The etiquette expert’s tips on turning heads
By Julia McKinnell - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - 0 Comments
Whenever you walk in a room, self-confidence will ensure a ‘ta-dum’ effect
Photograph by Jenna Marie Wakani
“Punctuality. Be on time! I was raised in Sweden, so I am very clock-oriented,” says etiquette expert Adeodata Czink. It is 9 a.m. sharp when this one-day teen etiquette workshop starts on a recent Saturday in Toronto. Czink, whose company Business of Manners offers etiquette courses to kids, teens and adults, is dressed in a periwinkle floor-length gown. When the parents leave, the teens gather at a table in one of the stately lakeside rooms at the city’s exclusive Boulevard Club.
Each teen is handed a black folder with the day’s agenda. First up, “First Impression.” “Bum is in, stomach is in,” says Czink, who will only admit to being in her 60s. “You have become two inches taller. Tall is not a matter of inches. Tall is a matter of how I feel.” Czink spreads her legs to demonstrate how not to sit. “This is what I call the potty position.”
Next, she coaches the teens on how to enter a room. “Whenever you come through the door, think ‘I, the queen,’ or ‘I, the king, have arrived.’ This is what gives the self-confidence. Make sure it is a ‘ta-dum’ effect.” When one shy 13-year-old girl makes a trial entrance, Czink instructs her to “Look up! Head up! I am beautiful! The princess doesn’t shuffle. You went like this, ‘Sorry, I am here.’ We don’t have ‘Sorry, I am here.’ It’s ‘ta-dum!’ ”
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REVIEW: A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown
By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments
Book by Julia Scheeres
What if 9/11 is largely forgotten two decades from now? Won’t happen. Yet young people today rarely hear of the 1978 murder-suicide of more than 900 people, mostly Americans, at an agricultural colony in Guyana. Reverend Jim Jones’s mass killing of followers has dropped out of our consciousness of the 1970s for a multitude of regrettable reasons—the lack of a physical memorial being one, the political inconvenience of the incident surely being another. (Jonestown has, for example, been edited out of the myth of martyred San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, who cynically protected Jones’s Peoples Temple in exchange for its votes.)Mostly, the Jonestown deaths have been shifted into a foggy mental category of “cult suicide,” where degrees of culpability are imprecise. Scheeres’s account of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown, founded on new and overlooked FBI records, brings clarity. She tells the story through the testimony of five people, four of whom survived. The record left by Edith Roller, a left-wing English instructor who served as Jones’s official diarist, is perhaps the most poignant: Scheeres reads closely and decodes messages of despair that the teacher left between the lines as her messianic communist “Dad” grew crazier.
Scheeres’s aim is to help us see the valid, even praiseworthy reasons people joined the Temple, and to grasp how hard it was to escape the gulag that was Jonestown. Her absolution effort, however, is partly countered by her own reporting: no other writer has chronicled so forcefully how much help Jones had in engineering death. Doctors, lawyers, journalists and politicians all violated core rules of their callings for him. Focusing on innocents, Scheeres shows how effective Jones’s original anti-racist message of communal love was in its time. Now who will explain the motives of the thugs, concubines and informants who gave Jones power?
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Econowatch: December 2011
By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments
David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Feeling down about the state of the economy? You’re not alone. According to a recent global survey, nearly a quarter of the workforce, weighed down by economic uncertainty, is depressed. In Canada, a poll found that 89 per cent of workers feel overworked, up from 64 per cent two years ago. There is not a lot of positive energy going around.
Unfortunately, this could become a chronic condition, because there’s little to suggest that the economy will spring to life any time soon. Nowadays, just as things start to look up, they drop back down. U.S. third-quarter growth was recently revised downward, from 2.5 per cent to two per cent. Markets are swinging almost daily by amounts they once moved only over a period of months.
Many observers are coming to the conclusion that this go-nowhere drift is the new normal. We could be headed for a long era of disappointment, like the one the U.S. economy fell into in the ’70s, when markets were all but dead and growth stalled. Even politicians are throwing up their arms. “Our world has entered into a time of slower growth,” warned the Ontario Liberals in their recent Throne Speech, “and we expect that slower pace of growth to continue throughout the four-year mandate given to this parliament.” A stirring message: four more years of hard times.
