Brazilian sex workers brushing up on their English in World Cup lead-up

By Mika Rekai - Monday, January 14, 2013 at 4:23 PM - 0 Comments

Sex workers in Brazil, where prostitution is legal, will soon be getting a new set of skills to pay the bills.

Hundreds of prostitutes are signing up for free English classes in advance of the 2014 World Cup, which will be hosted by multiple cities in the country. Cida Vieira, president of the Minas Gerais state Association of Prostitutes, told Reuters learning to communicate in other languages will be extremely important for prostitutes who do not want to be taken advantage of. In English, they will learn to negotiate prices and boundaries, but also how to describe sexual fantasies and fetishes to provide better service.

The classes are “important for the dignity of the work,” says Vieira. “The women need to be able to negotiate a fair price and defend themselves.”

While proponents believe English lessons are a sensible investment in the lead-up to the World Cup, some in Brazil believe prostitutes’ time could be better spent learning to speak Portuguese, as many are immigrants and do not speak the local language. Regardless, tourism money is proving to be an effective catalyst for the education of the country’s prostitutes, many of whom are young and grew up in poverty.

Brazil’s World Cup beer battle

By Gustavo Vieira - Thursday, April 19, 2012 at 10:34 AM - 0 Comments

Pedro Silveira/AP

Brazil has been giving FIFA, soccer’s governing body, quite a headache over beer. The South American country known for its raucous Mardi Gras and its uninhibited beaches has, surprisingly, a ban on alcohol during soccer matches.

With just two years to go before the country will host soccer’s biggest party, the World Cup, Brasilia has yet to alter its strict ban on alcohol in soccer stadiums. FIFA’s secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, recently went as far as to say Brazil needed a “kick in the pants.” (President Dilma Rousseff later received an apology for the slight from FIFA president Joseph Blatter.) Far from being the kick-start Valcke intended, the move gave Brazilian senators another reason to continue stalling last week, demanding Blatter appear at a hearing before a bill to allow alcohol sales goes to the Senate.

FIFA wants the ban lifted. It has promised its long-term partner, the beer behemoth Anheuser-Busch InBev, that Budweiser will be the World Cup’s official beer in 2014.

Japan defeats US 3-1 in Women’s World Cup Final

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 18, 2011 at 11:16 AM - 0 Comments

Japan defeated the US in a 3-1 shoot-out on Sunday in the FIFA women’s World Cup final in Frankfurt, Germany. Saki Kumagai scored the winning goal on American goalkeeper Hope Solo. The win comes as a fairy tale victory for the disaster-stricken country, Al Jazeera English reports. Japan is the first Asian team to win the women’s title.

Al Jazeera English

Good news, bad news: May 5-12, 2011

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

Frederick Breedon/Getty Images

Some justice at last

It’s been over three years since Robert Dziekanski died at the Vancouver airport after RCMP used Tasers to subdue him. Now B.C.’s attorney general has laid perjury charges against the four officers involved for allegedly giving misleading testimony during the exhaustive Braidwood inquiry. While some, including Dziekanski’s mother, Zofia Cisowski, are disappointed the charges don’t relate to the tasering itself, Cisowski still applauded the move. The wheels of the law may be slow, but they do keep moving, and in this sad case the charges offer at least some measure of justice.

Harnessing hot air

Energy sources such as wind and solar could provide 80 per cent of the world’s power supply within four decades if governments provide the cash and policies to make it happen. That is the landmark conclusion of a UN panel that says it’s not too late to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a “safe” level. In the meantime, farmers are enjoying the heat. According to separate research, Canadian crops have been largely spared from the scourge of climate change—and our historically hard-luck farmers are profiting from increased demand.

Prize catch

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year’s Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, it was a blow to China’s human rights record. But the big winner may be Scottish fish farmers. In a fit of pique, China has stopped buying salmon from Norway—its biggest supplier—and signed a deal with Scotland. Perhaps that contributed to the unprecedented majority won by Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party in the May 5 elections. Good news for nationalist politicians, not so much for fish.

It’s all relative

A NASA study has confirmed two of the “most profound predictions” about Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity: that space and time are both warped and pulled by Earth’s gravity. Astrophysicists say the results, based on data measured by an orbiting space probe, will have implications “beyond our planet.” In other physics news: engineers have developed a golf ball that won’t slice. Now there’s a breakthrough we can relate to.

Bad news

Parivartan Sharma/Reuters

Revolution relapse

In the post-Mubarak era, Egypt is transitioning, but to what? Christians and Muslims clashed in Cairo, leaving 12 dead and two churches in smoldering ruins, amid signs Islamist hard-liners are asserting their power. At the same time, Syria continued its crackdown against anti-government protesters, killing scores of people and injuring hundreds, while in Libya, forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi hammered rebels. Clearly the fight is far from over for the pro-democracy movement across the Middle East.

Retirement blues

Tens of thousands more baby boomers will face retirement without a company pension plan, Statistics Canada reported this week. Since the recession, membership in private sector plans has fallen below that of the public sector for the first time ever. Which is why Canadians should be cheering the Canada Pension Plan’s tripling of its 2009 investment in Internet-calling-company Skype, recently purchased by Microsoft for US$8.5 billion. Unless you work for the civil service or at a university, the CPP may be all the help you will get.

Red carded

Lord Triesman, the chair of England’s failed bid for the 2018 World Cup of soccer, is alleging at least four FIFA members demanded bribes for their votes, including a knighthood for Paraguay’s representative. Trinidad’s football head wanted $2.5 million cash for an “educational centre.” London’s Sunday Times reports two West African delegates were paid $1.5 million to support Qatar’s winning bid. And in France, the national team is embroiled in scandal after it emerged officials considered quotas to limit the number of African and Arab-born players on their development squads. The ugly side to the beautiful game.

Unholy bonds

A good marriage isn’t necessarily built on love or even physical attraction, suggests new research in the Journal of Politics. Among the strongest shared traits between U.S. spouses is their political attitudes, the study found. The political bond forms early in marriages, but it’s not always enough to keep them together. Just ask political power-couple Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, who separated this week.

