On a rampage

By Susan Mohammad - Friday, April 3, 2009 at 5:07 PM - 0 Comments

At about 10:30 AM on Friday, a man, described as being in his 20s, walked into the American Civic Association in Binghamton, N.Y., carrying a high-powered rifle. He reportedly took 41 hostages and began shooting some of his captives before turning the gun on himself. According to reports 14 people (including the shooter) are dead.

This is the latest mass shooting in recent months. Here’s a look back at some other recent tragedies: Continue…

Massive spy scandal rocks NATO

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 11:40 AM - 5 Comments

It’s the stuff sensational spy thrillers are made of. In a dramatic finale to what investigators are calling the biggest spy scandal in NATO history, a former security head at Estonia’s defence ministry has just been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for selling nearly 3,000 pages of intelligence information to Russia.

Last Wednesday, Herman Simm, 61, pleaded guilty to treason at a closed trial at the Harju County Court in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn. He was accused of selling top secret NATO and EU documents to Russia’s SVR Foreign Intelligence Service for about $131,000.

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Sexual Assault: Saint John, N.B.

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 11:56 AM - 0 Comments

The problem: Just as sexual assaults in Canada is on the decline, Saint John’s numbers rose sharply in 2007—from 59 per cent above the national average in 2006—to 131 per cent over the national average (that’s 150 reported incidents for every 100,000 people). The problem is not a provincial one. Oromocto (93 km away) for instance, was ranked as one of the safest cities in Canada with a crime score that’s 82 per cent below the national average.

What’s being done to deal with it: Haidee Goldie is the coordinator for the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program, which began in 2006. SANE responds to victims immediately after they’ve presented themselves, providing medical care including exams, pregnancy and STI testing and the collection of evidence for police use from an all-female staff. “Prior to our program, if they came to emergency and didn’t have any physical injuries they would sit and wait for six or seven hours before they were seen by a physician,” says Goldie, adding the volunteer nurses are on call around the clock. She says she’s “definitely” seen an increased number of cases. “And if we had numbers for the first two months of this year—it’s gone through the roof,” she says. “Unfortunately this year we’ve had a huge increase in our pediatric numbers which is quite distressing.” SANE also works with the Family Services Unit of the Saint John Police Force. Thanks to $65,000 in provincial funding, the group is currently putting together a sexual assault response team, which they hope to have ready by August, that will consist of health care and social workers, advocates with connections to shelters and other services and police.

THE FULL RANKINGS: Overall Crime Score: By Rank — Overall Crime Score: By Population — Murder — Sexual Assault — Aggravated Assault — Robbery — B&E — Motor Vehicle Theft

Blackwater tries to bury its ugly past

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

The name Blackwater will always conjure up images of the ugliest hours of the Iraq war. A year and a half after a bloodbath involving Blackwater guards left 17 civilians dead in a Baghdad square, the personal security company’s name remains synonymous with lawless destruction and trigger-happy cowboys. So much so, in fact, that the firm has adopted a new identity. Blackwater Worldwide is buried. In its place is Xe (pronounced “Zee”).

The recent announcement that Blackwater was rebranding its two dozen business units to “define the company as what it is today and not what it used to be,” according to spokesperson Anne Tyrrell, is supposed to reflect Blackwater’s new focus as it moves away from personal security. But it will take more than a new name to save the North Carolina-based firm from its troubles.

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"Watch your drink"

By Susan Mohammad - Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 4:37 PM - 0 Comments

A newly-released study claims one in five sexual assault victims in Ontario may have been drugged. Researchers from the Women’s College Research Institute in Toronto and the Ontario Network of Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Treatment Centres screened 882 victims of sexual assault between June 2005 and March 2007 and found that more than 20 per cent suffered from symptoms—such as amnesia, blackouts, conscious paralysis or hangovers that were inconsistent with the amount of alcohol or drugs they had used—that suggested they had been drugged.

Dr. Janice Du Mont, one of the study’s co-authors, believes the problem may in fact be worse than her research suggests. Many victims don’t come forward, she says, especially those who believe they were drugged because they may not be able to clearly remember what happened. Still, she says staff members at sexual assault treatment centres in the province won’t likely be surprised by her and her colleagues’ findings. After all, it was their suspicions that prompted the study in the first place. “Nurses at these centres were reporting anecdotally they were seeing an increase in the number of clients who thought they had been drugged and sexually assaulted,” she says, “and they brought that question forward.”

