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For the first time in thirty years, Uncle Sam lost more than 10,000 of his children to the folks up north. The number of Americans emigrating to Canada has almost doubled since 2000, according to a report from the Association for Canadian Studies (pdf).

Although the Canadian study does not provide statistics about the emigrants' motivations, anecdotal evidence suggests that post-9/11 U.S. policies are a major drive for the move. Other reasons may include Canada's generous healthcare system and Canada's tolerance for gay marriage, as American emigrate Tom Kertes tells ABCNews.

Becoming a magnet for America's liberals, however, doesn't seem to be dampening anti-American feelings in Canada. 

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What would you do if you were president?

Barack Obama's reply is: Pull out of Iraq and move into Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Unveiling his strategy to combat global terrorism today at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Illinois senator pledged to send troops into Pakistan to destroy terrorist safe havens even without a green light from Pervez Musharraf, the beleaguered president of Pakistan.

To me, all this fuss about invading Pakistan looks like a rhetorical jab at Clinton, who called Obama's foreign policy "naive" last week. Still, some people with sharp tongues will probably ask: So he would gladly meet with America's worst enemies and send unwanted troops into the territory of a major non-NATO ally?

But the most interesting thing about the speech is what Obama didn't say. Where was Iran? After all the fuss last week about talking to Tehran with no preconditions, Obama made little mention of the mullahs today. 

That may be a good thing. As much as I don't like the prospect of a nuclear Iran, the mullahs still have to figure out how to go from splitting atoms to making a bomb (which will probably take them between two and eight years). And they ultimately have little sympathy for troublemakers like al Qaeda and the Taliban, whom they offered to help fight at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. By contrast, Pakistan already has a nuclear arsenal and plenty of bin Laden fans. Where would you shop if you were a mujahed in search of nuclear weapons?

By bashing Pakistan over Iran, the youngster from Illinois might be showing that he's not so naive after all.

As Christine points out elsewhere today on Passport, it's been a stormy summer for sports. Europeans are busy booing doped-up cyclists, but American sports fans have their fair share of things to complain about, too. After the Barry Bonds scandal, for instance, a chemist who worked with BALCO told USA Today that he believes baseball's culture of doping is still very much alive:

What they're doing is taking steroids in the offseason, and then using HGH and EPO during the season. There's testing now, but I'm sure somebody has already designed an undetectable steroid."

Undetectable steroids may soon be obsolete. A team of medical researchers at the University of Milan has found a way to reduce mental and perhaps physical fatigue through small electric shocks to the brain. The shocks are imperceptible and have no collateral effects, the scientists claim in a study soon to be published in the European Journal of Neuroscience. The discovery could herald the end of doping ... or perhaps the start of a new trend of artificial performance-boosting, and this time among nerds as well as jocks.

MIKHAIL KLIMENTIEV/AFP/Getty Images

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a gulag survivor and the author of The Gulag Archipelago, the world's most famous literary denunciation of Soviet labor camps. The Gulag Archipelago is the reason Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union and was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature.

So I was surprised to read, in a recent interview with Germany's Der Spiegel, Solzhenitsyn's apologetics for Vladimir Putin, the man who is taking Russia back to the heyday of Soviet censorship (pdf). Why would Solzhenitsyn, an inspiration for dissidents everywhere and a past critic of Putin, do anything but bash the Russian president over his repressive policies and worsening human rights record?

It seems that even for Solzhenitsyn, who accepted a State Award from Putin in June, dictatorship is preferable to anarchy. When Putin came to power in 2000, Russians expected two things from their new leader: that he safeguard Russia's territorial integrity, and that he reverse their country's slide into chaos. Disintegration and internal implosion were seen as the unfortunate consequences of the Yeltsin era, with its wild economic liberalizations and breakneck federalist reform.

And so, Solzhenitsyn is merely echoing many of his compatriots when he tells Der Spiegel:

Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible -- a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments."

Solzhenitsyn's interview makes for a great ironic contrast with Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general who has harsh words for Vlad in today's Seven Questions. When did the freedom fighter become the apologist for dictatorship, while the spy became the dissident?

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP

In the 2001 electoral campaign, Silvio Berlusconi festooned Italy's walls with gigantic posters announcing the beginning of the Internet age in the country's schools. Forget Latin and ancient Greek; the Internet would breed a new class of modern-day entrepreneurs. Italians liked that message, and Berlusconi won the race (though perhaps his tax cuts were the real reason for his victory). 

But in Italy, the second-favorite national sport—after soccer, of course—is reforming public education. Each time a new government steps in, it rushes to undo what the previous government has put in place.

