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Here's a primer designed to answer the biggest questions TV viewers may have about watching the Games. Q: What networks in the United States will carry the games? A: NBC is the only network. It paid $820 million for the right to carry the Games — it has broadcast every Olympics, summer or winter, since 1984. But action won't be limited to just NBC, whose local affiliate is KING-TV (Channel 5). Other stations in its empire — MSNBC, CNBC, USA and Universal HD — will also take part. Further coverage will air on its new Universal Sports Channel (115 on...

TORONTO -- The commander of Canada's largest Air Force base, who once flew dignitaries around the country, has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of two women Ontario Provincial Police Det. Insp. Chris Nicholas said Monday that Col. Russell Williams, 46, was also charged in the sexual assaults of two other women. Williams was arrested Sunday in Ottawa. The charges left Canada's military in a state of shock.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP)—Cypress Mountain passed a major test Monday, as freestyle skiers completed their first pre-Olympic practice sessions and Winter Olympic organizers kept dumping snow on competition courses in unseasonably warm weather. “It’s absolutely fine,” World Cup champion Hannah Kearney said after her training runs. “It’s as if there was no problem.” Trucks and helicopters still were dumping snow onto the mountain in an effort to get the Olympic venues ready for the Vancouver Games, which open Friday.

If you don't know why this is funny, I'm not going to bother explaining it to you. If you don't recognize any of the characters (one character in particular, but you know what I mean) in the lineup of what this Polish newspaper (not Norwegian, as was previously reported) thought were Olympic mascots, then you very likely don't know why this picture is funny, and that's OK. Not every joke can be obvious. Might I suggest Jay Leno's comedy if you're feeling curiously left out of the joke here? He has this hilarious bit called "Headlines", and you're totally going...

Col. Russell Williams, a high-ranking Canadian military commander who has met with senior Canadian politicians and been quoted extensively about the war in Afghanistan and the earthquake in Haiti, is facing first-degree murder charges in the deaths of two women from eastern Ontario. Williams, of Tweed, Ont., and the 8 Wing Commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, was arrested Sunday in Ottawa and has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Jessica Lloyd, 27, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 38. In addition to the murder charges, Williams faces counts of forcible confinement, breaking and entering, and sexual assault in...

Col. Russell Williams was an up-and-coming air force officer who seemed to be on the right track for promotion to the senior ranks of the Canadian Forces. He was a graduate of the military's command and staff course and had recently completed French training in Gatineau before being given command of 8 Wing at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Ont. In January, Williams proudly showed Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Chief of the Defence Staff General Walter Natynczyk around Trenton as military crews readied aircraft for the Haiti relief mission. But on Sunday, Williams, 46, was arrested in Ottawa and charged...

Organisers of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver were today stubbornly refusing to consider a last-minute venue change after an unseasonably warm weather front put the competition under threat. With just four days until the Games' opening ceremonies, the Canadian city still has not seen any snow. Ironically, parts of neighbouring America have been buried under a two-foot blanket of snow after the worst blizzard in 90 years.

2/8/2010 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFNS) -- To any other member of the 965th Expeditionary Airborne Air Control Squadron, the five Canadian airmen who work with them are a part of the team. And that's just the way they like it. Each day the five Canadians work together as part of a crew on an E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft supporting missions in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility from an air base in Southwest Asia. Their presence with the 965th EAACS; however, is part of an international partnership between the United States and Canada -- known...

BELLEVILLE, Ont. — Ontario police have charged the senior officer at CFB Trenton in south-eastern Ontario with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jessica Lloyd and a second Ontario woman, Marie France Comeau. Wing commander Col. Russell Williams, 46, was arrested Sunday and is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Lloyd, 27. She was reported missing Jan. 29, after she didn't show up for work. Lloyd last communicated with a family friend on Jan. 28 at 10:36 p.m. through text messaging. Helicopter and ground searches near her Belleville home, about 180 kilometres northeast of Toronto, turned up nothing....

CASR CanadianAmerican StrategicReview -CanadianDefence Policy,Foreign Policy,& Canada-USRelations-   Editorials   Afghanistan   CASR Home Afghan Mission  –   New US Troops  –  Kandahar City  –  NATO~ISAF  –  February  2010 Task  Force  Kandahar  –  Troops  from  Canada  and  America Deployed  in  a  ' Super  Brigade '  to  Defend  Kandahar  Area Edited  excerpts  from  article  in  the Victoria  Times - Colonist ,  29  January  2010      [1]  The Canadian commander of  Task  Force Kandahar,  Brig.-Gen. Daniel  Ménard will soon have almost 6000  Canadian  and  American  troops  under  his command. Gen. Ménard  did not say exactly where the new  US  troops  would  be  deployed,  but...

