Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/315215642?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
'The Voice' gives Danielle every chance to shine
TV
6 hours ago
After Monday's live final performances on "The Voice," it?s pretty clear who the show hopes will be crowned the champion on Tuesday.
Danielle Bradbery was given the prime slots and closed the show Monday night. Before she?d even uttered her first note of ?Born to Fly,? Adam Levine already had anointed her the winner and Blake Shelton, the 16-year-old's coach, had said (again) that she was one of the most important artists they?d ever seen walk across the show's stage.
And just in case the sentiment was unclear, both stars left the show?s viewers with an unmistakable last impression.
?What else can I possibly say? Your perfection is almost boring me at this point. It?s too perfect,? Adam said.
?As your coach, I?d like to sit here and say coach-y type things, but at the end of the day ? I?m one of the millions of people out there that you have wrapped around your finger,? Blake said. ?Thank God that you came to 'The Voice' to debut yourself, because you are such an important person in music and I can?t say enough about you.?
Some might argue that this is quite a lot of praise to put on a teenager.
Nevertheless, ?The Voice? spared nothing in giving her the chance to shine.
Danielle sang in the back half of every one of the live performance shows, and that wasn?t about to change this late in the game. On Monday, not only did she sing last, she was involved in three of the final four performances. If late impressions are what woo voters, she got her fair share and then some.
Her three songs were by Patty Loveless, Pam Tillis and Sara Evans, continuing the Blake strategy of keeping Michelle squarely in the country lane. It?s not the most fascinating approach to song selection in the world, but it works for the superstar every year and it did again on Monday.
The Swon Brothers, on the other hand, finished all three of their individual performances before Danielle took the stage for a second time. Except for a random group performance with the rest of the top 12, they were done for the night with 40 minutes left in the show. It doesn?t take a conspiracy theorist to guess that the likable Okies on Blake's team weren?t the top choice of whoever made the schedule.
That?s nothing new for the brothers. They?ve taken the opposite road from Danielle, having performed in the first half of every live show and survived where others in that position have faltered. They were again nothing but fun. And they did get Shakira to wave a little ?Go Okies?pennant ? although considering that she followed that by wearing Michelle-like glasses and a tiny cowboy hat to honor Danielle, she was mostly trying to get some airtime on a night where she had no remaining singers of her own to support.
Michelle Chamuel had the most memorable performance of the night with ?Why? by Annie Lennox. Part of the song was sung to an image of her in a mirror, which fascinated Blake to no end. She and coach Usher said more nice things about each other, and the hopeful still has the most range of any singer in the competition.
But for ?The Voice,? range isn?t as important as genre. Though Usher did his part by having Michelle reprise Taylor Swift?s ?I Knew You Were Trouble,? she?s an indie-rock girl in a country competition, and that likely means a runner-up finish and a front-row seat for Danielle?s coronation Tuesday.
Who are you rooting for to win? Click on the "Talk about it" button below and tell us!
Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/voice-gives-danielle-every-chance-shine-finals-6C10357251
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CA-NEWS Summary
Obama says will meet oversight board about NSA surveillance
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday he will meet soon with a privacy and civil liberties oversight board to discuss ways to balance the need for U.S. surveillance while respecting people's right to privacy. Obama, in an interview with PBS anchor Charlie Rose, said he believed there is plenty of transparency about the U.S. government's top-secret monitoring of Americans' phone and Internet data but that he has asked the intelligence community to see if there is more that can be revealed about it to reassure people.
Putin faces isolation over Syria as G8 ratchets up pressure
ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin faced further isolation on the second day of a G8 summit on Tuesday as world leaders lined up to pressure him into toning down his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Following an icy encounter between the Kremlin chief and U.S. President Barack Obama late on Monday, the G8 leaders will seek to find resolution to a war that has prompted powers across the Middle East to square off on sectarian lines.
Explosion in Kabul near Afghan national parliament: police
KABUL (Reuters) - An explosion on Tuesday morning rocked an area in the west of the Afghan capital, Kabul, close to the country's national parliament, police said. The explosion occurred soon after 9 a. m. (12.30 a.m. EDT) in an area called Karta-e Seh, a Kabul police source said, and came as hundreds of local and international officials gathered on Kabul's outskirts ahead of a ceremony to mark the beginning of the final phase of security transition to Afghan forces across the nation.
FBI rushes to Newark airport after passenger says poison on plane
NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - A passenger who screamed that he had poison aboard a plane that was headed for New Jersey's Newark airport on Monday was taken into custody by FBI agents when the plane landed, law enforcement officials said. United Airlines Flight 116 was en route from Hong Kong to Newark Liberty International Airport when a passenger "became disruptive," the carrier said.
Lawyer Cliff Sloan faces tough assignment: Closing Guantanamo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cliff Sloan has represented Jon Bon Jovi's band in legal matters and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, he has perhaps his toughest assignment: Helping to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Washington attorney was named on Monday as the State Department's Guantanamo Bay envoy, a central player in President Barack Obama's renewed push to make good on a 2008 campaign promise to shut the installation where the United States holds terrorism suspects. Obama wants to close the facility because it is a legacy of the Bush administration that he feels has damaged the U.S. reputation with allies around the world.
Turkey could deploy army to quell protests
ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's deputy prime minister said on Monday the armed forces could be called up if needed to help quell popular protests that have swept Turkish cities in the last two weeks, the first time the possibility of a military role has been raised. Bulent Arinc made the remarks in Ankara, where 1,000 striking trade union workers faced off briefly against police backed by several water cannon, before police retreated and the crowd left.
U.S. right to arm Syrian rebels, says Israeli president
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli President Shimon Peres has thrown his weight behind U.S. plans to arm Syrian rebels, shrugging off fears the weapons could be turned on Israel and exacerbate the conflict. In a wide-ranging interview with Reuters before his 90th birthday, Peres dismissed the idea that Israel could launch a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and urged Palestinians and Israelis to forge immediate peace.
Snowden hits back against critics of NSA leaks
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the U.S. government's top-secret monitoring of Americans' phone and Internet data fought back against his critics on Monday, saying the government's "litany of lies" about the programs compelled him to act. Edward Snowden told an online forum run by Britain's Guardian newspaper that he considered it an honor to be called a traitor by people like former Vice President Dick Cheney, and he urged President Barack Obama to "return to sanity" and roll back the surveillance effort.
Obama sees Iran's election of moderate as hopeful sign
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday that Iran's election of a moderate as its next president is a sign that Iranians want to move in a different direction, but he was uncertain whether it would lead to a breakthrough over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. In an interview with public television anchor Charlie Rose, Obama said the United States and its allies would be willing to hold talks with Iran over its nuclear program, as long as Tehran recognized that international sanctions would not be lifted unless Iran proved it is not building a nuclear weapon.
