Paying to see the royals

By Patricia Treble - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Mark Large/Getty Images

If the Canadian trip by Prince William and Catherine was focused on meeting the people of the Crown’s northern realm, then their 48-hour jaunt to Los Angeles was, in the words of one tabloid, “the ultimate pay-per-view.”

All the headline events were to support organizations or to raise money for charities that the royals either oversee or back. And in a city used to ladling out freebies to celebrities, this time everyone had to pay for the opportunity to be star-struck. On Saturday alone, William and Kate raised an estimated $7 million. First up was a polo match. A $100,000 cheque (and the ability to ride a horse) got a donor onto a polo pony, $4,000 bought lunch in the royal tent, while $400 got wannabes a seat in the stands and a brown-bagged meal. William “let loose,” as he put it, and scored four of his winning team’s five goals. All proceeds went to the American arm of the Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry that backs charities focused on youth, military families and the environment. That night he and Kate chatted up Hollywood’s equivalent of royalty, including Tom Hanks, Barbra Streisand and Nicole Kidman, at a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) gala where a table cost $16,000.

Though the trip was tightly scripted with few chances for informality, a mob of camera crews and reporters stalked the couple’s every move. Every moment of the celebrity-laden visit—William with David Beckham, Kate talking to Reese Witherspoon, the newlyweds studiously averting their eyes from J. Lo’s abs, visible in her cutaway dress—was photographed. The Today show devoted its prime slots to chef Giada De Laurentiis’s minute-by-minute recollection of serving lunch at the polo match. Her beef tenderloin crostini recipe appeared in People. Even the state of California cashed in on the visit, rushing a “what William and Kate should visit” commercial onto TV.

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The Harpers’ feline fixation

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:17 AM - 15 Comments

DEB RANSOM/PMO

Among the duties and responsibilities of a prime minister, inaugurating new animal shelters does not likely rank particularly high. But there was Stephen Harper last week, alongside his wife, Laureen, and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, cuddling with a black cat for the cameras to mark the opening of a new facility for the Ottawa Humane Society.

From his earliest days as leader of the Opposition, when journalists were eager for any noteworthy detail of his personal life, Harper’s fondness for cats has been well documented. But with the Prime Minister now assured at least another four years in power, and thus a more prominent place in Canadian history, the image of him as a cat lover is taking on a certain iconic status. And his feline fixation is being pushed more proudly than ever.

The day after the Speech from the Throne in June, the Prime Minister polled his Facebook fans on the name of his family’s new grey tabby—asking voters to choose between Smokie, Vingt-quatre, Stanley, Earl Grey, Griffin and Gandalf. The poll drew more than 11,000 responses, the plurality of them going for “Stanley.” A week after the results were announced, video was posted to the Prime Minister’s official YouTube account of Stanley frolicking around 24 Sussex. Both the poll and the video were apparently Laureen Harper’s ideas.

This public cuddling and cooing might have something to do with presenting a warmer image of the Prime Minister, but the Harpers seem legitimately committed to the cause of feline welfare. The Prime Minister’s official website has long included information on how to foster or adopt pets. Stanley joins incumbent cats Cartier and Gypsy at 24 Sussex and, according to the Ottawa Humane Society, the Harpers have hosted some 87 foster cats during their time in the capital. Mrs. Harper is the honorary chair of the humane society’s annual fundraising gala. And on one occasion, the Harpers took in 11 kittens after a fire at an animal shelter in Cornwall, Ont.

The couple’s affection for cats is apparently quite immersive. During the last campaign, when Harper and his wife invited cameras to watch them watch the royal wedding from a hotel room in Montreal, they recalled their comparatively humble nuptials. “Six people and two cats,” recalled Laureen. “I had a little bow tie made for my one cat and a little lace collar made for the other cat.” In an early profile of the Prime Minister’s wife, written shortly after her husband became leader of the Canadian Alliance in 2002, it was noted that the couple threw birthday parties for their cats.

