September 7, 2009

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Crime

MILLIONAIRE MURDER

Ryan Alexander Jenkins last showed up in Calgary in early June and found himself strangely alone. For several months he had been travelling back and forth between Calgary, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where he had just completed filming a reality television program. By NICHOLAS KÖHLER, RACHEL MENDLESON

16b

NATIONAL

THE COLD TRUTH

If you’re going to defend Canada’s sovereignty in the High Arctic it is almost always a good idea to do it in the summer, and not to aim too high. Even then there are no guarantees. It’s a tricky business. Earlier this month I sat in a briefing room in Iqaluit while an assortment of Canadian navy officers explained some last-minute amendments to Operation Nanook ’09. Every summer, Op Nanook is the Forces’ premier Arctic exercise. By PAUL WELLS

SPORTS

TOO FAST TOBE CLEAN?

Of all the analysts, coaches, retired athletes, kinesiologists, politicians, Freakonomists, dieticians and assorted pundits who weighed in on Usain Bolt’s performance last week, perhaps none captured the magnitude of the sprinter’s accomplishment better than Ethan Siegel. By CHARLIE GILLIS

INTERVIEW

Q: When you decided all those years ago on tennis, had you considered any other sports? A: No, because I didn’t know at that time of anything in sports that a woman could do and earn that type of income. I didn’t know nothing about tennis. I hadn’t even watched a tennis match.

MAIL BAG

WILL THE WORLD be a better place with less poverty, hunger and human suffering if dinosaurs are brought back to life? (“The quest to build a dinosaur,” Science, Aug. 24.) If not, then it is a waste of valuable research resources. When existing species of animal life are struggling to survive in the environmental mess we humans have created—see your article “Canada’s sickest lake” (Environment, Aug. 24) in the same issue—why introduce more?

THIS WEEK

NEWSMAKERS

Canadian novelist and soothsayer Margaret Atwood has embarked on an international tour to promote her latest book, The Year of the Flood. As part of her campaign, she will be writing a blog to keep fans up to date on her toing and froing. In her inaugural posting, she welcomes her visitors with a photo: “Here is a picture of me in the garden with giant phlox, before starting out.

THE BACK PAGES

IT’S ALL ABOUT THEM

Pop history suggests that husband and wife singer-songwriter teams tend to have far from enviable relationships. While they were amusing to watch, there was about as much sexual chemistry between Sonny and Cher as a Saturday morning cartoon. By ELIO IANNACCI

THE BACK PAGES

Your family is being watched 24-7

To passing tourists, catching yet another government poster apprising you of electronic surveillance looming in the distance, the initials “CCTV” can be oddly reminiscent of “CCCP,” the Cyrillicized abbreviation for the U.S.S.R. CCTV is the United Kingdom’s ubiquitous acronym. By MARK STEYN

Business

ECONOWATC

So how about that recovery? You missed it? Too bad, because the last few months might be as good as it gets for a while. According to our Graph of the Week (see right), compared to other nasty recessions of the past, the S&P 500 has already enjoyed one of the best rebounds ever. By DUNCAN HOOD

Business

IMAX THINKS NOT-SO-BIG

For decades, Imax Corp., the little company with the big screens, was a Hollywood outsider. Even as crowds were awed by documentaries about four-storey starfish, movies with stars of the Homo sapiens variety were scarce. By JASON KIRBY

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