Back to newsletter list 16/07/2008 23:34:35 (UTC) Canada | World Briefs | Business News | Sports | Weather Headlines  - Canadian govt. refuses new stance on Guantanamo Canadian - Convicted terrorist remains unexpelled after 19 years - Canadian manufacturing bounces back
OTTAWA: GOVT. WON'T BUDGE ON GUANTANAMO CANADIAN A spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the federal government won't change its attitude toward the only Westerner being held as a terrorism suspect at Guantanamo, Cuba. A video of imprisoned 21-year-old Omar Khadr being interrogated in 2003 at Guantanamo by an agent of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service was released by Khadr's lawyers earlier in the week. He's shown sobbing and calling for his mother. Mr. Harper has said that Khadr faces serious charges and should be tried. The prime minister's spokesman says the government won't change its position because his lawyers are "pursuing an aggressive media strategy." TORONTO: KHADR'S MILITARY LAWYER SAYS TRIAL RIGGED Meanwhile, the U.S. military lawyer helping in Khadr's defence says he won't get a fair trial. Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler says the "military commissions" are rigged to obtain convictions. Twenty-one-year-old Omar Khadr is to appear before such a commission in October. He's accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 years old. Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler says the prime minister should stand up for the rights of a Canadian, adding that the video released earlier in the week of his interrogation at Guantanamo shows that Khadr is a frightened child not a "hardened terrorist." BRANTFORD: CONVICTED TERRORIST RESISTS DEPORTATION FOR 19 YEARS A convicted Palestinian terrorist is still living in Canada 19 years after the immigration department ordered Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad deported for having lied about his terrorist past. Mohammad lives with his family in Brantford, ON. In December 1968, he and another man acting under the orders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine threw grenades and fired machineguns at an airliner with 50 people on board. An Israeli passenger was killed. A Greek court convicted Mohammad of manslaughter and other crimes and sentenced him to 17 years in jail. He was pardoned by the Greek government after another Palestinian group hijacked an airliner and threatened to kill the passengers unless he was released. Since his deportation order, he has managed to stave off removal by using seemingly inexhaustible avenues of appeal. OTTAWA: MANUFACTURING REBOUNDS Manufacturing sales in Canada were up 2.7 per cent in May over the previous month, the largest jump since March of last year. Statistics Canada says nearly half the growth involved the sale of petroleum and coal products, commodities which showed an increase of 9.2 per cent. Metal manufacturers and the makers of chemicals also showed gains. Clothing and textile manufacturers, who are struggling with offshore competition, saw their business drop by just over 13 per cent. QUEBEC CITY: PREMIERS WANT TO DISCUSS NATIVES WITH PM Canada's provincial and territorial leaders have called for a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss native issues. Premier Jean Charest of Quebec and the other leaders want to build on the momentum from the federal government's recent apology for having forced Canadian natives to attend residential schools. Mr. Charest says such issues as native education could be addressed. Mr. Charest made the call for a joint meeting with the prime minister after a gathering of aboriginal leaders and premiers and territorial leaders in Quebec City. HALIFAX: CANADIANS SPEND MORE ON HEALTH CARE A new report says that Canadians are spending more out of their own pocket on health care than they were 25 years ago, increasing the risk of financial crisis during illness. The report was prepared for GPI Atlantic, a research group based in Nova Scotia. The report says Canadians spent $452 per capita on health care last year, compared with $222 in 1981. The report studied risks faced by Canadians when they are sick, elderly, unemployed or single parents. Last year Canadians spent a total of $16.5 billion for private health care costs, including drugs, dental and eye care. People in Prince Edward Island and British Columbia spent the biggest percentage of their disposable income on private health care costs. UNDATED: PATHOLOGISTS WANT UNIFORM BREAST CANCER TESTS The Canadian Pathologists Association has requested that the federal and provincial governments agree on a protocol for breast cancer tests. Association President Dr. Jagdish Butany says it wants to avoid a repetition of the diagnostical errors of the sort committed in Newfoundland and Labrador between 1997 and 2005. The pathologists are demanding tests of equal efficiency everywhere in the country, the certification of every test result and the creation of a national agency independent of government charged with the accreditation of all medical