Man found dead in manhole

What looks like an attempt to steal copper wire from a city manhole claimed the life of the suspected thief Wednesday.

The man’s body was discovered about 11:45 a.m. after a passerby walking along the 900 block of McDougal Rd. N.E., noticed an Enmax manhole cover was ajar and took a closer look, police said.

Emergency crews were called in by an Enmax employee who was alerted to the body by the passerby, said Calgary Fire Department spokesman Jeff Budai.

“On arrival of fire crews, they reported the male patient was face down in approximately six inches of water and not moving,” he said.

There is indication the man may have been trying to steal copper wire from the underground installation, said Enmax spokesman Peter Hunt, who called the incident a tragedy for the individual, his family and the crews who responded.

Alberta ignores U.S. oil critics at its peril

There was a time when being Alberta’s man in Washington D.C. involved golf rounds and cocktail circuits of non-stop fun.

As America’s most reliable energy supplier, the province rated a red-carpet reception in a national capital thirsting for secure oil. Not any more.

Gary Mar is not yet a political pariah, but he’s running an Alberta office in the Canadian embassy that’s fighting negative perception battles on multiple fronts.

Arguably the brightest Cabinet minister to grace former premier Ralph Klein’s front bench for more than a dozen years, he’s been representing the province in the U.S. capital for less than a year now and finds himself under increasing siege by an organized environmental backlash against the Alberta oil sands.

Why Are 3G iPhones So Cheap?

If you’re wondering how Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) can sell the new 3G iPhone for a price tag of just $199 (for the 8-GB model), it could be because it only costs $173 in hardware bill of materials (BOM) and manufacturing costs.

In a preliminary virtual teardown report from tech research firm iSuppli, analysts developed estimates of iPhone content, suppliers and costs.

With the 3G iPhone, Apple is making significant changes in its pricing strategy from when the original 2G phone was sold at an unsubsidized price of $499, said iSuppli.

In addition to low BOM and manufacturing costs, the low price of the 3G can also be attributed to wireless service carriers that will sell the phone at a subsidized rate, using a common business model for the mobile-handset market. iSuppli estimates the size of the subsidy paid by wireless carriers to Apple will be about $300 per iPhone.

Calculating in the $300 subsidies from carriers, Apple will be “selling the 8-Gbyte version of the second-generation iPhone to carriers at an effective price of about $499 per unit, the same as the original product,” said Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst for iSuppli, in a statement.

U.S. helps beef up typhoon relief in Philippines

By Romeo Ranoco

SIBUYAN ISLAND, Philippines, June 26 (Reuters) – U.S. soldiers shuttled water, rice and medicine to typhoon-ravaged islands in the central Philippines on Thursday as the search for hundreds of bodies from a capsized ferry continued.

Helicopters from the USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier that cut short a visit to Hong Kong to help relief efforts, transported supplies and scoured the seas around the Princess of the Stars, which went belly up with 865 people on board during Typhoon Fengshen on Saturday.

The overall death toll from the sixth typhoon to hit the Philippines this storm season could top 1,300, while over 1.4 million people have been forced to evacuate their homes and are reliant on handouts to survive.