Sharks’ favourite lunch stop

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Alexander Safonov/GETTY IMAGES

Most people bitten by sharks in the shallow, murky water of Volusia County, on central Florida’s east coast near Daytona Beach, just feel a tug, and maybe some thrashing around their ankles. Then they look down to see one of their legs streaming with blood, pierced by dozens of puncture holes. It happens all the time on the 75-km stretch of coast, because Volusia County has the largest number of shark attacks in the world. Of 639 bites worldwide between 1999 and 2008, Volusia County had 135. That’s more than one-fifth of the entire world’s attacks, and about one-third of all attacks in the U.S.

“When you’re surfing on a wave you can sometimes even see sharks underneath you,” says Jeremy Johnston, a long-time surfer raised on the east coast of Florida, who’s had sharks bump into his legs, but has been lucky enough to avoid any bites. “You see one and you lie down, float on the board and go straight into shore. It’s scary.”

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A hill to dye on

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images Eduardo Gold's non-governmental organization "Glaciares de Peru"

Splashing white paint on mountains to lower temperatures and regrow glaciers: it sounds like mad science. But one Peruvian inventor is fighting climate change by toiling against Mother Nature’s evolving colour palette. Eduardo Gold is attempting to reform a glacier on the Chalon Sombrero mountain in western Peru, which melted away because of rising temperatures.

He and four men from Licapa, a nearby village that relies on glacial runoff for farming, mix lime, egg whites and water to make an environmentally friendly paint that they dump from buckets onto rocks, turning them from brown and grey to a white reminiscent of the peak’s snow-covered days. The idea is that the paint reflects the sun’s radiation, cooling temperatures in a geological equivalent of changing from a black T-shirt into a white one on a hot summer day.

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Spicing up social media

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Corporate America finally figured out social media. Over two days, beginning July 13, the team behind Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice body wash campaign churned out more than 180 YouTube videos in which a hunky, bare-chested actor named Isaiah Mustafa, playing the most manly man imaginable, responded in near real-time to consumer and celebrity comments posted on Twitter and Facebook.

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Advice for parents of “big kids with even bigger problems”

By Kate Fillion - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Stephanie Diani/Getty Images

A bestselling author and television screenwriter, Gail Parent has won two Emmys and was nominated for 12 more for her work on shows ranging from The Golden Girls to Tracey Ullman’s comedy specials. In her new book, How to Raise Your Adult Children, co-authored with psychotherapist Susan Ende, she offers advice to parents of “big kids with even bigger problems.”

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French woman charged with killing eight of her babies

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 12:06 PM - 0 Comments

A 45-year-old French woman named Dominique Cottrez has been charged with killing eight of her babies after the remains of two children were found wrapped in plastic bags by the new owners of a house in the village of Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille. Police tracked the previous occupants to another house just half a mile away, where they found the bodies of six more children hidden at that property. Cottrez, who has two grown daughters with her husband Pierre-Marie, is said to have been “systematically killing her babies since 1988.” According to Le Figaro, two of the bodies discovered had been hidden in the first house for more than 20 years. If convicted, she faces 15 years in prison in what has become France’s worst-ever case of infanticide. Pierre-Marie Cottrez has been questioned but no charges have been laid against him.

The Telegraph

Russian court bans access to YouTube

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 12:04 PM - 0 Comments

A court in Russia’s Khabarovsk region has ordered Internet provider Rosnet to block YouTube after it carried a single video containing “extremist” content. The ban is the result of YouTube hosting “Russia For Russians,” an ultra-nationalist video which was added to the federal justice ministry’s list of banned extremist materials after a separate court decision in November. The court also banned access to four websites that carried copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The ban has incited anger from the Russian blogosphere, many of whom argue the move is a slippery slope towards tighter Internet censorship across the country. China, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran have also banned YouTube.

The Guardian

Controversial Arizona immigration law takes effect Thursday

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 12:02 PM - 0 Comments

Arizona’s controversial immigration law takes effect Thursday, even though U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton recently blocked several of its most controversial aspects. The preliminary injunction, issued Wednesday, prevents police from questioning people’s immigration status if there is reason to believe they are in the country illegally. Bolton also blocked provisions of the law that would have made it a crime for immigrants to fail to apply for the proper documents and “for an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work” while in the U.S.  A provision “authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person” if there is reason to believe that person might be subject to deportation was removed as well. The parts of the law that take effect on Thursday include a ban on “sanctuary cities”—cities with laws or policies that render them relatively safe for undocumented immigrants—and the criminalization of hiring day laborers who are in the country illegally. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the state would file an expedited appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

CNN

The billionaire's widow

By Dafna Izenberg - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 9 Comments

HARRARI/SIPA/ LIONEL CIRONNEAU/AP

In December 2002, a Monaco courtroom was temporarily transformed into a synagogue. It was the trial of Ted Maher, charged with (and ultimately convicted of) starting the fire that led to the death of international banker Edmond Safra.