Year in pictures – July & August

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Chile's president gets a yellow card

By Nadja Drost - Friday, December 3, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

There are allegations that Piñera was involved in a coach's resignation ; Head coach Bielsa in November | Alex Ibanez/Presidencia de Chile; Ivan Alvarado/Reuters

The stunning rescue of 33 miners did wonders for Chilean President Sebastián Piñera. After the miners rose from the depths, Piñera’s popularity climbed by 10 points to 63 per cent, according to a poll conducted by Adimark, a government-commissioned polling firm. Now, his approval ratings may hinge on the future success of Chile’s national soccer team.

As he toured Europe shortly following the mine rescue in October, Piñera, who won the presidency last January, was treated as Latin America’s new star, still riding the crest of a wave of popularity. Until, that is, he found himself in the crosshairs of a controversy centred on perhaps the one thing Chileans will rally around more than 33 miners stuck underground: soccer. “Soccer is having an effect on politics, and the direct responsibility for this lies with the president,” said Mauricio Morales, a professor of political science at Diego Portales University in Santiago. “We have never seen this before in Chile. Never.”

Continue…

A coffee-table book with benefits

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Cullen/ Mick Tsikas/Reuters Jack Bush's 'Thanksgiving.' 1954: The Painters Eleven/ Afghanistan defeats Russia to win

PAINTERS ELEVEN:THE WILD ONES OF CANADIAN ART
Iris Nowell

The Painters Eleven were abstract artists based in Toronto who banded together in 1953 with a goal: to make waves in the tranquil pool of Canadian landscape art. In other words, no more pine trees. The Painters Eleven drafted a statement, of sorts, saying, “there is no jury but time.” The work would speak for itself.
In her new book, Iris Nowell helps the rest of us understand this group of abstract artists who dared to create a footprint unlike the Group of Seven’s. So, who were they? Toronto’s top art teachers, illustrators, commercial artists and art directors. They joined the city’s established art societies, cannily, and tried to bring about change from within. It wasn’t easy, but they revolutionized contemporary art in Toronto and bestowed legitimacy on abstract expressionism after it had gained fame in America and the Automatistes had made inroads in Quebec.

Opening the hefty book, readers are immediately treated to 11 colour reproductions—no titles, no dates, no dimensions, no artist name printed politely at the side. Nowell is saying, “Look at these! The work deserves this lavish treatment.” And she’s right. Nowell has given us a coffee table book with benefits. Examining the members’ artistic development toward abstraction, she peppers the text with chatty anecdotes, biographic details and telling character descriptions. If you thought you’d heard all about artist Tom Hodgson’s carousing in his studio, called the Pit, think again. If abstract art was the group’s unifying force, so was boxing and booze—martinis, to be exact, and Walter Yarwood’s Bloody Murphy. Nowell recounts how socialite Alexandra Luke, one of the two females in the group, had to sell an Emily Carr painting to buy art supplies. Her book is an accessible account that leaves the reader with one burning question: who is the mystery benefactor who partially bankrolled this lush publication?
- JOANNE LATIMER

INVASION OF THE PROSTATE SNATCHERS
Mark Scholz and Ralph Blum

The humble prostate is man’s great unknown. Buried somewhere in our nether regions, it is a walnut-sized enigma that (I’m told) is crucial to the reproduction of the species and is accessible only via an almost comically uncomfortable process involving a finger, a rubber glove and a hospital gown. But is what usually follows as necessary as the medical establishment claims?

Not entirely, according to authors Ralph Blum and Mark Scholz, who paired up for what might be subtitled Conversations With and About My Cancerous Prostate. Blum has had prostate cancer for 20 years, and he uses his experience as an example of the near-uselessness of biopsies and resulting surgery—one alarming statistic reveals that roughly 80 per cent of prostate surgeries are unnecessary. Prostate cancer is the whale shark of the cancer world: slow-moving and benign. He and co-author Scholz, himself a doctor specializing in prostate cancer, talk about why men almost always opt for surgery: straight-up fear, the insistence of surgery-mad urologists who run “the prostate cancer world,” the human male’s tendency to want to cut the damn thing out and be done with it. Rather than have surgery, Blum embarked on self-treatment and active surveillance—closely monitoring cancer markers and trying a series of often out-there experimental therapies, some more successful than others. (Spirit-channelling shaman? Silver-infused water? Blum tried them all.) His methods are scattershot, and that’s just the point. By staying positive (and keeping an eye on the markers) there are hundreds of possible treatments for this particular cancer. A breezy and effortless writer, Blum writes endearingly about the emasculating travails of at once losing one’s libido and ability to perform, a side effect of testosterone blocking therapy, while Scholz gives a welcome wariness to the practices of much of the medical establishment. A worthy read for anyone about to assume the position.
- MARTIN PATRIQUIN

HOME AND AWAY:THE SEARCH FOR DREAMS AT THE HOMELESS WORLD CUP OF SOCCER
Dave Bidini

The singer-songwriter from the beloved (and now defunct) Canadian band the Rheostatics is known for writing about games that are played in unlikely places—baseball in Italy, hockey in Hong Kong. Dave Bidini’s latest quirky sport story is a mix of familiar and foreign, as he follows the Canadian homeless soccer team to Melbourne, Australia, for the 2008 Homeless World Cup Tournament.

Bidini does a fine job portraying the Canadian team: Krystal, an 18-year-old black woman who never fit in with her adopted family; Billy, the Greek, who played soccer professionally and then ran his family’s business until becoming hooked on narcotics; sane, sober Jerry, whose multiple failed business ventures left him destitute. Bidini affectionately recounts some of their signature plays on the pitch (street soccer, a four-on-four game with two seven-minute halves, is played on a smaller field to accommodate players’ fitness and health levels)—like the way Jerry would hold the ball underfoot like a man resting his foot on a curbside. And their awkward social forays. Billy suggested that the team adopt “Souvlaki” as its anthem.

