Ottawa Canada - In its 10-year history, Halogen Software has never faced anything like this. The company - co-founded by former Corel executive Michael Slaunwhite and run by Paul Loucks - survived the dot-com crash, then built a performance-management software business estimated to generate $40 million a year in revenue.

Now it is defending itself against a lawsuit that is showing the firm, its tactics and ethics in a less-than-flattering light.

With more than 20 rivals in its niche, Halogen exists in a cutthroat world where newcomers appear frequently and competitors trash one another's claims with impunity. Litigation is common.

In this case, one of Halogen's California rivals - SuccessFactors of San Mateo - is suing the Ottawa firm for engaging in fraudulent business practices in order to gain deeper insight into SuccessFactors' product lines. The specific allegation: that Halogen established a fake firm, The Magnus Group, that posed as a customer interested in buying SuccessFactors' software. Court documents allege that Halogen used the knowledge gained to improve its own software platform at SuccessFactors' expense.

''Halogen devised an elaborate scam, entailing months of planning and execution,'' SuccessFactors alleged in its motion for a temporary restraining order, ''all in order to steal and exploit SuccessFactors' non-public, proprietary information and materials to further Halogen's own product improvement.''

As America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades -- against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News -- fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators today announced they would reject efforts by Canada's right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.

Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast....any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1988. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North."

Of all the protests raging across the Middle East, Iraq stands out because it has already undergone recent radical political change. Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003 and Iraqis have held half a dozen rounds of elections, but people still do not feel their government represents them. The lesson is clear: going to the ballot box does not by itself constitute a democracy.

This might be because eight years after the end of autocracy, citizens and elected officials seem to have little or no understanding of democratic institutions. Friday's "day of rage" protests, when as many as 15 were killed, showed that Iraqis have been unable to differentiate between rallying for a cause, and simply expressing frustration mixed with violence. In one example, angry protesters in the governorate of Wasit burnt the mayor's offices, a key institution of local government.

Harbouring grievances against the elected mayor, who was elected in 2008, is legitimate. But setting fire to a public building, which actually is owned by the protesters as much as anybody else, shows the lack of a distinction between the mayor and public offices in general. And protesters shouldn't be resorting to arson anyway.

Danny Fitzsimons, first Westerner convicted in an Iraqi court since the war began, had been facing the death penalty.

An Iraqi court Monday convicted a British man and sentenced him to 20 years in prison over the shooting deaths of two contractors, making him the first Westerner convicted in an Iraqi court since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Danny Fitzsimons, 30, was found guilty in the 2009 fatal shootings of a British and Australian contractor who worked with him and with attempting to kill an Iraqi guard.

Fitzsimons, who had been facing the death penalty, told The Associated Press as he was being led from the courtroom by Iraqi guards that he was happy with the sentence. But when asked whether he thought the trial was fair, he said: "No."

Egypt's general prosecutor has imposed a travel ban on former president Hosni Mubarak and his family pending further investigations.

The prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmud on Monday also ordered the freezing of all of their financial assets inside the country.

"The decision today is acting on complaints received on wealth accumulated by former president and his family," a statement from the prosecutor's office said. The statement did not elaborate on the complaints.

Judicial officials said the decision applied to the deposed president, his wife Suzanne, his two sons Ala and Gamal, and their wives.

Last week the Guardian, Britain's main liberal newspaper, ran an exclusive report on the belated confessions of an Iraqi exile, Rafeed al-Janabi, codenamed "Curveball" by the CIA. Eight years ago, Janabi played a key behind-the-scenes role - if an inadvertent one - in making possible the US invasion of Iraq. His testimony bolstered claims by the Bush administration that Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, had developed an advanced programme producing weapons of mass destruction.

Curveball's account included the details of mobile biological weapons trucks presented by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, to the United Nations in early 2003. Powell's apparently compelling case on WMD was used to justify the US attack on Iraq a few weeks later.