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Gadhafi: still crazy after all these years

By Susan Mohammad - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 1:10 PM - 0 Comments

His reputation was beginning to mend, but critics of Col. Moammar Gadhafi are wondering if the Libyan leader is too erratic to head the African Union, after controversial statements made during his first address to the 53-nation group. Only a week into his appointment, the AU leader raised eyebrows last week in Tripoli for resurrecting his pet project of a “United States of Africa,” which would include Caribbean islands with African populations such as Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Gadhafi made other contentious statements, for example excusing the actions of Somali pirates as “self-defence,” and stating that multi-party democracies in Africa only lead to bloodshed. He went on to say that Libya was the best model for Africa because opposition parties are not allowed.

George Joffé, a University of Cambridge lecturer and Libyan politics expert, said the dictator’s vision of a single African military, currency and passport is unlikely. “The major states in Africa—being South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal and, to a lesser extent, Egypt—don’t want that to occur,” says Joffé. “They don’t want their sovereign rights interfered with by some super-state regional organization.” Besides, Joffé says, Gadhafi’s pan-African vision will fall by the wayside because his role as head of the AU is an “empty title.”

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Baby's first smartphone

By Susan Mohammad - Friday, February 20, 2009 at 2:12 PM - 2 Comments

If the LeapFrog toy company has its way, texting will soon join reading, writing and arithmetic as a staple of early childhood eduction. Starting in June, the company will begin selling a BlackBerry-like toy called the Text & Learn. The device is aimed at tots and features a full keyboard, calendar, LCD screen, and texting capacity. The big difference between the $25 Text & Learn and the several-hundred-dollar gadgets for grown-ups that inspired it is that it connects to a fake internet browser where preschoolers can exchange texts with a digital puppy named Scout whose five preprogrammed text messages include “Hi! We’re out of puppy biscuits. Thanks!” and “Let’s meet up later to play some fetch!”

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Finland’s epidemic of cheap booze

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 9:50 AM - 4 Comments

It’s last call for cheap booze in Finland. Doctors are pressing the government to raise the taxes on alcohol to combat an epidemic of out-of-control binge drinking that has made alcohol the country’s number-one killer.

Over the past decade, alcohol consumption has doubled in Finland. Its citizens now out-drink all of their Nordic neighbours, consuming an estimated 10 litres of pure alcohol a year. In 2005, drinking overtook heart disease and cancer as the leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 64, and since then the problem has only continued to grow. According to Statistics Finland, alcohol-related deaths increased by a worrying nine per cent in 2007 alone and more than 2,000 Finns now die of alcohol-related causes each year.

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To deprogram a Jihadist

By Susan Mohammad - Monday, February 2, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 3 Comments

News last week that Said Ali al-Shihri, a former inmate of Guantánamo, has emerged as al-Qaeda’s deputy leader in Yemen intensified debate on how to deal with prisoners held at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba. But al-Shihri’s narrative raised other interesting questions as well. In 2007, the U.S. released him to Saudi Arabia, where he underwent a much-trumpeted religious “deradicalization” program for jihadists that clearly didn’t take. In the past, Saudi authorities have consistently claimed that none of the program’s graduates have returned to terrorism in the five years since the program was established. But after al-Shihri’s story began unfolding, authorities admitted that nine others have been rearrested. Despite the failure, Time has reported, the Pentagon won’t change its policy on repatriating Gitmo’s most dangerous detainees to the kingdom even though the Saudi program has been called into question.

Saudi Arabia is one of several countries running ambitious deradicalization programs in which Islamic scholars try to lead radicals to moderation. Similar initiatives are running in Egypt, Singapore, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, Malaysia, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Indonesia. Canada could be next. Omar Khadr’s lawyers have filed a proposal with the military commission at Guantánamo to have the alleged terrorist undergo a specialized deradicalization program should he ever return to Canadian soil; they’ve asked Hamid Slimi, chair of the Canadian Council of Imams, to create a rehabilitation plan. Even without a request from Stephen Harper for Khadr’s repatriation, the proposal (which includes years of psychological treatment and a formal education) is a step closer to reality now that Guantánamo will close. Khadr’s fate may be discussed when President Barack Obama visits Harper in the coming weeks.

