Canadians want NHL teams in Winnipeg, Quebec City

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 3:23 PM - 0 Comments

A majority of Canadians would like to see the NHL return to Quebec City and Winnipeg according to an Angus Reid poll. The survey found 62 per cent of respondents thought it would be a good idea to add a team in the Manitoba capital, while 57 per cent were similarly warm to the thought of adding a team in Quebec City. However, Canadians don’t want public funds to be spent on doing so: 57 per cent rejected the idea taxpayer money should go to help relocate an NHL franchise in Canada, with only 35 per cent of Canadians saying they’d be open to the idea.

CBC News

The method man

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 0 Comments

Roman Cho; Getty Images/ Maragret Marissen

Sometimes Daniel Lanois feels like he’s being held hostage by the ghosts in his head. The brittle hi-hat in Arthur Alexander’s Anna—a soul ballad that peaked at No. 68 on the pop charts in 1962, and is mostly remembered for the cover version the Beatles did the following year. The warbling acoustic guitar of Blind Willie Johnson, a Texas bluesman and street preacher who died in 1945, leaving behind 30 songs and just one photograph. The “multidimensional” quality of old John Lee Hooker cuts: parched vocals up front, the bright tremolo and reverb of the guitar soaring above, and way out to one side, shoe leather scuffing against the studio floor. Sonic building blocks from the past that rattle around the super-producer and musician’s brain, waiting to burst back out in new finery, stretched, tweaked, or sometimes distorted beyond all recognition.

It’s part and parcel of his relentless search for sounds that will elevate a recording from workaday to timeless. The seven-time Grammy winner has a lot of pet terms for the process—a mixture of sacking and sleuthing. Over the years, he’s called it “testimonial exorcism,” “spotting,” and “highly paid vandalism.” But the one that seems to fit the best is Soul Mining, the title of his forthcoming musical memoir. “If you’re trying to solve a riddle, or do something that hasn’t been done before, you’re going to be at it for awhile because it requires a lot of research,” the 59-year-old drawls down the line from Bella Vista, his hilltop villa overlooking L.A.’s Silver Lake reservoir. “You bump into things you don’t like, then you discard them. But oftentimes those by-products are more interesting than what you thought you were going after in the first place. It takes a lot of time.”

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Harper makes pitch for Security Council seat at UN

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 3:17 PM - 0 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s pitched his wares at the United Nations on Thursday in a bid to secure a coveted spot for Canada on the Security Council. “If we are elected, we are ready to serve,” Harper said in a speech that touched on Canadian foreign aid, its chairmanship this year of the G8 and G20, and its respect for the sovereignty of all nations. “We shall be informed by these ideals and strive to further them, just as we have striven to implement Security Council resolutions.” Canada has never before lost in a race for a spot on the Council, though it’s hardly assured of winning the vote—scheduled for Oct. 12—this time around. Its recent stances on climate change and Israel, among others, are expected to turn some countries against Canada.

Toronto Sun

TV Premiere Week: Thursday

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 3:11 PM - 0 Comments

And now comes one of the bigger nights of this wild premiere season — though another night that probably won’t produce a breakout hit. Except for Lone Star (where the network had to make a special announcement that they’d be showing a second episode) and last night’s The Whole Truth, there have been no out-and-out flops among the new shows. But there haven’t been any out-and-out smash hits either: NBC’s The Event was probably the best performer relative to its time slot, while Hawaii 5-0 and Mike and Molly both did well but not terrific considering their plum time slots. Most of the new shows are like that, doing OK but not great but not terrible either. Which ones stay on and which ones get canceled will depend on how they do in future weeks and what the network has waiting in the wings, plus the network executives’ opinions. (Cougar Town, for example, continues to do very poorly given its time slot, losing a huge chunk of Modern Family‘s audience. But ABC seems to like it, so they might cut loose some other show to keep it on.)

Instead, the big numbers have been posted by returning hits, particularly light n’ fun shows: Two and a Half Men, Modern Family and Glee were all up from last year.