Eight years on, Curveball revealed to the Guardian that he had fabricated the story of Saddam's WMD back in 2000, shortly after his arrival in Germany seeking asylum. He told the paper he had lied to German intelligence in the hope his testimony might help topple Saddam, though it seems more likely he simply wanted to ensure his asylum case was taken more seriously.

For the careful reader - and I stress the word "careful" - several disturbing facts emerged from the report.

Lakewood, Wash. (USA) - A natural gas explosion Monday at Pierce Transit headquarters rattled nerves, but nobody was hurt.

It happened around 5 p.m. at 3701 96th Street SW in Lakewood.

The fire sparked in a compressed natural gas tank at the back side of the Pierce Transit parking lot, according to Lakewood Fire officials. The facility compresses natural gas fuel for buses, said Lind Simonsen with Pierce Transit. Nobody was close to the explosion when it occured, and nobody was hurt.

The heat was so intense, firefighters were forced to back off to a safe distance to fight the fire, said investigators.

Several witnesses reported an explosion followed by a large column of flames.

As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Labor unions are not exactly popular, though: A third of those surveyed viewed them favorably, a quarter viewed them unfavorably, and the rest said they were either undecided or had not heard enough about them. But the nationwide poll found that embattled public employee unions have the support of most Americans - and most independents - as they fight the efforts of newly elected Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio to weaken their bargaining powers, and the attempts of governors from both parties to cut their pay or benefits.

Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.

Those surveyed said they opposed, 56 percent to 37 percent, cutting the pay or benefits of public employees to reduce deficits, breaking down along similar party lines. A majority of respondents who have no union members living in their households opposed both cuts in pay or benefits and taking away the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Around 3,000 people whose coastal town was leveled by Chile's massive earthquake and tsunami one year ago still live in squalid conditions that some compare to a "concentration camp."

In El Molino camp, some 450 temporary homes line streets of rubble, with no running water and shared makeshift bathrooms.

Residents lost everything when the nearby town of Dichato on the central coast was razed by the giant quake -- measuring 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale -- and subsequent tsunami on February 27, 2010.

Jimena Toledo, a community leader, regularly visits inhabitants of the wooden shacks, stepping over trash and other debris to walk down the streets, which are regularly flooded with mud during the winter months.

"Life in the village is bad, bitter, and ugly. I think it's like a concentration camp. People shut themselves in their homes at nine o'clock at night and that's it," Toledo told AFP.

"It wasn't like that before... we went out."

The government set up the camp, which is one of Chile's largest, three weeks after the quake, renting the land from a forestry company.

Almost all the former residents of Dichato now live there after the destruction of around 80 percent of their fishing town, which was once popular with tourists. Twenty-six people died there.

"Few people go to Dichato. Although they don't want to believe it, this is a new town," Toledo said of the camp.

A fruit and vegetable market takes place several days of the week, and many people have set up stalls selling basic goods.

Another 106 temporary villages sprung up after the quake to house the more than 4,000 families worst affected by the tragedy, which left 524 people dead and at least 31 missing, as well as 30 billion dollars in losses.

In the grand experiment known as the American democratic system, jury selections are designed to bring together a wide cross-section of any community.

As Scioto County Prosecutor Mark Kuhn kicked off the process of selecting a jury for a drug-related murder trial last year, he asked those selected randomly to raise their hands if someone in their family or in a friend's family had a drug problem.

One by one, all 31 potential jurors stuck their hands in the air.

Even for a seasoned prosecutor who has seen thousands of drug cases come through the Scioto County system in his six years on the job, it was a stunning verdict about the depth of the drug problem in the county.

"That was simply unbelievable," Kuhn said, shaking his head on a recent morning as he stood in the hallway at the Scioto County Courthouse, a manila folder full of arraignments tucked under his arm. A courtroom full of defendants awaited him -- most of his cases typically will somehow involve prescription drug abuse.

Such is life in Scioto County, a Southern Ohio county on the Ohio river where a prescription drug epidemic crosses all socioeconomic lines, wrecking young lives from ramshackle trailer parks to cushy suburban homes. The pain pills come in varying forms and dosages, but there is no question which one is king -- OxyContin, the fifth most prescribed drug in the world.