The new anti-Semitism

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

THOMAS HAENTZSCHEL/AP

“Gone with the Jews!” yelled a group of youths at Jewish dance performers on the fringes of  Hanover, Germany. It was International Day, and celebrations were focused on social diversity and cohesion. These hate-filled sentiments, though, broke up the festivities when the young people began stoning the dancers. Unlike traditional sources of anti-Semitic hatred in Germany—white, right-wing radicals—German authorities say this and other such cases mark a new source of anti-Semitic hatred in Germany: young Muslims.

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Why we're a 'favourite' target of Iran

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

A former member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who secretly spied for the CIA during the 1980s and ’90s says that Canada is a major target of Iranian espionage.

Reza Kahlili is the pseudonym of an Iranian national now living in the U.S. who joined the Guards shortly after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and quickly became disgusted by the violence and radicalism that followed. Kahlili, who attended university in California, agreed to spy for the CIA during a visit to America in 1981. He described his time in the intelligence agency in A Time to Betray, a memoir published earlier this year.

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Women’s tennis CEO Stacey Allaster on equal pay, sexy tennis garb, and Venus

By Kate Fillion - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Bob Croslin/Getty

A 15-year veteran of Tennis Canada, Stacey Allaster—who got her start cleaning courts in Welland, Ont.—is now chairman and CEO of the Women’s Tennis Association. She joined the WTA in 2006 as president, and was instrumental in achieving pay equity in prize money for female players at all four Grand Slam events. The total prize money on the women’s tour is US$85 million—up from $300,000 in 1973.

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Reeling in a big one

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The BC Ferries’ Queen of Nanaimo smashed into a Mayne Island dock last week, splintering parts of the pier and leaving two crew members and six of its 207 passengers with cracked ribs, concussions and other injuries—all because of a Dungeness crab trap. About 4.5 m of line, with a buoy on one end and a trap on the other, got tangled in the propeller. Though an extreme case, the accident highlights a chronic—and costly—problem.

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Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of August 16th, 2010)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Tales of space dandruff and chimponauts

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SHUTE

PACKING FOR MARS
Mary Roach
She never uses the term, but Roach’s new book could best be summarized as an overview of “wetware” aspects of space exploration, with the emphasis on the “wet.” What’s it like to pee in microgravity? What happens if you barf in your helmet while spacewalking? Has anybody had sex up there? Was it fun?
Generations of scientists, largely nameless and often working in secret, have had to deal with awkward biological matters like these. The necessary experiments have many times been absurd, and sometimes dangerous. Proposed solutions and training methods can get mighty weird. As in “toilet-cam” weird.  “Monkey in a V-2 rocket” weird.

Roach’s funny, profane, fearless approach is admirable, and the wisecracks ought not to mislead anyone. Packing for Mars adds much to the public understanding of a realm that NASA—which is, after all, an agency of the U.S. government—would rather not talk about. It tackles some of the great legends and rumours of space exploration, adding context to incidents like Rusty Schweickart’s Apollo 9 motion sickness and the sexual harassment of Canada’s Judith Lapierre in a Russian space-station simulator. On historical topics like astronaut meals and zero-G hygiene, her treatments are near-definitive.The explicit theme of the book is the future of manned space exploration: how far we’ve come, and what’s left to learn before we can send humans to Mars and beyond. But letting robot proxies serve instead looks all the more like common sense after Roach’s stories of how lousy sentient meat is at travelling. The man-on-Mars scenario has remained about equally far into the future since the days of the Apollo program; Obama says he “expects to be around” to see it, but this is not exactly JFK-esque “before this decade is out” talk. With the shuttle program ending in a whimper, there is something sad and ironic about Roach’s Rabelaisian tales of space dandruff and chimponauts.
- Colby Cosh

LET’S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME
Gail Caldwell
The friendship of Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp seemed meant to be. When they crossed paths at Fresh Pond Reservoir in Cambridge, Mass., something sparked. They promptly fastened themselves together for the rest of their lives.

This proved shorter than expected; Knapp died of lung cancer in 2002, at the age of 42. In her new memoir, Caldwell lovingly uncovers each layer of their friendship and how it transformed her life. She and Knapp first bonded over their pups—Clementine (Caldwell’s Samoyed) and Lucille (Knapp’s shepherd mix). Next came a deep respect for each other’s work—Caldwell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book reviewer and Knapp was a columnist acclaimed for her own memoir, Drinking, a Love Story. Alcoholism and recovery were something they had both been through as well. And then there was rowing, a passion Knapp transferred to Caldwell. The first scene of the book has Knapp standing on the shore, generously coaching Caldwell’s teetery negotiation of a tiny racing scull, then laughing as her friend plunges into the water.