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Greek growth industry: kidnapping

By Susan Mohammad - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 1:22 PM - 0 Comments

For a nation founded on the concepts of democracy and civil order, Greece has been rocked by an unusual amount of violence lately. On Monday, prominent shipping tycoon Pericles Panagopoulos was abducted by three men wielding Kalashnikovs, the third such high-profile kidnapping since June.

Panagopoulos is the 74-year-old founder of Attica Group, Greece’s largest ferry company, and is said to be worth about $400 million. According to reports, he was snatched near his seaside home just outside of Athens as he was being driven to work, and forced into one of two waiting vans. Police say his driver, who was also abducted, was later found hooded and handcuffed to a bush in Koropi, a town 15 km away.

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Out of work? Go dumpster diving.

By Susan Mohammad - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 5:48 PM - 1 Comment

With economists predicting more than 250,000 job losses this year in Canada, there will be more than enough stress and panic to go around. In response, a barrage of self-help books are now available, aimed at helping the unemployed survive the tough times. Some of the books even promise to help land readers a better job. Titles include The Fastest, Easiest Way to Get Good Jobs in Today’s Economy. Guaranteed!, How To Prosper During Bad Times and Your Recession Survival Guide. But do these self-help books justify the cost, especially during these penny-pinching times? We took a closer look at No Job? No Prob! How to Pay Your Bills, Feed Your Mind, and Have a Blast When You’re Out of Work, by Nicholas Nigro. Continue…

Honda’s new hybrid takes on the Prius

By Susan Mohammad - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

It’s not often that Honda messes up. But this month’s launch of its first hybrid-only car, the 2010 Insight, marks a complete about-face on its hybrid strategy.

Until now, Honda has only offered hybrid versions of existing models, such as the Civic and Accord, and it has watched in horror as Toyota’s hybrid-only Prius stole the show. With annual worldwide sales of more than one million cars, the Prius is by far the bestselling hybrid, while the Accord hybrid flopped so badly it was discontinued in 2007.

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A beacon of democracy in Africa

By Susan Mohammad - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

Surrounded by democratic pretenders on a volatile continent, Ghana is emerging as a beacon of democratic hope for Africa. Despite the threat of a violent clash over results that were almost too close to call, a new leader, John Atta Mills, has successfully taken the reins in an orderly, fair runoff election that would be the envy of many Western nations. The outcome is a rare example of an African nation handing power over to a legitimately elected leader twice; it could stand as an example for other African nations, including nearby Cameroon, where voters are apathetic over President Paul Biya having been in power since 1982.

Atta Mills, a lawyer, is head of the National Democratic Congress Party, and received 50.23 per cent of the ballots cast. The leader of the outgoing New Patriotic Party, Nana Akufo-Addo, by comparison secured 49.77 per cent in Ghana’s closest vote in history. Akufo-Addo had initially threatened to reject the results, but halted his court challenges after Ghana’s outgoing president, John Kufuor, appealed to the parties to embrace the outcome. (There have also been reports of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan working behind the scenes.)

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Israeli mobs: Holy Land or gangland?

By Susan Mohammad - Monday, December 29, 2008 at 9:00 AM - 7 Comments

At the funeral for assassinated Tel Aviv mob boss Yaakov Alperon last month, one of his sons vowed a special blood-soaked revenge for his father’s death. “We will find the man who did this,” promised Omer Alperon. “I’ll send this man to God. He won’t have a grave because I’ll cut off his arms, his head, and his legs.”

Days after the gruesome statement was made, the Israeli government ordered an immediate crackdown on organized crime to stop a quickly developing all-out gang war. In the face of mounting pressure, Israel’s police are struggling to overcome growing concerns they are impotent in the face of the growing violence.

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The Governor-General's options

By Susan Mohammad - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 7:00 PM - 3 Comments

Tomorrow, Governor-General Michaëlle Jean will likely meet privately with Stephen Harper, where it’s expected he will ask her to terminate, or prorogue, the current session of Parliament. The gambit would allow Harper to dodge a non-confidence vote scheduled for Monday, and thus avoid the humiliation of watching his seven-week-old government go down in defeat in the House of Commons.