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Franc talk about a money deadline
By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments
Nearly 10 years after France officially adopted the euro, a staggering amount of francs are still around
Nearly 10 years after France officially adopted the euro, a staggering amount of the old currency, the French franc, is still waiting to be exchanged—about 600 million euros’ worth, according to the country’s central bank. Now, even as the ongoing euro crisis puts the future of the common currency in question, time to trade those old bills in is running out. After Feb. 17, the central bank will no longer exchange any franc banknotes for euros.
To get the word out, la Banque de France has kicked off a public awareness campaign. Two television commercials ask viewers if they remember where they put their remaining francs (in one, an actor is shocked to hear that his friend put them through the wash a decade ago). There’s also a website, jechangemesfrancs.com, with information on where to exchange the old currency and how many euros one can expect in return (a 20-franc note gets 3.05 euros).
Countries that adopted the euro have varying timelines to switch currencies. Spain, Germany and Ireland, for example, have no set deadlines. Belgian francs were only accepted until the end of 2004. The Netherlands, meanwhile, will allow people to trade in their guilders until Jan. 1, 2032.
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Germany’s brown army faction?
By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments
As details of a 10-year Neo-Nazi killing spree emerge, Germans are learning that racist ideology is more widespread than they thought
Soeren Stache/AFP/Getty Images
In 2004, following a bombing in the Mülheim district of Cologne, an area home to many ethnic Turks, Germany’s then-interior minister, Otto Schily, told Germans the attack was carried out by “not terrorists but the criminal underworld.”
There have been a lot of those sorts of assumptions going around Germany this past decade or two. People from ethnic minorities would turn up dead, shot in the head at close range, and it was assumed to be the work of organized criminals, probably foreigners. The press even had a snappy name for a murder spree of eight Turks and a Greek between 2000 and 2006: “the doner killings,” named after a Turkish meat kebab.
Police had few leads. In 2009, they said the victims may have been linked to international match fixing in soccer. A murder in Turkey was related, they said. Police sketches of suspected witnesses showed swarthy-looking men.
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A leg up for Britain’s generation rent
By Leah McLaren - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments
Will David Cameron’s new mortgage plan get British renters on the property ladder?
Jason Alden/Getty Images
There was a time, not long ago, when middle-class Britons could expect that, with the help of an education and a decent job, they would one day own their own home. Kathleen Taylor, a 37-year-old civil servant, bought her first London property back in 1997, a two-bedroom apartment that cost her just $180,000. Even then, as with many young, first-time buyers, her mother had to underwrite the mortgage and provide part of the down payment (a loan she later paid back). Since then, Taylor has moved house several times, enjoying the security of being on what the British call “the property ladder”—a metaphorical climbing structure long regarded as the path to financial security.
Turns out she was one of the lucky ones. Today, even with low interest rates and moribund house prices, many Britons Taylor’s age and younger have begun to give up hope of ever “getting on the ladder.” An example of how quickly things have changed: Taylor’s 33-year-old younger brother, a freelance sound designer, has, she says, “been completely priced out of the London market,” despite having cobbled together a decent deposit from savings and a recent inheritance. “And that’s assuming he could even get the mortgage.”
On the last point, Britain’s Tory-led government has introduced a program they hope will change things for Britain’s burgeoning “generation rent.” On Nov. 21, Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled a government-backed mortgage scheme that will allow first-time buyers to purchase homes with only five per cent down. (At present, banks insist on minimum deposits of 20 per cent from first-time buyers, which is no small demand. Though house prices have sunk back to 2006 levels, they are still overvalued by at least 25 per cent, according to The Economist.)
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Win-win
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 11:13 AM - 0 Comments
A retired major claims the Defence Minister’s helicopter ride was part of a training exercise.
