New Delhi's endgame?

By Adnan R. Khan - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 51 Comments

UPDATE: Pakistan’s drift toward extremist control has accelerated in recent days, raising anxiety among its neighbours, and drawing words of alarm from Washington. The government in Islamabad is “basically abdicating to the Taliban,” Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, said during an appearance before a congressional committee. Clinton was referring to a series of events in the country suggesting the Islamist radicals are operating with impunity through ever greater tracts of Pakistan’s northern territories. Of particular concern is an agreement authorized by President Asif Ali Zardari last week allowing the Taliban to impose sharia law in the Swat Valley, located just 140 km west of the capital. The parties reached the deal after the Pakistani military tried and failed to root Taliban fighters out of the area.

The situation in the Swat Valley underlines the gravity of the situation—for the region and the rest of the international community. In the eight months since its former military dictator Pervez Musharraf gave way to a democratically elected government, Pakistan has gone from grudging partner to the NATO mission in Afghanistan to potential victim of the Islamist radicals in its own right. Its weakness was made plain this week when Taliban forces occupied a district located 100 km from the capital, before withdrawing voluntarily. The stakes behind these developments could not be higher: the Taliban now represent what Clinton called an “existential threat” to a government that—she hardly needed to mention—possesses nuclear capability. Atomic weapons in the hands of the Taliban is a worst-case scenario for India, and by extension, its western allies. This week, it seems dangerously close to coming true.

Few things are more disturbing than a spy giving you the once over. It’s that look in his eyes that makes you feel slightly less than human—more like a locked box he’s carefully assessing with the intent of cracking open—and the cold, cruel precision of it all. This particular spy, the one who enters a house in a nondescript part of central Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Taliban-plagued North-West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, really looks nothing like a spy. But that’s the thing about spooks: a good one never fits the bill, which is why James Bond would make such a terrible spy in the real world. “The trick is to disappear,” says the portly middle-aged man (for simplicity’s sake, let’s call him Farouk), a mid-level agent in Pakistan’s infamous Inter-Services Intelligence agency. “Whether you’re walking around in a market, or undercover inside a militant group, you have to look like everyone else. Otherwise you’re a dead man.”

In Pakistan, spies take their jobs very seriously, but that’s the nature of the espionage business in these unruly parts. It is a game of life and death, much like it was in the old days of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. That era is long gone, but another cold war, between archrivals India and Pakistan, rages on, with potentially dangerous consequences to the world that have been largely ignored. Like the U.S. and the Soviets, both India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed nations; one is secular and the other religious, an echo of the capitalist-Communist divide that was at the heart of the Cold War. But while the U.S. and the Soviets never went to war, Pakistan and India have fought three, and very nearly a fourth.

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Apple app crosses the line: "Baby-shaker" game pulled

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:18 PM - 1 Comment

Consumer outrage over an iPhone game called “Baby Shaker” has resulted in Apple pulling it from its iTunes App store. The 99 cent game that encourages users to quiet a crying baby with a vigorous shake went on sale Monday with the following instruction:  ”See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!” The user was instructed to then shake the on-screen black-and-white drawing of a baby with large red X’s over its eyes. An applications review website called Krapps spotted the game and protested about it. Within hours, other websites and Twitter were condemning Apple, which claims to vet every app carefully before approval (it has turned down a game that involved throwing shoes at George W. Bush). Organizations including the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome also condemned the company for approving the game’s sale.

Times Online

Hard times mean Americans are staying put

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:14 PM - 0 Comments

New U.S. Census Bureau figures record that the number of Americans who changed residences declined to 35.2 million from March 2007 to March 2008, the lowest number since 1962, when the nation had 120 million fewer people. Experts said the lack of mobility was of concern on two fronts. It suggests that Americans were unable or unwilling to follow any job opportunities that may have existed around the country, as they have in the past. And the lack of movement itself, they said, could have an impact on the economy, reducing the economic activity generated by moves.

The New York Times

Bully

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:09 PM - 9 Comments

Michael Ignatieff talks to the other Hour.

When he was a kid, his diplomat father sent 11-year-old Michael back to Toronto in 1959 to attend Canada’s most prestigious English-speaking private school, Upper Canada College. I ask Ignatieff if he was ever bullied at school.

“I remember bullies and I’m very hot-tempered, so I know how to defend myself,” Ignatieff replies. When asked to elaborate, Ignatieff will only say, “I hate bullies. I hate bullies in politics, I hate bullies in life. I don’t mind being argued with, I don’t mind being contradicted. But I hate bullies. It’s a red line for me. I absolutely hate being pushed around.”