In other ratings tidbits, the season premiere of Being Erica didn’t provide much good news: it was down to only 400,000 on an otherwise good night for the CBC. Since the network didn’t promote its return very much, I’ve heard speculation that this is seen as a possible last hurrah for the show: a chance to wrap things up without much hope of renewal. I guess we’ll see. I personally enjoy the show but have to admit that, because we’d seen her learn her lesson so often, I started to drift away a bit. There’s only so many times a character can learn the same lessons about personal growth.

Now here are tonight’s U.S. “big four” premieres, starting with the much-hyped competitive 8:00 slot:

8:00
CBS: The Big Bang Theory
NBC: Community
Fox: Bones
ABC: My Generation

I said just now that the hour is competitive, but in a sense it isn’t: The Big Bang Theory is likely to win the hour in total viewers and the Coveted Demographic. What makes it interesting is the question of how well it will do — will it get somewhere near what it got after Two and a Half Men, establishing it as a genuine smash hit? Or will some of its viewers prove unwilling to follow it to Thursday, establishing it as a bad night for CBS to try comedy? If the show can do in its new time slot what Glee did its new slot, then it will be a game-changer for its network, which would then move the aging CSI and start a two-hour Thursday comedy block to replace NBC’s. But that’s a huge “if,” which is why everyone’s going to be looking very closely at the numbers.

Then there’s Community. This show is not going to win the night; the question is whether it will hold up enough to get a third season. The quality should be as good Continue…

Corporate mind games

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Liz Sullivan

A few weeks ago it was revealed that Google and the CIA—two organizations whose job it is to know what’s going on in the present—are working together to learn what will happen in the future. Through their respective investment arms—Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel—the geeks and the spooks each took a stake in a little-known Cambridge, Mass., company called Recorded Future, which bills itself as “the world’s first temporal analytics engine.” By scanning websites, news stories, blogs and Twitter pages for links between individuals, groups and incidents in the past, the company says it can apply “temporal reasoning” to predict events that haven’t happened yet.

The company is at the forefront of a fast-growing field known as predictive analytics, which uses algorithms that detect patterns and connections in life that wouldn’t otherwise be found.

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By the way (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 1:27 PM - 0 Comments

Immediately before voting on the long-gun registry last night, the House voted 220-84 to advance Bill C-17 to the public safety committee for further consideration. Bill C-17 essentially aims to reinstate certain anti-terrorism provisions, including investigative hearings and preventive detention, that expired in 2007.

The legislation, which has a rather long and complicated history, was debated on Monday and Tuesday—and the discussions there of civil liberties, justice and terrorism would seem rather relevant, if obviously not quite as exciting as the question of whether or not gun owners should be required to fill out the necessary paperwork to register their firearms.

For the love of cardboard

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Two years ago, online retailer Amazon.com vowed to do away with annoying, hard-to-open packaging. It didn’t succeed. Only a fraction of its suppliers adopted the effort to scrap those impossible-to-crack plastic bubble cases entombing many consumer goods (from toothbrushes to electronics).

But Amazon is back on the offensive again, this time using the power of angry consumers to try to convince manufacturers to change their ways and offer what it calls “frustration-free packaging.”

There are clear benefits to simple cardboard boxes. They’re cheap and environmentally friendly, for starters. But more importantly, consumers like them better than plastic—a lot better, it turns out. Companies that have switched to frustration-free boxing through Amazon have seen a 73 per cent drop in negative feedback on the site, reports the New York Times. Amazon is now taking those numbers to its suppliers to make its case against plastic, and it’s working. A number of big brands, from Duracell to Polaroid, have recently switched over to cardboard—no scissors required.

