Financials slide, indexes tumble

TORONTO — North American stock markets racked up triple-digit losses Friday on escalating worries about the financial sector.

The Toronto market was also hard hit by energy stocks even as oil prices started to mend from a tumble Thursday, while the Dow Jones Industrials ended below 12,000 for the first time since mid-March.

Toronto’s S&P/TSX composite index closed down 209.48 points to 14,580.67 on top of a 283-point dive the day before.

New York’s Dow Jones industrials fell 220.4 points to 11,842.69.

“The financials in the U.S. are going to continue to be weak in at least the short to medium term because there’s such an uncertainty about the balance sheets and exactly what more writedowns are going to be there,” said Blair Falconer, portfolio manager at HSBC Securities Canada.

Greenland climate changed quickly

Extensive spruce forests used to cover the southern half of Greenland, according to a Canadian study that gives a remarkable glimpse of the icy island’s green past and possible future.

The work, by a team at the Université du Quebec a Montreal, shows the impact of past climate warming on the massive ice sheet was much greater than previously believed.

And it “should increase concerns about its fate” as the global climate warms because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Anne de Vernal and Claude Hillaire-Marcel report in the journal Science today.

Singularly sensational

She was an executive story editor on Sex And The City, she co-authored the best-selling bible for lovelorn women, He’s Just Not That Into You, and her first novel, How To Be Single, is about unmarried women all over the globe. Liz Tuccillo champions the cause of single women everywhere, and what’s more, she’ll make you laugh out loud while doing so.

Tuccillo’s new novel, How To Be Single, is just out. The book concerns a group of single women in New York, one of whom decides to travel the world and investigate love and relationships in other cultures. Julie, the narrator, goes to Paris, Rio, Sydney, Mumbai, Bali and Beijing to interview (and hang out with) other single women. The book is fast and funny and fascinating, but you wouldn’t exactly call it Chick Lit — it’s a lot more complicated, in a good way. How To Be Single is a study of friendship and love, but with elements of anthropology and sociology for good measure.

Tuccillo says she learned a lot while travelling and researching the book. “I learned that so much of my perception of being single has to do with where I live and that there are other places — Iceland, for instance — where it wasn’t an issue. There are still a lot of stigmas about being single in America. I learned that a lot of my point of view is influenced by my culture.”

Philippine ferry carrying over 800 people sinks in typhoon

MANILA (AFP) — A ferry carrying more than 800 passengers and crew sank in heavy seas killing at least four after Typhoon Fengshen lashed the Philippines, officials and reports said Sunday.

The MV Princess of the Stars went down several kilometres off the coast of Sibuyan Island in central Romblon province after being battered by huge waves overnight when its engines failed, officials said.

Four bodies have been found washed onshore but the death toll was likely to rise with the fate of the rest of the passengers, including 50 children, and crew unknown, officials and reports said.

“I am still hopeful for survivors,” coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo said.

Search and rescue boats were struggling to reach the submerged ferry which left the capital Manila on Friday for the central island of Cebu.

Coast guard and navy vessels were turned back by massive waves overnight when the ferry, stranded and taking on water, sent a distress signal.