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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/YTI5fes6MYc/story01.htm
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Monday, November 28, 2011
University and College News: PREVIEW: Badman at John Moores University
YOUTUBE comedy hit Humza Arshad comes to Liverpool this week as part of a nationwide university comedy tour.
He has become arguably the UK?s most popular British Pakistani comedian after receiving millions of views for his Diary of a Badman series on the website.
The video diary chronicles the life of a self-styled ?Badman with seriously good looks? as he attempts to impress girls, survive marriage offers via Skype and escape the wrath of his rolling pin-wielding mum.
?Hopefully, the tour will show that British Pakistanis are about more than just kebab shops and taxis. Although, let?s face it? we do it best!? jokes Humza.
Azme Alishan, a Pakistani campaign that aims to shift perceptions about the country and its culture, is organising the tour.
A spokesman explains the campaign wants to bring Humza to a wider audience.
?Humza uses his Pakistani heritage to bring something special to his comedy,? says the spokesman. ?The Azme Alishan campaign in the UK is really excited to be part of the Badman phenomenon.?
Despite his massive appeal among young people of all backgrounds, the tour will be the first time Humza has taken his act nationwide.
It will feature the comedian treating fans to unseen footage from his YouTube series as well as live versions of favourites such as the comedy track Jam that Hype and the Badman VS Mum rap battle.
Humza will also be joined on stage by up and coming singers JP and Kalum. The London-based comedian, who studied acting at Croydon College and completed a drama degree at Richmond Drama School, made his first Badman video in September last year but it wasn?t until two months later that he released it after he was persuaded by friends and family.
He describes the character he has created as ?a stereotypical young guy in today?s society who gets into trouble but learns from his experiences?.
He?s now completed eight different videos, but stand-up is a new ball game.
Expect some improvisation and ?good messages? amongst the routine.
BADMAN comes to Liverpool John Moores University?s Art & Design Academy in Duckinfield Street, Liverpool on Friday, December 2 at 7pm.
Tickets are ?10 on http:// www.chillitickets.com
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Fractured town shows challenges ahead for Libya (Reuters)
BANI WALID, Libya (Reuters) ? Every revolution has its losers.
Libya's new rulers, who swept to power three months ago in a revolt against Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule, have promised the country a brighter future. In the biggest cities, celebratory gunfire and the war-cry "God is great" can still be heard daily.
In Bani Walid, long a stronghold for Gaddafi loyalists and one of their last bastions to fall during this year's civil war, the mood is entirely different.
On a quiet Friday morning -- the day of rest in this almost entirely Muslim country -- a middle-aged man drew the metal shutters of his shop closed to speak freely about how Libya's new leaders have brought this town nothing but empty promises.
"Under Gaddafi everything was great. And now there's nothing," he says, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by forces loyal to the National Transitional Council (NTC), which led the revolt against Gaddafi.
"They will find me," he says, adding angrily: "Anyone who tells the truth in Libya gets slaughtered."
Bani Walid, which sits on a rocky perch above a lush valley dotted with olive trees, is a town divided.
"Before the liberation, half the people were Gaddafi loyalists, half were with the revolution," said Tariq Faqi, a 28-year-old doctor who works at the town's hospital, after Friday prayers at the Abdel Nabbi bil Kheir Mosque.
"Now they accept reality and they're waiting to see what happens ... People feel they can't trust the new government until they see improvement."
SECURITY
After the fall of Tripoli three months ago, Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam hid among the town's 100,000 or so inhabitants. He says Western warplanes fired on his convoy as he fled, and their missiles blew off part of his thumb and index finger.
Bani Walid is also home to the Warfalla tribe, the biggest in this vast, oil-rich country of roughly six million people, and one upon which Gaddafi often relied to stay in power.
Here as all over Libya, security remains one of the top concerns. A militia from Tripoli, a good two hours' drive away, conducted a raid in Bani Walid this week, sparking a firefight in which several people were killed on each side.
Talks between tribal elders have eased tensions, and most people interviewed felt life had since returned to normal, but residents disagreed over how much faith to place in a central government they said had yet to deliver concrete results.
A provisional national government was sworn in on Thursday with the aim of steering the country toward democracy and dealing with the most pressing problems, with elections to a constituent assembly due in the middle of next year.
The new government was put in place by the unelected NTC, which still wields significant influence over all government matters and had the final say in each of Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib's cabinet appointments.
The country is still teeming with weapons, and Libya's new rulers have yet to disarm and make an army out of the patchwork of militias that roam the country, often far from their homes, occasionally clashing with each other, settling old scores.
Keib says his top priorities are improving security and looking after former rebel fighters and their families, but if he is to convince all of Bani Walid of the benefits of democracy, he will have to tackle a far wider range of issues.
"The situation now is good," school administrator Abdullah Mohammed, 36, said when asked about security, standing next to the mosque which, unusually, was damaged in the war, a testament to the intensity of the fighting that took place here.
"There was an incident two days ago but now it's getting better," he added as he left Friday prayers, echoing the sentiment of many who described the raid by men from Tripoli's Souq al-Juma neighborhood as an isolated case.
While many residents said they did not want any more armed "outsiders" coming to their town after a war in which many local homes were destroyed and looted, most said they were happy for a national army to come and help secure the town.
"We want Libya to be united. We don't want any problems between us," bank employee Garera Salem Mohammed, 52, said in a largely empty square bearing the scars of war.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
Bani Walid's position on a hilltop made it virtually impregnable by ground forces alone. To take it, warplanes from Western countries in the NATO alliance pounded Gaddafi's forces while NTC troops battered the town with artillery.
At the fruit and vegetable market, the most common complaint was that banks had not reopened yet, as they have in Libya's cities, even though there is a nationwide restriction on monthly cash withdrawals.
"The market is dead. No one has any money with which to buy anything," said Munir Ali Muftah, 24, who was finding no takers for his dates and took shelter from the still-warm winter sun under his neighbor's tarpaulin roof.
"The people whose homes have been destroyed are not back yet," he added.
Of the market's few customers, most said they hoped the central government would bring an improvement in daily life but did not want to go so far as to predict it, replying simply with "insh'Allah" -- God willing -- when asked about the future.
Others were already growing impatient.
"We haven't seen anything from the new government. There's no money, there are no funds available for anything," said Moussa Juma Maymoun, 46, who was selling cigarettes, lighters and snuff stacked on the trunk of his car.
"In the former system, our situation was good. Everything was fine. But now everything is different. When you talk about elections and democracy, where is the democracy?" said Maymoun, who used to water olive trees for the agriculture ministry.