Prorogation is Harper’s best bet for survival. However, requesting that the Governor-General suspend Parliament in order to allow the federal government to dodge a motion is unprecedented and Jean might not go for it. In fact, she’s already got another proposal on the table should she lean toward sending Harper back to the wolves: The Liberals and NDP want to take over from the Conservatives and govern with a coalition. But that’s just as unusual a solution as granting Harper’s request for a prorogation—and no less likely to silence critics of the Governor General’s role in the mess. So, what’s a Governor General to do?

Canadians, for what it’s worth, appear tempted by the thought of prolonging the misery. A national opinion poll by Angus Reid Strategies found 52 per cent of Canadians oppose proroguing Parliament; the same proportion opposes a Liberal-NDP coalition; and 68 per cent want nothing to do with another federal election campaign. So much for the wisdom of crowds.

Meanwhile, constitutional experts have been speculating all week over what Jean can (or will, or even should) do. Here’s a rundown of her options:

1) Grant Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament. This would allow the Conservatives to regroup and present a budget at the end of January, effectively a re-do for Jim Flaherty’s after his unusually combative fiscal update launched the current crisis. There are two major problems with this approach: it’s unclear whether the government would be any more stable in January than it is now; and it would leave Canada without an effective government for nearly two months while a financial crisis ravages the country’s economy.

2) Deny Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament and let his government face a non-confidence motion next Monday. This, in other words, is Jean’s “walk the plank” option. Harper’s government is facing a bulletproof non-confidence motion, scheduled for next Monday and supported by every opposition party in the House. The Conservatives are almost assured of defeat. Should the seemingly inevitable happen, Jean would still face a tough decision: Either she sends Canadians back to the polls, or she allows Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton to seize the reins of government. No one wants an election, but denying a request for prorogation and then installing a coalition seems destined to spark a messy Constitutional debate.

3) Allow a conditional prorogation. The Governor-General can make use of her reserve powers (her power to make decisions without the approval of another branch of government) to place conditions that severely restrict Harper’s authority until Parliament returns. For example, she could implement rules similar to those in place during election campaigns, during which a government can only operate on a basic level and can’t institute new policies or make appointments.

Prostitutes are okay, but not pimps

By Susan Mohammad - Monday, December 1, 2008 at 9:00 AM - 4 Comments

Paying for sex in Britain is about to get riskier. A new law is being proposed for England and Wales that would make it an offense to pay for sex with prostitutes if they are controlled by pimps.

Right now, buying and selling sex is legal, but soliciting and pimping are not. The new law would mean that people who hook up with prostitutes who are “controlled for another person’s gain” could be fined up to $1,900 and get a criminal record. As well, anyone who has sex with an illegally trafficked woman could be charged with rape. The police also gain new powers to close brothels, and there would be more “naming and shaming” of persistent johns.

The crackdown was announced by British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last week. According to Smith, the measures are designed to increase penalties for buyers and those who prostitute others, and decrease the “demand” for trafficked women. But the new measures stop short of an outright ban on paying for sex.

“My proposal is that men should think twice about paying for sex,” Smith told the BBC. “The reason they should do that is actually the majority of women don’t want to be involved in prostitution.”

Critics say the government may as well have banned prostitution because there’s often no way to know whether a prostitute has a pimp or not. And many prostitutes themselves oppose the law. Niki Adams, of the English Collective of Prostitutes, told the BBC the legislation will only force women underground. “All this will do is hound the decent parlour owners,” she says. “The government is trying to take the moral high ground but it’s a low blow for women who are struggling to make ends meet—whether they are from Croydon or Croatia.”

Can’t sell your home? Try a swap.

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 9:00 AM - 3 Comments

It’s the latest strange twist from the U.S. housing meltdown. Thousands of Americans are discovering that no one wants to buy their homes—at least not at a reasonable price. But some just have to move. So here’s their creative solution: rather than selling and then trying to buy, they just find someone else in the same position and swap.

These aren’t temporary home swaps of the sort that vacationers do. They’re permanent, with each party taking legal title of the other’s property. In a recent listing on the Vancouver Craigslist site, for instance, a realtor posted an ad for a “4-bdrm, 2-bath home on a corner lot in a desirable area of Torino in Port St. Lucie, Fla.,” complete with “marble and granite countertops and upgraded appliances.” The owner is looking to trade it for a place in Vancouver, and is “open to suggestions.”

