UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Saudi Arabia and Chad easily won coveted seats on the U.N. Security Council Thursday, despite criticism from human rights groups. Nigeria, Lithuania and Chile also won seats.
The five candidates endorsed by regional groups faced no opposition after there were no contested races for the first time in several years.
The countries were elected in the first round of voting by the 193-member General Assembly. Lithuania was the top vote-getter with 187 votes followed by Nigeria and Chile with 186 votes, Chad with 184 votes and Saudi Arabia with 176 votes.
Security Council seats are highly coveted because they give countries a strong voice in matters dealing with international peace and security, in places like Syria, Iran and North Korea, as well as the U.N.'s far-flung peacekeeping operations.
The 15-member council includes five permanent members with veto power — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — and 10 nonpermanent members elected for two-year terms.
The five countries elected Thursday will assume their posts on Jan. 1 and serve through the end of 2015. They will replace Azerbaijan, Guatemala, Morocco, Pakistan and Togo.
Philippe Bolopion, United Nations director for Human Rights Watch, denounced the election of Chad, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.
"The prestige of a seat at the world's foremost diplomatic table should prompt the new members to get their house in order," he said.
"Chad should put an end to the recruitment of child soldiers, which earned it a spot on the U.N. list of shame," he said. "Saudi Arabia should end its crackdown on human rights activists and grant women their full rights."
Bolopion also criticized Nigeria, saying it should "end chronic abuse by security forces and better protect civilians in the north" from attacks by the Boko Haram terrorist network.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch, accused Saudi Arabia of denying women the right to vote, drive a car or travel without the permission of a male relative. He also accused it of "praising and shielding Sudan" whose president, Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Neuer said Chad should not have oversight on U.N. peacekeeping operations as long it employs child soldiers.
Chad, Saudi Arabia and Lithuania have never served on the U.N.'s most powerful body while Nigeria and Chile have both been on the council four times previously.
Seats in the Security Council are allocated by region, and regional groups nominate candidates. There are often hotly contested races. In 2007, for example, a runoff between Guatemala and Venezuela went 47 rounds before Panama was finally elected as the Latin America candidate.
This year, there were initially two candidates for a West African seat but Gambia dropped out last week in favor of Nigeria.
To win, each country must obtain support of two-thirds of all General Assembly members present. Because balloting is secret, there is intense lobbying for votes by candidates, even in uncontested races, to ensure they get the minimum number needed for victory — and to see who gets the highest vote.
• Eminem is 41, Chris Kirkpatrick of ‘N Sync is 42, Ziggy Marley is 45, Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead) is 51 and Margot Kidder (Superman) is 65 years old. Click HERE to see who else is celebrating a birthday today.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older women who exercise regularly and don't smoke may have a substantially lower risk of late-life disability than their peers with less-healthy habits, say UK researchers.
They found that among women in their 60s and 70s, behaviors like smoking, drinking and exercise could account for up to 17 percent of a woman's risk for disabling conditions like heart disease, arthritis and difficulty walking.
"We set out to quantify the influence of current lifestyle on subsequent disability," Lois Kim, lead author of the study and lecturer in medical statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Reuters Health.
More than 2,500 British women between the ages of 60 and 79 filled out surveys as part of the British Women's Heart and Health Study. The questionnaires asked about the women's smoking, exercise, alcohol consumption and eating habits. Seven years later, the women reported on whether they had developed any of several disabling health problems.
The study found that women who never exercised were about twice as likely to get arthritis and had about double the risk of developing problems walking; they were also more likely to develop heart disease.
Women who smoked currently or in the past also developed heart disease at more than twice the rate of those who had never smoked.
"This study provides more information - more ammunition - in support of the benefits of exercise as we age," said David Watts, an associate professor of geriatrics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the study.
"We know from other work that exercise is the most proven intervention to prevent not only physical decline, but also the cognitive decline so often associated with aging," he said.
The study found no influence on disability from eating fruit, and only a slight benefit from moderate alcohol consumption, but that effect was small enough to be due to chance.
Together, the four lifestyle factors analyzed explained 17 percent of a woman's overall risk for disabling conditions at the seven-year follow-up, the researchers report in the journal Age and Ageing.
Exercise alone accounted for 9 percent of the risk for walking problems, 5 percent of heart disease risk and 4 percent of arthritis risk, they note. They also acknowledge those numbers mean behavior changes in old age might make a relatively small difference in disability risk.
Watts cautioned as well that the study "does not answer the question as to whether healthy habits need to be continued lifelong. That is, can you start exercising at age sixty, or do you need to start much earlier to get a benefit?"
Other research and common sense would suggest "that a lifelong commitment to exercise is probably most beneficial," he added.
It's possible that the women who did not exercise at the first survey did not do so because they had pain or other limitations, and therefore may already have been "headed for higher rates of disability," Watts noted.
Watts agreed with other researchers, however, that healthy habits are important for long-term wellbeing and they have few drawbacks.
Recommendations to eat well and exercise "are generally safe and inexpensive, and likely have benefits on multiple mental health status, cognition, and cancer risks," said Terri McCarthy, an assistant professor of geriatrics at the University of Minnesota, who also was not involved in the study.
Getting older shouldn't discourage people from adopting new habits, which may be beneficial even if adopted later in life, according to Gerald Pankratz, an assistant professor of geriatrics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
"I would certainly advocate that healthy lifestyle choices should be lifelong, but I would never say it is too late to make a change," Pankratz told Reuters Health. "Older adults are frequently under that misconception."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1bsx7B7 Age and Ageing, online September 29, 2013.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Tropical Storm Raymond steamed Sunday toward Mexico's southern Pacific coast, an area devastated by rains and mudslides from tropical storm Manuel in September.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Raymond is expected to become a hurricane soon, but is expected to take a strong westward turn before it reaches the coast and heads out to sea.
