Danielle Steel and the just noticed missing $2.7 million

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 5:18 PM - 0 Comments

Danielle Steel, the quintessential airport fiction writer, has been manufacturing bestsellers at the rate of two a year for three decades, some 76 in total. Her back catalogue—she has half a billion copies in circulation—sells well enough to keep her flush, to the tune of $30 million last year alone. Small wonder she has trouble keeping track of the loose change. No longer. She’s filed suit in her hometown of San Francisco, alleging that Kristy Watts, her bookkeeper for 15 years, embezzled $2.7 million from her over the past six years, some of it by using Steel’s credit card rewards on Watts’ own family. Watts has already admitted to embezzling $400,000 in a low-profile criminal case in which Steel was referred to only as “employer A.” In her civil lawsuit the author uses her most recent married name, Danielle Perkins, and claims irregularities in Watts books came to light last November.

The Independent

Pirating Dan Brown

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 5:15 PM - 4 Comments

Yeeyan, a Chinese collaborative translation website, has posted the prologue and first two chapters of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol online, in a bid to galvanize readers into producing a Chinese-language version before the novel’s official 2010 release by the People’s Literature Publishing House. This is not the first example of a Chinese appetite for blockbuster media resulting in crowdsourcing—fans regularly craft subtitles for popular Western TV shows, and have previously banded together to quickly translate Harry Potter books. (Nor have Potter enthusiasts stopped there: until author J.K. Rowling and her legal wizards stepped in, Chinese publishers dished up the likes of Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon—in which Harry encountered sweet and sour rain, became a hairy troll, and joined Gandalf to re-enact scenes from The Hobbit—credited it to J.K. Rowling, and sold it like butterbeer on a hot day.) But the pirated translations, a headache for Western rights holders—neither Brown nor his publisher Random House stand to make a cent from Yeeyan’s eventual production—are partly the rights-holders’ own fault, according to some observers. According to PSFK, a trends research, innovation, and activation organization, global companies consistently have yet to figure out how to “engage” Chinese consumers. “There is a lucrative opportunity for the next company bringing a global product into China to create an innovative and memorable experience around its product in a way that Random House did not.”

PSFK

Preliminary report: Cervical cancer vaccine didn’t kill 14-year-old British schoolgirl

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 4:44 PM - 4 Comments

An unnamed “serious underlying health condition,” not an inoculation intended to prevent cervical cancer, was likely responsible for the death of 14-year-old schoolgirl Nathalie Morton, a preliminary report from British health officials concludes. Morton died suddenly on Monday shortly after receiving the Cervarix vaccine, prompting widespread fear about a drug offered to millions of girls in Britain as part of a national immunization campaign. At least nine other girls at Morton’s school received medical attention after apparently suffering side effects related to the jab. As a precautionary measure, the batch of vaccine used at the school remains under quarantine.

The Times of London

Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and Woody Allen add their names to a petition to free child-rapist Roman Polanski

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 4:43 PM - 27 Comments

Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and Woody Allen have added their names to a petition signed by more than 100 film industry luminaries that demands Roman Polanski’s release from detention in Zurich. The 76-year-old director, whose films include The Pianist and Rosemary’s Baby, was arrested on Saturday on an outstanding American arrest warrant related to a three-decade-old underage sex case when he arrived to receive a lifetime achievement award at the city’s film festival. (Polanski pled guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977 after he had plied her with Quaaludes and champagne; he later fled to Europe where he has been living in exile since.) The petition cites the director’s creative genius and fame as reasons he should be granted clemency: “Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.” Others who have signed include Wim Wenders, Alexander Payne, Tilda Swinton, Pedro Almodóvar, Terry Gilliam and producer Harvey Weinstein. The five-person jury at the Zurich film festival, headed by the actor Debra Winger, yesterday released a statement protesting that the event “had been exploited in an unfair fashion” and that the arrest “could have disastrous consequences for freedom of expression across the world.”

The Guardian

‘The Sun’ goes down on Brown

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 4:41 PM - 2 Comments

Things just keep getting worse for Gordon Brown. Earlier this week, a BBC interviewer asked the British prime minister about Internet rumours suggesting he is addicted to prescription drugs. Now the populist tabloid The Sun has switched sides, endorsing the Tories in the coming elections. Brown’s Labour Party, which is holding its annual conference, is spitting mad.