Similar ads are now appearing daily on Craigslist and a host of other sites devoted to swaps. Most listings are placed by Americans wanting to relocate to another state, but some hope to trade their undervalued luxurious poolside homes with Canadians.

David Moskowitz launched the U.S.-based house swapping site DomuSwap last year after having problems selling his own Nokomis, Fla., property. He says people like the idea of swapping because they can avoid real estate agent fees (though you still need a lawyer to finalize the deal), and because you can buy and sell property in one smooth transaction. “The simplest cases are where both people own property and they exchange deeds,” says Moskowitz. “In some cases a difference is paid, where one party owes the other money if the homes have different values.”

Moskowitz says he sees realtors getting in on the action by charging to broker swaps, and he may very well be right. After all, with the U.S. housing market mired in the worst slump it has seen in decades, there’s plenty of them out there looking for work.

Israel’s mob war set off by car bomb

By Susan Mohammad - Monday, November 24, 2008 at 9:40 AM - 1 Comment

There were fears that Tel Aviv could be plunged into an all-out mob war after the patriarch of one of Israel’s most powerful crime families was assassinated in a midday attack. Yaakov Alperon (also called Don Alperon) died Monday after a bomb detonated under his rental car, also injuring three bystanders. The explosion was apparently set off by remote control; the bomb was likely planted earlier while the 53-year-old was inside the city courthouse where one of his sons was facing extortion and assault charges. Continue…

Giving to boost the bottom line

By Susan Mohammad - Monday, November 17, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 2 Comments

Thirteen years ago, the phone ringing in David Cooper’s office gave him a bad feeling. Every month, he had to turn down $1 million worth of used office furniture from businesses wanting him to take it off their hands. What a waste, he thought. But the owner of Cooper’s Office Furniture didn’t have enough space in his 50,000-sq.-foot store to accept it. Realizing there was a vast amount of used and unwanted furniture out there, Cooper started diverting some of the free items to charities since it was cheaper than paying for storage. Word of his donations grew in the community surrounding his downtown Toronto shop, and so did the number of calls begging him to take other free items like computers and clothing. Cooper founded the not-for-profit organization Supporting Today’s Underprivileged For the Future (STUFF) Canada in 1995, which brokers the exchange of surplus items between businesses and non-profit organizations in and around Toronto, at no cost.

STUFF Canada is one of the various ways in which Canadian businesses invest in their communities, as described in a new report released this week by Imagine Canada, a national charitable organization that researches and promotes the non-profit sector. The report systematically tracks the contributions of Canadian businesses to charitable and non-profit organizations, and describes the efforts of 93 companies giving back to their communities. It’s the first report in Canada to take an in-depth look at business community involvement, after a two-year survey of over 1,500 businesses to compare philanthropic initiatives of some of Canada’s largest corporations (with revenues of over $25 million per year) and other members of the broader business community.

The aim is to provide insight for the non-profit sector and companies looking to assess their contributions as more corporations realize the business benefits of having good community investment programs. “One of the interesting things was that there was a sense [for businesses] of ‘it’s the right thing to do,’ and there are other reasons to help as well. It can help their business, and for some of the larger organizations, we saw that community investment is becoming an important thing for them to recruit and retain employees,” says Georgina Steinsky-Schwartz, CEO of Imagine Canada.
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Retribution for a 12-year-old slave girl

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 1 Comment

A West African court has convicted Niger’s government of failing to prevent a 12-year-old girl from being sold into slavery. The precedent-setting case could help thousands of Africans who are still enslaved in Niger and neighbouring states by bringing more attention to their plight, and forcing governments to do more to eradicate the problem.

The state of Niger argued that it had done everything possible to end slavery, which it outlawed just five years ago. But the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States ruled otherwise on Monday. Niger was ordered to pay Hadijatou Mani 10 million CFA francs (about $25,000) in damages for allowing her to be sold into forced domestic and farm labour in 1996 for about $600.

“We are law-abiding and will respect this decision,” Mossi Boubacar, an official for Niger’s government, told Reuters. Critics of the government, however, say the ruling is proof that the government needs to do more to implement laws against forced labour.