This collegiality and safety of competitiveness was one of the more intangible essentials in the women’s friendship. There was also Knapp’s “polite” refusal to be rejected by Caldwell, as well as her head-on approach to conflict. Caldwell was in her early 40s when Knapp came into her life, on an indefinite break from men and resigned—by choice and not unhappily—to never having children. She was a “gregarious hermit,” happy to socialize or to be left alone. But she soon found herself telling Knapp: “Oh no. I need you.”

As this dependence grew, Caldwell’s fears surfaced. “Hostage to attachment,” she remembers thinking. But she didn’t run away. When Knapp was in the hospital, Caldwell brought her a T-shirt from their dog-training days that said “Sit! Stay!” then realized, “That was what I did. I sat and I stayed.”
One evening several months after Knapp died, two pit bulls attacked Clementine at Fresh Pond. Caldwell threw herself into the melee, helping Clementine escape. At first, she credited Knapp’s spirit with saving her dog’s life. Later, she amended her conclusion: “Caroline’s dying had forced me into courage under fire; now I had her inside me as a silent sentinel.”
- DAFNA IZENBERG

SAVAGES
Don Winslow
A veteran and well-regarded American thriller writer, Winslow has just been catapulted into the big leagues with this, his 14th novel, slated to be filmed by Oliver Stone. Savages is one wild ride, an action story with literary ambitions. Beyond the frequent bursts of blank verse, there’s what any one of Winslow’s California  characters would call a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid vibe: the two main protagonists, Ben and Chon, partners in a high-end marijuana business, are “this close to being gay,” as a stoned Ben once says, holding his thumb and index finger an inch apart. They’re not, though—they merely love each other almost as much as they love their common girlfriend, Ophelia. But just as a reader begins to tire of the ways cerebral Ben resembles Paul Newman and Chon channels Robert Redford, the characters bring it up themselves in this wickedly funny novel. Wait, asks Ben, didn’t the Wild Bunch all end up dead? “Not the girl,” Ophelia cheerfully responds.

At first, all is well in the boys’ impossibly Edenic garden of pot, until the Mexican Baja Cartel moves to take over their operation, while demoting Ben and Chon to employees in their own start-up. Although Ben appreciates the post-colonial irony of the offer—the Mexicans want to turn them into field hands—he and Chon decide to simply abandon the field to the forces of big business. But the cartel wants Ben’s horticultural genius along with the operation, and kidnap Ophelia to enforce compliance.

There is nothing the boys won’t do for their girl, and thus commences an orgy of violence amid a dizzying spiral of plot twists. And the question of just who are the savages of the title—once seemingly answered when the cartel sent Ben and Chon a snuff video showing the decapitated bodies of dealers who had failed to co-operate—comes alive again, in a novel that’s almost as thought-provoking as it is compulsively readable.
- BRIAN BETHUNE

NORMAN PODHORETZ: A BIOGRAPHY
Thomas L. Jeffers
For critics on the left, in America and abroad, neo-conservatism (or neo-liberalism, as some call it), militantly capitalist and robustly pro-military, is an almost literally diabolical political stance responsible for much of the world’s troubles. And the brilliant and pugnacious Norman Podhoretz remains, at age 80, its chief Satanist. Jeffers, in a detailed first biography of the man who edited the highly influential New York journal of ideas Commentary from 1960 to 1995, offers an absorbing—if laudatory—account of Podhoretz’s now famous Damascene conversion from classic Jewish liberalism to a right-wing conservatism that was both specifically Jewish and broadly all-American.

When he took over Commentary—one of the two leading journals (along with Partisan Review) of intellectual New York—the ambitious Podhoretz, son of immigrants to Brooklyn, was only 30. He was soon at the centre of liberal politics, publishing New Left thinkers like Herbert Marcuse, while personally organizing parties for Jackie Kennedy. Yet the excesses of the ’60s began to wear at him, and in 1972 he voted for Republican Richard Nixon, a rightward slide in tune with wider U.S. trends in the ’70s. But Podhoretz didn’t stop there: in his newly conservative magazine he criticized Ronald Reagan in the ’80s for insufficient Cold War aggressiveness. Last March, he went on record as preferring Sarah Palin to Barack Obama for president.

