Toronto, Feb 11 - Air Canada Thursday reported its first profit since 2007, posting a net income of $107 million for 2010 as well as the highest load factor in its history.

The revival comes after the country's national carrier reported a net loss of $24 million in 2008 and $1 billion in 2008 at the peak of the global meltdown.

The Montreal-based airline's income of $361 million for 2010 shows a huge improvement over its $316-million loss in 2009.

Toronto, Feb 11 - Top Indo-Canadian leader Ujjal Dosanjh has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, calling for a "third freedom movement" to liberate India from corruption.

He joins eminent Indians, including Wipro chief Azim Premji, who last month drew the prime minister's attention to the widening 'governance deficit' in an open letter.

Toronto, Feb 10 - The legislative assembly of Canada's French-speaking Quebec province Wednesday passed a unanimous motion banning the kirpan from its premises.

All 113 members of the assembly, including Premier (chief minister) Jean Charest, voted in favour of the ban on the Sikh symbol.

The motion was introduced by the opposition Parti Quebecois (PQ) after last month's incident in which the assembly security staff denied entry to four Sikhs of the World Sikh Organization (WSO) who came to testify before a House committee debating Bill 94 which aims to ban Islamic face coverings.

Toronto, Feb 8 - ArcelorMittal and Nunavut Iron Ore Acquisition Inc., which jointly acquired Canada's iron ore-rich Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation last month, Monday announced further consolidation of their stake in the Toronto-based company.

Holding about 60 percent of Baffinland stock at the time of their takeover, the two partners said Monday that they have acquired an additional 89,710,019 common shares to take their stake past 90 percent.

Toronto, Feb 8 - After Ottawa's refusal to grant additional flights to Emirates Airline last year to protect traffic on the India-Canada corridor for its national carrier, Air Canada has entered into a sharing agreement with Jet Airways till it gets long-haul Boeing 787 Dreamliner to resume India operations.

Under a three-year agreement starting February 21, passengers booking for India will travel on Air Canada flights to London's Heathrow Airport where they will be connected to Jet flights for Mumbai.

Air Canada stopped its direct India flights via Zurich in 2007 after it faced severe economic crunch. It entered into a sharing agreement with Lufthansa with Frankfurt as the hub for passenger transfer on the Canada-India sector.

Toronto, Feb 6 - Wooing Bollywood tops the agenda of Dianne Watts, mayor of Canada's 'Indian city' of Surrey, when she begins her 11-day business mission to India Feb 10.

Watts said she will use her city's "many connections to India, both socially and economically", to woo businesses and investors.

Surrey on the suburbs of Vancouver is the fastest growing city in Canada and home to the largest concentration of Indians, mostly Sikhs, in Canada. Indians account for almost 30 percent of the city's population of 465,000.

Toronto, Feb 4 - Canada's world-famous Carleton University is set to sign memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with various Indian educational institutions during the visit of it president and vice-chancellor to India next week.

Ottawa-based Carleton is the only university in the world to have a full-fledged India-centric Centre of Excellence in Science, Technology, Trade and Policy to raise awareness about bilateral studies and public diplomacy, and develop initiatives to build a better understanding of both countries.

University president Roseann Runte, who is leaving for India Friday, told IANS she would meet top Indian academics and sign MoUs with various institutions during her five-day visit which takes her to Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Toronto, Feb 3 - Shaking off a bad previous year, the global airline industry posted an impressive 8.2 percent growth in passenger traffic in 2010.

At 20.6 percent, the growth in freight traffic was even more impressive, said Montreal-headquartered International Air Transport Association (IATA) in its annual report Wednesday. "The world is moving again. After the biggest demand decline in the history of aviation in 2009, people started to travel and do business again in 2010,'' said IATA director general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani. But the IATA boss said the industry was not out of the woods yet because of the tight margins.

Toronto, Feb 3 - A Canadian man has been locked up for six months for beating his puppy to death.

A court in Victoria, which is the capital of British Columbia province, Wednesday sentenced 24-year-old Brent Malcolm Connors for beating his dog to death last month.

"I am really sorry for what's happened. It really affected me. I hope it never happens again to any other animal,'' the local Victoria Times Colonist newspaper quoted the accused as telling the judge.

Toronto, Feb 2 - Even the most horrible criminals feel guilt, and playing on that sentiment might be a good way to extract a confession.

Michel St-Yves, forensic psychologist and lead author Nadine Deslauriers-Varin, both from the University of Montreal's School of Criminology, worked with 221 prisoners, analysing the conditions under which they did or didn't confess.

The findings highlighted the predominant role of police evidence over and above other factors the researchers considered, reports the journal Justice Quarterly.

When the evidence is strong, the confession rate increases independently of socio-demographic or criminological factors, according to a Montreal statement.

Toronto, Feb 2 - ArcelorMittal and Nunavut Iron Ore Acquisition Inc., which are now the joint owners of Canada's iron ore-rich Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation, Tuesday announced taking up an additional 4,773,400 common shares of Baffinland at their outstanding offer of $1.50 per share.

Abandoning their rivalry to take over Baffinland, ArcelorMittal and Nunavut made a joint bid for the Toronto-based iron-ore giant January 14 at $1.50 per per share.

With their successful $590-million bid last week, the two became joint owners of Baffinland, with ArcelorMittal controlling the larger stake of 70 percent and Nunavat 30 percent.

Toronto, Feb 1 - As the global meltdown grounded the auto industry, Toronto's biggest Indian car man, Nav Bhatia, only thrived. The multimillionaire Sikh has also been helping change stereotypes about Indians in Canada after being mistaken for a cab driver once.

"We have continued to post better results thanks to our clients," beams Bhatia who landed here from Delhi in 1984 and is the biggest Indian origin Hyundai car dealer in Canada today.

Flip through any newspaper and you find him featured in full-page auto ads with his trademark right finger pointed up.

He is friends with the who's who of Canada, including BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie. "We are very good friends. Jim loves Indian food. He is very simple and cuts his lawn grass himself."

Toronto, Feb 1 - Shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) slipped about two percent Monday after India rejected its offer for partial access to its encrypted corporate emails.

Since August last year, India has been seeking access to BlackBerry encrypted emails to counter threats to its national security. Since BlackBerry encrypted emails travel between smart phones through RIM's own servers and cannot be breached, BlackBerry has become the dominant enterprise smart phone globally.

Toronto, Jan 29 - With a billionaire brother-in-law of the ousted Tunisian dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fleeing with his family to Montreal last week, Canada Friday said it was taking steps to remove him from the country.

Billionaire businessman Belhassen Trabelsi, who has been accused of amassing wealth by looting the Tunisian people, landed in Montreal after fleeing Tunisia in a private jet. The Tunisian authorities have sought his extradition and requested the Canadian government to hand him over to them, Mouldi Sakri, Tunisia's ambassador to Canada, said.

Toronto, Jan 29 - China's ZTE Corp. has replaced BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) among the world's top five mobile phone sellers.

According to a report released Friday by tech research company IDC, the low-priced cellphone maker ZTE also pushed Apple to the last spot on the Top-5 list on the back its surging sales.

The report "Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker'' said Apple was pushed from the fourth slot to the last position despite shipping a record number of iPhones during the fourth quarter.

BlackBerry had made to the IDC's Top-5 list only last April.