The Guardian

Why Balsillie went ballistic

By Charlie Gillis and Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 3:15 PM - 33 Comments

Craig Leipold is not the sort of man who shoots off his mouth. Even before he joined the cloistered ranks of the National Hockey League as owner of the Nashville Predators, the sandy-haired entrepreneur from Racine, Wisc., had carved a reputation for discretion—a virtue no doubt learned from his in-laws. Leipold’s wife happens to be Helen Johnson of S.C. Johnson & Company fame, and while her husband long ago proved his business bona fides, Leipold’s social station speaks for itself. You don’t gain entry into one of America’s most venerable families by waging unseemly personal battles.

But when the subject of Jim Balsillie comes up, as it did during a deposition hearing last month, Leipold’s customary reserve flies out the window. Now the owner of the Minnesota Wild, Leipold was testifying as part of the high-profile bankruptcy proceedings of the Phoenix Coyotes, recalling the six months of fractured negotiations in 2007 when he’d tried to sell the Predators to Balsillie. For two years, Leipold had kept his feelings about the quixotic Canadian billionaire largely to himself. Now, from his lawyer’s Main Street offices in Racine, he was about to pound a rhetorical stake through Balsillie’s reputation. Continue…

Top 10 storylines of the '09-'10 NHL season

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 3:12 PM - 1 Comment

Rahim Jaffer was ‘The life of the party’

By Nicholas Köhler - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

Last week, an email began making the rounds of the Tory BlackBerry circuit. Titled “Laugh of the day,” it consisted of two sentences pulled from an Edmonton Journal story detailing the arrest, on Sept. 11, of former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, whom police have charged with drunk driving and cocaine possession: “Edmonton MLA Thomas Lukaszuk knew Jaffer well and said he never saw him intoxicated in any way,” ran the excerpt. “ ‘I knew him to be a religious person,’ Lukaszuk said.”

The email’s recipients considered the quote droll because Jaffer, though almost universally loved among parliamentarians of all political stripes, is known to enjoy a drink. “He’s very hard not to like, although everyone acknowledges his shortcomings,” says another. “I think many people would say Rahim was the life of the party,” says Calgary Tory MP Rob Anders, a long-time colleague. Continue…

ImminentLiberalMeltdownWatch Day Three – Liveblogging the post-QP scrums

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 2:50 PM - 35 Comments

Will the fizzling economy finally overtake the Coderre Affair in the race to capture the hypermercurial imagination of the national press? Tune in at 3pm as ITQ hits the Foyer for a third straight day.

(Hey, she has to find some way to keep the liveblogging muscles limber until House committees are up and running, right?)

2:57:42 PM
We’re baaaack! We being the nation’s ever-intrepid press, that is; the nation’s elected officials, whose intrepitude varies from day to day, are still holed up inside the House, Wednesday’s QP being the most likely of the week to run late. That doesn’t mean that there’s not plenty of scurrying and pre-scrum positioning going on, of course, although there is much gloom at the continuing absence of Denis Coderre. Funny, he didn’t always play so hard to get.

Speaking of sudden shyness, ITQ can report that the Liberals’ much — okay, slightly — ballyhooed morning media availabilities with the leader seem to have gone the way of, well, Denis Coderre, ever since Monday’s installment, which marked the start of the newscycle of their discontent.

3:06:17 PM
Mill, mill, mill. I swear, it’s amazing there aren’t more head injuries, what with so many of us bent over our BlackBerries amid all those potentially lethal columns.
3:08:24 PM
And here’s Gilles Duceppe, who is — or at least, has been for the last few days — invariably the first politician at the mic. Then again, why wouldn’t he be? Of all the leaders, his shrug is the most convincing.

Continue…

Russia/ Georgia: Now both of you go to your room

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 2:03 PM - 28 Comments

The European Union issues a Solomonic judgment about that whole Georgia/Russia/South Ossetia unpleasantness last year, arguing that Georgia violated international law and commenced the shooting war, but that Russia was being a spectacular pain in the neck beforehand and used Georgia’s attack as an excuse to escalate far beyond what defence would have dictated. So really, it’s everyone’s fault. Hey, I’ve got a great idea: Let’s expand NATO to Georgia immediately! That’ll solve… uh… nothing.