One of the most common questions I get from readers these days is why are the Canadian media ignoring the growing global controversy over the credibility of climate change research and in particular, of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? For example, unless you read the international press, especially the mainstream U.K. newspapers such as The Times, Telegraph and Guardian, you probably haven’t heard much about any of the following controversies in recent days. (1) John Sauven, director of Greenpeace U.K., until now one of the strongest allies of IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri, has called for Pachauri’s resignation,...

IQALUIT, Nunavut - The Group of Seven finance ministers emerged from a two-day meeting in the Far North saying they are determined to make financial institutions bear the cost of crises they cause. The G7 ministers also expressed confidence a global economic recovery is underway, although they cautioned it was still too fragile for governments to start withdrawing stimulus spending. The meeting in Nunavut's remote capital was unusual in that it did not produce a formal communique. And for its locale - a treeless landscape about 300 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle that offered none of the accoutrements the...

What's the first thing you think of when you see all those poor Haitian kids?By Ezra Levant on February 2, 2010 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (48)Stephen Harper's reactionSend food, medicine and relief workers. Be amongst the first in the world to help. Dispatch our disaster response team within hours of the earthquake. Save every child you can. Make a personal example of donating, encourage other Canadians to donate, and match those private donations. Host an international Haiti relief conference. Pledge to make the upcoming G8 meeting about helping the world's poor, especially moms with infants, by funding "clean...

Last week, I was invited by a student group at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., to speak on the issue of abortion. What you think of the issue is up to you — we live in a free society where difference of opinion is respected. Or at least is supposed to be. The organizers of the event were obliged to hire security guards after threats were made. These were taken seriously as pro-life speakers have been shouted down, meetings broken up and people assaulted several times in recent years. All that happened this time was a dozen people stood up...

IQALUIT, Canada (Reuters) - Europe's deepening debt crisis leapt to the top of the agenda of a meeting of G7 finance leaders in the Canadian Arctic on Friday amid fears that Greece's fiscal sickness was already infecting its peers. Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, host of the top-level meeting, said officials from the seven rich industrialized countries had already started talking about Europe's problems, and there was particular concern about the situation in Greece. "I think we have to be very mindful of the potential failure of domestic economies and of the persistence of some toxic assets in some banks,"...

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, scientists said on Friday in giving their early findings from the biggest-ever study of Canada's changing north. The research project involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries who collectively spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle. It marked the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada's high Arctic for an entire winter. "(Climate change) is happening much faster than our most pessimistic models expected," said David Barber, a...

A landmark U.S. study that examines the "potentially enormous" global storehouse of methane hydrate -- an icebound form of natural gas found largely in Arctic perma frost and seabed deposits -- has highlighted a Canadian site as one of the world's most important sources of the powerful but elusive fuel. The report, released this week by the U.S. National Research Council, summarizes the promising research conducted over the past three years at the Mallik methane hydrate site in the Mackenzie Delta near Inuvik, N.W.T., about 1,200 kilometres north of Whitehorse. While the full results of the experimental tapping of the...

Canada is rolling out the welcome mat in the Arctic for the world's top finance officials this weekend, but its unusual choice of venue has fuelled debate on whether the Group of Seven rich nations is relevant today. At a time when extra clout for emerging powers like China has put the G7's future in question, Ottawa's decision to host finance ministers and central bank governors in Iqaluit, a frostbitten outpost some 300 kilo-metres south of the Arctic Circle, is not helping matters. "With all due respect, the Canadians are crazy to organize it in a place like that," said...

(IsraelNN.com) Two Jewish students at Toronto's York University were assaulted on Monday during pro-Israel activity. Eyewitness Tyler Golden, Co-President of Hasbara Fellowships at York University, told the Shalom Life website: “Hasbara was tabling for Gilad Shalit. We run a campaign called Free Palestinians from Hamas. It was a very peaceful day and we had permission from the university to table. At around 4 o’clock, several known anti-Israel faces on campus came to start questioning us and debate with us.”