“That’s a song?” asked the coach. “A song, a food. Whatever,” was Billy’s reply.

Bidini also aptly covers the range of homeless experiences represented by the 54 nations who competed at Melbourne, including the all-female Cameroon team who left their street babies back home. Bidini holds a “long-standing belief in the redemptive properties of sport,” and to some extent, his book reflects this ideal. After returning to Canada, Billy reconciled with his parents and Krystal started playing soccer semi-professionally. But Bidini also hints at the fact that homelessness is too complex a problem to be solved by a soccer ball. He mentions players getting high before games and going AWOL for days at a time. He asked a young, strung-out Australian woman what the tournament meant to her. “I don’t get very mushy about things,” she replied. “That’s my life, you know, and that’s how I f–ked it up.”
- DAFNA IZENBERG

THE LAMPSHADE
Mark Jacobson

In early 2006, just months after hurricane Katrina, Skip Henderson was prowling the melancholy streets of New Orleans when he came upon a junkie selling storm-ravaged items. Among them was a small lamp.

Henderson’s collector’s eye recognized the metal frame as a central European, mid-20th-century work. But the shade . . . What is this made of? he asked. “The skin of Jews.” Henderson had no reason to believe it, but sent the shade to a journalist friend, Jacobson, who passed it along to a genetic lab. The verdict arrived 118 years to the day after Hitler’s birth: human origin.

With that, Jacobson’s utterly engrossing and profoundly disquieting search for answers is off and running. He re-examines the postwar stories that the Nazis didn’t just murder Jews by the millions but rendered their body fat into soap and their skin into leather. Ilse Koch, the so-called Bitch of Buchenwald—immortalized in the B movie Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS—reportedly ordered such lampshades made, once as a birthday present for her husband, the camp commander. Buchenwald’s American liberators displayed a table of horrors that included a purportedly human-skin lampshade. But that lampshade disappeared, no others surfaced and no charges were ever entered in war-crimes trials. Most scholars long ago dismissed the beliefs as myths that captured the essence of a genocide both diabolical and prosaically industrial.

Even the shade’s drug addict seller, who had stolen it from an abandoned home, had no real reason to think it was a Holocaust artifact. He was just one of the many people Jacobson encounters—all of them of an age to remember the old stories—who somehow instinctively recognize the shade for what it is. In the end, its stubbornly murky origins matter less to Jacobson than a single question: what on Earth should he do with it? No Holocaust museum would accept it, leaving Jacobson, as he leaves the reader, with a hard choice: bury the shade—and all hope of further discovery—or keep both in the land of the living.
- BRIAN BETHUNE

GREAT HOUSE
Nicole Krauss

As she did in The History of Love, the American writer weaves seemingly disparate stories around a singular object—this time, a massive desk—and only at the novel’s conclusion do all the interconnections become clear. There’s a solitary novelist in New York who borrowed the desk from a passionate young poet, subsequently tortured and killed in Pinochet’s Chile. In Israel, a widower struggles to make sense of his antagonism toward his adult son. In London, a waifish pair of siblings rattle around an antique-filled house while their father combs the Earth to find the furniture the Nazis stole from his parents before killing them. Nearby, a professor of literature stumbles across a secret that his wife, a supremely self-contained woman now suffering from dementia, has kept all her life.

Each story takes the form of a confession, and each is, in itself, deeply compelling, both because the characters’ voices are so distinct and because their situations are so richly imagined. Here’s the New York novelist explaining a lover’s reasons for dumping her: “The gist was that he had a secret self, a cowardly, despicable self he could never show me, and that he needed to go away like a sick animal until he could improve this self and bring it up to a standard he judged deserving of company.” And here’s the widower, berating his son for renting a BMW: “You’re such a big shot that you can’t accept a Hyundai like everyone else? You have to specially pay extra for a car made by the sons of Nazis?”

As in her previous two novels, there’s a lot about the writing life—many of the characters are writers, or would like to be—but Krauss no longer seems to be angling for an A from the postmodern tricksters who have influenced her style. Here, narrative is the point. She doesn’t quite tie everything together convincingly in Great House, but the characters feel so real, and the sense of loss they share is so powerfully distilled, it’s easy to forgive minor construction flaws.
- KATE FILLION

GOD AND SEX: WHAT THE BIBLE REALLY SAYS
Michael Coogan

A serious scholar (editor of  the New Oxford Annotated Bible) with a sense of humour, Harvard lecturer Coogan has long been bemused by the way all sides in various debates, from abortion to same-sex marriage, reference the Bible without knowing much about what it really says. The language of sex and of beauty is culturally specific, he points out, and while the male speaker in the Song of Songs clearly means high praise for his lover when he compares her hair to “a flock of goats streaming down from Mount Gilead,” a modern beau would be ill-advised to say as much to his beloved. Likewise, sexual euphemisms, which range from the familiar carnal overtones of “knowing” to the less often recognized use of “feet” for genitalia: the Israelite heroine Jael was able to drive a tent peg into an enemy commander’s skull because “between her feet he knelt down, there he fell, wasted” (Judges 5:27).

The meat of the book, though, lies in Coogan’s discussion of what Scripture says about current hot-button issues. Almost all sexual transgressions involving women, from adultery to incest and rape, are treated as property crimes, because they usurp another male’s rights to a woman or diminish her financial value. Abortion is not mentioned, and the few references to fetuses are not clear about their status as human persons.

As for homosexuality, the last of the New Testament’s three condemnations (Romans 1:26-27) speaks of homoerotic relations as divinely imposed, a concept, Coogan notes, “not very far from the modern view that sexual orientation is innate,” not chosen. The Old Testament’s two explicit references are found with other instances of Israelite rejection of what scholars call “category confusion”: crossbreeding animals, planting different crops in the same field, wearing clothing woven from different kinds of yarn. Needless to say, these are prohibitions long ignored. And just as we no longer scan the Bible for agricultural advice, Coogan concludes, we ought to be at least as wary about its social policy prescriptions.
- BRIAN BETHUNE

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 6, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Silvio Berlusconi’s very bad week
Italy’s PM is on thin ice after a party revolt led by long-time ally Gianfranco Fini, and now come fresh allegations of scandal. “In the bed there was me, two girls from Rome, and Berlusconi,” Maria Teresa De Nicolo, an escort, told prosecutors in a corruption inquiry, according to the daily La Repubblica. Could it end with a snap fall election?