The root cause, of course, was over America and Israel, increasingly—and, for Podhoretz, outrageously—seen as forces for evil by his former friends and fellow liberal intellectuals. As Podhoretz put it in a 1985 statement, he began painfully to “unlearn” what he had accepted as unquestioned truth. “That the last thing one ought to be defending was one’s own, that it was nobler to fight for others and for other things in which one had no personal stake.” A gross and dangerous error, in Podhoretz’s opinion, and one he was resolved never to embrace again.
- BRIAN BETHUNE

BUCK OWENS: THE BIOGRAPHY
Eileen Sisk
It should probably go down in the User’s Guide to Celebrityhood: when a dirt-digging journalist offers to pen your life story, think twice before blowing her off. If Buck Owens had kept author Eileen Sisk inside his tent, for example, his reputation as a hard-living country music legend who’d do anything to succeed might have survived. Instead, the singer led Sisk on for three years, teasing her with salacious details of his life before abruptly cutting her off in 2000, telling her whatever she wrote would be unauthorized.
Freed from the sense of obligation that comes with access, Sisk has carved up Owens with ruthless precision.

Wife-beater. Philanderer. Liar. Miser. Deadbeat dad. Thief of intellectual property. There’s practically no label of dishonour that doesn’t fit the man who blackens these pages, and if he hadn’t died in 2006 you can be sure he would have sued. Sisk, a former editor with the Tennessean newspaper, pays due homage to the unprecedented string of hits Owens unleashed—along with the “freight-train” sound that revolutionized a stagnant genre in the 1960s. Owens ruled the country charts despite turning his back on Nashville, she explains, transforming his adopted home town of Bakersfield, Calif., into a rival of Music City. But his 21 chart toppers and his pioneering use of TV pale next to the thought of him smashing his third wife Phyllis in the jaw with a golf club. Baby boomers who recall the aw-shucks co-host of Hee Haw might be interested to know he sired six unacknowledged children. Or that he boasted shamelessly about the size of his genitals.

Owens styled himself part of the Okie exodus to California in the early ’30s, but he was certainly no Tom Joad. By 1966, he was already worth millions, yet he still forced his bandmates to sleep two to a bed during road trips. Surveying the trail of embittered musicians, stiffed business associates and jilted women Owens left behind, singer-songwriter Gene Price described him as “a very bad man who made very good music.” Seldom a truer word was spoken.
- CHARLIE GILLIS

THE ART OF CHOOSING
Sheena Iyengar
Despite its title, this is not the book to read if you are trying to pick between a sedan and a coupe, pondering whether or not to re-shingle the roof or deciding on a university.

The Art of Choosing isn’t a guide to making the right choice. Rather it is a contemplation on the complex nature of choice itself: how choosing defines us as individuals and the ways in which our culture’s attitude toward choice in turn shapes us.

Iyengar, a business professor at Columbia University with a cross-appointment to the psychology department, is famous for her jam experiment. She set up a table in a busy grocery store in San Francisco and offered customers two alternating options for sampling jams. Part of the time there were 24 different kinds of breakfast spreads to taste. Other times the selection was just six. The results seem surprisingly counterintuitive. While more customers were attracted to the bigger range of options, only three per cent actually purchased jam. While fewer people came to the table when only six jams were displayed, 30 per cent of them bought a jar.

To Iyengar, this suggests that while most people claim they want a lot of choice in their lives, this can often become a crippling burden. Less choice is better. She pursues this idea via investigations on a wide variety of subjects, including arranged marriages, fashion, investing and politics, generally with the aid of social experiments such as the jam study. Quite often Iyengar concludes it’s better to have experts make your choices for you. Her study of parents forced to decide whether to take a baby off life support, for instance, suggests they should let doctors make the call.

Some readers may be unconvinced that choice can be a bad thing. But it’s rather bracing to have someone challenge the North American birthright to 25 kinds of cola and 1,000 channels on cable TV. Besides, if you don’t like her message, you can always choose a different book.
- PETER SHAWN TAYLOR

Dance, dance, dance

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 5:13 PM - 0 Comments

New video of Michael Ignatieff dancing, this time at Folklorama in Winnipeg. His rhythm seems possibly to have improved, or perhaps he has found a beat to which he can more comfortably move.

