An inquest into Mr Malton’s death today heard that officers no longer have to swim or receive life-saving training.

This evening Mr Malton’s father Peter branded the emergency services’ response to the tragic accident as  ‘unacceptable’

He spoke out after it emerged that when relatives of his son arrived at the scene, they found emergency workers standing around drinking tea.

The shocking case prompted a new row over how health and safety restrictions are preventing the emergency services from fulfilling their most basic duties.

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The French commandos swoop into action, shooting dead the kidnappers and bundling the hostages into a helicopter. But the smiles of the former captives fade as their liberators deliver a nasty shock: the bill.

That could be the scene after Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, introduced a law enabling officials to take legal action against kidnap victims deemed to have ignored official advice against travelling to dangerous places.

The legislation follows criticism over the burden to taxpayers from missions to free French hostages in countries such as Iraq, Somalia and Pakistan.

“If people get themselves into difficulty and the State has to intervene, putting the lives of its own agents in danger, then it is legitimate in principle to be able to recover the money,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman told The Times. “This is meant to be dissuasive. We’re concerned about public finances but we’re more concerned about the safety of French citizens.”

The controversy echoes the row in Britain after the the SAS rescued Norman Kember, the peace activist held in Iraq, in 2006. When he initially omitted to thank publicly the SAS, who had freed him and two Canadian hostages, army officers queued up to criticised his apparent ingratitude.

Diplomats said that the cost of operations, often involving navy vessels, air force helicopters, commandos, secret service agents and covert deals with corrupt officials and kidnappers, could run to millions of euros.

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There was a staggeringly important article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Briefly, it said that the immense run up in oil prices in 2008, from roughly $33 a barrel to roughly $150 per barrel was not caused by an oil shortage, was not caused by an immense upsurge in demand from China and India and Brazil, not caused by bandits in Nigeria.

This finding was from President Obama’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission, hardly a mouthpiece of Big Oil.

The staggering 2008 run up in price, which beggared hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, was caused by the sinister machinations of a few dozen oil traders and speculators in the commodity pits and lush offices of hedge funds and investment banks. (Think Goldman, Sachs at its worst.) The shortage, which terrified innocent people and literally killed the U.S. automotive industry, made a few dozen or maybe a few hundred people very rich. It also made the nation believe we actually faced a major oil shortage. (I was briefly taken in before I realized that nothing in the supply demand situation had changed even remotely enough to justify the kind of price moon shot we had been through. When I wrote that the spike was the work of some oil speculators and I knew their names, one of them sent me threatening e-mails.)

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Related:

Oil Glut? Oil Shortage? Or just plain manipulation?

The Great Oil Shortage Myth Revisited

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If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off. Quickly.

That small cipher will likely be your only warning that someone has taken advantage of a bug that Miller and his fellow cybersecurity researcher Collin Mulliner publicized Thursday at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. Using a flaw they’ve found in the iPhone’s handling of text messages, the researchers said they would demonstrate how to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone’s functions. That includes dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device’s camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking.

“This is serious. The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone,” Miller told Forbes. “Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this.”

Though Miller and Mulliner say they notified Apple about the vulnerability more than a month ago, the company hasn’t released a patch, and it didn’t respond to Forbes’ repeated calls seeking comment.

The iPhone SMS bug is just one of a series that the researchers planned to reveal in their talk. They say they’ve also found a similar texting bug in Windows Mobile that allows complete remote control of Microsoft-based devices. Another pair of SMS bugs in the iPhone and Google’s Android phones would purportedly allow a hacker to knock a phone off its wireless network for about 10 seconds with a series of text messages. The trick could be repeated again and again to keep the user offline, Miller says. Though Google has patched the Android flaw, this second iPhone bug also remains unpatched, he adds.

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Related:

Everybody Panic! The iPhone Has a Vulnerability!

Updates:

12:16 pm EDT, July 31st, 2009 — Card PIN numbers traded at two for a dollar

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More than half of children taking the swine flu drug Tamiflu experience side-effects such as nausea and nightmares, research suggests.