“This was a training flight that we were going to participate in,” Reid said in an interview. “If the minister was able to slide his way in, in some fashion, that was fine with us … “The flight would have been flown regardless of whether or not the minister was included because the squadron conducts two training events per day as part of a regular routine,” he said. “In this case, a new flight engineer required hoist training, therefore the training intentions were well matched.”
Too bad the government has already abandoned any reference to search-and-rescue operations in its explanation.
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Mr. French does Dylan
By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 10:58 AM - 0 Comments
Random hit-and-run YouTube clips of weird things are normally best left to Twitter in this 140-character age, but I can’t resist bringing this one in: Sebastian Cabot (Mr. French from Family Affair, Bagheera from The Jungle Book and the narrator of Winnie the Pooh) cut an album in the late ’60s where he performed spoken-word renditions of Bob Dylan songs. Unlike Shatner, he stuck to one songwriter, and tried to inject some humour into his dramatic readings of folk-pop lyrics. But it’s still one of the stranger albums of a golden age for strange albums, particularly because Cabot adopts an accent that is somewhere between his native England and his adopted home of America. Also, the chamber-music accompaniments are a bit odd.
“Like a Rolling Stone”:
“It Ain’t Me, Babe”
This whole album isn’t nearly as weird as Paul Frees’ album from a few years later, where he recites a series of contemporary pop songs in the voices of various classic movie stars. But that’s another story.
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Triumphalism runneth over
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments
Bob Rae talks to Postmedia.
Rae was critical of the “triumphalism” that has marked the government’s attitude during this session of Parliament is a problem, saying it has eliminated the “give-and-take” that is the mark of a truly functioning democracy.
However, the Liberal leader said Canadians will turn on that brand of politicking in the long run. ”I think there’s a growing appetite in the country for a very candid discussion about the nature of how our democracy is or is not working,” he said. “I think that’s a real issue for people.”
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When do we want it?
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments
In the midst of lamenting for it all, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett notes a 2002 report that surveyed parliamentarians about their concerns for the state of the institution.
When asked whether Parliament is in need of reform, the short and universal answer from the Parliamentarians with whom we spoke is: yes. In their view, the institution has, in a sense, lost its way.
Parliamentarians feel that the House of Commons and the Senate are no longer places in which meaningful debate occurs. The impetus to get the government’s business through and the strongly enforced party discipline have combined to limit the number of voices heard in Parliament … Parliamentarians feel they have not the information, the support or the expertise to hold the government to account effectively … By and large, Parliamentarians do not feel their work as legislators has a significant impact on public policy decisions in Canada. By the time issues and ideas are brought to either chamber, positions have by and large been set, partisan lines drawn, and the outcomes determined. What is more, Parliamentarians feel they have little, if anything, to show for those occasions when they have come together on issues, be it a committee recommendation or motion passed in the chamber. Put simply, decisions are made elsewhere.
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Rejected by voters, paid for by the public
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments
Irwin Cotler notes that the Conservative candidate in his riding now works for the government.
Mr. Cotler said the Tory candidate, now employed in the office of Heritage Minister James Moore, is performing the duties of a member of Parliament. He said ex-opponent Saulie Zajdel is now offering to help municipal politicians in his Montreal riding secure federal grants and services.
“We have had information conveyed to us that, in fact, he has had meetings with mayors and councillors in this riding, in which he has held out to them that he, in the course of his work, can confer a benefit upon them,” Mr. Cotler said in his office Tuesday. “What has he been hired to do and what is he, in fact, doing? … The question is whether a defeated candidate seeks to perform the duties of an MP, as a kind of shadow MP on the public purse.”
See previously: Puppet MPs
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Entrances: Pippa Middleton
By Patricia Treble - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments
Like Kate, Pippa has perfected the “say nothing, keep smiling” strategy
(Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP Photo)
It seemed like the world collectively gasped when they got their first peek of Pippa Middleton as she arrived to her sister Kate’s wedding to Prince William at Westminster Abbey. First there was the plunging neckline in the front of her maid-of-honour dress, an Alexander MacQueen couture creation. Then she turned around.The ultra-slim fitting gown was positively jaw-dropping from behind, at least for the male half of the species, as a row of covered buttons ended provocatively exactly at her perfectedly proportioned derriere. Every sashay—ordinary steps were impossible—and each graceful stoop to pick up Kate’s train guaranteed Pippa a place in tabloid immortality.
