European Union scraps sanctions against Cuba, defies United States

By Ingrid Melander and David Brunnstrom
Reuters

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union states agreed on Thursday to scrap sanctions against Cuba in a move aimed at encouraging democratic reforms on the Communist island, officials said. The lifting, agreed despite U.S. calls for the world to remain tough on Havana, will pave the way for a new dialogue with Cuba but come with calls that it address human rights concerns and free political prisoners. — 542 words.
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"News is what (certain) people want to keep hidden. Everything else is just publicity."
PBS journalist Bill Moyers.

Your support makes it possible for True North to clear the fog of "publicity" and keep you informed on what's really happening in the world today. Please send your donation to:

Or quick and easy and perfectly safe, via Pay Pal. No donation is too small.
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True North No Gas Fridays
Don't be shy! Just don't buy!

Join True North No Gas Fridays and hit back at Big Oil price gouging. When enough drivers make the point that they're mad as hell and won't take it anymore Governments will act. You can count on it. Protect yourself with True North No Gas Fridays.
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Take care, beware, don't go near that thing on Friday . . . theres a gouger lurking, with a very greedy eye on your hard-earned money.
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Editor’s Notes

Friday, June 20, 2008

This edition we offer the usual feast for thought
but have had to postpone some important features

The process of streamlining the production of True North Perspective so that we can meet our Friday deadlines has slowed us down. A result is that missing from the lineup today are The Book End and Reflections by our most famous correspondent, Fidel Castro. These will be back with us with the proverbial bells on next Friday stronger and better than ever. — 561 words.
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Op-Ed

Recalls United Church apology in Sudbury in 1986

Apology to First Nations remind us that ritual prayers
must be take taken seriously as basis for all legislation

By The Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan

The native apology given by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on behalf of the people of Canada has made us all conscious of the terrible injustices to which our aboriginal people have been subjected. By this sick system native people have lost culture, language and religion. Untold amount of personal wounds have been inflicted. — 752 words.
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In the Court of Judge Harold Wright

Lawyer, cop duke out stop sign dispute
Here’s what the evidence revealed:
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Health Watch

Go ahead, order your skinny latte

Researchers have found coffee consumption alone does not
increase mortality and may help guard against heart disease

By Trelee Pearce
The Globe and Mail

If you're on a health kick you may not have to give up your coffee habit, according to new research into the links between coffee, disease and death.

"Coffee drinkers can be reassured that coffee does not increase their risk of death," says Esther Lopez-Garcia, an epidemiologist at the University of Madrid, who worked on the research at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. — 552 words.
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From the Desk of Mike (the Hammer) Garvin

Chev’s two-stage hybrid system prompted me
to say we should all be driving one of these

By Kevin Corrigan

Now that's a pretty big statement for an automotive journalist to make, but trust me, it has nothing to do with me being in the back pocket of GM and them throwing me huge bundles of the folding stuff to make it (I wish!!!). It doesn't even have much to do with the overall feel of the vehicle, nor the number of bells and whistles which GMC has added to the Yukon for 08. No, in my opinion, everybody should drive one of these simply for their own personal peace of mind, and to make our roads safer for everyone! Now that I have you totally confused, let me explain.... — 1,451 words.
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Cool Hand Shorter mauled by grizzly kills bear, lives to tell tale

'I noticed my shoulder was dislocated. I managed to pop it in myself and thought I'd better go and get some help.' — John Shorter

CBC News A man from B.C.'s Interior not only survived being mauled by a grizzly — he killed the bear as well. — 337 words.
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Canada fast-tracks short and long-term provision
of wood-frame buildings for quake victims in China

VANCOUVER (Xinhua) — Canada has unveiled a two-phase project to provide temporary and permanent wood-frame buildings to help survivors of the recent earthquake in China. — 351 words.
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Real issues lost in political squabbling
over role of the Canadian Wheat Board

By Alex Binkley
True North Perspective
Originally written for Ontario Farmer

A poll done for the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) on prairie farmer attitudes toward grain marketing has created a political tempest for the simple reason it can be interpreted any way anyone wants. — 434 words.
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Chávez may stop oil to Europe over immigrant law

By Frank Jack Daniel
Reuters

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday threatened to stop selling oil to European countries if they apply a new ruling on illegal immigrants that is criticized in Latin America and by human rights groups. — 589 words.
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New Zealand court convicts pair of depleting ozone layer

Reuters

WELLINGTON — Two refrigeration engineers have been convicted by a New Zealand court for depleting the ozone layer. — 103 words.
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Saddam Hussein nationalized oil in Iraq
but under American guns Big Oil is back

By Clay Bennett

‘"There is an enormous amount of oil in Iraq … We were part of the consortium, the four companies that were there when Saddam Hussein threw us out, and we basically had the whole country."

