Omar Khadr is innocent, says his lawyer

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

In a military commission trial in Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr’s defence lawyer is arguing that the Canadian is innocent and that there is no forensic evidence to prove he killed a U.S. soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. The Toronto-born Khadr faces accusations of throwing a deadly grenade, and is being tried on five charges, including murder in
violation of the laws of war. But his lawyer, Lt.-Col. Jon Jackson, argued that Khadr did not throw the grenade and was at the scene of the firefight because his father asked him to be there. Furthermore, Jackson said Khadr’s confessions to the crime were the result of torture and threats of rape and murder during his interrogation.

CBC

On the stump

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 2:28 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff is not quite reinventing the spoken word this summer, but he’s speaking with a certain vim and building a certain case. There’ll be another 2,000 words or so on this either later today or sometime tomorrow, but for the sake of visual documentation, here are a few clips.

First, his address to the rally in Windsor on Sunday night.

Previously referenced here were Thornhill and, from the official Liberal YouTube account, bits of his remarks in Oakville and London. Separately, the Liberals have also put up excerpts from Maugerville and Cupids someone has uploaded footage from Peterborough.

We don't need your thought control

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

Can Holmes fix native reserves?

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Mike Holmes, the most famous handyman in the land, has accepted a rather ambitious project: to improve the lives of people in First Nations communities. The 47-year-old host of HGTV’s Holmes on Homes recently joined forces with the Assembly of First Nations and will oversee an initiative aimed at building sustainable homes on reserves. “We’re going to make sure,” he says, “that all the products we use are mould-free, water-resistant, termite-resistant.”

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'Couples' fake it for money

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

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An optimist might think the uptick in marriages performed by Rev. Alex Brown of East Sussex, U.K.—who officiated at 13 ceremonies from 2001 to 2005, and a whopping 383 in the four years that followed—was a sign of love in the air. In fact, police say it was part of a massive immigration fraud. On July 29, the vicar and two other men were found guilty of organizing about 360 sham marriages from 2005 to 2009, part of a scheme that saw African nationals marrying Eastern Europeans in order to gain residency in Britain.

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RIM’s revival

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Research In Motion remains North America’s smartphone leader, even if it’s now widely perceived to be a runner-up behind Apple and its iPhone when it comes to innovation.

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That's a bit personal

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Andrew Taylor/Reuters

For Australia’s first female prime minister, the decision not to have children was a political one. Julia Gillard, also the first unmarried leader of the world’s smallest continent, recently cited Baroness Margaret Thatcher’s son Mark—once convicted of taking part in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea—when she argued that children can detract from a life in politics, and may even become a political liability. But now this decision to be childless, and Gillard’s gender, are becoming themes in the run-up to the country’s Aug. 21 election, which Gillard called after only three weeks in office.

The campaign is pitting the 48-year-old Gillard and her Labour government against the Conservative leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, 52. So far, Abbott, who needs to win only an extra nine seats to form a government, has attempted to use his wife and three daughters to differentiate himself from Gillard, and improve his ratings with female voters. When asked whether he is playing the family card to win the election, he said: “I think families are important, I take them seriously.”

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Vandalizing history

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Kappeler/AFP/Getty Images

On July 28, hackers attacked the Buchenwald concentration camp foundation and memorial website, and replaced it with neo-Nazi slogans and symbols. One English slogan read “Brown is beautiful,” referring to the colour of the shirts worn by Adolf Hitler’s SA storm troopers. The hackers also erased a list of Holocaust victims’ names from the website and replaced them with links to Holocaust denial websites. The website for another camp was also erased.

The Buchenwald foundation’s mandate is to preserve the camp in commemoration of the victims and promote knowledge through Holocaust research (an estimated 56,000 people were killed by the Nazis at Buchenwald). Police launched an investigation into the hacking, and both websites were restored the next day. The incident came just days after former Nazi death camp guard Samuel Kunz, 88, was charged with aiding in the murders of 430,000 Jews at Belzec during the Second World War. Kunz was indicted for crimes committed between January 1942 and July 1943, including shooting 10 people himself.

Harper, like you've never seen him

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Following Stephen Harper’s performance last October of the Beatles’ classic With a Little Help From My Friends, comedian Steven Shehori and his brother and writing partner, Daniel, wondered what would happen if the Conservative party staged a musical about the Prime Minister to boost his ratings.

So they created Stephen Harper! The Musical. The show, which just wrapped up a two-week run at Second City in Toronto, is the Canadian response to successful musicals in Chicago about the former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.

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How Medvedev defines democracy

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Sakuma/AP

Last September, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote a policy paper bashing Russia’s “negative democratic tendencies,” and promising more democracy. After he signed a new law on July 29 that broadens the powers of the Federal Security Service (FSB), opposition leaders say Medvedev isn’t keeping his promise.

