Mittal Steel Co., which has emerged as the world's largest steel producer, is one of seven bidders vying for control of insolvent Stelco Inc., sources familiar with the matter revealed yesterday.

"It came up on Monday," said a company source. "They were identified as one of the seven."

Earlier this week, Stelco confirmed seven groups have agreed to conduct due diligence and submit binding offers for the company by Jan. 31.

[. . . . ] Another source confirmed the other bidders include rival Algoma Steel Inc., U.S. Steel Corp., Russian producer OAO Severstal and a joint $1.8-billion financing plan by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board and miner Sherritt International Corp. [. . . . ]

[Sources] yesterday speculated Arcelor SA or one of several Japanese steelmakers may be in the running. [. . . . ]

Phil Knoll, group vice president of Duke Energy Gas Transmission, is pleased to announce the appointment of Gregory L. Ebel as president, Union Gas.

[. . . . ] Before joining Westcoast Energy in 1998, Mr. Ebel was advisor to the executive director of the World Bank Group. From 1989 to 1993, he held positions with the Government of Canada, including chief of staff to the minister of finance and deputy prime minister. [. . . . ]

In 2004, South Korea won the title of world's largest shipbuilding nation, beating out Japan for the first time. But South Korea is already looking over its shoulder at China, which has embarked on a path toward becoming the world's largest shipbuilder by 2015. The explosion in trade in and out of China has created a worldwide shortage of ships. . . . The three major South Korean shipbuilders won almost 90 percent of the more complex and lucrative LNG tanker contracts awarded this year. But China is currently the world's third largest shipbuilding nation, winning 14 percent of worldwide orders in 2004. Japan comes in second with 24 percent. While South Korea is far ahead with 40 percent, China still plans to grow its industry. Two of its yards are already starting to build their own LNG tankers. See "Korea reigns in shipbuilding, for now," James Brooke, The New York Times at International Herald Tribune, 1/5/05
Chen Xiaojin, general manager of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation, has stated his company will become the world's largest shipbuilder both in terms of production volume, and in terms of shipbuilding science and technology. China Daily's article "Shipbuilding industry advancing" presents a detailed description of China's shipbuilding sector (1/5/05).

A really cold war: Several countries are drooling over the North Pole, one of the only virgin territories left on the planet. Current research on climate change suggest that ice in the Polar Sea could disappear within 50 to 100 years. This would open up the Northwest Passage, . . . .It would also open terrain currently closed to fishing, and oil and gas reserves. Diamond finds in Canada's Nunavut have already fired a mining rush. [ Search "diamond" and "criminal" ] With the area's potential unknown, Denmark, Canada and Russia are among the countries currently trying to lay claim — just in case. . . . Canada has also started mapping the sea floor, and has taken steps to prove it could defend its territorial claim, if necessary. . . . See "Race for the Arctic," The Independent, 1/5/05.

The United States may have to get used to sharing the western Pacific with China, the world's rising naval power. China is spending $10 billion to acquire and upgrade submarines, and is buying destroyers and frigates and equipping them with modern antiship cruise missiles. . . . "The Chinese influence in the Pacific islands will be very, very big. . . . Chinese interests and the American interest will clash." See "U.S. rule of Pacific waves faces China challenge," James Brooke, The New York Times at the International Herald Tribune, 12/29/04.

Kim Jong-Il has reportedly decided to kick in US$150,000 to the tsunami relief effort. Presumably not too much will be coming from the average North Korean, who is starving. Scouring the lists of national donors, I couldn't find anything from Cuba either.

[. . . . ] The outpouring of generosity from the peoples of free nations -- and the wonders of relief technology -- represent a powerful affirmation of how the sympathetic, benevolent and innovative aspects of human nature have all been promoted and enhanced by the system that so many of the tsunami victims lack.

China, Russia, and India watch bemused as the United States tries to hunt down the psychopathic killers while Western elites ankle-bite and hector its efforts. I suppose the Russians, Chinese, and Indians know that Islamists understand all too well that blowing up two skyscrapers in Moscow, Shanghai, or Delhi would guarantee that their Middle Eastern patrons might end up in cinders.