An estimated 150,000 people with flu symptoms were prescribed the drug through a new hotline and website last week, according to figures revealed yesterday.

Studies of children attending three schools in London and one in the South West showed that 51-53 per cent had one or more side-effects from the medication, which is offered to everyone in England with swine flu symptoms.

The research by the Health Protection Agency emerged as Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, said that swine flu infections “may have reached a plateau”.

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Related:

Tamiflu approved for Canadian babies

Health officials OK Tamiflu for kids despite risks

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Somehow I can’t help but think that Peter Van Loan has a cultural agenda involved in his current “tougher penalties for honour killings” gig – what does saying that honour killings are a crime that “Canadian society cannot accept” mean anyway?

Are we actually contemplating a society where some reasons for premeditated murder are somehow less acceptable than others, and therefore deserve harsher penalties?

If a 5th generation Canadian discovers that their partner has been playing slap and tickle with the next door neighbour, and that their child not only knows about this but likes their new mommy or daddy better so stays shut up about it, and the wronged partner kills them both and tries to make it look like an accident, should s/he get a lighter sentence than people like Mohammad Shafia and his wife and son who are charged with the killings in Kingston that have been labeled an honour killing?

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Notes:

“Balb” is asking a damm good question and I can’t imagine what Van Loan was thinking when he came out with this one.  I guess it’s one of those mysteries that only a politician can understand. 

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GEORGETOWN, S.C. — He was standing at the counter when I entered the store. As he paid the clerk, he turned, and I noticed, in this order, his beard, his T-shirt, which had “Marines” emblazoned on the front, and his cane. His prosthetic foot still was masked by the counter when I said, “Semper fi, leatherneck.”

He smiled and replied: “Semper fi to you, too, Colonel. You were embedded with my unit in Afghanistan last year.”

We spoke for a few minutes. He had been wounded by the favorite weapon of radical Islamic terror, an IED. He’s minus some of his body, a little less mobile, preparing to re-enter civilian life and permanently proud of having served his country. As he moved to leave, he said: “We did our part. Sure hope the crowd in Washington doesn’t screw it up.”

His concern is particularly relevant at a time when the American welfare state is the only growth industry in our country. At its core is socialized health care. The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are pushing legislation to make health insurance mandatory for every American and to allow government to dictate what services will be provided to us. It is an expansive, expensive proposal, requiring the most productive among us to carry the cost of medical care for all others.

That’s relevant to the young wounded Marine because the O-Team’s compassion czars first suggested that some of the cost of health care for illegal immigrants and “disadvantaged” citizens be borne by America’s combat-wounded service members. The administration’s bean counters and medical magistrates discerned that charging veterans’ private insurance companies for treatment of service-connected injuries, wounds or sickness could save $540 million. The O-Team’s message to our military: If you gun-toting, knife-wielding, overage adolescents and right-wing extremists want to go off and play soldier, don’t expect us to pick up the tab if you get hurt.

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#1 — BBC | Concern at Nigeria Islamist death

Human rights campaigners have voiced concern over the death of the leader of an Islamic sect in Nigerian police custody, calling it “unlawful” killing.

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Times | Islamist sect leader shot dead after 600 killed in Nigeria siege

#2 — CNN | Too many clunkers, too little cash

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — This much seems certain about the Cash for Clunkers program: Consumers are happy to take government rebates to buy new cars.

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#3 — Fox | Stimulus Bill Funds Go to Art Houses Showing ‘Pervert’ Revues, Underground Pornography

Talk about a stimulus package.

The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night “pervert” revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco.

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#4 — Fox | House Kills F-22 Funding, But Rejects Most Obama Weapons Cuts

WASHINGTON — The Democratic-controlled House went along with Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plans to kill the over-budget F-22 fighter jet, but has rejected his efforts to cut off several other big ticket items. 