Hurricane Igor leaves thousands stranded in Newfoundland

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 12:32 PM - 0 Comments

Tens of thousands of Newfoundlanders have been cut off from important services—including access to highways and power—since Hurricane Igor swept through earlier this week. Strings of communities along the Burin and Bonavista peninsulas have been cut off from road access to highways, and are either running out of gas or lacking the electricity to operate pumps. Broken bridges and washed-out roads have made it impossible for vital supplies, including food, to be trucked in. Travel along the Trans-Canada Highway remains disrupted. Tom Hedderson, Newfoundland and Labrador’s acting minister of emergency, stated that the repair bill will cost at least three or four times the $27-million incurred by tropical storm Chantal in 2007.

CBC

Canadian fraud suspect will appear on ‘America’s Most Wanted’

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

A Canadian man sought in connection with the alleged defrauding of elderly people will be featured this Saturday on “America’s Most Wanted,” after the failure of Canadian Police Services to capture him. “Despite widespread media coverage and numerous warrants being issued by investigators from 10 Canadian Police Services, (Richard Earl) Rupert continues to evade capture,” Niagara Regional Police said Wednesday in a news release. As a result, detectives with the Toronto Police Service have called on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ for help. After hearing about the crimes the 53-year-old fugitive had allegedly committed, the show’s producers agreed to take on the case and air a story on Rupert.

CTV

Muting a bitter TV battle

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

NATHAN DENETTE/CP

Investors barely batted an eyelash last week when phone giant BCE revealed it had struck a $1.3-billion deal to buy CTV, the country’s top television network—a deal that continues a significant reorientation of the media landscape that began with Shaw Communication’s purchase of Global TV earlier this year. The reason? There are no immediate winners or losers. No one has figured out a way to benefit from owning both TV content and the “pipes” that deliver it to consumers—at least, not yet.

In fact, the only one that appears poised to come out ahead in the near-term is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The country’s broadcast watchdog has spent the past few years at the centre of an ugly fight between Canada’s ailing broadcast networks—CTV, CBC and Global, among others—and satellite and cable firms like Bell, Shaw and Rogers Communications (which own Maclean’s magazine) over the concept of “fee for carriage.” Dubbed a “TV tax” by Bell, Shaw and Rogers, the idea is that cable and satellite firms should be forced to pay for carrying the networks’ over-the-air signals on their services—an argument that’s now been rendered moot by the recent takeovers. “Fee for carriage doesn’t mean anything when the content owners and the content distributors are one and the same,” says Carmi Levy, an independent analyst.

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Multiple Sclerosis pill approved in the U.S.

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 12:15 PM - 0 Comments

Swiss drug maker Novartis has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a multiple sclerosis pill, called Gilenya, which treats relapsing MS, the most common type of the disease. This puts it ahead of Merck, a rival drug maker, another contender to be the first with an oral treatment on the shelves in the U.S., Reuters reports. Gilenya reduces the frequency of MS relapses and helps slow the progress of some physical problems caused by the disease, Novartis says. Currently, only injectable drugs are available to treat MS, a neurological condition with symptoms that include dizziness, fatigue, and cognitive problems.

New York Times

Mammograms aren’t the answer: study

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 12:11 PM - 0 Comments

Women are now accustomed to getting mammograms to screen for breast cancer on a regular basis, often from their forties or fifties, but a new study suggests the mammogram might not have the benefits often associated with it. The first study to assess the benefit of mammography in the context of modern breast cancer treatment, it shows that improved treatments with hormonal therapy and other targeted drugs have reduced mammography’s benefits, since it’s now less important to find cancers too small to feel, the New York Times reports. Previous studies done when treatment was less effective, decades ago, found mammography reduced the breast cancer rate by up to 25 per cent, but in the new study, mammography combined with modern treatment reduced the death rate by 10 per cent. Still, the data showed that the effect of just mammographs might be 2 per cent, even zero per cent. Even a 10 per cent reduction is so small, it might have occurred by chance, they said. Still, experts continue to debate the benefits of mammography, with many advocating for it.