The red shift

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 3:41 PM - 0 Comments

Liberal senator Grant Mitchell contemplates the potential possibilities and pitfalls of senate reform.

Electing Senators will cause a massive shift of power from the Prime Minister, from the House of Commons and from provincial Premiers to the Senate. As elected Senators they can (and they will) hold up legislation and budgets which will diminish the power of the House of Commons. Since there are, for example, only 6 Senators in Alberta compared to 28 MPs, they will have more prominence and the power that goes with it. When elected, Senators will more aggressively exercise their role in representing regional rights and will take the power to do that from where it resides now, with the Premiers. I often ask people to name 5 members of the US House of Representatives, 5 Governors and then 5 US Senators. For most, it is way easier to name Senators than either Governors or a Congress Person. That’s because the US Senate, elected as it is, is the most powerful institution in US government.

Media War 2.0

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 3:29 PM - 0 Comments

That’s the title of Tom Watson’s feature in the new issue of Canadian Business. It looks at how the big players in the Canadian media biz — The Globe, Star, Postmedia, and Sun Media — are all working different strategies as they try to figure out how to make money in a business environment that has changed almost unrecognizeably since the National Post was launched.

Here’s the key passage, outlining Paul Godfrey’s “digital first” strategy for Postmedia:

Godfrey, who has what he considers real money on the line, insists the Post is on the verge of profitability. And he says it won’t start bleeding again because Postmedia will dramatically attack costs associated with traditional newspapers. There will still be printed products from the old Southam chain, but they won’t be breaking news.

“Instead of taping me right now,” Godfrey says, “you’d be collecting video. The editorial guys are going to have to carry webcams. When a story breaks, we’ll issue alerts on cellphones and mobile devices. Then the story goes on the web. Editors will be digital media curators. Video clips will be sent out to all the social-networking streams. And ultimately, the stories of the day are wrapped up in print.” Four years from now, Godfrey says, Postmedia will have “a content division and a sales and marketing division. That’s it. Everything else will be centralized or outsourced.”

War: A love story

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 3:16 PM - 0 Comments

I finished Sebastian Junger’s War last night, the companion book to the documentary Restrepo that he made with Tim Hetherington.  The book is divided into three large sections – Fear, Killing, and Love – and while it is slow to get going, the second half of the book, and the final third especially, is outstanding.

There is some attempt at replicating the structure of The Perfect Storm, with the war-zone reporting cut with digressions into topics such as military tactics and weaponry, the politics of the war in Afghanistan, and the psychology of courage. Only the last is executed in a fully satisfying way, but that doesn’t harm the narrative much. After spending the better part of fifteen months embedded in the Korengal, the material Junger has is crackerjack.

If you’ve seen Restrepo, most of the plot points of War will be familiar, though the book gives so much more background and context that it is, in retrospect, an almost essential companion to the film. Like most books that give the grunts-eye-view of combat, War is really a book about masculinity, and the distinctly male ways of bonding, in-group/out-group dynamics, and the relationship between male sexuality and violence. These are the same themes that haunt the film, only amplified, and I don’t have much more to add than what I wrote in my review of Restrepo.

Most of what Junger has to say on these themes is not new, but he writes it very, very well, and when it is used to frame the goings-on at the KOP and OP Restrepo, it adds a really nice tension to the story. (The bit about soldiers creeping around, afraid of being gang-raped by a pair of over-the-top platoon mates, is pretty wild).

The one element that is new, and I think, exactly right, is Junger’s discussion of courage. Aristotle  defined courage as the mean between cowardice and recklessness, but this has always been totally unhelpful. Courage has always defied rational analysis, largely because its most extreme manifestations – e.g. a soldier throwing himself on a grenade – seem completely irrational. Junger finds the crack in the nut, I think, when he argues that courage is something largely indistinguishable from love. And therein lies the great conundrum of war: it isn’t that men enjoy war, so much that they will never love any one as much as they do the men with whom they go into combat.

How they do it

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 2:32 PM - 0 Comments

If senate reform is, as has been hinted, to be prominent in the government’s fall agenda, it is perhaps worth seriously considering what it is we want the senate to be. And on that note, here is an extensive look at the U.S. Senate, penned by the New Yorker’s George Packer after a few months of observation.

