Archive | July, 2008
The Chancellor is considering a windfall tax on energy companies amid the outcry over record increases in fuel bills.
Alistair Darling’s aides say that he is looking at measures to help families struggling to meet the rising cost of energy and food. These include a one-off tax on record profits earned by energy companies as a result of a surge in the price of oil and gas. The money would be used to help the poorest to pay their fuel bills.
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What's brownish-purple, goes to the beach and stinks of rotting flesh?
New York's celebrity-obsessed Hamptons summer season got even sillier this week when a strange-looking, very dead creature washed up on a beach in Montauk at the far eastern end of New York's Long Island.
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Foreign investors have become extremely wary of the Russian stock market after the Kremlin moved yet again to tighten its noose around the country's energy and mining sector, launching anti-trust probes against London-listed Evraz Holding and Raspadsky Coal.
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This is Mother Earth - naked.
Stripped bare of forests, plants, soil, water and man-made structures it is the earth caught undressed and without her make-up.
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The already tense relations between China’s Olympic authorities and the international media have taken another turn for the worse after a South Korean television channel broadcast illicit footage of the Games’ top secret opening ceremony.
In an embarrassing breach of security, journalists from Seoul Broadcasting Systems (SBS) walked into the “Bird’s Nest” national stadium and filmed closed rehearsals for next Friday’s spectacular ceremony, which will be attended by world leaders, including President George W Bush.
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Ever heard of the Stella Awards?
No? Pity, because better than most things they give an idea of the insanity that increasingly has the legal system in its grip.
The Stella Awards were started in 1992 on behalf of ridiculous lawsuits.
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MONTREAL - Chuck Guite has failed in his bid to get the Quebec Court of Appeal to overturn his conviction on fraud charges related to the sponsorship scandal.
Guite, a former bureaucrat, was in charge of the federal sponsorship program where friends of the federal Liberals were paid in the 1990s for little or no work.
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Today let's take a break from the BS we're being fed about global warming to examine the BS we're being fed about crime statistics.
Specifically, about how "low" they are today compared to the past, how anyone who believes otherwise is paranoid and how the best way to make the crime rate even lower is to go even softer on criminals than we already are.
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It's hard to say which is more appalling: the way Myanmar's elite skimmed as much as $10 million from international aid money flowing into the country for the survivors of Cyclone Nargis, or the way United Nations officials failed to notice the scam - or worse - for weeks on end.
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BEIJING -- Dissension has erupted in the senior ranks of the International Olympic Committee, with the head of its press commission suggesting that IOC president Jacques Rogge acquiesced to Chinese plans to censor Internet access during the Beijing Olympics. [...more]
Two of Canada's biggest tobacco companies will pay record-setting fines after pleading guilty to tax charges laid in connection with contraband cigarettes.
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A man was stabbed to death and then decapitated on a Greyhound bus travelling through Portage la Prairie, Man., early Thursday, witnesses confirm.
Witnesses on the bus told CTV's Murray Oliver that a young man, between the ages of 18 to 20, was killed.
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Raphael Alexander | Garbage In, Garbage Out
-- The Globe and Mail thinks it has an article about the Conservatives looking for "ways to cut gas prices". But it doesn't. In fact, if you read the article there's nothing tangible about plans to cut gas prices whatsoever:
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National Post | Editorial: Election Canada's double standard
-- The federal Conservatives are accused of having shuffled $1-million between national headquarters and local candidates in the last federal election, allegedly as part of a plan to boost the amount of TV advertising the party could buy. It's a story that has gotten plenty of play, especially in Ottawa.
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National Post | Olmert's rivals jostle for Israel's leadership
-- JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's rivals jostled for Israel's leadership on Thursday after his decision to resign but aides said he could remain in office long enough to forge a statehood deal with the Palestinians.
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National Post | France-Quebec deal example of good federalism, Tories say
-- LEVIS, Que. -- The Harper government is citing a proposed labour deal between Quebec and France as an example of its policy of non-interference in provincial matters.
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SAINT-AGAPIT, Que. -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Wednesday dared the Liberal opposition to defeat his government and precipitate an election in which the Grits' proposed carbon tax would be the defining issue.
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I don't know who Brodie Fenlon is. Never met him but his article today in the Globe has me gasping for breath.
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Popularity: 26% [?] [...more]
LEVIS, Que. -- Defence Minister Peter MacKay says Canada will lease six to eight Russian-built helicopters to ferry troops around the battlefield in Afghanistan until it can purchase new U.S. aircraft.He describes it as a stopgap measure.
Securing helicopter transport to get soldiers off the bomb-laced roads of Kandahar was a principal condition when Parliament extended the combat mission until 2011.
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LÉVIS, Que. — The Conservative Party will look over the next two days for ways to bring down the price of gas even though there is no room for major tax cuts, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said.
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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday that he has decided not to contend in the Kadima primary election and would resign as soon as the new party leader was chosen, due to the criminal investigations that have embroiled him in recent months.
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When adventurer Steve Fossett seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth last September, his many admirers couldn’t quite believe he had perished on something as mundane as a joyride in a light aircraft above the Nevada desert in the U.S.
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Around 1.7million families will sink into negative equity within the next year, a shocking report warned today.
In a blow for homeowners, it said Britain's housing market meltdown is going to be 'more severe' than the last housing crash.
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Provincial teacher contract bargaining is proving to be far less successful this time around compared to the last one.
Indeed, the drop out of yet another teacher union sets the scene for potential school labour strife as kids head back to school in September.
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A U.S. federal judge will soon decide whether to throw out a guilty verdict against Jeffrey Arenburg, the schizophrenic killer who, in May, was convicted of assaulting a Buffalo border guard.
David Jay, who was Mr. Arenburg's standby counsel while he represented himself in the assault trial, says Mr. Arenburg was unfit to represent himself.
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The sharp drop in energy prices since the beginning of the month is turning into a rare bright spot in a bleak economic landscape.
For the moment, at least, fears of a prolonged energy shock seem to have subsided a bit.
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LEVIS, Que. -- Maxime Bernier admitted Wednesday that dealing with the scandal that cost him his job as Canada's foreign minister was "very hard in the beginning," but he declared the "page has been turned."
Mr. Bernier was swarmed by reporters as he arrived here to participate in his first national caucus meeting since his resignation in May.
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ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) -- Turkey's Constitutional Court has rejected a proposed ban on the country's Islamic-rooted ruling party -- the Justice and Development Party, or AKP -- for alleged anti-secularist activities, the leader of the court said Wednesday.
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