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The Sisters Brothers tells the story of Eli and Charlie Sisters, guns-for-hire who are tracking a prospector through mid-19th-century California. “I think that I’m still processing a lot of it,” deWitt said of his success these past few months. “I think it will settle in over the next few months. I think it’s something I’ll be thinking of more, once all the noise has passed and I’m back in my office. burberry outlet cheapAll I know now is I feel predominantly a feeling of gratitude. Recognition on this level was completely unexpected. So it was just sort of the nicest of surprises for me. I feel very moved by it all.” The prize was especially meaningful to deWitt, because he received a much-needed grant from the Canada Council for Arts, which administers the GGs, during the writing of The Sisters Brothers. He was running out of money and considering asking his father for a construction job when the envelope arrived in the mail. “I remember my hands were shaking,” he says. “My wife and my mother were there; it was this really intensely dramatic moment. When I opened it up and got it, we all erupted in cheers. It was a really fine moment for me. “I can’t really overstate how much it really saved me,” he said. “I think it really benefitted the book in a really tangible way, because when you have to take breaks, when you’re forced to take breaks — which has happened to me so much in the past – often times, you just lose the momentum completely, and the initial spark, your affection for the characters – all those things can disappear.” Foran’s book earlier won the Charles Taylor prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. “The 2011 GG-winning books reflect the diversity and depth of contemporary Canadian literature,” said Robert Sirman, Director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts. “With the hundreds of other great books that have won Canada’s national literary award over the past 75 years, they represent pure gold for Canadian creative excellence.”

Peterborough, Ont. writer Charles Foran has won the 75th Governor General’s Literary Award in the English-language non-fiction category for his biography of Montreal author Mordecai Richler, Mordecai: The Life & Times, it was announced Tuesday in Toronto. Joining Foran among the winners was Patrick deWitt, in the English-language fiction category, for his much-acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers. DeWitt, originally from Vancouver Island, now lives in Oregon. Montrealer Donald Winkler won the award for French to English translation for Partita for Glenn Gould (translated from Partita pour Glenn Gould, by Georges Leroux). This is his second Governor General’s award for translation; he won the prize in 1994.sacs louis vuitton Winkler is also nominated for a Quebec Writers’ Federation translation prize, for the same book. The winner of that prize will be announced Nov. 22. Leroux himself won a Governor General’s award as well Tuesday, for French-language non-fiction, for his book Wanderer : essai sur le Voyage d’hiver de Franz Schubert. Each GG prize winner receives $25,000. DeWitt’s novel The Sisters Brothers also won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award earlier this year, and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize. “When this book came out, I had never really thought of myself as someone who would win a prize,” he said moments after the announcement. “So to be embraced in this way – it just makes me feel good about books.” The Sisters Brothers tells the story of Eli and Charlie Sisters, guns-for-hire who are tracking a prospector through mid-19th-century California. “I think that I’m still processing a lot of it,” deWitt said of his success these past few months. “I think it will settle in over the next few months. I think it’s something I’ll be thinking of more, once all the noise has passed and I’m back in my office. All I know now is I feel predominantly a feeling of gratitude. Recognition on this level was completely unexpected. So it was just sort of the nicest of surprises for me. I feel very moved by it all.” The prize was especially meaningful to deWitt, because he received a much-needed grant from the Canada Council for Arts, which administers the GGs, during the writing of The Sisters Brothers. He was running out of money and considering asking his father for a construction job when the envelope arrived in the mail.