As the senators cast their votes, I noticed Robert Kaiser, the author of “So Damn Much Money,” in the press gallery. I later asked him if, with the passage of two big reform bills in three months, we were witnessing a possible renewal of the Senate. “If you can engage public opinion in a way politicians can understand, public opinion can still blow away money and interest groups,” he said. “But over the past few decades the reflex has grown in the Senate that, all things considered, it’s better to avoid than to take on big issues. This is the kind of thing that drives Michael Bennet nutty: here you’ve arrived in the United States Senate and you can’t do fuck-all about the destruction of the planet.”

Partial victory for Rod Blagojevich

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 2:14 PM - 0 Comments

After three weeks of tense deliberations, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was mostly vindicated because a jury in his federal corruption trial was one vote short of convicting him of attempting to sell a U.S. Senate seat. Though 11 jurors were ready to convict Blagojevich, a lone juror held out on and would only agree that Blagojevich lied to the FBI. The jury, which deliberated for 14 days, ended up hung on the other 23 counts against him and handed out a guilty verdict on the least serious charge. Prosecutors said they will meet next week to decide their next move and may retry Blagojevich. Following the trial, Blagojevich told reporters: “What the jury decided today was that I didn’t let the people of Illinois down.” As he walked by, supporters cheered and screamed, “We love you!”

CNN

Feds expected to match donations for Pakistani relief

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 1:33 PM - 0 Comments

Ottawa is expected to announce it will match private donations earmarked for relief efforts in flood-ravaged Pakistan. Details of the program are reportedly still being hammered out as Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon prepares for a trip to New York, where the UN is hosting an emergency meeting on the situation in Pakistan. The federal government has already pledged $33 million in aid to Pakistan, but aid organizations say they’re still having trouble collecting donations to pay for the relief effort.

Montreal Gazette

France pushes protectionist measures

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 12:49 PM - 0 Comments

French Industry Minister Christian Estrosi says the country will adopt a policy of “French industrial patriotism” because corporations aren’t working properly to ease unemployment in the country. “What is important is the number of components, to ensure that the large majority come from French suppliers,” Estrosi says. “All this will lead me to think about a law on inter-industrial relations, to better protect our suppliers.” France, one of Canada’s key allies in the push for a free trade deal with the EU-Canada, is being accused of violating the spirit of the G20 summit pledge, which opposed protectionist policies. Separately, the EU has accused Canada of enacting protectionist measures of its own. It continues to press provinces to abandon measures granting preferential treatment to domestic suppliers, like those included in Ontario’s Green Energy Act.

Montreal Gazette

President's Choice recalls Decadent cookies

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 12:28 PM - 0 Comments

People who have in store baked President’s Choice Decadent Chocolate Chunk cookies in their cupboards should beware. Loblaws has issued a recall on the cookies because they may contain small, round pieces of metal. The suspect cookies are sold in packages of eight, weighing 352 grams. The cookies were baked in store and the packages have the UPC 0 6038383903 8. The metal pieces are roughly one millimeter in diameter. Loblaws has taken the cookies off the shelves and says any customer can return the product to the store for a full refund.

Toronto Star

Twelve of a kind?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 12:05 PM - 0 Comments

To the cases of Linda Keen, Arthur Carty, Bernard Shapiro, Kevin Page, Peter Tinsley, Richard Colvin, Marc Mayrand, Paul Kennedy, Robert Marleau, Munir Sheikh and Pat Stogran, you can perhaps add the curious case of Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak.

The head of the Canadian Firearms Program, who is a strong supporter of the long-gun registry, is quietly being bounced out of the position, CBC News has learned…

CBC’s Brian Stewart reported that Cheliak was set to unveil a major report before the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police at their annual general meeting in Edmonton and get a president’s award for his work on the long-gun registry. But Stewart said Cheliak was told by the RCMP he’s not going to be sent there.

Wyclef goes into hiding with presidential bid in limbo

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:49 AM - 0 Comments

Wyclef Jean is in hiding following death threats as his bid for president of Haiti sits in limbo. Haiti’s electoral commission, known as the CEP, said late Tuesday it was postponing to Friday its ruling on who will be allowed to run for president in the November election. More than 30 people have filed to run for the presidency, but the CEP said more than 20 of the candidacies were contested. The Haitian-born Jean’s upbringing in the U.S. could be a roadblock to his candidacy, as Haiti’s Constitution requires candidates to have lived in the country for the five years leading up to the election. In a flurry of emails to the Associated Press, Jean revealed he in hiding at a secret location in Haiti after receiving a phone call telling him to get out of the country.