The camera doesn’t lie
France’s stunning first lady should be used to the lure of cameras. And yet, during filming for Woody Allen’s new movie, Midnight in Paris, in which Carla Bruni plays a bit part as a museum curator, the former model and pop songstress couldn’t nail the simplest of scenes. Bruni needed a whopping 35 takes to film a dialogue-free scene that required her to walk in and out of a grocery store, clutching a baguette. In fairness, it had probably been a while since she’d done her own groceries.

Easy, rider
One moment Gregor Robertson was Vancouver’s clean, green mayor; the next he was a scofflaw on wheels. The avid cyclist—he’s pumping $25 million into new bike infrastructure in Vancouver—was caught blowing a red light on his bike on July 22. He didn’t even slow down to check for traffic, bus driver Michele MacDonald told the Vancouver Province, after nearly flattening him. Only a quick, hard stomp on the brakes saved him, she said. “When he looked up and said he was sorry, I thought ‘Oh my God: it’s Mr. Gregor Robertson.’ ” The near miss was a “good lesson—and a reminder to everyone to use caution and follow the rules when out on the road,” said Robertson, whose poster-boy image took an another drubbing earlier this summer when a mike was accidentally left on at a council meeting, revealing a raunchier, more partisan, F-bomb-dropping mayor.

And he knows from silly
Long after the World Cup, the fallout continues. Argentina’s soccer association has dropped superstar Diego Maradona as coach of the national team, after it was sent packing in the quarter finals in a humiliating 4-0 defeat to Germany. Maradona was greeted by cheering fans on his return from South Africa and President Cristina Fernandez urged him to stay on, but the soccer association concluded his best days were behind him. Meantime, Paul the psychic octopus was roasted by Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The eight-legged sea creature (no risk of a hand ball there) is credited with predicting the outcome of all seven German World Cup matches—a silly bit of decadent Western nonsense and superstition, Ahmadinejad thundered in a recent speech in Tehran. “Those who believe in this type of thing cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection,” he said.

The Mel Gibson of the left?
It’s one thing to blame Adolf Hitler for the Holocaust, Oliver Stone said in an interview last month, but whom do we blame for Hitler? “German industrialists, the Americans and the British,” the film director told the Sunday Times of London. “He had a lot of support. Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.” Stone went on to lament “the Jewish domination of the media” and the way Israel has distorted U.S. foreign policy “for years.” He did apologize, calling his comments “glib” and “clumsy,” adding “Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry.”

Now comes the tough part
“From strippers to ministers,” blared the Russian headline that propelled Georgia’s new economy minister, Vera Kobalia, to the heart of an international scandal. Russian media—who love a chance to needle Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and seldom let the facts get in the way—based the accusation on a racy Facebook photo of Kobalia in what they call a Vancouver strip club, but turned out to be a nightclub. Kobalia grew up in B.C.; she met Saakashvili at the Vancouver Olympics, is all of 28, and has no political experience. It’s not the only challenge she’ll face in her new job: running an economy that shrank a whopping seven per cent last year.

It’s a black thing, and I understand
In a big week for racial politics in America, Essence, the bible of black fashion, caused a sensation for hiring Ellianna Placas, a white woman, as fashion director. “It’s a dark day,” said former editor Michaela Angela Davis, who noted the industry has long been a tough place for black women. Not everyone objected. “Kudos—for having the . . . courage to elevate a qualified and talented white woman, in a time of such racial tension,” said Sophia Nelson, a black lawyer. Andrew Breitbart, ever mindful of reverse racism, could perhaps get behind it too. The conservative activist, who posted a video clip edited to make fired black civil servant Shirley Sherrod look like a racist, will “definitely” be sued, Sherrod declared last week. Breitbart reacted to the news saying, “As difficult as it probably was for her, it’s been difficult for me as well.”

They get around
Utah’s predominantly Mormon Brigham Young University has added a new prohibition to its long list: no motorized couches. Students Nick Homer and Stewart Clyde spent months combining an old couch with a motorized wheelchair as a comfy means of transportation around campus. It was a sensation, until administrators instituted a law banning couch-based transportation systems. When campus police pulled them over, Homer says, they “basically congratulated us on being awesome.” Yes, if awesomeness is a crime, Neil Rideout of New Waterford, N.S., must also plead guilty. He was stopped by cops last week while driving his motorized drink cooler to a convenience store. He was fined $222 for driving on the sidewalk after police said the street was off-limits. The cooler, in addition to being cool, has jacks for an MP3 player, a 5.5 hp motor, a radio and, naturally, cup holders.

Spoken like a Lady
When you’re Lady Gaga, it must be hell deciding what to wear. So, for her cover shoot for September’s Vanity Fair, she threw in the towel, and every other bit of clothing, save for a floral tattoo and a tasteful choker necklace. Art is a cruel taskmaster, she said in an interview; she’s perpetually lonely, even in relationships. Of course that may also have something to do with celibacy. “I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.” She credits her mom and grandmother with getting her mostly free of drugs, but for the occasional toot of cocaine. If the Lady is overexposed now, wait until the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 12. She has a record-breaking 13 nominations. God put her on Earth for three reasons, she says: “To make loud music, gay videos, and cause a damn raucous [sic].”