“For the question of specific sectors, whenever we enter negotiations as we’ve done in the past with other countries, as we’re doing right now with Europe, we always say that all matters are on the table,” Harper said. “But of course Canada will seek to defend and promote our specific interests in every single sector of the economy.” Boscariol said there’s no question that other countries, particularly New Zealand and the U.S.,sacs louis vuitton will be targeting Canada’s “supply management” system of quotas. “Whether or not it’s in their rules, certainly it’s been made clear to Canada ‘you’re going to have to liberalize agriculture.’ This is going to be the number one issue in the negotiations for Canada,” said Boscariol. Without the supply management system, Canada’s entire poultry industry would be at risk of collapse, said Mike Dungate, executive director of the Chicken Farmers of Canada. “It would exist as a shadow of what it is. . . . What you would see is a whole lot of farmers going out of business,” said Dungate, who argued consumers wouldn’t see any cost savings from potentially-cheaper imported chicken as a result. Instead, the savings would be eaten up by retailers and poultry processors eager to boost their own bottom lines, he suggested. Dungate, however, is optimistic that Canada’s track record of protecting its supply management industries in trade agreements won’t change, as is Yves Leduc, director of international trade at the Dairy Farmers of Canada. “Canada has negotiated 10 or 12 free trade agreements over the last 20 years, and all of them have excluded the supply management sector,” said Leduc, who also dismissed suggestions Canadian consumers are paying too much for milk and cheese. “I think Canadian consumers pay a fair price for their dairy products. Don’t go and compare it to lower prices in countries where the dairy industry is heavily subsidized,” said Leduc, referring to both the U.S. and Europe. Queen’s University professor Robert Wolfe says even if Canada does get into the TPP, it likely wouldn’t be at the expense of our dairy and poultry industries. “Anything you put in there that changes supply management in a meaningful way would open up the Americans’ own agricultural industries in a way that they don’t want,” said Wolfe, adding that the U.S. likely doesn’t even want Canada or Japan to join. The U.S. has already entered into negotiations to join, while both Canada and Japan have expressed formal interest.

Would you be willing to trade away the ability to eat local chicken if it meant your cousin’s job at a manufacturing plant was more secure? As Stephen Harper shifts his gaze to a new Pacific Rim trade agreement, experts say Canada’s system of dairy and poultry quotas could be at risk, but Canadian manufacturers could get more access to hard-to-crack Asian markets. While Canada has long expressed a general interest in joining the four-country Trans Pacific Partnership,sacs louis vuitton this weekend’s announcement by the Prime Minister made it clear this country will be applying formally. What Harper didn’t make clear, said trade lawyer John Boscariol, is exactly what would be on the table in negotiations to join. One of the sticking points that kept Canada from applying before was the import and production quotas in our poultry and dairy industry. In the poultry, dairy and egg industries, industry associations and marketing boards set quotas for how much of our eggs, chicken and milk is produced here and how much is imported. Critics have charged this keeps prices artificially high for consumers. “Up until now, they’ve made it very clear they won’t be changing the system, which particularly protects the dairy industry in Quebec, which is why it’s a bit confusing now,” said Boscariol, head of the international trade practice at McCarthy Tetrault law firm. Given the federal government’s ongoing attempt to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board, it wouldn’t be a huge philosophical leap for them to agree to change the way the dairy and poultry industries work. “The Harper government has made it clear with the Canadian Wheat Board that they don’t like these types of quotas and boards, this government interference in the market,” Boscariol said. Brian Masse, international trade critic for the federal NDP, says any reassurance the government won’t change the dairy and poultry system in this country must be taken with a grain of salt. “They don’t care about supply management in the Canadian Wheat Board. . . . I can see them pulling the plug on these industries in a minute,” Masse said. If protected industries like dairy and poultry are the most vulnerable to more trade negotiations, Canada’s beleaguered manufacturing sector could be the big winner. “We think it’s great news. … These negotiations are shaping up to be the agreement for the Asia-Pacific region,” said Jean-Michel Laurin, vice president of global business affairs for Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. “Canada being out would mean we run the risk of giving U.S. exporters privileged market access into other TPP countries while Canada would be on the sidelines.” The TPP was founded by Chile, Brunei, Singapore and New Zealand in 2005. Five other countries, including the U.S., are negotiating to join. Japan and Canada recently requested formal negotiations. Speaking in Honolulu Sunday, Harper said there would be no pre-conditions to Canadian negotiations.

