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Canada PM, rival make final campaign stops
OTTAWA -- Canada's Conservative prime minister and his Liberal rival crisscrossed the country Monday in a final day of campaigning, with voters concerned the ruling party is out of touch but also that the opposition's leader has trouble communicating in English.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has had a tenuous hold on power since the 2006 election and is forced to rely on the opposition to pass legislation, called Tuesday's vote in hopes of winning the 155 seats needed for a majority in the 308-seat Parliament.
But Harper, the first G-7 leader to face election since the global credit crisis worsened, has been hurt by his slow reaction to the market meltdown, and that -- among other missteps -- may have cost him his bid for the majority.
Opponents are painting Harper as a right-winger who would reshape the landscape like a U.S.-style Republican.
"Just because someone's a Conservative doesn't mean he's George Bush," Harper told voters in Quebec on Saturday.
Harper's rival, Liberal leader Stephane Dion, hopped from the Atlantic coast province of New Brunswick inland to Quebec and then toward the city of Vancouver on the Pacific coast in a last minute blitz of campaign stops. He urged the divided left to vote for his party and dismissed talk he would step down as party leader if he loses.
Dion is a former professor from the French-speaking province of Quebec whose struggles to communicate in English have become an issue. Dion's English is heavily accented and awkward. He stumbles over words during speeches and his grammar is often mangled.
China dairy sued over infant's death
BEIJING -- The family of a baby whose death has been blamed on toxic milk filed suit against one of China's largest dairies Monday, while another dairy ensnared in the scandal said it was a victim of unscrupulous subcontractors.
The lawsuit against Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group Co. was filed over the May 1 death of 6-month-old Yi Kaixuan in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, the family's lawyer said.
It is the first to be filed over a child who died from drinking the tainted milk and asks for almost $160,000 in damages.
Milk collection stations and individual farmers are accused of watering down milk to increase volume, then adding the industrial chemical melamine to increase protein levels. Melamine, used mainly in plastics and fertilizer, is high in nitrogen and can make milk appear to contain more protein, which is what quality tests measure.
The practice has been blamed for causing the deaths of four infants and sickening 54,000 others, with 10,000 still hospitalized.
Speaking on a television talk show late Sunday, the president of Bright Dairy said his company, one of the largest in the Chinese dairy industry, had been "too nice" toward milk collection stations that bought milk from farmers.
Israeli official says Livni closer to PM post
JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party initialed a partial agreement Monday on bringing the Labor Party into a new governing coalition, but several issues remained to be settled before a formal pact, a Labor official said.
Livni also will need to attract support from smaller parties to form a new government to replace the one headed by former Kadima leader Ehud Olmert, who resigned as prime minister under the cloud of a corruption investigation.
If Livni fails to put together a coalition in the coming weeks, early elections would have to be called, further disrupting Israel's peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
Lior Avnon, a spokeswoman for Labor, said her party's leader, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Livni would try to produce a final agreement at a meeting Tuesday evening. She did not give any details on the unresolved issues.
Labor would be Kadima's key partner in any coalition and a deal would make it easier for Livni to bring in the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party and reach a majority in parliament.
Photos of Kim Jong Il add to uncertainty
SEOUL, South Korea -- The first photos of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il released in two months show him in a setting very similar to photographs from August.
And the verdant background looks more like summer than autumn, adding to uncertainty about Kim's health after reports he underwent brain surgery.
North Korea released the undated still photos and video frame grabs Saturday accompanying a report by North Korean television that Kim visited an all-female military unit. They were the first photos of Kim published since Aug. 14, and in both sets of pictures he wears his trademark dark sunglasses and a khaki jumpsuit.
"They didn't appear to have been taken recently," Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said Monday of the pictures carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. "To me, it looked like they were taken in June or July."
The 66-year-old communist leader disappeared from public view in mid-August and failed to make appearances on two national holidays -- leading to speculation he was seriously ill. American and South Korean officials said he suffered a stroke and had brain surgery; North Korea has denied he is ailing. |