Aside from William Lyon Mackenzie King, who drew great companionship from a series of Irish terriers, Canadian prime ministers are not particularly noted for their pets. In the United States, the presidential pet has reached exalted status (witness the attention heaped on Bo, the Obama family’s Portuguese water dog), but dogs have mostly ruled the White House in recent administrations. Winston Churchill, the revered British leader, kept a series of cats as beloved pets and they have long been employed by prime ministers to deal with rodents around the official residence at 10 Downing Street. Earlier this year, David Cameron appointed a four-year-old tabby named Larry to the position of “chief mouser” after a rat was spotted scurrying by the front steps. (After two months without success, Larry was reported to have made his first kill in April.)

The psychology of pet preference was the subject of a study conducted in 2009 by University of Texas psychology professor Sam Gosling, author of Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You. Using an online personality test based on five general traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), Gosling and his team found that dog people were more extroverted, more agreeable and more conscientious, while cat people were more neurotic and more open: the latter a measure of how curious, imaginative, creative and aware an individual is.

But if there is indeed deeper meaning to be drawn from Harper’s cats, the Prime Minister has already himself offered a couple of flattering suggestions. He has, for instance, argued that politicians who prefer dogs want to be loved, while those who prefer cats want to serve. For that matter, he has compared his entire political career to the mythology of a cat. “Cats have nine lives,” he told reporters on the eve of the Conservative party’s election victory in 2006, “and evidently I have many lives.”

Danger and struggle

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 51 Comments

Roland Paris reads the Prime Minister’s interview with this magazine and wonders what Mr. Harper is worried about.

The fact that Canada may need to “contribute more” to protecting our security may be true, but that portion of Harper’s response tells us nothing about the threat itself. We are left with “Islamic extremist terrorism” as “a big” threat. Is it the big one? Are there others?

The world is a messy place, so I empathize with the prime minister when he talks about the difficulty of defining threats in a complex world. But let’s be clear: complexity itself is not a threat. Nor should we respond to complexity with simplistic theories of history or vague allusions to looming conflicts.

If Canada faces a clear and present danger, Harper should tell us exactly what it is. Otherwise, he should stop scaring people – and himself.

See previously: The lurking, unspecific danger

How Kate and Will broke the rules

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 0 Comments

Andy Clark/Reuters

By the time William and Catherine waved au revoir from Calgary’s airport, they’d set a new standard for royal tours, shredding the fetters of precedent, protocol and stifling formality. From the first event in Ottawa to wheels-up in Calgary nine days later, the duke and duchess signalled that past practices were made to be broken. Let us count the ways:

Royals don’t apologize: That one went by the wayside with the duke of Cambridge’s first credible attempt at speaking French in Ottawa. “It will improve as we go on,” he said, with a self-deprecating grin. In Quebec there was another winning smile: “Thank you for your patience with my accent, and I hope that we will have the chance to get to know each other over the years to come.” The fact that William and Catherine, in her rookie performance as a touring royal, would visit both Montreal and Quebec City, tells you all you need to know about the confidence the palace places in the young couple. The largely positive reception there, while allowing the inevitable anti-monarchist protesters to make their point, also ended the myth that Quebec is a royal pain for the Wales family.

Royals like to watch: Aside from tree plantings and ribbon cutting, touring royals generally limit their activity to bland small talk and limp handshakes. No one expects 85-year-old Queen Elizabeth II to become an action hero, but grandson William and his bride are not above plunging into activities. They donned chef outfits in Montreal and helped prepare their dinner. William skimmed one of Canada’s aging Sea King helicopters atop a lake in Prince Edward Island, where he and Kate also proved adept and competitive as dragon boat racers. Granted, William’s hockey shootout attempt in Yellowknife was lame, but they looked comfortable and strong paddling a canoe across choppy Blachford Lake in the territory. In Alberta they stole away to rustic Skoki Lodge above Lake Louise to hike the high alpine. The next day they donned cowboy duds for a preview of events at the Calgary Stampede, with William clambering up the rails of the metal chute for a perilously close look at a massive, snorting rodeo bull.