Putin, Obama face off over Syria; rebels get Saudi missiles
ENISKILLEN, Northern Ireland/DUBAI (Reuters) - Rebels fought to halt an advance by President Bashar al-Assad's forces into northern Syria on Monday while U.S. President Barack Obama faced a showdown with Russia's Vladimir Putin over Obama's decision last week to arm the insurgents. New evidence emerged of escalating foreign support for the rebels, with a Gulf source telling Reuters that Saudi Arabia had equipped fighters for the first time with shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, their most urgent request. Rebels said Riyadh had also sent them anti-tank missiles.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-news-summary-000524607.html
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Monday, June 17, 2013
Nokia RM-877 approved by FCC with AT&T LTE, likely is the EOS
Oh, the tales FCC employees could tell -- if they were allowed to discuss them. A Nokia device, known only as the RM-877, has passed the agency's approval process. This mystery unit contains AT&T-compatible LTE bands (2, 4, 5 and 17, to be specific), pentaband HSPA+ / WCDMA and quad-band GSM / EDGE. Additionally, it also sports NFC, Bluetooth and dual-band WiFi. According to the above diagram, the handset measures 130.35mm tall and 71.4mm wide, which makes it a millimeter taller and wider than the Lumia 925. We're still combing the documents for any more clues, but we've already seen reports that appear to match this model number with the EOS that we're expecting to see on July 11th.
Update: As we continue to look through the documents, we've noticed mention of the device being tested with a "camera grip" (model PD-95G). It definitely gives us more reason to believe this is the EOS. Additionally, we've also noticed that a wireless charging cover was involved in testing, which means it's likely optional, much like the Lumia 925.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Nokia, AT&T
Source: FCC
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/RwgxfXKWMFY/
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Ark. Sen. Pryor hit from right, left before 2014
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) ? The conservative Club for Growth tags Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor as President Barack Obama's "closest ally" in the state. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's gun-control advocacy group says Pryor "let us down."
Pryor's re-election race is 17 months away, but the Democratic incumbent seen as perhaps the most vulnerable in 2014 is already taking hits from the right and the left. That's forced the second-term senator to aggressively defend himself and step into re-election mode sooner than planned, even though he has no Republican opponent.
"My goal right now is to put the campaign off until the election year, 2014," Pryor told reporters recently. "They keep dragging me back into the politics, they keep running ads and trying to keep it stirred it up here."
Republicans are trying to unseat Pryor and three other Democratic incumbents who represent states that Republican Mitt Romney won in last year's presidential race: Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
Democrats need to defend 21 seats, including seven in largely rural states that Obama lost in 2012.
Republicans need to pick up six seats to regain Senate control. But the GOP is defending fewer incumbents and could benefit from history: The party controlling the White House usually loses seats during the midterm election of a second-term president.
Pryor, who began airing his first television ad last month, faces pressure especially early in Arkansas. He's trying to survive in a state where Republicans enjoyed widespread gains over the past two election cycles, fueled by Obama's unpopularity.
The GOP controls both chambers of the Legislature and all four U.S. House seats. In 2010, Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln lost her bid for a third term. Last year, Republicans swept all four House seats and won control of the Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.
National and state Republicans are eager to topple Pryor, whose father, David, was a senator and governor. It's a turnaround from 2008, when Republicans were unable to find anyone to challenge Mark Pryor and he easily won a second term.
"When you hear Arkansas Democrats try to spin things for Mark Pryor, the only things they can point to is he's raised a lot of money, he's got a high name ID and the fact his father is popular," David Ray, a spokesman for the state GOP. "That's not a very strong place to start."
Among Republicans, U.S. Reps. Tom Cotton and Steve Womack are widely viewed as potential challengers.
So far, Pryor is taking heat from outside groups rather than a challenger. The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee, has begun airing $320,000 worth of television ads criticizing Pryor's 2009 vote for the federal health care law and calling him too liberal.
The conservative Club for Growth, which backed Cotton last year, has aired ads linking Pryor to Obama.
At the same time, Pryor has absorbed criticism from the left after voting against expanded background checks for firearms purchases.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Bloomberg group, is airing television and radio ads criticizing Pryor for the vote. The ad invokes the shooting death of Bill Gwatney, the state Democratic Party chairman who was killed in his office in 2008. Bloomberg has also urged New York donors to not contribute to Pryor or the other Democratic senators who voted against the background checks measure in April.
"When my dear innocent friend was shot to death, I didn't blame guns. I blamed a system that makes it so terribly easy for criminals or the dangerous mentally ill to buy guns," Angela Bradford-Barnes, who worked with Gwatney, says in the ad. "That's why I was so disappointed when Mark Pryor voted against comprehensive background checks. On that vote, he let us down."
Robert McLarty, a Democratic consultant in Little Rock who's not affiliated with Pryor's campaign, said the senator's biggest challenge right now is that he doesn't have an announced opponent while he's fending off attacks from both sides.
"He's not able to direct a compare and contrast style campaign," McLarty said. "He's not able to take a candidate on the other side and say this is how we differ."
But McLarty and others say Pryor is in a better position than Lincoln was in 2010.
She survived a bruising Democratic primary with the help of former President Bill Clinton, who campaigned for her. But she lost handily in the fall of 2010. Pryor has higher approval figures than Lincoln did and appears unlikely at this point to draw a serious primary challenger next spring.
Clinton headlined a March fundraiser to kick off Pryor's re-election bid, helping him raise more than $1 million in a night. Pryor reported having more than $3.4 million in the bank for the 2014 race.
"The reason this is a race of national significance is because it's about whether a senator who cares about his own people more than ideological purity can be financed, elected, lifted by the people he has served in the face of all these crazy currents that are taking America and tearing it to shreds," Clinton said at the event.
Pryor is trying to find middle ground on issues such as gun control, where he contends his vote represents a constituency that values hunting and gun rights. He's also argued that a competing measure he supported that was endorsed by the National Rifle Association would have done more to address gun violence.
The NRA has also stepped in to help Pryor, with a radio ad airing in the state thanking the lawmaker for his vote.
Without an opponent, Pryor is casting the fight over gun control as one with Bloomberg.
"The mayor of New York City is running ads against me because I opposed President Obama's gun control legislation. Nothing in the Obama plan would have prevented tragedies like Newtown, Aurora, Tucson or even Jonesboro," Pryor says in his television ad. "I'm committed to finding real solutions to gun violence while protecting our Second Amendment rights."
When Bloomberg's group ran ads before the background checks vote, Pryor responded: "I don't take gun advice from the mayor of New York City. I listen to Arkansans."
He's also distanced himself from Obama and national Democrats on other issues. He's opposed gay marriage despite a growing chorus of support from lawmakers from his party in other states and criticized the Internal Revenue Service for targeting conservative groups.
Pryor said he's trying to keep his focus on Arkansas.
"All I can do is be the very best senator I can be. I wish these outside groups would let me do that and not have to fool around with the election," Pryor said. "People in Arkansas are tired of the election. They want us to get up to Washington and take care of the nation's business."
___
Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report.
___
Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ademillo
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ark-sen-pryor-hit-left-2014-085128242.html
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Manu Ginobili sparks Spurs to Game 5 win
SAN ANTONIO (AP) ? Across three NBA championships and more than 100 playoff victories together, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili have built a bond most teammates will never share.
So maybe Ginobili could ignore it when he was suddenly being criticized around San Antonio.
You better believe it bothered the others.
"Yeah, of course," Parker said. "Because for everything he did for the franchise, I thought it was a little bit too harsh. We understand it's a business. He came out big tonight."
