Jack's Newswatch

DUBLIN, Ireland – Much of the world is turning green Wednesday for St. Patrick’s Day, the annual celebration of all hues of Irishness.

More than a half-million people lined the 3-kilometre route of the flagship Dublin parade beneath unusually sunny skies in this wet, windy land. The parade’s theme “The Extraordinary World” celebrated Ireland’s increasing multiculturalism as well as the global spread of the Irish. patrick

Mixed in with the usual displays of U.S. marching bands and Irish sporting heroes were dancing troupes from Africa and India, bands from Austria and France, giant insect floats from Spain, and Dubliners dancing with mops and dusters.

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OTTAWA- The Canadian dollar continued its assault on the U.S. greenback, rising to 99.27 cents US by midday Wednesday, up 65 basis points.

The loonie was pushed closer to parity by rising oil prices and by the Federal Reserve Board’s decision Tuesday to keep rates there at record lows.

The dollar has risen almost five per cent over the past two and a half weeks as various economic indicators – housing sales and a recovery in employment among them – show the Canadian economy quickly recovering from recession. It has gained almost 30 per cent over the past year against the U.S. dollar.

Industry Minister Tony Clement told reporters Wednesday that Canadian companies are adjusting to the reality of a higher dollar by improving their productivity.

“What we’re seeing now with the higher dollar … is an increase in labour factor productivity in our country, the fact that companies are adjusting to a higher dollar and are looking at other means to increase their productivity and their competitive edge,” the minister said after a meeting of the Conservative caucus.

“I think the new normal is that you don’t just rely on a low Canadian dollar for your productivity edge,” Clement said, following similar remarks Tuesday from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

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A non-profit organization is flying Mexican strays into Calgary, but the humane society says potential dog owners should first look at adopting abandoned local pets.

Pawsitive Match flies about 15 dogs a month to Calgary from La Paz, Mexico, part of the southern Baja peninsula where one animal aid organization estimates there are an estimated 10,000 strays.

Mirella Montgomery, who runs the non-profit, said she feels a need to rescue animals from that area because they’re often mistreated.

“They’re beaten, they’re kicked, they’re thrown out of cars there,” she said. “It’s just an everyday thing. That’s not to say we don’t help dogs here too.”

The Calgary Humane Society’s Lindsay Jones said that while her organization is grateful to anyone helping homeless animals, there are more than 130 dogs waiting to be adopted locally.

“Right now we are very full and so we’d like to see Calgarians step up and help out Calgary’s homeless pets first,” she said.

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Notes:

Odd don’t you think?.

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Despite the protests of OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, police killer Craig Munro has finally won unescorted passes from his British Columbia minimum-security prison.

Munro, 59, was convicted of first-degree murder for murdering Toronto police Const. Michael Sweet during a botched robbery in the early hours of March 14, 1980, at George’s Bourbon Street restaurant on Queen St. W.

On Tuesday in Agassiz, B.C., at a closed hearing, Munro was granted up to four unescorted passes a year for up to 15 days each.

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Related:

Bonokoski: Prison break

Notes (for American viewers and somewhat related):

This morning I saw a quick “blurb” on Fox News that Charles Manson is on the loose having escaped from wherever he was supposed to be at the moment. Google has nothing at this point and Fox has not posted the story to their website but they may still be attempting to confirm the report so I guess we’ll have to wait for it.

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FOND-DES-BLANCS, Haiti — Before the earthquake that changed everything, Chlotilde Pelteau and her husband lived a supremely urban existence. A cosmetics vendor and a mechanic, they both enjoyed a steady clientele and a hectic daily routine, serenaded by the beeping cars and general hubbub of Port-au-Prince.

Now, as roosters crow and goats bleat, Ms. Pelteau, 29, toils by day on a craggy hillside in the isolated hamlet of Nan Roc (In the Rocks), which she had abandoned at 14 for a life of greater opportunity. At night, she, her husband and their two children sleep cheek-to-jowl with a dozen relatives in the small mud house where she grew up.

“With everything destroyed, what could I do but come back?” said Ms. Pelteau, wearing a floral skirt as she poked corn seeds deep into arid soil unlikely to yield enough food to sustain her rail-thin parents, much less those who fled the shattered capital city to rejoin them.

Life has come full circle for many Haitians who originally migrated to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside. Since the early 1980s, rural Haitians have moved at a steady clip to Port-au-Prince in search of schools, jobs and government services. After the earthquake, more than 600,000 returned to the countryside, according to the government, putting a serious strain on desperately poor communities that have received little emergency assistance.

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WASHINGTON — Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print.

Premiums are likely to keep going up even if the health care bill passes, experts say. If cost controls work as advertised, annual increases would level off with time. But don’t look for a rollback. Instead, the main reason premiums would be more affordable is that new government tax credits would help cover the cost for millions of people.

Listening to Obama pitch his plan, you might not realize that’s how it works.

