Drake: more than famous

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, June 21, 2010 at 8:24 AM - 10 Comments

Alex Hoerner/Icon International

The trappings of fame aren’t that hard to get used to. Aubrey Drake Graham was driving a leased Rolls-Royce around Toronto even before he signed one of the richest first-record contracts in music history. For more than two years now, he’s been hanging out with sports icons like LeBron James, partying with Jay-Z, Kanye West and other rap royalty, and making the gossip rags for his “romances” with Hollywood starlets (rumoured) and pop divas like Rihanna (confirmed).

There’s been a No. 1 single, a couple of nominations and an on-stage performance at the 2009 Grammys, and the inevitable deal to shill for a soft drink. It’s a heady life, but to hear the 23-year-old tell it, it’s only now that he’s realizing what it means to be a global celebrity.

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Please don’t feed the exhibits

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, June 21, 2010 at 8:20 AM - 8 Comments

Photo Illustration by Stephen Gregory

It’s tourist season in Ottawa, and the Parliament Hill experience is better than ever with this exciting new audio tour.

Hello, and welcome to the Audio Guide. Please step through the doorway of Centre Block, proceed up to the fourth floor and push open the big wooden door. Do you hear sobbing? You have arrived at Michael Ignatieff.

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The Liberals will never be the same

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, June 21, 2010 at 8:18 AM - 232 Comments

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

There are some things you say that you can never take back. It doesn’t matter whether you meant what you said. You said it, and from that moment things can never be the same. This is how it is now, I think, with the Liberal Party of Canada.

For the past several weeks, various figures, mostly on the left of the party, have been openly speculating about the possibility of forming a coalition government with the NDP after the next election. Not a mere non-aggression pact, such as the one between the Ontario Liberal and New Democratic parties 25 years ago—the object of some pointed public reminiscing by Bob Rae—but a full-blown coalition: common program of government, New Democrats in cabinet, the works.

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The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 4:15 PM - 15 Comments

One last time before pausing for the summer: our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

My Pa!

By Jaime Weinman - Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 12:46 PM - 2 Comments

I think we can agree that this is the most epic Father’s Day celebration ever put on film.

This scene (from a Chuck Jones cartoon) was animated by Ken Harris, a specialist in conveying emotion and personality without breaking up the action. If you asked yourself “what would an even-tempered, completely oblivious person look like when dancing?” you’d probably picture something like Mama Bear’s dance, where she executes every step she’s ever learned in the most mechanical way possible, while never reacting facially to anything she does.

He’s not your type and that’s good

By Julia McKinnell - Saturday, June 19, 2010 at 10:31 PM - 24 Comments

Illustration by Taylor Shute

A checklist of requirements may be your biggest impediment to finding true love, says Toronto-born dating coach Andrea Syrtash in her new book He’s Just Not Your Type and That’s a Good Thing. Syrtash coaches single women to consider the type of man they think they’re attracted to, then counsels them to work on doing things differently, such as dating a shorter man if they’ve always gone for tall, or an introvert if they’ve always liked the charismatic. “It’s not about throwing out your standards,” Syrtash told Maclean’s from her home in New York. “It’s about being more open.”

The now-married dating coach herself admits she was not at first physically attracted to her husband. “He wasn’t my type. I mean, he’s an attractive guy but it’s a funny thing,” she says. “I dated these all-American clean-cut, more conservative-looking guys, and my husband is dark. His parents are from Egypt. He didn’t come in the package I thought was my type.”

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Ignatieff’s summer of discontent

By John Geddes - Saturday, June 19, 2010 at 10:01 PM - 63 Comments

Mike Cassese/Reuters

Only a true foreign policy wonk would expect to be stirred up by a document called “Canada in the World: A Global Networks Strategy.” But the platform paper unveiled by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff with a major speech in Toronto this week tossed more red meat in the direction of his demoralized hard-core partisans than the title hinted.

On its way to detailing a new Liberal approach on everything from Afghanistan to doing business with Asia’s economic giants, the paper swerves to slam Stephen Harper in a style more typical of a campaign stump speech than a policy blueprint.

