Pakistan is hemming and hawing about a report that the U.S. wouldn't cut it a cheque in February to fight al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Seems Washington is wondering if that's where the money actually goes.

From the NYT:

When the Pentagon announced in March that Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran in a critical job at a pivotal time in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

But nearly two months later, the military has quietly canceled the assignment of General Hood, a 33-year Army veteran who was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

During General Hood’s command from 2004 to 2006, military authorities force-fed with tubes detainees who were engaging in hunger strikes at the Guantánamo prison, a step they justified as necessary to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide to protest their indefinite confinement. Also during General Hood’s tenure, reports that an American guard may have desecrated a Koran stirred wide protests in the Islamic world.

The decision to withdraw General Hood’s assignment has not been announced, but it appears to reflect the widening shadow that the military prison at Guantánamo is casting over American foreign policy. While the United States considers Pakistan a close ally in its counterterrorism efforts, the accounts by Pakistanis who have returned to Pakistan after being held at Guantánamo Bay have added to anti-American sentiment in the country.

Who does Russia's new president love more: His wife, Deep Purple or Vladimir Putin?

To be perfectly frank, my CTV.ca feature doesn't address that question (it's a bait-and-switch effort), but it does give an overview of Dmitry Medvedev, a long-time Putin associate who officially became Russia's president today.

Alas, I fear he won't be the same human quote machine as the Putinator, nor be likely to provide amazing photo ops like this:

Economist Todd Hirsch says that too many argue Canada's economy needs what he calls "faster horses" -- more tax cuts for business, more social spending for the poor.

But the problem is a horse-drawn-buggy economy, when Canada needs to think about a transformation on the scale of mass production of automobiles (his opening anecdote is based on a Henry Ford quote: "If we had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Two German research teams say shifting ocean currents may blunt global warming for the next 10 years, but that climate change deniers shouldn't take much comfort from that.

I know Rex Murphy's got a good vocabulary and all, but who on Earth who knows anything about climate change was touting biofuels as a solution to that problem?

This CBC climate crank claimed tonight that environmentalists saw things like ethanol and whatnot as climate silver bullets.

Some of the biggest boosters of biofuels have been U.S. President George Bush and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and I suspect more for reasons that have to do more with perceived energy security and domestic partisan politics than fighting climate change.

Most responsible environmentalists have said from the get-go that food crops shouldn't be converted into fuel -- or tropical forests, for that matter. I believe it was also environmentalists who noted that food crops produced with industrial agriculture techniques aren't climate-friendly. They do think there's some promise in converting cellulosic fibre (i.e. straw and other biomass) into ethanol. But the economics aren't there for that process yet.

There was nothing in Murphy's commentary that reflected those facts. Draw your own conclusions.

Read to the end of this story excerpt.

On Sunday, a number of co-ordinated attacks were carried out on U.S. and Afghan military outposts in the Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan. Hmm. Who do we know that does stuff like that?

From the BBC:

A top Taleban commander in Pakistan has halted peace talks with the government, his spokesman says.

Last week Baitullah Mehsud ordered a ceasefire amid reports that he was close to reaching a peace deal with the new government.

But his spokesman says talks have broken down because the government refuses to order troops out of the tribal areas by the Afghan border.

It would seem to me that having Pakistan withdraw its troops from South Waziristan before a deal is reached with Mehsud would provide the militant leader with a significant advantage. But maybe that's just me.

My headline may be a bit misleading. Read on:

However the spokesman said that they did not plan to start fighting again at this stage.

"Taleban remain firm in the ceasefire but Mehsud warned that if the government launched any action his fighters would retaliate," Maulvi Omar said.

Okay, so they're not talking, but they aren't shooting either. My mistake.