New York Times

The now friendlier skies

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Victor R Caivano/AP/CP

Airbus parent EADS was conceived as a pan-European aerospace company, but, like the politically turbulent eurozone, the ride hasn’t always been smooth. Created in 2000 by the merger of German and French aerospace interests, EADS has often been roiled by costly internal political divisions—most notably leading to delays of its Airbus A380 “superjumbo” program. So it’s not surprising that a redesign of EADS’s corporate identity will reportedly ditch all national references.

That includes the existing logo, a combination of the logos of co-founders Daimler­Chrysler Aerospace AG of Germany and Aérospatiale-Matra of France. EADS is not commenting on the redesign, but CEO Louis Gallois recently told Reuters that there is now a more “serene” climate inside the company. Which should make investors—not to mention passengers—rest a little easier.

Hoverboard not included

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

EVERETT COLLECTION

In Back to the Future 2, Marty McFly crouches in his DeLorean and dons a pair of futuristic Nike high-tops. “Alright! Power laces!” he exclaims as the shoes automatically tighten around his feet. More than 20 years after the film was released, those sneakers remain legendary among a small, vocal group of enthusiasts. So, when reports recently emerged that Nike has patented self-lacing technology, blogs lit up with speculation these shoes might finally become a reality.

Filed in 2009 and now posted on the World Intellectual Property Organization website, Nike’s patent for an “automatic lacing system” features a diagram that looks a lot like McFly’s shoes in the movie. It’s not clear if, or when, a self-lacing sneaker would be released, a blogger at Dime basketball magazine noted, “but if you know the movie, then the year 2015 might ring a bell.” (A Nike spokesperson declined to comment, noting that hundreds of patent applications are filed as part of any design process.)

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Jackie Burroughs of 'Road to Avonlea' dies

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 11:28 AM - 0 Comments

Canadian actress Jackie Burroughs has died of stomach cancer at the age of 71. Burroughs, who was originally from England, moved with her family to Canada as a child. She worked extensively on stage in venues like the Stratford Festival, but she is best known to Canadian and international audiences for playing Hetty, the tough but sympathetic spinster aunt on the hit show ‘Road To Avonlea’. Sarah Polley, who co-starred with Burroughs on that show, called her “passionate, fierce, uncompromising, honest.”

CBC News

Patronizing? Sexist? Or merely unnecessary?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

As the Globe notes, there is apparently some concern being raised over this answer offered by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews yesterday during QP, as it relates to the NDP’s Niki Ashton.

Mr. Scott Armstrong (Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the decision facing MPs on the long gun registry is crystal clear. MPs can either support the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry or vote to scrap it. The member for Churchill has stated: A lot of people in northern Manitoba feel the gun registry does not work for us. Could the Minister of Public Safety update this House on the long gun registry and why it is important that all members of Parliament, including the member for Churchill, vote with their constituents on this issue?

Hon. Vic Toews (Minister of Public Safety, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for this question and for his efforts on this file. The hard-working, law-abiding gun owners of Manitoba and Canada know that the long gun registry does not work. I would call upon the member for Churchill to stand in this House and represent her constituents in rural Manitoba, like her father does in the Manitoba legislature, where he has consistently spoken out against the long gun registry and with the NDP in that province who do not support the long gun registry, and not to vote with her downtown Toronto leader.

For whatever it’s worth, I’ve heard Justin Trudeau heckled for who he is the son of. So perhaps the solution here is a simple moratorium on references to one’s immediate families (the one exception being, of course, when one is compelled to enter into that traditional and hallowed debate as to whether or not his or her father could physically pummel another’s).

Too Hot For Sesame Street

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 11:25 AM - 0 Comments

The video of the day is the Katy Perry/Elmo duet that Sesame Street decided not to air. Personally, as a lifelong Elmo hater, I think he’s the objectionable part. Replace Elmo with pretty girls who can sing, and the show might be appropriate for children again.

