MONTREAL - Quebec's construction strike settled into its second day with a warning that workers are ready to stay off the job for a long time.
Yves Ouellet, spokesman for the alliance of construction unions, said the 175,000 workers had already made several concessions to "reduce the cost of projects" at the request of their bosses and are ready for a lengthy strike.
WASHINGTON - Google on Tuesday sharply challenged the federal government's gag order on its Internet surveillance program, citing what it described as a First Amendment right to divulge how many requests it receives from the government for data about its customers in the name of national security.
The move came in a legal motion filed in the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and was aimed at mending Google's reputation after it was identified this month as one of nine U.S. Internet companies that gave the National Security Agency access to data on its customers. Revelations about the program, known as PRISM, by a former NSA contractor has cracked open a broader debate about the privacy of American's communications from government monitoring.
TORONTO - The Toronto Port Authority reported record net income of $19.7 million in 2012, up from $13.9 million the previous year, with the Billy Bishop City Airport division seeing the largest year-over-year increase.
Total revenue was $49.6 million for the year as all of TPA's business operations showing improvement, the authority said.
LONDON - A year ago, Julian Assange skipped out on a date with Swedish justice. Rather than comply with a British order that he go to the Scandinavian country for questioning about sex crimes allegations, the WikiLeaks founder took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
He's still there — and now says he won't emerge even if Sweden drops the case that triggered the strange diplomatic standoff.
NEW YORK, N.Y. - The mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and 15 other cities are reviving a push against letting food stamps be used to buy soda and other sugary drinks.
In a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday, the mayors say it's "time to test and evaluate approaches limiting" the use of the subsidies for sugar-laden beverages, in the interest of fighting obesity and related diseases.
NEW YORK, N.Y. - Taco Bell plans to test a "Power Protein" menu that it's hoping will eventually be hit with its core audience — young men.
The chain says it will start testing the menu July 25 at about 40 locations in Dayton, Ohio. The burritos and bowls will have double portions of chicken or steak, and toppings such as corn, guacamole and reduced fat sour cream. They'll be made with existing ingredients, including those used for its Cantina Bell line.
TERRACE, B.C. - There is a growing imbalance between oil supply and delivery in Canada and doing nothing is not an option, the lawyer for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers told a federal panel weighing the Northern Gateway project.
Keith Bergner told the review panel Tuesday that current pipeline capacity is not sufficient, and producers are finding themselves with product on their hands and no way to ship it to buyers — "shut-in" as it's known in the industry.
HALIFAX - The Canadian government is planning to introduce new rules to make drilling and production companies more accountable in the event of offshore spills.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, speaking at a news conference Tuesday in Halifax, said Ottawa will introduce legislation this fall to raise the liability cap for companies operating in Atlantic Canada's offshore to $1 billion, up from the current $30 million. The liability cap in the Arctic would also increase to $1 billion from the current $40 million, he said.
TORONTO - Many Canadians would be surprised to learn that in this digital age of email and instant messaging you can still send an old-fashioned telegram.
And the owner of Telegrams Canada, Colin Stone, says demand for the old-school service is steady, with about 20,000 messages being sent through his company each year.
TORONTO - The U.S. International Trade Commission has upheld a Canadian company's patent for its couples vibrator, banning the import, sale and marketing of all infringing products in the United States.
But the battle isn't over for Standard Innovation Corp., maker of the We-Vibe.
WASHINGTON - A federal bank that backed a huge airplane loan for Air India will have to explain that the loan didn't hurt U.S. airlines.
A lawsuit by Delta Air Lines Inc. had accused the Export-Import Bank of failing to follow a requirement that it makes sure its loans to foreign companies won't hurt U.S. competitors. The Ex-Im bank guaranteed $3.4 billion in loans in 2011 so that Air India could buy planes from Boeing Co. But Delta competes with Air India on some routes.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. says its new deal to provide original TV shows to Netflix will help it double the revenue it gets from TV shows to $200 million by 2015.
DreamWorks expects $100 million in TV revenue this year. The Glendale, Calif., company released the figures in a call with analysts Tuesday.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Three more employees of the truck stop chain owned by the Cleveland Browns' owner and Tennessee's governor have pleaded guilty in what authorities call a scheme to cheat trucking firms out of rebates.
Regional sales manager Kevin Clark pleaded guilty to mail fraud in federal court in Knoxville on Tuesday.