Toronto Star

Dutch border city seeks to end drug tourism

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

Dutch border city Maastricht is pushing to make the legal use of recreational drugs a Dutch-only policy as they struggle to reduce traffic jams and a high crime rate. City officials say as many as two million “drug tourists” visit the city’s 13 “coffee shops” every year, where they can buy marijuana without fear of prosecution. The case is now making its way through the courts to see if the country’s security concern will override the European Union’s guarantee of a unified and unfettered market for goods and services. In July, the advocate general for the European Court of Justice, Yves Bot, issued a finding that the selling of drugs “does not benefit from the freedoms of movement guaranteed by European law.” Many residents of border towns in the Netherlands have also criticized Belgium, France and Germany for tolerating recreational drug use while banning the sale of drugs.

New York Times

Head of federal gun program sent away ahead of vote on registry

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:43 AM - 0 Comments

RCMP Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak has been sent to French language training one month before parliament will debate a Conservative bill to scrap the long-gun registry. Cheliak, whose responsibility includes enforcing the Firearms Act, has united police associations across Canada in favour of keeping the firearms registry. Top-level police, including the president of the Canadian Police Association, Charles Momy, are questioning the timing of the decision. They say that Cheliak was moved as a warning to other police to keep quiet about the issue during September’s debate.

CBC News

EI claims rise for third straight month

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

Statistics Canada is reporting that the number of Canadians who received regular employment insurance benefits climbed in June for the third month in a row. The overall increase was due to a rise in EI claims in nine provinces—the biggest increases occured in Quebec and New Brunswick—with Ontario being the only region to register a decline in the number of EI claims. The number of beneficiaries is nonetheless down since its June 2009.

CBC News

BHP launches hostile takeover bid of Potash Corp.

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:21 AM - 0 Comments

Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton has launched a $40 billion hostile takeover bid of the Canadian firm Potash Corp, the world’s leading miner of potash. If BHP succeeds, the takeover would be the biggest in Canadian history. BHP’s initial offer was rejected, with Potash Corp. calling it “grossly inadequate” and saying it “substantially undervalues” the company. The latest offer comes as demand for fertilizer is expected to increase with the rising consumption of meat in emerging markets. In a statement, BHP said, “The acquisition will accelerate BHP Billiton’s entry into the fertiliser industry and is consistent with the company’s strategy of becoming a leading global miner of potash.”

BBC News

B.C. grow-op guarded by 10 black bears

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:13 AM - 0 Comments

RCMP officers in B.C. say the 1,000 plant grow-op they found 350 km east of Vancouver two weeks ago was guarded by 10 tame black bears. A neighbour of the woman accused of growing the marijuana said the suspect had been feeding the bears for years so they would stay close by and scare away potential thieves away. “[Officers] noticed the bears were docile and tame,” RCMP Sgt. Fred Mansveld told CBC News. “One of them jumped on our unmarked car for a while.” Because the bears have lost their fear of humans, RCMP say they may have to be destroyed.

CBC News

"Somebody will have a majority"

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:11 AM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister yesterday in Ajax, Ont. (as noted by Colleague Wherry):

“The next election will be a choice between a coalition government of the Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québécois, or a stable Conservative majority government for this country.”

Compare that with my boss Ken Whyte’s interview with Harper just before New Year’s Day, 2009:

Obviously, if we had an election today somebody will have a majority because it will be either Canada’s Conservative government or the coalition. Continue…

Can this man save Tiger Woods?

By M.J. Stone - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Christopher Wahl/ AP Photo/Rob Carr

Ten years ago, on a day in early April, a dozen coaches were gathered inside the Glen Abbey academy in Oakville, Ont., for a golf instructors’ seminar. Situated near the 10th tee of the famed course, the room offered a panorama of the sloping fairway beyond. To start things off, participants were asked to introduce themselves and say a few words about their goals. When Foley’s turn arrived, he cleared his throat. “In 10 years’ time,” he said, “I want to be the swing coach to five of the top 50 ranked golfers in the world.”

Everyone burst into laughter. Although the 26-year-old Foley was a distinguished enough instructor of Canadian junior golfers, his resumé with PGA Tour professionals was non-existent. No one believed his cachet as a junior coach could translate into a job with an established tour player. And with only a handful of Canadians on the PGA Tour, what were the odds that one of Foley’s junior players would make it to the big leagues?

Continue…