HONOLULU—President Barack Obama plunged into a long-awaited and high-stakes mission to re-establish U.S. leadership in the Pacific but is bumping into the expanding influence of China at every turn. Mr. Obama hosted a forum of 21 Asian-Pacific nations in Hawaii over the weekend. But one of those countries, China,sacs louis vuitton occupied an outsized share of the president's attention and that of his aides, underscoring the challenges the U.S. faces in the Pacific. One of Mr. Obama's core objectives is to serve notice that the United States will serve as a counterweight to China's growing economic, diplomatic and military influence. "This trip is very much about extending a clear signal that the United States is going to be fully present in the economic, security and political future of the Asia-Pacific region, and it takes place in the context of a rising China," Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser at the White House, said in an interview Sunday. The president framed his central message on Saturday: "The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay." Enlarge Image APEC Close APEC Associated Press Chinese President Hu Jintao, left, met with Barack Obama on Saturday in Honolulu. Mr. Obama said the American public is increasingly frustrated with China's slow pace of change. But China has proven to be a continuous complication. On trade, Mr. Obama has repeatedly pressured China to allow its currency to appreciate, only to be told by Beijing that China is doing enough. On national security, China is extending its claims in the region, worrying U.S. partners and allies who both depend on China for trade but fear it may exercise its power in more forceful ways. As a result, China's neighbors have implored the U.S. to deepen its involvement. "The nations of the region very much want us here," Mr. Rhodes said. The tensions were on full display this week, with more to come as Mr. Obama heads next to Australia and then Indonesia. On the economic front, Mr. Obama announced advances over the weekend in a regional free trade deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that excludes Beijing for the foreseeable future. WSJ's Chana Schoenberger has details of U.S. companies being deterred from taking advantage of easy access to the Chinese Yuan by bureaucracy and paperwork. Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images To get in, China would have to foster more competition between private companies and state-owned enterprises, and boost protection of intellectual property rights, conditions China will have difficulty meeting.

RIO DE JANEIRO — About 3,000 police officers and soldiers moved into one of the largest slums here on Sunday in a pivotal effort by the government to assert control over lawless areas of the city ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. In an operation that began before dawn, military helicopters buzzed the sky, and tanks rolled through the narrow streets of the Rocinha slum. Elite police squads patrolled the alleys, and snipers perched on rooftops. The authorities said the occupation was an effort at the “pacification” of the sprawling slum, or favela,sacs louis vuitton and it was carried out peacefully. By early Sunday evening, the police, accompanied by contingents from the Brazilian Army and Navy, had not fired a shot. Under the government plan to assert control over the favelas in Rio, the authorities have brought in specially trained community police officers and have tried to improve basic services. But the process has not always gone smoothly. Street battles last year in the Complexo do Alem?o, a patchwork of slums, left more than 30 people dead before security forces won control of the area. The operation in Rocinha — which is located above some of Rio’s most exclusive residential neighborhoods — was considered the most important step yet in the effort to impose order. Officials said the operation’s success was made possible by months of intelligence gathering and by the arrest last week of Ant?nio Bonfim Lopes, the drug lord known as Nem, who was said to have effectively ruled Rocinha. “Some say it’s good; others say it’s not,” said Nilson Ferreira, 31, a doorman who lives in Vidigal, a slum near Rocinha that was also occupied on Sunday by soldiers and the police. “For me, it’s fine,” said Mr. Ferreira, who watched the police clean an area where drug traffickers had thrown oil to prevent vehicles from passing. The occupation of Rocinha and Vidigal, which command spectacular views of Rio, is also a crucial phase in the crackdown against drug traffickers that control many of the city’s slums. The preparations to enter Rocinha, a hillside community of more than 80,000 people that boasts a thriving assortment of businesses and an emerging tourism trade, involved months of planning, officials said. Critics said the operation, called “Shock of Peace,” seemed somewhat overdone, given the relative calm in Rocinha compared with the atmosphere in other favelas in Rio, a city with a population of 11.8 million. “The helicopters flying overheard are more Coppola than Vietnam,” said Luiz Eduardo Soares, a security expert and author, in a Twitter message that referred to the movie “Apocalypse Now,” the director Francis Ford Coppola’s fictional account of the Vietnam War. Mr. Soares also criticized the news media frenzy ahead, calling it “showtime” and saying that it fed the middle class’s exaggerated fears. Still, the operation allowed officials to highlight the security gains of recent years, which have made parts of Rio considerably safer. The city’s security chief, José Mariano Beltrame, said on television that the Rocinha operation had returned “dignity and territory to those who haven’t had them for 30 years.” Searches by the police in the Laboriaux area of Rocinha turned up drugs and caches of weapons and ammunition. The police also guided journalists through the luxurious three-story villa of a Rocinha drug trafficker called Peixe, or Fish, who was arrested last week, showing them his hot tub, swimming pool and collection of imported spirits. But such displays belied the sense of normalcy that prevailed in Rocinha on Sunday. With the authorities surveying the scene from helicopters, residents gathered to chat while sharing tall bottles of beer. The wheels of commerce also began turning as they had before the incursion.