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The shrimp that won't die

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Walter Meayers Edwards/National

When the first diminutive dinosaurs emerged on land, the common tadpole shrimp was already swimming around the Earth’s wetland pools. And it looked very much like the one that recently hatched in an aquarium in Scotland.

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Trash or burn?

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

What will Canada’s greenest city do with its trash? Bury it in a far-off hole? Burn it in a new $470-million waste-to-energy incinerator? Last week, local politicians inched closer to a decision following a heated, five-hour debate at a Metro Vancouver board meeting. The regional body oversees Vancouver’s 21 municipalities, including Surrey, tony West Vancouver and granola-crunching Bowen Island, and they don’t always agree. The hullabaloo over the region’s 1.4 million tonnes of garbage boiled down to whether or not to build a new incinerator. The hiccup: would it be green enough?

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The passing of a great voice for art

By John Geddes - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:47 PM - 0 Comments

Obituaries for Shirley Thomson, the former director of the National Gallery of Canada, inevitably make much of her role in buying and defending Voice of Fire, the controversial acquisition that marked her most public moment as one of the most influential figures on Canada’s fine arts scene. (Here‘s one from the Ottawa Citizen.)

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Alanis Morissette five-months pregnant

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:43 PM - 0 Comments

“Yes, happy news—I’m pregnant,” Alanis Morissette Tweeted to the world Wednesday. The 36-year-old singer, known best for her record-setting 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, is five months along. The father is rapper ‘Souleye’ Tredway, who she married in May after dating for just eight months. In an interview yesterday, she said she was shocked but excited when the doctor told her she was pregnant. Morissette smiled for the cameras recently as she was swarmed by paparazzi looking at her “bump” while leaving the set of Weeds. Asked whether she’s had to kick any habits in preparation for the baby, she said she “enjoys [marijuana] sometimes,” but won’t smoke while pregnant.

Daily Mail

GM on the road to recovery

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:39 PM - 0 Comments

General Motors Co. reported a second straight quarterly profit of $1.3 billion, a contrast to its nearly $13 billion loss a year ago. The company, which is 61 per cent owned by the U.S. government, said increased car sales and production contributed to its income boost. These successes will help clear the way for its initial public offering, which is needed to repay the billions in taxpayer assistance the company received in 2009. GM also announced that its chief executive, Ed Whitacre, is resigning effective Sept. 1. Daniel Akerson, GM board member and former CEO of Nextel, will succeed Whitacre.

Business Week

Senior Iraqi general says country isn't ready to take over from Americans

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:27 PM - 0 Comments

In a defense conference held in Baghdad today, Iraq’s army chief said that the Iraqi army is not ready to take over until 2020. “If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: the U.S. army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020,” said Lieutenant General Babakir Zebari, reported The Guardian. Zebari has said that his army would be unable to cope if the Americans left before, but the timing of his statement was notable given Barack Obama’s withdrawal commitment in 2011. Obama’s goal is to be down to 50,000 troops by Sept. 1 and hand over military responsibility to the Iraqi government by the end of August 2011.

This week, Obama was briefed by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Ray Odierno, who said that American forces were on target for withdrawal dates. Last night, the President affirmed that the withdrawal date was acceptable. Violence in Iraq had been lower than in 2006-2007, but this July saw a marked increase in the number of civilian deaths from bombings, shootings and other attacks.

The Guardian

Tim Hortons posts higher than expected profit

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:23 PM - 0 Comments

For the second-quarter period ending July 4, Tim Hortons posted a 21 per cent rise in profit on same-store sales growth in Canada. Compared with the $77.8 million (43 cents a share) second quarter in 2009, Tims earned $94.1 million (54 cents a share) in 2010. Though the figures were more than analysts had estimated, same-store sales in Canada and the U.S. did not increase substantially compared to last year (only a 1.7 and 3.3 per cent increase respectively from last year). The company also announced that it was going to sell its 50 per cent interest in Maidstone Bakeries to Swiss partner Aryzta AG for $475 million. Maidstone will continue to provide baked goods for Tim Hortons restaurants until at least 2016, at which point the Canuck retailer can look for alternatives.

Financial Post

Spell-check for the angry

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Earlier this month, the Moncton, N.B.-based tech company Lymbix launched ToneCheck, a free program that aims to save people from sending emotionally charged emails they might later regret. Like a spell-check for emotions, ToneCheck flags words and phrases that may be interpreted as angry, sad, fearful or humiliating. The user can then edit out the offending language, or adjust the tolerance threshold for negative language.