[vodpod id=Video.4501034&w=640&h=385&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

Investment house on the Prairies

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Mike Cassese/Reuters

The seed of what would become One Earth Farms was planted years ago when Kevin Bambrough, the president and CEO of Sprott Resource Corp., was standing in the middle of a sprawling field on the Canadian Prairies. Bambrough discovered that most of the land around him belonged to First Nations, but that very few Aboriginals were involved in farming it (the land is instead leased out). He spotted a rare opportunity to grab a massive chunk of an industry that’s still dominated by smaller, family-owned farms in Canada, but where most of the money is increasingly being made by larger, corporate-run operations.

“What was typically happening is, guys would come in and lease a smaller chunk of land for their family operation,” says Steve Yuzpe, the CFO of Sprott Resource, an arm of the investment firm founded by legendary investor Eric Sprott. “No one thought to take the next step.” That step was to launch negotiations with some 40 different First Nations who control two million acres of land in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and offer them a chance to participate in the business. The goal is to eventually create a giant, one-million-acre operation, scattered over the three provinces, that would rank among the biggest farms in the world.

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Obama's White House shuffle

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 11:16 AM - 0 Comments

Two years into his presidency, Obama’s inner circle of advisors will break apart, or at least break open, the Washington Post reports. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is expected to run for mayor of Chicago and senior advisor David Axelrod is predicted to leave in the spring to prepare for Obama’s 2012 election campaign. It’s normal for presidents to shake up their staff at this point, but Obama is facing a league of departures. His chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, is returning to his post as a professor at Harvard, Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina will be leaving with Axelrod, and its said that national security adviser James L. Jones wants out. A Democratic strategist for the White House thinks Obama’s staff is due for a shakeup: “[they are] all about the insularity. Otherwise how do you explain how a group who came in with more goodwill in decades squandered it?”

Washington Post

By the way

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 11:03 AM - 0 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, the government released its latest progress report on the war in Afghanistan. Postmedia notes the use of one verb in particular.

Afghanistan’s security situation is “deteriorating,” with a rise in insurgent violence and intimidation of civilians, according to a new report on the war by the Harper government.

The latest quarterly report by the government, which covers the period from April 1 to June 30, also notes the assassination of several Afghan officials and an “early escalation of the fighting season.”

“This quarter was marked by a deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, with increasing insurgent violence and intimidation targeting civilians, the assassination of several officials from Afghan government institutions and civil society, and an early escalation of the fighting season,” states the report, referring to the security situation as “increasingly volatile.”

Divided they ride

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON HAYTER

Separated bike lanes are every cyclist’s dream. And when a single weekend in May left five cyclists dead in a series of accidents in Ontario and Quebec, many Canadians—non-cyclists, too—alighted on the idea.

Vancouver is going a long way toward bringing the two groups together by keeping them apart: it’s creating a protected bike network that makes it safer and easier to cycle the city core. This fall, the city is adding a two-way, bikes-only, separated roadway along Hornby Street, running north-south through the downtown.

It joins another separated bike route that bisects the city east-west along Dunsmuir Street. They meet new, protected bike lanes on two of the busiest downtown entry points: the Burrard Street bridge and the Dunsmuir viaduct. By late fall, cyclists will be able to enter and ride downtown without having to wrangle for space with a car—and vice versa. The network went up over the past 12 months, as city engineers quietly stole a lane (sometimes two) from drivers with every new leg.

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Canadians are among the world's fattest

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 10:57 AM - 0 Comments

Today, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a study which found that Canadians are among the heaviest in the western world. In a survey of 33 members of OECD, only Americans, Mexicans, Brits, Australians and New Zealanders were fatter than Canadians. The study found that sixty per cent of Canadian adults are overweight and one in four are obese. Canadian men are heaver than women, 66 per cent of men are overweight compared to 54 per cent of women. The OECD average is 50 per cent of the population is overweight. Japan has the thinnest population, only 24 per cent are overweight and three per cent are obese. One piece of good news is that Canadians aren’t expected to get much fatter. The proportion of overweight people is expected to increase by five per cent, a relatively minor increase compared to Americans. “Canada is doing well in terms of the rate of increase of obesity,” said report author Franco Sassi, the OECD’s senior health economist, reported the Vancouver Sun. “But it is clearly one of the countries where obesity is the highest, so there is a lot of work to do to bring the rates down.”

