from my family to yours:





To view a video that a young couple living in London, Ontario made, click to watch: Canadian, Please

June 23

CBC - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched another unmanned surveillance aircraft over the Canadian border on Monday, this time in the Great Lakes area, to try to stem the flow of drugs, migrants and terrorists into the country, U.S. officials told CBC News.

The U.S. has been using the Predator B drone aircraft to patrol its border with Mexico.

The Predator is the unarmed version of the drone plane that the U.S. uses to conduct air strikes in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. The aircraft is able to fly at an altitude of 6,000 metres and can remain in the air for 20 hours.

The plane is equipped with 3,000 sensors and cameras capable of detecting a moving person from 10 kilometres away.

The planes will gather information along the border and transmit it to operators who will in turn contact border agents. The drones will not carry weapons and the U.S. will need permission to send them into in Canadian airspace.

David B. Caruso | New York | June 14

AP - New York City plans to trap and kill as many as 2,000 Canada geese this summer in an attempt to avoid the type of collision that caused an airliner to ditch in the Hudson River.

Ginger Thompson | Washington | May 23

NYT - After years of delay and hundreds of millions of dollars in preparations, Customs and Border Protection officials said new security measures would go into effect on June 1, requiring Americans entering the country by land or sea to show government-approved identification.

Currently, Americans crossing borders or arriving on cruise ships can prove their nationality by showing thousands of other forms of identification. But after the start of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, Americans will be required to present a passport or one of five other secure identification cards.

Coming as the summer vacation season starts, the measure is expected to lengthen lines at least temporarily at border crossings and seaports. But the biggest impact is expected along the nearly 4,000-mile border that the United States shares with Canada, which both countries once boasted was the world’s longest undefended frontier.

Bill Curry | Ottawa | May 11

The Globe and Mail - Top Canadian scientists are accusing the Harper government of politicizing science funding and jeopardizing climate research by naming global warming critics to key boards that fund science.

The government's actions are "dreadful," said Garry Clarke, a leading international glaciologist at the University of British Columbia, and undercut public pledges to tackle climate change.

"Their mouths are doing one thing and their hands are doing something different," Prof. Clarke said.

Bob Drogin | May 10

LA Times - The administration says security should be as stringent as on the Mexican frontier. Border residents and Canadian officials disagree, saying the terrorism threat is exaggerated.

High above the rugged border, an unmanned Predator B drone equipped with night-vision cameras and cloud-piercing radar has scanned the landscape for signs of smugglers, illegal immigrants or terrorists.

Armed agents checked the identification of border crossers while radiation sensors and other devices monitored vehicles entering by road. Soon, a network of telescopic and infrared video cameras mounted atop 80-foot metal towers will rise above key locations.

The beefed-up border security is not taking place along America's chaotic southern border -- riven by drug smuggling, gun running and illegal immigration -- but rather, its traditionally boring northern boundary with Canada.

The changes have jarred communities along the 3,987-mile frontier, the longest undefended border in the world.

"Those of us who grew up here never considered it to be a border," said Bernadette Secco, a communications consultant on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls who sometimes dines or shops in the U.S. three times a day. "We're neighbors, not terrorists."

The U.S. has increased security along the Canadian border since the Sept. 11 attacks. But changes are coming more quickly now, driven by fears of terrorists exploiting the relative quiet of the northern border and complaints that the U.S. has been disproportionately soft on Canada.

Luke Harding | May 6

The Guardian - Nato today began a series of controversial military exercises in Georgia following an apparent failed uprising at a Georgian army base yesterday and Moscow's expulsion of two Nato diplomats this morning.

Russia said it was expelling Isabelle Francois, the Canadian head of Nato's Moscow information office, and a worker at her office.

The move was in retaliation for last week's expulsion of two Russian diplomats, who had been accused of spying, from Nato's Brussels HQ, Russia's foreign ministry said.

The ministry said it was summoning Canada's ambassador to Moscow.

"The withdrawal of diplomatic accredition in Moscow will be our response," a Russian official told the Interfax news agency. "We are not the ones who initiated such behaviour. We have been forced to act in this way."

Mike Funston | Toronto | April 18

The Toronto Star - A Toronto man has been charged with attempting to ship devices to Iran that can be used to make enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

An RCMP spokesperson identified the accused man as Mahmoud Yadegari, 38, a Canadian citizen who emigrated from Iran in 1998.

Asked about the significance of the arrest on a scale of 1 to 10, George Webb, of the Canada Border Services Agency's counter-proliferation unit, said: "It's a 10."

Yadegari is charged with attempting to procure and export to Iran 10 pressure transducers. That is prohibited under the Customs Act and the Export Import Permits Act as well as under the Iran regulations of the United Nations Act, RCMP Insp. Greg Johnson said. He said further charges are pending.