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Victoria fashion event draws the attention of Vogue

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 5:54 PM - 2 Comments

A local Victoria fashion event nearly became the target of a lawsuit by fashion giant Vogue magazine for breach of one of their trademark names. “Victoria Fashion’s Night Out,” said Vogue, was much too similar to their “Fashion’s Night Out” held in New York City last year. Late Wednesday, the night before the event, organizers received a letter from Vogue lawyers threatening a lawsuit if the name wasn’t changed immediately. “Our client did not consent to use of its ‘Fashion’s Night Out’ trade-mark by your organization or its members and is extremely concerned by this unauthorized use of its intellectual property,” read a letter from Leigh Walters of the Toronto-based firm Sim Lowman Ashton and McKay. The organizers of the show were amused. Tiffiny Dobson, who participated in the event, said, “To think Vogue is worried about us having this kind of event is kind of intimidating but at the same time great. It’s flattering and good exposure for the event and Victoria fashion.” The name of the event has since been changed to “Victoria’s Fashion Night.”

Times Colonist

World Cup 2010: Week in review

By Daniel Squizzato - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 5:50 PM - 0 Comments

South Africa vs. Mexico

South Africa 1 – Mexico 1

The tournament couldn’t have started better for South Africa, as a stunning, top-corner strike from Siphiwe Tshabalala put the home side ahead early in the second half. With over 80,000 fans and the blaring vuvuzelas urging them onward, the Bafana Bafana played an exciting, uptempo game—but a defensive lapse inside their own penalty area allowed Mexican captain Rafael Marquez to score an equalizing goal in the 79^th minute. Though Mexico controlled most of the possession, it was South Africa that nearly grabbe

France 0 – Uruguay 0

Fans still buzzing from the scintillating back-and-forth action of the tournament’s opener quickly had the mojo sapped from them by this dreary affair. The highest drama may have been the tournament’s first red card—Uruguay’s Nicolas Lodeiro was sent off following a second yellow card in the 81^st minute. With only six shots on goal between them throughout this match, neither side did much to endear themselves to fans—except, perhaps, those of South Africa and Mexico, who saw that Group A was still completely wide open after the World Cup’s opening day.

Next: Day 2

Hundreds evacuated in Northern Ireland

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 5:49 PM - 5 Comments

A 300lb bomb parked outside of a police station in Northern Ireland forced the evacuation of 350 people on Thursday night after dissident republicans called in a bomb threat to a Belfast news station. It’s the latest in a string of bomb attacks across the country, and has put the community of Aughnacloy in lockdown while police and army experts investigate, after disarming the bomb with a controlled detonation overnight. “I have no doubt that if this device had detonated it would have caused complete devastation and lives would certainly have been lost,” said police superintendent Brian Kee. “The intention of the people responsible for planting this bomb . . . is to murder police officers with no regard for the people who live in this community.”

The Guardian

This week has four sketches

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 5:31 PM - 0 Comments

Our weekly look back at all we saw and heard.

Monday. Marching off to war with an army of strawmen
Tuesday. United in mutual disdain
Wednesday. A bridge too far
Thursday. A day like any other

Why dogs are not your child’s best friend

By Anne Kingston - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 4:29 PM - 50 Comments

Keri Leary/GETTY IMAGES

The tragic death of a 21-day-old girl in Saint-Barnabé-Sud, Que., last week puts a lens on a little-discussed issue in a culture that views dogs as family members and delights in YouTube videos of babies frolicking with protective St. Bernards: that these beloved animals are increasingly biting and attacking—most often the hand that feeds them.

Animal behaviourists shudder over the scant public details known of the Quebec case. The newborn had been strapped into a car seat placed on the floor and left unattended while two Siberian huskies, a male and a female, ran free. A third husky was found by police in a cage with her puppies. The baby’s 17-year-old mother, who was outside of the house when the attack occurred, was charged with manslaughter and will appear in juvenile court on Aug. 31.

Continue…

'It was my No. 1 priority, but my bosses had other priorities, too'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 4:28 PM - 4 Comments

As the Military Police Complaints Commission hearings continue, perhaps as many questions are raised as are answered.

Former diplomat Nicholas Gosselin visited Afghan detention facilities at least 38 times, but conducted only a handful of interviews with prisoners in the months after a bombshell allegation that a Canadian-captured detainee had been beaten with electrical cables. The revelation stunned both the inquiry chair and the human-rights group that prompted the continuing torture inquiry.

Gosselin told a Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry Tuesday that there often wasn’t time to get in to a question-and-answer session with inmates of either the Afghan intelligence jail, or the notorious Sarpoza prison.