Raymond was located about 195 miles (310 kms) south of the beach resort of Zihuatanejo and had sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph). It was moving northwest at about 7 mph (11 kph).
Authorities in southern Guerrero state, where Manuel and Ingrid caused about 120 deaths from flooding and landslides, were more worried about the possibility of floods than the winds.
The state government closed seaports and urged residents in risk areas to take precautions.
Forecasters say Raymond is expected to slowly approach Mexico's southern Pacific coast Mexico late Monday or Tuesday and then begin to meander. The center says Raymond is expected to become a hurricane by Monday.
Forecasters warn heavy rainfall is possible along the south-central Mexican coast in coming days and could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides. A tropical storm watch is in effect from Acapulco to Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico.
Wicked cast members Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth finally came together again this week, and they aren't the only ones reuniting!
Entertainment Weekly has brought together the casts of such classics as Mystic Pizza, Do The Right Thing, Frazier, The X-Files, and more for a huge reunion issue!
How amazing! Though we're guessing bringing David Duchovny and Gillian Andersontogether wasn't all that hard! LOLz!
President Obama, right, and Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta meet in the White House on Oct. 17, 2013.
Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, who met with President Obama on Thursday, spoke with Lally Weymouth beforehand about Italy's efforts to emerge from recession and spark growth. Excerpts:
Lally Weymouth: What will you discuss during your meeting with President Obama?
Enrico Letta: We have to reaffirm the strategic interest of our friendship—Italy and the U.S. We have to work together on many issues. We share the fact that after five years of crisis and austerity in Europe and the world, we need to have years of growth. Second, the main concern is instability.
L.W.: Are you worried about refugees coming into Italy if Syria continues to be so unstable?
E.L.: We are, because the situation today is out of control in Libya, Egypt, and Syria. We had a terrible tragedy [of refugees drowning] around Lampedusa [an island south of Sicily] some days ago. We [have] decided ... Italian ships and aircraft will patrol the sea between Libya, Lampedusa, and Malta.
L.W.: Is that to let immigrants in or keep them out?
E.L.: To rescue them if their ships capsize. We had a rescue operation two days ago saving 150 people, children and women. And of course we have to block the Libyan human traffickers—those who are creating these ships.
L.W.: You want to stop the organizers?
E.L.: The main problem is that Libya today is a weak country, so it is very difficult to deal with them but absolutely necessary to help. First, we must rescue people in the sea because we can't [allow] the Mediterranean to become a sort of death sea. Secondly, we also have to deal with the failure of some states, like Syria. We want to deal with refugees. In our constitution there is the right to accept refugees. The main problem is that we had a big change in migration trends. ... Ten years ago the migration trends were completely focused on economic reasons. Today, more than half are refugees from failed states.
L.W.: You have Syrian refugees?
E.L.: Yes, in Lampedusa, for instance.
L.W.: Many analysts call Italy, Spain, and France the troubled countries of the eurozone. Can Italy do enough to remain in the eurozone?
E.L.: We need to have a banking union in the European Council because if we had had the banking-union mechanism [whereby failing banks can be aided or shut down], we would have avoided the banking crises. ... Second, we need to have a stable situation in the markets. Since one year ago when [European Central Bank President] Mario Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it took [to buy government debt], that was the big change and stability came for Italy, Spain, and France. ... [This week] we approved in the [Italian] Council of Ministers the budget for 2014. And for the first time in five years, the general debt will be lower. The deficit will be 2.5 percent, so it will be lower than the 3 percent of this year.
L.W.: How will you do that?
E.L.: By cutting public spending.
L.W.: You're going to cut public spending? But haven't the unions already threatened to strike?
E.L.: Yes. They are not very happy, but I will convince them.
L.W.: Isn't Italy's deficit to GDP at 3.3 percent right now?
E.L.: We're at 3 percent for the deficit. ... The general debt today is 132 percent. ... Next year I hope we will have 130 percent.
L.W.: You're talking about debt-to-GDP ratio?
L.W.: It's horrendously high.
E.L.: Yes, it is. The main problem is the lack of growth. [But] the debt next year will be decreased, the deficit will be lower, and public spending for the first time will be lower. And, fourth, we will reduce taxes for the first time in years.
E.L.: Today we have a tax threshold that is 44.3 percent. At the end of three years, it will be reduced to 43.3 percent.
L.W.: If you cut all these things, where will you get revenue?
E.L.: From a privatization process. I think now the markets are ready to buy and we will sell public assets. ... Fincantieri, for instance—a shipyard. We will sell one part of Terna, which is the national electric grid. Of course, not 100 percent, but 49 percent. We will present this privatization plan, and I think it will be a very important step. ... The other main issue is the cut in public spending. That is, of course, not easy, but I think it is necessary.
L.W.: In order to attract outside investment?
E.L.: In order to have the budget completely under control and to have low interest rates. That, for a country with such big general debt, is absolutely decisive. We need low interest rates. Today, I am very happy that we have reached the lowest interest rates in two years.
E.L.: It is 4.2 percent on a 10-year bond. It is the best result in two years. For me, personally, it is a big result because the success of my government is linked to lower interest rates. It is a way to restore confidence in the markets.
L.W.: You feel you are restoring confidence in the markets?
E.L.: Today's result is a fact—it is a concrete achievement. I am happy about that, and we have to continue.
L.W.: What are the central elements of your economic program?
