For A Monday

For now...


Stolen passports further muddy the mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight 370:

Authorities questioned travel agents Monday at a beach resort in Thailand about two men who boarded the vanished Malaysia Airlines plane with stolen passports, part of a growing international investigation into what they were doing on the flight.

Nearly three days after the Boeing 777 with 239 people on board disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, no debris has been seen in Southeast Asian waters.

Five passengers who checked in for Flight MH370 didn't board the plane, and their luggage was removed from it, Malaysian authorities said. Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said this also was being investigated, but he didn't say whether this was suspicious.

The search effort, involving at least 34 aircraft and 40 ships from several countries, was being widened to a 100-nautical mile (115-mile, 185-kilometre) radius from the point the plane vanished from radar screens between Malaysia and Vietnam early Saturday with no distress signal.

Two of the passengers were travelling on passports stolen in Thailand and had onward tickets to Europe, but it's not known whether the two men had anything to do with the plane's disappearance. Criminals and illegal migrants regularly travel on fake or stolen documents.

The only officially bilingual province in Canada is New Brunswick. English is the global language of commerce. There are 654, 706 English-speakers in the province of Quebec. The passage of Bill 14 would be as helpful turning on the air-conditioning in forty below weather:

The Parti Québécois says it will make its French-language bill a priority if it is re-elected.

The PQ minority government opted to scrap Bill 14 in the fall and focus on the secular charter after months of debate and criticism from opposition parties.

On Monday, Leader Pauline Marois said the bill would be a priority for a re-elected PQ government.

"There is a major problem about French language in Quebec. We have problem with access to services in English. In some business organization they are not speaking French. We have to work on this issue," Marois said. ...
 If passed, the bill would amend Quebec's language charter by tightening restrictions around the use of English. It would give inspectors the authority to seize anything that they have reasonable grounds to believe is proof the language law was violated.

Drafting these "counter-proposals" is merely a formality:

Russia said Monday it is drafting counterproposals to a U.S. plan for a negotiated solution to the Ukraine crisis, denouncing the new Western-backed government as an unacceptable "fait accompli" and claiming that Russian-leaning parts of the country have been plunged into lawlessness.

Also:

Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, addressing thousands of people at the cradle of the uprising against Ukraine's Moscow-backed leader, accused Russia on Sunday of being complicit in police violence against protesters.

To chants of "Russia, rise up", Khodorkovsky, who was jailed for a decade under President Vladimir Putin, told the crowd the Kremlin was lying to its own people by portraying the protesters as "neo-fascists" bent on violence.

Indeed, who ever accused Putin of acting in Ukrainians' best interests?


Obama either has no clue what he is doing or wants the world to burn:

The Obama administration is stepping up its attempts to court China's support for isolating Russia over its military intervention in Ukraine.

Oh, and he and the missus went on another holiday because, you know, there are no world crises going on or anything.


There are no jobs in Ontario, anyway:

Canada's pending free-trade deal with South Korea is shaping up to be a tale of two provincial solitudes.

Ontario is worried the deal will unleash a flood of Korean-made automobiles and imperil the jobs of the province's auto workers. ...

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne reiterated her province's ambivalence toward the deal again Monday, hours before the details were announced.

"We are of two minds. We are optimistic, and at the same time we are cautious on the auto sector," Wynne said at Queen's Park.

"We will be looking for the appropriate protections and framework around the auto sector."

Wynne said she is supportive of opening up opportunities for Ontario and Canadian business.

Did someone tell the Koreans that McGuinty and Wynne have ruined the manufacturing sector and have driven up energy prices?


Of course he did:

North Korea's state media has confirmed a 100 per cent, no-abstention poll victory for leader Kim Jong-Un in the country's parliamentary election.

"Wild Bill" Guarnere has finally left this planet at age ninety.



And now, freaky fruits and vegetables.