Careful what you wish for
It’s gotten so one almost feels sorry for Tony Hayward, the ousted CEO of BP—almost. It’s now clear that Hayward, recently replaced by Bob Dudley, failed miserably at containing the public-relations fallout from BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico—smug and indifferent before Congress, appearing at a yacht race in England and telling reporters he “wanted his life back”—but he may have done as well as could be expected when it came to stopping the leak from the Deepwater Horizon rig. “I understand that people find it easier to vilify an individual more than a company,” the career oilman recently told the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps. But CEOs are paid big bucks to take responsibility during times of crisis and expected to know when they’re in over their heads. Or at least when to hire image consultants.

Spreading the good word
Asked how he’ll protect constituents from the Muslim “threat,” Tennessee gubernatorial hopeful Ron Ramsey questioned whether religious freedoms should even apply to Islam. It’s arguable, he told a Chattanooga crowd, if the world’s second-largest religion is actually a religion—or “a nationality, a way of life, cult.” In nearby Florida, pastor Terry Jones announced plans for “International Burn a Quran Day,” on the anniversary of Sept. 11. His church, the Dove World Outreach Center, will host.

It’s what Uncle Earl would want
A man peddling Ansel Adams photos purchased at a Fresno, Calif., garage sale may in fact be selling pictures taken by 87-year-old Oakland resident Miriam Walton’s Uncle Earl. When Richard Norsigian announced experts had authenticated the negatives he bought for $45 and valued them at US$200 million, Walton recognized a photo of the famous Jeffrey Pine at Yosemite National Park from the news footage. “I keep thinking that perhaps that box of negatives belongs to Uncle Earl,” she told a local TV station. Undeterred, Norsigian is selling copies at a hefty markup: $7,500 for darkroom prints, $1,500 for digital reproductions.

A bit too N-Sync
Rumours dogged punk singer Plastic Bertrand for decades that the voice on his 1977 hit Ça plane pour moi isn’t his, but producer Lou Deprijck’s. Late last month, the singer (real name Roger Jouret) admitted the ruse to a newspaper after a linguistics expert told a Belgian court the vocals are indeed Deprijck’s. Plastic says he was promised a small share of the rights to the song if he agreed to “keep his mouth shut.” According to Deprijck, the reasoning for the Milli Vanilli-esque bait-and-switch was simple marketing. “I was even prepared to shave my moustache,” he told the Guardian, “but the record label preferred this guy with his punk look.”

Mass arrests in Asia over World Cup gambling

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 2:29 PM - 0 Comments

Interpol have arrested 5,000 people and seized US$10 million in raids of nearly 800 illegal gambling dens across Asia whose combined business was worth over US$155 million. The gambling crackdown, called Operation Soga III, ran from June 11 to July 11 with arrests made in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Interpol’s chief of police Jean-Michel Louboutin says the Soga operations—the first and second editions took place during the two previous World Cup tournaments— have resulted in nearly 7,000 arrests and seizures of more than $26 million. It’s not clear whether or not the results matches were affected by the gambling.

BBC News

Psychic octopus picks World Cup finalists

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 10:51 AM - 0 Comments

A two year old octopus named Paul has correctly predicted the outcome of every World Cup match involving Germany this far in the tournament. No doubt to the consternation of his countrymen, Paul chose Spain to beat Germany in the semi-final by picking a mussel from a jar with the Spanish flag on it instead of a German one. Paul, who lives in the Sea Life Aquarium in the city of Oberhausen, has become a celebrity and his predictions are broadcast on German national television. His latest prediction may be cause for concern, though it’s worth pointing out Paul hasn’t always been right. In Euro 2008, he wrongly forecast Germany would prevail over Spain.

BBC News

The handball rule is obsolete

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 2:55 PM - 20 Comments

While I continue to abhor diving in soccer, I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that the handball is an infraction that is falling into desuetude. There have just been too many goals scored off handballs for it to be an accident or a matter of the game going too fast or referees being too inattentive. The closest analogue I can think of is the traveling rule in basketball. At a certain point, referees just stopped enforcing it except in the most blatant and egregious cases.

The same thing seems to have happend with the handball in soccer. As long as a plausible case can be made that it was incidental, everyone – the refs, the other team, the fans, the league, FIFA — is willing to look the other way and not make a fuss. And as in basketball, I suggest the rationale is the same: to enforce the letter of the rule gives too much of an advantage to the defence, and restricts the creativity of the offence.

Fabiano probably summed up the current mindset of the sport yesterday, when he admitted that he’d twice used his hands before scoring against Cote d’Ivoire:

Well that is true, it seems as though the ball hit my hand,” said Fabiano. “It seems the ball hit my hand and the second time it hit my shoulder.

“But in order to make the goal more beautiful, there had to be a doubtful element. It was a spectacular goal and I believe it was not a voluntary handball. It was a legitimate goal and it was one of the most beautiful goals that I’ve scored in my career. Where better to score such a goal than at the World Cup?”

Mailbag: Dudus Coke, the Lost finale, Stephen Harper’s Near Death Experience

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 2:28 PM - 29 Comments

Welcome to the Mailbag, where I’ve got no time for an introduction because I have to fix a speech for a client, find my kid’s jock so he can play baseball tonight and write a statement announcing the retirement from acting of Kim Cattrall’s vagina at the age of 103.

The following queries were actually submitted by actual readers. And remember: there are no stupid questions, unless you’re asking whether I ruined my chances with Kim Cattrall just there.

•••

Dear Scott:

Has there ever, in the long and colourful history of drug lords, been a better drug lord name then Dudus Coke? – Jeff B

Jeff B –

Well, Billy-Bong McCrackenhorse comes immediately to mind, right? That guy had a pretty colourful name. In fact, now that I think about it, all the McCrackenhorses sounded fairly “drug lordy”… Billy-Bong, Spliff, Mary-Jane and C.J. (Nose) Candy III.

Who else? Um… Bob and Dave Heroin. They lived over near the tracks. Sold cocaine (confusing). Oh – Bathtub Crank MacBenzidrine. Blunt Norm. Whack E. Tabaccy. Steve Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (of the Coney Island Methylenedioxymethamphetamines). The list is surprisingly long.

