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OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to sit next to Chantal Kreviazuk, Wolfmother and Spearhead - in your iPod. The prime minister tops the list of most-downloaded podcasts at the online iTunes music store, Apple's massively popular music download site. Every Harper speech since the April 4 speech from the throne can be downloaded for free. While the speeches are available on the Tory party's website, putting them on iTunes has given them much wider exposure and triggered a slight tremor through cyberspace. "If this is the future, get me back to the past!" wrote Alberta Bill, on the...

New York The Clinton Global Initiative wrapped up on Saturday bringing in over $1.25 billion in pledges. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Chris Tucker, Barbra Streisand, Leonardo DiCaprio, astronaut John Glenn, and Mark Rich’s ex-wife, song writer, Denise Rich, participated among the “global leaders” who joined former President Bill Clinton to combat “some of the world’s most pressing problems.” The former President told the packed ballroom on the first day of his three-day “nonpartisan” conference this is “more than business as usual.” Issues on the CGI’s docket include reducing poverty, religion, fighting diseases, and combating environmental issues. Bill Clinton's premise is...

TORONTO (CP) - Dealing with the United States in trade disputes has been "a very painful experience" for Canada in recent years, federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said Monday. Goodale, speaking at the annual conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, said Canada has been treated unfairly by the U.S. in disputes over such goods as wheat, beef and softwood lumber. The minister said he was "very disturbed" by the American response to a recent NAFTA panel ruling on the softwood lumber dispute that he called "absolutely clear cut and without equivocation in Canada's favour." Earlier this month, the...

Lennon on Live 8 A timely excerpt from David Sheff's September 1980 Playboy interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Sheff: Just to finish your favorite subject [the Beatles], what about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit? Lennon: I don't want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death. Sheff: Why? Lennon: Because they're always rip-offs. I haven't performed for personal gain since 1966, when the Beatles last performed. Every concert since then, Yoko and...

The question that haunts the federal inquiry into Maher Arar's torture nightmare in Syria is whether Canada was behind it all. Did Canadian officials make it known to the United States that everyone would be better off if Mr. Arar, a citizen of Canada, were dispatched to his Syrian birthplace rather than sent back home to Ottawa? Paul Cellucci, then the U.S. ambassador to Canada, was unequivocal in a letter he wrote to this newspaper, published last Canada Day, correcting what he said was an error in an editorial. "I have never said or implied that 'Canadian security officials gave...

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! — Allen Ginsberg, Howl, Collected Poems 1947-1980 Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it. — J. Paul Getty, quoted by Robert Lenzner, The Great Getty In one way, an oil boom is a mighty bad thing, because it gets into your blood and almost becomes an obsession. Booms are filled with excitement, adventure, and drama, but sometimes the exit from the scene must be made between suns on a pair of mighty weary feet — Sue Sanders, U.S. oil producer, Our...

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM,Two groups of foreign Jewish investors had secretly purchased two large properties run by the Greek Orthodox Church in the holy city of Al-Quds, a leading Israeli newspaper revealed on Friday, March 18. The revelation has raised alarm bells on Jewish attempts to control the occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem), where holy Islamic and Christian sites are based. It is made a few days after Jewish extremists threatened to strike Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine also located in Al-Quds. In a one-page article titled "Omar Square in our hands", the Maariv daily said a number of overseas Jewish investors paid...

Vancouver — A day after he was acquitted of the worst mass murder in Canada's history, Vancouver businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik is once again dealing with the police. However this time, he is the victim of crime. Five men broke into his downtown clothing business early yesterday morning. A surveillance camera at the business caught the men on tape and the security system registered when they came in and when they left. A fire broke out before 6 a.m. yesterday. Vancouver police, who seized the surveillance tapes, indicated the men were "street people," Mr. Malik's son Jaspreet said yesterday in...

work to do to see it fully put into effect, Ahern said. "A number of recent incidents involving paramilitary activity and criminality - including the brutal murder of Robert McCartney on the 30th of January - would suggest that some people have yet to fully embrace the agreement's requirements for peace and democracy," Ahern said. "The issues of paramilitary capability and activity, including all forms of criminality, will have to be conclusively dealt with if there's to be any prospect of restoring partnership government in Northern Ireland," he said. "For our part, my government will continue to make every effort...

As France tries to pressure the rest of the EU into lifting the arms embargo on China, some readers might remember that Christine Deviers-Joncour -- the erstwhile mistress of former French foreign minister Roland Dumas whose tell-all books played a serious role in clarifying details of the scandal surrounding the kickbacks involved in Taiwan's purchase of Lafayette frigates in the early 1990s -- once wrote a book about herself called The Whore of the Republic. The former lingerie model's right to this title is now under severe challenge from France's Defense Minster Michele Alliot-Marie, who last week said -- and...

