Never Gonna Give You Up Karaoke By Tay Zonday

Meet the ‘Italian Seinfeld’ from Down Under

If you’re an Italian Canadian, you can probably stop reading just about now. Stop because you’ll not only already know most of what follows but will, I presume, already have purchased tickets for one or more of the upcoming stand-up concerts starring comedian Joe Avati.

If you’re not Italian Canadian, and are still with me, you may have been missing out on one of the planet’s hottest comics, a diminutive, affable, perpetually well-tanned, 33-year-old Australian of Calabrian descent, who’s been wowing audiences and amassing a tidy fortune for the past seven years, through personal appearances, five best-selling CDs and three DVDs.

This week, he starts an eight-city Canadian tour, his third trip here in seven years. Usually, Avati’s shows are sold out, presto. The first time he played the Toronto Centre for the Arts, in 2001, tickets for four shows were gone in two hours. In 2005, he made 23 90-minute appearances, all sold out.

Bush Urges NATO on Ukraine, Georgia

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — President Bush on Wednesday renewed urgent calls for NATO to start the admission process for Ukraine and Georgia despite a split among alliance members and fierce Russian objections.

The president said the two former Soviet states are ready for membership and that NATO leaders at a summit this week must make clear that membership will remain open to all European nations, no matter what Moscow thinks.

“We must make clear that NATO welcomes the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine for membership in NATO and offers them a clear path forward toward that goal,” Bush said in a speech ahead of a summit of alliance leaders in Bucharest.

Zimbabweans feel change in the air as factions talk of deal to end Mugabe rule

HARARE — Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is in the midst of the most severe crisis of his tempestuous political career, with factions in his ZANU-PF party beginning to suggest that he must leave office.

“It seems there is movement in ZANU-PF, people reaching out to the opposition to talk about a deal,” said a well-connected Western diplomat in the capital. But, the diplomat said, it also would not be a surprise to see the government declare victory at any moment, and move quickly to quash any dissent.

More than three full days after Zimbabweans went to the polls, there is no official winner in either the parliamentary or presidential vote. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has repeatedly claimed victory, but the government says it will accept none but the official results released by its electoral commission, and there is no sign of when those will come.

Second inmate who died in B.C. prison riot identified

AGASSIZ – The name of the second prisoner who died during a prison riot in Agassiz has now been released.

Corrections Canada said Trevor Wayne O’Brien, 25, died in the riot from what appears to be a drug overdose. He was serving a three-year, nine-month sentence for robbery and property offences.

Michael Andrew Gibbon was also killed during the riot. Results from an autopsy done on the notorious sex offender will not be released until pathology tests are completed, an RCMP spokesman said Tuesday.

Historic aboriginal paintings stolen, recovered within hours

DARWIN, AUSTRALIA — Seven historic aboriginal paintings were stolen Tuesday from an Australian museum then recovered hours later after the thief apparently changed his mind and dumped them in a park, police said.

The paintings, valued at more than $460,000 by officials at the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery, were undamaged.

The thief broke into the museum in the northern city of Darwin before dawn and took seven paintings by Aborigines, six of them from the early days of the Papunya Tula movement — an artists’ collective in central Australia credited with creating a modern Aboriginal style that is now world renowned.

CBC-TV to drop Royal Canadian Air Farce

TORONTO — CBC-TV’s long-running comedy show, The Royal Canadian Air Farce, is ending its 15-year run, a mutual decision by the show’s producers and the network.

Producers Don Ferguson and Roger Abbott, who also star on the beloved sketch comedy series, have informed the cast and crew that there will be a truncated, 10-episode season starting in the fall, with a final Air Farce farewell edition airing on New Year’s Eve.

“All good things must come to an end,” Ferguson said Tuesday. “Our last deal with the CBC was made after our 12th season and it was for three years, and the feeling was that would be long enough.”