And so the Internet itself, with its associations with Berlusconi, has become Italy's latest political football. The new guidelines published by the ministry of education speak of "preventing cases of [teen] dependency on drugs, alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, [sports] doping, and the Internet" (my translation). It's an implicit rebuke of the previous administration, whose championing of the World Wide Web presumably created not venture capitalists, but video-game addicts.

What seems to have escaped both the left and the right, though, is that there are still very few computers in Italian schools. In 2001, there was one computer for every 30 kids, and although Italy is catching up, it still has a long way to go. Isn't it a little premature to worry about the dangers of Internet dependency among the little wannabe entrepreneurs?

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European newspaper columnists often lament that Europe's best and brightest are leaving for greener pastures. But brain drain is only part of the problem with European labor. Europe is also undervaluing the brain power of half of those who stay behind.

A recent report by the European Commission (pdf) finds that women are still earning an average of 15 percent less than their male counterparts. The gender pay gap has shrunk by only 2 percent over the last decade or so, and there's no evidence that it's narrowing.

And here's the most baffling detail: It's better-educated women who are being underpaid the most. Statistics show that women with higher degrees earn 30 percent less than their male counterparts, whereas for jobs with fewer qualifications the gap is only 13 percent. Maybe they should start teaching Bargaining 101 in European universities.

Lindsay Lohan just got out of rehab ... and into Machiavelli. Rumor has it the young American starlet has picked the Italian renaissance author's most famous work for her summer reading. In an interview with British magazine Tatler, Lohan declares: 

[The Prince] is always with me."

The usual skeptics will say that Lohan hasn't actually read it, or is too dumb to understand its lessons. And intellectual snobs will be tempted to ask questions like: "Is Lindsay plotting to conquer Europe on horseback?"

But Lindsay is smart to be reading her Machiavelli. Hollywood is ruthless, and in showbiz everyone is scheming to come out on top—just like in politics. Whether you're trying to seize power or just get your face on the latest cover of People magazine, a good dose of Machiavellian realism goes a long way. I would advise Lohan's enemies to watch their backs from now on.

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We once thought of obesity as the quintessential symbol of wealth and decadence. A problem of the rich West. Not so anymore: Fat is taking over the developing world as well. Around the globe, 1.6 billion people are overweight, 400 million of whom are obese. In fact—along with bird flu and HIV/AIDS—fat is the next global health threat of the 21st century, according to the World Health Organization. The problem? Trans fats, sugars, and a sedentary lifestyle form an often lethal cocktail that can result in diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer.

It's true, in countries where being able to stuff your belly is still a privilege (Mauritania, for instance), chubby is usually considered sexy. But the standards the WHO uses to measure obesity around the world have nothing to do with the Western notion that thin equals beautiful. This is science, and its verdict is clear: 30 percent of the population is overweight in India, Brazil, Thailand and Russia. China leads the rankings of child obesity. And according to the BBC, if we keep chowing down, by 2015 there will be 700 million obese people worldwide. My advice? Invest in Chinese fat camps now, while shares are still cheap.

Fast-rising oil prices and greenhouse gas emissions have reignited the debate over nuclear power. Some claim this type of energy is clean and safe; others argue that going nuclear is not the great green hope.  

KOICHI KAMOSHIDA/Getty Images News

On Monday, Mother Nature scored a point for the skeptics. An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 hit the coast of central Japan caused some leaks in the nuclear power plant near the city of Kashiwazaki. The Tokyo Electric Power Company told the BBC on Monday that "the small amount of radioactive material that leaked into the sea posed no environmental risk." The New York Times reports that this "small amount" was "317 gallons of water containing trace levels of radioactive materials."

This isn't the first time Japan has had problems with nukes, the BBC article notes:

The safety of Japan's nuclear installations, which supply much of Japan's power, have come under the spotlight in recent years after a string of accidents and mishaps.

But if Japan's jitters are enough to make us fret, what about Pakistan? President Musharraf's rule is not the only shaky thing in the country. Sitting right on top of the rift  between the Asian continent and the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan is one of the hottest seismological spots in the world. The latest brutal evidence of this came in in October of 2005, when an earthquake of magnitude 7.6 killed more than 86,000 people. 

Japan's sophisticated reactors shut down during Monday's earthquake, but I have my doubts that the same would have happened in Pakistan. Or consider Iran, where the same crowd that was responsible for Chernobyl is running the show. Are we sure nuclear energy is the best energy solution for developing countries? 

