Back to newsletter list 13/10/2008 23:25:14 (UTC) Canada | World Briefs | Business News | Sports | Weather Headlines  - Canadian Conservatives seem headed for second minority govt. - Candidates make final pitches to voters - Somali abductors threaten Canadian hostage with death
OTTAWA: POLL POINTS TOWARD ANOTHER MINORITY GOVT. The final public opinion poll before the federal election on Tuesday suggests that Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party is poised to win another minority goernment. The Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll gives the Conservative Party 34 per cent nationally, followed by the Liberal Party at 25 per cent. The New Democratic Party stands at 19 per cent, the Bloc Québécois at 11 and the Green Party at nine per cent. Regionally, however, the polls show the Bloc Québécois ahead in the mainly French-speaking province of Quebec. The Liberal Party is leading in Atlantic Canada, while the Conservatives are ahead in western Canada. In Ontario, the Conservatives and the Liberals are nose-to-nose. CORNWALL: PM CRISSCROSSES COUNTRY IN FINAL CAMPAIGN SPRINT Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, British Columbia and Alberta in his final dash of the election campaign. In Cornwall, Prince Edward Island, he told a crowd that the primary task of the next prime minister will be to protect the country's economy. He suggested to his listeners that if they want a prime minister who will perform that task, they should vote for him. If, on the other hand, they want a prime minister who will experiment with the economy, they should elected Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, who will impose a carbon tax at the worst possible time for radical taxation changes. The prime minister acknowledged that his Conservatives might not win on Tuesday. FREDERICTON: DION DENIES EXISTENCE OF TORY PLAN Mr. Dion, meanwhile, also planned five final campaign stops in Longueuil, Montreal, Fredericton, Winnipeg and Vancouver. In Fredericton, he told voters that the Harper government doesn't have a plan to safeguard the Canadian economy from the global woes resulting from the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown. Mr. Dion says that the Liberals do indeed have one to protect pensions, savings, mortgages and jobs. Speaking in Longueuil, he told a crowd that the Conservative campaign is built on the "shameful lie" that his Green Shift carbon tax is a job-killing money grab, noting that Tory support in Quebec has evaporated since the campaign began. TORONTO: LAYTON SPENDS FINAL DAY TRYING TO GALVANIZE NDP SUPPORTERS NDP leader Jack Layton spent the 37th and last day of the campaign rallying party supporters in several Toronto ridings, urging them to get out the vote. He also appeared on the MuchMusic television show, during which he advocated lowering the voting age from 18 to 16. Mr. Layton refused to speculate whether his party would take part in some kind of left-leaning coalition. In Mr. Layton's last two campaigns, his support melted away in the final days as many NDP supporters defected to the Liberals to head off a Conservative triumph. But the president of the Harris-Decima pollster, Bruce Anderson, says that isn't happening this time, partly because of Mr. Layton's more polished, confident message, another factor being voters' relative lack of enthusiasm for Mr. Dion and Mr. Harper. MONTREAL: BLOC LEADER UNFAZED BY ANOTHER MINORITY GOVT. Bloc Québécois Gilles Duceppe says he's undisturbed by the prospect of the third minority government in four years. Mr. Duceppe recalled the successive Liberal Party governments of the 1960s and invited all federal parties to work together, while expressing doubts that the Conservatives would wish to do so. Mr. Duceppe also dismissed a comment by Conservative cabinet minister Lawrence Cannon that Quebec voters should appreciate that a vote for the separatist Bloc would be a wasted vote. Mr. Duceppe says the remark betrays Mr. Cannon's contempt for democracy. HALFIFAX: GREEN CANDIDATE SPENDS FINAL DAY IN NS Green Party leader and candidate Elizabeth May spent the final day of the campaign in her Nova Central riding in Nova Scotia. She has focussed her efforts on her own riding since last week's televised leadership debates. Mrs. May is running an uphill battle against cabinet Peter MacKay, who has won Nova Central handily in the past four elections. The issue of "strategic voting" for Green supporters, after Mrs. May speculated on Sunday that voters in "maybe 20 per cent" of the country's 309 ridings might consider voting NDP or Liberal to prevent the election of a Conservative. She later issued a statement that she doesn't herself favour such a tactic. Several of her candidates in hard-fought Ontario and British Columbia riding have disavowed such a strategy. TEHRAN: SOMALI KIDNAPPERS THREATEN TO KILL CANADIAN HOSTAGE The Somali abductors of a Canadian freelance reporter have threatened to kill her unless a $2.5-million ransom is paid for 27-year-old Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan. The threat was reported by Press TV in the Iranian capital, for which Miss Lindhout had worked. The freelancer from Sylvan Lake, AB, and the Australian were kidnapped on Aug. 23 near Mogadishu. They appeared with their abductors in a video broadcast by the al-Jazeera television network in which the kidnappers accuse Canada and Australia of "taking part in the destruction of Somalia."