The presiding judge asked the accused whether he had any questions for the rabbi who had just testified on behalf of the prosecution. Maher requested that the rabbi say a prayer for the deceased. The rabbi replaced his wide-brimmed hat with a yarmulke and began to pray in Hebrew on the witness stand. It was at this moment that Edmond Safra’s wife, Lily—who had previously suffered such widely publicized personal tragedies as the suicide of her second husband and the fatal car accident of a beloved son and grandson—broke down in public for the first time in her life.

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The benefits of rejection

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Why are there still so few female entrepreneurs? According to one MIT researcher, the answer is simple: it all comes down to sexual rejection. Chizoba Nnaemeka, of the MIT Entrepreneurship Review, says women aren’t as practised as men at being turned down. As such, she says, they don’t learn some of the skills required to strike out on their own in business, such as “confidence and optimism, sales and marketing, resilience, and trace amounts of desperation.” To pursue romantic relationships, after all, is to risk repeated rejection, much like trying to raise significant amounts of capital to finance a start-up.

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Karzai urges West to target Pakistan

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a Thursday news conference his country’s Western allies are unwilling to move against Pakistan, which is allegedly supporting the Taliban. “It is a different question whether Afghanistan has the ability to tackle this, but our allies have this capability,” he said. “The question now is why they are not taking action?” Tensions with Pakistan are running high in Afghanistan after documents released by WikiLeaks appeared to show cooperation between Pakistani authorities and the Taliban. Karzai also used the news conference to slam WikiLeaks for releasing information on Afghan informants cooperating with NATO forces, calling it “extremely irresponsible and shocking.”

BBC News

Feuding neighbours

By Nadja Drost - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Their relationship has long suffered from bristling tensions, poisonous spats, and a lack of trust. But just as hopes were rising for an end to the acrimony and the turning of a new page, Colombia and Venezuela’s governments are once again embroiled in a blistering exchange of words.

Last week, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s administration declared it has evidence, including satellite photos, videos and intelligence gleaned from guerrilla deserters, that top rebel leaders from both the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) are seeking refuge in guerrilla camps in Venezuela. Like clockwork, the assertion unleashed a maelstrom of cross-border turbulence.

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Licence to advertise

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

California’s mounting budget shortfall—now US$19 billion—has overtaken highway gridlock, and the smog it generates, as drawbacks to living in the Golden State. But one Democratic senator, Curren Price, thinks he has found a solution via Silicon Valley: wireless technology that beams advertising onto drivers’ licence plates.

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Harry Potter and the trial by fire

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Marianne Helm

In November 2008, Kim Baryluk, lead singer for the band the Wyrd Sisters, sat down at her computer in her Ponemah, Man., home on Lake Winnipeg’s shores. There, she happened upon a story in the Globe and Mail describing a lawsuit filed in her name. As she read on, her jaw hit the floor—the suit was news to her. Her lawyer had, without her consent, she claims, sued two Ontario judges for $21 million for conspiracy, a case so bizarre (ever hear of a lawyer suing a judge?) even the Times of London reported it.

Baryluk had hired Toronto intellectual property lawyer Kimberly Townley-Smith in 2005 to sue Warner Bros. over the use of the band’s name in a Harry Potter movie. The case was tossed and the judge ordered Baryluk, who earns a modest income running a group home for teenagers, to pay $140,000 in costs. That was just the start. In the four years Townley-Smith represented her, Baryluk, 51, launched multiple court proceedings—most of which, she claims, she was never even informed of; costs awarded against her have reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, in a legal file so complex it makes Bleak House look like a pamphlet. In the recent conspiracy case, Townley-Smith was accusing the judges of case fixing, abuse of public office and fraud.