“It wasn’t that there wasn’t a will,” said Gosselin, whose job at the Kandahar provincial reconstruction base included monitoring prisoners. “It was my No. 1 priority, but my bosses had other priorities, too.”

José Saramago dies

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 4:07 PM - 0 Comments

José Saramago, old-fashioned Communist and modern fabulist, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998, died at his home in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, his publisher said June 18. He was 87. The first Portuguese-language writer to win the Nobel, was known almost as much for his pro-Palestinian views as for his fiction—he once described an Israeli blockade of Ramallah as being “in the spirit of Auschwitz.” He became a very public intellectual after his rise to prominence, decrying globalization, Israeli policy and multinational corporations. Saramago turned to writing fiction only in his late 50s, after Portugal’s 1974 Communist-led revolution was overthrown and he was fired from his editor’s job at a Lisbon newspaper. Like other other prominent leftists, he became unemployable. “It was the best luck of my life,” he said in a 2007 interview. “It drove me to become a writer.”

Perhaps his most famous work, widely credited with bringing him the Nobel, is his 1995 novel Blindness, about a city of people suddenly going blind and the utter destruction of civilization that followed. A film version, scripted by Canadian actor and screenwriter Don McKellar and directed by Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles was released in 2008, starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. Saramago, suspicious of the film industry’s sensationalism, had originally refused to sell the film adaptation rights to Meirelles, Whoopi Goldberg, or Gael García Bernal. But in 1999, producer Niv Fichman and McKellar visited Saramago in the Canary Islands; Saramago allowed their visit on condition that they not discuss buying the rights. McKellar explained the changes he intended to make from the novel and what the focus would be, and two days later he and Fichman left Saramago’s home with the rights. McKellar believed they had succeeded where others had failed because they properly researched Saramago; given his feelings about the film industry, offers of large sums of money alone would not move him as much as a proposal sensitive to the novel’s themes would. The only conditions set by Saramago on McKellar’s proposal were for the film to be set in a country that would not be recognizable to audiences, and that the canine in the novel, the Dog of Tears, should be a big dog.

New York Times

Business Week

http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/Jose+Saramago’s+Blindness

Instead of cap-and-trade, "cap-and-dividend"

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 4:07 PM - 2 Comments

As attention on Capitol Hill shifts to the crafting of energy legislation, two US senators make the case for an alternative regime of “cap and dividend” in today’s Washington Post.  Also, Robert Reich speculated about the possibility that Obama is plotting a back-room deal to tax carbon. Ezra Klein had already raised doubts about the likelihood of such a scenario earlier this week.

How to write a Thank You note

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 3:43 PM - 7 Comments

It’s Friday — time for something non-depressing and non-oil spill or G-20 related.

On June 28, the US Senate will begin confirmation hearings for Obama’s second nominee to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan. As reporters have been sifting through the paper trail,  they came across this thank you note she wrote to Bill Clinton after he nominated her to an appellate court judgeship. (She didn’t get it.)

I’m a fan of the hand-written thank you note. Whatever you think of Kagan, I thought hers was lovely. (I found this at Above the Law via a link from Corporette, which outs me as a person who visits a website that runs polls such vexing issues as whether women should wear their shirt collars inside or outside their lapels. Sorry.)

Meet one of Afghanistan’s most influential women

By Michael Petrou - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 3:32 PM - 1 Comment

Fatima Gailani, president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, remembers the last time Afghanistan was abandoned. She was a young activist in exile and spokesperson for the anti-Soviet mujahideen during the Russian occupation. Her father, Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, founded the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, a political party that helped funnel CIA-funded weapons to Afghans fighting the Soviets.

“During the Cold War, Afghanistan was the star of the stars,” she tells Maclean’s during a recent visit to Ottawa. “Then, as soon as the last Russian soldiers got out of Afghanistan, we looked left and right, and we didn’t see anyone around to help us. Only a few NGOs.”

The September 11th attacks and the subsequent American-led overthrow of the Taliban refocused the world’s attention on Afghanistan, and, despite the frustrations that have come with the Taliban’s resurgence and the ongoing war, Gailani says Afghans have benefited from it.

“For the people of Afghanistan, this is still better than what they had,” she says. “When I talk to my colleagues [about their lives before Western intervention], they say they virtually didn’t have a tomorrow. They didn’t know if a rocket would land on their house, if the school would be standing tomorrow, how many people in the house would be alive. If they compare today with what they had 10 years ago, they are still happy. You would be surprised.”