Just like Parker said he would.
Ginobili broke out of a slump in a big way with 24 points and 10 assists in his first start of the season, and the Spurs beat the Miami Heat 114-104 on Sunday night to take a 3-2 lead in the NBA Finals.
Parker scored 26 points, Duncan had 17 points and 12 rebounds, and Ginobili had his highest-scoring game of the season as the Spurs became the first team to shoot 60 percent in a finals game in four years.
"He's such a huge part of what we do and how far we've come. You can see it tonight in how we played and the results of the game," Duncan said. "We're always confident in him. ... We know he has it in him. We hope he can bring it forward for one more win."
Danny Green smashed the NBA Finals record for 3-pointers, hitting six more and scoring 24 points. Kawhi Leonard finished with 16, but the stage was set when Ginobili trotted out with Duncan, Parker and the rest of starters in what could have been the last finals home game for a trio that's meant so much to San Antonio.
One more victory and the Spurs' Big Three, not Miami's, will be the one that rules the NBA.
And a big reason was Ginobili, as he's been for so long ? just not during what had been a miserable series for the former Sixth Man of the Year.
"I was angry, disappointed," Ginobili said. "We are playing in the NBA Finals, we were 2-2, and I felt I still wasn't really helping the team that much," Ginobili said. "And that was the frustrating part."
On Sunday, it was all forgotten.
"He's obviously very popular. He's been here a long time. He's helped us have a lot of success over the years," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said.
LeBron James and Dwyane Wade each scored 25 points for the Heat, who host Game 6 on Tuesday night. They need a victory to force the first Game 7 in the finals since the Lakers beat the Celtics in 2010.
Miami's Big Three formed a few weeks after that game, with predictions of multiple titles to follow. Now they're a loss away from going just 1 for 3 in finals to start their partnership, while the Spurs could run their perfect record to 5 for 5.
"This is the position we're in and the most important game is Game 6," James said. "We can't worry about a Game 7, we have to worry about Game 6."
Duncan won his first title in 1999, and Parker and Ginobili were with him for three championships since. They have been the perfect partnership, keeping the Spurs in the hunt virtually every year while teams such as the Lakers, Mavericks and Suns have all risen and fallen in the Western Conference during that time.
They remained unbeaten in Game 5s, including two previous victories when the series was tied at 2-2. Of the 27 times the finals have been tied at 2-2, the Game 5 winner has won 20 of them.
Miami was the most recent loser, falling to Dallas in Game 5 in 2011 before being eliminated at home the next game.
"We're going to see if we're a better ballclub and if we're better prepared for this moment," Wade said.
San Antonio shot 42 of 70, right at 60 percent. The last team to make 60 percent of its shots in the finals was Orlando, which hit 62.5 in Game 3 against the Lakers in 2009, according to STATS.
"They just absolutely outplayed us," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "At times they were just picking one guy out at a time and going at us mano y mano. That will change."
Ray Allen scored 21 points on the night for the Heat as he watched Green shatter his finals 3-point record. Green has 25 3s in the series. Allen made 22 3-pointers in six games in the 2008 finals for Boston.
Chris Bosh scored 16 points for Miami, Wade had 10 assists, and James had eight assists and six rebounds, but it was their defense that let the Heat down in this one.
The Heat were within one with 3:05 left in the third quarter before Green hit yet another 3-pointer and Ginobili followed with the stretch that turned the game into the fourth straight blowout of the finals.
The crafty lefty plays with a flair developed on the courts of Argentina and perfected in Europe before coming to the NBA. He sees angles other players can't and takes risks few others would, but his style has been the perfect fit alongside Duncan and Parker.
He converted a three-point play, tossed in a floater with his left hand as he drifted right, and found Tiago Splitter under the hoop with a pass to make it 85-74.
He flipped in another runner with 2.9 seconds to go in the period, sending the Spurs to the fourth with an 87-75 lead as fans chanted "Manu! Manu!" during the break between the third and fourth quarters.
Ginobili had been averaging just 7.5 points on 34.5 percent shooting in the series, making only three of his 16 3-point attempts. But Popovich made the finals' second lineup change in two games, after the Heat inserted Mike Miller to start Game 4.
Ginobili didn't make a start this season and certainly hadn't been playing like someone who belonged with the first five. But in the Spurs' biggest game of the season, they remained confident he would break out, and they were right.
"I knew that I was not scoring much and I felt it in the air. But I tried not to care about it. I know I'm critical enough of myself to be worrying about what other people say," Ginobili said.
It was the first time he scored 24 or more points since having 34 on June 4, 2012, against Oklahoma City, according to STATS.
The AT&T Center crowd roared when Ginobili was the last starter announced, the cheers growing louder when he made a jumper ? originally ruled a 3-pointer but later overturned by replay ? on the first possession. He assisted on the Spurs' next three baskets, and it was 15-10 when he later hit a 3 that did count.
Parker picked it up from there, dancing his way into the lane repeatedly and scoring seven points in a 12-0 run that made it 29-17.
Leonard's 3-pointer with 4.7 seconds left, on an assist from Ginobili, made it 32-19 and gave the Spurs 12 makes in 19 attempts (63 percent) in the opening 12 minutes.
Green's third straight 3-pointer made it 45-28 about 5 minutes into the second quarter, and it seemed the trend of blowouts would continue.
But James suddenly got rolling during a 14-2 Miami spurt that cut it to five on his third consecutive Heat basket.
San Antonio made 21 of 34 shots (62 percent) in the first half, opening a 61-52 lead on Parker's drive with 0.4 seconds left.
Miami then ran off eight in a row to start the second half and get within one. They cut it to one again later in the period before Ginobili led the flurry that finished the Heat for good.
It was a fitting finish if it was the last home game in the finals for San Antonio's star trio, which has combined for 101 playoff victories. Ginobili has said he might think about retirement as he turns 36 next month, and Duncan is 37.
Both coaches said it was difficult waiting two days between games ? Popovich said it was "like death" ? though he did say it was great for the Spurs because they have some older players.
The break seemed to help his team early, particularly Parker, whose energy sagged in the second half of Game 4 as he struggled with a strained hamstring that he said could tear at any time and would've had him sidelined during the regular season.
If things fall right for the Spurs, he'll have plenty of time to heal after Tuesday.
Notes: The last team to lose Game 5 of a 2-2 series and then win the title was the Los Angeles Lakers, when they beat Boston in 2010. ... The Spurs said Sunday that reserve guard Patty Mills had surgery to remove an abscess Friday and would miss the rest of the series. Mills had an infection in his right foot and the abscess developed between his fourth and fifth toes.
___
Follow Brian Mahoney on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Briancmahoney
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/manu-ginobili-sparks-spurs-game-5-win-025442617.html
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Box Office Guru Wrapup: Man of Steel Sets June Record
This weekend, Superman was reborn at the box office as the big-budget gamble Man of Steel paid off handsomely with a spectacular opening weekend in North America plus impressive launches overseas in only a portion of the international marketplace. The Warner Bros. summer tentpole grossed an estimated $113.1M domestically, breaking the record for the biggest June opening ever. Adding in $12M from Thursday night group sales led by Walmart's promotion for 7:00pm shows, the total stood at a stellar $125.1M. The Friday-to-Sunday portion for the PG-13 film averaged a muscular $26,879 from 4,207 theaters including 331 IMAX screens. Toy Story 3 held the June record since 2010 with $110.3M.
