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AP - Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney urged conservatives to back off aggressive anti-immigration policies as the Republican presidential candidates vied for Hispanic votes Friday, a day marked by heightened tensions entering the final weekend before Florida's primary.
For the first time, the Justice Department has made public a series of sensitive messages that passed to the highest levels of the agency within hours of an ambush that killed a U.S. border patrol agent in 2010, igniting a national scandal over a gun trafficking investigation gone wrong.
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AP - Tom Brady felt the power of the New York Giants' pass rushers when he was sacked five times in their first Super Bowl confrontation.
AP - Senegal's highest court ruled Friday the country's increasingly frail, 85-year-old president could run for a third term in next month's election, a deep blow to the country's opposition, which has vowed to take to the streets if the aging leader does not step aside.
Reuters - Newt Gingrich struggled to regain momentum in the Republican presidential race on Friday as two new polls showed him falling behind rival Mitt Romney, who was seen as the winner of the final debate before the Florida primary.
AP - Twitter, a tool of choice for dissidents and activists around the world, found itself the target of global outrage Friday after unveiling plans to allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.
The Food and Drug Administration has detained several shipments of imported orange juice after finding traces of carbendazim, an illegal fungicide. The government says the juice is safe to drink. But carbendazim is not U.S.-approved and any juice that contains small amounts must be detained.
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AP - The two teens had a detailed plot, blueprints of the school and security systems, but no explosives. They had hours of flight simulator training on a home computer and a plan to flee the country, but no plane.
AP - Demi Moore smoked something before she was rushed to the hospital on Monday night and was convulsing and "semi-conscious, barely," according to a caller on a frantic 911 recording released Friday by Los Angeles fire officials.
AP - A U.S. citizen kidnapped by gunmen in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta has been freed after a week in captivity, the U.S. Embassy said.
Reuters - Security forces killed over 40 people in Syria on Friday, activists and residents said, as people in Homs mourned 14 members of a family they said were slain by militiamen in one of the worst sectarian attacks in a 10-month revolt.
On the heavily redacted recording, one of Moore's friends argues with the dispatcher amid confusion over which agency should be sending paramedics.
The economy perked up late last year as factories ramped up production. Unfortunately, a lot of what those factories made is still in warehouses and on store shelves.
Influential Republicans are mobilizing to stop presidential candidate Newt Gingrich from ascending in the race. NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell reports. (Nightly News)
Newt Gingrich unleashes a fiery ad attacking his rival while Romney appealed to Florida’s Hispanic voters. NBC’s Peter Alexander reports. (Nightly News)
As director Nicholas Jarecki scouted locations for his new film “Arbitrage,” about an imperiled hedge-fund manager, he “began to think about the twenty-thousand square foot townhouses in his native New York City,” according to promotional materials for the movie, which landed a healthy distribution deal at the Sundance Film Festival this week.
“I thought about a man who lives in those mansions,” Mr. Jarecki continued. “What kind of guy is he? What does he do?”
As it happens, one such guy is Mr. Jarecki’s own father, whose 35-plus-room Gramercy Park townhouse the director used to film much of “Arbitrage.”
In notes distributed to reporters at Sundance, the younger Mr. Jarecki didn’t mention using his father’s home, focusing instead on the challenges of “creating a billionaire’s world with a low budget.”
“We had to document that New York and it’s expensive!” he is quoted as saying.
In at least one case, the younger Mr. Jarecki, 32, got a discount.
The director used his father’s home–once described in a broker’s listing as “the greatest house remaining in private hands in New York”–to serve as the palatial residence of the film’s protagonist, played by Richard Gere.
His father, Dr. Henry Jarecki, said in an interview that he has rented his home to other filmmakers for movies such as “What Happens in Vegas” for around $50,000 a day, but waived the fee for “Arbitrage.”
“I didn’t think it was right to charge my son,” he said. A spokeswoman for the movie said that the director’s comments concerning production expenses referred to other aspects of the shoot.
The five-floor mansion was designed by Stanford White in the 1880s for the family of railroad tycoon Stuyvesant Fish.
The house is the centerpiece of an extended scene at the start of “Arbitrage,” which prominently features the 28-foot-tall Swarovski crystal chandelier that is a permanent fixture of Dr. Jarecki’s residence, and is the setting for numerous other scenes throughout the film.
The filmmakers spent about two weeks shooting at the house, Dr. Jarecki said. “They kicked me out of the residential side,” he added (he uses the building as both a home and an office).
Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and Roadside Attractions LLC paid slightly more than $2 million for the right to distribute “Arbitrage” in the U.S. after a well-received Sundance debut.
A spokeswoman for the film declined to make Nicholas Jarecki available for an interview about his use of the townhouse, purchased in 2000 by an entity affiliated with Dr. Jarecki, according to public records. The price wasn’t disclosed.
Throughout a multifaceted career, 78-year-old Henry Jarecki has worked as a commodities trader, psychiatrist and entrepreneur, among other pursuits.
Though the “Arbitrage” production notes don’t acknowledge the use of the Jarecki family manse–Dr. Jarecki said he was satisfied to have his name included in the movie’s credits, along “with about 20 other people”–the director does make several references to his privileged background.
“As a successful business owner and the son of two commodities traders,” he explained, he had a degree of familiarity with the financial world, adding that he “learned about markets from my parents.”
Mr. Gere is quoted in production notes saying: “I discovered that Nick’s parents had been deeply involved in the world of commodities and hedge funds and how much he knows about the textures of money in this world and the lifestyles that go with it.”