Bad day for bards

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:03 PM - 0 Comments

British poet Ian McMillan is staying in today, he writes in the Guardian, “cowering behind the settee in a hard hat and persuading my wife to bring my meals on a tray, making sure that she tastes them first, or at least offers them to our grandson.” There’s something about Shakespeare’s death day that brings the shadow of extinction to all of his ilk: “William Wordsworth wandered his last lonely walk on this day, as did the great Spanish author Cervantes. Henry Vaughan, the Welsh metaphysical poet, breathed his last lungful of gorgeous Welsh air on this day. Rupert Brooke died today in 1915, and Harold Arlen – whose songs such as Stormy Weather and Let’s Fall in Love (mind you, he didn’t write the lyrics) approach the status of poetry— passed to the far side of the rainbow on 23 April 1986.”

Guardian.co.uk

"Happy face" spider appears to be contagious

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

British scientists have discovered studying a “happy face” spider indigenous to the Hawaiian rain forest makes them smile, the Telegraph reports. Dr Geoff Oxford, a spider expert from the University of York, told the paper: “I must admit when I turned over the first leaf and saw one it certainly brought a smile to my face.”  The spider, which goes by the scientific name Therein grallatorial, is harmless to humans, and is believed to have has evolved the distinctive markings to confuse predators. Less amusing is the reason scientists are studying the adorable arachnid: the species is facing extinction.

Telegraph.co.uk

British pubs ravaged by new taxes

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 1 Comment

Owning a pub in beer-loving Britain was once a licence to print money—but not anymore. In fact, some say the local pub is being taxed into extinction.

According to a new report by the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), 39 pubs in Britain are shutting their doors every week, and there are now seven million fewer pints sold each day than there were at the market’s peak in 1979. The lobby group now fears that as many as 60,000 jobs—or 10 per cent of the sector’s total workforce—could be lost.
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You stay classy, Jeff Watson

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 11:59 AM - 18 Comments

Transcript of a point of order raised after yesterday afternoon’s votes.

Mr. Michel Guimond (Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, BQ):  Madam Speaker, I would like to inform the House that, during the first vote, the one on the Bloc Québécois’ opposition motion concerning the gun registry, the Conservative member for Essex made an inappropriate gesture, and I would like to ask you to take action. When the member for Essex stood to vote against the Bloc Québécois motion—as is his right—he made an inappropriate gesture: he imitated a handgun, a revolver, using his thumb and index finger. Many Bloc Québécois members saw him quite clearly. Consequently, I would ask the member for Essex to apologize for making that inappropriate gesture. Given that the vote was on the subject of whether to maintain the firearms registry, it was totally unacceptable.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Denise Savoie): The Chair did not observe the gesture. I will give the member for Essex an opportunity to comment, or we can wait and review the video recording for this session.

Mr. Jeff Watson (Essex, CPC): Madam Speaker, for the benefit of the House, I was horsing around a bit with a colleague. It was certainly not intended at any member across the House or anyone else. There was no disrespect intended. It was not intended at hon. members across the House. In that sense, this is my explanation on that.

Mr. Michel Guimond:  Madam Speaker, when you look at the recording, you will see that he was pointing right at the leader of the Bloc Québécois, the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie. It was perfectly clear to those of us on this side of the House. We eagerly await your decision.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Denise Savoie): I would like to inform the hon. member that I will take his comments under advisement and, this afternoon, I will comment on what can be heard and seen on the tape.

Poor academic performance costs U.S. trillions in GDP

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 11:32 AM - 0 Comments

Common sense suggests that if the academic performance of a country’s schoolchildren isn’t up to snuff, the economy will suffer. But a new study reveals just how much the achievement gap is costing the U.S. The management consulting firm McKinsey $ Company estimates that the disparities in test scores (between rich and poor kids, as well as white and Hispanic, and white and black students) are robbing the U.S. of trillions of dollars annually, or US$3 to US$5 billion per day.  

The New York Times

Father of the nation?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 1 Comment

Paraguay’s new president, Fernando Lugo, appears to be taking this whole “father of the nation” thing a little too literally. For the third time in less than a month, a woman has come forward to claim that the former Roman Catholic bishop is daddy to her child. The latest mother, a social activist and director of a child care centre, says that she has information that Lugo may have fathered six children over the years.

The Washington Post

Nardelli's failures

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 11:18 AM - 0 Comments

When Robert Nardelli joined Chrysler in 2007 he was an outsider set to bring some Jack Welch-style management to Detroit. But it hasn’t worked out as planned, to say the least. Nardelli cut costs at Chrysler until there was almost nothing left of the company (an auto maker with a paucity of engineers and just four new cars in the pipeline for the next five years). He faced a very steep challenge, but he as fared no better than any other Detroit CEO before him in the tireless game of restructuring.