E.L.: Cutting public spending, privatization and, of course, the cut of labor taxes. That is the main issue for pushing growth and jobs.
L.W.: What is the reaction of the labor unions?
E.L.: They are happy about it. It gives companies the chance to give more jobs with lower taxes on labor. The problem with unions is that they want more cuts on labor taxes. But of course, to cut labor taxes is not easy because we need money.
L.W.: You feel Italy is on the path to financial recovery under your government?
E.L.: Yes, we are, because next year we will reach the targets I stressed, and these targets are absolutely necessary for having lower interest rates.
L.W.: What about your banking sector? Many analysts worry about the European banks.
E.L.: Our banks were obliged to recapitalize with public money for 3 billion euros in these last five years. It was, in the eurozone, the lowest level of public money for saving banks in Europe. It was a demonstration of the solidity of our banks and it was just for one bank—Monte dei Paschi.
L.W.: Only one bank needed capital?
E.L.: Yes, and only 3 billion euros, which is peanuts in comparison to Ireland, the U.K., Spain, and so on. This is the demonstration of the solidity of the Italian banking system. We in our budget passed some important tax rules to give them more capitalization.
L.W.: What if Italy ran a stress test? The U.S. banks had to mark down their balance sheets.
E.L.: The ECB and the banking authority at the European level ... are very tough with the stress tests. And the Italian banks passed.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's back to basics on Wall Street after the default debacle was kicked down the road, but in the early going after that cloud was lifted, investors have found corporate America's numbers wanting.
Just as the market breathed a sigh of relief as a debt-limit agreement was reached on Wednesday evening, it was socked in the jaw by earnings from Dow component IBM.
Big Blue, as it is commonly known, was joined by a pair of underwhelming results from fellow Dow members Goldman Sachs Group Inc and UnitedHealth Group Inc. All three stocks were lower Thursday, and taken together accounted for about 120 points of losses on the Dow, even though the S&P 500 was marginally higher.
A number of bellwether names have been a drag on stocks so far, including IBM, Yahoo and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Overall earnings growth is expected to come in at just 2.1 percent for the third quarter, down from an estimated 4.5 percent at the beginning of October. Forecasts have been on the wane with the growth picture muddied and as margins come down.
That means the market's rally is largely going to come as a result of investors who believe stocks are still undervalued based on hopes for future growth.
"The stock market's expansion this year has been driven by multiple expansion rather than material improvement in underlying fundamentals. That's why people do take a lot from IBM," said Adrian Cronje, chief investment officer at Balentine in Atlanta.
Data show the forward price-to-earnings ratio on the S&P at near 14.5, which is around the highest it's been in four years, a shade under the long-term mean of 14.85. This may be helping fuel the market's run to record highs, but if weakness in earnings continues, that P/E will rise, and could make the market look expensive.
Researchers at Goldman Sachs, in a note Thursday, said that profit margins before interest and taxes - excluding financials - have dropped for seven consecutive quarters prior to this one.
IBM said profitability in its hardware business declined by $1 billion from a year ago, and missed revenue expectations by about $1 billion as well. Shares opened at a two-year low on Thursday.
When it reported earnings, Goldman Sachs said third-quarter revenue plunged 20 percent on mortgage and bond-trading results, but profit dropped only slightly as the Wall Street bank slashed compensation and other expenses.
"If markets continue to stay where they are, you have to keep paying a higher multiple for the same levels of fundamentals, which does make the market more vulnerable to disappointing news," Cronje said.
Revenue estimates for the third quarter have dropped steadily and are now at 2.6 percent for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. So far, 55 percent of the 79 S&P 500 components that have reported have beaten revenue estimates, below the 61 percent average since 2002.
From a more technical perspective, IBM's performance after earnings is a harbinger of weakness in the next few weeks as well. A drop in IBM shares one day after results predicts a decline in the S&P 500 five weeks down the road about 75 percent of the time, according to Bespoke Investment Group, an investment research firm in Harrison, New York.
"No other stock in the S&P 500 has been more consistent over the last 12 years in accurately predicting the performance of the S&P 500 over the following five weeks," Bespoke said in a note on Wednesday.
Looking forward the picture doesn't get better as the fourth quarter didn't get off to a great start. The 16-day government shutdown and threat of default was expected to cut about 0.6 percent from gross domestic product growth, further hurting corporate earnings.
The disarray in Washington has also helped keep the Federal Reserve's stimulus in place, which has pushed traders to buy any market declines on expectation that the flow of cheap money will keep equities trending higher.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Julia Edwards; editing by Andrew Hay)
Remember when music videos were about the artists? These days they are about the guest stars. In Future’s ‘Real and True’ it’s Miley Cyrus, naked, covered in metallic paint and portraying an alien! Yes, impossible to make this stuff up; just check out the video below for proof! Miley Cyrus goes from swinging naked on a wrecking ball to sharing the same metallic color of one. Is the 20-year-old pop star the It Girl of hip hop? She’s riding high on her own hip-hop infused album, “Bangerz,” that just had its expected No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200. Her outrageousness is out on loan this time in the service of one 29-year-old Atlanta rapper named Future, on his single ‘Real and True’ for his upcoming sophomore studio album, “Honest,” which also features British singer-songwriter Mr. Hudson and is produced by Mike WiLL Made It. Future was also one of the producers “Bangerz,” — ‘My Darlin’ — as Mike WiLL Made It, was executive producer, for whom she reciprocated and appeared on his “22″ single and music video. Miley Cyrus has gone from the high school bad girl in “22″ to the extraterrestrial in “Real and True.” Versatility, we might [...]Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RightCelebrity/~3/qPgwvHo6VLw/ Similar Articles: 9newsusain bolt
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton rallied supporters of Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe Saturday, pointing to the race as a sign that divisive politics is giving way to "common sense and common ground."