PHILADELPHIA - Would you like fees with that?
A Pennsylvania woman has filed suit to avoid fees she may be charged to get her McDonald's wages from a debit card.
CALGARY - Cenovus Energy Inc. said Tuesday that it plans to massively increase the amount of oil it ships by rail by the end of 2014 as the fates of contentious pipeline projects remain undecided.
The Calgary-based oil company (TSX:CVE) expects to move 30,000 barrels per day by rail by the end of 2014 — triple the 10,000 it's anticipating by the end of 2013.
The iBookstore's Official Book Charts for the week ending June 17, 2013:
1. "Inferno," by Dan Brown (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)
WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew won't win any prizes in penmanship, but his official signature which will go on the nation's currency is at least a slight improvement over the loopy scrawl he had a few months ago.
The Treasury Department unveiled the new signature on Tuesday. It takes the Bureau of Engraving and Printing about 18 weeks to put new engraving plates into production. That means Lew's signature will not show up on the various currency denominations until sometime this fall.
TORONTO - Some of the most active companies traded Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange:
Toronto Stock Exchange (12,367.46 up 78.56 points):
VIENNA - Alpine Bau GmbH, one of Austria's biggest construction companies, says it is insolvent.
In making the announcement Tuesday, the company said it is seeking a reorganization plan that would allow parts of the conglomerate to continue functioning.
WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain urged the world on Tuesday to learn from past mistakes as it passively observes Syria's bloody civil war while Canada's defence minister, Peter MacKay, stood by the Canadian government's decision against arming the Syrian rebels.
"There's an old line about those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them," McCain told reporters at the Canadian embassy in the U.S. capital.
MONTREAL - Quebec's construction strike settled into its second day with a warning that workers are ready to stay off the job for a long time.
Yves Ouellet, spokesman for the alliance of construction unions, said the 175,000 workers had already made several concessions to "reduce the cost of projects" at the request of their bosses and are ready for a lengthy strike.
OTTAWA - The RCMP should amend its code of conduct to explicitly define and prohibit harassment, a Senate committee recommends.
In a newly tabled report, the senators said Tuesday that spelling out the prohibition in direct language would avoid ambiguity.
OTTAWA - Conservative attacks against Justin Trudeau's paid public speaking career have boomeranged into questions about the propriety of using the Prime Minister's Office to fire off purely partisan missiles.
The tables turned Tuesday after the Barrie Advance newspaper outed the PMO as the source of documents circulated to media Monday showing three fundraising events headlined by Trudeau in 2006 and 2007 — before he became an MP — lost money.
QUEBEC - The Quebec government is spending $500,000 to create a committee to examine wasteful spending by the federal government.
The pro-independence Parti Quebecois government wants to examine how much it costs to have federal services that duplicate ones already offered by the province or that encroach on provincial jurisdiction.
MONTREAL - Montreal has had its second scandal-provoked mayoral resignation in less than a year, with an arrest and criminal charges leading to the departure Tuesday of its interim city-hall boss.
Replacement mayor Michael Applebaum stepped down a day after he was slapped with 14 criminal charges.
TORONTO - A team of Canadian and U.S. researchers has developed a new "sharp-shooter" drug they hope may be a breakthrough in treating several types of aggressive cancer.
The drug, known for now as CFI-400945, is a new class of cancer agent that targets an enzyme involved in some malignancies, among them certain types of breast cancer, and ovarian, colorectal, pancreatic and prostate cancers.
OTTAWA - Two speakers hired by the Senate to help motivate senators and staff in the midst of a raging scandal over the abuse of taxpayers' money have had their event cancelled pending further discussion.
Communications consultant Barry McLoughlin and motivational speaker Marc-Andre Morel had been slated to talk about "the enduring value of the Senate and help bring a little perspective to the current situation," according to an invitation that went out Tuesday morning.
OTTAWA - Leaked documents suggest Canada helped the United States and Britain spy on participants at the London G20 summit four years ago.
Britain's Guardian newspaper says spies monitored the computers and intercepted the phone calls of foreign politicians and officials at two G20 meetings in London in 2009.
ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland - The Group of Eight stopped short of calling for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad in its final statement on Tuesday, but called for a swift end to the bloody civil war and urgent peace talks to stop the country from spiralling further into chaos.
Despite the lack of consensus among the G8 around the fate of Assad, as well as the use of chemical weapons by his regime, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the outcome was better than he expected.
ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland - Canada has publicly been called on the carpet by the European Union for holding up free-trade talks.
EU trade spokesman John Clancy took the unusual step Tuesday of criticizing Canada as the G8 summit in Northern Ireland came to a close.
OTTAWA - Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer has handed a House committee the tricky question of whether two Tory MPs should be suspended over doubtful campaign spending.
Scheer says it's up to the committee on procedure and House affairs to decide if James Bezan and Shelly Glover should lose their MP privileges until their fight with Elections Canada is settled.
BUFFALO, N.Y. - The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a petition to review the murder case of an anti-abortion extremist who is also suspected in the shootings of three Canadian doctors.
James Charles Kopp claims his constitutional rights were violated during the state and federal trials that sent him to prison for life for the sniper-style slaying of an American abortion provider.
OTTAWA - Call it the Rathgeber clause: Liberals in the Senate say a Conservative bill that would force unions to disclose their expenses should match another Tory bill on disclosure of public sector salaries.
Conservative backbencher Brent Rathgeber quit the party caucus earlier this month after his private members' bill on public sector salary disclosure was effectively gutted by the government.
GENEVA - The last day of Ahmad Mokaled's short life dawned on a sunny spring February morning in the southern Lebanon town of Nabatieh.
Feb. 12, 1999, was Ahmad's fifth birthday. So his father, Raed, pulled him out of school for an impromptu celebration with Ahmad's older brother, Adam, at a bustling public park where the boys sprinted into a growing throng of children.
BUDAPEST, Hungary - Hungarian prosecutors on Tuesday charged a 98-year-old former police officer, who was stripped of his Canadian citizenship, with torturing Jews and assisting in their deportation to Nazi death camps.
Laszlo Csatary, who lived for years in Montreal, was chief of an internment camp for 12,000 Jews at a brick factory in Kosice — a Slovak city then part of Hungary — in May 1944, they said.
VANCOUVER - The federal government says a man allowed into Canada 17 years ago should be kicked out of the country because there is ample evidence that he was part of an Asian crime gang.
But in newly released written arguments, Lai Tong Sang's lawyer said that Ottawa is basing its arguments on multiple layers of hearsay evidence that is unreliable.
TERRACE, B.C. - There is a growing imbalance between oil supply and delivery in Canada and doing nothing is not an option, the lawyer for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers told a federal panel weighing the Northern Gateway project.
Keith Bergner told the review panel Tuesday that current pipeline capacity is not sufficient, and producers are finding themselves with product on their hands and no way to ship it to buyers — "shut-in" as it's known in the industry.
HALIFAX - The Canadian government is planning to introduce new rules to make drilling and production companies more accountable in the event of offshore spills.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, speaking at a news conference Tuesday in Halifax, said Ottawa will introduce legislation this fall to raise the liability cap for companies operating in Atlantic Canada's offshore to $1 billion, up from the current $30 million. The liability cap in the Arctic would also increase to $1 billion from the current $40 million, he said.
OTTAWA - A handful of Canadian troops are about to take part in peacekeeping operation in Haiti, under the command of Brazilian forces, in a long-delayed mission that has been kept inexplicably low on the political radar.
The deployment of an infantry platoon was approved by the Harper government on Oct. 16, 2012, according to internal defence department documents obtained by The Canadian Press.
Defenceman Mark Streit is staying in Philadelphia
Less than a week after Streit was acquired by the Flyers in a trade with the New York Islanders, the 35-year-old defenceman agreed to a four-year $21 million contract, according to a person familiar with deal.
KINGSTON, Jamaica - Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica is serving a provisional suspension after failing a drug test.
The Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association announced Tuesday that the 2004 and 2008 Olympic champion at 200 metres is provisionally suspended while a panel reviews the case.
TORONTO - John Herdman has pleaded patience with his work-in-progress women's soccer team this season.
Two more newcomers will have the chance to audition for Canada's head coach when the Canadians play perennial powerhouse Germany in a friendly on Wednesday.
VANCOUVER - Vancouver Whitecaps winger Kekuta Manneh has been suspended one game for a collision with New England Revolution goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth.
Vancouver coach Martin Rennie revealed the suspension after a practice Tuesday. The Whitecaps will not appeal the suspension, and Manneh will sit out Wednesday's home game against Chivas USA.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - The Los Angeles Kings have agreed to a six-year contract extension with rising star defenceman Slava Voynov.