Vancouver Sun

Don't count her out, yet

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Mark Thiessen/AP/CP

When Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska, recently conceded the primary to her opponent Joe Miller, her loss was considered a victory for former governor Sarah Palin—and the Tea Party movement that’s sweeping America. Murkowski, 53, was expected to win. After all, she’s a Republican power player from one of the most prestigious families in Alaskan politics, and part of the GOP leadership in Washington. She had more than 10 times as much money for her campaign as Miller, and the political clout and experience to match her war chest.

But Miller—a 43-year-old attorney and virtual unknown in Alaskan politics until Palin endorsed him—managed to upset Murkowski’s 30-year family legacy in that Senate seat. (Murkowski’s father was a former governor, and senator for Alaska.) The Tea Party Express pumped some US$600,000 into an advertising campaign that attacked Murkowski, erroneously claiming that she supported President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package, and that she did not want to repeal health care reform—even though she does.

Since then, the Republican Party has been throwing its support behind Miller, a hardline conservative with little political experience. Said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, “I have no doubt that he will be elected as the next U.S. senator from Alaska.” And this narrative of a little-known politician toppling an incumbent senator from the Republican establishment is not exclusive to Alaska. Miller is part of a group of Tea Party candidates who have been emerging as the Republicans of choice in Senate races this year from Florida to Colorado.

However, Murkowski, with GOP blood running through her veins, is not one to easily give up. Just over a week after her defeat, she announced she’s still ready to fight for her seat in the race for the November general election, should Alaskans want that. Supporters have overwhelmed her with a flurry of emails and phone calls, requesting that she does not step down. She said, “I’m not a quitter, never have been. And I’m still in this game.”

If she decides to run, she could announce her candidacy as early as this week. Her friend Andrew Halcro, an Anchorage politician, said this would be “the kind of campaign you should have seen in the primary”: “no-holds-barred, pedal-to-the-metal stuff.”

But this would be an uphill battle for Murkowski. She has lost support from the Republican establishment, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which now backs Miller. The moderate Republican has already met with the Alaska Libertarian Party to see if she could run on their ballot, although their politics were too disparate. Her other option would be an independent write-in candidacy, but few national candidates have been elected by convincing voters to write their names at the bottom of their ballots.

Of course, Murkowski could also stay out of the race. For now, she says she’s listening to the people of Alaska, and giving “considered thought” to what they want. And it just could be that what Alaskans want may have more of a Sarah Palin flavour.

Leaving one game for another

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia for 17 years, has announced his resignation in order to focus on maintaining control of the international chess federation, FIDE. Ilyumzhinov, who has been president of FIDE for 15 years, is running for re-election as head of the organization, with the vote slated for Sept. 29 during the bienniel Chess Olympiad, held this year in Khanty-Mansiysk, Siberia. But Ilyumzhinov may have had a push from the Kremlin, which has been cleaning house. He’s just one of a group of long-time leaders of Russian republics who have recently retired from their posts, including Murtaza G. Rakhimov of Bashkortostan, Eduard Rossel of Sverdlovsk Oblast, and Mintimer Shaimiyev of Tatarstan.

If Ilyumzhinov has indeed been ousted, it may have had something to do with his claims that he can communicate with aliens, or his inept financial management of his poverty-stricken region.

(For the 1998 Chess Olympiad, Ilyumzhinov spent $50 million to build Chess City, a chess-themed Disneyland-like complex on the outskirts of Kalmykia’s capital, Elista.) Meanwhile, Ilyumzhinov’s FIDE presidential campaign has also hit rough waters. In July, Anatoly Karpov, a former world champion, filed a lawsuit along with five national chess federations in Switzerland seeking to have Ilyumzhinov’s election ticket disqualified. The hearing is scheduled for Sept. 15 and 16, just two weeks before the FIDE election and the Chess Olympiad.