IT'S a symbol of Australia's fighting spirit. Now the Boxing Kangaroo is at the centre of an international incident, with the International Olympic Committee ordering it taken down from the Winter Games athletes' village in Vancouver. It can be revealed that IOC officials ordered the green and gold flag be removed just 24 hours after it was draped over a balcony - because it was deemed to be "too commercial". But the Aussies are defying the IOC order and are determined to keep the flag flying. "Someone from the IOC is objecting because it's our team mascot," an Australian source...

KELOWNA, B.C., February 4, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Kelowna local television station that drew national coverage this week after agreeing to air a pro-life ad has changed its mind, claiming that the ad is too graphic, reports Kelowna.com.The ad was sponsored by Kelowna Right to Life (KRL), who got the news of its cancellation yesterday.  “The overarching reason is because the image is inappropriate for TV and is too graphic in nature,” Marlon Bartram, KRL's executive director, told Kelowna.com.However, he said, “One of the fundamental purposes of media is to identify truth and show truth.  When they fail to...

One of the world's most recognizable political figures is coming to Calgary. Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential running mate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, has decided to make her first Canadian public appearance, since leaving office, in this city on March 6, the Herald has learned.

At sunset a convoy of Canadian Light Armored Vehicles over-watches the area near Khadan Village, Afghanistan, Jan. 25. (22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment Photo by Staff Sgt. Christine Jones) 22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment Photo by Staff Sgt. Christine Jones KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - On Jan. 26, Afghan National Police and Canadian Forces took part in Operation Tazi, the first of many future operations, partnering with the ANP in the village of Khadan, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. "The ANP are taking the lead on this, we are going to ask permission. 'Hello, we are conducting a security operation, can we search this...

Health Care: A Canadian premier, Danny Williams, said Tuesday he was headed for the U.S. for heart surgery. That's a bit ironic, given that Democrats hail Canada-care as a model for the U.S. and call our system "broken." The provincial governor of Newfoundland and Labrador didn't seem to think so when his deputy, Kathy Dunderdale, told the National Post: "He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done." She didn't disclose exactly where, but she assured Canadians that his prognosis was excellent and she'd fill in for him during his three- to 12-week...

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States. CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week. The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a routine procedure. Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale is scheduled to hold a news conference Tuesday morning. She's expected to provide more details about Williams's condition, as well as how the provincial government will function during his absence. CBC reporter...

A pounding at the door the other morning; my windows rattled. I was upstairs at work. I don't always leave my desk to hear the good news about Jehovah. The pounder was insistent. I went down, if only for the sake of the windows. Oh, jeeze, the cops. Officers Firth and Kozar in attendance. "What's up, boys?" My preference was to talk to them through the plate glass door. They wanted to come inside. Not a chance. I stepped onto the porch. Who wants two armed strangers in his house, and anyway it was a nice morning. Officer K. said,...

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States. Mr. Williams, 59, has said nothing of his health in the media. The premier's press secretary confirmed the report Monday evening. Deputy premier Kathy Dunderdale confirmed the treatment at a news conference Tuesday, but would not reveal the location of the operation or how it would be paid for.

In the fight against climate change, doing nothing may yet become an option for Canada. With damning e-mails and fictional predictions suggesting evidence of humans warming the planet is built on research that wouldn't support a high school science fair project, the naysayers are in joyful celebration and the righteously green are gloomily indignant. There exists in this government, perhaps in large numbers, MPs who quietly question the need to impose any emission reductions at all in the aftermath of the unimaginatively christened Climategate and those bogus warnings of imminent glacial meltdowns. Still, this government is behind the push for...

News of a higher price tag than expected and competition from other gas supplies are growing skepticism among state legislators that TransCanada Corp. can deliver on the long-awaited natural gas pipeline to the Lower 48. "Can anyone afford to spend $41 billion and find a way to pay for that investment when natural gas is so cheap?" said Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican. "I think we all have to question that and wonder how it's going. ... There's reason to be concerned, reason to be fearful of what the future is for Alaska." That was the environment faced...

Details are expected Tuesday about the condition of Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams, who left the province Monday to travel to the United States to undergo heart surgery.