As the government begins to tackle all the problems of a country emerging from decades of dictatorship, it should think of the victims of this eight-month war as much as of the NTC fighters who emerged victorious, the local doctor said.
"Many of the civilians evacuated (during the war). They returned to find their homes destroyed, their belongings stolen. The government must take this into consideration and do something for them," Faqi said outside the mosque.
"Their priority should be the civilians, at least as much as the rebels. Civilians suffered a great deal in this country."
With national security still fragile and myriad factions continuing to compete for power ahead of next year's elections, the government would only achieve national unity by helping the war's losers as well as its winners.
"Educated people realize things can improve over time and are willing to be patient but here there are all levels of education," Faqi said.
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes and Taha Zargoun, editing by Peter Millership)
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Sunday, November 27, 2011
"A Separation," "Anatolia" win top Asian Pacific Screen Awards (omg!)
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Two Oscar foreign-language contenders, Iran's "A Separation" and Turkey's "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia," were the big winners at Thursday's Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which took place in Queensland, Australia.
"A Separation," directed and written by Asghar Farhadi, was named Best Feature Film. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" won awards for Achievement in Directing and Achievement in Cinematography, as well as receiving the Screen International Jury Grand Prize.
The two winners "are very different kinds of films, but both of them are the same in their excellence in every aspect of their filmmaking: from screenplay, to directing, to performances, to their technical craftsmanship such as cinematography and editing, everything," said APSA International Jury president Nansun Shi in a release announcing the winners.
Established in 2007, the Asia Pacific Screen Awards are an initiative of the government of Queensland, Australia, in collaboration with UNESCO and the International Federation of Film Producers. They are open to films from the Asia-Pacific region, an enormous area that stretches from Egypt to the Cook Islands, and from Russia to New Zealand.
Previous winners include China's "Aftershock," Australia's "Samson & Delilah" and Kazakhstan's "Tulpan."
The winners:
Best Feature Film: "A Separation"
Best Children's Feature Film: "Buta"; High Commendation: "Wind and Fog"
Best Animated Feature Film: "Leafie"
Best Documentary Feature Film: "I Was Worth 50 Sheep"; High Commendation: "Pink Saris"
Achievement in Directing: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia"
Achievement in Cinematography: Gokhan Tiryaki, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia"; High Commendation: Andrei Zviagintsev, "For Elena"
Best Screenplay: Denis Osokin, "Silent Souls"; High Commendation: Yoon Sung-Hyun, "Bleak Night"
Best Performance by an Actress: Nadezhda Markina, "For Elena"
Best Performance by an Actor: Wang Baoqiang, "Mr. Tree"
Screen International Grand Jury Prize: "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia"; High Commendation: Nahed El Sebai, Bushra and Nelly Karim, "Cairo 678"
FIAPF Award: Zhang Yimou
UNESCO Award: "For Toomelah"
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Italy's brightest look abroad for opportunity (Reuters)
ROME (Reuters) ? After working as an unpaid intern for 18 months in Italy, Massimo Fantini decided to try his chances abroad. Within five years he had a good job in a major multinational, had bought a house and had got married.
"If I had stayed in Italy, none of this would have been possible," said Fantini, speaking by telephone from New York.
"When I talk to my friends who stayed behind, I can hear their frustration. They are losing their energy and their dreams. That is the worst thing you can do to someone," added the 34-year-old accountant.
Fantini is one of a growing number of highly qualified young Italians who feel forced to take their skills elsewhere because of the economic turmoil, bureaucratic red tape and deep-seated cultural constraints that weigh on their aging country.
The problem has become so acute that the Italian parliament has passed legislation trying to entice the emigrants to return, but newly installed Prime Minister Mario Monti will have to go much further with the reforms if he hopes to halt the exodus.
Italy has a long tradition of emigration, with an estimated 25 million Italians searching work abroad between 1876-1970. Whereas in the past, it was mainly the unskilled and uneducated who packed their bags, now it is well-trained graduates.
Although there are no official statistics specifically on university leavers, Italian business lobby Confimpreseitalia estimated in a recent report that 120,000 young Italians moved abroad in 2008/09, 70 percent of whom were graduates.
Sergio Nava, a journalist who has written a book and blog tracking what he terms the "la fuga dei talenti" (the flight of the talented), believes the economic crisis that has engulfed Italy in recent months has only made matters worse.
"Italy is a country dominated by old men. They give work to people they know and trust, rather than to those with the best qualifications. It is a nightmare for young people," he said.
"This is bringing Italy to its knees," he added.
NOT MUCH WORK, EVEN LESS PAY
Italy has far fewer graduates than most EU countries, with just 19.8 percent of Italians aged between 30 and 34 holding a degree against an EU average of 33.6 percent, according to the European Union statistics office, Eurostat.
And yet, Italy had the highest number of jobless graduates for more than six months (58 percent), while average monthly pay for those lucky enough to find work was put at just 1,078 euros ($1,535) in 2009 by AlmaLaurea, a higher education jobs service.
By contrast, the average starting salary for graduates in the United States that year was $4,042 and $2,800 in Britain.
To make matter worse, Italian firms invariably offer graduates a string of short-term, or "precarious" contracts, reserving the perks and job protection for older workers.
The lack of work, low pay and shaky contracts means that nearly a third of Italians in their early 30s still live at home with mamma and papa -- a figure that has tripled since 1983 and forced people to delay starting families.
"If I went back to Italy I would have to give up most of my independence," said Fantini, who co-founded an association to help other Italian professionals moving to New York.
"Do our leaders, who are all in their 60s or older, understand that? Can they put themselves in our shoes?"
Monti, 68, was sworn into office on November 16 by Italy's 86-year-old president, Giorgio Napolitano. The average age of his cabinet of technocrats, tasked with digging the country out of a gathering debt crisis, is 63.
Calling the young one of Italy's "great wasted resources," Monti promised to free up the economy and reform closed-door guilds - 28 professional bodies that guard their long-standing privileges ferociously, making it hard for bright youngsters to get ahead in a broad range of jobs.
ATTACKING THE CARTELS
Various governments have tried to take on these wealthy lobbies in the past and have almost always failed, to the despair of graduates who complain that the cartels foster rampant nepotism while strangling competition in key sectors.
"Some great talent is leaving Italy because of its medieval approach to hiring people. It is not what you have done, but who you know, or who you have slept with," said Alessandro Capata, a Rome academic actively seeking work abroad.
"If you want to work in a supermarket you can find a job. But if you want to be an architect, a dentist or a journalist then you will really struggle. It is a feudal system."
Berlusconi had promised to tackle the problem, but Stefano Saglia, the undersecretary for economic development in his administration, acknowledged that little headway was made.
