So what's keeping him from facing questions from opposition politicans when Question Period begins today at 2:15 pm in the House of Commons?

   more »

Afghanistan torture allegations, the RCMP Commissioner's plea to Parliament to get tough on his own force; and some really expensive whisky:  Listen to my four-minute audio roundup of what's on the front pages of the country's newspapers plus highlights from Monday's Parliamentary daybook by clicking on the link below.

You can also get these audio summaries via podcast from iTunes or via an RSS feed by subscribing to my AudioBoo stream. Both the iTunes link and the RSS link are at my profile at AudioBoo.fm. Look under my picture on the left hand side of the page.

Tags: national post, toronto star, globe and mail, afghanistan, grey cup, rcmp

I can't recall the last time Prime Minister Stephen Harper took questions in Ottawa from the Parliamentary Press Gallery (PPG) at an open-ended press conference. He took a question or two from the PPG when Obama was in town and I think he took a few at the National Press ...   more »

RCMP taser tales, Afghanistan torture allegations, and football: Listen to my four-minute audio roundup of what's on the front pages of the country's newspapers plus highlights from Friday's Parliamentary daybook by clicking on the link below.

You can also get these audio summaries via podcast from iTunes or via an RSS feed by subscribing to my AudioBoo stream. Both the iTunes link and the RSS link are at my profile at AudioBoo.fm. Look under my picture on the left hand side of the page.

Tags: national post, globe and mail, toronto star, colvin, rcmp

New York Times book review editor Sam Tanenhaus reviews tennis star Andre Agassi's Open:

"“Open” is one of the most passionately anti-sports books ever written by a superstar athlete — bracingly devoid of triumphalist homily and star-spangled gratitude. Agassi’s announced theme is that the game he mastered was a prison he spent some 30 years trying to escape  . . .

"Equally hard-won self-knowledge irradiates almost every page of “Open,” thanks in great part to Agassi’s inspired choice of collaborator, J. R. Moehringer, author of the memoir “The Tender Bar,” with its melody of remembered voices. Agassi says he read it in 2006, at his last U.S. Open, and then recruited Moehrin­ger to help him write his own book. The result is not just a first-rate sports memoir but a genuine bildungsroman, darkly funny yet also anguished and soulful. It confirms what Agassi’s admirers sensed from the outset, that this showboat, with his garish costumes and presumed fatuity, was not clamoring for attention but rather conducting a struggle to wrest some semblance of selfhood from the sport that threatened to devour him."

Be sure to watch the video of Tanenhaus interviewing Agassi about the book. Terrific.

The new TOP500 list is out. Geeks, like me, get excited about this. The semi-anual TOP500 ranks the world's biggest, fastest supercomputers.

At the top right now is Jaguar, a Cray XT5-HE Opteron Six Core 2.6 GHz, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Jaguary was upgraded this year ...   more »

Colvin's claims on Afghanistan torture, an HST break for B.C., and a $16,000 hospital bill: Listen to my four-minute audio roundup of what's on the front pages of the country's newspapers plus highlights from Friday's Parliamentary daybook by clicking on the link below.

   more »

The Toronto Star's restaurant critic Amy Pataki heads out to Toronto's best gourmet burger joints which reminded me of a pic I snapped in Singapore last weekend while covering the annual APEC leaders summit. I took this picture at a burger joint across the street from Suntec City Mall, the site of the media centre for APEC journalists:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Raj Ghat, Gandhi's memorial, in New Delhi Tuesday. On the way out, he signed the visitors book:

   more »

Apparently, we -- the Canadian media travelling with Prime Minister Stephen Harper this week -- ruffled a few feathers during our three days here. Here is a review of our coverage written by Sarabjit Jagirdar and distributed by the Indo-Asian News Service . . .

   more »