A Toronto man who filed a human rights complaint alleging he was turned down by the Canadian Forces Reserves because he is a “black African Muslim� has had his case thrown out by a high court. Abdur-Rashid Balogun applied to be a Reserves officer in February 2001 and filed a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission after waiting three years for a response. Balogun alleged “difficulties and delays� in the application process were because of discrimination “based on his race, religion and national/ethnic origin,� the decision from a Federal Court of Appeal shows. The complaint was handled by a...

Competitiveness: The latest index of economic freedom shows America falling fast, being ranked for the first time as "mostly free." We've fallen behind Canada, and it's look out below. Our accelerating descent into a command-and-control economy with government pulling the strings is taking its toll. The Heritage Foundation's 2010 index of leading economic indicators shows that the land of the free is only mostly free, falling to eighth in the world from sixth last year, now sandwiched between Canada and Denmark. That Canada, long considered a bastion of socialized medicine, is ranked as economically freer may surprise some. But our...

The state of our Union is mostly free. This may shock citizens who call America the “Land of the Free.” Alas, as the Heritage Foundation demonstrates, Washington has transformed Francis Scott Key’s timeless truths into mere lyrics. In conjunction with the Wall Street Journal, Heritage’s 16th annual Index of Economic Freedom ranks 179 of Earth’s nations on 10 factors including fiscal discipline, free trade, labor freedom, and corruption. By these measures, America is not No. 1. If economic freedom were an event at Vancouver’s Winter Olympics, America would not earn even a bronze medal. In fact, the U.S. fell from...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canada's top envoy in Afghanistan warns wooing the Taliban could backfire on coalition forces if peaceful Afghans feel put out. William Crosbie, Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan, told reporters Sunday the gesture is pointless if others perceive the Taliban as being favoured. A scheme to lure moderate militants from the insurgency's more radical elements emerged from a recent international conference in London. The plan involves paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to low-and mid-level Talibs in the hopes they'll defect. Jobs and vocational training to militants who lay down their arms would also be offered under the...

TransCanada Corp and partner Exxon Mobil Corp boosted their cost estimates for a planned line to carry Alaska gas to southern markets by up to 58 per cent on Friday, as the two ready plans to sign up shippers on the massive project. The companies said the cost of the 2,700-kilometer line carrying at least 4.5 billion cubic feet of gas daily from the North Slope to Alberta will range between $32 billion and $41 billion, up from a previous $26 billion forecast. A smaller line, running from the gas fields of Alaska's North Slope to a liquefied natural gas...

In an ironic twist, a protester from the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was pied in Newfoundland on Friday...

Shariah-compliant mortgage banking, in accordance with Islamic religious law, may soon become a reality in Canada, according to a report published Wednesday by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The law firm Gowling, Lafleur Henderson LLP, which prepared the report, said it found no legal obstacle to the practice. It added that “given the growth of Islamic financing internationally, it can be expected that international harmonization of IF accounting and reporting... will occur in due course.”

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee. Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a...

VANCOUVER – A free-speech group allied with Holocaust deniers, women's advocates and fundamentalist Mormons are among those looking to have their say at a B.C. trial that will determine the constitutionality of Canada's anti-polygamy law. They are seeking intervener status in the case, which would let them and the others call evidence and question witnesses during the B.C. Supreme Court trial. In October, B.C. Attorney General Mike de Jong asked the B.C. Supreme Court to clarify the controversial anti-polygamy law, and rule on whether it violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A date for the trial has not been...

TORONTO, Canada (AP) -- Canada's Supreme Court ruled Friday that it will not force the government to seek the repatriation of the youngest detainee held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has steadfastly refused to request the return of Canadian-born Omar Khadr, the last Western detainee held at the prison at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. Harper has said the U.S. legal process must be allowed to play itself out. The Supreme Court ruling Friday overturns a lower court ruling that ordered the Canadian government to seek Khadr's return. The top court's nine judges...

OTTAWA -- The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to order the Harper government to seek Omar Khadr's repatriation from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a unanimous ruling Friday, the court said that Mr. Khadr's constitutional rights were violated, but concluded that it would intrude on the government power over foreign relations to force officials to ask the U.S. to send the accused terrorist home. "The appropriate remedy in this case is to declare that Khadr's charter rights were violated, leaving it to the government to decide how to best decide in light of current information, its responsibility over foreign affairs...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper took to the world stage yesterday to strongly reject the type of proposals from Washington and elsewhere on how to regulate banks, suggesting they can be "excessive" and "arbitrary" and would not find their way into Canada. The remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, illustrate the great divide among the world's leading economies on how to reform the financial system in the aftermath of the credit crisis. They also threaten to blow up a landmark agreement among the major Group of 20 economies to act in unison in implementing a common set of...