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Dear Scott:

Imagine you are on an airplane with Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, the plane is going down, there are only two parachutes, you have one, who gets the other one? – Fred

Fred –

It’s fun to ponder the circumstances under which this flight could be taking place. Are the three of us up there to Continue…

Tiger vs. Charlie

By Patricia Treble and Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 4 Comments

The Red Rocket

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 7:00 AM - 0 Comments

Is it his name—Jon Montgomery—which sounds ever so slightly old-fashioned, something you’d see etched in a memorial somewhere in the Canadian heartland? Or his clipped no-nonsense speech and compact frame, which are oddly anachronistic, as though he’s stepped from a First World War portrait, sepia and fading? Or is it his beer-drinking? That spontaneous moment when the 30-year-old Montgomery, who’d surprised us all by striking gold in men’s skeleton, stepped from a gondola in Whistler, into a throng of waiting thousands, and lustily accepted a pitcher of brew thrust at him from some anonymous woman—watching him gulp back that liquid the colour of his triumph seemed so perfect, primal and clean.

The Whistler crowds were ecstatic over the mountain resort’s first Canadian medal, and Montgomery, with his red hair and scrub of red beard, was just the man to channel their ferocious Olympic enthusiasms, and those of Canadians everywhere: a delighted everyman who started off the evening’s festivities by striking his ta-dah! pose—after jumping, both feet in the air, atop the podium—then led an impromptu parade through the gabled pedestrian streets of this tourist town. The next day, receiving his medal, Montgomery unabashedly belted out a bad O Canada from the stage, living the dream for armchair competitors across the land.

It was as much a celebration of good times as of heroic athleticism, and a timely balm for a Canadian soul in tatters after some disappointing performances in the first week of the Olympics. That very night, 29-year-old Mellisa Hollingsworth, favoured to win a medal in the women’s skeleton, had clunked in at fifth, while Montgomery’s teammate, 38-year-old Mike Douglas, was disqualified over the technical snafu of failing to remove the covers from his runners.

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Loud and Proud

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 7:00 AM - 1 Comment

She giggled. Standing on the infield at the Richmond Oval, waiting to take her place on the victory podium, Kristina Groves couldn’t help it. The roar when they announced her name as the winner of bronze in women’s 3,000-m speed skating was so loud, so sustained, so un-Canadian that she had to laugh. “It was wonderful. It was deafening,” she said. “I’ve never experienced a crowd that loud for Canada. I’ve raced in all sorts of places where it’s been that loud, but not for Canada. It gave me goosebumps.”

Forget the advance access to Olympic venues, or the extra millions poured into coaching, sports psychologists and “top secret” technologies, the true advantage of a home Games is just that—home. The stands are filled with friends and family, the crowds bedecked in red and white, and for the first time in a generation, Canada’s Olympians get to experience the full-throated support that fills the nation’s hockey rinks most Saturday nights, but never quite makes it to World Cup meets in far-off lands.

In the 3,000-m, the first medal event in what promises to be a hardware-filled two weeks for Canada’s female speed skaters, those waves of unconditional love seemed to lift Groves to the podium. The 33-year-old from Ottawa, twice a silver medallist in Turin, is a favourite in the 1,000-m and 1,500-m, but didn’t expect a top finish in the longer distance. Racing before the partisan throng, she covered the three kilometres in four minutes, 4.84 seconds. In third spot with one pairing left to skate—featuring the defending Olympic champion Irene Wust of the Netherlands—Groves had reconciled herself to fourth or fifth. But when the final times flashed on the scoreboard, she remained among the leaders, clinging to the bronze by just three-hundredths of a second. Martina Sablikova of the Czech Republic took gold. Stephanie Beckert of Germany won the silver.

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Canada's Olympians: Cindy Klassen, Speed Skating

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 2 Comments

Forget the eponymous rec centre in her hometown of Winnipeg, or the 15-foot-high snow sculpture a local sponsor once built of Cindy Klassen speed skating with a herd of bison. Disregard the long-distance calling cards with her picture, the ubiquitous print ads, and the nationally televised McDonald’s commercials. The argument about who is Canada’s most famous Olympian begins and ends with a simple proposition. If the Royal Canadian Mint strikes 22 million coins with your likeness, and your name is not Queen Elizabeth II, you win.

Klassen’s five medals at the 2006 Torino Games—a gold, two silver and two bronze—were the most ever won by any Canadian at an Olympics. Add in the bronze she won four years before in Salt Lake City, and she is the country’s most successful Olympian ever. (Her teammate Clara Hughes owns a total of five Olympic medals—two cycling bronzes from the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, a speed skating bronze in Salt Lake City, and a gold and silver in Turin.) She holds five world records. Yet for all the visibility, accolades and past successes, the 30-year-old finds herself heading into the Vancouver 2010 Olympics as a distinct underdog. An athlete whose greatest victory may lie in simply having made these Games at all.

In the summer of 2008, Calgary orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Nick Mohtadi operated on both of Klassen’s knees, removing cartilage and tendons that had been worn almost into oblivion by a decade of workouts, training and racing. Everyone knew going in that the injuries couldn’t be repaired, only ameliorated. But the healing process turned out to be a lot tougher than the speed skater and her coaches had imagined. Originally scheduled to return to the ice that fall, Klassen didn’t manage to strap on the blades until January 2009. “It was such a big deal that we actually videotaped it,” she told Maclean’s. “But when I looked at the tape, I couldn’t believe how I looked.” Plans to return to competition that season were scrubbed, and Klassen didn’t find her way back to the World Cup circuit until this past November, just three months before the start of the Vancouver Games. Even then, the pain was constant.
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Royal baggage, Putting the hate in Haiti and Heck of a yard sale

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 5:55 PM - 0 Comments

Royal baggage
Britain’s royal family doesn’t travel lightly, but not always by choice. Just look at the swag Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, the duchess of Cornwall, collected on their recent Canadian tour. The list of books, jams, and teapots, recently catalogued on the Prince of Wales’s website, tops out at more than 100 items. It includes his and hers BlackBerries from the premier of Ontario and a bottle of “Victoria gin” from the mayor of Victoria. Meanwhile, Prince William, who visits Australia this week, was asked to help recover the missing skull of Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy, who was shot dead in 1802 and whose head was sent to England in a glass jar. Elder Michael Mundine says the prince will appreciate the importance of the request because he “has his mother’s heart.”