Christened the new “it girl” and instantly recognizable by just her first name, Pippa has been under the media microscope ever since that day in April. Every day photographers waited to snap her picture as she walked to work—Pippa edits an online magazine for her family’s party goods business and holds down a part-time job as an event planner in London—or went out to one of the many social events that populate her busy calendar.
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My wish list: Jesse Brown on technology
By Jesse Brown - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments
Macleans.ca has asked its leading bloggers, pundits and critics to weigh in with what they’d like to see in 2012—in politics, television, film, books, wherever. The wish lists will run throughout the month of December and will be archived at macleans.ca/wishlist.
x-ray delta one/Flickr
(1) Dear Internet, please fix travel: We’re still flying blind when it comes to planning flights. Want the cheapest fare? Good luck. Each airline has its own bizarre and opaque pricing system. Book too early, and you get hosed. Book too late, and you get hosed. What’s the sweet spot? They’re not telling. There are dozens of factors that determine what a seat costs, and they change by the minute. Continue…
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Entrances: She’s the one to watch
By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments
From Tavi Gevinson to Maria Aragon, 2011 had plenty of dynamite girls
Stephen Fernandez / Splash News
TAVI GEVINSON
Since starting her blog Style Rookie at the tender age of 11, the now-15-year-old has taken the fashion world by storm: she’s inspired a line of designer duds from Rodarte, snagged a spot in the front row at runway shows and reviewed collections for Harper’s Bazaar. Now she’s conquering publishing, too. Working with established editors like Jane Pratt of Sassy, Gevinson launched Rookie, an online magazine for teen girls. Even the Grey Lady took notice: the young media mogul’s launch was covered in the New York Times.
HEATHER RUSSELL
Like him or not, razor-tongued tastemaker Simon Cowell knows talent when he sees it. So when he signed a deal with the 10-year-old Toronto singer, she was anointed the next big thing. Like Justin Bieber, Russell’s singing attracted thousands of views on YouTube, where she can be seen performing You’re Beautiful, a song she wrote when she was all of eight; her voice, which sounds mature beyond her years, has fans comparing her to Mariah Carey. If Cowell has his way, Russell will be the next Canadian Idol.
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Exits: the newly departed
By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments
From Oprah to Glenn Beck: the ones who bowed out, and those who were booted out
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
SIGNED OFF: OPRAH
Oprah Winfrey, America’s richest-ever female entrepreneur, retired the syndicated afternoon TV talk show that represented the heart of her media empire. For her final episode, Winfrey eschewed the usual celebrity guests and gift-giving spectacles, opting for a low-key recital of favourite empowerment messages. “Nobody but you is responsible for your own life,” she told the audience. Her Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) is received on cable in 80 million U.S. households and took over the Corus-owned Viva brand in Canada this year.
DUMPED: GLENN BECK
Meanwhile, Oprah’s mirror-image, the conservative historian-polemicist Glenn Beck, departed network TV after just 2½ years. Beck joined Fox News Channel at the start of 2009 and rocketed to the top of the cable totem pole with impassioned monologues and paranoid chalk talks diagramming the leftist infiltration of American institutions. But advertisers and his audience abandoned him. Beck claimed, “The show has become a movement . . . it doesn’t belong on television anymore.” He was right about that at least: Fox dropped him.
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Entrances: Bursting on the scene
By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments
From the IMF’s first pink ribbon at the top to the new country on the map–a close look at this year’s newcomers
Rolling Stone Magazine's winners Ewan Currie, Sam Corbett, Leot Hanson and Ryan Gullen of The Sheepdogs
PIPPA MIDDLETON
She has yet to utter a single public word, yet ever since her emergence—ahem, from behind—in an Alexander McQueen silk screamer at last summer’s royal do, the duchess of Cambridge’s baby sis has stolen the spotlight. Her slow-mo sashay down the aisle dropped jaws across the globe, launching a million appreciative tweets. And with her sister sequestered on a rainy Welsh island, as tabloids wonder whether—yawn—she’s preggers yet, the 28-year-old London party planner appears on the arms of a stream of tall, dashing, well-heeled suitors.