In her first public political event since departing the Obama administration, Clinton noted the end of the 16-day partial government shutdown, which affected many Virginians. More than 800,000 government workers were furloughed while Democrats and Republicans in Congress engaged in a partisan brawl over funding the country's new health care program, funding the government and raising the debt ceiling before reaching an eleventh hour compromise.
"We cannot let those who do not believe in America's progress to hijack this great experiment," Clinton said, endorsing her longtime family friend at an event billed, "Women for Terry McAuliffe."
The former secretary of state has largely avoided politics this year, raising money at private fundraisers for McAuliffe and the New York City mayoral campaign of Bill de Blasio, a former campaign aide. McAuliffe was a top fundraiser for the campaigns of both former President Bill Clinton and Mrs. Clinton and later served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Democrats consider Clinton to be the party's leading contender to succeed President Barack Obama, her onetime rival, if she decides to run for president again in 2016.
While Saturday's event aimed to energize voters for McAuliffe, it evoked Clinton's lengthy bid in 2008 to become the first woman to win the White House. The crowd broke into chants of "Hillary" as McAuliffe introduced her, and Clinton confessed that she had "been out of politics for a few years now."
When Clinton told the audience that her time traveling the globe had allowed her to think about "what makes our country so great, what kind of leadership is required to keep it great," a man in the audience shouted, "Yours!"
Independent polls show McAuliffe has built a lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli with more than two weeks until the Nov. 5 election, helped by an advantage among women and voters in northern Virginia. Both blocs were crucial to Obama's victories in Virginia during his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns.
Cuccinelli's campaign said Clinton's appearance brought back memories of McAuliffe's fundraising role during Bill Clinton's presidency, when some prominent donors stayed overnight at the White House in the Lincoln Bedroom.
"If there was any doubt that Terry McAuliffe would bring Washington, D.C., big-government politics to Richmond, today is your proof," said Cuccinelli spokesman Richard T. Cullen.
A longtime advocate for women and children, Clinton said the energetic McAuliffe would be a "24-7 governor" who would do the right thing for women and "stand up against attempts to restrict women's health choices and ban common forms of birth control."
She said the recent shutdown, which has hit many Virginia voters hard, was an example "of the wrong kind of leadership, when politicians choose scorched earth over common ground." Clinton said many workers had been furloughed, businesses had been hurt and children had been thrown out of early childhood education programs.
"That is not the kind of leadership we need in Virginia and America today," Clinton said.
___
Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas
Two soulmates, engrossed in reading the same book, pass each other on the street without ever meeting. A clique of teenage ponies is ravaged by scandalous gossip. As a world-ending meteor barrels towards Earth, a triceratops reflects on the fact that it never got to see the ocean.
Ben Dewey’s Tragedy Series on Tumblr is a single-panel compendium of mishaps large and small. Illustrated in a buttoned-up, old-timey style, like the sketches of a befuddled naturalist reporting from some adorably accident-prone alternate realm, the series collects what it calls “depictions drawn from regrettable accounts of the less fortunate for purposes of instruction; so that one may avoid similar missteps.”
These tragedies often befall the cute, but Dewey’s work is more than just an visual mashup of bad things happening to good animals. Though the artist has an undeniable knack for drawing helpless kitty cats, lazy lemurs, and conniving sloths, the tiny heartaches it dramatizes often hit just close enough to home to elicit a genuine wince. In a sense, Dewey told WIRED, the Tragedy Series is “about death and about the loss of things that you love, or coming up against obstacles that seem insurmountable or impossible to navigate.”
“There is a bittersweet quality [to life] that you start to understand more keenly, that becomes more acute, as you get older,” said Dewey. “Every time I watch Cosmos with Carl Sagan, I think, ‘Here is the best communicator of science that there has ever been. He investigated the world with a fearless love for everything, and he died at 62, of forces beyond his control.’ And the same thing happened to my dad, and my friend Greg. Making a point of observing the sad things in life, taking stock of those bittersweet qualities, is what I see in my favorite art, and that’s what I’m trying to reproduce.”
The Tragedy Series operates within a set of parameters that keep the world consistent, even as the subject matter veers wildly from week to week. “I like surrealism in my comedy. I don’t like scatological stuff or pervy stuff,” Dewey explained. “The internet has plenty of that, and there are people who do it much better than me. And I want to keep the subject of the joke outside of living memory. If it hits too close to home, then it starts to seem like more overt social and political commentary. Sometimes I’ll be prompted by a thing that’s happening, but I’ll try to take it two or three steps removed—so it’s not about the death of James Gandolfini, it’s about losing a talented person from the world, something more universal.”
A native of Ohio, Dewey attended the Cleveland College of Art and Design before moving to Portland at age 25, where he landed an internship at Periscope Studio and began posting the Tragedy Series to Tumblr in 2011. He posts three comics a week, every week; as of this writing, he’s reached Tragedy #420. The self-imposed mandate to come up with three gags a week was part of the comic’s initial inception. “Even when I don’t necessarily feel like, ‘I’m inspired!’, I still have the pressure to come up with something,” Dewey told WIRED. “I don’t like the myth of the artist waiting around for just the right spark to ignite something. That’s not sustainable with making a life in the creative industry.”
Dewey just released the second self-published chapbook of Tragedy comics, available via his Etsy store. He plans to conclude the Tragedy series when he reaches 500 comics, or just under six months from now, though he says he may follow up with a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-style comic miniseries using characters from throughout the Tragedy Series. “I’m trying to plant the seeds of that now, so if it does turn into something people can look back and see it was in there,” said Dewey. In the meantime, the Tragedy Series remains his hallmark, with its helpless kitty cats, lazy lemurs, and a perspective on the world that feel as bruised as it does charming.
