Canada
#1 — CBC | Anti-G20 vandals hit Toronto ATMs
At least one suspect has been arrested after vandals spray-painted a handful of ATMs in downtown Toronto, marking some with anti-G20 slogans.
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#2 — CBC | Oil refinery leak concerns B.C. residents
Residents and community leaders are demanding answers from Chevron Canada after learning about a leak at an oil refinery in Burnaby, B.C., that has oil seeping into the waters of Burrard Inlet.
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#3 — CBC | Tories to unveil infrastructure security plan
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is expected to announce a new strategy on Friday aimed at protecting Canada’s infrastructure.
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#4 — Globe | Police detail G20 security zone
The G20 security perimeter was shrouded in secrecy until today.
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#5 — Globe | Low H1N1 vaccination rate alarms health experts
The announcement that less than one-third of Torontonians received the H1N1 vaccine is taking health experts by surprise and creating alarm over potential system-wide deficiencies with the country’s pandemic planning.
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#6 — FP | Canada won’t fall victim to foreclosure wave: Report
Canada’s housing market won’t fall victim to the type of foreclosure wave the United States saw, according to a new report by debt-rating firm DBRS Ltd.
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#7 — NP | Toronto 18 witness ‘scared of jihad talk’
The final witness testifying in the “Toronto 18″ terrorism case said he was “scared of the jihad talk” when he met with ringleader Fahim Ahmad to discuss ways of fraudulently raising money for the group.
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#8 — Star | Staff say Ombudsman André Marin’s office plagued by ‘culture of fear’
The provincial official whose job it is to protect the little guy from abuses of government is himself the target of harassment allegations from his staff.
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#9 — Star | Canadian Minister attempts to defuse escalating diplomatic spat with India
NEW DELHI, INDIA-In a bid to defuse an increasingly venomous diplomatic spat between Canada and India, Canadian citizenship and immigration minister Jason Kenney has apologized for allegations made by immigration officers at Canada’s mission in New Delhi.
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World
#10 — BBC | China ‘will not protect’ Korea ship attackers
China “will not protect” whoever sank a South Korean warship in March, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has said.
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#11 — BBC | Czechs go to the polls in a general election
The Czech Republic has begun voting in a two-day general election that is predicted to be a tight race.
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#12 — CNN | BP sees ‘some success’ with top kill method
(CNN) — BP has measured “some success” in the Gulf of Mexico with a risky procedure known as “top kill,” which has never been tried before a mile under the ocean’s surface, the company’s top executive said Friday.
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#13 — Fox | White House Asked Bill Clinton to Urge Sestak to Drop Out of Senate Race
The White House asked former President Bill Clinton to talk to Rep. Joe Sestak about the possibility of obtaining a senior position in the Obama administration if he would drop out of the Democratic primary race against establishment-backed Sen. Arlen Specter, the Obama administration said in a report released Friday morning.
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#14 — Fox | Palin Puts Up Fence at Wasilla Home After Writer Moves In Next Door
WASILLA, Alaska — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has erected a 14-foot-high fence at her Wasilla home, making good on a promise to prevent her new neighbor — a writer working on a book about her — from peering in.
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#15 — NY Times | Oil Flow Is Stemmed, but Could Resume, Official Says
HOUSTON — By injecting solid objects overnight as well as heavy drilling fluid into the stricken well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers appeared to have stemmed the flow of oil, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the leader of the government effort, said on Friday morning. But he stressed that the next 12 to 18 hours would be “very critical” in permanently stanching what is already the worst oil spill in United States history.
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#16 — DM | Paedophile postman used Facebook and Bebo to groom up to 1,000 children for sex
A paedophile postman used Facebook and Bebo to groom up to 1,000 children for sex.
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#17 — DM | Now Michael Caine joins tax revolt
Sir Michael Caine has joined the growing revolt over the new coalition’s plans to hike taxes, insisting it will encourage the wealthy and top companies to quit Britain.
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#18 — Times | Failing to brush teeth can lead to heart disease, research shows
People who fail to brush their teeth twice a day have a higher chance of heart disease, research showed today.
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#19 — Times | Baroness Scotland’s illegal immigrant cleaner jailed
The illegal immigrant who tricked Baroness Scotland of Asthal into hiring her as a cleaner was jailed for eight months yesterday.
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#20 — Times | US death toll in Afghanistan reaches 1000 as Americans weary of war
The toll of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan reached 1,000 on Friday, a grim milestone that came as Americans back home prepared to commemorate their war dead.
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#21 — Telegraph | Eurovision Song Contest 2010: the contestants in pictures (and video)
Pictures and video of the full line-up ahead of Saturday’s final.
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#22 — Telegraph | Obituary: Grand Duchess Leonida of Russia
Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna of Russia, who has died aged 95, was the last surviving member of the Romanov family to have been born before the Russian Revolution; as widow of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, Tsarist pretender to the throne of Russia, she styled herself Her Imperial Highness.
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Re: #6 — FP | Canada won’t fall victim to foreclosure wave: Report
Pure BS, if Canada’s housing market doesn’t fall victim to the type of foreclosure wave the United States saw, it is mostly because our banks already have their clutches well positioned deep inside taxpayer’s wallets.
Canada May Triple Bank Mortgage Purchases to C$75 Bln
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=ajCcW5.1VvK8
“Canada expanded measures to help banks get through a global credit crisis and to keep up with backstops offered elsewhere, buying up more mortgages and other debt and offering cheaper loan insurance. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty pledged today to triple the amount of mortgages the government can buy from banks to as much as C$75 billion.”
I don’t vote conservative just to have my government use my tax dollars to buy $75 billion worth of mortgages I don’t need or want, whether it ultimately costs the government anything or not. Relative to the size of our market, $75 billion is twice as much as G. W. Bush’s original TARP bailout expenditure, making it enough to allow Canadian banks to sit on hundreds of thousands of shaky mortgages for a decade or so waiting for markets to recover, rather than foreclosing on them at a loss that would push down prices. As blatant a housing market manipulation as any other, it almost guarantees that anyone who purchases a home before the next housing market downturn will get screwed over, and that some future downturn will either hit twice as hard, or last twice as long, all just to prop up current prices for homeowners so as to prevent deflation and keep those tax revenues flowing. The most egregious part is that our banks have been eyeballing US acquisitions ever since they got their hands on even more of our tax money than usual. Markets must be allowed to correct themselves, and banks must carry some risk for the decisions they make, so this is quite simply not free market capitalism. But then again, having operated under taxpayer guarantees for so long, our banks would have no idea what a free market even looked like.
Re: #15.
“While he was optimistic, Mr. Hayward gave the effort a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of success because it had never been tried in water this deep.”
Sealing off ‘blowouts’ such as this in shallow water has been tuned almost to a fine art. Apparently the biggest obstacle here is the depth. That being the case let’s not forget that BP is drilling in over a mile deep water because the enviromental groups forced them to. If this had occurred close to shore in 150 ft of water where they is plenty of oil and where drilling is not only much safer but also much cheaper it would have been over and done with a long time ago with minimal environmental damage. So as the warning says, ‘be careful what you wish for’. Like Americans who voted for Obama, the environmentalists also wished for something but after they got it too turned into a nightmare.