The 3.5-day performance exceeded the extended seven-day holiday opening of 2006's reboot Superman Returns which amounted to $108.1M during the week leading up to Independence Day. That mega-budgeted film eventually inched its way into the double century club ending with $200.1M but was seen as a creative and commercial disappointment which failed to lead to a new franchise being born. The new reboot may match the last one's gross by the end of next weekend.
Man of Steel was directed by Zack Snyder with Henry Cavill taking on the title role and also featured an Oscar-caliber cast including Russell Crowe, Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon and Laurence Fishburne. Christopher Nolan, who successfully rebooted the Batman franchise for the studio, produced Steel and lent much to the box office pull of the film. After getting the origin story out of the way in 2005's Batman Begins, grosses soared even higher for the next two chapters leading to a $2.5 billion global trilogy, so it was crucial for Warner Bros. to relaunch Superman in a way that brought in the masses.
Reviews were mixed but paying audiences gave the super hero flick an encouraging A- grade from CinemaScore. Friday debuted to $44.1M including $9M in midnight shows. Saturday fell an understandable 18% to $36.3M while Sunday was projected to dip by only 10% to $32.7M thanks to the Father's Day holiday. Much of the film's story involves Superman's two dads from Krypton and Earth and how they molded him.
Studio research showed that Man of Steel skewed towards men as expected with 56% being male. But that made for a better female turnout than usual for a comic book pic. Iron Man 3 and Avengers were both 61% male and last summer's Spider-Man reboot played 58% male. The stronger cross-gender appeal could allow it to play well over the coming weeks especially with the Fourth of July holiday around the corner.
3,350 theaters offered a 3D option with those screens accounting for 41% of the gross. With conversions, even for effects-driven action pictures, audiences nowadays typically prefer the original 2D version at regular prices instead. IMAX venues contributed 12% of the total gross with $13.3M and a sturdy average of $40,181 since Thursday night. Tickets cost as much as $21.50 to experience Man of Steel in IMAX 3D in New York City. Massive cross-promotions with brand partners helped to drive in business too for the event film.
The international launch for Man of Steel was also quite strong even though many top markets open later. The weekend saw $71.6M from 24 markets led by the U.K., Mexico, and Korea which were the only majors to open this week. 27 new countries will launch next weekend including key territories like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia and China so Man of Steel has much more ahead this summer. But so far, the first weekend delivered $196.7M in global sales.
Opening far behind in second place was the new doomsday comedy This is the End with an estimated $20.5M over three days and $32.8M since its launch on Tuesday night with 7:00pm shows. It was a respectable opening for the Sony release especially considering the distraction Clark Kent had over the target audience of young men. Playing in 3,055 locations, the raunchy R-rated comedy starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill and Jay Baruchel averaged $6,710 over the Friday-to-Sunday period. The full gross was below the $41.3M five-day debut of Pineapple Express in August 2008 which was from many of the same team members.
Reviews were very solid for End but the CinemaScore grade was a B+ which is commendable, not glowing. The road ahead features plenty of new action movies which will continue to lure in young men so it will not be easy. But Rogen and company hope that word-of-mouth will help it reach many more moviegoers over the weeks ahead, especially those who want a rowdy laugh and are all actioned out. Studio research showed that the crowd was 60% male and 52% over 25. With a $32M production budget and marketing costs not in the same league as summer tentpoles, the comedy should turn out to be a moneymaker regardless of how it plays overseas.
Holding steady in third place was Lionsgate's heist thriller Now You See Me with an estimated $10.3M, down 46%, for a robust cume to date of $80M. Now the top-grossing installment of the franchise, Universal's Fast & Furious 6 followed with an estimated $9.4M dropping 52% pushing the domestic tally to a muscular $219.6M. Worldwide, it's also the highest-grossing Furious flick with a total now of $636.9M and still growing.
Last week's top film The Purge got beaten down tumbling a frightening 76% to an estimated $8.2M. The micro-budgeted $3M pic has nonetheless raked in a healthy $52M in ten days for Universal. The Fox comedy The Internship fell a troubling 60% in its second weekend to an estimated $7M putting the Vince Vaughn-Owen Wilson pic at a disappointing $31M.
Dropping 50% to an estimated $6M in its fourth round was the animated film Epic which has collected $95.4M to date for Fox. Star Trek Into Darkness followed with an estimated $5.7M, off 51%, for an impressive $210.5M for Paramount.
The summer's most notable flop so far, Will Smith's critically panned father-son sci-fi adventure After Earth, crumbled 65% to an estimated $3.8M for a lousy $54.2M cume to date for the pricey $130M gamble. Flirting with the quadruple century mark, Iron Man 3 rounded out the top ten with an estimated $2.9M in its seventh weekend, down 50%. Disney has grossed $399.6M to date and $1.2 billion globally.
The top ten films grossed an estimated $186.8M which was up a stellar 55% from last year when Madagascar 3 remained at number one with $34.1M; and up 29% from 2011 when Green Lantern debuted in the top spot with $53.2M.
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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927672/news/1927672/
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Shock lingers after Nazi unit leader found in US
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ? The revelation that a top former commander of a Nazi SS-led military unit has lived quietly in Minneapolis for the past six decades came as a shock to those who knew 94-year-old Michael Karkoc. World War II survivors in both the U.S. and Europe harshly condemned the news and prosecutors in Poland have said they'll investigate.
An Associated Press investigation found that Karkoc served as a top commander in the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion during World War II. The unit is accused of wartime atrocities, including the burning of villages filled with women and children.
"I know him personally. We talk, laugh. He takes care of his yard and walks with his wife," his next-door neighbor, Gordon Gnasdoskey, said Friday. Gnasdoskey, the grandson of a Ukrainian immigrant himself, said he was disturbed by the revelations about his longtime neighbor.
"For me, this is a shock. To come to this country and take advantage of its freedoms all of these years, it blows my mind," he said.
Karkoc told American authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during World War II, concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the legion and later as an officer in the SS Galician Division, according to records obtained by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a secret American government blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the United States at the time.
Though records do not show that Karkoc had a direct hand in war crimes, statements from men in his unit and other documentation confirm the Ukrainian company he commanded massacred civilians, and suggest that Karkoc was at the scene of these atrocities as the company leader. Nazi SS files say he and his unit were also involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Nazis brutally suppressed a Polish rebellion against German occupation.
No one answered the door Friday morning at Karkoc's house on a residential street in northeast Minneapolis, where several television news trucks were parked outside. Karkoc had earlier declined to comment on his wartime service when approached by the AP, and repeated efforts to arrange an interview through his son ? including again Friday ? were unsuccessful.
Late Friday, Karkoc's son, Andriy Karkos, read a statement accusing AP of defaming Karkoc, and pointed to the portion of the story about records not showing Karkoc had a direct hand in war crimes.
"That's the god's honest truth," said Karkos, who uses a different spelling for his last name. "My father was never a Nazi."