Joel Edgerton, Baz Luhrmannand Jacki Weaver will be among the beneficiaries at Oct. 24’s Australians in Film Awards dinner, instituted by Australians in Film, the Los Angeles-based industry guild for Australian filmmakers and performers in the United States.
Edgerton and his acting, directing and producing colleagues at the Sydney-based collective, Blue Tongue Films, will receive the Orry Kelly International award. Blue Tongue members include Kieran Darcy-Smith, Luke Doolan, Edgerton and his sibling Nash Edgerton, Mirrah Foulkes, David Michod and Spencer Susser – who have made films including Animal Kingdom and Wish You Were Here -- are being recognized for their success in introducing Australian filmmakers to an international audience.
They will share the Orry Kelly International Award with The Great Gatsby writer, director and producer Luhrmann, who is being recognized for his continued input and development of Australian talent at home in Sydney and abroad.
The international award is named after Australian costume designer Orry George Kelly who moved from Australia to the U.S. in 1921. Kelly was Australia’s most prolific Oscar winning costume designer, winning three statues in the 1950s for An American in Paris, Les Girls and Some Like It Hot.
A second international award, named by locations marketing agency Ausfilm, is being given to Warner Bros. president of worldwide physical production Steve Papazian, who is being honored for his work in bringing 38 projects totaling nearly$2 billion to Australia over several decades. Projects include 1992 TV movie Survive the Savage Seas to more recent films like Gatsby, made entirely in Australia, and Gravity, with Adelaide-based Rising Sun Pictures a key visual effects provider on the film.
The L.A.-based organization that serves as the industry guild for Australian filmmakers and performers will also present actors Alex O’Loughlin and Animal Kingdom's Sullivan Stapleton and Weaver with the AiF Breakthrough Award.
According to Australians in Film president Tracey Viera, the Breakthrough award, handed out for the past seven years, is given to Australian actors whose talent has catapulted them into the international spotlight, while the international award honors those who are nurturing colleagues’ careers in Australia and making a meaningful contribution to the Australian film industry. Last year’s inaugural international award recipient was Harvey Weinstein.
O’Loughlin currently stars in CBS' Hawaii Five-0, while Stapleton appears in the upcoming Warner Bros./Legendary feature 300: Rise of an Empire. The in-demand Weaver stars opposite Cate Blanchett in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine.
The AiF Awards benefit dinner is aimed at supporting the organization’s mission: helping usher Australian filmmakers into the international market and to provide educational programs for the 500 AiF members.
Presenters include Robert Pattinson, David O. Russell, David Michôd and Andy and Lana Wachowski. Other new initiatives for the organization are also expected to be announced at the dinner.
The AiF Awards dinner takes place during Ausfilm Week in Los Angeles, which kicks off Sunday, Oct. 20.
By giving teens the option of posting in the public eye, Facebook's new rules have sparked yet another round of privacy concerns. On the other hand, "I'm not sure how many are going to want to turn on for all to see," suggested Justin Brookman, director of the consumer privacy project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "In some ways, the less public stuff is of more concern."
Facebook on Thursday changed the default setting determining who can see posts by kids aged 13 through 17.
Up until now, the setting for the first post on Facebook of a kid in this age group was "friends of friends," and kids had the option to change it.
Now, the initial setting will be the narrower audience of "friends." However, also new under the revised rules will be the option for teens to make their posts visible to the public.
Teenagers can now also use the "Follow" feature, which lets people automatically receive posts from other users even if they are strangers.
Fear, Loathing and the New Rules
The change immediately sparked concern because the potential audience for teens' posts has been widened to the public at large. That, in turn, could expose teenagers more readily to bullies, sexual predators and marketers.
Sex offenses linked to Facebook or Twitter have surged over the past four years, UK newspaper The Mirrorreported in April, noting also that pedophiles are increasingly logging onto social network sites to target children.
Facebook also figures prominently in cyberbullying, with 64 percent of the victims reporting they were harassed on the social networking site, privacy-focused social network Sgrouples states.
Cyberbullying has driven several teenagers to suicide, the most recent victim being Florida 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick.
"What Facebook has done is classic bait and switch -- fake the public into thinking they've added more privacy when in fact they've taken a whole layer away and put teenagers at greater risk for cyberbullying," Sgrouples CEO Mark Weinstein told TechNewsWorld.
On the other hand, "I don't see kids posting everything -- or even that much -- to the public," remarked John Simpson, consumer advocate at Consumer Watchdog.
Storm in a Teacup?
In fact, the changes might actually be for the better, Simpson told TechNewsWorld.
The old default setting of sharing with friends of friends "could be a huge number of people," Simpson pointed out. "Now the default is to share just with friends."
The original setting "encompasses a huge number of people, some of whom are unsavory at best," Simpson continued.
Further, teenagers are increasingly migrating to services like Tumblr and Twitter that don't require them to use their real names so as to avoid parental oversight, "so I'm not sure how many are going to want to turn on for all to see," remarked Justin Brookman, director of the consumer privacy project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Those who choose to make their posts public will see pop-up reminders warning the post can be seen by anyone.
It's not likely that Facebook will run afoul of laws established to protect kids online. California requires that kids should be able to erase social media content, but "Facebook already has in place tools for users to go back and erase stuff," Brookman pointed out.
Facebook did not respond to our request for further details.