The Kings did not say how much the deal is worth, but reports estimate the figure at $25 million. The deal can't be made official until July 5.
BOSTON - Chris Kelly, Daniel Paille and Tyler Seguin have proved to be a winning combination for the Boston Bruins.
"I'm just a little ticked off that I didn't put them together sooner," Boston coach Claude Julien joked Tuesday.
MONTREAL - The Crown has withdrawn domestic violence charges against ex-NHL star Vincent Damphousse.
The prosecution announced today that it has withdrawn six charges of simple assault against the ex-star, explaining its decision to do so after going over the case.
MONTREAL - Coach Marco Schallibaum was serving a one-game suspension when his Montreal Impact had perhaps their worst game of the Major League Soccer season last weekend in Columbus.
He'll want a better showing from the Eastern Conference leaders when he returns to the sidelines for a game Wednesday night against the visiting Houston Dynamo.
EDMONTON - It was going to be a breakthrough campaign for career backup quarterback Matt Nichols, the year he fought to be the No. 1 signal caller.
Instead the 26-year-old Edmonton Eskimo formally ended his 2013 season Tuesday with the announcement he will undergo surgery for a torn anterior cruciate ligament on his right knee.
SAN FRANCISCO - Major League Baseball is dragging its feet on having team owners vote on the Oakland Athletics' proposed move to a new ballpark 40 miles south in San Jose, San Jose city officials said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The lawsuit — filed in federal court in San Jose — is disputing MLB's exemption to federal antitrust law, which MLB has used as a "guise" to control the location of teams, according to the suit.
NEW YORK, N.Y. - Former Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis plans to get married this year.
People magazine says the 53-year-old Louganis will marry paralegal Johnny Chaillot.
BOSTON - There is no panic or frustration. But Chicago Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville acknowledges his team is in a tough spot going into Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final.
"You lose back-to-back games, it gets your attention," the coach conceded. "We're in a hole right now. We want to make sure (Wednesday) we prioritize the importance of that game and it's a different level."
BOSTON - Injured Bruins forward Gregory Campbell limped up to the podium, the very picture of Boston Strong.
Campbell has become part of hockey lore since breaking his leg blocking a shot while killing a penalty against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Eastern final — and then finishing his shift. While Campbell downplays his heroics, coach Claude Julien says he epitomizes the blue-collar Bruins.
DETROIT - The Detroit Red Wings accomplished their No. 1 goal of the off-season Tuesday by agreeing to a $22.5 million, three-year deal with Pavel Datsyuk.
"It's a great day for the Red Wings," general manager Ken Holland said in a telephone interview. "He's is a world-class player and there are no moves I can make to find players like Pavel Datsyuk."
OTTAWA - Colin Miller will be on the bench with Canada's men's soccer team at the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup.
Miller returned as interim head coach after leading the squad in a game against Costa Rica last month in Edmonton. He was also Canada's coach at a camp in the U.S. earlier this year, and was Canada's interim head coach for part of 2003-04.
OTTAWA - The home of the Ottawa Senators is getting a new name.
Scotiabank Place will be renamed the Canadian Tire Centre, the team announced Tuesday.
TORONTO - Five-time world hockey champion France St-Louis has joined the Canadian team staff for the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
St-Louis was named an assistant chef de mission for the Games, joining chef de mission Steve Podborski and assistant chef Jean-Luc Brassard.
SAN JOSE, Calif. - The San Jose Sharks agreed to a contract extension with star centre Logan Couture to keep him off the market next summer.
A person familiar with the deal confirmed the extension, which was first reported by Comcast SportsNet California. The person spoke on condition of anonymity Tuesday because the contract can't be signed until the free agency window opens July 5.
SYDNEY - Australia qualified for the 2014 World Cup by beating Iraq 1-0 on Tuesday, with Josh Kennedy heading home the winner in the 83rd minute to reward a bold substitution by coach Holger Osieck.
Osieck, a former Canadian national team coach, made the surprising decision to take off talisman Tim Cahill and replace him with Kennedy, and the decision paid dividends when Mark Bresciano chipped a cross into the box, where the tall striker took advantage of lax marking to head past Noor Sabri in the Iraq goal.
PARIS - A trial involving Bayern Munich star Franck Ribery and Real Madrid's Karim Benzema on charges they solicited an underage prostitute has been adjourned until January.
The two France internationals face potential prison terms of up to three years each if convicted.
