International News

By JANE ARMSTRONG
Thursday, November 02, 2006
On matters of war, Maj. Andrew Lussier has read everything he can get his hands on.

He knows all about the grinding boredom of waiting and watching for an unseen enemy.

By MARINA JIMENEZ
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
A former Russian undercover agent who lived under a false name in Toronto and spied for the Russian government is suing Canada's immigration department for refusing to allow her to return here as a landed immigrant.

Elena Miller, a 43-year-old ex-spy, was deported in 1996 after her cover was blown by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

By JILL MAHONEY
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
In Britain, the aristocracy and the socially ambitious have long turned to publisher Debrett's for authoritative advice on how to address royalty, behave at horse races and eat soup.

But in a stark departure from its fusty Victorian values, the upper-crust firm has launched an etiquette guide for modern young women that covers previously unmentionable conduct, from casual sex to going topless at the beach.

"While some people might say we're being quite revolutionary, we like to think that we're being relevant to the 21st century and how women go about their everyday lives," said Jo Aitchison, editor of "Etiquette for Girls," in an interview.

While etiquette guides for modern singletons are not new, the book breaks new ground for the arbiter of etiquette and society, which has published sedate tomes since 1769.

Indeed, in Jane Austen's "Persuasion," a character obsessively reads a Debrett's book mapping the lineages of British aristocracy.

The 224-page manual's racier bits, including a cover photo of a woman with ample cleavage slurping an oyster and a chapter titled "Man management," have already made headlines in Britain.

By KIRK MAKIN
Monday, October 30, 2006
Something smelled foul about the case of Regina v. Savane Jones, but it wasn't the quality of the evidence.

It was Jones.

In an unusual ruling, Justice Casey Hill of the Ontario Superior Court took the administrators of Maplehurst Correctional Complex to task for depriving Jones of a shower and a hot meal following his return every day from his sexual-assault trial.

To expect a defendant to be at his best when he is hungry and smells rank works against everything from simple logic to United Nations Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, Hill said.

"There is no reasonable excuse for the failure of the correctional authorities to permit Savane Jones to shave and shower daily when it was known he was appearing in court," the judge said.

By GRAEME SMITH
Monday, October 30, 2006
On the evening they said goodbye to Private Josh Klukie, there was clarity in the eyes of the men who fought beside him.

They watched his casket hoisted into a cargo plane in the warm afternoon light, snapped to attention and marched off the tarmac to prepare for another mission.

Two days earlier, the soldiers of 4 Platoon, part of Bravo Company, a unit of the First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, had seen their friend thrown across a field by a huge explosion.

By MARINA JIMENEZ
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Most Canadians do not understand what biometrics are, but think the government should use them to prevent prospective immigrants from using bogus identity documents to enter the country, according to a poll obtained by the Globe and Mail.

Fraudulent identity documents are a "very serious problem" and biometrics should be used to prevent people from abusing government programs, including the immigration and refugee systems, said more than half the respondents in the Ipsos Reid survey conducted for the agency Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

"Four out of five Canadians believe that by the end of this decade, it is likely almost every adult Canadian will have at least one biometric ID on file to verify their identity," the survey notes.

By ROBERT COLLIER
Friday, October 27, 2006
Hugo Chavez's revolution came to the hillside slum of San Juan one recent night in the glare of a solitary light bulb and with puddles from a recent thunderstorm still underfoot.

Two-dozen people clustered on a rooftop to debate the money and power that suddenly seemed within their grasp _ everything from home construction to bank loans, street repairs, and after-school and vacation recreation programs for children.

It was the first meeting of San Juan's communal council, an example of a new grass-roots governing structure that is spreading across Venezuela.

By DOUG SAUNDERS
Thursday, October 26, 2006
If you stroll around the sprawling central London offices of Pimlico Plumbers, the words that come to mind are not "age discrimination."

You're likely to run into Buster Martin, the silver-bearded man who tends to the company's fleet of blue trucks.

By MARGARET PHILP
Sunday, October 22, 2006
The U.S. Coast Guard has started to patrol the Great Lakes with machine guns mounted on their vessels and are conducting live-ammunition training drills on the American side to prepare officers to combat terrorists flooding across the border from Canada by boat.

The automatic-weapon drills started earlier this year but came to light only in the past two weeks after information about the Coast Guard move to create 34 permanent live-fire training zones in the Great Lakes was published in the U.S.

By ANNE McILROY
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Mona Lisa had recently given birth, a team of Canadian and French scientists announced this week, so her mysterious smile may have expressed the weary joy of a mother with a newborn.

Using infrared technology that allowed them to see beneath a layer of varnish, the researchers found that Leonardo da Vinci's model had a gauzy layer over her dress they say was typically worn by pregnant women of the time, or mothers who had recently given birth.