By PATRICK WHITE, Toronto Globe and Mail

KANDAHAR - His trigger-finger is curled into a permanent claw and he shakes uncontrollably due to bullet fragments lodged against his spine.

Yet two years after the Afghanistan government persuaded him to renounce his insurgent past, 45-year-old former Taliban commander Mohammed Gul is itching to rejoin the battle.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - In a marked shift in ground strategy, Canadian and American troops will form a "ring of stability" around Kandahar City to stem the flow of insurgent raids on the city, according to the commander of Canadian troops here.

Canada has held NATO authority over the city for three years, along with the outlying districts.

An absence of research into how influenza behaves among aboriginals is hindering efforts to curtail swine flu as it ravages native communities in Manitoba and Nunavut.
Even as doctors scramble to fill in those blanks, native leaders are accusing health officials of ignoring their plight.

Famed for prowling the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, a remote-control Predator aircraft took flight over the wheat fields of South Dakota this week, the first in a network of surveillance drones that could soon patrol America's border with Canada.

For police in this city, it was the most routine of confrontations.
While dining with friends at Muddy Waters Smokehouse Saturday night, two off-duty officers glimpsed a pair of belligerent men. They had just been thrown out of the popular rib joint but were returning through the front door.

We all know that global climate change is heating sensitive ecological regions around the world. Now researchers are predicting it will bring a burning sensation to some sensitive human regions.Researchers at the University of Texas say global warming will trigger a dramatic rise in kidney stones in the United States.

TORONTO -- What would Sir John Macdonald think? At Toronto's normally genteel Albany Club, which Canada's first prime minister helped found in 1882, 100 or so business folk had a TV dinner night Tuesday, with Oklahoma pulled pork, New York deli sandwiches, California rolls and other chow representing the 24 Super Tuesday states.