Working Hard for the Money
Facebook probably relaxed its rules for teenage posters to drive engagement and compete with other services such as Tumblr and Twitter, where teens can already share posts publicly, the CDT's Brookman told TechNewsWorld.
"More engagement is good for advertising revenue, but I'm not sure it really matters to Facebook whether the sharing is private or public," Brookman pointed out.
Teenagers are sharing more personal information on social media sites, Pew Internet has found.
That would make them better targets for marketers, and Facebook's online marketing efforts are paying off handsomely. Click-through rates, which show how consumers interact with ads, increased by a factor of 3.75 year over year in Q3, figures from Nanigans indicate.
Keep an Eye Peeled
Parents should monitor what their kids do online, whether or not it's public, Brookman said.
"In some ways," he concluded, "the less public stuff is of more concern."
On Friday, Oct. 18, 2013, Joyce Jackson holds a drawing made by her son Bobby Gerald Bennett, in Dallas. Jackson says Bennett, who is a schizophrenic, wanted to take the drawing with him out of the house leading to an argument that caused her to call police Monday. Surveillance video from a neighbor's camera shows Bennett standing as two officers approach him. Seconds later, Officer Cardan Spencer fires at Bennet who now remains in a hospital intensive care unit. Dallas police have opened a criminal investigation and placed the officer on administrative leave indefinitely. (AP Photo/Nomaan Merchant)
On Friday, Oct. 18, 2013, Joyce Jackson holds a drawing made by her son Bobby Gerald Bennett, in Dallas. Jackson says Bennett, who is a schizophrenic, wanted to take the drawing with him out of the house leading to an argument that caused her to call police Monday. Surveillance video from a neighbor's camera shows Bennett standing as two officers approach him. Seconds later, Officer Cardan Spencer fires at Bennet who now remains in a hospital intensive care unit. Dallas police have opened a criminal investigation and placed the officer on administrative leave indefinitely. (AP Photo/Nomaan Merchant)
This image from video courtesy of Maurice Bunch shows Bobby Gerald Bennett, left, standing as two Dallas Police officers approach him. Seconds later, Officer Cardan Spencer fires at Bennet who now remains in a hospital intensive care unit. Dallas police have opened a criminal investigation and placed the officer on administrative leave indefinitely after he shot and wounded Bennet who is a schizophrenic. (AP Photo/Maurice Bunch)
This image from video courtesy of Maurice Bunch shows Bobby Gerald Bennett , left, after Dallas Police Officer Cardan Spencer shot Bennet, who now remains in a hospital intensive care unit. Dallas police have opened a criminal investigation and placed the officer on administrative leave indefinitely after shooting the schizophrenic man. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Maurice Bunch)
DALLAS (AP) — Surveillance video showing a Dallas police officer shooting a mentally ill man standing still about 20 feet away contradicts the assertion of an officer that the man threatened his safety by lunging at him with a knife.
Bobby Gerald Bennett remains hospitalized after being shot in the stomach Monday. The officer who shot him, Cardan Spencer, is on indefinite administrative leave pending a criminal investigation after a neighbor released surveillance video that captured the incident.
Bennett was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on a public servant, but Police Chief David Brown announced Friday that the charge would be dropped.
Bennett's mother, Joyce Jackson, said in an interview Friday that her 52-year-old son has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and that he was off his medication at the time of the shooting. Jackson said she was arguing with Bennett when she called the police. She was told that officers who have been trained in dealing with the mentally ill would arrive to assist her.
The officers arrived outside her southeast Dallas home around noon to find Bennett sitting on a chair in the street holding a knife. At this point, accounts of the incident differ.
Spencer wrote in a police report that Bennett refused to drop the knife and moved toward him and another officer "in a threatening manner." Spencer says that's when he fired at Bennett four times from about 20 feet away, wounding him.
The video tells a different story. Although the police report says Bennett "lunged" at the officers with a knife, in the video he stands up from the chair but then doesn't appear to move at all until the gun is fired and he crumples to the ground.
The surveillance video doesn't include audio, and Spencer wrote in his report that Bennett yelled at them, "You all are gonna need more officers than this!" But it doesn't show that the incident "escalated, which led an officer to fire his weapon upon the individual," as police spokesman Warren Mitchell said in a statement a few hours after the shooting.
Police Chief David Brown said in a statement Thursday night that Spencer has been placed on indefinite administrative leave pending a "thorough criminal investigation."
Jackson said she and her son had been arguing about whether he could take an ink drawing of a rose he had done for his late grandmother, she said. The drawing is framed on the wall of her home.
The argument soon escalated to the point where Jackson felt she needed police assistance.
"I'm devastated that I felt the need to call 911," Jackson said.
Jackson said her son struggles with mental illness and often leaves her home to sleep on the streets, but said he is an avid artist and reader and isn't violent. According to state criminal records, he was convicted of larceny, vehicle theft and forgery in the 1980s but has no recent arrests.
"I was expecting help from someone that's a lot more knowledgeable than me," she said. Mitchell, the police spokesman, declined to say Friday whether the two officers sent to Jackson's home had any specific mental health training.
Jackson did not see the shooting. She was inside her home when she heard four gunshots. She said it was a "miracle" that her neighbor's camera recorded the incident. Otherwise, "I wouldn't have had a leg to stand on," she said.
Maurice Bunch installed the surveillance camera two years ago after a trailer was stolen from his driveway.
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Follow Nomaan Merchant on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nomaanmerchant
The guys at Almond Manufacturing got some time in on their splitboards and made their first edit for the season up in the BC Backcountry. Look closely and you'll see that those boards don't have binders. This is snow surfing in its rawest form.