AFP

Trash—a munnezza, as they call it in southern Italy—is invading the streets of Naples. And though the city council just removed an impressive 4,000 tons of it, the International Herald Tribune reported recently that "egg shells, fermenting teddy bears, garlic, hair that looks human, boxes for blood pressure medicine, [and] scuzzy wine bottles" are still a common picture around town. A few enraged Neapolitans have protested by setting the trash on fire, and black-dressed elderly Italian women are blocking the railways in order to get the attention of public authorities.

Foreigners are amazed. Italians are ashamed.

It's gotten so bad that on Monday, the U.S. embassy urged tourists to stay away from Naples and its nasty smells. And Brussels is threatening EU penalties against Italy for allowing a health and environmental hazard to fester.

This is hardly the first time Naples has nearly drowned in its own refuse. In fact, it happens every summer. But why? Here are two clues:

1. There aren't enough dumpsters around town, but the city council hasn't bothered to add any in years.
2. When the official dumpsters are full, trash-deluged citizens must pay for illegal dumpsters managed by the camorra, the Neapolitan mafia.

Surely Passport readers can put two and two together here. I bet you thought that Tony Soprano's job in the waste-disposal business was a cover, right? We Italians know that garbage is the game, baby.

VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty Images

These days, Washington is looking more and more like Rome. Unfortunately, the similarity is not in sunny alleys, cobblestone streets, angel-hair pasta, or renaissance stone angels pouring water from fruit baskets. It's about politics.

The scandal over the firings of U.S. attorneys brought to light a practice that has long been at the heart of Italian political cuisine: "Generously sprinkle every government agency with loyal cronies."

And Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that he is immune from executive orders echoes former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's refusal to appear in court in a process against him because, as prime minister, he had much more compelling things to do.

President Bush's recent decision to commute Scooter Libby's sentence—which lawyers say will have deep implications for the U.S. legal system—is a classic of Italian politics 101: "screw the system, save your men!"

And yet, the Bush team still looks like a bunch of amateurs compared to its Italian counterparts. The latest? An Italian newspaper recently reported that the Italian secret services had been illegally monitoring left-leaning generals, judges, and journalists in order to discredit prominent critics of the former right-of-center government. Hopefully, the CIA has been the subject of too much bad press of late to take inspiration from this.

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Buoyed by the high price of oil, Brazilian President Ignacio Lula da Silva is trumpeting biofuels as an alternative. And now he says they could be a boon for the poor. And Lula, as quoted by Al Jazeera, seems to be taking a page out of Mao's little red book:

[E]veryone has the technology and the knowledge to dig a little hole of 30 centimeters to plant an oil plant that could produce energy, the energy they couldn't produce in the 20th century.

It's a sentiment that recalls one of Mao's famous exhortations during the Great Leap Forward—that every Chinese should smelt steel in his or her backyard. Lula's economics is not quite as bad as Mao's, but he's still full of it. Lula was responding to a recent report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, who are decidedly less enthusiastic. The rise of biofuels, the report makes clear, is no panacea for poverty.

In fact, Oil-exporting countries, net food importers, and the urban poor are all in for a rough ride thanks to biofuels. As gasoline starts to become so expensive that the world turns en masse to alternative fuels, oil-exporting countries in the Middle East will see their main source of revenue dry up. And since many types of biofuel are made from feedstock, the rising prices of crops such as corn will increase the cost of raising livestock and, ultimately, the price of food. Indeed, this is already happening, and it's bad news for the poor, who spend a significant chunk of their meager incomes on food. (It's also bad news for beer drinkers.)

So while Brazil's sugar producers may be cashing in on the ethanol boom, the hundreds of thousands of Brazilian favelados aren't exactly eager to ride the biofuel wave. After all, many of these people don't have yards in which to grow little "oil plants" ... nor running water, for that matter.

It's no surprise: the West is rich, the rest is poor. Seventy to ninety percent of global income flows to the top twenty percent of the world's population. But here's what you didn't know: A lot of that money is illicit. According to conservative estimates, under-the-table financial outflows from poor countries to rich countries amounted to $500-800 billion in the 1990s and 2000s. That's ten times more than the foreign aid that made its way from rich countries to poor countries during that same time period: a mere $50-80 billion. Raymond Baker, director of Global Financial Integrity, shared these numbers at a presentation he gave yesterday. He says that the trend of hiding cash in wealthy nations' bank accounts started in the 1960s when elites in the newly-independent developing world realized that they didn't need to tuck stacks of rolled-up currency under the mattresses. Sending it to safe havens in places like Zurich, London and Manhattan was far easier.

The ease with which dirty money travels around it the world is the biggest legal loophole of capitalism. It's made those sitting in the top twenty percent of the income tower a lot richer. But shouldn't it make them a little uncomfortable too?

FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP

A popular saying within the EU depicts politicians as having "the punctuality of the Italians, the flexibility of the Germans, and the humility of the French"—to which they now might want to add the marketing talents of, say, the Bulgarians.

Exhibit A: The European Commission is pushing something called "flexicurity" (pdf) as a way to sell its labor market reform plan to the EU Council and Parliament. As the Commission explains:

Flexicurity can be defined as an integrated strategy to enhance, at the same time, flexibility and security in the labor market.

The Commission's awkward marketing strategy reflects past failed attempts to shake-up Europe's labor markets. As the turmoil that torpedoed the career of Dominique De Villepin demonstrates, Europeans simply don't like reforms that cut into their cherished safety net in the name of greater labor market flexibility, no matter how clever the portmanteau used to describe them.

And yet, with unemployment rates hovering around 8 to 9 percent, Europe badly needs a shakeup, and the Commission's reform would do just that. And from the standpoint of textbook economics—where the U.S. labor market is the ideal type of flexibility and Europe a paradise of security—"flexicurity" isn't a bad name at all. It envisions more flexibility than in the current European labor markets, and more security than in the current U.S. system. But in the eyes of a European citizen, it just means increasing flexibility and cutting on security. And so, "flexicurity" is likely to be ridiculed as a blatant attempt to sweeten a bitter pill for Europeans to swallow.

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As Russia expert Dimitri Trenin notes, Russia's return to the world stage is more than a passing phenomenon. Russia has experienced eight consecutive years of economic growth, is about to join the WTO, and has laid eyes on OECD membership. High energy prices are keeping the economy rolling. No wonder President Vladimir Putin is laughing.

Yet at the same time, Russia often looks like a screaming child claiming its right to play power politics with the bigger kids. The Russians have missed few opportunities lately to create headaches for Western leaders. Consider Putin's speech in Munich, his address to the parliament, and his vitriolic rhetorical roundhouse before the G8 summit.

If Moscow is out to reclaim its great-power status, this is no way to go about it. Russia's foreign policy appears erratic and reactive. So although Russia has largely been a responsible member of the Middle East Quartet—which also includes the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations—it's not hard to imagine that some in the Kremlin see Hamas's coup in Gaza as a political opportunity to exploit. Keeping the region aflame and oil prices high is surely in Russia's interest, and Prussian President Vladimir Putin has played footsie with Hamas before. It would be tempting to break with the Quartet's policy of isolating the militant Islamic group.

But it would be a mistake for Russia to reprise the Soviet Union's role as champion of radical anti-Western groups in the Middle East. The world has become vastly more complicated since the end of the Cold War; no longer is a gain for the West necessarily a loss for Russia, and vice versa. Hang tight, Vlad!

Paul Kane/Getty Images News

Naval power isn't quite what it was in the days of U.S. naval officer and historian Alfred T. Mahan, but it's still a key differentiator between those countries that can power abroad, and those that can't. Nowhere is this more true than in the Pacific, where some of the world's largest and fiercest naval battles have been fought. And so it's interesting to note that Australian Defense Minister Brendan Nelson just announced a $9 billion plan to upgrade the country's naval forces. 

Did Australians suddenly turn into warmongers? Not likely.

This is part of a wider security shift in the Pacific. Late last year, U.S. diplomatic efforts managed to convince Japan to remain under the U.S. nuclear umbrella instead of  launching its own nuclear program in response to Pyongyang's nuclear tests in October of 2006. But it was a close call. Should Japan change its mind, it has enough enriched uranium to join the nuclear club in a matter of months. 

Kim Jong Il is not behind the recent Australian move (ever heard of the North Korean navy? Me neither). To the folks down under, the real scary thing is China. Beijing's recent test of anti-satellite missiles caught the world by surprise, and in March the Communist Party's decision to raise military spending triggered alarmist outcries in the media. 

Australian officials were taking notes. After securing a military pact with Japan, they decided it was time to go for some new hardware. And so five advanced destroyers and amphibious warships are on their way.

Nelson made clear in announcing the move that defense and security come before any other priorities for Australia. But then he immediately added:

It's not that we have hostile intent towards anybody."

Right. A war in economically booming Asia seems unthinkable. But as any realist will tell you, the road to war is often paved with well-intentioned military upgrades.

Last week, Hamas took control of Gaza. Now, writes Helene Cooper in the New York Times, the Bush administration's reaction is all about "West Bank First":

The United States and Europe appear in agreement that perhaps the only way to salvage some advantage from the Hamas victory in Gaza is to bolster Mr. Abbas in the West Bank, in order to provide Palestinians there and in Gaza with a preview of what life could be like with a pro-Western government in charge.