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Mr. Fashionomics

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Imran Amed Photograph by Daniel Cianfarra

When Imran Amed, a Harvard Business School graduate and former management consultant with McKinsey & Company, saw a gap in reportage about the fashion industry, he decided to launch a website called The Business of Fashion. “Most of what I was reading online focused on the individual—what they wore, what they liked—or there was commentary on what celebrities were wearing,” says the London, U.K.-based Calgarian. “There was nothing about the industry itself.”

Now Amed—who grew up on a steady diet of CBC’s Fashion File—has become the self-styled Tim Blanks for the digital generation. Some 90,000 people follow his Twitter posts, which are also republished on the New York Times website and Style.com. He has more than 100,000 monthly visitors to his website, including the executives of some of the world’s biggest luxury goods companies. Nadja Swarovski, creative director of the billion-dollar crystal company, is a follower, and so is Oscar de la Renta CEO Alex Bolen, Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet, and the chairman of Condé Nast International, Jonathan Newhouse.

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Is anybody normal anymore?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 10:55 AM - 0 Comments

Mental health experts are warning that an updated version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which helps doctors diagnose mental illness, could mean that virtually nobody is classified as normal. Set to be published in 2013, the new DSM might include diagnoses for “disorders” like toddler tantrums and binge eating, resulting in people previously seen as healthy being told they are ill. “Technically, with the classification of so many new disorders, we will all have disorders,” experts said in a joint statement. “This may lead to the belief that many more of us ‘need’ drugs to treat our ‘conditions’ — (and) many of these drugs will have unpleasant or dangerous side effects.” They cited examples of new additions like “mild anxiety depression,” “psychosis risk syndrome,” and “temper dysregulation disorder.”

Reuters

Ignatieff trails Harper in personality poll

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 10:51 AM - 0 Comments

In a new “personality poll,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper beat Michael Ignatieff in almost every measure, though even the PM’s numbers were low when respondents were asked if the leaders are “in tune with Canadians.” Just 28 per cent said Harper is “in tune with Canadians,” while 12 per cent said the same about Ignatieff. Where Harper shone was when respondents were asked who is most “confident” and “determined”—Harper got 55 per cent and 56 per cent, respectively, versus 28 per cent for Ignatieff on both measures. Harper also eked out a win on the question of who is smarter. Despite Ignatieff’s egghead reputation, 45 per cent said Harper is smarter compared to 41 per cent for the Liberal leader. Ignatieff’s single win was on the question of which leader is more “hypocritical.” Harper had a 43 per cent hypocrisy rating, while only 39 per cent called Ignatieff a hypocrite.

QMI

Call it 'An Inconceivable Truth'

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Keystone/Getty Images

If you think about it, there was something positively medieval about the security at last month’s G20 summit—turning Toronto’s core into a walled city, surrounded by a steel-mesh fence and guarded by helmeted warriors armed with shields and sticks. What’s sobering is that the authorities’ $900-million show of force would have been powerless to protect the G20 leaders, or the city, if one terrorist had showed up packing the ultimate weapon of opportunity—a nuclear device. Forget the fence; it could be set off from the Toronto Islands.

That may seem like a paranoid fantasy ripped from some spy movie or conspiracy thriller. But the prospect of such a scenario seems all too plausible in light of a terrifying new documentary called Countdown to Zero. The film makes a compelling case that the danger of nuclear catastrophe—something we tend to associate with the bygone era of the Cold War—is more dire today than ever before. Although the era of superpower stand-offs may be over, the nuclear club now includes nine countries, including unstable regimes such as Pakistan and North Korea, with Iran on the threshold. But what’s most alarming is that terrorist organizations are actively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons in a world where both the materials and the technology are proliferating as never before.

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Toyota's latest repairs

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Eugene Hoshiko/AP

First it was plastic zip ties. Now it’s a hacksaw and bubble wrap. The fixes for Toyota’s ongoing problem with sticky accelerator pedals, and the floor mats that can trap them, increasingly sound like something from an episode of MacGyver. A recent bulletin issued by General Motors to dealerships regarding the Pontiac Vibe—a mechanical twin of the Toyota Matrix—calls for mechanics to use a hacksaw to remove part of the pedal assembly as part of an operation to ensure that it doesn’t become stuck in a depressed position. According to the instructions, posted on automotive blog Jalopnik, the bubble wrap is apparently used to protect the pedal’s electronic sensors during the procedure.

Other fixes issued by Toyota, which has been forced to recall 8.5 million cars since 2009 amid driver reports of instances of “sudden unintended acceleration,” included using zip ties to secure floor mats to the floor and inserting a Chiclet-sized piece of steel into the accelerator pedal to prevent it from getting stuck in a partially depressed position.

