But Akio Toyoda, appointed to the top job at Toyota Motor Corp. last June, said the company is still deciding what steps to take to fix brake problems in the popular Prius gas-electric hybrid.

Speaking at a hastily announced news conference that lasted an hour, a stern-looking Toyoda promised to beef up quality control.

“We are facing a crisis,” he said, publicly confronting the automaker’s safety problems for the first time since the global recalls were announced Jan. 21.

He said the company is setting up a special committee he would head himself.

Meteorite hunters are on the look-out for space rock in Ireland, after a fireball was spotted blazing across the sky on Wednesday night.

People from across the country witnessed the spectacle, which happened at around 6pm.

It is thought the fireball was a space rock travelling at a 100,000 miles per hour, or the equivalent of a small atomic bomb blast in the skies.

The Canadian economy added a better-than-expected 43,000 jobs in January, Statistics Canada said Friday.

That was enough to push down the unemployment rate by one-10th of a percentage point to 8.3 per cent. It was the fourth month of job gains in the last six months.

Economists had been forecasting a more modest gain of 15,000 jobs.

The jobs gains were largely part time, as only 1,400 full-time jobs were created last month. Most of the new job creation took place in the private sector.

From the employment peak in October 2008, the country has shed 280,000 jobs.

Ontario was responsible for more than half the new jobs, adding 30,300 positions.

Average hourly wage growth in January dramatically slowed to 1.8 per cent year-over-year. The annual rate of wage growth had been 2.4 per cent in December.

Youth employment rises

Young people were the beneficiaries of 29,000 new jobs in January, pushing down the youth jobless rate to 15.1 per cent from 16 per cent.

Nasa scientists have been left stunned after detailed images of the surface of Pluto reveal it has dramatically changed colour over just a two-year period.

The Hubble Telescope captured the images, which are the most detailed and dramatic ever taken of the distant dwarf planet.

They revealed that the cosmic body, demoted from full planet status in 2006, is significantly redder than it has been for the past several decades.

Windsor City Hall renovation proposal has drawn fire after the shut down of daycares which leave 400 children seeking for alternatives.

The assessment of 350 City Hall Square West should come as no surprise to council — it commissioned the $53,000 study three years ago — but councillors contacted Wednesday conceded the timing for its receipt is unfortunate.

The study, completed in 2008 by IRC Building Sciences Group Inc., points to the need for “major capital expenditures” within two years. Many of the systems and units still in operation, like the mechanical, heating and air- conditioning systems, are “the vintage real McCoy” that came when the building was built more than 55 years ago, said Sergio Grando, city executive director of corporate facility planning.

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