Jack’s Newswatch

Barack Obama called for House passage of the cap and trade tax bill last Friday by calling it a jobs bill. The bill is designed to raise the price of energy in the U.S. so much that it will reduce the use of fossil fuels by 17% by 2020 and by 83% by 2050. Sentencing [...]

MEMRAMCOOK, N.B. — Friends and colleagues of Romeo LeBlanc hailed him as an unsung hero and a champion of the Acadian people as he was laid to rest in his hometown Friday morning.
A state funeral is underway in the small farming community of Memramcook for the first Acadian to be named governor general.
His longtime friend, [...]

THE multi-billion dollar global football sector has become a vehicle for money laundering and other forms of corruption, requiring an international response, a study says.
“Money laundering through the football sector is revealed to be deeper and more complex than previously understood,” said the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body formed to fight money [...]

In San Luis Obispo County, a 20-year-old drug abuser who was the sole caretaker for his seriously disabled father provided such poor care that, according to the grand jury in that county, the father frequently had bedsores, he was not properly cleaned, adult protective services had to be called in and, ultimately, he died before [...]

OTTAWA — Immigration to Canada would need to more than double from current levels, surpassing 600,000 a year, to offset the drag on living standards from an ageing population — a scenario that is “unrealistic,” a prominent think-tank warns in an analysis.
As a result, policymakers need to focus on potentially controversial initiatives that would delay [...]

GARMSIR, Afghanistan — U.S. Marines are in a “hell of a fight” as they storm into Taliban strongholds in a major assault in Afghanistan, their commanding officer said Friday.
Nearly 4,000 Marines launched the operation Thursday in parts of the southern province of Helmand, suffering their first fatality in a pivotal test of President Barack Obama’s [...]

The shouting, swearing and even name-calling at a high-profile Senate committee have rendered it a dysfunctional, public spectacle on Parliament Hill, senators have told CBC News.
And after videos of a meeting of the committee on national security and defence were posted on YouTube, it has reached a new level of notoriety.
The committee’s mandate is to [...]

The U.S. economy has lost the equivalent of every job created in the past nine years.
All job growth since the final year of the dot-com bubble, its recovery from the bust, and the ensuing six years of consumer-driven boom is now gone, leading some economists to fear an outright decline in wages will be next. [...]

“When the country I was born in shames me with its colonial mindset, I refuse to celebrate it, and will not apologize for refusing to do so”
– Former Canadian Arab Federation VP Omar Shaban
He still seems to hate this country.
But Omar Shaban won’t be leaving anytime soon.
“I still have to finish my school,” he said [...]

Liberal leader says Tories’ personal attacks pit Canadian against each other
By Chinta Puxley – 2 hours ago
WINNIPEG — Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is accusing the Tories of dividing Canadians through personal attacks on his patriotism and by dredging up controversial remarks about Ukrainians made 15 years ago.
During a stop in Winnipeg Thursday - part of [...]

The Longest Year
RCMP Corp. Cameron McFarlane’s year spent training local police officers in Afghanistan was filled with hope, tragedy and the constant threat of danger.
So when the veteran Mountie emerged through the arrival gates at Pearson International Airport after a long flight home from Kandahar yesterday, he realized just how fortunate he was to be [...]

HERAT, Afghanistan — Students at Afghanistan’s Herat University thought they were living in new era of openness, one in which the right to criticize authority was increasing.
Last week, however, officials at the Iranian consulate in Herat, near the Iranian border, complained to the Afghan Ministry of Culture that the student newspaper, Pegah, was inappropriately critical [...]

Airbus is expected to face calls to ground its worldwide fleet of long-range airliners tomorrow when French accident investigators issue their first account of what caused Air France Flight 447 to crash off Brazil on June 1.
It is believed that the accident bureau will report that stormy weather was a factor but faulty speed data [...]

Editor’s note: Leah Ward Sears stepped down this week as Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. In 1992, she became the first woman — and youngest person — appointed to Georgia’s highest court.
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — After Tommy’s sudden death, we found among my brother’s personal effects a questionnaire he had completed in 2005 [...]

The governor of California has declared a fiscal emergency in the US state to address a budget deficit of some $24.3bn (£14.5bn).
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also ordered many state offices to close for three days each month until June 2010, with staff unpaid for those days.
California has been one of the US states hardest hit by [...]