"Certainly someone needs to have the courage to carry out a reform," he told Reuters. "Politicians are always frightened of protest ... but perhaps a government of technocrats will have more success because they aren't running after every vote."
Saglia co-sponsored a rare cross-party bill in 2010 which offered tax breaks to Italians under 40 who were living abroad to try and lure them home. There is no sign that the measure is having an impact, and all the while Italy is losing out.
A study by the Italian Competition Institute estimates Italy lost four billion euros over the past 20 years in terms of revenues from patents that expatriate Italian scientists filed abroad. The Confimpreseitalia business group estimates that Italy's brain drain had cost the country 5.9 billion euros.
While graduate emigration is not unique to Italy, the Organization for Economic Coordination and Development, says very few educated foreigners want to come here, despite the fine weather and great food. In a 2001 survey, it said that only 57,515 graduates from OECD countries worked in Italy, while 395,229 Italians with tertiary education had moved abroad.
However, Nava, who has a weekly show on Radio 24 where he interviews Italian expatriates, is convinced that the flows could be reversed, if the government acted decisively.
"Many of the people I talk to want to come back. They see that the country is in great difficulty and that there isn't much time to sort things out. But before they return, Italy will have to become a more attractive place to live," he said.
(Editing by Giles Elgood)
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Mexico acknowledges 2nd Mayan reference to 2012 (AP)
MEXICO CITY ? Mexico's archaeology institute downplays theories that the ancient Mayas predicted some sort of apocalypse would occur in 2012, but on Thursday it acknowledged that a second reference to the date exists on a carved fragment found at a southern Mexico ruin site.
Most experts had cited only one surviving reference to the date in Mayan glyphs, a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco.
But the National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement that there is in fact another apparent reference to the date at the nearby Comalcalco ruin. The inscription is on the carved or molded face of a brick. Comalcalco is unusual among Mayan temples in that it was constructed of bricks.
Arturo Mendez, a spokesman for the institute, said the fragment of inscription had been discovered years ago and has been subject to thorough study. It is not on display and is being kept in storage at the institute.
The "Comalcalco Brick," as the second fragment is known, has been discussed by experts in some online forums. Many still doubt that it is a definite reference to Dec. 21, 2012 or Dec. 23, 2012, the dates cited by proponents of the theory as the possible end of the world.
"Some have proposed it as another reference to 2012, but I remain rather unconvinced," David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a message to The Associated Press.
Stuart said the date inscribed on the brick "'is a Calendar Round,' a combination of a day and month position that will repeat every 52 years."
The brick date does coincide with the end of the 13th Baktun; Baktuns were roughly 394-year periods and 13 was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas. The Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3114 B.C., and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.
But the date on the brick could also correspond to similar dates in the past, Stuart said.
"There's no reason it couldn't be also a date in ancient times, describing some important historical event in the Classic period. In fact, the third glyph on the brick seems to read as the verb huli, "he/she/it arrives."
"There's no future tense marking (unlike the Tortuguero phrase), which in my mind points more to the Comalcalco date being more historical that prophetic," Stuart wrote.
Both inscriptions ? the Tortuguero tablet and the Comalcalco brick ? were probably carved about 1,300 years ago and both are cryptic in some ways.
The Tortuguero inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.
However, erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible, though some read the last eroded glyphs as perhaps saying, "He will descend from the sky."
The Comalcalco brick is also odd in that the molded or inscribed faces of the bricks were probably laid facing inward or covered with stucco, suggesting they were not meant to be seen.
The Institute of Anthropology and History has long said rumors of a world-ending or world-changing event in late December 2012 are a Westernized misinterpretation of Mayan calendars.
The institute repeated Thursday that "western messianic thought has twisted the cosmovision of ancient civilizations like the Maya."
The institute's experts say the Mayas saw time as a series of cycles that began and ended with regularity, but with nothing apocalyptic at the end of a given cycle.
Given the strength of Internet rumors about impending disaster in 2012, the institute is organizing a special round table of 60 Mayan experts next week at the archaeological site of Palenque, in southern Mexico, to "dispel some of the doubts about the end of one era and the beginning of another, in the Mayan Long Count calendar."
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Saturday, November 26, 2011
Afghan president condemns killing of 7 (AP)
KABUL, Afghanistan ? Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Thursday condemned the killing of six children and an adult in the southern part of the country that local officials blame on a NATO airstrike.
Karzai's office said in a statement that local officials said NATO was responsible for the incident in the Zharzai district of Kandahar province.
NATO said that Gen. John Allen ? the top U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan ? ordered an investigation into the incident, which occurred Wednesday.
The statement said Allen was saddened by the incident, which it said "concerns several civilians being killed and injured. This unfortunate incident occurred when coalition forces identified, and responded to, offensive actions by insurgents."
"Protecting the Afghan civilian population is central to our mission here in Afghanistan, and we will investigate this situation fully to determine exactly what took place and whether any further actions need to be taken," Allen said. "As was President Karzai, I too was saddened by this event."
It came as other violence flared around the country, as insurgents seeking to overthrown Karzai's government kept up their campaign of violence around Afghanistan.
An Afghan provincial official said seven Afghan guards working for a private security company were killed in the west of the country when Taliban militants attacked a convoy carrying goods for NATO.
A spokesman for the governor of western Farah province, Nakibullah Farai, said the Thursday attack lasted two hours and ended after Afghan police intervened. He said there were no foreign troops involved.
Farai said 10 vehicles were also destroyed in the attack. He says he does not know if there were Taliban casualties.
Earlier, Karzai nominated a U.S.-educated banker as the new governor of the country's central bank, his spokesman said Thursday.
Presidential spokesman Hamid Elmi named the candidate as Noorullah Delawari. His nomination comes after a five month vacancy in the post caused by turmoil in Afghanistan's banking system due to the near-collapse of the Kabul Bank, once the country's largest private financial institution.
Parliament is expected to discuss its approval of the appointment on Saturday, said lawmaker Gul Pacha Majeidi.
Delawari is a former central bank governor who now sits on the institution's governing board. He will replace Abdul Qadir Fitrat, who fled to northern Virginia in late June after claiming to have received threats to his life in connection with Kabul Bank scandal.
Kabul Bank became a symbol of the country's deep-rooted corruption, and the case was closely followed by Afghans and international donors because it is widely perceived to be a test of the government's pledge to root out patronage and graft.
Afghanistan's financial system appears to be slowly recovering from the aftereffects of the near-collapse, which required a massive central bank bailout.