He said the family wouldn't comment further until it has obtained its own documents and reviewed witnesses and sources.
Sam Rafowitz, an 88-year-old Jewish resident of the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, and spent four years working in concentration camps. He took a hard line after hearing the news about Karkoc.
"I think they should put him on trial," said Rafowitz, who was born near the border of Germany and Poland.
He may get his wish: Polish prosecutors announced Friday they will investigate Karkoc and provide "every possible assistance" to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has used lies in immigration papers to deport dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals. Karkoc lied to American immigration officials to get into the U.S., telling authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during the war. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1959.
The AP evidence of Karkoc's wartime activities has also prompted German authorities to express interest in exploring whether there is enough to prosecute. In Germany, Nazis with "command responsibility" can be charged with war crimes even if their direct involvement in atrocities cannot be proven.
Efraim Zuroff, the lead Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said that based on his decades of experience pursuing Nazi war criminals, he expects that the evidence showing Karkoc lied to American officials and that his unit carried out atrocities is strong enough for deportation and war-crimes prosecution in Germany or Poland.
"In America this is a relatively easy case: If he was the commander of a unit that carried out atrocities, that's a no brainer," Zuroff said. "Even in Germany ... if the guy was the commander of the unit, then even if they can't show he personally pulled the trigger, he bears responsibility."
Former German army officer Josef Scheungraber ? a lieutenant like Karkoc ? was convicted in Germany in 2009 on charges of murder based on circumstantial evidence that put him on the scene of a Nazi wartime massacre in Italy as the ranking officer.
Prosecution in Poland may also be a possibility because most of the unit's alleged crimes were against Poles on Polish territory. But Karkoc would be unlikely to be tried in his native Ukraine, where such men are today largely seen as national heroes who fought for the country against the Soviet Union.
Karkoc now lives in a modest house in an area of Minneapolis that has a significant Ukrainian population. Even at his advanced age, he came to the door without help of a cane or a walker. He would not comment on his wartime service for Nazi Germany.
"I don't think I can explain," he said.
Gnasdoskey said the neighborhood was once a destination for displaced persons from Slavic countries, Ukraine, Poland and other countries in the region. The area has diversified over the years, but is still occupied by the last of those residents along with some of their descendants. Karkoc and his family are longtime members of the St. Michael's and St. George's Ukrainian Orthodox Church, among several Catholic and Orthodox churches in the neighborhood.
"All the time I am here, I know him as a good man, a good citizen," said the Rev. Evhen Kumka, the church's pastor. "He's well known in the congregation."
Kumka moved from Ukraine to Minnesota 19 years ago to lead the congregation, and said Karkoc was already active in the church then. Kumka wouldn't say whether he'd spoken to Karkoc about his past, but said he was skeptical.
"I don't think everything is correct," Kumka said. "As I know him, he is a good example for many people."
Karkoc worked as a carpenter in Minneapolis, and appeared in a 1980 issue of Carpenter magazine among a group celebrating 25 years of union membership. He was a member and a secretary in the local branch of the Ukrainian National Association, a fraternal organization, and voting records obtained by the AP show he regularly voted in city, state and general elections.
Members of Karkoc's unit and other witnesses have told stories of brutal attacks on civilians.
One of Karkoc's men, Vasyl Malazhenski, told Soviet investigators that in 1944 the unit was directed to "liquidate all the residents" of the village of Chlaniow in a reprisal attack for the killing of a German SS officer, though he did not say who gave the order.
"It was all like a trance: setting the fires, the shooting, the destroying," Malazhenski recalled, according to the 1967 statement found by the AP in the archives of Warsaw's state-run Institute of National Remembrance, which investigates and prosecutes German and Soviet crimes on Poles during and after World War II.
"Later, when we were passing in file through the destroyed village," Malazhenski said, "I could see the dead bodies of the killed residents: men, women, children."
Valentina Yarr of Minneapolis, a former president of the church council, said she had also known Karkoc and members of his family for many years.
"I don't have anything bad to say about him, nor did I ever hear a hint of anything like this," Yarr said. "I'd rather not say anything else."
In a background check by U.S. officials on April 14, 1949, Karkoc said he had never performed any military service, telling investigators that he "worked for father until 1944. Worked in labor camp from 1944 until 1945."
However, in a Ukrainian-language memoir published in 1995, Karkoc states that he helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in 1943 in collaboration with the Nazis' feared SS intelligence agency, the SD, to fight on the side of Germany ? and served as a company commander in the unit, which received orders directly from the SS, through the end of the war.
It was not clear why Karkoc felt safe publishing his memoir, which is available at the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library and which the AP located online in an electronic Ukrainian library.
Karkoc's name surfaced when a retired clinical pharmacologist who took up Nazi war crimes research in his free time came across it while looking into members of the SS Galician Division who emigrated to Britain. He tipped off AP when an Internet search showed an address for Karkoc in Minnesota.
"Here was a chance to publicly confront a man who commanded a company alleged to be involved in the cruel murder of innocent people," said Stephen Ankier, who is based in London.
The AP located Karkoc's U.S. Army intelligence file, and got it declassified by the National Archives in Maryland through a FOIA request. The Army was responsible for processing visa applications after the war under the Displaced Persons Act.
The intelligence file said standard background checks with seven different agencies found no red flags that would disqualify him from entering the United States. But it also noted that it lacked key information from the Soviet side: "Verification of identity and complete establishment of applicant's reliability is not possible due to the inaccessibility of records and geographic area of applicant's former residence."
Wartime documents located by the AP also confirm Karkoc's membership in the Self Defense Legion. They include a Nazi payroll sheet found in Polish archives, signed by an SS officer on Jan. 8, 1945 ? only four months before the war's end ? confirming that Karkoc was present in Krakow, Poland, to collect his salary as a member of the Self Defense Legion. Karkoc signed the document using Cyrillic letters.
Karkoc, an ethnic Ukrainian, was born in the city of Lutsk in 1919, according to details he provided American officials. At the time, the area was being fought over by Ukraine, Poland and others; it ended up part of Poland until World War II. Several wartime Nazi documents note the same birth date, but say he was born in Horodok, a town in the same region.
He joined the regular German army after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and fought on the Eastern Front in Ukraine and Russia, according to his memoirs, which say he was awarded an Iron Cross for bravery.
He was also a member of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN; in 1943, he helped negotiate with the Nazis to have men drawn from its membership form the Self Defense Legion, according to his account. Initially small, it eventually numbered some 600 soldiers. The legion was dissolved and folded into the SS Galician Division in 1945; Karkoc wrote that he remained with it until the end of the war.
Policy at the time of Karkoc's immigration application ? according to a declassified secret U.S. government document obtained by the AP from the National Archives ? was to deny a visa to anyone who had served in either the SS Galician Division or the OUN. The U.S. does not typically have jurisdiction to prosecute Nazi war crimes but has won more than 100 "denaturalization and removal actions" against people suspected of them.
In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Michael Passman said the agency was aware of the AP story.
"While we do not confirm or deny the existence of specific investigations, I can say as a general matter that the Department of Justice continues to pursue all credible allegations of participation in World War II Nazi crimes by US citizens and residents," Passman said.