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Elon Musk, the geek tycoon

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Michal Czerwonka/The New York Times/ Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Elon Musk is used to making headlines. In fact, he seems to relish them. In late May, the 39-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur stood alongside Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Toyota Motors CEO Akio Toyoda and inked a deal to purchase a mothballed California auto plant for Tesla, his electric sports car company.

Two weeks later, he was in Florida, watching a Falcon 9 rocket, made by another one of his firms, SpaceX, blast off on its maiden voyage to orbit, and a potentially lucrative future hauling freight and astronauts to the International Space Station. On June 29, he and his 24-year-old fiancée, British actress Talulah Riley, toothily rang the bell to open trading on the New York Stock Exchange, as Tesla became the first automobile maker to go public in the U.S. since Ford in 1956.

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Otters, kelp beds and CO2

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Stuart Westmorland/Getty Images

Sea otters, arguably the world’s cutest endangered species, have also turned out to be one of Mother Nature’s best animal carbon sinks. It’s believed they can pull up to 0.18 kg of C02 out of the air for every square metre of water they occupy, by keeping kelp beds healthy.

They’re only at about a third of what their population once was, but if their numbers were back to the estimated 300,000 before they were hunted to near extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries, they would be responsible for the sequestration of about 10 billion kg of carbon dioxide a year.

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A heartthrob vs. the PM

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Yuriko Nakao/Reuters

Finally, with Naoto Kan, it seemed Japan’s political merry-go-round might stop. Upon being designated the new prime minister in June, he won early raves for blunt warnings about Japan’s massive, unsustainable debt and the need for tax increases to attack it. With the decisive, plain-spoken former activist, Japan seemed also to be calling it quits on another unseemly tradition: de facto hereditary control of public office.

Many countries have their Kennedys and Gandhis, but in Japan, where more than a quarter of lawmakers are descendents of legislators, blood is almost a prerequisite for high office. Kan’s four predecessors were the sons or grandsons of former prime ministers; each quickly flamed out, resigning in the face of falling approval ratings (his immediate predecessor, Yukio Hato­yama, lasted all of nine months). The archaic system is blamed for everything from policy gridlock and weak governance to the decline of the world’s second-biggest economy. But Kan, a salaryman’s son with no special connections, as he liked to remind voters—and Japan’s fourth PM in six years—seemed to spell the end to all that.

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Weapons of choice: Ottawa's 65 new jet fighters

By John Geddes - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

CP Images

Despite the presence of three cabinet ministers and a military band, there was something missing when the federal government announced its plan to spend $9 billion on 65 new fighter jets earlier this month. The politicians talked plenty about Canada’s long involvement in U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin’s development of the new Joint Strike Fighter F-35, and about the contracts they hope will now flow to Canadian companies involved in the huge project. They stressed how Canada’s allies—mainly the U.S., but also Britain, Australia and others—are also buying F-35s. What they didn’t offer was a plainly worded description of what the new jets might actually do.

Asked for “specific examples of the uses of these aircraft,” Defence Minister Peter MacKay was imprecise. He mentioned “patrols over Canadian airspace” and “future missions with NATO,” then quickly switched to stressing how the “new gear” will make it easier to recruit pilots. That left critics to question the need for fighter jets, arguing they made more sense during the Cold War, when air-to-air combat with Soviet jets was a plausible scenario.

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Oil spill: when a science fiction nightmare becomes reality

By Joseph Boyden, Amanda Boyden and David Parker Jr. - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Lee Celano/Reuters/ Patrick Semansky/AP /Joe Raedle/Getty Images

We walk on the sands of Pensacola Beach tonight. We’ve strolled here before, in the past, but it’s different now. Really different. The sky has turned from lavender to purple to black, and what we see comes straight from a science fiction movie. Our darkest imaginings of some mishandled future have sprung to life. For stretches longer than football fields, dozens of white-skinned, red-eyed aliens plod like zombies across the beach where the water meets the sand.

And then we see: the white-skinned aliens are really hazmat-clad humans wearing single infrared lights affixed to their heads. They shuffle and bend in teams of two, one holding a plastic bag while the other digs at black gelatinous blobs in the white sand. They wear white masks, and the waxing moon lists in the sky. Suddenly understanding that the beings are human is no less frightening.

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Week in Pictures: July 21th – 28th 2010

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE