Angel >> Swordsmen/journalists Ian Austen and Linda McQuaig Taking on a high stakes dare from media baron Conrad Black ain't easy. The big, bad B-man owns Hollinger Inc., the Southam newspaper chain, the Jerusalem Post and the London Daily Telegraph. He controls 33 Canadian daily newspapers, including the new National Post, and happens to be one the country's wealthiest men. Last week, Black dared the duo of Austen and McQuaig to re-print a damning story they wrote about him, thus opening themselves up to a lawsuit which Black promised he would file. In response, saying they cannot afford to defend themselves against Black's legion of lawyers, Austen and McQuaig challenged Black to an old-fashioned duel of hand-to-hand combat. En garde!

Insect >> Jean Charest, failed saviour of Canada The Liberals avoided the landslide PQ victory that everyone predicted but, in the larger scheme of things, Charest is still a big loser. When he took the Liberal leader's job back in March, the party's standing in the polls shot through the roof. All he had to do was keep the pressure on the Parti Québécois and make sure his numbers didn't slip back down. But he ran a lacklustre campaign, meeting as few voters as possible during the first two weeks. And while Lucien Bouchard ran a mistake-riddled campaign (buying off doctors, insulting Charest personally, ducking the drug-insurance controversy), Charest did little to capitalize. Perhaps federalists were too quick to place their hopes in a man who, ultimately, has never headed a winning team in his life.