(See EXT4 for debt crisis news.) Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said his priority is to ensure the payment of a sixth loan under a European Union-led bailout to avert financial collapse, hours after Prime Minister Lucas Papademos took charge as head of a new interim government. Venizelos retained his posts as deputy premier and finance minister in the government sworn in yesterday by Archbishop Hieronymos of Athens and All Greece. The clock is ticking on the payment of the 8 billion-euro ($11 billion) loan installment under the 110 billion-euro EU-led rescue agreed on in May 2010. The tranche must be paid before the middle of December to prevent a collapse of the country’s economy. “The ministry’s first priority is to secure the payment of the sixth loan on completion of all the necessary actions,”sacs louis vuitton Venizelos told reporters in Athens yesterday. He said that the group of euro-area finance ministers can approve the release of the loan after a telephone conference call. The new government must implement budget measures and decisions related to an Oct. 26 European bailout amounting to 130 billion euros as well as manage a voluntary debt swap, before holding elections that have been tentatively set for Feb. 19. “The new unity government will do the best it can to resolve the country’s problems,” Papademos said in a meeting with former Prime Minister George Papandreou after the ceremony. “I believe with the collaboration and unity of all we will achieve the results we want.” Government Mandate Health Minister Andreas Loverdos, Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou and Energy Minister George Papaconstantinou also kept their posts. Anastasios Giannitsis, currently chairman of Hellenic Petroleum SA, will head the interior ministry and Stavros Dimas, deputy leader of the main opposition party, New Democracy, and a former European commissioner, will be foreign minister. President Karolos Papoulias gave Papademos the mandate to form a government on Nov. 10 after agreement from Papandreou, New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, and opposition LAOS party leader George Karatzaferis following four days of wrangling after Papandreou said he’d resign.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief Thomas J. Donohue, in Honolulu for the week-long Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, is urging APEC's political leaders to reach agreement on the nine-nation Trans-Pacific pact, calling it the best chance for the U.S. to tap into the world's most lucrative markets. The U.S., he warned in a speech this week, is "already behind the eight ball in Asia." Mr. Donohue, who is participating in APEC's CEO Summit along with hundreds of business leaders, is pressing for an aggressive trade agenda that he believes would benefit U.S. businesses. The nine nations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership—the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru,sacs louis vuitton Singapore and Vietnam—are involved in talks to form a free-trade zone in the Asia-Pacific. In a wide-ranging interview with Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, the 73-year-old president and chief executive of the Chamber shared his concerns about the euro-zone crisis and trade frictions between the U.S. and China as political leaders prepared to discuss the Trans-Pacific trade pact. The more and more you get into the political season, one of the things that everybody finds it's necessary to do is make their China comment, because in economically challenging times, countries all over need to become somewhat protectionist and tell their citizens that we're ... protect[ing] jobs here in America. When in fact, the reality is China's one of our fastest growing export markets, and how do you walk away from ... a country that has 1.3 billion people and massive growth in the middle class.