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Why Harper wants to take on the world

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 234 Comments

SEAN KILPATRICK/CP

“When I have something to say, I’ll tell you,” Stephen Harper said at one of his first news conferences as Prime Minister in 2006. Very well then. What has he been telling us since he won a majority on May 2?

In two important speeches and an interview with my boss at this magazine, Harper has given important hints, and left open important questions, about his plans for the country. A surprising amount of what he’s said has to do with foreign policy.

I don’t want to overstate this. In two speeches to Conservative partisans, at the party’s Ottawa convention on June 10, and again at the Calgary Stampede on July 9, Harper spoke first about more familiar subjects: his party’s electoral success and the economy. But Canada’s place in the world has grown as a theme until these days foreign policy is one of Harper’s big applause lines. He clearly sees it as a way to sharpen the contrast between his party and its opponents, to Conservatives’ advantage.

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Raining on the Pride parade

By Claire Ward - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 16 Comments

MARK BLINCH/REUTERS

As far as estimates go, one million has a nice ring to it. Last week, a number of Toronto media outlets, including Macleans.ca, reported a dramatically inflated statistic: that one million people attended Toronto’s annual Pride parade on July 3. Maclean’s has since determined that this is both physically impossible, given the dimensions of the space, and highly improbable, given previous estimates of attendance. The number of attendees remains unconfirmed by Toronto police, the City of Toronto, and Pride Toronto organizers. So how did the media get it wrong? The erroneous news reports were a case of broken telephone that can be traced back to a 2009 estimate, which states that Pride week drew 1,120,000 visits. But visits, Maclean’s has learned, have little to do with attendance as we understand it.

Read the original online piece

“Attendance is a tricky word,” says Michael Harker, senior partner at Toronto-based Enigma Research Corporation, the research company behind the 2009 report. “There’s a big difference between visits and unique attendees. Visits is, a guy comes three times, we count him three times. Uniques is, he comes three times, we count him once.” That one million figure, then, accounts for total visits to the 2009 festival—multiple returns over the span of four days—and not for boots on the ground at the festival’s flagship parade. The total number of uniques was actually 411,450, which, again, does not represent just parade attendees but all visitors over the course of four days. Enigma did not provide an estimate for how many people were at the parade itself. In fact, no one did.

Const. Victor Kwong, media relations officer at the Toronto Police Service, explains that the police don’t give estimates anymore. “We used to do estimates, but we got a lot of complaints. People would say, ‘Oh, you’re lowballing so that the event gets less press,’ or, ‘You’re highballing so the event gets more support.’ ”

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Britain falls in the gutter

By Leah McLaren - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 4 Comments

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times, for the British press today.

In a news week that transfixed the world, sending shock waves from the lowest gutter press to the country’s highest office, power brokers were arrested, police and politicians held to account, and a profitable and historied newspaper destroyed. Today, the future of both the British media and its most powerful press baron, Rupert Murdoch, hang in the balance. What began as a scandal that had been simmering on low boil for half a decade suddenly became a full-blown crisis when the Guardian revealed what police had apparently known for years: that the private voice mail of teenaged murder victim Milly Dowler had been hacked into by tabloid journalists from the News of the World before her parents even knew she was dead.

This revelation, coupled with the news that other victims may have included the families of dead British troops, was the catalyst that upped the stakes in what is now, without question, the biggest British news story of the year. The term “phone hacking,” formerly synonymous with the privacy infringement of celebrities and politicians (neither of whom get much love from the media-jaundiced British public), was suddenly a matter of serious public interest and moral outcry.