SUN NEWS
In hindsight, the hullabaloo over its creation seems wildly out of proportion. Fox News North, this ain’t. On Earth Day, viewers of the Quebecor venture were treated to Ezra Levant attacking a potted plant. The day coincides with Lenin’s birthday, Levant, wielding a chainsaw, shouted over the din, leaving no question which was the bigger tool. Communism and environmentalism aside, shop peeves include arts funding and the CBC, known there as the “state broadcaster.” They still have a long way to go before they rival the ratings of their southern mentor.
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Exits: No rush for the doors
By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments
Canada’s top soldier in Afghanistan tells Maclean’s he’d go back if he could
Murray Brewster/CP
When the time came, Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner, the last Canadian commander of Task Force Kandahar, didn’t want to leave. Milner presided over the historic withdrawal of Canada’s combat troops from Afghanistan last July, marking the end of fighting that began in deadly earnest when Canadian soldiers took responsibility for the violent southern province of Kandahar in 2006. “To be honest, I would have liked to stay on in the south a little longer assisting the Americans,” he told Maclean’s. “You hate to go because of the experience, the knowledge, the connection we established.”
Milner, who was deployed to Kandahar in the fall of 2010, said he arrived after a summer when Taliban insurgents had regrouped and “really spiked up their activities.” But a U.S. troop surge had also flooded Kandahar with American soldiers in unprecedented numbers, allowing the Canadians to concentrate their efforts more than ever before, particularly in Panjwai district. By the time of Canada’s exit, Milner could claim significant progress in the notorious Taliban hotbed: a new road he calls “a dagger in the heart of the Taliban,” 10 open schools—compared to just one when he arrived—and 600 Afghan police officers, up from 100 in less than a year.
Still, Milner doesn’t deny that the gains won at such cost—158 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, along with a diplomat, two aid workers and a journalist—are far from secure. “It is reversible,” he says. “It is fragile.” The Taliban have suffered punishing losses recently, but their ability to find sanctuary in Pakistan remains troubling. He points to the role Canada has taken in training the Afghan National Army as the key to ultimately ending the need for large numbers of NATO troops to prevent a Taliban rebound.
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A Bloc stat, by way of a plug
By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 7:52 PM - 0 Comments
From my dead tree take on the remaining Bloc Québécois MPs:
“[I]n a recent analysis by Influence Communication, the four Bloc MPs combined only muster the same media attention as Raphael Diaz, the number four defenceman for the Montreal Canadiens.”
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The Commons: A fish story, in verse
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 5:55 PM - 0 Comments
The Scene. “Is that all you’ve got?” moaned James Moore, as he is wont to do.“Is that all you’ve got?” he cried again a second later, in case Alexandre Boulerice hadn’t heard him the first time.
The Heritage Minister did not clarify what precisely he found lacking in news that, as The Globe and Mail put it this morning, “the RCMP is probing allegations that members of the Quebec construction industry tried to use Conservative contacts all the way up to the Prime Minister’s Office in a bid to influence the choice of a new president of the Montreal Port Authority.” But if Mr. Moore didn’t think that much was worth a query or several, he was no doubt mollified as the range of the opposition’s concerns this day became clear: everything from ethical lapses to alleged failures by this government in regards to conditions on native reserves, firearms licensing, international climate talks, asbestos exports, employment insurance, food safety and poverty.
Foremost among concerns this afternoon was Peter MacKay’s fish story. Continue…
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MacKay had places to go
By John Geddes - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 5:30 PM - 0 Comments
Defence Minister Peter MacKay has apparently dropped his old story about participating in a search-and-rescue demonstration, and is now going strictly with the new one about how he needed a helicopter to get back to ministerial business that was, one presumes, quite pressing.