Let's set aside the fact that Abbas was in charge of a "pro-Western government" for years, and little good came of it—in fact, Hamas's electoral victory was the result. The emerging U.S. plan recalls American strategy during the Cold War: Keep West Berlin shiny and wealthy—as West Berlin's mayor Willy Brandt preached—and it will be a display window for East Germans and the rest of the communist world to envy.

Brandt's strategy was an amazing success. So would what worked for West Berlin be good for the West Bank as well?

Probably not. Unlike Brandt's, Mr. Abbas's authority in the West Bank is not unchallenged; unlike East Germany's government, Hamas has been democratically elected; unlike in Cold War Europe, there are three major players in the Palestinian Occupied Territories: Fatah, Hamas, and Israel.

But most importantly, "West Bank First" means isolating the enemy, Hamas, whereas Brandt's approach, known as Ostpolitik, was one of opening to the enemy, socialist Germany. No matter how rich and shiny, a display ain't that inviting if it carries a big sign saying "Keep Out." And that's probably what the West Bank would look like to the Palestinians in Gaza (which, by the way, is 40 miles away from the West Bank).

Alex Wong/Getty Images News

The Chinese government is in high dudgeon over U.S. President George W. Bush's recent tribute to the victims of communism.

Speaking at the dedication ceremony for a new memorial here in Washington on Tuesday, Bush made the following perfectly accurate statement:

According to the best scholarly estimate, communism took the lives of tens of millions of people in China and the Soviet Union.

China, although it has pretty much become a communist country in name only, didn't appreciate this one bit. A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry shot back:

Some political forces in the United States, driven by a Cold War mentality and by political imperatives, are provoking confrontation between ideologies and social systems.

Until President Bush made his entrance on stage, no one had yet heard any mention of Russia or China. Rep. Tom Lantos confined his bashing to Europe, expressing sympathy for "everyone who experienced communism from Albania to Estonia." Lantos also advised former French President Jacques Chirac to "go to the Normandy Beaches" and called former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder a "political prostitute" for working for Russian state-run energy giant Gazprom after leaving politics.

All in all, anyone who attended the event had the impression that the targets to be bashed had been allotted according to rank: Russia and China to the president, with Europe relegated to the congressman. Yet more proof of the inarrestable decline of European grandeur, perhaps?

Have you ever been dragged around ancient archaeological sites under a boiling-hot sun? If you grew up in Greece or—like me—in Italy, then you definitely have childhood memories of "ruin indigestion."

Enter Rome Reborn 1.0. Now you don't have to brave the blazing summer sun and trudge around endless fallen columns and past armless statues to see what ancient civilization once wrought: An international team of academics from Europe and the United States has digitally reconstructed imperial Rome as it appeared in A.D. 320. The team behind the project, a 10-year joint effort by the University of Virginia, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Italy's Politecnico di Milano, claims their reconstruction is "the biggest, most complete simulation of an historic city ever created."

Indeed, the model Rome seems very impressive. And as an Italian, I'm proud to note that my country provided not only its famous archaeologists and classicists, but also its best computer engineers. Gabriele Guidi of INDACO Lab at the Italian Politecnico di Milano—ScienceDaily reports—fairly bubbles with ambition:

The project was an enormous technical challenge, and now that we have successfully met it, we can easily start building up a library of other city models in museums around the world."

With its abundance of cultural heritage sites, Italy is the ideal place for further developing this branch of 3D modeling. And for Italy's universities, often castigated by The Economist, Rome Reborn 1.0 is a good chance to redeem their reputation.

After being stopped for drunk-driving ...

After violating her probation on the driving ban ...

After showing up late for her court hearing ...

After obtaining a reduction of her sentence from the original 45 days down to 23 days ...

After managing to get out of prison after only three days for unspecified health reasons ...

After pleading to be allowed to stay at home and listen to the second hearing by phone rather than showing up in court ...  

... a screaming and wailing Paris Hilton is back to prison.

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And once again she has taught rival heiress Nichole Richie a PR lesson: Now that Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan have done it, checking yourself into rehab is old news. If you really want to make headline news, shoot for prison.  

The court has reverted to the original sentence, and she's already served three days. So now and for the next 42 days, Paris may get more of a taste of what it's like to be one of the 737 out of every 100,000 U.S. residents that are in jail. (For more on that topic, see "Prison Planet," Roy Walmsley's piece on worldwide prison trends in our May/June issue.)

But in her special unit for celebrities, public officials, police officers, and high-profile inmates, it is doubtful anyone or anything will burst her bubble. She'll be the same old Paris Hilton when she comes out and—with the inevitable book memoirs and exclusive interviews about her dark days in Lynwood Detention Center—even richer than before.