Anti-Slavery International reports that 43,000 people are still enslaved in the state (mostly in rural areas), and that the children of slaves are often “inherited” by their masters. The U.K.-based group was responsible for helping Mani, now 24, bring her case to court, where she testified that she was beaten and raped repeatedly by her 63-year-old master. She was held captive for 10 years and bore children while in captivity. In 2005, she was given a “liberation certificate,” but she was arrested and jailed on bigamy charges shortly after when she married another man.

Mani told Reuters that she was “very happy” with the decision, adding that she went to court to ensure that her children didn’t end up suffering the way she did.

The ruling by the panel of judges is binding for all 15 member nations of the Economic Community of West African States. Human rights groups say the ruling is an embarrassment for Niger, which has repeatedly denied that it has a problem with slavery.

Who stole an entire beach in Jamaica?

By Susan Mohammad - Friday, October 24, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

Jamaican investigators are still scratching their heads over the mysterious disappearance of an entire beach, after hundreds of tons of white sand from a developing resort were discovered missing last July from Coral Spring beach on Jamaica’s north coast. No arrests after nearly three months, or an explanation of how thieves could transport 500 truckloads of sand without anyone noticing, have created a political storm and left detectives red-faced.

The opposition People’s National Party has alleged a cover-up. Prime Minister Bruce Golding has ordered a report into what happened. Baffled detectives, meanwhile, have fingered the tourism industry because luxurious white sand beaches are worth their weight in tourism dollars. Mark Shields, the deputy commissioner for crime, told the BBC, “It’s a very complex investigation because it involves so many aspects. You’ve got the receivers of the stolen sand, or what we believe to be the sand, the trucks themselves, the organizers—and, of course, there is some suspicion that some police were in collusion with the movers of the sand.”

Meanwhile, development of the nearly $132-million, 64-acre resort has been halted. Investors in the property are now working with an environmentalist to assess the potential environmental impact of the theft, since damage from hurricanes may be increased without a beach acting as a buffer (the coast has salt pans, mangroves and a dry limestone forest). Police have started forensic tests comparing samples from other beaches with those taken from the scene of the crime in the hopes of finding the guilty party. No word yet on whether they are also looking for a giant sandcastle.

Forget April in Paris . . . try Xmas in Iraq

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

If April in Paris has gotten tiresome, why not vacation in Iraq instead? Tourism to the ill-fated country is growing even though Iraq may be the last place many would chose to unwind. Despite the violence in the south, a company in California is planning a second tour of the mostly stable north after its last excursion attracted enough interest for a wait list. For US$5,860, Distant Horizons offers a 12-day visit to the autonomous Kurdish region to explore largely untouched ancient historical and religious sites. Other companies are cashing in on the historical gold mine there, too. Terre Entière, a Parisian tourism company, offers an eight-day “Christmas in Iraq” voyage for $3,340 to celebrate the holiday in Ankawa—a Christian suburb in the regional capital of Erbil. “We don’t use Baghdad at all. We fly in and out of Erbil,” says Janet Moore, the owner of Distant Horizons, which specializes in destinations “off the beaten path.”

Moore has taken her own children to northern Iraq and insists safety is a priority (she cancelled this year’s tour of Afghanistan for security reasons). The trip itinerary includes visiting the Erbil citadel (which UNESCO states is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the world), seeing the remains of one of Saddam’s palaces, and an Assyrian Christian monastery founded in 361 CE. Tourists also visit Neanderthal caves, barbecue a freshly slaughtered sheep at a mountain picnic with locals, and visit the holy Yezidi community of Lalish, where followers of that faith (with elements of Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and the Levantine religion) trace their calendar back almost 7,000 years.

Baghdad International Airport remains closed to commercial flights, but Austrian Airlines now makes four (often full) weekly runs from Vienna to Erbil—making Paris so last year.

The vodka diet

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 10 Comments

A cadaverous Amy Winehouse has been called one. So too the bottle-clutching pre-rehab Lindsay Lohan. And while “drunkorexic” isn’t a medical term, the slang word describing women who skip food in order to drink booze without gaining weight is increasingly on the lips of medical experts. Appearing first on gossip sites tagging skeletal celebrities who appear to live only off of Grey Goose and cigarettes, talk of drunkorexia can now be found on health blogs next to better-known eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia, orthorexia (obsession with healthy foods) or even pregorexia (pregnant women who strive to look un-pregnant by not eating). News reports about the phenomenon warn that drunkorexia is rapidly growing among college-aged women trying to avoid beer bellies without cutting out the beer—but dependable statistics on the newly identified illness are hard to come by. “Until someone says ‘I’m not eating all day so I can drink tonight’—until those people come forward in a study, they’re not going to show up in our numbers,” says Sharon Vanin, a nutritionist who has been treating eating disorders for over 20 years.