So exactly what was the work that MacKay needed to attend to so urgently that he whistled up a special military airlift to transport him from the Burnt Rattle lodge on Newfoundland and Labrador’s picturesque Gander River, where he was enjoying bit of fishing two summers ago?
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Demonstration? What demonstration?
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 4:31 PM - 0 Comments
Long after he’d had his three turns, Bob Rae rose near the end of QP to double-check with the government.
Bob Rae. Mr. Speaker, the government’s answers with respect to the use of the plane by the Minister of National Defence keep changing. The September answers were that he was on a previously planned search and rescue operation. In the answers that we have heard from the minister and the Prime Minister today, and in the answers yesterday, the words “search and rescue operation” appear nowhere. My question to the Prime Minister is simply this: Was the Minister of National Defence, or was he not, on a search and rescue operation on his trip in Newfoundland? Yes or no. What kind of a trip was he on?
Peter MacKay. Mr. Speaker, I have answered this question a number of times. I left time off to go back to work.
The Liberal side took this as a no.
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AFN Chief slams government over Attawapiskat crisis
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 3:48 PM - 0 Comments
Calls situation in northern Ontario community a ‘national disgrace’
National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Shawn Atleo criticized the Harper government for calling in a third-party manager to make decisions in the community of Attawapiskat, the Globe and Mail reports. The dire lack of proper housing in the northern Ontario community forced its leaders to declare a state of emergency. “This is a national disgrace,” Atleo said in a speech to aboriginal leaders in Ottawa on Tuesday. “We have reason to feel angry and betrayed.” Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have both pointed to the $90 million in federal funding Attawapiskat has received since 2006, alleging that there are accountability issues with the community’s leadership. Theresa Spencer, chief of the Attawapiskat community of fewer than 2,000, has since kicked out the government-appointed third-party manager, contending that her council has been transparent about where they’ve spent the money: on health care, education and social programs, she said. In his speech, Atleo supported Spencer’s claims. He also expressed hope that the situation in Attawapiskat can be a turning point in federal-aboriginal relations. “This really needs to be about breaking the unilateral, externally imposed solutions,” he said.
Maclean’s blogged on the crisis Attawapiskat, and the federal government’s math on the issue:
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A variety of carryings-on
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 3:45 PM - 0 Comments
After QP this afternoon, the Speaker ruled on a pair of disturbances in the House, previously noted here and here.
The prepared text of Mr. Scheer’s ruling is below. Continue…
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Economists: diversity drives down charitable donations in Canada
By Erica Alini - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 3:24 PM - 0 Comments
Kathryn Harper/Flickr
With Santa soon to climb down (the believers’) chimneys, a new study found rather un-Christmassy evidence that ethnic and religious diversity tends to drive down charitable giving in Canada.
McMaster University’s Abigail Payne and David Karp, Wilfrid Laurier University’s Justin D. Smith, along with James Andreoni from the University of California, San Diego, found that a 10 percentage point increase in a neighbourhood’s ethnic diversity leads the average household to give $27 less per year to charity, out of an average donation of about $200. That’s a 14 per cent drop. Increases in a neighborhood’s religious diversity also tend to make households stingier—albeit to a lesser degree. A 10 percentage point increase reduces donations by $20, or 10 per cent. Continue…
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Troops fail to quell protests in Moscow’s streets
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 3:17 PM - 0 Comments
Kremlin struggling to tame discontent over flawed elections
Over 1,000 demonstrators and truckloads of troops were squaring off on Moscow’s main streets on Tuesday, as protests continue over flawed parliamentary elections in Russia, the Financial Times reports. On Sunday, the country’s ruling United Russia party saw its share of the vote shrink to 49.54 per cent, down from 64.3 per cent in 2007. The party of prime minister Vladimir Putin still controls a majority of the seats in the lower house, but the election represented a resounding defeat for the Kremlin in the court of public opinion. The vote was also marred with fraud allegations, which lead hundreds to stage protests in the capital.