News of Karkoc's past also prompted anger from World War II survivors overseas, in countries where the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion was active.
In Poland, Honorata Banach told the AP she wants Karkoc to apologize. She was 20 when she fled the Polish village of Chlaniow before it was burned down by the legion.
"There was so much suffering, so many orphans, so much pain," Banach said. She and her mother returned the day after the attack, she said, to see that "everything was burned down, even the fences, the trees. I could not even find my house."
Survivors told her the Ukrainian legion did it, she said.
Rafowitz, the survivor living near Minneapolis, said he lost his mother and other relatives at the Majadenk concentration camp in Lublin, in German-occupied Poland. He said soldiers in the camp were German but that it was run by Ukrainians.
"You don't forget," Rafowitz said. "For me, it's been almost close to 70 years those things happened, but I still know about it. I still remember everything."
Menachem Rosensaft, who was born in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, now teaches the law of genocide and war crimes at several New York universities. He said Karkoc is a reminder that the Holocaust and other genocides "cannot be viewed as abstract history."
"I have every confidence that if Mr. Karkoc was not already on the Justice Department's radar screen, he now is," Rosensaft said.
___
Rising reported from Berlin, Herschaft from New York, Scislowska from Warsaw and Condon from Minneapolis. Associated Press writers Maria Danilova in Kiev, Ukraine; Efrem Lukatsky in Pidhaitsi, Ukraine; Svetlana Fedas in Lviv, Ukraine; Amy Forliti, Doug Glass and Brian Bakst in Minneapolis; and Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/shock-lingers-nazi-unit-leader-found-us-135442792.html
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Sunday, June 16, 2013
Beyonce, video game company settle NYC lawsuit
NEW YORK (AP) ? Beyonce has settled a New York City lawsuit that said she didn't play fair in a deal for a video game structured around her.
Court records show the case was closed Friday after the Grammy Award-winning singer and Gate Five LLC agreed to drop it.
A lawyer for Gate Five says the terms are confidential. A lawyer for Beyonce hasn't returned a call seeking comment.
Gate Five had said Beyonce made a lucrative deal for a game called "Starpower: Beyonce," then demanded a new agreement and abandoned the project. The company says it lost its nearly $7 million investment and 70 people lost their jobs.
Beyonce's lawyers had said she was within her rights to get out of the deal because Gate Five didn't have needed financing.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/beyonce-video-game-company-settle-nyc-lawsuit-001954722.html
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Sony RX100 sequel leaks in Japanese manual images, adds tilting screen, hot shoe and WiFi
We were more than a little smitten with Sony's original RX100, a high-end Cybershot point-and-shoot housing a notable 1-inch 20.2-megapxiel CMOS sensor alongside a f/1.8 Carl Zeiss lens. It looks like there were enough customers that thought the same, because SonyAlphaRumors has gleaned several images from the manual for a sequel device. The site has more to share, but it's checking its translations first. In the meantime, these initial images already point to some notable hardware additions. Alongside a screen that can tilt up and down (plus a light sensor to adjust brightness automatically), the mark two RX100 will apparently catch up with Sony's NEX series, adding built-in WiFi too. There's also the addition of a hot shoe for mics and other peripherals, but fear not: there's still the built-in flash to the left of it. Naming, pricing and availability are still unknowns, but according to the site's mole, the camera will get formally announced later this month on June 27.
Source: Sony Alpha Rumors
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Saturday, June 8, 2013
Around the Web?
Friday has finally arrived! Wrap up the week with these links: Julie Bowen: I refuse to keep my son in a bubble because of his allergies — SheKnows 18 baby names inspired by your favorite cocktails – Babble Dog rescues newborn baby left in Thailand trash dump — PEOPLE Pets Girl in need of a […]
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/xABIMvv6fEs/
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Wednesday, June 5, 2013
As Real Estate Market Heats Up, Trulia Strengthens Ties With RE/MAX
Today, Trulia issued a press release noting a new marketing agreement with RE/MAX that will provide tools and training for RE/MAX agents as they compete in an increasingly competitive real estate market. Agents will get premium branded profiles, custom training and access to marketing and advertising products that will help them stand out during the summer home season and beyond.
This agreement is part of Trulia?s larger strategy to proactively engage with the industry and tailor deals that enable Trulia to help franchises and brokers grow their businesses. The RE/MAX agreement is focused on helping RE/MAX agents connect with valuable mobile consumers and providing tools for RE/MAX agents to succeed.
?Trulia?s massive consumer audience on the web and mobile devices ? 31 million monthly unique visitors in all ? and its commitment to making tools that help real estate professionals market their properties and win listings more effectively, make us an ideal partner for real estate brokerages and franchises,? said Alon Chaver, Vice President of Industry Services at Trulia. ?Our business grows when our partners are successful, and this agreement is a perfect example of how we are working together with the industry to create more business opportunities and help agents close more deals.?
With the real estate sector currently rebounding after several challenging years, real estate professionals are looking for ways to stand out and strengthen their businesses. Trulia recently released a report that indicates the housing market is about 54% back to normal, and in the midst of a long, multi-year recovery. This bodes well for home sellers and for real estate professionals, especially as construction picks-up to address low inventory in many markets around the country.
For more information about how your brokerage or franchise can partner with Trulia, call 1-877-776-9521.
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Suspect killed by the FBI was an MMA fighter
Just after midnight early Wednesday morning, an FBI agent shot and killed someone they were questioning for his connections with the Boston Marathon bombers. Ibragim Todashev, the suspect, was an MMA fighter with a 1-0 professional record.
Todashev, who was reportedly a friend of deceased bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, fought in July of 2012. He submitted Bradford May in the first round of their bout at Real Fighting Championships in Florida with a guillotine.
Khusen Taramov, a friend of Todashev's, said that Tsarnaev and Todashev trained together in Boston. Tsarnaev trained and competed as a boxer.
"He used to talk on the phone with him (Tsarnaev)," said Taramov. "They talked last time a month ago. After the bombing, I couldn't believe it."
Todashev was reportedly being questioned about a triple-murder in Massachusetts in September of 2011. The FBI said in a statement Todashev posed an imminent threat to the agent.
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/suspect-killed-fbi-mma-fighter-194231412.html
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Love: Lucille Redmond Intervivew | Fluid Radio
Posted On: May 21, 2013
Posted In: C.E. Alexander, Lucille Redmond
Comments: No Responses
Posted In: C.E. Alexander, Lucille Redmond
Comments: No Responses
In March 2012, at the urging of friends, award-winning writer and journalist Lucille Redmond published her second collection of short fiction. Titled Love (stories of love, Ireland, sex, sea, snow and money), the book?anthologizes previously-published material and three new works.
Love is a stunning compilation, a humbling display of wit and weight, of process and voice.? ?The Sanctuary Keeper? strips a male friendship down to its events and filters them ruthlessly.? The best musical?comparison here is Brian Eno, no question, until the needle rips across the vinyl with a sudden crash into the fourth wall: ?Nothing further occurs.? At the opposite end of her?collection Redmond places??Wolf and Water,? which nods in more directions than she lets on. (Kant?? Nietzsche? Yeats? Keep reading.) If anything the book cover downplays the violence of the title story, although the brutal core of ?Elsewhen? is encased in startling tenderness.
