Newsmakers

You wouldn’t want to cross either one
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin burnished his credentials as a man of action last week, while also asserting some Arctic sovereignty. He helped scientists track endangered polar bears in Franz Josef Land, an Arctic archipelago. With cameras rolling, he attached a tracking collar to a tranquilized bear. “Be well,” he said, shaking its paw. “The paw is heavy,” said Putin, one force of nature saluting another. “This is a master of the Arctic, you can feel that straight away.”

That’s how it’s done in Wawota, Sask.
Washington Capitals fans Mary Ann Wangemann and her 14-year-old daughter Lorraine were driving home from the Caps’ game-seven loss to the Montreal Canadiens when their tire was flattened by a pothole. An SUV pulled over as they stood by the side of the road in their team colours. To their amazement, out hopped Brooks Laich, the Alberta-born, Saskatchewan-raised Caps centre. He peeled off his suit jacket and spent 40 minutes, on one of the worst nights of his life, installing a spare tire for two strangers. Mary Ann asked Laich, 26, how to repay the favour. “I’m sure you’ll do something nice for someone in the future,” he said.

Andy, Andy, we got us a crime wave!
There’s three reasons why Mayberry, the idyllic, fictional setting of The Andy Griffith Show, was so law-abiding, hapless deputy Barney Fife once explained. “There’s Andy, and there’s me, and [patting his gun] baby makes three.” Things have changed since the 1960s. Mount Airy, N.C., the birthplace of actor Andy Griffith and the inspiration for Mayberry, had a real-life wallet-snatching last week. The victim: 83-year-old Betty Lou Lynn, the actress who played Fife’s girlfriend Thelma Lou. In a double irony, she’d moved there to escape the crime of Los Angeles. A suspect is under arrest.

No place for media in the bedrooms of the nation
Sex scandals aren’t the forte of the French press, but last week Paris Match broke the don’t-ask-don’t-tell convention with the revelations of an 18-year-old “escort.” Zahia Dehar told the magazine she had paid sex with stars of France’s national soccer team, including Karim Benzema, Sidney Govou and the very married winger Franck Ribéry. More shocking, she said her clients didn’t know she was under the legal age of 18 at the time. The allegations have shaken the team as it prepares for the World Cup in South Africa next month—and unsettled French journalists. “It is not our way of thinking,” Claude Soula, media editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, wrote of the scandal. “Sex? Yes, we are French. But only in the bedroom please.”

A state of fear
Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants is getting blowback, and not just from the White House. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said he won’t enforce the bill, which he called “racist,” “disgusting,” and “unnecessary.” Columbian singing sensation Shakira shimmied over to Phoenix to share her thoughts with that city’s mayor. “It is unjust and it’s inhuman and it violates the civil and human rights of the Latino community,” she said. She noted she was vulnerable herself since she wasn’t carrying a driver’s licence to prove her identity: “I’m pretty much undocumented.”

Also found: embers from burning bush
The “discovery” on Mount Ararat of the wooden remnants of Noah’s Ark doesn’t hold water, an archaeologist says. Randall Price, director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the conservative Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., was part of the Chinese-led team that found ancient beams on the Turkish mountainside. They purportedly proved the Old Testament story that Noah built a giant boat to escape the flood of a wrathful God. Price now thinks local Kurds hauled the wood up to the mountain in an elaborate hoax. People can believe what they want, he said. “My problem is that, in the end, proper analysis may show this is a hoax and negatively reflect how gullible Christians can be.”

Blood is thicker than vodka
Joan Kennedy, the mother of Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy, won’t comment on reports her much-rehabbed son fell off the wagon. But Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, said Patrick downed six shots of vodka at a Washington bar, hours after giving a talk about his fight against substance abuse. Joan told the Boston Herald the death of her ex-husband Sen. Ted Kennedy hit his son Patrick and all family members hard. Patrick is reported to have told a fellow barfly that Barack Obama is “the best President ever.” What about your uncle, the man asked, referring to the late president John F. Kennedy. “Oh, yeah! Good one,” a genial Patrick conceded.