BusinessWeek

Mr. Darcy, Miss Bennet and zombies

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” It’s not every literary DJ who would want to remix one of the most beloved opening sentences in English literature, Pride and Prejudice’s exquisite phrasing about the common notion that “a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Especially since Seth Grahame-Smith’s surprisingly graceful mash-up of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel and George Romero’s equally classic (in its own peculiar way) 1968 zombie film, Night of the Living Dead, does retain some 85 per cent of Austen’s original text. But the author was working in an already crowded field, and he had a certain tone—both literary and absurdist—to set right off the top.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is, indeed, only the latest, if goriest, take on the most adapted novel in history. There are nine more or less straight-up film and TV versions of Austen’s corrosively funny tale of marriage, money and the five Bennet girls. That’s before mentioning Bridget Jones’s Diary or Bollywood’s Bride and Prejudice. Or the entire fictional sub-genre of unhappy modern women obsessing over Austen’s orderly society in rural England. Depending on the level of fantasy involved, the women in those stories can play out their dreams in an Austen-esque way or actually end up in Austen-era England. And in one four-hour BBC production, Lost in Austen (2008), a 21st-century Londoner switches places with Elizabeth Bennet—an Austen character—meaning she gets to do what she really wants: wreak romantic havoc in the world of Pride and Prejudice. Clearly, Austen’s novel still resonates with women.

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Turtle Power!

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10:53 AM - 0 Comments

The prequel craze has given us movies about the origins of many classic franchises: Star Trek, Batman, James Bond, and now, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Producers have announced that they’re working on a live-action movie that will tell how Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael came to be pizza-eating, sewer-dwelling talking turtles who fight evil. There has been no announcement about whether the movie will explain why they’re all named after Renaissance painters.

Variety

Mother’s morning sickness linked to child’s IQ

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10:51 AM - 0 Comments

Nausea and vomiting that often accompany pregnancy are certainly not pleasant—but queasy moms might actually give birth to smarter babies, according to a new study from Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. Morning sickness, which affects about 80 per cent of expectant mothers, actually enhances a child’s long-term neurodevelopment, according to researchers at SickKids’ Motherisk Program. In the study, the first of its kind, 121 women were recruited and split into three groups of mother-child pairs: moms who had morning sickness and were treated with anti-nausea drug diclectin; those who had morning sickness, but didn’t take diclectin; and those who didn’t have morning sickness. Their children aged three to seven were then assessed, with controls over variables including moms’ alcohol consumption and socioeconomic status. Children of women with morning sickness scored higher on performance IQ, verbal fluency, phonological processing and numerical memory. Severity of morning sickness was a significant predictor of higher scores. Although morning sickness is a common condition, it has “yet to be sufficiently studied,” says Dr. Irena Nulman, lead author of the study and associated director of the Motherisk Program, adding that more research into the condition is needed.  The study will appear in the April 23 online edition of The Journal of Pediatrics.

SickKids

For Hollywood, there's money in being green

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10:43 AM - 0 Comments

When Deep Sea 3D is smoking Julia Roberts at the Cineplex box office, you know something strange is going on. But ever since that BBC/Discovery series Planet Earth wowed TV viewers with its stunning pictures, movie-goers have been opting for nature docs over the dream factory. Space Station, for example, stands at US$78.5 million in domestic theaters, compared with $65.3 million for the Paul Rudd comedy, I Love You, Man. And Disney’s Earth is expected to earn $10 million in it’s first five days. A Warner exec credits a combination of factors, from the family-friendly quality of the nature films to the fact they often enjoy much longer runs, playing as they do at museums and public institutions. Then again, it could be that the artifice of many Hollywood movies has come to feel too—what’s the word?—artificial. Coral reefs might not be sexy, but at least they’re real. What’s more, they never wind up in rehab.

Los Angeles Times

Mitchel Raphael on the lululemon cabinet minister

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

A) Once a day? B) Once a decade?????

When the Canadian Medical Association was visiting the Hill, many MPs were given a health evaluation. “Do you exercise once a day?” Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler was asked. “No,” he replied. “Once a week?” Again, he replied no. When the questioner got to once a month, the champion for human rights who has served as counsel for such former political prisoners as Nelson Mandela explained he just doesn’t have time for exercise. Cape Breton Liberal MP Mark Eyking noted many MPs, including him, were given pedometers to measure how much they walked in a day. How effective they’ll be remains to be seen. Eyking demonstrated for Capital Diary that just by shaking the machine a little, the number goes up.