[Comment: Clearly a hed written by someone who isn't familar with what "device" means in a special weapons context... ~ JPD]

Zoltán Dujisin | Budapest | May 1

IPS - The situation of Roma in the Czech Republic has always been bad, but growing right-wing extremism has taken tensions to new levels, driving many to seek asylum in Canada.

Roma organisations have called on those Roma who feel unsafe in the country to leave. There are up to 300,000 Roma living in the Czech Republic, that has a population of 10 million.

Roma, often also called gypsies, are a people believed to have migrated to Europe from India since the 14th century.

At least 853 mostly ethnic Roma Czech citizens have applied for refugee status in Canada over the last year, and 84 have obtained it. But in only the first two months of 2009, there are already new 570 Czechs, mostly Roma, seeking asylum there. This is the second wave of Czech Roma seeking to flee to Canada after a similar wave in the late 1990s.

Czech media has claimed that the migrations are economically motivated and promoted by mediators who tell Romanies to exaggerate their experiences of racial discrimination in the Czech Republic and personally profit from their asylum applications.

Canada has asked the Czech government to investigate the allegations as the mediators are allegedly Czech and Slovaks émigrés to Canada.

Susan Bourette | Toronto | Apr 20

CSM - British Columbia's 'private-public partnerships' have been touted as a model for the US to revamp its infrastructure.

British Columbia’s political leader Gordon Campbell recently stepped aboard Vancouver’s new light transit system and into the world’s spotlight as one of the leading proponents of a burgeoning movement to twin the public and private sectors in building everything from bridges to roads and hospitals.

The Canada Line, a $2 billion light transit system running between Vancouver’s downtown waterfront and the city’s airport, is the latest in a string of public-private partnerships, or P3s, built in B.C. and being touted as a model for rebuilding America’s infrastructure.

Winnipeg, MB | April 18

CBC - Water levels are receding in the city of Winnipeg as tributaries feeding the Red River crest, but the flood watch continues as water from the U.S. continues to move north toward the city, with levels second only to the destructive flood of 1997.

The flood crested in Winnipeg on Thursday amid last-minute sandbagging and a declaration of a state of emergency for about 800 waterfront homes. But the Red River, swollen to 19 kilometres wide in some places, is still expected to rise as it flows north.

Kevin G. Hall | Windsor, Ontario | Apr 17

McClatchy Newspapers - Chrysler and General Motors are demanding steep givebacks in pensions and other benefits from members of the Canadian Auto Workers union on the grounds that, unlike their American counterparts, they can count on generous government-sponsored health care.

Autoworkers in Canada have long enjoyed a cost advantage over their American counterparts across the Detroit River because their health care isn't paid for by their employers, but by all Canadian taxpayers through the government.

That advantage is now being held against Canadian autoworkers in talks to prevent a GM bankruptcy and to promote a merger of Chrysler and Italian automaker Fiat.

Without a deal with Canadian autoworkers, there will be no deal for Chrysler to merge with Fiat and save U.S. jobs at Chrysler. Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne told Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper on Wednesday that "we are prepared to walk" on the entire Chrysler merger if Canadian autoworkers don't yield.

Canadian workers are staring down steep benefit cuts as U.S.-based carmakers pull out of Canada to preserve American jobs first. Canadian auto manufacturing has sunk even faster than U.S. car making has, and 15 years of integrated North American manufacturing is unraveling fast.

Eileen Smith | Washington,DC | March 31

AP - The U.S. Border Patrol is erecting 16 more video surveillance towers in Michigan and New York to help secure parts of the U.S.-Canadian border, awarding the contract to a company criticized for faulty technology with its so-called “virtual fence” along the U.S.-Mexico boundary.

The government awarded the $20-million project to Boeing Co., for the towers designed to assist agents stationed along the 4,000-mile northern stretch. Eleven of the towers are being installed in Detroit and five in Buffalo, N.Y., to help monitor water traffic between Canada and the United States along Lake St. Clair and the Niagara River.

Don Butler | Ottawa | March 21

The Montreal Gazette - OTTAWA — George Galloway, the British MP who’s been declared persona non grata by the Harper government, once demanded that Britain’s Labour government block a visit by far-right French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Galloway, an outspoken opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was informed Friday he won’t be allowed into Canada for a scheduled four-city speaking tour because he led a convoy that delivered humanitarian aid to Hamas officials in Gaza earlier this month.

Brussels | March 22

CP - Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Sunday that he is more interested in keeping his job than becoming NATO's next secretary-general.

Deborah Summers | Mar 20

The Guardian - • Anti-war MP banned on grounds of national security
• 'This idiotic ban shames Canada,' says Galloway

Anti-war MP George Galloway has been banned from Canada, it emerged today.

A Canadian spokesman confirmed that the Respect MP had been deemed inadmissible on national security grounds and would not be allowed into the country.