Gailani is now one of Afghanistan’s most influential women. She attended the Bonne Conference on Afghanistan in 2001, was a delegate to the 2002 Loya Jirga, and took part in drafting the 2004 constitution. Most recently, she was invited to join the “peace jirga” conference President Hamid Karzai convened this month to seek support for his efforts to negotiate an end to the Taliban’s insurgency.

The Taliban have so far shown little interest in a deal. They rocketed the conference and say they won’t talk until all foreign troops leave. Karzai, however, is committed to reconciliation with the Taliban—motivated, surely, by the inability of his government and its foreign backers to defeat them militarily.

Gailani worries what political accommodation with the Taliban will mean for Afghan women, who, during Taliban rule, were forbidden to work, attend school, or leave the house wearing anything other than an all-concealing burqa.

“We, the women of Afghanistan, are the most vulnerable people in this situation,” she says. “When you go to the negotiating table, I would like to know if my future is your bargaining chip. Are you going to compromise on my future, on the schooling of my daughters, my work, freedom of the press, things that are so valuable to me? We have achieved a lot. I don’t want to lose it.”

Gailani says foreign troops should leave Afghanistan—but not yet. The police, the military and civil society are still in “shambles,” she says. If foreign troops go now, the country risks collapse. Foreigners, however, can’t fight for Afghanistan forever, she says. “We will never have a safe Afghanistan unless our forces are capable of guarding their own country. The army of Afghanistan needs to be rebuilt. It needs to be trained. Not just how to fight and how to protect, but the ethics of soldiering. We have to learn to be human with the people in our hands.”

Dandy in the afterworld

By Andrew Potter - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 2:55 PM - 14 Comments

Post-Wildean British artist/writer/dandy Sebastian Horsley has died of an apparent heroin overdose. The good people at Q have reposted an interview Jian did with Horsley two years ago. It’s an amazing bit of performance art, from the very start, and almost everything out of Horsley’s mouth is quotable. I especially like the exchange that starts just after the six minute mark, when Jian asks why Horsley didn’t just put his memoir online for all to read. Horsley responds that ‘The internet is loser central, and it is basically replacing masturbation as a leisure activity.” Then comes this:

Q: You once said, “It’s better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.” What do you mean by that?

SH: Do you like me?

Q: I think I kind of like you.

SH: Well then I’ll tell you what I mean, my dear.

What follows is a gorgeous defence of live lived as an open book. Turn off the soccer for a few minutes and give it a listen.

Related reading: In Praise of Gossip.

Final report on Dziekanski death released

By Shanda Deziel - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 2:15 PM - 10 Comments

The public inquiry into the 2007 death by Tasering of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski was released today. Commissioner Thomas Braidwood detailed the circumstances of Dziekanski’s death in his second report on the incident, and found that the Mountie who Tasered Dziekanski was not justified in using his weapon and that the two other officers involved offered “unbelievable after-the-fact rationalizations” to explain the incident. Braidwood described the situation as “the story of shameful conduct by a few officers”, which should not reflect on thousands of other Mounties. The inquiry was called following the October 2007 death of Dziekanski, 40, who was stunned five times at the Vancouver International Airport. Someone in the crowd filmed the incident, prompting an international outcry. Since the death, the RCMP changed its Taser policies. The inquiry report makes eight recommendations, including an independent body to investigate the B.C. Police.

The Globe and Mail

National Post

Mercer turns down job offer at proposed Sun TV News

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 1:58 PM - 31 Comments

After proposing a “controversially Canadian” specialty news channel this week, Sun TV News made a play to make political satirist Rick Mercer part of its prime-time line-up. Mercer confirmed that he met with the newly hired Quebecor vice-president Kory Teneycke “a while ago,” and was offered a job with the proposed conservative news network. Seen as the crown jewel of Canadian content, the Rick Mercer Report has been eyed by rival broadcasters in the past. The show is privately produced and renewed by CBC on a year-to-year basis, allowing other networks to inquire about its availability. Now in its seventh season, the show averaged over one million viewers a week last season. But when it came down to it, Mercer said he’s happy with his relationship with CBC and will stay with the network. Mercer said although he was intrigued by the idea of starting a new network, he decided to “dance with the one that brung me,” borrowing a phrase from former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Mercer wished the new venture luck and called Teneycke “a smart fellow.” Sun TV News is planned to launch in January 2011, pending CRTC license approval.