laboratories. MONTREAL: MORE 'SAFE INJECTION' SITES PLANNED Quebec's public health director, Dr. Alain Poirier, says the provincial government is planning "safe injection" sites for drug addicts in several locations, the first being Montreal. The controversial site in Vancouver, BC, is at present the only such facility in North America. Dr. Poirier says the health and social services departments have been considering setting up "safe injection" sites for some time but have been encouraged by recent court rulings in favour of the Vancouver site. The federal government has been seeking to close the latter facility. The site doesn't provide addicts with drugs but provides a safe environment where they can inject them. Critics say governments shouldn't finance drug addiction. OTTAWA: GOVT. CONCERNED ABOUT CZECH ASYLUM SEEKERS Immigration Minister Diane Finley is in Prague on Thursday, a visit intended mainly to discuss the issue of burgeoning numbers of Czech refugee applicants with her Czech counterpart, Karel Schwarzenberg. The visit comes just nine months after Canada lifted visa requirements for visitors from the Czech Republic. Mrs. Finley's department reports 302 requests from Czech asylum seekers in the first five months of the year, a figure which the Czech news media say rose to 449 a month later. A spokesman for the Czech embassy said he understands the Canadian government's concern but that the reintroduction of the visa requirement would only punish genuine visitors and not solve the problem. Many of those seeking asylum are Romany, or gypsies, who claim persecution by neo-Nazis and skinheads. ST-JÉRÔME: ELECTRIC CARS ALLOWED ON ROADS Starting on Thursday, the Quebec government is allowing low-speed electric cars on roads with a speed limit under 50 km/h. The cars must carry an orange triangle indicating a low-speed vehicle. The cars are made by two companies in Toronto and near Montreal. Ian Clifford of Zenn north of the latter city, says that with soaring gasoline prices the project is an idea whose time has come. Mr. Clifford says it cost about a penny per kilometre to drive one of Zenn's cars, which can travel for 50 to 80 kilometres on a single charge. The B.C. government last month passed legislation letting electric cars onto roads with a speed limit of up to 40 km/h.
LEBANON Five Lebanese, a murderer and four Hezbollah members, arrived in Beirut today to a warm welcome. They were welcomed by President Michel Sleiman, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Mr. Sleiman told the murderer that he and the four others have a right to be proud of their country. The five were exchanged for the bodies of two dead Israeli soldiers who were abducted by Hezbollah in July 2006. The kidnappings provoked an Israeli invasion which led to a one-month war in which hundreds died. IRAQ Police report that a car bomb in the northern city of Tal Afar has killed 15 people, seven of them children. About 70 others were injured. The bombing is the latest indication of political instability around the northern city of Mosul, considered the last stronghold of "Al-Qaeda in Iraq." COLOMBIA President Alvaro Uribe has apologized to the International Red Cross for the fact that one of the soldiers who took part in a hostage rescue on July 2 illicitly wore a Red Cross badge. Mr. Uribe says that the government investigated news media reports that this had occurred and found that a soldier had reacted nervously when the helicopter with which the rescue was carried out by attaching the Red Cross insignia. The Red Cross says it has accepted Colombia's apology. Use of the insignia is illegal under the first Geneva Convention because it would damage the organization's reputation for neutrality and endanger medical personnel wearing them. SUDAN The Arab League has denounced the decision of the International Criminal Court to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide in Darfur region. Secretary General Amr Moussa says he travel to Khartoum this weekend after an emergency meeting of the League's foreign ministers. Meanwhile, a soldier of the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur has been killed by unidentified militiamen. The UN continues to evacuate its non-essential personnel from Darfur, despite the Sudanese government's promise to do everything possible to protect UN-AU soldiers and humanitarian workers. UNITED STATES The International Court of Justice has ordered the U.S. government to take all necessary measures to postpone the execution of five Mexican citizens while it considers its verdict on a request by the Mexican government. One of the five is scheduled to be executed in the state of Texas on Aug. 5. The court has already condemned the U.S. for having failed to inform 51 Mexicans condemned to die of their right to consular assistance and ordered new trials. U.S. President George W. Bush asked for new trials in 2005, but the Supreme Court ruled last March that the federal government has no jurisdiction in the cases, a ruling which led the Texas authorities to schedule José Medellin's execution.