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Police find “improvised explosive device” in Edmonton vehicle

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Police say they found a “live improvised explosive device” in the trunk of a car in Edmonton and another smaller explosive device on one of two men arrested at the scene. Police pulled over a blue Toyota Yaris at about 4 p.m. on the Sherwood Park Freeway because the car had been reported stolen from Swift Current, Sask., earlier that day. Police took the two passengers
into custody and then sent in the bomb disposal expert to deal with the device. The bomb in the trunk was small, but could have caused injury had it been detonated, said bomb squad Sgt. Grant Jongejan. One man, 39, faces eight charges, including possession of explosives, possession of prohibited fire arms and possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking. The other
man, 35, was arrested on outstanding warrants.

CBC

Six in 10 against affirmative action quotas in civil service

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:16 PM - 0 Comments

Nearly six in 10 Canadians say a person’s race, gender or ethnic background shouldn’t give a person an advantage when looking for a government job, according to a new QMI Agency poll. The poll was taken in the days after the Conservative government said it would review affirmative action policies. Their announcement followed the case of a white Ottawa woman who was told she couldn’t apply for a position she was qualified for because she didn’t meet the diversity requirements. Only 20 per cent of those polled said they thought targeted hiring is fine as long as the successful candidate meets all job requirements. There are four “equity groups” who are occasionally considered first when applying to federal government jobs: women, visible minorities, aboriginal Canadians and those with disabilities. Both women and aboriginal Canadians are over-represented in the civil service. However, visible minorities, who make up 16 per cent of the country’s population, hold just under 10 per cent of the civil service jobs.

London Free Press

Getting hitched in London, Ont.

By Joanne Latimer - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson; Photo Illustration by Bradley Reinhardt; Hulton Archive/Getty Images

He’s booked three weeks in advance. He doesn’t accept “drop-ins” and doesn’t make house calls. No, he isn’t an orthopaedic surgeon. He’s the trailer-hitch guru of Canada. Each summer, RV owners head to London, Ont., in a steady stream to get their wobbly travel trailers tamed by the master: Andy Thomson, Jr.

Sitting on 17 acres off Highway 4, his Can-Am RV Centre attracts clients from as far away as Alberta, Texas, Australia, even Japan. “Mr. Tanaka and his interpreter came from Tokyo to learn how to custom-build hitches for Subarus,” recalled Thomson, 51, who runs the business with his younger brother Kirk. “In May, we shipped an Airstream to France for a client who moved there from P.E.I.”

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Mario Laguë

By Paul Wells - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

Caroline Phillips/Ottawa Citizen

Mario Laguë, Michael Ignatieff’s communications director, died this morning in a motorcycle crash in Ottawa. The news has come as a horrible shock to many who follow politics.

Between 2005 and 2009 I received perhaps a dozen long emails from Laguë, from wherever he was living at the time: Costa Rica, Switzerland, Montreal. I did not know him well when the correspondence began. He was a public servant in Quebec City when Robert Bourassa was premier; his close work with Bourassa gave him, as it gave many who learned from that life-long student of electoral realism, a lasting reputation as an authority on Quebec politics and political strategy in general.

Bourassa made him Quebec’s delegate-general to Mexico City. He left that job rather than pledge allegiance to the sovereignist cause after Jacques Parizeau’s election in 1994. Mario really didn’t want to pledge allegiance to the sovereignist cause: He moved to Ottawa, joined the Privy Council Office and became a key player in the group of civil servants who joined elected officials from Quebec City and Ottawa who, haphazardly to be sure, helped win the 1995 referendum. Continue…

Breaking the ice

By Anthony Davis - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Anthony Davis

An enemy soldier was on the ground dying. A Canadian army reserve medic knelt beside him. “He’s critical,” he told his commander. “He’s got about 10 minutes left.” Capt. John Grebenc of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment ordered him to do what he could for the soldier, part of a rebel band that this company of 70 army reservists had been ordered to kill or capture. The medic went through the motions of administering morphine. “There,” he assured his patient, “your last minutes on Earth are going to be nice and pleasant.”

The supposedly unconscious “Stromian” soldier—the word was concocted by Canadian Forces intelligence officers—couldn’t help but grin. He would not win an Oscar for this bit of acting. The scene, one of many staged over the course of a week in May during a training program near Yellowknife, was more about manoeuvres than method acting.

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Taking on Mubarak

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

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Mohamed ElBaradei isn’t technically eligible to run in Egypt’s 2011 presidential election. But the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, backed by the popular but outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, has lit a fire under President Hosni Mubarak’s stagnant rubber-stamp government since he burst onto Egypt’s political scene in February.

Rumours of ElBaradei’s possible candidacy surfaced in December after he finished his fourth and final term at the IAEA. Then, on Feb. 24, he launched a non-party political movement called the National Association for Change, which released seven demands for a fair electoral process in Egypt. As it stands, ElBaradei is ineligible to run because he does not belong to a party approved by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.

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