Drunkorexia may be statistically elusive but it’s mainstream enough that a recent episode of the A&E show Intervention featured a young drunkorexic man named Asa whose family staged an intervention. According to Diet-Blog.com, 30 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds skip food in order to drink more. And it’s often the hard stuff. “I hardly see women ordering beer anymore. A lot more men are ordering vodkas too,” says Amy Taylor, managing bartender at Mink Nightclub in Toronto, where the diet trend has forced the club to stock more vodka because the low-sugar content makes it attractive for calorie counters.

The blasé attitude some have regarding the disease is scary. “I don’t see the problem with trading food for alcohol. Honestly, all you are doing is taking in different calories,” posted “Nat” on Diet-Blog.com in June. Apart from the dangers of substituting alcoholic calories for ones with nutritional value, there is also evidence the disorder can worsen your dependence on alcohol. (A 2003 study by researchers at Columbia University found that people with eating disorders are up to five times more likely to become substance abusers; it also found more links in cross-addictions, as substance abusers are 11 times more likely to have an eating disorder.) And while experts like Vanin may have never heard of the term until recently, over the years she’s “definitely” seen the behaviour. “I see people compromising their eating so that there can be the calories left for alcohol. It’s the same as some people not eating all day because they are going to a banquet at night.”

A starving body, says Vanin, isn’t able to deal with stress or make healthy decisions. “Inhibitions are compromised. Suicide attempts, promiscuity, dangerous driving and other risky behaviours compound the problem.” While long-term effects of disordered eating include osteoporosis, cardiac problems and even death, immediate signs of malnutrition aren’t visible as our bodies are adept at compensating for a lack of nutrients for a period of time. But eventually, “hair starts to thin, their nails don’t grow, they become constipated and bloated,” says Vanin. She’s treated people from age 12 to age 65, and insists a patient see a health team (including a therapist, physician, nutritionist and, if warranted, an addiction specialist) to address the many facets of eating disorders.

Jerome Basil Herlehy 1958-2008

By Susan Mohammad - Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

Jerome Basil Herlehy was born in Windsor, Ont., on Oct. 22, 1958, to Christine, a nurse, and Basil Herlehy, a high-school custodian. As a young boy, Jerry, as he was known, liked to tag along with his dad when he went to work in the evenings, shooting hoops in the empty school gymnasium. He was a natural athlete who excelled in track and field and played hockey, earning the nickname “Hacker” at DeLaSalle Elementary School for the way he whacked his stick on the ice. Although he was popular, Jerry was a quiet boy who liked to help others. He was only 10 when Basil died and he became a father-figure to his younger brother and sister, Patrick and Charlene. When he was just 14, he met his future wife, Anne-Marie Poupard, at the Adie Knox Herman Arena in Windsor. “He was ice-skating with his friend and we just stared at him going round and round,” says Anne-Marie, who was sitting in the stands with her friends. With his dark, shoulder-length hair flying, “He was very cute,” she says. Anne-Marie, who also stood out with her mop of fiery red hair, eyed Jerry as he eyed her. Years later, Jerry told her that he knew the first time he saw her that she was the girl for him. He followed Anne-Marie out of the arena that night and they began to date.

Since they lived on opposite sides of the city, Jerry biked to Anne-Marie’s house where they spent hours on the front porch talking about their future together. One time, Jerry kissed her goodbye and kept waving at her as he peddled home. He was so distracted, he rode right into a street pole and fell off his bike. Red-faced, he got back on and took off without a word. At W.D. Lowe Secondary School, where he and Anne-Marie were students, Jerry excelled in his technical courses. He loved working with his hands and left school early for a job at Windsor Lumber. When he was 17, his mother moved away to Manitoulin Island with her second husband, leaving Jerry in charge of the 48-unit apartment building near the University of Windsor that his stepfather had managed.

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