Erica Alini's blog

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images News

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. 

MARK WILSON/Getty Images News

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?

SEAN GALLUP/Getty Images News

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.

China Photos/Getty Images

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.