Last week, the IMF approved a three-year $133.6 million loan for Afghanistan because it found the government had taken steps to address governance and accountability issues that surfaced during the Kabul Bank crisis. The decision reassured international donors, many whom had withheld aid while waiting for the IMF decision.
The Kabul Bank has been split into two parts, a healthy one being run by the Afghan Finance Ministry, and another which is has taken over hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans. The Afghan government hopes to put the healthy bank up for sale in the middle of next year.
In October, the Afghan Finance Ministry said that of the more than $800 million in fraudulent loans issued by Kabul Bank, more than $70 million has been recovered; $350 million in loans have been restructured for repayment; and $110 million in assets associated with the loans have been seized and transferred to the government.
Delawari, who is in his mid-60s, also heads the Afghan Investment Support Agency. The Afghan government set up the agency in September 2003 as a one-stop shop for investors. The agency oversees registration, licensing and promotion of new investments in Afghanistan.
Delawari left Afghanistan in the 1960s and studied in the United States and Britain. He worked at several banks in the United States, including 16 years as vice president of the multinational division of Lloyds Bank of California.
Since returning to Afghanistan in 2002, Delawari has also been an adviser to the president. He was governor of Afghanistan's central bank from November 2004 to December 2007.
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UK calls for climate deal by 2015
24 November 2011
Last updated at 12:12 ET
The UK's climate secretary has called on delegates at next week's UN climate summit to agree on a way to deliver a legally-binding global treaty by 2015.
It should "start to bite" into emissions by 2020, Chris Huhne said.
He embarked on a potential crash course with developing countries by suggesting each should pledge action appropriate to its level of development.
The developing world's overt line is to keep the firewall between "rich" and "poor" in the UN climate convention.
In a speech at London's Imperial College, Mr Huhne observed: "China is not, and will not be, the same as Chad or India.
"We need to move to a system that reflects the genuine diversity of responsibility and capacity, rather than a binary one that says you are 'developed' if you happened to be in the OECD in 1992."
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Kuwait all exceed the EU average per-capita GDP, while Brunei, Israel, The Bahamas and South Korea are among those not far behind.
Yet the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) puts them all in the big basket of "developing countries".
The developing world, through the powerful G77/China bloc, maintains that western countries are the only ones that must make actual cuts in their emissions because of the historical responsibility they bear.
Nations that industrialised first - such as the UK, US and Germany - have put much more CO2 into the atmosphere than others; and their primary responsibility is enshrined in the UNFCCC.
Mohammed Al-Sabban, Saudi Arabia's chief climate negotiator, put the point forcefully this week in an email to BBC News.
"Saudi Arabia, along with other developing countries, cannot accept to re-negotiate the existing UNFCCC convention - its principles, its commitments, or any of its provisions," he wrote.
"The differentiated responsibility between developed and developing countries was based on the historical responsibility of the developed countries, and has nothing to do with the new economic reality of some developing countries, as some developed countries are arguing."
Instead, he said, developed nations inside the Kyoto Protocol - all bar the US, basically - must re-negotiate future emission cuts inside the protocol's mechanisms.
A number - Canada, Japan and Russia - have made plain that they will not do that.
And Mr Huhne said that although the EU was not opposed to Mr Al-Sabban's position, the Kyoto Protocol countries only account for 15% of the world's emissions, so it would not be enough on its own to meet internationally agreed climate targets.
A technical briefing note prepared for a recent meeting of the BASIC group of countries (Brazil, South Africa, China and India) argued that climate targets could be met if the traditional "rich" bloc went into "negative" emissions - sucking more CO2 from the air than it emits - between now and 2050.
Bridging the divideMr Huhne's comments reflect the fact that some developing countries do privately accept that revisiting the existing definition of "rich" and "poor" would be a good idea.
Continue reading the main storyIn a meeting in the UK parliament last month, Xie Zhenhua, the minister in charge of China's climate policy, did not rule out the possibility that it could begin to cut its emissions soon after 2020, rather than just restrain their rise as it does now.
"China will make commitments that are appropriate for its development stage," he said.
In recent days, a number of nations - including the US and Japan - have said a new climate treaty cannot be countenanced before 2018, and probably not by 2020, putting a dampener on the fortnight-long UN negotiations that open in Durban, South Africa, on Monday.
But Mr Huhne pointed to scientific studies showing emissions should have begun to fall by that date, or shortly afterwards; which means the terms of a new treaty should be negotiated by 2015.
"We won't get that signed and sealed at Durban; but if we can at least get everybody agreed on what the objective is, that means we can then go on to do the details and get global emissions coming down well in time for 2020," he told BBC News.
"Only a comprehensive, legally-binding agreement for all can provide the clarity we need," he said.
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Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-15874995
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Friday, November 25, 2011
Ruth Stone, award-winning poet, dies in Vt. at 96 (AP)
Ruth Stone, an award-winning poet for whom tragedy halted, then inspired a career that started in middle age and thrived late in life as her sharp insights into love, death and nature received ever-growing acclaim, has died in Vermont. She was 96.
Stone, who for decades lived in a farmhouse in Goshen, died Nov. 19 of natural causes at her home in Ripton, her daughter Phoebe Stone said Thursday. She was surrounded by her daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Widowed in her 40s and little known for years after, Ruth Stone became one of the country's most honored poets in her 80s and 90s, winning the National Book Award in 2002 for "In the Next Galaxy" and being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for "What Love Comes To." She received numerous other citations, including a National Book Critics Circle award, two Guggenheims and a Whiting Award.
She was born Ruth Perkins in 1915, the daughter of printer and part-time drummer Roger Perkins. A native of Roanoke, Va., who spent much of her childhood in Indianapolis, Ruth was a creative and precocious girl for whom poetry was almost literally mother's milk; her mother would recite Tennyson while nursing her. A beloved aunt, Aunt Harriette, worked with young Ruth on poetry and illustrations and was later immortalized, with awe and affection, in the poem "How to Catch Aunt Harriette."
By age 19, Stone was married and had moved to Urbana, Ill., studying at the University of Illinois. There, she met Walter Stone, a graduate student and poet who became the love of her life, well after his ended. "You, a young poet working/in the steel mills; me, married, to a dull chemical engineer," she wrote of their early, adulterous courtship, in the poem "Coffee and Sweet Rolls."
She divorced her first husband, married Stone and had two daughters (she also had a daughter from her first marriage). By 1959, he was on the faculty at Vassar and both were set to publish books. But on a sabbatical in England, Walter Stone hung himself, at age 42, a suicide his wife never got over or really understood.
