Jack's Newswatch

At first glance, the assignment must have seemed like something out of a Mission Impossible movie, but one even Tom Cruise would refuse to take on: Trek into the wilderness north of the Arctic Circle, retrieve a broken plane marooned on the edge of a remote, frozen lake, and find a way to drag it out of the bush some 2,500 kilometres back to civilization.

Oh, and do it in early spring when temperatures are still hovering around -40 C.

Sound like a fool’s errand?

Not to Don Wieben, a vintage airplane enthusiast who has restored a number of older aircraft and flown them around Canada.

For this project, his prize was an abandoned Canso — an amphibious plane built during the Second World War to hunt submarines and protect convoys crossing the Atlantic. Just a handful of the aircraft remain in the skies today, which is why Wieben, a farmer from Fairview, Alta., decided to recruit a group of relatives, friends and neighbours for an elaborate rescue mission.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

There is a growing consensus among world oil experts that the planet has an abundance of oil – “enough oil for at least 100 years,” claims a top executive at Italian oil giant ENI SpA. Enough to fuel the industrial revolutions in China, India and elsewhere in the developing world. Enough to supply North America after it recovers from a recession in which oil consumption dropped 9 per cent.

The thesis is based on an unusually large number of recent major discoveries and on enhanced recovery techniques that have breathed new life into oilfields once thought to be tapped out.

While there’s still an argument about oil’s long-term future, there’s no denying the evidence of newly abundant oil.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Britain is facing a new Al Qaeda terror threat from suicide ‘body bombers’ with explosives surgically inserted inside them.

Until now, terrorists have attacked airlines, Underground trains and buses by secreting bombs in bags, shoes or underwear to avoid detection.

But an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror campaign by inserting ‘surgical bombs’ inside people for the first time.

Security services believe the move has been prompted by the recent introduction at airports of body scanners, which are designed to catch terrorists before they board flights.

It is understood MI5 became aware of the threat after observing increasingly vocal internet ‘chatter’ on Arab websites this year.

The warning comes in the wake of the failed attempt by London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

NEARLY three-fifths of the growth in jobs under Labour during a decade in power was directly or indirectly created by the state, new research shows.

Across the country as a whole, it says 57% of new jobs created during the period 1997-2007 were state or “para-state” — dependent on government spending .

In the West Midlands these jobs accounted for all of the rise in employment, with no new private sector jobs generated overall. More than 80% of new jobs for women nationally depended on the state.

The research, which was carried out at Manchester University’s Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, concludes that Britain’s business model before the financial crisis in 2007 was “undisclosed and unsustainable”.

“We more or less knew that finance had made a negligible contribution to employment,” said Professor Karel Williams, one of the report’s authors. “We were intellectually curious about the gap between the official figures on public sector employment and what we call the para-state.”

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The case for raising taxes

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Popularity: 2% [?]

LORD STERN’S report on climate change, which underpins government policy, has come under fire from a disaster analyst who says the research he contributed was misused.

Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US-based consultancy, said the Stern report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and the frequency and severity of disasters such as floods and hurricanes.

The Stern report, citing Muir-Wood, said: “New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement.

“If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5%-1% of world GDP by the middle of the century.”

Muir-Wood said his research showed no such thing and accused Stern of “going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence”.

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Updates:

2:02 pm EST, January 31st, 2010 — Ed Miliband declares war on climate change sceptics

3:03 pm EST, January 31st, 2010 — UN based disappearing mountain ice claims on student essay and magazine article: report

Popularity: 4% [?]

GORDON BROWN is making secret plans to stay on as Labour leader after the general election even if his party is defeated.

The prime minister has told close colleagues that he will refuse to quit unless the Conservatives win a significant majority.

“Gordon has said he believes his enemies in the party are too divided among themselves to force him out,” said a senior Labour source.

“He thinks that if the May election is indecisive and if there is any prospect of a second election, Labour should not be plunged immediately into a messy leadership contest.”

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Popularity: 2% [?]

The next time I run into Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, I will address him as “Braveheart” and paint his face green.

Just like Mel Gibson in his movie of the same name, except Gibson used blue.

Because I don’t want to be accused of terrorism, I give the premier fair warning of my intention.

Further, I assure his bodyguards they will not need to shoot me, because, unlike PETA, I will first ask Premier Braveheart if he wants his face painted green, and, if he says “no” I won’t.

But I will insist on calling him “Braveheart” which, is not a crime in Ontario … yet.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Lorrie, other than being off your meds, why do you want to call McGuinty ‘Braveheart’ and paint his face green?”

I’ll tell you why. Because Braveheart is the name McGuinty clearly wants us to call him in the wake of his $7-billion deal with South Korean industrial giant Samsung Group, to manufacture and sell wind and solar power in Ontario.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

#1 — BBC | Snow causes German traffic chaos with three deaths

Heavy snow and high winds have caused traffic chaos across Germany with at least three deaths reported nationwide.

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#2 — BBC | Warning over tax return deadline e-mail ‘phishing’ scam

Tens of thousands of fraudulent e-mails have been sent out ahead of Sunday’s tax return deadline, officials say.

