Thursday Post

Quickly now....


According to this:

"Mr. Speaker, CBC/Radio-Canada currently has approximately 730 employees who earn more than $100,000 per year."

Making this:

According to Postmedia News, the document noted that the maximum salary scale for CBC News' chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge was $80,485.22. Radio host Jian Ghomeshi and TV host Amanda Lang were said to be making between $60,844.32 and $77,390.42.

... total bunk.


The tragedy of Walkerton has nothing to do with the Tories' proposals during this election but everything to do with typical Liberal dirty tricks.

Read that tripe if you want. It's repugnant on so many levels.


Why the attitude if you have nothing to hide, Monsieur Mulcair?

Tom Mulcair stood his ground Thursday throughout an unprecedented two-hour grilling by a Commons committee over the NDP's allegedly improper use of parliamentary resources.

The NDP leader was at times contemptuous of his Conservative and Liberal tormentors, but managed to keep his temper in check as he insisted — repeatedly — that New Democrats have done nothing wrong.

Nothing he said persuaded Tory and Liberal MPs on the procedure and House affairs committee, who continued to allege the NDP has been using taxpayers' money to pay for partisan activities, in violation of parliamentary rules.

Oh, I think I know what he's hiding.


The Nigerian government rejects the proposed exchange of kidnapped schoolgirls for prisoners:

Nigeria's president has rejected an offer from Islamist rebel group Boko Haram to exchange schoolgirls it abducted for imprisoned militants, but the government is open to broader talks with the rebels, a visiting British minister said.

President Goodluck Jonathan is under pressure to crush the rebels who have killed thousands in their campaign for an Islamist state and to free the girls whose abduction a month ago has sparked global outrage.

Government officials initially said they were exploring all options with respect to the swap proposal and later said they were willing to negotiate with Boko Haram without specifying whether any putative talks might include an exchange for the girls.

Jonathan further refined that position on Wednesday during talks with Britain's Minister for Africa Mark Simmonds.

"He (Jonathan) made it very clear that there would be no negotiations with Boko Haram that involved a swap of abducted schoolgirls for prisoners," Simmonds told reporters after meeting Jonathan.

Why should Vietnam cede its territory to China?

A top Chinese general on Thursday defended the deployment of an oil rig that has inflamed tensions in the disputed South China Sea and triggered deadly protests in Vietnam, blaming Hanoi and saying China cannot afford to "lose an inch" of territory.

A map of the disputed area:

(With thanks)

It's not so much that China has no sense of territory but a boldness. It knows the biggest navy in the world is not coming to Vietnam, the Philippines or Taiwan's defense.


And now, an underwater archeological find:

The pristine skeleton of a teenaged girl who lived about 13,000 years ago, discovered in a deep, water-filled underground cavern in the sprawling cave system in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, is providing archeologists with an unprecedented glimpse into the history of the early inhabitants of the Americas.

Given the name Naia, Greek for "water nymph," the remains of the 15- or 16-year-old girl were found at the bottom of the boulder-strewn, underwater chamber dubbed Hoyo Negro — "black hole" in Spanish — along with the scattered bones of 26 large animal species, among them sabre-tooth tigers, giant ground sloths and cave bears.

"Sealed off by water and darkness for over 8,000 years, it is a time capsule of the environment and human life in central America at the end of the Ice Age, when glaciers across the globe trapped massive amounts of water as ice and sea level was far lower than it is today," said American paleontologist Jim Chatters, head of an international research team investigating the site and its archeological treasures.

Chatters, the first scientist to study the prehistoric skeleton known as Kennewick Man that was found in Washington state in 1996, described Hoyo Negro as being like a miniature of California's La Brea tar pits, "only without the tar and with considerably better preservation."

At the time of Naia's death, the caves would have been dry and accessible, he told a media teleconference. "Perhaps seeking fresh water in the dark passages, animals and at least one human fell into this inescapable ... trap."

Naia's remains were discovered in 2007 by three Mexican cave divers exploring an underwater cavern, deep in the Yucatan jungle about eight kilometres from the Caribbean coast. In a 50-metre-deep sinkhole within the cavern, the girl's skull was resting on a boulder, "laying upside-down with a perfect set of teeth and dark eye sockets looking back at us," said diver Alberto Nava.