In the poem "Turn Your Eyes Away," she remembered seeing his body, "on the door of a rented room/like an overcoat/like a bathrobe/ hung from a hook." He would recur, ghostlike, in poem after poem. "Actually the widow thinks/he may be/in another country in disguise," she writes in "All Time is Past Time." In "The Widow's Song," she wonders "If he saw her now/would he marry her?/The widow pinches her fat/on her abdomen."
Her first collection, "In an Iridescent Time," came out in 1959. But Stone, depressed and raising three children alone, moving around the country to wherever she could find a teaching job, didn't publish her next book, "Topography and Other Poems," until 1971. Another decade-long gap preceded her 1986 release "American Milk."
Her life stabilized in 1990 when she became a professor of English and creative writing at the State University of New York in Binghamton. Most of her published work, including "American Milk," "The Solution" and "Simplicity," came out after she turned 70.
Her poems were brief, her curiosity boundless, her verse a cataloguing of what she called "that vast/confused library, the female mind." She considered the bottling of milk; her grandmother's hair, "pulled back to a bun"; the random thoughts while hanging laundry (Einstein's mustache, the eyesight of ants).
"I think my work is a natural response to my life," she once said. "What I see and feel changes like a prism, moment to moment; a poem holds and illuminates. It is a small drama. I think, too, my poems are a release, a laughing at the ridiculous and songs of mourning, celebrating marriage and loss, all the sad baggage of our lives. It is so overwhelming, so complex."
Aging and death were steady companions ? confronted, lamented and sometimes kidded, like in "Storage," in which her "old" brain reminds her not to weep for what was lost: "Listen ? I have it all on video/at half the price," the poet is warned.
Stone was not pious ? "I am not one/who God can hope to save by dying twice" ? but she worshipped the world and counted its blessings. In "Yes, Think," she imagines a caterpillar pitying its tiny place in the universe and "getting even smaller." Nature herself smiles and responds:
___
"You are a lovely link
in the great chain of being
Think how lucky it is to be born."
___
Associated Press Writer Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.
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Greek conservative leader backs fiscal targets
A protester sits next to banner, reading "We resist," hang outside the electricity company's logistics building, during the third day of the occupation against a new property tax that has been added to consumers' power bills, in Athens, Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011. Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted Wednesday that Greece can only receive its next vital batch of bailout loans if Greek coalition parties commit in writing to a separate international aid package, ensuring support for painful austerity measures tied to the money. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
A protester sits next to banner, reading "We resist," hang outside the electricity company's logistics building, during the third day of the occupation against a new property tax that has been added to consumers' power bills, in Athens, Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011. Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted Wednesday that Greece can only receive its next vital batch of bailout loans if Greek coalition parties commit in writing to a separate international aid package, ensuring support for painful austerity measures tied to the money. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
A man walks past lines of washing hanging out to dry in an estate built for refugees from the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 in Nikaia, southern Athens, on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011. Germany insisted Wednesday that near-bankrupt Greece can only receive its next vital batch of bailout loans if the three parties in the country's interim coalition government commit in writing to a separate international aid package. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
An old lady walks through an estate built for refugees from the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 in Nikaia, southern Athens, on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011. Germany insisted Wednesday that near-bankrupt Greece can only receive its next vital batch of bailout loans if the three parties in the country's interim coalition government commit in writing to a separate international aid package. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
A lady walks up the steps to her home in a housing estate built for refugees from the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 in Nikaia, southern Athens, on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011. Germany insisted Wednesday that near-bankrupt Greece can only receive its next vital batch of bailout loans if the three parties in the country's interim coalition government commit in writing to a separate international aid package. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
ATHENS, Greece (AP) ? In an abrupt U-turn, Greece's conservative junior coalition leader has written to international creditors telling them he backed the country's fiscal targets, clearing a major sticking point to get a desperately needed loan that will prevent a devastating Greek bankruptcy.
In a letter Wednesday to the heads of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, Antonis Samaras said his conservative New Democracy party also supports many of the austerity measures the debt-wracked country has already implemented.
The letter was made public hours after German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a blunt warning that rescue loans would remain frozen until Greece's fiscal targets received cross-party backing.
While naming public expenditure cutting, fighting tax evasion, structural reforms, and privatizations among the measures he backs, Samaras made no mention of tax hikes to bolster flagging state revenues, which he has vocally opposed in the past ? advocating tax cuts instead.
"On the evidence of the budget execution so far, we believe that certain policies have to be modified," Samaras wrote. "We intend to bring these issues to discussion, along with viable policy alternatives."
Heading for a fourth year of deep recession and with unemployment at a record high, Greece has implemented repeated pension and wage cuts ? coupled with heavy tax increases and a rise in retirement ages ? to cut bloated budget deficits. The deeply resented austerity measures have triggered a series of violent protests over the past two years, with the country's two biggest labor unions calling a new general strike for next week.
Greece's international creditors have insisted that Samaras, along with other party leaders supporting the country's new interim coalition government, must commit in writing to backing the country's new euro130 billion ($174 billion) bailout plan approved last month.
Otherwise, the vital next euro8 billion ($10.71 billion) loan installment ? from the euro110 billion bailout agreed on in May 2010 ? will not be released.
German Chancellor Merkel spelled that out again earlier Wednesday.
"The Greek question is still unresolved because we do not yet have the preconditions to pay out the next installment," Merkel told Parliament in Berlin.
Greece's second international bailout includes provisions for banks and other private holders of Greek bonds to write off 50 percent of their Greek debt holdings, potentially cutting the country's debt by euro100 billion ($134 billion).
Without the next loan installment, Greece would go bankrupt before Christmas and could eventually be kicked out of the 17-member eurozone, reverting to a devalued version of its pre-2002 drachma currency.
The country's central bank governor dramatically highlighted the quandary, saying Wednesday that the Oct. 26 new bailout deal was "a last chance" for Greece to keep using the euro.
Presenting the bank's interim monetary policy report, George Provopoulos urged the government to clean up its act and avoid new deviations from fiscal revival policies.
"We must quicken our pace, not only to reach our targets but to surpass them," he said. "Because what's at stake now is very large: whether we remain in the euro. So I think most Greeks have no question when it comes to this type of dilemma. We must succeed."
The report said Greece has so far failed to persuade markets and ordinary citizens that it can make its cost-cutting and reform targets.
"The situation remains critical," the report said. "Economic policy has often been conducted in a piecemeal manner, indecisively, with backtracking and delays, and following rather than leading developments."
It added that the government is focused on "indiscriminate and across-the-board approaches ... to curtail public spending, while the mechanisms that are inherently cost-generating remain untouched; this outcome prevails because the public administration is unable to work out targeted solutions, which would be more effective and socially more equitable."