The manly art of cabinetry
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s larger-than-expected cabinet shuffle Tuesday didn’t advance the thin ranks of women. Lisa Raitt (she of the “sexy” isotope shortage) is bumped from the natural resources portfolio to labour. Rona Ambrose leaves low-profile labour for the giant public works department. Diane Ablonczy becomes minister of state for seniors, going from the equally obscure small business and tourism. Marjory LeBreton remains government leader in the Senate. Expect Harper to give her a Tory majority there to push through his agenda.

Yup, still crazy
Mehmet Ali Agca, 52, the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, emerged from a Turkish prison Monday and checked into a five-star hotel. In typical bizarre fashion he called himself the “Christ eternal,” proclaimed the coming “end of the world,” and angled for a huge book deal to tell his story. Agca has never revealed why he tried to kill the pope, or if he was acting alone.

Putting the hate in Haiti
U.S. President Barack Obama’s rapid response to the earthquake in Haiti won praise from former president George W. Bush, but it isn’t playing well with America’s extreme right. Radio host Rush Limbaugh said Obama is using the crisis to “burnish” his image “in both the light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.” He also advised against donating to the Red Cross relief fund through a link on the White House website, claiming donors could end up on Obama’s mailing list. Meantime, evangelist and former nominee for the Republican presidential ticket, Pat Robertson, said Haiti suffers because its people made an 18th-century pact with the devil to free themselves from French rule. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs labelled both comments “stupid.”

Fore, and after
Golfer John Daly is a shadow of his former self. The hard-living 44-year-old has lost 116 lb., about the poundage of some women playing the LPGA circuit. Daly credits lap-band surgery, an implanted balloon that constricts the stomach. The results are so striking no one recognized him as he tried to enter a recent party after a pro-am event in Honolulu, where he was serving as host. “If I weighed 300 lb. and had four chins, I’d have no problem getting in,” he said. Fans can share Daly’s attempt to get his life and his game on track. His comeback is the subject of a reality show, Being John Daly, premiering on the Golf Channel in March.

Almost famous
It was an assignment to cover an Elvis convention that hooked Delta, B.C., photographer Brian Howell on the wacky world of celebrity impersonators. From there, the frequent Maclean’s contributor travelled North America searching out faux Mick Jaggers, Johnny Depps, Marilyn Monroes and a southern-fried Colonel Sanders. His exploration of celebrity obsession resulted in a photo book, Fame Us, and now a portrait exhibition at Vancouver’s Windsor Gallery. One who escaped his notice is Annette Edwards. The 57-year-old British great-grandmother spent $16,000 on surgeries to replicate the look of slinky Jessica from the animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. “I just think she’s a very sexy cartoon,” she said.

Guess who’s a big soccer fan?
It’s been years since predominantly Muslim Egypt fielded a World Cup-qualifying soccer team, and coach Hassan Shehata seeks the glory of a higher power. “Pious behaviour” is essential to selection on his team. “I strive to make sure that those who wear the Egypt jersey are on good terms with God,” says Shehata. Speaking of which, a near miracle played out on the cricket pitch in New Zealand. Canada earned its first ever World Cup cricket win Friday, defeating Zimbabwe at the under-19 World Cup. “This is the start of hopefully a great future for Canadian cricket,” said team captain Rustam Bhatti.

Heck of a yard sale
Disgraced Montreal money manager Earl Jones, 67, pleaded guilty Friday to defrauding his clients of $50 million over 30 years. Both defence and prosecution are recommending an 11-year sentence, although the 67-year-old will likely serve only a fraction of that behind bars. Jones’s clients face a lifetime of poverty. A charitable assistance fund is spending $5,000 a week in temporary assistance to help 50 seniors whose savings were wiped out. They may see a small share of their money after the sale of four properties previously held by the high-living Jones and his wife—and their contents. A long list of possessions from their Dorval condo, including golf clubs, a golf cart and a Rolex watch, are being auctioned off.

An offer she didn’t refuse
Jackie Collins, the 72-year-old British author of such steamy novels as Hollywood Wives, knows of what she writes. She told U.S. tabloid The Globe she had a fling with actor Marlon Brando when she was just 15. She was attending a Hollywood party with her older sister, actress Joan Collins, when Brando, then about 29, pitched his woo by proxy. “He sent someone over to say, ‘Marlon thinks you’re great-looking and have a great body and would like to meet you,’ ” Collins said. “We had a very brief but fabulous affair. He was at the height of his fame, and gorgeous.” Brando, who died in 2004, could have faced a Roman Polanski-style world of pain had the affair been made public.

Don’t ask me, I’m just the biographer
Rocker Ozzy Osbourne has released I Am Ozzy, his autobiography— or the bits he remembers. As he notes in his introduction: “Other people’s memories of the stuff in this book might not be the same as mine. I ain’t gonna argue with ’em. Over the past 40 years I’ve been loaded on booze, coke, acid, Quaaludes, glue, cough mixture, heroin, Rohypnol, Klon­opin, Vicodin, and too many other heavy-duty substances to list in this footnote . . . I’m not the f–king Encyclopedia Britannica, put it that way. What you read here is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.”

Toy story
Her father’s development of the Frisbee and hula hoop made Elena Marano a wealthy woman, but her ex-husband Peter Marano’s investment in the yo-yo market of London commercial real estate has cost her $8.4 million. Marano is appealing in a British court a settlement requiring her to pay her ex’s real estate losses. He already got an equal share of their $32 million in assets when the 20-year marriage ended in 2007. She claimed her ex’s property portfolio has since rebounded, in a case of “boom, bust and boom again.”

