Afternoon Update July 27th, 2010 (22)

Canada

#1 — CBC | Clement grilled over census changes

Opposition MPs grilled Industry Minister Tony Clement over his recent decision to scrap the mandatory long census form, accusing the Conservative government of “manufacturing a crisis” and deliberately misleading Canadians.

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The minister also said the results of that new survey, which replaces the mandatory, long census, will be made available to researchers in 92 years.

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NP | Beardsley: The PMO is part of Clement’s problem

#2 — CBC | Canada cancels passport of accused Russian spy

Canada has cancelled the passport of an alleged Russian spy who fled after being freed on bail in Cyprus.

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#3 — CNews | Col. Williams civil case put over to October

BELLEVILLE, Ont. – A civil lawsuit against Col. Russ Williams and his wife has been adjourned until Oct. 19.

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#4 — LFP | Coalition opposes shipping plan

Aboriginal voices have joined the growing international chorus opposing plans to ship radioactive nuclear generators along the Great Lakes.

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#5 — NP | Northern Ontario lab at the centre of search for dark matter

Eager to answer the question of what’s hiding out in the cold darkness of space, a team of U.S. physicists is eyeing a move to a subterranean warren of laboratories two kilometres down a mine shaft near Sudbury, Ont., that has quickly become a world destination for ‘‘dark matter’’ researchers.

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#6 — OC | Minister ‘troubled’ by complaints about RCMP commissioner

OTTAWA — Following reports of harsh criticism from within the RCMP about Commissioner William Elliott, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said he is “troubled” by the accusations.

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#7 — OC | Cataracts partly to blame for pathologist’s mistakes

A Windsor pathologist at the centre of investigations into diagnostic errors remains off the radar as a newly released report says cataracts were partly to blame for her mistakes.

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#8 — MG | Problem gambler sues over withheld jackpot

A registered problem gambler who had his jackpot seized at a casino never signed away his ability to win, said his lawyer.

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#9 — Star | Stores to blame for eco-fee confusion, says watchdog

Ontario’s environment watchdog is worried the recent controversy over so-called eco fees slapped on thousands of household products could jeopardize what he sees as an important program.

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#10 — Star | Canadian set to be named top UN watchdog

The UN’s top watchdog may soon be a Canadian.

Carman Lapointe-Young, a former World Bank auditor general, will take on one of the toughest jobs on the United Nations block, if the General Assembly accepts her nomination by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

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World

#11 — BBC | US withdraws ‘heat ray’ gun from Afghanistan

A heat ray gun developed by the US military has been withdrawn from Afghanistan, army chiefs have confirmed.

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#12 — CNN | Attorney in Iran stoning case remains missing

Tehran, Iran (CNN) — An attorney representing an imprisoned Iranian woman facing possible execution by stoning remained missing Tuesday, although his wife and brother-in-law were in custody, a human rights activist said.

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#13 — CNN | Seychelles convicts 11 Somali pirates

(CNN) — Eleven Somalis convicted of piracy-related crimes are heading to prison in the island nation of Seychelles, the archipelago’s department of legal affairs said in a press release.

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#14 — Fox | Nebraska Town Weighs Suspending Illegal Immigrant Hiring Ban to Save Legal Fees

OMAHA, Neb. — Faced with expensive legal challenges, officials in the eastern Nebraska town of Fremont are considering suspending a voter-approved ban on hiring or renting property to illegal immigrants until the lawsuits are resolved.

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#15 — Fox | Second Housing Crisis? Another $1T in Mortgages Backed by Taxpayers

With little fanfare, the U.S. government has rapidly become the nation’s top backer of mortgages that require little or no money down, with taxpayer guarantees on them surpassing $1 trillion earlier this year, a FOX Business analysis shows.

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#16 — NY Times | Translating Stories of Life Forms Etched in Stone

In 1909, Charles Walcott, a paleontologist and secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, discovered one of the greatest and most famous fossil troves high in the Canadian Rockies on Burgess Pass in British Columbia. The slabs of Burgess Shale that Walcott excavated contained the earliest known examples at the time of many major animal groups in the fossil record, in rocks that were about 505 million years old.

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#17 — DM | It’s a jungle out there

They are one of the largest poisonous spiders in the world and are capable of blinding you with their venom.

So you can imagine the alarm after experts warned there may be a whole batch of escaped tarantulas on the loose.

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#18 — DM | Every pound coin in UK could be scrapped as one in 36 are now fakes

Record numbers of fake £1 coins in circulation could force the Royal Mint to scrap every one and reissue the entire denomination.

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#19 — DM | ‘I’ve been demonised and vilified’: Hayward

Tony Hayward today claimed he was ‘demonised’ and ‘victimised’ over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as it was confirmed he is standing down as BP’s chief executive.

Mr Hayward likened his experience during the environmental disaster to ‘stepping off the pavement and being hit by a bus’.

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#20 — DM | U.S. authorities can’t account for 95% of the £9.1bn allocated to rebuild Iraq

An audit has discovered the U.S. Defense Department can’t properly account for how it spent about 95 per cent of $9.1billion in Iraqi oil money earmarked for rebuilding the war-ravaged country.

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#21 — Independent | UK and US ‘should have realised Iraq evidence was suspect’

Britain and the United States should have realised that their intelligence about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction was suspect, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspectors said today.

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#22 — Telegraph | Police officers and families moved out of Grenoble

Crime squad officers in Grenoble have been moved out of the town along with their families after local gangsters put a contract on their heads.

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