Redmond is the granddaughter of Irish nationalist Thomas MacDonagh and the aunt of Clichy-based composer Laurent Redmond. Find her Twitter feed @Redmond_Lucille, her blog at Heatseekers, and her Amazon purchase page at LoveLucilleRedmondUS. We corresponded by email in early May, on the subjects of reading, teaching and the unraveling of an empire:
You?ve taught in prison, but as far as I can tell there is no word on who the inmates were or what subject. Do you care to elucidate?
In Ireland, the prison services run excellent courses for long-term prisoners, offering all kinds of skills training and personal development. Some of the courses offered are artistic training, and I used to teach ?creative writing? ? which is to say a basic course in fiction, prose and poetry ? along with other writers: Brendan Kennelly, Kate Cruise O?Brien and I generally worked in tandem.
The scheme was started by the Irish Writers? Co-Operative, which persuaded the Arts Council to come on board, and then the prison service took it up and formalised it. The Co-Op also started the Writers in Schools service, under which schools can get a small grant from the Arts Council to pay writers to go and talk to schoolkids and run workshops with them ? very useful for teachers, who can demonstrate (usually) that not all writers are dead, and often handy for those secret writers who discover that what they do isn?t so weird after all.
No comment on the types of prisons, or the prisoners you taught? Can we assume they weren?t all convicted of tax evasion or insider trading?
The Writers in Prisons scheme is part of the Irish prisons? training schemes, so you can be working with various different types of prisoners. My first group was towards the very beginning of the scheme, and while I obviously wouldn?t be rude enough to ask them what had brought them to this place, they were really helpful when I asked what kind of burglar alarm to get. (?A small, yappy dog? was the answer ? ?you just go and find somewhere easier, all other things being equal.?) Very funny, witty guys, at that age at the edge between the twenties and thirties when most people get sense and straighten out their lives ? usually because they meet someone who?s more important to them than whatever adventures they?d committed to when they were younger.
Later I did a brief stint in the women?s prison, though it was harder to teach there because most women prisoners are in jail for short sentences for things like prostitution and shoplifting, and they won?t be in a writing group long enough to get deeply into it. And their attention tends to be elsewhere, anyway ? they?re worried crazy about their children, and being in jail is causing trouble in their lives in all kinds of ways that civilians can?t imagine.
And I did a few sessions in a young offenders? centre, working with the poet Brendan Kennelly. Rather than get the lads to sit down and write, Brendan liked to get them telling stories and making poems in speech and action ? he?d give them a setup and have them work out a scenario, acting it as they went.
All of the prisoners we taught seemed to value the work a lot, and wrote deeply felt and thoughtful poems and prose ? often short, powerful fragments.
If you want a strange little fact about the prisons, I asked some guys who were serving long sentences if they found it strange when they were released. They said two things completely threw them: children, which they hadn?t seen throughout their sentence ? all these tiny people racing around screaming ? and the clatter of someone coming down a bus stairs fast, which sounded like they were back in jail and hearing feet clanging on the big spiral staircases of the prison.
You have taught creative writing in more traditional ways as well. With your own fiction, do you stick to what you teach, or do you find that all bets are off?
I have taught in various ways ? at one stage in Galway I was teaching a group of shy schoolgirls to write using the role-playing game Paranoia. They were dancing on the desks and screaming with laughter as one girl read out a line of a story composed by her group: ?The teacher walked into the smoke-filled hell of the staffroom?, when the door swung slowly open, the principal looked in and backed slowly out again.
Teaching adults, I currently do a beginners? course in my local college, with classes on narrative, voice, point of view, dialogue and so on. I?ll set up a blind maillist for each class, and then (if any individual student gives permission for any individual piece of work) send work around for pre-class reading. We generally have a lot of fun.
Do I stick to what I teach? Yes, because what I teach is ?follow your hero through adventures?. That?s what I like to do.
I also like to attend workshops given by writers I admire, to pick their brains and see what they have to add ? it?s something all writers should do.
You?re writing a short book about your grandfather Thomas MacDonagh. For any readers who might not be as familiar with the events of 1916, do you care to describe?
My grandfather and his friends made a small revolution that destroyed the greatest empire since Rome. The 1916 Rising began the Irish War of Independence, which lost Britain its first colony ? the others soon followed us out.
My grandfather was an unlikely revolutionary. He was an adoring husband and father, a poet, ran a scientific and literary magazine, was a professor (in the American sense) in University College Dublin, had published books of poetry and had plays performed in the Abbey Theatre; WB Yeats wrote two of his greatest poems ? ?Easter 1916? and ?Sixteen Dead Men? about his and his friends? execution by firing squad, and how it changed everything for Ireland. ?He might have won fame in the end, so daring and sweet his thought? was how Yeats wrote about MacDonagh.
Yeats knew him well, and had known my grandmother, Muriel, and her sister Grace and their ten siblings from childhood; their father, Frederick Gifford, was the Yeats family lawyer. Grace has become a kind of symbol of gloomy revolutionary romanticism because she married another of the 1916 leaders, Joseph Plunkett, an hour before he was executed. Another sister, Nellie, was a Citizen Army woman who smuggled James Larkin into William Martin Murphy?s Imperial Hotel to address the locked-out workers during the 1913 Dublin Lockout, inspiring syndicalists and socialists around the world.
Going back a bit, the Giffords? grandfather had been an idealistic Protestant clergyman, personal chaplain to Lady Harriet Kavanagh; he died in the Famine on Christmas Eve 1850; Thomas MacDonagh?s grandfather was a hedge schoolmaster in the west of Ireland ? but enough?
I cannot help but think of the final pages of ?And the Green Sea Ebbs Away? when I read Patrick Pearse?s quotation: ?They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half.? Do you agree? If so, was this intentional?
It was. ?And the Green Sea Ebbs Away? is set on a sea planet invaded by earth people who have themselves genetically engineered so they can live in the planet?s conditions. But the judicial murder at its centre is based on the murder of the Kearney family by the landlord Ponsonby Shaw in Gleann na Sm?l. I was intentionally writing about a society riven with political tension and inequality, which swings towards violent revolution because of an injustice. And the character I chose for the centre of it ? the person who is decent and kind and loving, but who is caught up in that destruction, was quite deliberate.
This makes it sound like a didactic work of propaganda, but I wasn?t writing at all for that purpose ? I was writing a story of hopeless love, like so many of the stories in the collection Love.
Speaking of, let?s take ?Elsewhen,? and specifically its lapses out of third-person. It feels almost more honest that way, an admission that the writer tries to keep herself out of the narrative, but often fails.
I used the varying person ? the third person for Omurchu, the well-off boy from a Moslem merchant family; the first person for the trafficked prostitute ? as a pair of lenses to shimmer your view of them as they fall in love and doom approaches.
Using both third-person and first-person narrators in this very short piece also allowed me to slow the speeding narrative. And to make it funnier.
?Wolf and Water? is alluring for its headstrong female character and timeless theme, but more than anything it?s a page-turner. Again, was this intentional? And which appeals to your more as a reader? As a writer?