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Plans in Flux on Health Vote

Pelosi Calls All Female Democratic Members Into Meeting

Clyburn says health vote could push past Easter holiday

Limbaugh prompts healthcare calls, ties up House phone lines

House Democrats’ tactic for health-care bill is debated

MacDonald: In the fourth quarter Obama finally comes out to play

Steyn: Critical Mass

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Industry Minister Tony Clement has bemoaned the fact that Canada’s unemployment figures are at an “unacceptable level” and claims that job creation is a top priority of the federal government. If the minister is serious about this he might then well ask his colleague, Jason Kenny, the Immigration Minister, why our immigration levels are at such unprecedented high levels when there are 1.3 million men and women looking for work.

In the past two years while the country has been in the midst of a serious recession 483,000 immigrants entered Canada. In addition to the immigrants, in 2008 alone, 192,519 temporary foreign workers entered and joined the 170,975 who were already here — for an amazing total of 363,494. Why such high volumes if indeed the government is worried about job losses? Are ministers not aware that in the first year of recession Canada lost 486,000 full-time jobs and within the next few months 810,000 workers will run out of unemployment benefits?

In the past when Canada was entering into an economic downturn it was customary to turn the immigration tap off or at least to slow it down. The rationale was simple — what was the point in bringing to Canada immigrants who would find it difficult to find employment, and why make it more difficult for unemployed Canadians workers to get back to work?

However, for the past 20 years governments have set immigration levels extraordinarily high, aiming for about 250,000 per annum regardless of economic or labour force conditions. As the number of applications increased, an enormous backlog has piled up. In June of 2008 it was estimated to be between 900,000 and 950,000. Now it probably exceeds one million.

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Barack Obama has said he will not campaign for any Democratic congressmen who fails to support health care reform.

The president will refuse to make fund-raising visits during November elections to any district whose representative has not backed the bill.

A one-night presidential appearance can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds which would otherwise take months to accumulate through cold-calling by campaign volunteers.

Mr Obama’s threat came as the year-long debate over his signature domestic policy entered its final week.

Mr Obama is personally telephoning congressmen who are still on the fence this week, in between several personal appearances devoted toward swinging public opinion.

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‘Nobody Wants to Vote for the Senate bill’

Health Care Nightmares

PRUDEN: The suicide mission for the Democrats

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John McCain thought he needed to spring one more surprise on America.

In August 2008, his presidential campaign against Barack Obama was listing badly. Some of this was his fault. But after eight years of George W. Bush, anyone representing the Republican party came with a lot of baggage. McCain needed to choose a candidate for vice-president who underlined his reputation as a maverick within the party and who was untainted by close ties to the previous administration. The stakes were high. As John Heilemann and Mark Halperin write in Game Change, their book about the campaign, “If McCain’s running mate selection didn’t fundamentally alter the dynamics of the race, it was lights out.”

McCain’s original plan was to partner with Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic nominee for vice-president. McCain hoped such a choice would prove his bipartisan credentials, steal thunder from his opponents, and back-foot the press­—allowing his campaign to regain some momentum. But when word of the Lieberman plan leaked, much of the Republican party rebelled, and McCain was forced to scramble. “We need to have a transformative, electrifying moment in this campaign,” McCain strategist Steve Schmidt said. No one on the short list of alternative candidates could deliver this. Schmidt suggested a new option: Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

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Tea Party activists from across the country rallied outside Democratic congressional offices in Washington on Tuesday to protest the $875 billion health care bill and demand meetings with their respective members of Congress.

And by all appearances, their arrival is not being taken lightly.

House Democrats received a formal memo from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, listing tips for how targeted representatives should handle the crowds of activists.

“Tens of thousands of conservative and Tea Party activists will be on the Hill as part of what they are dubbing a ‘Surge Against Obamacare,’” reads the memo, which also includes a checklist of provisions in the current bill to counter the “caricature of the reform bill presented by right-wing media outlets.”

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Fertilising the oceans with iron to absorb carbon dioxide could increase concentrations of a chemical that can kill marine mammals, a study has found.

Iron stimulates growth of marine algae that absorb CO2 from the air, and has been touted as a “climate fix”.

Now researchers have shown that the algae increase production of a nerve poison that can kill mammals and birds.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they say this raises “serious concern” over the idea.

The toxin – domoic acid – first came to notice in the late 1980s as the cause of amnesiac shellfish poisoning.

It is produced by algae of the genus Pseudonitzschia, with concentrations rising rapidly when the algae “bloom”.

Now, its presence in seawater often requires the suspension of shellfishing operations, and is regularly implicated in deaths of animals such as sealions.

Domoic acid poisoning may also lie behind a 1961 incident in which flocks of seabirds appeared to attack the Californian town of Capitola – an event believed to have shaped Alfred Hitchcock’s interpretation of Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds in his 1963 thriller.

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