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What happens when you combine two women, a "large-bladed weapon" and a baby?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10:12 AM - 11 Comments

In the Maclean’s national crime rankings, published early last month, Saskatoon posted the highest crime score, 163 per cent above the national average. Most of the incidents that give the city that dubious distinction are routine. But not these ones. This story tells of charges laid in “an afternoon machete attack on a 20-year-old man along a busy riverside street in downtown Saskatoon.” Police also report that another “large-bladed weapon was allegedly used in a noon-hour confrontation between two women — one of them toting a baby.” They said one woman attacked the other with a “sword.”

The Star Phoenix

Jacob Zuma headed for South African presidency

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10:07 AM - 0 Comments

With more than one third of the ballots counted, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party appears to be headed for another national electoral victory–a result that would see the controversial Jacob Zuma become the country’s third post-apartheid era president. The A.N.C. has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid and its apparent victory this year is not a surprise. However, the party may stand to lose its hold on Western Cape, one of the country’s nine provinces, where Helen Zille, a former anti-apartheid activist who is currently the popular mayor of Cape Town, holds a narrow lead.

The New York Times

These fiscally prudent celebs are killing us!

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 4 Comments

We knew this recession thing was bad, but we didn’t know how bad until news came in from the forests of Bavaria that Nicolas Cage had been forced for financial reasons to sell his 28-room German castle, Neidstein. Et tu, economy?

While it’s true that Cage still owns several other homes and could, in a pinch, build a spacious bungalow from remaindered DVDs of Bangkok Dangerous, the fact remains that this big-time celebrity is now in possession of only one (1) ornate castle—Midford, an 18th-century fortress in England.

This is tragic news and I’m sure you’re tempted to feel sorry for Cage. We all know what it feels like to be down to our last castle.

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New life for death row

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Try as you might, it’s impossible to imagine Lara Lavi dangling Vanilla Ice off a 15th-floor hotel balcony. Or negotiating a record contract with a lead pipe in her hand, pistol-whipping artists, engaging in nightclub gunplay, or really duplicating any of the countless misdeeds—large and small—attributed to the founder of the company she now runs. The self-described “Jewish soccer mom” is more granola than gangsta, given to flowing scarves, her speech peppered with “mans,” “dudes” and “awesomes.” She even flashes a peace sign by way of goodbye. And that makes it all the stranger that the 48-year-old American, and her little-known Toronto-based company, WIDEawake Entertainment Group, are now the keepers of the dubious legacy of Marion “Suge” Knight Jr. and his infamous rap label Death Row Records.

In mid-January, WIDEawake stunned industry watchers by beating out big name competition like Warner Music in a Los Angeles bankruptcy court auction for the rights to the Death Row brand, and its back catalogue of recordings by urban music heavyweights including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Doggy Dogg. The US$18-million bid—several million more than the competition—from a company that boasts exactly one other artist on its roster, soul singer Sean Jones, raised eyebrows. Hobbled by Knight’s feuds with talent, financial woes, and periodic jail sentences, Death Row hadn’t released any new material since 2005. And shoddy record-keeping during its early-1990s heyday made it almost impossible to say what remained to be mined from the vaults. But Lavi and her associates say they have a plan to “monetize” an asset that has been heavily used and abused. (Since Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas in September 1996, at age 25, there have been over a dozen posthumous albums.) It revolves around giving the scariest outpost in the music business a Mr. Rogers-style makeover.

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Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of April 21st, 2009)

Fiction
1 THE WINTER VAULT  by Anne Michaels   1 (4)
2 THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows    2 (14)
3 GOING ASHORE by Mavis Gallant    4 (2)
4 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson  6 (29)
5 THE SWEETNESS AT   THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE by Alan Bradley  3 (10)
6 THE CHILDREN’S BOOK by A.S. Byatt   (1)
7 LA’S ORCHESTRA   SAVES THE WORLD  by Alexander McCall Smith  8 (4)
8 THE KINDLY ONES by Jonathan Littell    7 (8)
9 LOWBOY by John Wray    9 (2)
10 THE BELLINI CARD by Jason Goodwin    10 (2)

Non-fiction
1 OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell    4 (21)
2 TRUE PATRIOT LOVE   by Michael Ignatieff      (1)
3 THE CELLO SUITES by Eric Siblin    1 (6)
4 NOT YET by Wayson Choy    2 (4)
5 ALWAYS LOOKING UP by Michael J. Fox    3 (3)
6 NORMAN BETHUNE by Adrienne Clarkson    (1)    
7 HOUSE OF CARDS by William Cohan   9 (5)
8 STEPHEN LEACOCK  by Margaret MacMillan   6 (2)
9 A LION CALLED CHRISTIAN  by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall   5 (2)
10 ANGELS AND AGES  by Adam Gopnik  8 (11)

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Comic strip bombshell!!