Give or take $50-million

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 1:04 PM - 56 Comments

The Globe’s James Bradshaw checks James Moore’s math.

The Conservative government backed away from a plan to house the Portrait Gallery of Canada in the former U.S. embassy because the price tag was going to grow to more than $100-million, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore said last week, but government documents show the estimated cost of the project was about half that amount … government documents passed on to The Globe and Mail from Ottawa NDP MP Paul Dewar, a long-time advocate for the Portrait Gallery, indicate that estimates for housing the gallery in the former embassy never went above $45-million.

… Deirdra McCracken, Mr. Moore’s communications director, said there was “nothing inconsistent in the minister’s remarks. Costs for the Portrait Gallery had risen, as the minister stated, and in a time of economic downturn, our government chose to be extra prudent with taxpayers’ money.”

'I have some concern'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 12:35 PM - 6 Comments

Ned Franks talks to Steve Paikin about the state of Parliament.

Brian Jean Maverick Watch

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 12:12 PM - 29 Comments

Conservative MP Brian Jean laments for our discourse.

Jean admits he doesn’t like the current attack ads his party is running on TV which call Igantieff’s character and motivations into question. ”But they seem to work,” he says. “I don’t like them, but that’s not my job.”

(The story in question is not yet posted on the newspaper’s website. So we shall have to take that not disinterested blogger’s word for it for now.)

What we have here is a failure to communicate

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 12:02 PM - 31 Comments

Before departing the scene, Gordon Landon helpfully clarifies what you thought he was saying when you thought you heard him say there was something partisan about the way federal funding was distributed.

“The facts on this matter are however, quite clear,” Mr. Landon added. “The Town of Markham applied for financial stimulus funds for 14 projects, and each of those 14 projects were approved for joint federal and provincial stimulus support. The remarks I made last week were critical of the inadequate representation, and lack of personal action, received by Markham-Unionville from the Liberal MP in this riding, and not of the federal government.”

So that’s the official press release. In a separate interview, he appears to contradict a previous account of his own account and says he was not asked to step aside, but repeats his assertion that PMO control was the primary motivating force for his exit.

Toking tourists not welcome

By Patricia Treble - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 6 Comments

The era of tourists jaunting to the Netherlands for a “weed weekend” is coming to a close. The Dutch government is about to start a trial project that will introduce membership cards for cannabis cafés in Maastricht. The cards, required to buy marijuana and hashish, will be restricted to Dutch nationals in an attempt to stop the flood of tourists visiting the border city to smoke dope in licensed establishments.

Eventually, the government wants to roll out the foreign restrictions for all 700-odd “coffee shops,” according to the ANP news agency. As well, the amount of weed sold at one time without fear of criminal charges will reportedly be reduced from five to three grams. The changes come after a recent report into the country’s “soft drug policy,” which effectively decriminalized marijuana use in 1976. It wants more smaller cafés serving local residents, rather than today’s big shops catering to tourists. Continue…

Nova Scotia soldier gets four years for killing tent mate

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

Cpl. Matthew Wilcox was sentenced to four years behind bars and kicked out of the military on Wednesday for shooting a fellow Canadian soldier in Kandahar. Cpl. Kevin Megeney, Wilcox’s tent mate in Kandahar, was killed in the 2007 incident. During his trial, Wilcox said he thought he’d heard a gun being cocked behind him and mistakenly shot Megeney in self-defense. However, the Crown argued the two men had been playing a game of quick draw when Megeney was killed. There was initial speculation Wilcox would get off without a prison sentence, but the military judge ruled out that possibility Tuesday, announcing Wilcox would serve at least two years in prison. In handing down the four-year sentence on Wednesday, Cmdr. Peter Lamont, acknowledged the past friendship between the two men. However, he also said Wilcox’s actions were “part of a pattern of negligent behaviour.”

CBC News

Fergie goes to Hollywood

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 11:32 AM - 0 Comments

America loves the Duchess of York—and her children’s books. The Little Red series for four to eight year olds has been bought by an unnamed U.S. film company that is expected to turn the tales into Hollywood blockbusters. Her latest book for children under four, Tea for Ruby, will also be made into a movie. British film companies previously refused to buy Sarah Ferguson’s collection of stories. “When I gave it a go in America I was ready to fail there, too,” she said, “But they have really embraced me.” Time will tell if movie-goers will too.