There is a new strange mood of acceptance among Americans about the world beyond our shores. Of course, we are not becoming naïve isolationists of 1930s vintage, who believe that we are safe by ourselves inside fortress America — not after September 11. Nor do citizens deny that America has military and moral obligations to stay engaged abroad — at least for a while yet. [. . . . ]

Instead, there is a new sort of resignation rising in the country, as the United States sheds its naiveté that grew up in the aftermath of the Cold War. [. . . . ]

Imagine a world in which there was no United States during the last 15 years. Iraq, Iran, and Libya would now have nukes. Afghanistan would remain a seventh-century Islamic terrorist haven sending out the minions of Zarqawi and Bin Laden worldwide. The lieutenants of Noriega, Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Saddam, and Moammar Khaddafi would no doubt be adjudicating human rights at the United Nations. The Ortega Brothers and Fidel Castro, not democracy, would be . . . .

[. . . . ] In fact, an American consensus is growing that envy and hatred of the United States, coupled with utopian and pacifistic rhetoric, disguise an even more depressing fact: Outside our shores there is a growing barbarism with no other sheriff in sight. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] But after we have taken care of the emergency (which we will do, pretty much, single-handed — I don't think we are waiting for a French or German aircraft carrier full of helicopters and medicine), let us not get carried away with generosity for rebuilding lands that have been mismanaged since the beginning of time.

If we are going to go further in debt to ease human pain and suffering, here are a few numbers to keep in mind. When one of our young military heroes dies in Iraq or other combat, his or her next of kin get only a $6,000 "death gratuity" (half of which is taxable), up to $1,750 for burial expenses, plus $833 a month for surviving spouse until remarriage and $211 per month per child until 18.

If our soldiers, anticipating dying in the line of duty, want to provide more for their children, they have to pay for such insurance out of their meager wages. There are, apparently, some strict limits to our generosity.

Who is Maher Arar? We all know the basic contours of his story. In 2002, U.S. officials detained the Canadian software engineer at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. They alleged that he was linked to al-Qaeda and secretly deported him to Syria, where he says he was tortured. When Arar was freed more than a year later and the public got a glimpse of him, he seemed to be a likable, hard-working family man caught up in a monstrous international screwup. Was there more? Simultaneously, officials, most of them anonymous, were leaking information and dropping hints suggesting that Arar was a security risk with something to hide.

Well, if Arar is a terrorist, he is unlike any other. In contrast to other suspects dispatched to harsh justice, Arar did not vanish into oblivion in his Middle East cell. Nor, after his release, did he recoil from public view. Instead, Arar, who has a modest home in Ottawa, has stepped into the spotlight as a vocal proponent of human rights in Canada, a symbol of how fear and injustice have permeated life in the West since 9/11. [. . . . ]

Two years later, while his wife Monia Mazigh was completing a Ph.D. in finance at McGill, Arar took a job at the MathWorks, a Boston-area computer company.

[. . . . ] Arar’s choice for Newsmaker of the Year was so politically correct. And so typically Canadian.

Time Canada used Arar to propound the theory, so popular in this country, that the United States is responsible for all of the world’s problems. . . .

[. . . . ] The magazine also propounded the theory . . . .

A burgeoning East Boston-based street gang made up of alleged rapists and machete-wielding robbers has been linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, prompting Boston police to ``turn up the heat'' on its members, the Herald has learned.

MS-13, which stands for La Mara Salvatrucha, is an extremely violent organization with roots in El Salvador, and boasts more than 100 ``hardcore members'' in East Boston who are suspected of brutal machete attacks, rapes and home invasions. There are hundreds more MS-13 gangsters in towns along the North Shore, said Boston police Sgt. Detective Joseph Fiandaca, who has investigated the gang since it began tagging buildings in Maverick Square in 1995.

In recent months, intelligence officials in Washington have warned national law enforcement agencies that al-Qaeda terrorists have been spotted with members of MS-13 in El Salvador, prompting concerns the gang may be smuggling Islamic fundamentalist terrorists into the country. Law enforcement officials have long believed that MS-13 controls alien smuggling routes along Mexico.

The warning is being taken seriously in East Boston, where Raed Hijazi, an al-Qaeda operative charged with training the suicide bombers in the attack on the USS Cole, lived and worked, prosecutors have charged. [. . . . ]

Roughly 60,000 illegal immigrants designated as 'other-than-Mexican,' or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border, including a sizable number from Arab and Muslim countries. And if recent reports are any indication, they may be getting some troubling new help in their efforts to enter the United States. [. . . . ]

VIENNA (Reuters) - The crisis caused by North Korea's refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions is deepening and needs to be resolved as soon as possible, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Wednesday.