But some 50 members of his party, and members of the opposition as well, pressed for Mr. Papademos, seen as an outsider to the old-boy political networks — a technocrat, perhaps able to take Greece on a new path. But it was not an easy sell. Some analysts here have said that the political parties were reluctant to embrace him because he would be an unknown, and perhaps a rival, at election time. Only after another five hours of negotiations on Thursday morning did the president’s office issue a written statement confirming that Mr.sacs louis vuitton Papademos would take on the task of trying to bring Greece’s economy back from the brink. It was unclear on Thursday night what his cabinet might look like. News reports earlier this week said that Mr. Papademos had also set certain conditions before he was willing to take the post that had added to some of the reluctance to embrace him. The reports said he wanted a term of at least six months; earlier, the major political parties had agreed to new elections in just 100 days. Other reports said that Mr. Papademos was insisting that members of the main opposition New Democracy party play a significant role in the unity government. It was widely reported that the opposition, headed by Antonis Samaras, had resisted participating, not wanting to be linked to deeply unpopular reforms with an election around the corner. But standing outside the presidential palace, Mr. Papademos said he had not made any demands before accepting the job. He also said the new unity government would be “transitional,” and its priority would be to make sure that Greece stayed in the euro zone. “I am convinced that Greece’s continued participation in the euro zone is a guarantee for the country’s stability and future prosperity,” he said. Whether he will succeed remains an open question. But some analysts said they considered his appointment to be Greece’s best shot.

ATHENS — Lucas Papademos, a respected economist and former vice president of the European Central Bank, was named Thursday to lead a new Greek unity government that has pledged to abide by the tough terms of a European aid package in the hopes of saving the country from bankruptcy. The announcement came after four days of often chaotic negotiations that put the feuding among Greece’s political parties on full display. Mr. Papademos, who has a low-key, avuncular manner,sacs louis vuittonemerged from the presidential office building shortly after the statement about his new post was released at midday and spoke briefly with reporters, striking an optimistic note. “The course will not be easy,” he said. “But the problems, I’m convinced, will be solved. They will be solved faster, with a smaller cost and in an efficient way, if there is unity, agreement and prudence.” Mr. Papademos has only a few weeks to persuade Greece’s creditors in the so-called troika — the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank — to release its next block of aid, $11 billion, before the country runs out of money. Then he must begin fulfilling the painful terms of an even larger loan. He will have to move swiftly to reassure the European leaders there will be no repeat of the shock they suffered in October, when the former prime minister, George A. Papandreou, after negotiating a new $177 billion loan, decided without warning to submit the bailout package to a referendum. The move infuriated the Europeans, who had concocted the Greek bailout as part of a painstakingly negotiated broader effort to stabilize the euro. It also started the clock on the end of Mr. Papandreou’s tenure. Mr. Papademos will have to deal with 2011 budget shortfalls and the passage of a 2012 budget that is expected to call for another round of austerity measures in a climate of growing social unrest. He will also have to start what are expected to be difficult negotiations with private sector banks that have agreed, in principle, to write off 50 percent of the face value of their Greek bond holdings as part of the rescue plan. As if to underscore the problems, the national statistics authority reported on Thursday that unemployment had jumped to a record high 18.4 percent in August, a month when the tourist season normally lowers the rate, from 16.5 percent in July. Mr. Papademos almost did not get the job. After Mr. Papandreou agreed on Sunday to step aside once a new coalition government had been formed, the parties could not seem to stop fighting long enough to settle on a candidate. With new elections expected early next year, all sides were maneuvering for strategic advantages. On Wednesday evening, Mr. Papandreou went on television to give his farewell speech as prime minister and was expected to announce a different successor.

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