Canada

Canada's Melancthon EcoPower Centre opened on October 30 after three years of construction. The country's largest wind farm is located near Shelburne, Ontario and has a capacity of 199.5 MW.

In a last-ditch effort to keep operating, consumer-electronics giant Circuit City has filed for bankruptcy protection in both the United States and Canada.

Just days after the Richmond, Va.-based company announced it would close 155 of its 770 retail stores and cut 20 percent of it U.S. workforce, Circuit City on Monday said it has faced significant financial challenges and needs to file for Chapter 11 protection in the United States, while seeking protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act in Canada.

Navigon has just taken the wraps off the 8100T -- a personal navigation device that adds a three-dimensional perspective to a company's fleet of GPS-enabled navigation products for automobiles.

Sporting a silver brushed-metal housing, the 8100T integrates a 4.8-inch color touchscreen with a panoramic 16:9 aspect ratio. The extra-wide screen is particularly useful for displaying the contours and elevations of nearby geographic features such as lakes, rivers and rolling hills, helping drivers realistically see what lies ahead.

Fujitsu has rolled out three new notebook PCs, including a mini-notebook that is squarely aimed at field workers and mobile sales teams.

Powered by Garmin's Mobile PC navigation software, the LifeBook U820 arrives preloaded with maps of the U.S. and Canada, together with data covering millions of destinations and points of interest. Weighing just 1.32 lbs, the mini-notebook delivers turn-by-turn, voice-prompted navigation that eliminates the need for workers to carry a separate navigation device, according to Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product management at Fujitsu.

One of Canada's most prominent environmentalists toured the oil sands in northern Alberta recently and had one word to express what she saw: Mordor. Maude Barlow, who was recently appointed to advise the UN on water issues, said her visit to the oil sands reminded her of Tolkien's fictional blackened and barren wasteland.

The smartphone race between upstart Apple (AAPL) and incumbents like Research In Motion (RIMM) is well under way. Picking winners has as much to do with what's inside these advanced wireless devices as the fancy features evident on the outside.

According to a noted neurobiologist, the rapid growth of computer technology is dividing humans into "digital natives" -- people who grew up using technology -- and "digital immigrants" -- people who started using technology later in life.

That's the provocative suggestion of Dr. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and director of the UCLA Center on Aging, in his new book, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Small coauthored the book with his wife, Gigi Vorgan, a former actress and Hollywood scriptwriter.

Toronto, Canada's Electrovaya and Mumbai, India's Tata Motors have teamed up on an electric version of Tata's Indica hatchback, which we previously announced would be electrified for the European market within 2009. The car is designed to be a direct competitor to traditional internal-combustion engine models, and will be rolled out in Norway in 2009 and India in 2010.