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Four indie films you should see this summer

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

MERRICK MORTON/SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

In case you haven’t noticed, aliens have taken over Hollywood. The multiplex is positively infested with them. Almost every summer blockbuster seems to involve extraterrestrials—except the Pirates and Harry Potter sequels, which make do with man-eating mermaids and soul-sucking ghosts. Elsewhere, it’s all aliens, all the time. In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, monster toys from another planet morph into war machines that clear-cut Chicago. In Super 8, a King Kong-sized space creature sends freight cars flying and dismembers townsfolk. And in Green Lantern, Ryan Reynolds inherits super powers from a purple alien who crash-lands on Earth. July winds down with Cowboys and Aliens, a genre mash-up that has Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig battling space invaders in the Old West. August ushers in Rise of Planet of the Apes, an unlikely prequel starring James Franco, followed by Attack the Block, a horror comedy about a teen gang in South London fighting an alien invasion of black, hairy beasts with fangs that glow in the dark. There is an alien-free blockbuster opening next week, Captain America: The First Avenger. But even though its super-soldier hero is not from another planet, he may as well be: he doesn’t seem remotely human.

Hollywood seems stuck in extraterrestrial gridlock, a summer vacation from hell, full of flashing lights, loud noises and screaming crowds. Summer movies are supposed to be about escape, but how do you escape the cacophony of alien escapism? Fortunately, there are alternatives. Sprouting up in the shadow of the blockbusters are some superb indie gems—namely, A Better Life, The Trip, Submarine and Beginners. Instead of special effects, they harness that strange and elusive force called human emotion.

Take A Better Life, a tale of tragic misfortune that manages to be wonderfully uplifting. Though not to be confused with the 2010 Oscar winner A Better World, it too is a father-son story that explores issues of immigration, intolerance and retribution. It’s about an alien—of the human variety. Carlos (Demián Bichir) is an illegal Mexican immigrant, a single dad who works as a gardener in Los Angeles, struggling to support his teenage son. When his boss retires, Carlos borrows money to buy his truck and gives chase to the American Dream—until catastrophe strikes. At the core of the drama is the father’s rift with his son, who’s on the verge of joining a gang. Bichir is a force of nature as the stoic, salt-of-the-earth hero, and director Chris Weiz captures L.A.’s Mexican subculture with remarkable veracity—hard to believe he’s the guy who made the last Twilight movie.

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Harry Potter’s final feat of magic

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 10:31 PM - 4 Comments

(from left) Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint in 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2'

Finally, a great summer blockbuster! There was no question that the finale of the Harry Potter saga would be a massive commercial, and cultural, event. What comes as a surprise is that it has turned out to be an inspiring cinematic event, maybe not quite on the same scale as The Tree of Life—and at the opposite extreme of narrative convention—yet strangely akin to it. I was trying to think of a recent movie that pondered coming-of-age, death and cosmic gravity with as much conviction, and The Tree of Life was the only one that came to mind. I’m not a Harry Potter devotee. Haven’t read the books,  haven’t seen all the movies (our book guy, Brian Bethune, covered the phenomenon in the magazine). So I felt like an outsider amid the hysteria surrounding this week’s gala premiere. The upside is that I could watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 as a stand-alone movie. And I was knocked out. With me at the screening was Maclean’s web editor Claire Ward, who is less than half my age, and an avid fan of the books. So it seemed like a good idea that we should have a dialogue about the film:

BDJ: So Claire, I don’t think we need do to much plot summary here. For fans, it’s a given. And for the uninitiated, it’s too late to catch up. I had a pretty good idea of what was going on, though even with gobs of exposition, some of the plot flew over my head. But I didn’t care. After a glut of clunky Hollywood blockbusters about aliens and superheroes, this came as such a tonic. Ultimately it’s a war movie, with stupendous special effects, but it has dignity, grace and depth. Potterworld is still a foreign place to me, yet I found this film far more thrilling and moving than the others. What did you think?

