Canada
#1 — CBC | RCMP computer report ‘designed to hide,’ MP says
The RCMP says it has figured out what went wrong when it bought two different computer systems that can’t communicate with each other, but a Liberal MP from British Columbia says the Mounties’ newly released report reads as gobbledegook.
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#2 — CBC | Quebec fire situation remains critical
Nearly a dozen forest fires raged out of control on Friday in central Quebec as firefighters from across the continent arrived to help in the containment efforts that started this week.
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#3 — Globe | Billion-dollar G20 security cost not a ‘blank cheque,’ security czar argues
Ward Elcock is the bureaucrat who is buying nearly a billion bucks worth of security for the G8/G20 summits and, to hear him tell it, that’s money well spent.
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#4 — Globe | All-terrain trails, wilderness roads hastening grizzly decline, report says
An extensive network of roadways and all-terrain vehicle trails carved deep into critical grizzly-bear habitat in Alberta is hastening the decline of the carnivores, whose population is already perilously close to collapse in the province.
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#5 — NP | Black: Canada’s inhumane prison plan
In the past two years, as regular readers in this space would know, thanks to my gracious hosts in the U.S. government, I have had what could be called extensive hands-on experience of the American correctional system. I have been tutoring and teaching fellow prisoners in English, and in U.S. history. And some of them have taught me how to read music, play the piano, keep fit, diet sensibly and assimilate some local folkways, while I have been fighting my way through the courts toward a just disposition of the few remaining (unfounded) charges that bedevil me. The fact that all my life any definition of Canada’s virtue and distinctiveness has prominently included references to civility and decency explains my alarm and outrage at finally reading the three-year-old report on the Correctional Service of Canada, misleadingly titled “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety.”
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#6 — NP | Antigonish diocese to sell property to settle $18.5M sex case
Amid the rolling hills of Mabou, Nova Scotia, a tall white steeple emerges.
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#7 — Star | Legal battle erupts over Air France black box from Pearson crash
It has been five years since Air France flight 358 overshot a runway at Pearson International Airport and burst into flames.
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#8 — Star | Nova Scotia family mulls next legal step in Facebook bullying case
HALIFAX—A Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge has approved a court order that would require a Halifax-based Internet provider to reveal the identity of a customer who posted allegedly defamatory comments about a 15-year-old girl on a fake Facebook page.
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World
#9 — BBC | Israel rejects Middle East nuclear talks plan
Israel says it will not take part in a conference aimed at achieving a nuclear-arms free Middle East, proposed at a UN meeting in New York.
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#10 — BBC | Insulin giant pulls medicine from Greece over price cut
The world’s leading supplier of the anti-diabetes drug insulin is withdrawing a state-of-the-art medication from Greece.
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#11 — Fox | Obama to Arizona Governor: Don’t Call Me, I’ll Call You
President Obama has turned down Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s request to meet while she’s in Washington next week as tensions mount between his administration and Arizona over the state’s new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.
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#12 — Fox | Actor Dennis Hopper Dies at 74
Actor Dennis Hopper, whose 50-year film career spanned such classics as “Rebel Without a Cause,” “Easy Rider,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Blue Velvet” died Saturday following a battle with prostate cancer, Reuters reported. He was 74.
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#13 — Fox | First Tropical Storm of the Season Forms Off Guatemala Coast
Tropical Storm Agatha, the first tropical storm of the 2010 season, formed Saturday off the coast of Guatemala, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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#14 — NY Times | Effort to Plug Well Faces Another Setback
HOUSTON — BP engineers failed again to plug the gushing oil well on Saturday, a technician working on the project said, representing yet another setback in a series of unsuccessful procedures the company has tried a mile under the sea to stem the flow spreading into the Gulf of Mexico.
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#15 — DM | Was Spartacus just a savage?
At the moment of truth, when bloodied and beaten to the ground he had lost the contest and the crowd had called for his death, a Roman gladiator was required to thrust his neck forward.
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#16 — Times | Dunkirk veterans recall the ‘blood-soaked sands’
British veterans gathered on the seafront at Dunkirk today to mark the 70th anniversary of the evacuation of more than 300,000 allied troops trapped on the channel port’s beaches by the German Blitzkrieg.
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#17 — Telegraph | Indian government prepares to escalate war against Maoists after train attack
Indian government forces are preparing to escalate their war against Maoist guerillas after a bomb attack on an express sleeper train left 79 passengers dead.
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#18 — Telegraph | Dudus criminals in Kingston turned slum into ‘fortress festooned with booby traps’
Criminals loyal to the fugitive international drug baron Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke turned his stronghold in the Jamaican capital Kingston into a fortress, according to police.
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#19 — Telegraph | Detroit to bulldoze thousands of homes in fight for survival
Tired of Detroit’s status as the symbol of everything wrong with urban America, its new mayor has come up with a radical solution: to bulldoze the city.
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#20 — Telegraph | How the Gurkhas are fighting the Taliban with a smile
The Gurkhas are making a big impression on the people of Helmand province, but will that be enough? Ben Farmer reports from Afghanistan.
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