By Andrew E. Kramer
International Herald Tribune

BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. — 1,636 words.
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Bad guys really do get the most girls

By Mason Inman
NewScientist.com news service

Tibetans take to the streets in capital city of Lhasa for month-long
major religious festival to celebrate the anniversary Buddha’s birth

LHASA, Tibet (Xinhua) — The one-month-long Sakadwa Festival, the anniversary of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death, began on June 4 and has attracted many residents onto the streets to pray. — 389 words.
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Four charged in 2006 killing of Russian journalist

The Moscow Times

MOSCOW — Formal charges were filed Wednesday against four men accused in connection with the 2006 killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the Investigative Committee said. — 353 words.
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Oil sands workers highest paid in high-paying mining industry

From the desk of Joan Kuyek
National Coordinator MiningWatch Canada

Workers at Canadian mines continue to enjoy increased wages, bonuses and benefits, according to a newly released survey by the CostMine Division of InfoMine. — 180 words.
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In Oregon a transgender Dad can give birth as a mother
and then be listed on the birth certificate as the father

By Nathan Heller
Slate Magazine

As people across the country fêted their fathers last weekend, a transgender man in Oregon entered the final weeks of his first successful pregnancy.

Thomas Beatie, who's male according to state law but who retains his female reproductive organs, underwent artificial insemination because his wife was unable to bear children. Will the baby's birth certificate register Beatie as the father or the mother? — 560 words.
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Male gay brains structured like those of straight women

Brain scans reveal that in homosexuals, key structures of the brain governing emotion, mood, anxiety and aggressiveness resemble those in straight people of the opposite sex. The results showed that straight men had asymmetric brains, with the right hemisphere slightly larger – and the gay women also had this asymmetry. Gay men, meanwhile, had symmetrical brains like those of straight women. — 585 words.
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Takla Lake First Nation sets roadblock to protect territory
from mining exploration including sacred Bear Mountain

From the desk of Joan Kuyek
National Coordinator MiningWatch Canada

By J.P. Laplante
Prince George B.C.

TAKLA FIRST NATION TERRITORY, B.C. — The Takla Lake First Nation has announced that it will not permit the use of Driftwood Forest Service Road past Kilometer 71 for industrial activities until further notice. — 377 words.
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U.S General Accuses Bush Administration of War Crimes

'...most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.'

By Matt Renner and Maya Schenwar

Abu Ghraib, by Fernando Botero

U.S. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (now retired) served as the deputy-commanding general for support for the Third Army for ten months in Kuwait during the early days of the Iraq occupation. In a statement released Wednesday, June 18, he bluntly accuses the Bush administration of war crimes and lays down a challenge for prosecution. — 570 words.
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Roadmap to torture
How the ‘good guys’ learned to be bad

Geneva Convention set aside as early as October 2000

by Spencer Ackerman
The Washington Independent

Testimony reveals how torture resistance training, "SERE," became Pentagon's "enhanced" interrogations.

In August 2004, a Defense Dept. panel convened to investigate detainee abuse after the Abu Ghraib scandal issued its much-anticipated report. Interrogation techniques designed for use at Guantanamo Bay, which President George W. Bush had decreed outside the scope of the Geneva Conventions, had "migrated" to Iraq, which Bush recognized was under Geneva, concluded panel chairman James Schlesinger, a former defense secretary. — 1,125 words.
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Putin warns private business to exercise a social conscience
or he will personally track them down, reach down their throats,
yank out their greed, 'and distribute them among the poor'

by Anna Smolchenko, Staff Writer
The Moscow Times

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may have changed jobs, but he doesn't appear to have lost his taste for coarse statements.

At a Wednesday meeting at the Energy Ministry, Putin warned the new private players in the power sector to stick to the rules or he would come looking for any ill-gotten gains himself. — 772 words.
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Newspaper alleging Putin would marry 24-year-old gymnast
will be back in business in September with more care to facts

The Moscow Times

MOSCOW — Moskovsky Korrespondent, the newspaper that closed after writing that former President Vladimir Putin would marry a former Olympic gymnast, intends to resume publication in two months. — 237 words.
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After Bobby Kennedy ... Barack Obama
‘Both with false hope of peace, racial harmony’

Will Barack Obama produce a nightmare for Americans?

A dose of cold water on the Barack Obama love-in

By John Pilger
New Statesman

"Seven of the Obama campaign's top 14 donors," wrote the investigator Pam Martens, "consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages."