CW: As a cinematic experience, it was probably my favourite in the series. I think the filmmaking has matured alongside the actors. Continue…

Emmy Twofers

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 8:02 PM - 0 Comments

Random trivia note about the Emmys: I was going through the lists of past Emmy nominees, and realized that something happened this year that hasn’t happened for a long time. Two shows were nominated for Outstanding Comedy that were from the same creator/showrunner: Parks & Recreation, co-created by Greg Daniels, and the U.S. version of The Office, developed by Daniels. I couldn’t find any examples of this – two nominations for one creator in the same category – since 1975, when Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda (both created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns) were both up for Outstanding Comedy.

David E. Kelley did have two shows that won Emmys in the same year once, but in different categories. Ally McBeal won for Best Comedy while The Practice won for Best Drama. But having two shows competing in the same category is as rare in drama as it is in comedy; even Kelley never had two shows nominated in the same category in the same year. I can’t find many examples in drama, and not many examples in comedy besides Brooks/Burns and Norman Lear. Usually it seems like if someone creates multiple shows, they will get Emmy nominations in turn. John Wells did have both The West Wing and ER nominated in Drama at the same time, though he didn’t create them.

The prostitution debate

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 4:51 PM - 35 Comments

While Conservative MP Joy Smith pushes forward with a bill that would criminalize prostitution, Amy Lebovitch argues for decriminalization.

Decriminalization, on the other hand, views sex work as legitimate work, and rescinds the laws against consensual adult sex workers, whether the work is commercial or private. New Zealand and New South Wales in Australia both have decriminalization. In these places, sex workers are not required to get expensive licences, and can work without the threat of criminal charges. The cost for licences and permits is on par with those of other businesses, and sex workers pay the same taxes that any other businesses do. Decriminalization puts the power back in the hands of the sex worker so we can work under our terms while still being productive members of society. We should be able to work safely, and should be able to contribute to, and participate in, society, just like everyone else.

Judge calls off trial of Roger Clemens

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 4:24 PM - 0 Comments

The presiding judge in Roger Clemens’s trial on perjury charges called an abrupt end to the proceedings on Thursday by declaring a mistrial. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled the prosecution had introduced inadmissible evidence involving Andy Pettite, Clemens’s former teammate and a witness for the prosecution. Clemens’s lawyer requested the mistrial ruling after Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Durham brought up a statement from Laura Pettite, Andy Pettite’s wife, which violated a pre-trial ordering barring references to her testimony, unless in rebuttal. Prosecutors allege Clemens told Pettite he used human growth hormone (HGH), a conversation Pettite subsequently reported to his wife. Clemens’s trial is in connection to testimony the former star pitcher gave before Congress, during which he said he’d never used performance enhancing drugs such as HGH. Walton has called for a September 2 hearing to determine whether to hold a new trial.

The Boston Globe

Ethics commissioner finds Guergis broke rules

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 4:05 PM - 8 Comments

Parliamentary Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has concluded former Conservative cabinet minister Helena Guergis violated her ethical obligations by endorsing a company that had ties to her husband’s firm. In 2009, Guergis wrote to the town council in Simcoe to recommend the a waste disposal firm, Wright Tech, that maintained business links with Rahim Jaffer, Guergis’s spouse. Guergis had said her goal was to offer an alternative to a municipal plan she opposed—a scenario Dawson acknowledged was “a significant part of her motivation”—but the ethics commissioner nonetheless concluded Guergis should have ceased lobbying on Wright’s behalf once she learned of its ties to Jaffer.

CBC News

Ethics report (Government of Canada) 

Gadhafi pushes NATO to the brink

By Jody White - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 3:27 PM - 2 Comments

In the David versus Goliath match being played out in the North African desert, the most advanced warplanes of the world’s richest countries pound Moammar Gadhafi’s third-rate army every time it pops its head over the parapet. Libya’s oil-based economy has come to a standstill and its fuel supplies have been choked off. But for all its satellite intelligence and laser-guided bombs, NATO (and its ragtag rebel allies) are unable—or unwilling—to deliver the coup de grâce necessary to put a definitive end to Gadhafi’s 41-year rule.