"This has been a pending issue for 12 years, and frankly it is getting worse," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters in an interview.

[. . . . ] The IAEA team was expelled on Dec. 31, 2002 and has not been allowed to return. Since that time, North Korea has produced enough plutonium for half a dozen nuclear weapons, the IAEA and a number of security think-tanks estimate. [. . . . ]

VIENNA, Austria -- The U.N. atomic watchdog agency has found evidence of secret nuclear experiments in Egypt that could be used in weapons programs, diplomats said Tuesday.

The diplomats told The Associated Press that most of the work was carried out in the 1980s and 1990s but said the International Atomic Energy Agency also was looking at evidence suggesting some work was performed as recently as a year ago.

Egypt's government rejected claims it is or has been pursuing a weapons program, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. [. . . . ]

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran has agreed to grant access to a military site the United States links to a secret nuclear weapons program and the first U.N. inspectors could arrive "within days," the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday.

[. . . . ] In leaks to media last year, U.S. intelligence officials said that a specially secured site on the Parchin complex, 20 miles southeast of Tehran, may be used in research on making high-explosive components for use in nuclear weapons.

[. . . . ] Iran has been the main focus of the IAEA since mid-2002, after revelations of two secret nuclear facilities - a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water production plant near Arak.

That led to a subsequent IAEA investigation of what turned out to be nearly two decades of covert nuclear activities, including suspicious "dual use" experiments that can be linked to weapons programs and a large-scale uranium enrichment program. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] It's simply not possible to set the degree of discomfort prisoners experience at zero: not if we hope to extract any information from them at all. Such a standard would exclude even routine techniques of interrogation, designed to confuse, manipulate, fatigue or demoralize the prisoner. Indeed, the very process of interrogation is intrinsically coercive (that's why it's banned with regard to prisoners of war). You can call that psychological torture, if you like, in which case every prisoner in every jail is being tortured. Or if you don't call it torture, then you have begun to make distinctions between different levels of pain. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] Yesterday, Martin changed his tune and says he's ready to talk with Williams about offshore energy revenues but he added: "I do not believe the Canadian flag should be used as a lever in any federal-provincial negotiations."

It's a pretty precious comment coming from
a man who lowered the Canadian flag on seven of his company's ships for crass profit reasons to avoid paying Canadian taxes.

Then there was the use of the flag by the Liberals to steal $250 million from the taxpayers under the ruse to plaster Quebec with the maple leaf. Sheesh. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] His controversial and symbolic gesture was
done to protest Prime Minister Paul Martin reneging on a deal made June 5, during the federal election campaign that Newfoundland could keep 100% of its provincial share of offshore oil revenues, rather than having most of it taken by the feds who then dole it out again as provincial "equalization" payments in an effort to keep the islanders beholden to the Liberal party.[. . . . Details of the deals, past and promised are here.]

"The premier's actions are disrespectful of our most treasured national symbol," Martin said in a statement last month. "It is even more disappointing that (Williams) would use the Canadian flag in this way."

Curious comments coming from the leader of the Liberal government that used the Canadian flag as the excuse to steal more than $100 million of taxpayers' money in the sponsorship scandal which it doled out to Liberal-friendly advertising agencies in Quebec who in turn gave a lot back to the Liberal party.

But it's even more disgusting coming from Martin, whose company -- Canadian Steamship Lines (which he has since handed over to his sons), lowered the Canadian flag on seven of his tankers, hoisting up other flags of "convenience" in order to avoid paying Canadian taxes altogether and to avoid adhering to Canadian environmental and labour laws.

[. . . . ] If denial of private-clinic abortion funding constitutes a violation of liberty and security of the person, then why doesn't the same hold for, say, heart surgeries? Why does our health policy demand that everybody wait in one long public line, but when it comes to abortion, then all options -- including the grand bogeyman of them all, American provision -- must be fully funded? [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] Bell said it wants the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission to implement a two-tiered process so the Montreal-based company can quickly react to market changes.

[. . . . ] Bell said it needs faster decision-making from the CRTC so it can shut down older networks. The phone giant is adopting networks based on Internet Protocol, a move that makes older services redundant as costs fall.

Bell claims it has to move faster as competition increases. [. . . . ]