The troubled U. S. -Canada relationship might be fixed by______.

The relationship between the U. S. and Canada should be as placid as Lake Ontario on a calm summer day. The border is undefended. Their peoples seem like cousins. Each is the other’s largest single trading partner. Yet there has been serious friction between the two neighbors in recent years — friction that might now be eased by the surprise election of a new Canadian Prime Minister.

When an economic crisis looms, Russians go shopping. As the ruble crashed through new lows last month, tills buzzed late into the night in the mega-malls that surround Moscow’s ring road as Muscovites rushed to buy Ikea sofas, new cars and washing machines. Russian state television, attempting to put a cheerful spin on the ruble’s collapse, reported the panic buying as a " consumer boom".