CALGARY: CANADA-U.S. PIPELINE EXTENDED TransCanada Corp. and the U.S. energy firm ConocoPhilipps have announced that their Keystone pipeline to the U.S. will be extended all the way to reach refiners on the Gulf of Mexico where the hub of the U.S. refining industry is located. The pipeline will eventually measure 3,456 kilometres. The first phase of the project will convey 590,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Hardisty, AB, to Cushing, OK. Construction is due to be completed next year and cost US$5.2 billion. The second phase will cost $7 billion and extend the pipeline to Port Arthur, TX, the location of several big refineries. The Gulf Coast refiners have traditionally refined crude from Mexico and Venezuela, but supplies from the former source are declining and Venezuela is shifting its exports away from the U.S. TORONTO: HUDSON'S BAY GETS NEW OWNERSHIP Retailer Hudson's Bay Co. has been taken over by the private equity firm which owns the American department store chain Lord & Taylor. Terms of the acquisition by NRDC Equity Partners haven't been disclosed. The transaction will combine two of the oldest department store retailers in North America, the new firm to be called Hudson's Bay Trading Co. and will have 75,000 employees and annual sales of more than US$8 billion. The change of ownership follows the death in April of American billionaire Jerry Zucker, who bought HBC for $1.1 billion in 2006. TORONTO: TD CHANGES MORTGAGES RULES TD Canada Trust has changed its mortgage requirements to get into line with the federal regulations that will come into effect on Oct. 15. TD will now offer a maximum amortization of 35 years and require a five-per cent down payment. TD joins the Bank of Montreal in making the changes. Earlier in the week, the federal government announced the tightening the rules to prevent a debacle in Canada like the subprime mortgage meltdown in the U.S. last summer. MARKETS TSX on Wednesday: 13,503.80 up 146. The Canadian dollar closed 0.01 of a cent ahead at US99.78 cents. The euro was worth C$1.5854, down 0.85 of a cent. Light, sweet crude: US$134.60, down $4.14.
SKIING Ken Read is leaving his job as president of Alpine Canada to open the door for his son to ski on the Canadian team. Under the rules of Alpine Canada, employees cannot have children racing for the team. Read's son Erik, competing in the 15/16-year-old division, won a silver medal in downhill last year at the world junior championship in Spain. He is now a part of the Alpine Canada program. HOCKEY Melody Davidson will be the head coach of Canada's women's hockey team for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Joining Davidson behind the bench will be Peter Smith and Doug Lidster, Hockey Canada announced on Wednesday. Davidson, from Oyen, AB., coached the Canadian women to gold medals at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, and the 2007 world championship in Winnipeg. BASKETBALL Canada is still alive at the FIBA Olympic qualifying tournament in Greece. The Canadians rallied from an 18-point deficit to beat South Korea 79-77. Canada trailed by 10 with just over two minutes left before staging a stunning comeback. The Canadians will face Croatia in Thursday's quarter-final game. TENNIS Canadians Daniel Nestor and Frederic Niemeyer got off to a good start in their Olympic tuneup Wednesday. Nestor, from Toronto, and Niemeyer, from Deuville, QC., defeated top-seeded Indians Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes 6-4, 3-6, 12-10 in the opening round of the Indianapolis Tennis Championships. Nestor, 35, and Niemeyer, 32, are pairing up for this tournament to practice for the Beijing Games, where they'll represent Canada. OLYMPICS A multimillion-dollar anti-doping lab for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver will be built inside one of the sites. Organizing committee officials say building the state-of-the-art lab inside the speed-skating building in Richmond, B.C., helps meet all the lab's requirements as set out by the World Anti-Doping Agency. The lab will cost $5 million to build, slightly more than the $4.1 million organizers had budgeted.
Weather British Columbia on Thursday: sun south, rain north, high 22 Celsius Vancouver. Yukon, Northwest Territories: sun. Nunavut: cloud. Whitehorse 19, Yellowknife 25, Iqaluit 16. Prairies: rain. Edmonton 23, Regina, Winnipeg 21. Ontario: rain. Quebec: mix of sun, cloud. Toronto 29, Ottawa, Montreal 28. Atlantic Canada: rain. Fredericton 28, Halifax, Charlottetown 27, St. John's 24.
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