CTV Toronto is reporting that Maple Leaf Consumer Foods has released an expanded list of recalled products from its Bartor Road processing facility. The list does not yet appear on the Maple Leaf web site, but can be found in the CTV report.

The list of products includes all Schneiders, Burns, Sure Slice and other cold cuts – beef, pork and poultry – identified as coming from Establishment No. 97B, in addition to Shopsy's sandwiches labelled with Best Before dates up to and including AU 22 and  AU 24.

The recalled products were distributed to food service operators, nursing homes, retirement homes, hospitals, and deli counters across Canada. The company has not released a list of recipients of the recalled meat.

4 people have died from eating cold cuts all in Ontario and most of them over age 50.  Primer Dalton McGuinty says that the outbreak was identified quickly due to an early warning system which was put in place in Ontario after the SARS epidemic.

Listeriosis is a bacterial infection that affects all types of meats and being kept cool in the fridge won’t kill it.  Symptoms can take up to 4 months to show up after eating tainted meat and include headache, dizziness, cramps, fever etc.  The federal health minister said that the full extent of the outbreak may take several months as this is the largest tainted meat recall in Canadian history.

People should avoid eating cold cuts unless they can establish with certainty the source of the meat. Especially, the elderly, young children, immune-compromised individuals and pregnant women should not eat cold cuts until this outbreak is over.  Personally I plan to just avoid cold cuts from all companies for the next few weeks until this all passes over.  There’s lots of other things in the grocery stores to eat!

The race by airlines to shave weight and save fuel is now reaching safety equipment.

Jazz Airlines, Air Canada's regional affiliate, recently removed life vests from all of its planes - including those that fly over water - to reduce fuel consumption and save money.

Transport Canada regulations allow carriers that fly within 50 nautical miles of shore to use flotation devices instead of vests. Safety cards in seat pockets will now direct passengers to use the seat cushions, which float...

How much you ask could this save.... Tom Hinton, at Canada's Transportation Safety Board. "When you're trying to save every bit of money you can to make the airline more productive, every bit counts." At the most, the various changes add up to 2 per cent of fuel costs.

Personally I don’t see an issue with this.  Your chances of surviving a plane crass are small, and if you are unfortunate enough that your plane goes down into water your chances are even smaller.  So in the extremely unlikely event you happen to need these you’ll just have to figure out some other way of floating. 

This is only affecting Jazz flights which are mostly domestic and there’s not a lot of water they fly over anyways.  Let’s say for example you’re flying from Toronto to Winnipeg, you will be over Lake Superior but if your plane had problems they’d be able to get to land either to the south or to the north quite easily just do to the relatively small size of the lake when comparing to the altitude you fly at.

For the people who are going to complain about this, you need to think, would you rather remove a life vest, which probably won’t work, or pay extra to have a life vest that probably won’t work?

The Prime Minister’s Office announced on Friday it plans to summon the Liberals to a meeting, where they will be asked to approve in advance everything the government wants done this fall. If the answer is no, Stephen Harper will call an election.

Two election trigger theories are now circulating around the parliamentary precinct. (The third possibility - waiting for the fixed election date, in October, 2009 - now appears dead.) Scenario A has it that after three more weeks of PMO-ordered committee mayhem, Mr. Harper will stroll across Sussex Drive next month to inform the Governor-General that Canada’s cantankerous Parliament needs a vote to reincarnate itself into something functional.

That theory got a major credibility boost on Friday after PMO staff said Mr. Harper would meet with Mr. Dion in the next two weeks, lay out his agenda and, if the Official Opposition leader refuses to support it, drop the writ.

The second, less-likely scenario is that the government will load up the first week of its September agenda with all manner of confidence-testing measures, including some legislative stinkbombs the Liberals cannot possibly support, to induce its own demise for a late October vote.

Election call highly likely, Conservative official says

A CBC story says a senior Conservative says Prime Minister Stephen Harper could call a federal election as early as Sept. 2.

The well-placed party official said Friday that no decision has been made but an election call is highly likely sometime within the next two-to-four weeks.

According to the official, Harper could pull the plug on his minority government immediately after the Labour Day weekend, or wait until shortly after Parliament resumes on Sept. 15. The calculation would place Election Day at the end of October, coinciding with the final excitement of the U.S. election. Surely, most of us will be glued to the U.S. elections for most of the Canadian campaign – which could be either good or bad?

I know this is now considered “old news”, but I’d like to talk about Cuil (pronounced “Cool”) because of their claims of being “better than Google”.  I tried entering the ultimate query into Cuil: My name. The result? My blogging profile came first, followed by some other social networks with my name — but there was no link to my own website. Google, on the other hand, lists my website first; then other social networks follow.

The second test was an easy one for Cuil, I typed the word “Toronto” and the results looked much more promising. I was given an drop-down menu on the right, which gave me more information about the city. But, I was still happier with Google’s results. I got a map, and all the relevant results I wanted — such as the government site and Wikipedia.

To be fair, Cuil is new and probably hasn’t had anywhere near as much time as Google has to index all of the Internet’s pages. Many publishers will optimise their sites for Google, which again might help Google receive better results.  Cuil was started by ex-Google employees which may give it a helping hand to get going as they know a lot of inside info that they can use, sort of...It’d be hard to prove that the secret of web indexing was a stolen idea.

I’ve personally been a massive Google fan for several years.  Prior to Google I used MetaCrawler and WebCrawler but eventually made the jump to Google.  The main reason they are the leader is because they are one step ahead and have the most functionality all on one site.  Google has maps, pictures, news, blogs, medical info, even free Wi-Fi.  I’m actually happy to see some competition coming in for Google — because, one day, like the others above, something will be better than Google.