The report said the economy is expected to shrink by 5.5 percent or more in 2011, before slowing to 2.8 percent next year and reverting to modest growth in 2013.
Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos' new government was appointed earlier this month after political turmoil led to the resignation of Socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou. Papademos is a former central banker and deputy head of the European Central Bank. The technocratic government is expected to lead Greece until early elections in February.
___
Juergen Baetz reported from Berlin. Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed.
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Thursday, November 24, 2011
Influential jazz drummer Paul Motian dies in NYC (AP)
NEW YORK ? Longtime jazz drummer and composer Paul Motian, who came to prominence as a member of pianist Bill Evans' trio in the late 1950s and influenced a generation of musicians with his astounding sense of time, died Tuesday at age 80.
Motian died at a Manhattan hospital because of complications of a bone marrow disorder, said friend and bandmate Joe Lovano, a tenor saxophonist who began performing with him in 1981.
"He was a hard-swinging free jazz drummer with an uncanny sense of time-phrasing and form that was beyond description," Lovano said.
Motian, who grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and spent time in the Navy, came to the forefront while a member of Evans' trio in the late 1950s and early 1960s, playing on landmark recordings such as "Waltz for Debby" and "Sunday at the Village Vanguard." He also had longtime partnerships with pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Charlie Haden and guitarist Bill Frisell.
Lovano called him a "true natural and one of the most expressive musicians in jazz."
"His touch and sound, sense of dynamics were so personal and unmatched," Lovano said.
Motian's career also included stints as a bandleader, beginning with the album "Conception Vessel" in 1972, and as a composer of works Lovano characterized as "hauntingly beautiful." As a leader, he recorded nearly three dozen albums for the ECM, Winter & Winter and JMT labels.
"As a composer he wrote pieces of music that were vehicles for improvisation," Lovano said.
Even after Motian stopped touring he continued to perform and record, mostly in New York and most often at the Village Vanguard jazz club, where he last performed in September, according to Lovano. His repertoire included originals, American songbook standards and traditional bebop.
Jarrett said Motian was a good drummer because he "understood composition."
"A lot of drummers are good drummers because they have some understanding of rhythm," Jarrett told The New York Times. "Paul had an innate love of song."
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Clinton announces $10 million in Thailand flood relief aid, Bangkok distracted by politics
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a $10 million aid package for Thailand flood relief during a visit to Bangkok Wednesday.
Both US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon paid visits to Bangkok today as a fierce political debate threatens to destabilize the flood-ravaged country.
Skip to next paragraphMrs. Clinton announced more than $10 million in extra flood relief assistance, telling media in Bangkok that she ?admired the resilience of the Thai government and people.?
Areas of the capital, Bangkok, are still under water almost four months after the Thailand's worst-ever floods grabbed headlines worldwide. The official death toll is now at 564, and several neighborhoods of Bangkok were today ordered to evacuate as water slowly drains through Bangkok toward the sea.?
The night before the high profile arrivals, however, the Thai government discussed an official pardon for some 26,000 felons, possibly including fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a September 2006 coup and faces two years jail time for corruption in office.
The mere hint of his return to Thailand has riled the country's opposition.
The pardon was discussed by the Thai cabinet on Tuesday and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ? Thaksin's younger sister ? will present the country's King Bhumibol Adulyadej with a list of names for pardon to mark the monarch's 84th birthday on Dec. 5.
While the focus of the Clinton visit was on the disaster and on the upcoming Asia-Pacific summit meetings in Bali, Indonesia, the pardon eventually came up.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra sidestepped the issue, however, reminding journalists that she wasn't present when the pardon was discussed and suggested that the matter was in the hands, for now, of Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubumrung.
Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva said today that any move to pardon Thaksin would undermine the rule of law in Thailand. He is expected to take up the issue in parliament.
Clinton made no comment on the pardon issue, but praised the work of the truth and reconciliation body set up by the former Thai government to investigate the Thaksin-backed "redshirt" street protests that turned ugly in 2010, killing 91 people.
The latest pardon attempt increases the possibility of new protests in the country.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Mega Buzz: A Grey's Romance, an Emotional Bones and a Desperate Hookup (omg!)
Every week, editors Adam Bryant and Natalie Abrams satisfy your need for TV scoop. Please send all questions?to mega_scoop@tvguide.com.
Will Mark and Lexie ever get back together on Grey's Anatomy? -- Jeannie
NATALIE: Just because Jackson and Lexie broke up doesn't mean that Lexie will go running back to Mark, particularly since he isn't single at the moment. Yes, Julia will still very much be in the picture when Grey's returns in January, though don't expect Lexie to throw any more softballs at her chest -- not literal softballs anyway.
Can you tell us anything about next week's Bones? I heard that David Boreanaz killed it! ? montgomerysloan, via Twitter
ADAM: How did you hear that? (Do tell.) I can confirm that Booth will receive some very tragic news from his grandfather, and Boreanaz's performance is pretty devastating. Fortunately, Booth has a great support system in Brennan, who will keep her usual iciness in check. But will she be able to keep her bangin' new pregnancy body in check??? Yeah, the episode won't be all tears.
I'm kind of dreading Bree's relapse on Desperate Housewives. Please tell me they'll get it over with quick. -- Isabel
NATALIE: How to put this? Alcohol, it turns out, is Bree's gateway drug. Next stop: Slutsville! Yes, believe it or not, Mrs. Van De Kamp-If-You're-Nasty is going to have quite a few notches in her bedpost by the time this phase is over. Unfortunately, she won't learn the error of her ways until she bumps into one of her one-night-stands... at church... with his wife!?
Just tell us who American Horror Story's Rubber Man is already! ? Tim
ADAM: Where's the fun in that? OK, fine. It's someone you know pretty well, and if you paid close attention to the Halloween episodes, you already know who's inside the gimp suit. (Still, it's a bit shocking. And gross.)
I'm so glad Ben and Leslie are back together. Any hope for the other couples on Parks & Recreation? ? Nina and Deb
NATALIE: Sadly, no. Chris and Millicent's budding relationship isn't going anywhere serious, which might make you think that an Ann-Chris reunion is in the works. But actually, it's a different guy at whom she takes a second look.
Got any good NCIS scoop? ? Robert
ADAM: When a local homicide cop's wife ends up dead, Gibbs literally makes a federal case out of it. But when the investigation doesn't produce immediate results, the cop threatens to find the killer himself and deliver his own brand of justice. Think Gibbs might have any advice for him on that front?
