Canadian car and light truck sales for last month were up 1.5 per cent compared to the same month in 2007. "I must say that I am absolutely completely surprised by the Canadian performance," auto analyst Dennis Desrosiers says in a note accompanying his release of the October sales data. "Did Canadians not open their investment statements in October?? or are they kidding themselves or did they enter the market in the summer and ordered their new vehicle and September and October are just showing the deliveries from these earlier in the year sales? I don't know."

...over 5 million people have returned to Afghanistan since 2002, representing a 20 per cent increase in the country’s overall population. Some 4.3 million of them were assisted through UNHCR’s voluntary repatriation programme for Afghan refugees, the world’s largest for the past six years. “I think it is very clear to everybody that an increase in a population with a refugee return programme of that dimension would represent a very sharp challenge for even a Western industrialized country. We are certainly not aware, in recent history, of any country that has absorbed so many people in such a short time...