Bobby Kennedy's campaign is the model for Barack Obama's current bid to be the Democratic nominee for the White House. Both offer a false hope that they can bring peace and racial harmony to all Americans, writes John Pilger. — 1,179 words.
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Russian spa erects monument to enemas
competing with other statues country wide

Interfax

Nurses posing at a monument to enemas at
Mashuk Akva-Term sanatorium in the Stavropol on Wednesday.

A monument to enemas was unveiled Wednesday at a sanatorium in the Stavropol region. The bronze monument depicts "three angel-like children, who raise above their heads a large bulb syringe," Alexander Kharchenko, director of the Mashuk Akva-Term sanatorium in the spa town of Zheleznovodsk, told Interfax. — 270 words.
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Federal fisheries minister advocates
dumping toxic mining waste into lakes

CBC News

OTTAWA — Tailing waste produced by mining companies is best stored in water, the federal fisheries minister said Tuesday, defending a planned move by bureaucrats to reclassify 16 Canadian lakes as toxic dump sites. — 550 words.
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Understanding long-term role of the frontier Mullah
offers insight into the volatile Afghan-Pakistan border

By Basharat Peer
The Nation

Late one evening in March, I sat in Haandi, a Pakistani restaurant on Lexington Avenue, and watched the swearing in of the new Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gillani. Gillani is a loyalist of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which since its founding in 1967 has been led by the Bhutto clan. — 3,620 words.
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Money and Markets

'I would not be surprised to see inflation of 15-20% in the not-too-distant future.'

By Tony Sagami

JUPITER, Florida

Almost all the commodities I follow — food, precious metals, energy, even water — are inflating like crazy. Besides the usual suspects that I spend the most time analyzing — gold and oil — take a look at what else is happening... — 1,500 words.
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Screenwriters strike cost California economy
$2.1 bin, 37,000 jobs, tipped state into recession

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — The recent Hollywood writers' strike tipped California into a recession, resulting in a loss of $2.1 billion to the state economy and costing 37,700 jobs, the Milken Institute said in a research report. — 354 words.
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Did you know?

Homes Quiz – by Mark Kearney and Randy Ray

For many Canadians, their home is their castle.  It’s where they spend the greatest portion of their time relaxing with friends and family, entertaining, tackling odd jobs, or sleeping.  They also spend a large chunk of their income on mortgage payments, property taxes, repairs and upgrades.

But how much do Canadians know about the homes they live in or are planning to buy?  As you tour open houses in search of your dream home this spring, or plan renovations at your existing abode, we invite you to test your knowledge of housing with our trivia quiz.. We’ll pose one question each issue here. You can find the answer at the bottom of the page. Good luck!

LePage’s glue, developed by Prince Edward Island native William Nelson Le Page, is a staple in the toolboxes of many homeowners and renovators. What was the main ingredient of the early version of the glue?

a) codfish skins b) horse parts c) pig tails d) flour

Randy Ray of Ottawa and Mark Kearney of London, Ont. are the authors of seven books, including Pucks, Pablum & Pingos, a Canadian trivia book, published in April.  Visit their Web site at: www.triviaguys.com
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Spirit Quest

Back to Batawa: A river runs through us and our lives -
the beautiful Trent River, draining from the Kawartha  Lakes to the Bay of Quinte.

By The Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan

Years ago I read a book by Norman Maclean and later saw a film based on the book called: A River Runs Through It. It pictures the stunning Montana countryside, its mountains and a river teeming with vigorous trout that runs through it.  Ontario doesn’t have mountains like that but it has some beautiful rivers. — 853 words.
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Random Acts of Poetry

By Mike Heenan
Literary Editor

CBC-RADIO NEWS TORONTO

SLOOOOWWWW NEWSDAY….Davido Craigomellobello reporting ….in his most Serious Baritone….

"Twenty-three more Moussabanians were senselessy slaughtered yesterday in what unconfirmed sources reported as yet another family squabble in the former Cassarabian capital city of Doulababia, now known as Ticklemearse in the heartland of the former state of Oupsididdle."
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Link not working? Story not loading? Can't click on the links? Got another computer problem? Never fear! Carl is here!

If you have any problems with accessing the newsletter or problems with your computer, send an email to Carl Hall  chall2k5@gmail.com , and he will be more than happy to assist you.
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Answer to Homes Quiz Did You Know?

a) codfish skins, an ingredient that meant his glue, which was invented in the 1870s, did not have to be heated before use, as was the case with other glues, many of which were made from a mixture of gelatin and animal parts.
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Archives
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Carl Dow, Editor and Publisher
Yvette Pigeon, Associate Editor
Mike Heenan, Literary Editor
Benoit Jolicoeur, Art Director
Ian Covey, Director of Photography
Carl Hall, Technical Analyst and Web Editor
Contributing Editors
Rosaleen Dickson
Geoffrey Dow
Tom Dow
Randy Ray
Harold Wright
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