What's going to happen now that Rick knows that Lori slept with Shane on The Walking Dead? -- Jim
NATALIE: You won't find out in Sunday's midseason finale, as the survivors will otherwise be occupied with, you know, zombies and stuff. But Sarah Wayne Callies thinks that, after some speed bumps, Rick's discovery is actually a good thing. "Lori's having a much harder time putting it out of her mind and putting Shane out of her mind than she ever would've anticipated given that it was really just a purely physical thing at its inception," she says. "It actually opens the door for things to begin to heal for them."
How long before we see the effects of Beckett's most recent confession to her shrink on Castle? ? Whitney
ADAM: Well, don't expect her to run straight into Castle's arms. After all, we're pretty sure that secret he's keeping from her will rear its ugly head at some point. But Stana Katic remains optimistic, despite the obstacles. "The more the characters grow, the more undeniable it will be that the two of them are just going to be together," she says. "It's a natural progression. It's not a matter of teasing the audience; it's just a matter of fully fleshing out the characters and [then] it'll just happen. It will have to."
I really wish Once Upon a Time would do more with Breaking Bad's Giancarlo Esposito. -- Elaine
NATALIE: Your wish will soon come true! (Note: That's also a hint.) Once will bring Esposito back after the New Year, executive producer Adam Horowitz promises. "His origin story will hopefully be very surprising to people; [we'll find out] who he is, who he was and how he got in the mirror," he says.
When are we going to see Andre Braugher again on Law & Order: SVU? ? Jake
ADAM: Soon! Braugher's Bayard Ellis returns in the Dec. 3 episode as the attorney representing an former pro football player (Treat Williams) accused of rape after sleeping with an underage prostitute. And once again, Ellis will have a civil liberties ax to grind. "[His client] has suffered a series of concussions and consequently doesn't have a lot of higher brain function," Braugher says. "His client does not have the same kind of volition that other people do. So the question is: Where does the law stand on people who commit crimes but don't have the ability to correctly judge what it is that they're doing?"
How will Jane's memory loss affect Cassie on The Secret Circle?
NATALIE: Cassie will pay the ultimate price for Charles' backfired spell. "It's going to toss her world around because, in some sense, the last family member she has is drifting away from her," executive producer Andrew Miller says. Could this be the catalyst for the emergence of her dark side? Here's hoping!
Have you heard anything new about the next season of Justified? ? Beth
ADAM: As a matter of fact, I have! The show has recruited Pruitt Taylor Vince, fresh off his gig as zombie bait on The Walking Dead, for a juicy guest spot. He'll play Glen Fogle, a local pawnbroker and modern-day Fagin who sells stolen goods and pays his band of thieves with Oxycontin. He takes twisted pleasure at the pain of others, but may get a taste of his own medicine when one of his own turns against him.
Adam's Mega Rave: Stana Katic's PTSD performance in this week's Castle was impressive, but let's not overlook Jon Huertas. He was equally strong in the pivotal scene where Esposito helps Beckett face her fears. Plus: It's nice to see someone other than Castle get through to Beckett every once and a while.
Natalie's Mini Rant: Forget occupying Greendale; we need to get over to the Cul De Sac, stat. (At least the latter has wine!) #CougarTown
(Additional reporting by Denise Martin and Kate Stanhope)
Crave scoop on your favorite TV shows??E-mail Adam and Natalie at mega_scoop@tvguide.com?or drop us a line at?Twitter.com/TVGuide
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US, Britain, Canada team up on new Iran sanctions (AP)
WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration will hit the Iranian economy with new sanctions Monday, U.S. officials said, teaming with Britain and Canada in an effort to pressure Tehran to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program. The British announced the first measures, declaring they would cut off all financial ties with Iranian banks to stem the flow of funds for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The coordinated actions among the United States and its two close allies represent the first direct response to the U.N. nuclear agency's recent report suggesting Iranian work toward the development of atomic weapons. The report's release has sparked frenzied international diplomacy over how to halt the Iranian threat, with President Barack Obama pressing the leaders of Russia and China little more than a week ago to join the United States and its partners in taking action.
America's financial and energy sanctions will target Iranian companies, the hardline Revolutionary Guard force and Iran's petrochemicals sector, U.S. officials said. The aim would be to build on several American measures already in place to isolate Iran's economy.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement later Monday, expected to be made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Canada is also expected to announce new measures against Iran.
Britain's new restrictions included an order that its financial institutions cease doing business with all Iranian banks, including the country's Central Bank. The ban extends to all branches and subsidiaries of Iranian banks, amounting to an unprecedented British attempt to cut off an entire country's banking industry off from the British financial sector.
The sanctions are aimed at "preventing the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons," British Treasury chief George Osborne said. He said they also were designed to shield Britain's financial sector from exposure to Iranian money laundering and terrorism financing, without offering specifics. It made no references to Washington's allegation of an Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States.
The report released two weeks ago by the International Atomic Energy Agency alleges Iran has been seeking to acquire equipment and weapons design information, testing high explosives and detonators and developing computer models of a warhead's core. It is the strongest evidence yet that the Iranian program ranges far beyond enriching uranium for use in energy and medical research, as Iran's government insists.
The Obama administration has sought to use the evidence as leverage in making its case to other countries that sanctions against Iran should be expanded and tightened, and that existing sanctions be toughened. It has argued that further isolating Iran's economy was the best strategy for now to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, while insisting that the option of using force ? a topic of intense speculation in Israel, Europe and the United States in recent weeks ? will not be taken off the table.
The probability of an American strike, at least, appears remote. Officials believe military action might delay but not stop Iran from developing the bomb, and the diplomatic and political repercussions could be enormous for a cash-strapped U.S. which is still trying to wind down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S. government has already slapped sanctions on dozens of Iranian government agencies, officials, and financial and shipping companies over the nuclear program, and the United Nations has passed four rounds of U.S.-backed sanctions against Iran's economy. But China and Russia appear to stand in the way of any further U.N. measures.
Obama returned home this weekend an Asia-Pacific trip without any firm commitments from the two veto-wielding U.N. Security Council members over stiffer penalties against Iran. Monday's sanctions amount to a `Plan B' for the Washington, which has insisted it is prepared to act unilaterally, or in concert with like-minded governments, to increase the heat on Tehran amid hardening suspicion over its nuclear ambitions.
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Int'l Emmys to honor 'Idol' producer Nigel Lythgoe (AP)
NEW YORK ? "American Idol" executive producer Nigel Lythgoe might have to print some new business cards after he receives a special honor at the 39th Annual International Emmy Awards Ceremony.
"I've been nominated (six times) for an Emmy for 'American Idol' ... and haven't won any of them," Lythgoe said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I've even got printed on my business card 'multi-Emmy loser' so it's going to be wonderful to actually accept one."