Toronto Star

Alberta confirms world’s biggest dinosaur graveyard

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 1:49 PM - 1 Comment

A 2.3-square-kilometre site near Hilda, Alberta, is the biggest deposit of dinosaur bones ever found. The thousands of bones belonging to the Centrosaurus species were discovered in the 1990s, but scientists just now confirmed the size of the discovery. Geological data from the bone bed has also offered paleontologists a new explanation for why Alberta is so rich in dead dinos: 76 million years ago the area may have been prone to catastrophic tropical storms.

Calgary Herald

Tangled web

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 1:43 PM - 1 Comment

According to prosecutors at his trial in the British city of Newcastle, Raymond Scott stole a Shakespeare first folio—worth millions—from Durham University in 1998 and then hoarded it for a decade until he tried to sell to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. To make it fit the story he told—that the volume had been in a Cuban family’s attic for a century or more before discovery, Scott tore the binding and boards from the 1623 book, often described as the most important in the English language. One expert who inspected the book, which was still thought to be worth $1.5 million U.S. in its damaged condition, described it as “ cultural legacy that has been damaged, brutalised and mutilated.” He had come to Washington, he told Folger, on behalf of his Cuban friends who couldn’t leave their country. But the prosecution says the unemployed Scott had become “infatuated” with a woman living in Cuba around February 2008 and had been sending her huge sums of money and was now $150,000 in debt.

Telegraph

Everybody Loves Rich People

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 1:06 PM - 1 Comment

The original pilot of The Big Bang Theory leaked online last week, and while the uploads keep getting pulled off YouTube, new uploads come to take their place. The most famous thing about the pilot is that it states directly that Sheldon has had sex, but some of the other changes are more interesting to me.

Background: the pilot was turned down by the network, but they liked Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons. So they asked the producers to do a new pilot, keeping the two guys but changing everything else. Their friend in this pilot was a socially-inept nerd girl whose character traits were eventually incorporated into Sara Gilbert’s character. And the girl they meet, played by MuchMusic VJ Amanda Walsh, was a hard-drinking, wisecracking party girl prone to bad decisions in every aspect of her life.

In the second pilot, those two female characters were dropped and three new characters added (Raj, Howard, Penny). There was also a major tonal change: everything became lighter, brighter and happier. In the original pilot, these characters live a drab existence and have lots of money problems. They’re selling their sperm because without doing that, they can’t get a good meal. Their apartment is drab and dark and depressing. Amanda Walsh’s character has problems that are much bigger than the cute little money and relationship problems that her replacement has. The pilot seems like an attempt to get a little closer to the creator and star’s Roseanne roots. If anything, despite the expected quota of mean-spirited jokes, this pilot has more jokes that “land” than the revised version — and it also has a more serious subtext — but it’s depressing.

In the revised pilot, the apartment becomes bright and spacious, the characters are well-off. (Penny isn’t well-off, but again, her money problems are TV-style money problems, where you can always afford to do anything the plot requires you to do, and always have infinite free time no matter how crummy your job is.) It’s yet another reminder that even though there’s a lot of longing for a Roseanne type of show about people who aren’t rich and comfortable, it’s hard to launch one. Instead the world wants to watch shows about scientists who have plenty of money but less-than-great social skills, or a mockumentary about three interconnected families that live in luxury. HBO abandoned its plans to make more Roseanne-style shows, canceling Lucky Louie not because of the viewership numbers but because that kind of show didn’t fit their upscale brand. It’s just become very difficult to find a place to do a comedy about everyday struggles; the closest thing is It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and that’s really more of a live-action cartoon than a realistic comedy.