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and North West Upgrading will submit a joint proposal to the Alberta government to build an upgrader northeast of Edmonton, the companies announced Thursday. The facility near Redwater would process 50,000 barrels per day of bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands, with the potential to be expanded in two phases to handle a total of 150,000 bpd. The two Calgary-based companies have struck a joint ownership agreement, with privately owned NWU as operator. It’s the first project under Alberta’s BRIK (bitumen royalty in kind) program, which is designed to promote construction of upgraders in Alberta. BRIK allows companies...

Paging Dr. Suzuki! Al Gore, Barack Obama, Stephen Harper, Jim Prentice, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe, Elizabeth May, Dalton McGuinty, Jean Charest, Gordon Campell, Greenpeace, the editorial boards of the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and everyone at the CBC, except Rex Murphy, please call your offices! Warning ... warning — the debate over global warming isn’t over and a scientific consensus has not been achieved! Emergency ... emergency — it is no longer possible to smear anyone who questions the politically correct orthodoxy on anthropogenic climate change as a lackey of Big Oil! From Wednesday’s Times in the...

EDMONTON, Alberta, January 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Baby Isaiah May has been granted at least another three weeks of life, after an Alberta provincial court ruled that he should remain on life support until February 19th while lawyers have him assessed by medical experts.Isaiah was born to Isaac and Rebecka May on October 24th.  During a long and arduous labour, Isaiah suffered severe oxygen deprivation because his umbilical was wrapped around his neck.  The Mays were flown into Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton, where he has been ever since.The Mays have cared for Isaiah at the hospital, and say...

Shell Canada Products plans to halt operation of its 130,000-b/d Montreal East refinery and to convert the facility into a terminal for gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel. In a press statement Shell said the refinery “no longer fits with Shell’s long-term strategy.” Shell opened the refinery in March 1933 as a 5,000-b/d topping plant. According to Oil & Gas Journal’s latest Worldwide Refining report, the Montreal East refinery’s processing capacities include 14,610 b/cd of visbreaking, 27,900 b/d of fluid catalytic cracking, 20,910 b/d of semiregenerative catalytic reforming, 14,100 b/d of hydrocracking for distillate upgrading, 49,500 b/d of catalytic hydrotreating for...

A small Alberta energy company sitting on a rich bitumen deposit south of Fort McMurray is hoping to break the mould -- and not begin routine in situ production. Excelsior Energy believes it has a better idea: a method that will recover 65 per cent of the frozen molasses-like oil, about twice the recovery rate of the industry standard -- steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). And even better, Excelsior's method will use virtually no water, and just 20 per cent of the energy needed by its SAGD neighbours. "We think combustion overhead gravity drainage (COGD) is an evolution for this business,...

OTTAWA — An incident in which the federal fisheries minister was hit with a pie by a seal hunt protester should be seen as a terrorist act, says a Liberal MP. Gerry Byrne made the comment to Newfoundland radio station VOCM after Gail Shea was hit in the face Monday by an American animal-rights activist, unhappy with Canada's seal hunt. New York City resident Emily McCoy, 37, a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is charged with assault.

OTTAWA -- The Canadian government is not about to impose new taxes on financial institutions or set limits on executive compensation, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Wednesday. Ottawa says such measures are not necessary because Canada has not suffered the same kind of turmoil as other nations. "We are not about to impose new taxes on financial institutions in this country. We are not about to impose limits or terms on executive compensation at financial institutions in Canada," Mr. Flaherty told a news conference.

CASR CanadianAmerican StrategicReview -CanadianDefence Policy,Foreign Policy,& Canada-USRelations-   Editorials &Opinions   2005 EditorialDART - Sri Lanka   CASR Home Disaster Assistance Response Team  –  CASR Op-Ed  –  14 January 2010 Haitian Earthquake & Canada's Disaster Assistance Response TeamDART's label misleads us about the true strenths of this military unit Dianne DeMille,  CASR Editor – Op-Ed column at the invitation of the The Ottawa Citizen The Limits of DART In the aftermath of any major catastrophe, the Canadian Forces Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) is put on alert and begins preparing for potential deployment. With the scale of earthquake damage...