Lythgoe, 62, who returned as "Idol's" executive producer last season, will be presented the honorary International Emmy Founders Award on Monday night at the Hilton New York Hotel in recognition of his work as "a major reality show innovator" as well as for "his amazingly deep commitment to dance around the world," said Bruce L. Paisner, president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Lythgoe produced the British TV phenomenon, "Pop Idol," and then was tasked with creating its American version in 2002. He attributes "American Idol's" eventual success to Rupert Murdoch's decision to leave its British production team alone and not try to Americanize the show.
"I think Americans sugarcoated all the critiques that they would do on shows like this," said Lythgoe, who earned the nickname Nasty Nigel for his caustic remarks as a judge on the British show "Popstars." "With bringing Simon Cowell out here we knew we wanted this new honesty.
"When we first came here, we had people waiting with baseball bats ready to take Simon out. The second year he'd get booed and there would be a smattering of applause. The third year he was getting applause and cheers."
The presentation to Lythgoe, who also produces and helps judge "So You Think You Can Dance?," will be a main event at the awards ceremony, hosted again by former "Beverly Hills 90210" star Jason Priestley. Forty nominees from a record 20 countries will be competing in 10 categories for International Emmys, honoring excellence in TV programming outside the U.S.
British television productions had a leading seven nominations. Christopher Eccleston was nominated for best actor for his role in an episode of the crime anthology series "Accused," which also is up for best drama. Julie Walters is contending for best actress for her portrayal of Mo Mowlam, the late Secretary of State for Northern Ireland who battled a brain tumor while working to forge the 1998 peace accords, in the film "Mo."
"Mo" will be competing in the TV Movie/Miniseries category with Sweden's "Millennium," based on the late Stieg Larsson's crime novel trilogy. Its stars, Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace, are up for Emmys in the acting categories.
Brazil had six nominations, all for TV Globo productions, including best actor and actress nominations for Fabio Assuncao and Adriana Esteves in the TV movie "Songs of Betrayal" about the passionate relationship between two music stars.
Actress Archie Panjabi ("The Good Wife") and Citigroup chairman Richard Parsons will present the honorary International Emmy Directorate Award to Indian media mogul Subhash Chandra, who launched India's first privately owned television channel nearly 20 years ago and now reaches more than 600 million viewers worldwide with his Zee TV network.
Paisner said Lythgoe is particularly worthy of the Founders Award which recognizes "significant achievements in television that cross cultural boundaries and contribute to our common humanity."
Lythgoe is being honored in part for his philanthropic work. In 2009, along with actress Katie Holmes, director-choreographer Adam Shankman and "Dancing with the Stars" judge Carrie Ann Inaba, he founded the Dizzy Feet Foundation, which provides scholarships to young dancers to study with leading professional companies and supports dance education programs.
Lythgoe, a former dancer and choreographer, says he was initially skeptical when "Idol" creator Simon Fuller suggested he use his background to create "So You Think You Can Dance?" in 2005. He credits the show with helping create a new style of dancer blending classical with street dance.
"I believe 'So You Think You Can Dance?' has given a whole new integrity to dance," Lythgoe said. "I think dads now are starting to enjoy it and understand why their kids want to dance."
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Monday, November 21, 2011
TheDaleJackson: RT @4gop: .@TheDaleJackson Mad. Co. GOP Men's Club Straw Poll Results pt. 2 - Huntsman 3, Santorum 3, Bachman 2, Anybody but #Obama 21 ...
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Hijackers take two boats, hostages, off Nigeria: sources (Reuters)
ABUJA (Reuters) ? Gunmen boarded two fishing vessels just off the coast of Nigeria and took two people hostage, security sources said on Saturday, the latest in a series of hijackings in the waters around Africa's largest oil business.
The captains of the two boats were taken early on Friday, the same day eight pirates took three hostages from an oil supply vessel contracted by Chevron Corp, two security sources close to the incidents said.
Chevron confirmed the attack on the vessel owned by its contractor, the second hijacking on ships hired by the U.S. major off the coast of Nigeria this month.
Both attacks on Friday were in waters around President Goodluck Jonathan's home state of Bayelsa, where military security has been bolstered in recent days amid a fierce political row.
Bayelsa has hundreds of kilometers of oil pipelines and other industry infrastructure crucial to Africa's largest crude exporter. Violence in the Niger Delta's vast swamps and waterways has in the past cut oil output, moving global prices.
The political dispute began earlier this month when the ruling People's Democratic Party listed sitting governor Timipre Sylva as one of four people who failed to get through a screening process to stand in a leadership primary due to be held on Saturday.
They gave no reason for his exclusion. One Western diplomat said Sylva may have "become unpopular with someone right at the very top of the party." A lot is at stake.
State governors are among the most powerful politicians in Nigeria, wielding influence over national policy and in some cases controlling budgets larger than small African nations.
Sylva has condemned the deployment of soldiers to a state he is still supposed to run but also publicly urged his supporters to remain calm and keep the peace.
"Three ships taken in the same day. It could be a coincidence but elections in the Niger Delta can be volatile and this one particularly so," one security source said.
Nigeria produces more than 2 million barrels per day of crude oil and is a key supplier to the United States, Europe and emerging markets in Asia.
(Reporting by Joe Brock; Editing by Sophie Hares)
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Sunday, November 20, 2011
Fallon is planning another 'History of Rap'
Ready for another trip to the classroom of hip-hop?
Jimmy Fallon told Access Hollywood that he and rapping pal Justin Timberlake are working on yet another ?History of Rap? segment for ?Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.?
VIEW THE PHOTOS: GQ?s 2011 ?Men Of The Year? Party
?We?re working on another ?History of Rap,?? Fallon told Access at GQ?s 2011 Men of the Year Party in Los Angeles on Thursday night.
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?We?re going to try and top (the others with) the next thing,? he continued.
Hip-hop hurray! Fallon, JT offer 'History of Rap 3'But what about possible a rap album with Fallon and the star?
?Justin doesn?t return my phone calls about that,? Fallon said with a laugh. ?He?ll call about anything else.?
All jokes aside, Fallon told Access he was honored to appear on the cover of GQ with his friend and collaborator.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Justin Timberlake: From The Stage To The Red Carpet!
?Justin?s one of the most talented people in the world,? Fallon said. ?He always makes me smile. He just comes on show and takes over. I love that guy so much? It was an honor to be on the cover with that guy.?
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Hot Shots Of The Lovely Jessica Biel!
Which rap song should JT and Fallon include in their next 'History of Rap'? Share your picks on the Facebook page for our TV blog, The Clicker!
Copyright 2011 by NBC. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45359978/ns/today-entertainment/
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