The Guardian

World-renowned conman was hiding in Canada

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 11:29 AM - 0 Comments

With a dozen aliases and a rap sheet that spans from Britain to Thailand to Canada, Juan Carlos Guzmán-Betancourt is a conman of epic proportions. Often compared to the gentlemen jewel thief in E.W. Hornung’s novels—and to Leonardo Di Caprio’s smooth-talking character in Catch Me If You Can—the 33-year-old Colombian is most infamous for escaping a British prison (he somehow convinced the guards that he could be trusted to attend a dentist appointment alone). His signature trick? He would stake out high-class hotels, identify a wealthy guest, and wait for him to go out. He would then impersonate the guest, tell the front desk that he lost his room key—and convince the hapless receptionist to hand over the code to the in-room safe. By the time the real guest returned, he was long gone. Wanted across the globe, Guzmán-Betancourt was arrested by border guards in Vermont after crossing over from Quebec. At last check, he hadn’t sweet-talked his way out of his cell.

Times Online

Typo of the day

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 11:22 AM - 12 Comments

I cah’t wate for the Guvenor-Genneralz Literry Awards.

NFL players at risk for dementia

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 11:11 AM - 5 Comments

Alzheimer’s disease and other memory-related diseases occur far more frequently for National Football League players than for the general population: a rate of 19 times what’s normal for men aged 30 to 49, the New York Times reports. Since the NFL has long insisted there’s no reliable data about cognitive decline among its players, this study (which it commissioned) marks its first admittance of any connection, although the league pointed to its limitations. It could bring about some changes at youth and college-level football, which tends to follow NFL safety policies. The study, conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, involved a phone survey in which 1,063 retired players (who’d played at least three or four seasons) were asked questions about their health. Some health issues, like kidney and prostate problems, appeared in ex-NFLers at normal rates, but others, like sleep apnea and elevated cholesterol, were higher. Others, including heart attacks and ulcers, were lower, the report said. After asking about “dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or other memory-related disease,” Michigan researchers found that 6.1 per cent of players aged 50 and over had received such a diagnosis, five times higher than the national average of 1.2 per cent. Players ages 30 through 49 showed a rate of 1.9 percent, or 19 times that of the national average, 0.1 percent. In an email, NFL spokesan Greg Aiello said the study didn’t formally diagnose dementia, was subject to shortcomings of phone surveys, and pointed out that “there are thousands of retired players who do not have memory problems.”

New York Times

Ontario woman says her horse is the tallest in the world

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 10:52 AM - 1 Comment

Poe is a gentle, 10 year old Clydesdale who used to haul crates for Budweiser in London, Ontario. Even though his breed is known for its humungous size, Poe stands above the rest, measuring 6’ 10” at the shoulder. His owner, Sheenen Thompson, says he’s a full two inches bigger then the tallest horse currently listed in the Guinness book of Records. He’s “a real puppy,” says Thompson, “but he does sometimes forget his strength and drags me along if he wants to play or go chasing something.”

The Daily Mail

Blast off!

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 10:51 AM - 0 Comments

On Wednesday morning, Guy Laliberté became the first Canadian space tourist. Laliberté paid $35 million (USD) for a seat on the two-day journey to the International Space Station, accompanying cosmonaut Maxim Surayev and astronaut Jeffrey Williams aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. Before blasting off, Laliberté announced his plans to spread the circus spirit on the space station by handing out clown noses to the astronauts on board. But it won’t be all fun and games for the Cirque du Soleil founder. On October 9, Laliberté will host the first-ever multimedia event from the space station—a two-hour show, “Moving Stars and Earth for Water,” featuring former U.S vice-president Al Gore and the musical group U2 which will draw attention to worldwide drinking-water problems. Laliberté will return to earth on October 11.

CBC News

Write if, according to reports, you get work

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 10:48 AM - 22 Comments

Jean Charest’s new man in New York will be familiar to macleans.ca readers.

Holy CROP

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 10:47 AM - 58 Comments

Liberals down 9 points in Quebec since June. Conservatives up 8 points in Quebec since June. NDP down 5 points in Quebec since August. Michael Ignatieff’s best-prime-minister score down 17 points since April. All sampling concluded before Denis Coderre turned extra-picturesque on Monday. Further entrails here.