After posting my last post yesterday about being bewildered, I took off from work early (2:00 out here) to take my vehicle in to the dealer. I really don't pay attention to too much outside of sports and stocks so it came as a complete surprise that it was going to drop to -40 degrees (celcius) in Edmonton this weekend.

Having taken over a vehicle lease from a guy in Vancouver last year, I was surprised to learn that not all cars sold in Western Canada come with block heaters. Last spring when I went to plug in my SUV, it took 1/2 hour of searching until I realized that people in Vancouver may not actually require them, thus my vehicle does not have one.

As I said, I have selective attention disorder :) Just ask my wife. But I digress...

While waiting the hour at the dealer to have a block heater installed, I grabbed one of the complimentary Timmies donuts and opened up a copy of the complimentary Edmonton Journal. As Edmonton is not a hub of finance by any stretch of the imagination, the business section is largely comprised of reprints of stories and headlines from the National Post in a section that is actually labelled with the Financial Post branding.

Kinda of like a two page Best of the Financial post for that day along with the market quotes from the prior day. Think of it like a USA today version for my US friends on here.

After skimming the first story, I noticed a headline that read as follows:

"Talk about an Unfortunate release" followed by the rest of the story. And yes, that sentance was bolded in the newspaper.

Wow, I thought... who is the poor unfortunate company worthy to receive such a headline? Was a company closing its doors? Was a company under a criminal investigation? Did somebody go on a shooting spree? Those would all be unfortunate news items worthy of the front page of a Financial Post section of a local newspaper. A local newspaper that is part of the CanWest media organization which is part of CanWest Global Communications. Canwest media publishes such papers as the National Post, the Vancouver Sun, the Province, the Ottawa Citizen, the Calgary Herald, as well as a host of others across Canada.

Now the National Post was launched in 1998 and was built around the existing Financial Post, an established business-oriented newspaper in Toronto which was purchased from Sun Media in 1997. (Financial Post was retained as the name of the new paper's business section.

So the National Post is the old Financial Post but they kept the brand as it has the same stature in Canada as the Wall Street Journal would have in the USA. It was required reading for anyone wanting a pulse on Canada's economy and markets.

Suffice it to say that if this unfortunate news release was mentioned in Edmonton, it was likely mentioned in every other news paper across this great country.

By now you are likely asking, what was so unfortunate?

Here is the word for word, character for character, double checked by me five times release:

"Talk about an unfortunate release by an issuer with an unfortunate symbol. Noront Resources (NOT/TSX Venture) said yesterday that, at the request of the IIROC, it was retracting "the estimated mine life and revenue projections for the Blackbird chromite deposit as disclosed in our Press Release of December 9, 2008, as these projections are not supported by independent economic analysis."

That's all that was published. Nothing else. And no mention of the other two press releases Noront had released on December 10. You know the ones that showed excellent assay results from AT12 and of course the one showing that the Eagles is open at depth past 1000 metres. One wouldn't want to highlight one of the two "fortunate" press releases when one can sling about dirt and pretend to represent fair and unbiased journalism on Canada's business environment. But this goes to confirm my belief that those who can't teach and those who can't teach work for the National Post.

Now you will notice that the date mentioned is wrong. "A pretty serious thing for a newspaper to screw something like that up when using a direct quote", I thought to myself. Until I went to SEDAR and found that what was officially submitted by Noront as a retraction also requires a retraction as the date stated is July 9, 2008. In order to ensure my DD is thorough, I checked to see if Noront had maybe snuck a Blackbird NR in December 2008 and was referring to that, But alas, none was there.

So now I have to extend my saying to those who can't get jobs at the National Post work for Noront.

After putting the paper down already frustrated in the closing share price and the fact that the service department wanted an additional $110 to tell me why my engine light was on (gotta love Acura) I at least knew what caused the share price to drop after an otherwise excellent week of news:

Financial Crap journalists writing biased headlines and Crap CEOs who can't even get the date right in a retraction being demanded by the IIROC.

With so much crap out there, one wonders how us Notters even stand a chance. Especially when shorters spend their days scanning newspapers for unfortunate events waiting for their next kill.

This leads me to my last belief. Noront in my opinion will never develop this area. When you cannot get two NRs in a row correct, you have no business trying to build Canada's next Sudbury. And at this point I don't mind. My dream for 2010 is that two very large mining companies will begin a bidding war for Noront that will allow us to walk away from this gong show with our dignity intact and our wallets fat.

Until then, let's keep the drills going 24 x 7 and hire a better PR firm. Or better yet, bring Richard back. At least he knew how to cross the t's and dot the i's, being a lawyer and all.

M1.

So now I had an understanding on why our stock dropped the day following what