Are you a big horror fan? If so, a very exciting adaptation is on its way: The new version of Carrie comes out today! Chloe Grace Moretz stars as the tortured high school student who gets her revenge at prom. It’s the third version of the book by Stephen King, so the question must be asked. Who was the best Carrie?
Sissy Spacek played Carrie in the 1976 film by Brian De Palma, which is now a classic. Her Carrie was great because she seemed truly spacey and not of this realm throughout the movie, like a vulnerable alien. That is, until she attacks of course, and those giant eyes become full of evil instead of pain.
Not many remember this movie, but The Rage: Carrie 2 was another entry to the genre in 2002. A slicker movie, it featured excellent turn-of-the-millennium stars like Jason London and Mena Suvari, with the main girl played by Emily Bergl (and actually called Rachel, not Carrie).
Lastly, Chloe Grace Moretz seems born to play Carrie (which is a compliment… we swear!). She seems almost too pretty to be hated by her classmates, but you definitely believe her rage.
LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese mobile gaming company Rekoo said on Wednesday it had chosen London as the new home of its European operations.
The company is the first from mainland China to establish an office in East London's technology hub, christened by Britain's government as "Tech City", and home to established gaming companies such as Mind Candy, behind the Moshi Monsters brand.
It will hire an initial 10 employees and expects to have 25 based in London within three years.
Rekoo's move to London coincided with a visit to China by Britain's Finance Minister George Osborne and London Mayor Boris Johnson, who are trying to attract Chinese investment as part of plans to increase bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015.
Rekoo's plan to invest in London follows a series of deals by Chinese companies in Britain in recent days.
China's Beijing Construction Engineering Group said on Sunday it had entered a joint venture to build a business district at Manchester airport, and last week a Chinese billionaire announced plans to spend 500 million pounds on rebuilding London's Crystal Palace.
(Reporting by Sarah Young and Paul Sandle; editing by David Evans)
State Sen. Chris McDaniel waves at supporters after announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2014, during a rally at the Jones County Courthouse in Ellisville, Miss., Thursday.
Rogelio V. Solis/AP
State Sen. Chris McDaniel waves at supporters after announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2014, during a rally at the Jones County Courthouse in Ellisville, Miss., Thursday.
Rogelio V. Solis/AP
It's official: Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran is the latest GOP incumbent to get a primary challenge from the right.
State Sen. Chris McDaniel announced Thursday he'll try to unseat the six-term veteran in 2014, the day after Cochran voted for the compromise to end the government shutdown and avert a debt default.
McDaniel's move wasn't completely unexpected. What's interesting, however, is the firepower behind it — influential national conservative groups such as the Senate Conservative Fund, the Club for Growth and the Madison Project are all supporting the Tea Party-aligned challenger's candidacy.
But he criticized Cochran's vote for the deal to reopen the government after being shutdown for 16 days. Cochran was one of the senators to vote 81-18 to temporarily lift the nation's borrowing limit through early February and keep the federal government funded until January 15.
"I've got 17 trillion reasons not to compromise," McDaniel said.
Cochran, who will turn 76 later this year, has held the seat since 1978. He's the top Republican on the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry committee and sits on the powerful Appropriations committee. He's not tipped his hand as to whether he'll seek re-election.
"Senator Cochran has indicated that he will determine his plans regarding the 2014 election cycle later this year," said Cochran Communications Director Chris Gallegos.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cochran had $773,953 cash-on-hand through the end of June — one of the lowest amounts of any senator who's up for re-election in 2014.
The Mississippi seat is considered safely Republican, so the winner of the June 2014 primary will be a heavy favorite in the general election.
Apple is cutting back production of its lower-cost iPhone 5C for the fourth quarter, according to sources close to the two Taiwanese companies that assemble the devices. The news gives ammunition to analysts who questioned the company's pricing strategy for the new addition to the iPhone line.
The colorful, plastic encased iPhone 5C debuted in September along with the high-end iPhone 5S, which costs $100 more and comes with the fastest mass-market smartphone chips to date, along with a fingerprint sensor.
Apple told its Taiwanese assemblers Pegatron Corp. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. that it would be cutting shipments of the iPhone 5C in the fourth quarter, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Pegatron, which the Journal says assembles two thirds of Apple's iPhone 5Cs, was told orders would be cut by less than 20 percent. Hon Hai, which assembles the rest of Apple's 5Cs, was told its orders would be reduced by a third.
Prior to Apple's iPhone release event in September, investors had been anticipating, and arguing for, the company to release a lower-cost model -- with a price tag around $350 -- to compete in developing markets such as China, where the company has been losing market share because many consumers don't have the disposable income for its "affordable luxury" class products. The iPhone 5C was the company's answer to this demand, but analysts were disappointed by the $550-plus price point.
Consumer demand for the gold version of the 5S, however, has outstripped expectations, leading Apple to increase orders for that model.
Audie Cornish talks to Kevin Bales, a professor of contemporary slavery at the University of Hull and lead author of the 2013 Global Slavery Index. The first-time report by the Walk Free Foundation estimates that there are nearly 30 million people in slavery across the globe.
Tomorrow the movie "12 Years A Slave" is set to open, based on the true story of a free black man kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1840s America. But the idea of kidnapping, selling, or even trading on people's debts against their will is alive and well beyond the multiplex. Some 29.8 million people are caught in some type of slavery, according to the newly released Global Slavery Index. That figure includes women sold into prostitution, children forced to beg and girls bought by wealthy families to be their indentured servants.
We turn now to Kevin Bales. He's lead author of the study and professor at the University of Hull. And, Kevin Bales, to start, help us understand how modern slavery is defined these days by other, you know, NGOs and nonprofits, and how you approached it for this report.
