Ford Motor Company has announced plans to build a massive cathode manufacturing plant in Canada to produce batteries for its future electric vehicles (EVs).

Wednesday brought gloom to Quebec as its Finance Minister Monique Jerome-Forget warned that the province will be forced to post a deficit in 2009-2010 because of the current global economic crisis.

"The budget has got to reveal the truth," she said in a news conference.

"I have no intention of playing a game here. No intention. I am going to tell the truth and the truth is that we're being affected."

The budget is expected to be listed in March. For the first time in the last decade the province is, in most probability, about to show a deficit.

ROUYN-NORANDA, Quebec, Dec. 2 - Former NHL player Hubert "Pit" Martin died Monday, a day after plunging through thin ice on a Canadian lake while riding his snowmobile with a friend.

The accident occurred Sunday on a lake in northern Quebec near his hometown of Rouyn-Noranda.

Martin, 64, spent 10 of his 18 years in the NHL with the Chicago Blackhawks. He broke into the league with Detroit in 1961 and went to Boston in 1965.

From 1967-78 he racked up 627 points in 740 games for Chicago, seventh-best in team history. During those years, the Hawks made it to the Stanley Cup Finals twice, losing to the Montreal Canadiens in 1971 and 1973.

Quebec City, Canada - Many travellers to Scandinavia are familiar with ice hotels, edifices of frozen water that beckon guests with the prospect of an overnight stay in arctic-like cold. There is one such hotel in North America - in the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec.

This winter, it will be open from January 4 to March 29.

The only warm things at the Hotel de Glace are the candles on the bedside tables. The air is so cold you can see your breath, which adheres in tiny droplets to the opening of your sleeping bag. The tip of your nose feels numb - almost as though it were frozen. Getting up for a little while, drinking a glass of milk or going to the toilet seem impossible without risking death.

Quebec, Aug. 19 : Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has said that current Prime Minister Stephen Harper absence from the Beijing Olympic Games and preference for extending a welcome to Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has the potential of impacting negatively on future Sino-Canadian ties.

Washington/Quebec City - Vanuatu, the archipelago country in the South Pacific once known as the New Hebrides made its first splash on the world's map of cultural landmarks Monday when a UN committ