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 9 Comments

It’s the most surprising turn of events in comics since Charlie Brown hit a game-winning home run: the recession has become a major issue in strips that never dealt with major issues before. Dagwood Bumstead in Blondie has been working the same generic white collar job since the ’40s, but his boss, Mr. Dithers, just told him that “at the rate the economy is going this company might be out of business by next year.” Hi and Lois is a 55-year-old strip about a round-nosed suburban family where the wife is usually in the kitchen, the kids say cute things, and nobody knows what the dad does for a living. But a recent strip had Hi Flagston coming home and telling Lois that “there were a lot more layoffs at work today” and that he might lose his job, whatever that is. The cover of a recent Archie comics digest has Veronica telling Betty: “We’re not just shopping, we’re helping to stimulate the economy!” The army strip Beetle Bailey managed to ignore Vietnam, Iraq and all the wars in between, and yet it showed the General standing in front of an earnings chart asking for advice on “the grim picture.” If you want to know how the recession is affecting us, don’t look to political strips like Doonesbury; look at The Wizard of Id, where the King bailed out the failed “carriage industry” but refused any money to help a small businessman. The crisis is so big that no comic-strip character can pretend it doesn’t exist. Well, maybe Ziggy.

Greg Walker, one of the writers of Hi and Lois (created by his father, Mort Walker), told Maclean’s that “we try to avoid jokes that would offend people. We go more for a warm, fuzzy approach.” But in the last few months, he’s been throwing in a few jokes that are anything but warm and fuzzy. A March 24 strip informed us that Hi might get his hours cut back at work, and the punchline was simply that he wasn’t looking forward to the idea of spending more time at home. Other old comic-strip franchises are doing entire multi-week storylines based on the economic realities of our time. Cathy did a series of strips about the latest fad in recession-era fashion: cheap-looking dresses that allow the title character to show off how thrifty she is. Marvin, a 27-year-old strip about a cynical baby who looks and acts like a humanized version of Garfield, recently took time off from diaper jokes to address the recession in the most depressing way possible, with Marvin’s grandparents losing their retirement savings and their home in the stock market crash.

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Grandpa’s canteen now costs $150

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 17 Comments

For water bottlers, the windfall is quickly disappearing. Just yesterday, it seems, Voss’s cool, cylindrical bottles represented the height of sophistication, B.C.’s glaciers were being bled dry to meet the global demand for $60 water, and the 535 bottled brands sold in the U.S. included Canine Quencher, bottled water for dogs. But as we tut-tut about consumer excess and carbon calculus, tap has come roaring back. In 2008, for the first time in years, dominant players PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Nestlé—which posted double-digit growth every year from 2002 to 2007—reported limp sales in North America. One-time market leader Aquafina was down a stunning 14 per cent.

But when shoppers close a door, they always open a window. A brand-new Manhattan-based start-up, uscanteen, founded by New York-based entrepreneurs Victoria Meakin and Peter Bobley, is offering the eco-guilty a hip alternative to utilitarian bottles. Like Sigg, Switzerland’s century-old, retro-chic aluminum-bottle maker—whose sales have surged past the $100-million mark, up from roughly $1 million a few years ago—uscanteen turned to a past classic for inspiration: the U.S. Army’s one-quart, aluminum M1910 canteen, replaced in 1962 by the olive-green polyethylene plastic version used in Vietnam and thereafter. Their ads on the New York Times website and on MySpace (where they were aimed at a younger audience) feature hip, natural-looking models carrying contoured flasks in holders almost as if they’re toting Jackie Kennedy’s Gucci hobos.

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What Bono says and what he does

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 92 Comments

After playing the Obama inauguration a couple of months back, the pop star Bono flew back home to a rare barrage of hostile headlines. As you know, the global do-gooder wants us to send more of our money to Africa. So why is he sending his money to the Netherlands? From the Irish Times:

“Bono ‘Hurt’ By Criticism Of U2 Move To Netherlands To Cut Tax.”

U2 hasn’t, in fact, moved to the Netherlands. You won’t find them busking outside downtown Rotterdam mosques of a Friday night. But they did move some of their business interests from the Emerald Isle to the Low Countries. From the Times of London: “Bono Hits Back Over Tax Dodging Claims.”

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