KEVIN BALES: Certainly, the way we look at this is to examine the essential relationship between a slave and a slaveholder. In other words, we're trying to define it according to the lived experience of people in slavery, as opposed to external motions of its legality. And that means that we're looking for a person who is completely controlled by another person.
Violence is being used to maintain that control. And, you know, the rule of thumb is that the person simply cannot walk away, even into a worse situation. It's slavery, pure and simple.
CORNISH: Now, you talk about which countries are having a bigger problem with this?
BALES: The country that turns out number one, in terms of the proportion of the population of that country in slavery, is Mauritania in northwest Africa. And, you know, this is a country with a long tradition of participation in slave trade that dates back actually hundreds of years. It's a country that's very a sharply divided by different ethnic groups. And there's a dominant ethnic group which tends to be the one that has enforced hereditary forms of enslavement on the ethnic groups that they dominate.
But in terms of the countries that have the most raw numbers of people in slavery, India tops the list. So, out of the 29.8 million people in the world in slavery, we're estimating about 14 million of those live in India. Now, of course, India has more than one billion people in its populations, so a smaller fraction of the national population of India but a very large raw number of people in slavery.
CORNISH: Now, are there certain industries that you found also where slavery is more common?
BALES: Well, you know, you can point certainly at dirty, dangerous, demeaning work in those extractive industries. So, mining, low-grade mining - not the kind with giant machines, but where people are still working with picks and shovels; coffee, cocoa, shrimp production; and then, you know, those jobs that are at the bottom level - brick making by hand, gravel making by hand. Those jobs which are at the lowest end of the economic ladder are the ones where you tend to find slavery concentrated.
CORNISH: Are there particular types of slavery that seems to be getting worse; things that may have appeared in one or two countries before but now seem more prevalent?
BALES: I think it's important to understand that a lot of people end up in slavery for doing what you or I would do in a similar situation, where we were in an insecure place with our family, we wanted to provide opportunity and support for our families and children, and we would go looking for work and safety abroad from the place that we live. Sadly, there are those slave recruiters who will use offers opportunity as a lure, as a conduit to drag people into slavery.
And that reflects the large numbers of people in the world who are becoming economic migrants, trying to better their lives and that of their family but a fraction of them are being caught up - and I think an increasing fraction of them are being caught up - in slavery.
CORNISH: Kevin Bales, thank you so much for walking us through this report.
BALES: It's been a pleasure, thank you so much.
CORNISH: Kevin Bales, he's from the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull. He spoke to us about the Global Slavery Index, which is published by the Australian-based Walk Free Foundation.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in Congress chastised President Barack Obama's top health adviser on Thursday for declining to testify before an oversight panel about problems in rolling out the president's signature healthcare program known as Obamacare.
Less than a day after Congress ended a 16-day partial government shutdown precipitated by Republican demands to delay or defund Obamacare, they sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius demanding she make officials available for the October 24 hearing.
The online insurance exchanges that are a central part of Obamacare rolled out on October 1 despite the shutdown but have been hobbled by technical difficulties that Sebelius has said are being fixed.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing is titled: "Implementation Failures: Didn't Know or Didn't Disclose?"
The letter from majority members of the committee said they invited Sebelius on October 11 to appear at the hearing, only to learn on Wednesday that she would not attend. The administration has not agreed to provide other administration officials, the letter added.
"It's well past time for the administration to be straight and transparent with the American people," said a separate statement by Republican Representative Fred Upton, who chairs the panel.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had no immediate comment.
A spokeswoman for the panel's Republican majority did not respond to a Reuters inquiry about whether subpoenas would be issued by the committee.
Upton said top administration officials had previously said that everything was on track, but the broad technological failures revealed that was not the case. "Either the administration was not ready for launch, or it was not up to the job," he said.
Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is expected to provide private health coverage to an estimated 7 million uninsured Americans through the new online marketplaces that opened for enrollment in all 50 states on October 1.
But the website Healthcare.gov, the administration's online portal for consumers in 36 states, was hobbled by technical issues - including error messages, garbled text and delays loading pages - that administration officials partly blame on an unexpectedly high volume of 14.6 million visitors in its first 10 days.
Sebelius recently appeared on the cable-television comedy program, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" for an interview that focused on the website's problems.
But HHS and the White House have largely declined to disclose information about the problems plaguing the federal marketplace's information technology system, which cost nearly $400 million to build, according to a report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office.
"This is wholly unacceptable. Secretary Sebelius had time for Jon Stewart, and we expect her to have time for Congress," Upton said.
Upton's panel is one of at least three House committees expected to hold hearings as part of a new Republican plan to attack the healthcare reform's weaknesses, beginning with the problem-plagued technology behind its launch.
The oversight is expected to span the cost of new insurance plans under the healthcare law, online security, fraud, the role of the Internal Revenue Service and the fate of consumers who are unable to enroll in coverage in the coming weeks, according to congressional aides.
"It's not just a bumpy rollout. We're crossing a bridge with a warning sign that says: BRIDGE OUT," said Republican Representative Tim Murphy, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce panel's health subcommittee and plans to hold his own hearings.
"We'll be trying to get people from the administration to tell us whether they were pretending everything was OK or was there an internal cover-up or did they just not know?" he added.
Oversight is also not the only strategy Republicans are planning.
House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement that Republicans will rely on "smart, targeted strikes" aimed at splitting Obama's support in Congress. His office did not elaborate.
But strategists say Republicans plan to use newly begun budget talks to jettison provisions of the law that are also unpopular with Democrats, possibly including a $29 billion tax on medical devices and a panel to control costs within the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled.