Galloway today branded the ban "idiotic" and vowed to fight the ruling with "all means" at his disposal. He is due to give a speech in Toronto on 30 March.

Earlier today The Sun said border security officials had declared Galloway, 54, "inadmissible" because of his views on Afghanistan and the presence of Canadian troops there and would be turned away if he attempted to enter the country.

LOL! I gotta say I have had a soft spot for the man ever since he humiliated Christopher Hitchens and Norm Coleman :D

I missed by a minute seeing Air Force 1 fly overhead on my way home from work. So I blew kisses instead in its direction and send Obama good vibes. I told him to go slay those fat bastards on Wallstreet.

A brief review of Obama's first visit to Canada.

ESPN

VANCOUVER -- The United States military will be cooperating with its Canadian counterparts to provide security for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Canadian Forces officials said Monday that the combined operations fall under the provisions of joint command NORAD, said Canadian Rear Admiral Tyrone Pile, commander of Joint Task Force Games.

"They have to be involved," Pile said. "We share a common border with them."

Pile said the U.S. will contribute Coast Guard and Navy vessels but there will be no American troops involved on Canadian soil.

New York | Feb 1

DPA - Researchers in Canada have developed a blood test that could make it possible to detect mad cow disease in animals months before they exhibit symptoms of the illness.

'That would be a great breakthrough because then we would not have to examine the brain of the dead animal, instead we'd have a simple, quick test, similar to a paternity test,' German molecular biologist Christoph Sensen of the University of Calgary told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa in an interview on Friday.

Researchers examined infected and uninfected elk, since the species develops symptoms of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) more quickly than cows. They then took monthly blood samples and found specific DNA markers in the infected animals that corresponded to the disease. The tests found evidence of the disease up to six months before symptoms became evident, Sensen said.

Sweden suggested to the United States that they nationalize their banks

Sweden did it right when they nationalized banks by giving ownership. Iceland tried doing it without and is now bankrupt. A Brit economist, believes, UK cannot take Iceland's soft option

Roubini: US Banks are effectively insolvent

Geoffrey York | Karma, Niger | Jan 24

The Globe and Mail -

In an empty expanse of blazing hot scrubland, the last remaining sign of the kidnapped Canadians is the scraped surface of the desert, where investigators used a bulldozer to remove a layer of the rocky red soil to search for clues.

Now the police have abandoned the site, and silence hangs over the spot where Robert Fowler and Louis Guay vanished into the twilight of western Niger six weeks ago. There is only a passing donkey cart and an occasional herd of goats, standing on their hind legs to reach the leaves of the thorn trees.

The harmattan - the wind from the Sahara - fills the sky with dust, gradually obliterating the final traces of the abduction.

Mr. Fowler, 64, was one of Ottawa's most powerful bureaucrats before his retirement. He had served as an ambassador to the United Nations, a deputy minister of defence, a top adviser to a string of prime ministers and a veteran of war zones from Rwanda to Darfur. Yet this time he may have ventured a step too far.

The U.S. v Omar Khadr Watch the full program on line.

Yes, it is shameful that the Canadian government hasn’t demanded that Khadr be released. Great psychological and emotional harm has been done to this child, by his parents and being in custody for such a long time along with his government deserting him who normally demand that citizen's rights be protected.

Further, it's revolting to read comments by my fellow Canadians that follow news reports. Every other country has demanded their citizens be returned with my country being the lone exception.

Daphne Bramham | Creston, BC | January 7

Vancouver Sun - On Wednesday around 7:45 a.m., eight plainclothes RCMP officers in unmarked cars drove up to the homes of polygamous leaders Winston Blackmore and James Oler in southeastern British Columbia.

They arrested Blackmore, 52, and Oler, 44, and charged them with the criminal offence of practising polygamy. It may not be the first time that anyone in Canada has been charged with polygamy. But it is definitely the first time anyone has been charged since the 1800s.

Both men — the most important spiritual leaders in the fundamentalist Mormon community — were cooperative.

Welcome to NORAD Tracks Santa

A glimpse from last year….NORAD tracking Santa around the world!

All the preparations for this year are in place! Return on Christmas Eve to track St. Nick on his magical flight around the world!

Until then, come back each day to receive updates from the North Pole and to discover new surprises in the Kids' Countdown.

[Comment: Url after the break. Here's to one of the more important, but near as I can tell, relatively little-known trades. ~ JPD]

on a popular Vancouver stroll when, what to my wondering eyes should appear but 3 US military in battle fatigues striding down the street heading towards their civilian car with Washington state licence plates. Yikes! I hadn't heard anything on the news about an invasion, but what a strange and rather scary sight. I was going to say something smart alec-y to them, but opted instead for the same response as everybody else in their track - namely the famous Canadian arched eyebrow of disapproval. US Agonistas may not realize that north of the border its pretty unusual to see even Canadian military in uniform roaming the streets.