Top newsmakers this week
Joaquin Guzman
The man nicknamed “Mexico’s Osama bin Laden” and “Public Enemy No. 1” by Chicago’s crime commission won’t be able to sneak out of his latest arrest. Guzman, considered the most-wanted drug lord in the world for his leadership of the deadly international Sinaloa drug cartel, was finally apprehended by U.S.-backed Mexican soldiers after being on the run for 13 years. Let’s hope the capture sticks this time, as Guzman, who was serving a 20-year sentence for drug trafficking and murder, previously escaped from jail in 2001 by reportedly disguising himself in a police uniform.
Scott Brison and Maxime St-Pierre
While Liberals were in Montreal to plot the future of their party last weekend, the Liberal MP and his husband were busy becoming parents. Via Twitter, Brison, the Liberal finance critic, announced that he and St-Pierre were now the proud fathers of twin girls, Claire (seven pounds, 10 ounces) and Rose (eight pounds, four ounces) Brison-St-Pierre. In 2007, Brison became the first MP to marry his same-sex partner.
Jan Koum
The Hubble space telescope, the Large Hadron Collider, the 50 most expensive paintings ever sold: these are just some of the things Facebook could have bought with $19 billion, the valuation of the company’s stunning deal to purchase cross-platform messaging application WhatsApp. Not that Koum is complaining: the WhatsApp CEO’s Ukrainian immigrant family came from hardscrabble means, relying on disability payments when his mother developed cancer. And while it’s hard to truly root for a freshly minted 38-year-old billionaire, the fact Koum signed off on the WhatsApp sale on the doorstep of the same welfare office where his family once collected food stamps is too touching to ignore.
Terrence Prendergast
When friends, Romans, and countrymen lent Marc Antony their ears at the end of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, they heard him say, “I come to bury Caesar, not praise him.” The Ottawa archbishop is taking Antony at his word by issuing a decree that Catholics in the city must curb eulogies for loved ones, because they distract from the funeral mass’s reaf?rmation of faith through prayer. “Technically, the books that guide us don’t allow [eulogies], but they had crept in,” Prendergast told CBC.
Alec Baldwin
The famously combative actor is done with us all. In a wide-ranging screed for New York magazine, which the 30 Rock actor calls his final interview, he says he will no longer talk to the media about his personal life. If it’s true, he’s burning several bridges behind him, as his feature tells all on his feud with Shia LaBeouf, castigates ex-colleagues from his days as an MSNBC talk-show host, defends himself against claims of homophobia and calls TMZ founder Harvey Levin a “cretinous barnacle on the press.” Say what you like, but the man knows how to make an exit.