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#5 — Fox | Spanish Police Defuse Second Bomb After Explosion at Resort Island Kills Two Police Officers

PALMA DE MALLORCA, Balearic Islands  —  Spanish police say they are defusing a second bomb on the resort island of Mallorca, after an earlier explosion blamed on Basque separatist group killed two police officers.

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#6 — Times | Last Communist regime in mainland Europe falls in Moldova poll

Europe’s last Communist government fell yesterday after defeat in Moldova’s general election.

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#7 — Times | ‘Knowing that the world cried for her – that has comforted me’

Before Neda Soltan was shot last month she and her brother, Mohammed, planned to buy a piano. He has done so and put it in her room. Each night he plays it for an hour to remember her.

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Times | Deaths of Neda Soltan and other protesters speaks of Iran’s brutality

#8 — Telegraph | Iraq inquiry sessions to be held in secret

Witnesses will be able to give evidence to the inquiry into the Iraq war in secret even when matters of national security are not involved, its chairman has said.

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#9 — DM | Brown tries to win back voters with ‘fair play’ pledges

Gordon Brown hopes to win back the vote of Middle Britain by appealing to their sense of fair play and core values.

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#1 — CBC | Toronto workers end strike

The mountains of garbage that have accumulated around Toronto over the past month will start to disappear on Friday as the city begins cleaning up the streets after a six-week strike by municipal employees.

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#2 — CBC | N.S. soldier guilty in Afghan shooting

A military jury has found a Glace Bay, N.S., reservist guilty of criminal negligence causing death and negligent performance of a military duty in the death of another Canadian soldier in Afghanistan.

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#3 — CTV | Harper says recession is no time for an election

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says a recession is no time to trigger an election, as political instability could undermine any potential economic recovery.

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#4 — CTV | Vancouver registers hottest day on record

VANCOUVER, B.C. — The city of Vancouver has registered its hottest day on record.

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#5 — Globe | Under fire, Miller lashes out at foes

Facing attacks from the public and his council critics, an embattled David Miller lashed out at opponents who threatened that Friday they would vote against a deal to settle the municipal workers strike, even as the City of Toronto got ready to open for business for the first time in 39 days.

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#6 — Globe | Punjabi school razed by ‘suspicious’ fire

The office of a private Punjabi school in south Vancouver started by businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik and others was ransacked before the school and a prayer room were destroyed by fire, the principal says.

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#7 — NP | Vancouver Olympics begs for free labour

VANCOUVER — It’s no secret that the $1.76-billion 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games face a potential crisis. More sponsors, advertisers and ticket buyers are required if the Games are to meet their revenue forecasts and their break-even mandate.

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NP | Growing forest fire threatens site of B.C. Games

#8 — NP | Agency turns its focus to tampering of food supply

With the listeriosis crisis barely behind them, federal health authorities are now looking seriously at the potential for deliberate contamination of Canada’s food supply, which they warn would undermine health and have “economic, political and psycho-social impacts.”

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#9 — NP | Canada’s taxman goes after eBay sellers

Canadians who are high-volume sellers of products on the online eBay marketplace may find themselves being audited by the Canada Revenue Agency beginning this fall.

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#10 — NP | Apologies keep on coming from Via

On Monday, after a two-day strike, the train company said sorry with a limited time 60% discount promotion. But Via couldn’t cope with the demand and now they’re apologizing again for the inconvenience to new and regular customers alike.

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#11 — MG | Another alleged Ponzi scheme uncovered in Montreal

Another alleged Ponzi scheme has surfaced in Montreal, this time involving close to 100 middle-class people who invested millions in an offshore company.

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#12 — Star | Professor’s firing stirs hot debate

Was it outrageous, or the right thing to do?

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#13 — Star | Foreign grapes drawing local wrath

David Wiley, a seventh-generation Ontario grape grower, fears local farmers will have to sell their farms unless the province does something about cheap foreign grapes.

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#14 — Star | Black days in July for Afghan mission

OTTAWA–In all of Afghanistan’s fighting seasons this decade, none has been as deadly as this one.

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