PRESS DIGEST - Canada - May 17

May 17 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

- Ottawa has placed 905,000 hectares of the northern offshore up for bids, clearing the way for energy companies to snap up exploration rights for an area half the size of Lake Ontario.

- The Charest government, abandoning any hope of negotiating a settlement with striking students, announced it is suspending classes in colleges and universities where students are still on strike.

Reports in the business section:

- Canadians are spending far more on goods in the U.S. than federal data suggest, raising the stakes for domestic retailers trying to find ways to draw customers back into their stores.

- Enbridge Inc, in the race to move oil from western Canada and the United States to refineries in the east, has solidified plans to reverse the flow of a key oil pipeline, a plan the energy industry had been pushing for to alleviate the crude glut in the Midwest.

NATIONAL POST

- The Conservative Party will ask the Federal Court to throw out a citizen advocacy group's legal challenge that claims misleading telephone calls in the last election affected the results in seven ridings.

FINANCIAL POST

- IMF head Christine Lagarde warned that any Greek departure from the euro "would be extremely expensive and hard, and not just for Greece".

- Canada's largest pension fund manager is investing $300-million to build a 45-storey office tower in downtown Chicago, the largest real estate project launched in the city in the past five years.