So while NATO jets scream over Tripoli, diplomats in Europe and North Africa quietly search for a negotiated end to the four month-old conflict. The stakes are high, and middle ground is hard to come by. “Brother Leader” Gadhafi has vowed never to leave Libya, even if it requires martyrdom in the name of Arab nationalism. Meanwhile, NATO is an alliance without a clear raison d’être since the fall of the Soviet Union and a defeat at the hands of such a feeble enemy could bring about its undoing.

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Why we don’t have a debt ceiling

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:57 PM - 4 Comments

Peter Devries explains why the government no longer has to ask Parliament to borrow more money.

In the March 2007 Budget, the Government proposed to amend the FAA by removing the existing statutory limit on borrowing.  It argued that since it was again undertaking borrowings for certain major Crown Corporations, it needed increased flexibility.  This proposal was outlined on page 322 of the Budget Plan.  The proposed amendment was contained in the Budget Implementation Act 2007 Bill C-29, which received Royal Assent on June 22, 2007.  The Opposition, along with political and financial commentators, did not focus of this change.  It was not until after the fact that the Parliamentary oversight consequences were raised by the Senate but by that time it was too late.

Although the Government indicated that improved and timely information would be contained in its Debt Management Strategy and the Debt Management Report, the government no longer has to seek Parliamentary approval for its borrowing requirements. This has seriously reduced the financial oversight responsibility of Parliament. 

Sun Media choosing ‘shock value’ over transparency

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:51 PM - 3 Comments

Sun Media’s decision to end its membership with the Ontario Press Council will make it difficult to keep the chain’s newspapers accountable to the public, the head of an international group of media ombudsmen says. The chain wrote a letter to the council this week that said the “politically correct mentality” of the press council is “incompatible” with the company’s future plans. The move is a sign that the often-controversial newspaper chain will focus more on shock value than transparency, Organization of News Ombudsmen executive director Jeffrey Dvorkin says. The press council usually receives between 1,800 and 2,200 complaints from the public a year.

Ottawa Citizen

Moody’s places U.S. debt rating under review

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:48 PM - 1 Comment

Moody’s rating agency has indicated it is considering downgrading the U.S. triple-A debt rating due to the “rising possibility” the U.S. could default on its debt. While the agency said the risk of U.S. not raising its debt threshold in time to prevent a missed payment on outstanding bonds and notes is low, it’s not impossible. U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said a default would be disastrous. Negotiations at the White House about raising the debt ceiling are set to continue Thursday. The U.S. hit its $14.3 trillion debt limit on May 16, but has adjusted its spending and accounting to continue operation.

BBC News

More jail for dad who killed daughter’s boyfriend

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:46 PM - 0 Comments

A Saskatchewan dad convicted of killing his daughter’s boyfriend will service 18 more months in jail. Kim Walker says he shot James Hayward in 2003 to save his daughter from drugs. In a highly publicized trial in May, Walker was found not guilty of second-degree murder and instead found guilty of manslaughter for shooting Hayward five times. Walker was sentenced Wednesday to eight more years in prison, but the judge deducted the six and a half years for time served in remand.

The Globe and Mail

Quebeckers wary of Montreal’s Champlain Bridge

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:42 PM - 0 Comments

Quebeckers living in the Montreal area are growing increasingly concerned over the safety of the Champlain Bridge. Their disquiet was fueled by the federal government’s initial reluctance to release the results of a study into the costs of repairing the crumbling bridge, which is used by 60 million people each year. Before agreeing to release it Wednesday, Quebec Transport Minister Denis Lebel said it could cause “turmoil” among the public, who would misinterpret the complexity of the issue. Premier Jean Charest had spoken along similar terms, which raised questions among the public. In March, a report was issued stating that the bridge was severely deteriorating, and that “it could be expected to collapse partially or altogether in a significant seismic event.” Wednesday’s report pegged the cost of replacing the bridge at more than $1 billion.