UNDATED Investors around the world reacted enthusiastically to the news of the ambitious plan by European governments to rescue staggering financial instiltutions. Britain, Germany, France and other European governments have pledged more than one trillion euros to recapitalize ailing banks, underwriting in particular inter-bank loans which had almost dried up since the failure last month of the U.S. bank Lehman brothers, thus threatening the stability of the wider economy. In New York, the Dow Jones skyrocketed by 936 points, or 11.08 per cent, to 9,387, its biggest gain ever. Asian stocks gained more than 7 per cent. Mexico's stock market closed up more than 11 percent Monday in its highest rise since 1998, and the peso strengthened slightly against the dollar after hitting record lows last week. The TSX was closed for the Thankgiving Day holiday. The U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank have said they will lend commercial banks whatever they need at fixed rates to resuscitate inter-bank lending. PAKISTAN Officials say 51 people died in weekend fighting between government troops and Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in northwestern Pakistan. The army reports 25 militant deaths and two soldiers in a day-long battle in the Swat area. Nine militants are reported killed in the Bajur region overnight. The government offensive launched against militants in Bajur in August has left 1,000 dead. Pakistan has been reacting to pressure from the U.S. to act against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who stage cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. UK Britain's House of Lords has voted against a controversial plan to extend the amount of time terrorism suspects can be held by police from 28 days to 42 days. The government says the measure is necessary to fight the threat of terrorism facing Britain. The proposal was endorsed by Britain's House of Commons in June by a margin of just nine votes. Many politicians, writers and the Council of Eurpe have attacked the bill as an infringement of civil liberties. SWEDEN This year's Nobel Prize for Economics has been awarded to American Paul Krugman for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity. The award is the last of the six Nobel prizes announced this year and is not one of the original Nobels. It was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Afred Nobel's memory, the Swedish businessman who established the annual prizes in 1895. Last week, the five Nobel Prizes for Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace were awarded. SOUTH AFRICA South Africa's new health minister has broken with her predecessor's controversial and discredited approach to fighting HIV and AIDS. Health Minister Barbara Hogan has declared that AIDS is unquestionably caused by HIV and must be treated with conventional drugs. That brings to an end 10 years of denial about the link between the virus and the disease by former president Thabo Mbeki and his health minister. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang advocated traditional remedies such as garlic, beets, olive oil and the African potato. BOLIVIA President Evo Morales launched a march by thousands of rural workers and union members to press legislators to approve his plan to rewrite the constitution. The marchers set forth from the southern town of Caracollo and are expected to reach the capital, La Paz, later in the week. Mr. Morales wants to reform the constitution to redistribute land and revenues from Bolivia's big natural gasfields for the benefit of the country's indigenous majority. He is being resisted by the governors of five eastern states where the gasfields are located. The governors want autonomy for the eastern region. Violence erupted last month between supporters and adversaries of Mr. Morales' police, leaving 18 dead. ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe has named two vice-presidents, a move which could endanger the power-sharing agreement brokered four weeks ago by former South African President Thabo Mbeki. Mr. Mugabe nominated the two vice-presidents without consulting the Movement for Democratic Change, which is supposed to be his ZANU-PF party's partner in a national coalition government. A spokesman for the former party said that any decisions not aimed at solving Zimbabwe's problems are "meaningless." MDC leader Morgan Tsangirai has threatened to renounce the power-sharing accord. Mr. Mbeki was expected in Harare later Monday in an attempt to salvage it. SOMALIA Islamist insurgents attacked African Union peacekeepers in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Monday. killing one civilian and wounding five others. Witnesses say the insurgents used artillery against a Ugandan contingent of the AU. The AU has been in Mogadishu since March last year and has about 3,000 troops. The violence comes one day after two peacekeepers were wounded by a roadside bomb in the city. Aid groups have scaled down operations in Somalia because of growing insecurity largely blamed on Islamist militants, who have waged a guerrilla war since they were ousted from power last year by a joint Somali-Ethiopian offensive. JAPAN The country's biggest business lobby, the Japan Business Federation, is going to reverse its long-held policy concerning immigrants and will call on the nation to admit more newcomers. According to Mainichi newspaper, the lobby will announce its change of policy on Tuesday. The newspaper says it will call for amendments to immigrant law to promote immigration, and will recommend as well better Japanese language training for newcomers and a right to social security for them. Although some Japanese see immigration as a threat to traditional culture, others point to serious economic consequences from labour shortages. More than one-quarter of Japanese are expected to be aged over 65 by 2015.
OTTAWA: CANADA BACKS G-7 CRISIS PLAN Canada's finance minister, Jim Flaherty, says he strongly supports the action plan put forward this past weekend by the Group of Seven richest nations. At a meeting in Washington, Mr. Flaherty and the other G-7 finance ministers worked out a plan to stabilize the world's markets and restore credit flow to end the spreading financial crisis. He says the Canadian government will continue to work with its G-7 partners and to take appropriate steps to support Canada's financial system. Mr. Flaherty expects Canada to survive the economic crisis better than any other G-7 nation and even have modest growth next year. TORONTO: MANULIFE SUFFERS FROM CREDIT CRISIS Manulife Financial Corp., one of Canada's biggest insurance firms, says it will record a $250-million third-quarter writedown because of credit losses linked to the worldwide financial crisis. Manulife says the writedown includes $50 million to increase its reserves for losses due to credit downgrades among its investments. Despite the losses, Manulife President and CEO Dominic D'Alessandro says the company remains "...well positioned to weather these difficult times." Manulife has major operations in Canada, the U.S. and Asia. WINNIPEG: NEWSPAPER ON STRIKE About 1,000 people who work for a daily newspaper in the western Canadian province of Manitoba have walked off the job. Employees of the Winnipeg Free Press are demanding better pensions, benefits and job security. Negotiations between the union and management have been going on since the weekend, but the union says the talks have been unproductive. The publisher of the Free Press says he is optimistic a deal can be reached soon. Meantime, management is continuing to provide news through the paper's website for the duration of the strike. MARKETS TSX, Canadian dollar: closed for holiday. Light, sweet crude: US$81.19, up $3.49.
FOOTBALL In the Canadian Football League, the Montreal Alouettes got their revenge on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Jamel Richardson caught three touchdown passes as Montreal beat Hamilton 42-11. Hamilton was officially eliminated from playoff contention for the seventh time in eight seasons. HOCKEY The Toronto Maple Leafs blew a 3-0 lead and remained winless on home ice this season with a 5-4 shootout loss to St. Louis.
Weather British Columbia on Tuesday: mix of sun, cloud south, rain north high 12 Celsius Vancouver. Yukon: mix of sun, cloud. Northwest Territories: sun. Nunavut: cloud. Whitehorse 7, Yellowknife 2, Iqaluit -1. Alberta: cloud south, rain north. Saskatchewan, Manitoba: rain. Edmonton, Regina 7, Winnipeg 12. Ontario: rain south, mix of sun, cloud north. Quebec: rain. Toronto 23, Ottawa, Montreal 22. New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador: rain. Nova Scotia: mix of sun, cloud. Fredericton 14, Halifax, Charlottetown 13, St. John's 8.
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