Biggest local, national and world stories of the week

The Rundown returns, plucking news items off the wires the way the Canadarm snares cargo ships in outer space. For instance, there is this story about the surge in ebook sales in Canada, this one about Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne and Ryan Gosling all sort of, kind of, being related, this one about the new-look pigtails on Wendy’s of hamburger fame and this one that cites a report saying more Canadians are living without debt this year than last year. That same report says those harbouring debt are allowing it to creep up.

Elsewhere:

The United Nations says there are six billion cellphone users in the world. For Canadian users who are perplexed by cellphone contracts, the CRTC wants to hear from you.

Alberta is solidly behind the wheel when it comes to driving Canada's economic growth.

A report says mental illness has a much larger impact than cancer.

Nearly eight million cars, including 240,000 in Canada, will be recalled by Toyota to fix faulty power window switches that could cause fire. The recall is the largest in Toyota's 75-year history.

Worldwide sales of personal computers are down slightly for the first time in 11 years, according to a report.

Strokes are happening at a younger age, according to a group of U.S. researchers.

The mother who glued her two-year-old daughter's hands to the wall says "she is not the monster everybody thinks I am."

The International Monetary Fund is concerned about debt being incurred in Canada's housing market.

Ottawa could return to the Canadian Football League as early as 2014 after the city okayed an expensive redevelopment of Lansdowne Park.

That post-Olympic boom in tourism for Britain? Didn't happen. But the tourists who did come, spent more.