The Globe and Mail

South Sudan becomes 193rd country to join the UN

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:38 PM - 0 Comments

Following its recent succession from the north, South Sudan was admitted to the United Nations on Thursday by the General Assembly, making it the 193rd country to join the UN. The last country to join was Montenegro in 2006. South Sudan’s independence vote came out of a 2005 peace deal that ended a 20-year war between the Arab-dominated north, based in Khartoum, and the predominantly African south. U.N. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, welcomed the new nation as applause erupted form the General Assembly.

The National Post

Peel Regional Police charge Waterloo man with kidnapping and murder

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:36 PM - 0 Comments

Peel Regional Police may have found the remains of a missing Markham real estate agent—Jianguo (Tony) Han—this week, in the Mississauga mansion he was trying to sell before his disappearance in January 2011. The previous owner of the mansion, Jun (Johnny) Fei, disappeared around the same time as Han, although police found him shortly after. Senthuran Sabesan, of Waterloo, Ont., who had been charged in the kidnapping of both Fei and Han in January, was arrested Wednesday, and charged in the first-degree murder of Han. Four other men have been detained by police in connection to the case; all face charges of kidnapping and intent to hold for ransom.

CTV News

Murdochs won’t testify next week at phone scandal hearing

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:34 PM - 0 Comments

Rupert Murdoch and his son James won’t testify next week before a British parliamentary panel looking into the hacking scandal enveloping their media empire, News Corp. Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of the company’s British branch, has agreed to come forward. Since both Rupert and James Murdoch are American citizens, it is not clear how they can be forced to respond to their parliamentary summons to face questions about the scandal. But the elder Murdoch did say that he is prepared to appear before a separate inquiry led by a judge, and James Murdoch said he can appear in August. Meanwhile, another former editor at News of the World, the tabloid at the heart of the controversy, was arrested on Thursday by Scotland Yard. Neil Wallis is the fourth person arrested in connection with the phone hacking scandal, which allegedly affected victims of terrorist bombings, murders, and the families of dead soldiers. On Wednesday, Murdoch’s News Corp. withdrew its takeover bid for British satellite television operative BSkyB.

The New York Times

At least 4 dead after suicide bombing at Karzai memorial

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:33 PM - 0 Comments

A suicide bombing at a memorial service for Ahmed Wali Karzai killed Kandahar’s top religious scholar and at least three other attendees. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose younger brother was assassinated earlier this week, was not present at the memorial. Fifteen other people were wounded in the explosion. Meanwhile, the body of the man who allegedly shot Karzai in the head was hanged above a Kandahar street by men in plain clothes. Reports allege that the man, named Sardar Mohammad, had worked alongside Karzai for seven years. Although the Taliban was quick to claim responsibility for the killing of the influential Kandahar power broker, Afghan officials say it is possible that Karzai was killed because of a personal dispute. Earlier, thousands of people had gathered for Karzai’s funeral and burial in the family’s ancestral village of Karz. President Karzai reportedly wept and had to be pulled away from his half-brother’s coffin before it was buried. The suicide bombing and the assassination comes as a UN report says that May and June were the deadliest months for civilians in Afghanistan since 2007.

The Globe and Mail

The Daily Mail

Rob Ford may cut 300 firefighting jobs to fight budget shortfall

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:31 PM - 5 Comments

Toronto mayor Rob Ford may make a 16 per cent service reduction to the Toronto fire department in an attempt to fight a $774 million budget shortfall facing the city next year. Chief Bill Stewart presented a report to Toronto’s budget committee recently, stating that roughly 300 firefighters (22 trucks) would have to be let go in order to satisfy Ford’s reduction target. Union leaders fear the reduction will put lives in danger—as fewer fire fighters would be on call—and would hike up insurance rates. Ford said in a news conference recently that the city’s workforce is too large, “and it’s eating up a huge chunk of our budget.”

The Toronto Star