JEDDAH, — A terrorist group has published a do-it-yourself plan to make a dirty bomb on its Internet site. Named Alma’sadah Al-Jihadiah, the site is run by a group whose aim is to promote and propagate terror activities in the region. A member of the group, calling himself Abu Al-Harith Al-Sawahiri the Mujahid Sheikh, provides a step-by-step instruction of making a dirty bomb, starting from tear gas canisters to higher-grade bombs, including those using uranium, on the site. The member, whose expertise veers toward chemical warfare, shows a marked emphasis in making gas bombs. He introduces the subject by naming...

BAGHDAD (IslamOnline.net) – The Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (Jama`) has urged all its members to remain committed to the Front's guidelines in fighting the US-led occupation, chiefly avoiding the use of bobby-trapped cars inside the cities, the slaughter of hostages and the killing of any Iraqi. Sources close the Front revealed to IslamOnline.net that Jama` has issued a statement early March to distance itself from people shown lately on Iraqi satellite and ground TV stations confessing membership in armed groups involved in carrying out attacks against Iraqi police and army troops and in slaying “collaborators” with the occupation....

Toronto — The military's intelligence arm has warned the federal government that avian influenza could be used as a weapon of bioterrorism, a heavily censored report suggests. It also reveals that military planners believe a naturally occurring flu pandemic may be imminent. The report, entitled Recent Human Outbreaks of Avian Influenza and Potential Biological Warfare Implications, was obtained under the Access to Information Act by The Canadian Press. It was prepared by the J2 Directorate of Strategic Intelligence, a secretive branch of National Defence charged with producing intelligence for the government. The report outlines in broad terms the methods that...

SANAA, — Yemen is planning to host talks between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mishal, a political leader of the Hamas movement on negotiations with Israel, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said yesterday. “We expect Mahmoud Abbas to arrive here in the coming weeks with Khaled Mishal of Hamas to bringing closer the viewpoints of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority,” Saleh said. Saleh made the remarks during talks with the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who concluded a two-day visit to Yemen yesterday. The Yemeni leader expressed support to Abbas in his efforts to bring together the Palestinian factions to...

WASHINGTON -- In the fall, former prime minister Jean Chrétien slipped into Ashkhabad, capital of one of the world's most repressive and authoritarian regimes, for a meeting with Turkmenistan's president for life, Saparmurat Niyazov. Mr. Chrétien met for close to an hour with the onetime Communist strongman who prefers to be known as Turkmenbashi the Great, leader of a personality cult so extensive that statues of his likeness dot the capital and the months of the year have been renamed in honour of him and his family. Mr. Chrétien, in his new role as counsel for the Calgary law firm...

EdmontonThe relentless rise in oil and gas prices has ensured Alberta is on track to record a $4.3-billion surplus – more than 10 times what the government forecast last spring. There is also record spending to go with it. In a third-quarter fiscal update released Monday, Finance Minister Shirley McClellan said higher–than-expected energy prices pushed the resource revenue forecast for the 2004-05 fiscal year to $9.6-billion. That's up slightly from the second-quarter estimate but fully double the figure listed in the spring budget. Last spring, the government estimated the benchmark price of West Texas Intermediate crude at $26 (U.S.) a...

After more than five centuries, Muslims of Al-Andalus (now Spain) still mark every year in anguish the mass exodus of their ancestors by Spanish authorities to North Africa. The Moriscos, the name given to Muslims who were living in Spain after the fall of the last Muslim stronghold of Granada in 1492, were subjected to an array of persecution, torture, mass killings, forced conversions to Christianity, the notorious Spanish Inquisition and mass exodus that started in February 1502. Today, up to four million grandsons of the Moriscos are living in North African countries like Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. “They used...

The hoary adage that "there are none so blind as those who will not see" should be carved in stone at the National Press Club in Washington. Surely there can be no better motto for the cozy clubhouse of America's media mavens, who seem preternaturally incapable of recognizing the truth -- even when it stands before them, monstrous and unavoidable, like a giant Cyclops smeared with blood. For just as they botched the most important story of our time -- the Bush Administration's transparently deceptive campaign to launch a war of aggression against Iraq -- the clubby mavens are now...

Canadian lumber producers had paid $4.1 billion in softwood duties to the end of 2004. Softwood conflict could cost consumers. "This is a big deal. Ottawa is going to retaliate to collect the entire amount of the duties," Cameron said. "It's hard to say where this is going to go now." Cameron applauded both the provincial and federal governments for finally recognizing American intransigence over the softwood issue for what it is: a blow aimed directly at the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA dispute settlement panels have already determined that Canadian lumber imports do not injure the U.S. industry,...

A US university in Wisconsin has blocked an attempt by Republican students to raise money for a group called Adopt a Sniper. The group raises money for US sharp-shooters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Students were selling bracelets bearing the motto: "1 Shot 1 Kill No Remorse I Decide". "Clearly the rhetoric of that organisation raised some questions and we had some strong objections as a Jesuit university," Marquette University school spokeswoman Brigid O'Brien said on Thursday. The students, representing a group called College Republicans, originally got permission to set up a table at the student union to raise money for...