Absolutely intentional. I don?t think I could say that I prefer page-turners; I?m greedy ? I want both. I love Tana French?s In the Woods, which has an absolutely weird story with a delightfully unrealised ending; I love Clare Keegan?s Foster, a novella that dives straight for its end, but you can absolutely taste every moment. At the moment I?m reading Nadeem Aslam?s The Blind Man?s Garden, about the war in Afghanistan, and I?m torn between greedily gobbling my way through the whole story as it rushes along, and stopping to breathe in fabulous details like a hidden herd of horses rising out of the ground.
I like a clear line of narrative ? no question about that.
That?s a fantastic opening paragraph to ?Green Sea Ebbs.? Your rewriting of a historical event and then plunging it underwater is easily my favorite plot device in the book. Do you care to comment on this particular choice?
I?m not sure why I did it. That first sentence: ?I was daydreaming of sex when I found the axe, on a baking day in August, on my knees weeding the beans at the end of the market garden.? I think it came from a friend of mine, a great-great-grandson of those Kearneys who were murdered in Gleann na Sm?l, telling me about the bloody axe being produced in a court where the landlord was both the accuser and the judge; he leaned across the woodstove to me and said: ?First time a man was ever shot with an axe.?
The person who tells the story had to be at its centre, yet be an outsider; so she was in love with the youngest of the boys accused by the great landowner. The original Kearneys were regarded by the Ascendancy as Fenian troublemakers. It wasn?t such a far leap.
It?s hard to get past Rose?s silence during the last pages of ?Love.? You even draw our attention to it: ?They were the last words she spoke.? Combined with Moriarty?s bizarre remarks and inaction, it seems like a comment on the silence surrounding all domestic violence. Do you agree?
I do. In fact, those words were taken from a news story; they were the reported words of a man explaining how he had killed his wife. And the refusal of the garda ? the village policeman ? to help Rose as she runs away from the murderous Coley is part of the silence on ?domestic? violence, but it?s also part of the sheer terror in the face of someone in a murderous state. Moriarty?s courage fails him, and he doesn?t dare to take on Coley. Oddly, when I wrote that, the Garda? ? an almost entirely unarmed police force whose motto is that they must maintain the law ?not by force of arms or numbers, but on their moral authority as servants of the people? ? were facing heavily-armed IRA members with enormous courage.
In one case, an unarmed garda persuaded a homicidal maniac from one of the offshoots of the IRA, loaded down with submachine guns and the like, to get out of his getaway car and come back to the garda station with him; the man then escaped ? and the garda recaptured him and kept him, without any use of violence.
But I wanted Moriarty to be an ordinary man who is utterly cowed by insane violence, and simply pretends not to see it, as so many, so often, do.
[Days later I asked about her current listening, to tie the interview back to Fluid Radio. Pardon the indelicate segue.]
The album I played most recently ? oh, I?m such an old fogey I kind of keep playing the same stuff: albums like Clandestino by Manu Chao and Pirates? Choice by Orchestre Baobab and Smaointe by Deirbhile N? Bhrolch?in, with its stunning version of ?Liam ? Raghallaigh? ? and then there are single tracks. A joyous and inescapably catchy 1998 single by the British Indian band Cornershop, ?Brimful of Asha?, is going around and around in my head at the moment unstoppably. Brimful of Asha on the 45, Brimful of Asha on the 45?
-Interview by C.E. Alexander (@CAlexanderRun) for Fluid Radio. His fiction debut The Music and the Spires is available now through Zidi Publishing.
www.heatseekers.blogspot.co.uk
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Source: http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2013/05/love-lucille-redmond-intervivew/
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Israel fires back at Syria after gunshots at its troops
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot at a target across the Syrian frontier on Tuesday in response to gunfire that struck its forces in the Golan Heights, the Israeli military said.
A statement said a military vehicle was damaged by shots fired from Syria but that there were no injuries. It said that soldiers "returned precise fire".
Gunfire incidents across the frontier from Syria have recurred in past months during an escalating a civil war there in which rebels have sought to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Israel's Army Radio said Tuesday's was the third consecutive cross-border shooting this week.
The Israeli military added in its statement that it viewed these incidents "with concern".
Israel captured the Golan territory from Syria in a 1967 war and later annexed the area. Negotiations aimed at resolving that conflict ran aground in 2000.
Israel has not taken sides in Syria's internal conflict, but has been worried about the involvement of its Iranian-backed foe, Hezbollah, in the fighting.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held out the prospect on Sunday of Israeli strikes inside Syria to stop Hezbollah and other opponents of Israel getting advanced weapons.
Netanyahu said Israel was "preparing for every scenario" in Syria. He added "we will act to ensure the security interest of Israel's citizens in the future as well".
Israel has neither denied nor confirmed reports it attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near Damascus this month that it believed were waiting delivery to Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is allied with Assad.
(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-fires-back-syria-gunshots-troops-052835235.html
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Avril Lavigne Says Wedding Planning Is 'Full-Time Job'
'Here's to Never Growing Up' singer tells MTV News about her upcoming celebration with Nickelback's Chad Kroeger.
By Christina Garibaldi
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1707673/avril-lavigne-wedding-plans-chad-kroeger-nickelback.jhtml
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Tuesday, May 21, 2013
How To Get The Most Spectacular Beach Wedding Photography
You want your wedding to be one-of-a-kind. You want it to be memorable, carefree, and cool. You want to hold it outdoors -- at the beach. While some people might find that idea not as manageable as weddings held at indoor locations, still nothing can rival the energy and the mood that a sunrise or sunset wedding at the beach can provide. All of which should emerge through your beach wedding photography. Here are a few tips to guarantee that your photos capture one dreamy sandy ceremony.
Choose the perfect spot for your beach ceremony. There will be loads of photographic opportunities in the best beaches scattered all over the world. The trick is selecting the best one for your type of wedding, be it a small, intimate ceremony or a large, festive one. Try to choose a spot that will have an interesting focal point when a shot is framed. Taking a landscape photo of the beach by itself would add a remarkable touch to your wedding album. But you would still want to see something other than the sea. Perhaps a lighthouse in the background would be one focal interest; cliffs and mountains are other considerations.
Schedule your beach ceremony at the right time. This is apart from arranging your wedding for an ideal season. Unlike indoor weddings held at grand and opulent locations, such as hotels or ballroom halls, a beach wedding is vulnerable to bad weather. But scheduling at the right time of day can give you photos with sublime effects and lighting. Both of which can significantly enhance the warmth you may be going for with your wedding photos.
When in doubt, go black and white. When it is impossible to arrange a ceremony at such perfect hours (sunrise and sunset), you can get away with dull lighting by going for black and white images.
Hire a professional photographer. Yes, digital photography and software may turn some hobbyists into virtual professionals but there is still no substitute to the creative and experienced eye of a photographer who has done many weddings in various locations. A professional wedding photographer will know exactly which filters (if need be) to use for a shot. Your photographer can also easily spot the best angles. Moreover, your professional photographer can quickly compose the perfect shots that turn your wedding photos into one extraordinary album, one that you will cherish throughout your lifetime as husband and wife.
Pierre Mardaga Photography offers excellent photo services.
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