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#3 — CNN | Forces mistakenly exchange fire in Afghanistan

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — As talk emerged about a secret meeting of U.N. and Taliban officials, the battlefield lit up in Afghanistan, with a joint Afghan-international force and Afghan soldiers exchanging fire when both sides mistook the other for enemy combatants.

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#4 — Fox | Pakistan Taliban Chief Reportedly Killed in U.S. Drone Strike

The head of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in a U.S. drone attack, Pakistan state television reported Sunday.

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#5 — Fox | TARP Cop: Some Bailout Goals Still Unmet

The government’s top bailout cop said Sunday that more than a year after the financial crisis hit, many of the goals of Washington’s $700 billion bank rescue program remain unmet and that policymakers still have not addressed fundamental problems that triggered the crisis, leaving the financial system vulnerable to another collapse.

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#6 — Fox | Sarah Palin’s PAC Raked in $1.4M in Last Six Months of 2009

The political action committee for the former Alaska governor and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee raised $1.4 million dollars in the last six months of 2009.

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#7 — NY Times | Site for Terror Trial Isn’t Its Only Obstacle

For much of President Obama’s first year in office, his national security team worked to devise a secure plan to send dozens of Yemeni detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the largest single group at the prison camp — home to Yemen, perhaps to a rehabilitation program.

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#8 — Times | Godfather Colin Gunn used Facebook to run empire from jail

ONE of Britain’s most dangerous gangsters has been using Facebook to threaten and intimidate his enemies from a maximum security prison.

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#9 — Times | Hamid Karzai fails Taliban who gave up arms

THE room the Taliban commander Mullah Mohammad now calls home, after bringing his 21 fighters to join the Afghan government’s reintegration programme earlier this month, is barely more comfortable than the mountain redoubt he left.

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#10 — Telegraph | ICC proposes powers to try politicians who wage ‘illegal wars’

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague is proposing to take new powers to put politicians who launch “illegal wars” on trial.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

#1 — CBC | Canada files emissions target with UN

Canada has aligned itself with U.S. policy as it gave the United Nations its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Copenhagen Accord.

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#2 — CBC | DND denies blame for cancer in Shannon, Que.

The federal government denies responsibility for hundreds of cancer cases at the heart of a class-action lawsuit filed over allegations of contaminated water near CFB Valcartier in Quebec.

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#3 — CTV | Canadian general plans offensive against Taliban

A Canadian general in southern Afghanistan has vowed to “break the back” of Taliban insurgents as the hard-line Islamist movement rejected participation in proposed peace talks with the Afghan government.

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#4 — CTV | End of home reno credit prompt last-minute rush

Hardware stores, lumber yards and home renovation stores are reporting crowded parking lots and busy aisles this weekend as homeowners rush to beat the deadline for the federal home renovation tax credit.

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#5 — Globe | Ontario colleges urge union to let faculty vote on offer

Ontario’s 24 colleges have issued a fresh appeal to the Ontario Public Service Employees Union to let faculty vote on a final contract offer.

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#6 — OC |  Wind farms creating blackout zones for aviation radar

Canwest News Service – Wind turbines may be seen by governments across the land as a power source for the future, but a group of Canadian engineers could hold the key to ensuring that the clean energy system doesn’t end up causing an aviation disaster.

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#7 — OC | Day reaches out to bureaucrats

“Hello out there in Treasury Board land.” That’s how Stockwell Day opened his first memo to his new department.

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#8 — OC | Guilty plea expected from disgraced financial adviser

VICTORIA — Disgraced investment adviser Ian Thow is expected to plead guilty to two charges of fraud on March 1 in a Vancouver court, according to several potential Crown witnesses in the case.

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#9 — MG | Montreal protestors march against corruption

MONTREAL- A mix of about 100 citzens and politicians braved the frigid weather Saturday to march from City Hall to the premier’s Montreal office in the latest public push for a commission of inquiry into alleged collusion, corruption and outrageous cost overruns in Quebec’s construction industry.

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#10 — Star | The Bandidos and their mass-murder over nothing

The Shedden Massacre was not the work of criminal masterminds. As a whodunit, the story of the murder of eight members of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club by fellow members in a barn outside London, Ont., could be told in a few sentences. But look at it as a whydunit, and it becomes a mystery of fascinating complexity. Not even outlaw biker insiders have an answer for this. Police, family members, even rival gangs can only shake their heads.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

TORONTO — Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have found his point man for Senate reform.

Bob Runciman — a Tory whose legendary tirades in the Ontario legislature earned him the nickname “Mad Dog” — could be the ideal candidate for the job, despite being one of Harper’s newest unelected senators.

The 29-year political veteran from Brockville, Ont., has spent years lobbying for Senate elections in the province, even proposing a ban on sitting members of the legislature running for the Senate.

Accepting the kind of patronage appointment he’d railed against for so long didn’t sit well, he acknowledged.

“I’ve had mixed feelings over it just the last couple of weeks when it was starting to sink in that it’s actually going to happen,” Runciman, 67, said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“But I know that it’s an opportunity that I have to accept, and it really gives me an opportunity to deal with issues that I otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to deal with.”

That includes playing “an active role” in transforming the upper chamber, despite the objections of provinces like Quebec, as well as moving ahead with the Tories’ justice bills, said Runciman.

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Popularity: 3% [?]