No head games
Just weeks ago Patrice Cormier was the plucky pride of Canada as captain of the national junior team. On Monday, the 19-year-old Rouyn-Noranda Huskies forward was suspended indefinitely by the Quebec hockey league for nailing Mikael Tam of the Quebec Remparts with an elbow to the head. Tam lost teeth, and went into convulsions. It’s the second ugly head-shot in a week to earn a suspension. On Thursday Zach Kassian of the Windsor Spitfires concussed Matt Kennedy of the Barrie Colts.

Jack Benny goes back in the vault
It’s been almost 35 years since the death of comedian Jack Benny, but his international fan club carries on—or tries to. These days, it is spitting mad at CBS. The network had discovered 25 original Benny TV shows long thought lost. The fan club offered to pay to digitize the tapes, which date from the 1950s, and Benny’s family approved the release. But CBS announced it won’t release the prized shows from its archives; there are “issues” blocking their release. Benny received similar shoddy treatment when the network cancelled his show in 1964, says club president Laura Leff. “Sadly, 46 years later, CBS has repeated the sentiment by condemning these shows to permanent silence.” M

Olympic secrets revealed

By Ken Macqueen and Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 6:00 AM - 21 Comments

In early December, Bob Joncas, the high-performance manager for the Canadian Snowboard Federation, boarded a jet for Switzerland. In the cargo hold, rolled into a heavy bag, was the result of three years of hush-hush research, development and testing. Joncas was bound for a mountainside factory in Braunwald to deliver a secret weapon of sorts, one of dozens of clandestine products and tactics that Canadian athletes will deploy in February at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

Joncas presented the bag’s contents to Hansjürg Kessler, considered by many elite athletes as the world’s best custom snowboard maker. Kessler was at work on a special Olympic order for the Canadian national team—tailored-to-measure boards with at least two significant modifications from any he has ever made. One was a super low-friction base, to be applied to the bottom of the boards from a 30-m roll of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene that Joncas carried from Canada. The other is a composite plate for bindings that is so revolutionary Canada’s boarders have hidden it under duct tape and MACtac during their frequent appearances on World Cup podiums this winter.

The base, which alpine boarders won’t use until Games time, cuts friction by 15 to 20 per cent compared to commercially available products, its creators say. “Small differences can be huge,” says Christos Stamboulides, the University of British Columbia researcher who formulated the product. Less friction equals more speed, and perhaps a podium finish, says project supervisor Savvas Hatzikiriakos, a specialist in fluid mechanics and friction. “In the last Olympics, Canada won a lot of fourth places,” he says. “Nobody remembers the fourth-place athletes.”

That quest for those small differences is what drives the aptly named Top Secret project—a five-year, $8-million technological arms race unprecedented in Canadian sport history. Researchers across the country have been breaking down the science of winter sport, looking for any edge in training, human performance and equipment. “To date, we’ve completed 55 projects, using 17 different universities and institutions,” says Todd Allinger, the Vancouver-based biomechanist who manages the program. “I think it’s been very successful.” Now, a month from the Olympic opening ceremonies, Maclean’s takes an exclusive inside look.

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A blight on the beautiful game

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 6 Comments

When Declan Hill’s account of pervasive match-fixing in international soccer hit bookstores last year, the doubters popped up like spring grass on turf. FIFA, the governing body of the so-called “beautiful game,” dismissed The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime with a rhetorical wave. European sports commentators scoffed, while even Hill’s hometown paper, the Ottawa Citizen, brushed off his first-hand accounts of a match-rigger in Asia paying off players, referees and coaches as a “slash at the game” that “proved little.”

“It was as if because I’m Canadian, I couldn’t possibly be an expert,” says Hill, a seasoned investigative journalist who now lives in Britain. “There was an enormous amount of push-back.” But at least one man in a position of influence found Hill’s exposé compelling. Michel Platini, president of the European Football Associations (UEFA), ordered a copy of The Fix and read it carefully, says Hill, then quickly announced the formation of an “integrity unit” charged with ferreting out schemes to manipulate game results to the benefit of gamblers wagering on illegal networks in Asia. In October 2008, Platini invited Hill to a summit in Geneva to discuss findings with members of the newly formed task force.

Hill was careful not to give away his sources—“Some of these people would kill me if they thought I was co-operating,” he says. But he did offer ideas as to how UEFA might fight back, most importantly by monitoring betting patterns in places like Shanghai and the Philippines. And the results weren’t long in coming. Last week, German police stunned the soccer world by announcing the arrest of 15 people as part of a sweeping investigation into match-fixing in nine European countries, at levels ranging from third-division pro to Champions League qualifying games. At least 200 matches are under suspicion, but investigators say that’s a mere fraction of the rot caused by the Asian gambling interests Hill had documented. Continue…

Canada's soccer triumph. Well, sort of.

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 11:38 AM - 0 Comments

Although most of you were probably watching the war of words unfold between John “I’d jump over this desk and punch you if I could” McCain and Barack “Smile big when feeling uncomfortable” Obama last night, Canada’s men’s national soccer team pulled off a mini miracle by tying Mexico in a World Cup qualifying game at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton before an embarrassingly pro-Mexico crowd. Unfortunately for our boys the result, an exciting 2-2 draw, does little to enhance our chances of participating in the biggest tournament in world as last weekend’s loss to Honduras snuffed out all hope of our advancement to the next stage. Nonetheless, a job well done.

Video Gallery: MuchMusic Awards 2006

By Jeff Harris - Friday, June 23, 2006 at 12:02 PM - 117 Comments

Sixteen videos from the red carpet and behind the scenes of the 2006 MMVA’s. Canadian starlet Elisha Cuthbert says that MuchMusic will always have a place in her heart and her favourite classic VJ, Rick (“the Temp”) tells us about his most memorable awards show moment. Plus clips of Nelly Furtado, Kardinall Offishall and three of Canada’s most well-known MP’s.

Click here for exclusive video coverage.