Click here to watch the unaired pilot

This week's travel news

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 1:01 PM - 2 Comments

The Airline Pricing Obstacle Course
Airline pricing continues to make headlines for befuddling passengers. In the U.S., new ‘unbundled’ fees seem to appear every day. The latest is American Airlines charging from $9 to $19 for the privilege of boarding early – just after the premium passengers. Why would people pay for that dubious benefit? Mostly because high fees for checked luggage have spurred many passengers to bring only carry-on, creating a free-for-all battle for overhead bin space. In the UK and Europe, no-frills airlines continue to offer what look like jaw-dropping low fares, which can more than double when ‘optional’ fees are added. Carriers like Ryanair, easyJet and Flybe charge up to £30 to put a standard 20kg bag in the hold. Passengers also face fees for paying by credit card, printing boarding passes and selecting seats. Next month Ryanair will hike luggage costs by £10 if passengers don’t check in online. In today’s crazy airline landscape British tabloid News of the World says a ticket on British Airways can end up costing less than one on a no-frills carrier, because it doesn’t charge booking fees or to check in luggage. Here in Canada we can count ourselves lucky on some counts. Neither Air Canada nor WestJet have taken unbundling to the levels of airlines south of the border, never mind Europe. But even here, the final price of a flight can double from the advertised amount due to extra fees, fuel surcharges and government taxes. As reported this week, legislation was passed by Parliament three years ago that would force airlines to advertise the full cost of a ticket. But a last-minute amendment won by the airline lobby delayed the advertising provision until the government and industry held consultations. As another legislative session comes to a close, it appears that Transport Minister John Baird has for a second time reneged on a commitment to move the process forward. It looks like we’ll continue to need calculators to figure out the price of a flight for some time to come.

Boeing & Airbus Hear Footsteps As Competition Looms
While their own rivalry has certainly been fierce, Boeing and Airbus have pretty much enjoyed a duopoly in the large passenger aircraft market for many years. But that’s going to change as some of the fast-emerging BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – bring their own flying machines to market. Canada is striving for a piece of the pie too, with Bombardier set to take on the big guys in the 100-149 seat market with its CSeries, set to enter service in 2013. Other competitors include China’s Comac, Brazil’s Embraer and Russian companies Sukhoi and United Aircraft Company. Almost all of the new competition will be in the narrow-body market, because of the prohibitive cost of entry for wide-body construction. The price of developing new jets like Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner or Airbus’s new A350 is estimated at more than $12 billion, making it unlikely that challengers will emerge until 2030 at the earliest. In the short-haul market, leaders Bombardier and Embraer will also see some new competition from Japan’s Mitsubishi. By 2014 the company hopes to be airborne with the first passenger aircraft to be built by a Japanese company since the mid-70s. It’s a beauty, too, with sleek lines, a dipped nose, a more spacious cabin than its competitors and perhaps most importantly, a highly fuel-efficient engine.

Water & Lights Show Is Next Step In Making Disneyland Grand
Five years in the making, a new evening water and lights show at Disney’s California Adventure in Disneyland has kicked off a $1.4 billion expansion. The 25-minute ‘World of Color’ show takes place in the Paradise Bay lagoon and features 1,200 fountains and water screens on which images of iconic Disney characters are projected. Lasers, fire, lights and music are other components of a show described by Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Tom Staggs as “exhilarating”. The growth continues with a Little Mermaid attraction opening next year and a 12-acre Cars Land that will be unveiled in 2012. The expansion marks the continuation of plans to transform the original Disneyland theme park into a multi-day resort destination. The new attractions aim to piggyback on the popularity of Disney and Disney/Pixar characters, with the goal, Disney says, of “adding product that tells a story.”

Buying A New Knee In Bangkok
Medical tourism is fast becoming a worldwide, multi-billion dollar industry. In the U.S. alone it’s currently a $20-billion market but experts predict that to multiply to $100-billion by 2012. While Americans travel to overseas hospitals in order to pay as little as 10% of what they would pay at home, Canadians are going for different reasons – mostly to avoid long wait-times for things like hip or knee replacements or cardiac surgery. In the past, the bulk of medical travel has been for cosmetic procedures, but that is quickly changing as facilities improve around the world. As reported in trade rag OpenJaw.com, travel agency marketing organization Travelsavers has been researching the market for some time and has now made the leap with the formation of Well-Being Travel. Travelsavers member agencies in Canada and the U.S. won’t sell the medical services– they’ve teamed up with a company called Companion Global Healthcare for that – but they will arrange air and hotel stays based around state-of-the-art hospitals in places like India, Thailand and Turkey. Executive vice president of Well-Being Travel Anne Marie Moebes is definitely a convert. She required dental work priced at $18,000 in the U.S. and got it for $4,000 including airfare in Central America. She says “you could eat off the floor” in its partner hospitals which included Bumrungrad International in Bangkok and Anadolu Medical Center in Istanbul.

By: Bruce Parkinson
Bruce Parkinson is a travel industry journalist and regular contributor to Takeoffeh.com as well as sister company, OpenJaw.com

Photo Credits: embraer.com, disneyland.disney.go.com, wikimedia.org