Dr. Jarecki said he used his professional experience to provide feedback on a scene that centers on the discussion of a copper position.
The Manhattan home is far from the only indication in “Arbitrage” of Mr. Gere’s character’s vast wealth. His office is adorned with blue-chip contemporary art. He flies in a Dassault private jet. And he takes hushed meetings at the Four Seasons Restaurant, during which the restaurant’s famed co-owner, Julian Niccolini, makes an appearance.
The Jarecki patriarch is not a newcomer to the movie business. With another son, Andrew Jarecki, he co-founded Moviefone. They sold the company in 1999 to America Online for $388 million in stock. He has also produced several films.
And three of his four sons are filmmakers. Andrew Jarecki directed “All Good Things” and “Capturing the Friedmans,” while Eugene Jarecki’s credits include “Why We Fight” and “The House I Live In,” which also debuted this year at Sundance.
In addition to the Gramercy Park home, Dr. Jarecki’s other properties include Guana Island, part of the British Virgin Islands. It is one of the only remaining privately owned islands in the region.
As he campaigns for the Republican nomination, Newt Gingrich almost always works the name of Ronald Reagan into his speeches. In fact, Gingrich's name-dropping is so common that it's now being criticized by Mitt Romney and the superPAC that backs him.
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A magnitude-5.5 earthquake rattled Yamanashi prefecture in central Japan on Saturday morning, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, and no tsunami warning was issued.
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Cuban food has evolved very little since Fidel Castro came into power — the U.S. embargo has made it hard to import ingredients from abroad. But a handful of Cuban chefs, including one who recently visited Washington, D.C., are determined to modernize the cuisine.
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Lana Del Rey’s debut, “Born to Die,” will officially be released Tuesday, but it has leaked online, just weeks after her appearance as a musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” — a performance that has served as an unofficial debut for the 25-year-old.
Following the episode of “SNL,” viewers took to the Internet to blast, or defend, her performance — including NBC anchor Brian Williams, who reportedly wrote in an email to Gawker Media chief Nick Denton that her performance was “one of the worst outings in SNL history” according to Reuters.
What are critics saying of Del Rey’s new album? Read some early reviews below.
France and Afghanistan agree NATO should speed up by a year its timetable for handing all combat operations to Afghan forces in 2013, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday, raising new questions about the unity of the Western military alliance.
Organizers say it's the first major parade for the men and women who fought in Iraq. They're hoping thousands turn out, just as people there did for the World Series champions last fall.
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Mitt Romney offered a vigorous defense Thursday night of Massachusetts' decision to mandate that nearly every resident either have health insurance or pay a tax penalty. In fact, some say it was the best defense of the individual mandate made by any candidate — including the president — so far this election cycle.
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In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on every state to require students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18. But unimpressive results in states that already have that requirement raise questions about how effective the initiative would really be.
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A dwarf-tossing contest scheduled for Saturday at a Windsor, Ontario bar has generated heated controversy but local authorities say there is no law to prevent it.
An assistant U.S. Army chaplain who pleaded guilty to producing child pornography in Puerto Rico has been sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison.
On Friday, President Obama stopped by the Democrats' retreat in Maryland, where he recapped the themes of his State of the Union address and previewed the Democrats' election message: They've done everything they can, they'll say, and Republicans have played politics.
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The U.N. nuclear agency is including two senior weapons experts on its next mission to Tehran in an unusually clear statement on the team's prime focus -- wresting information from Iranian officials about suspicions the country has secretly worked on atomic arms.
Coming so soon after the death of freestyle skier Sarah Burke following a training accident, 22-year-old snowmobile freestyler Colten Moore's crash may make you shudder. But rest assured, he wasn't seriously injured — and went on to win the event.
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In Agnieszka Holland’s new film “In Darkness,” to be released on Feb. 10 by Sony Pictures Classics, a small group of Jews endure 14 horrible months below the city of Lvov, surviving the Nazi occupation of Poland by hiding in the sewer system. Their only connection to the outside world was a simple Polish sanitation worker named Leopold Socha.
First-time screenwriter David Shamoon adapted “In Darkness”—which was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language category earlier this week—from an out-of-print book published in 1991 called “In the Sewers of Lvov,” which was partly based on the memoirs of Ignacy Chiger, one of the characters dramatized in the film.
In 2008, Chiger’s daughter, Krystyna, wrote her own memoir about the ordeal called “The Girl in the Green Sweater.” By then, Shamoon’s screenplay was already complete, and had been rejected by Ms. Holland, who says she “had some kind of depression” following her last Holocaust film, “Europa, Europa” and, at the time, didn’t think she could handle doing another one.
Holland never heard of “The Girl in the Green Sweater” until last year, when she got a phone call from her agent to say that a person named Krystyna Chiger was trying to get in touch.
“In the future, I will do all the research myself,” says Ms. Holland, who had been told that all the real-life characters in the film were dead. She immediately called Chiger, the last living member of the group of Jews dramatized in her film, and the two women met in New York the following week. (Chiger says she also will be attending the Academy Awards with Holland, now that the film was nominated.)
Speakeasy caught up with Chiger, now a 76-year-old retired dentist, on the phone from Port Washington, New York, where she lives. Excerpts are below:
You were only eight years old when your family went into hiding, but you seem to remember Leopold Socha very well.
Usually I have a very good memory. Him I remembered vividly because he was like an angel. We were sitting in the basement in the darkness, you see someone climbing from a hole with such a bright smile. It’s like I always compare it to the sun coming out.
Did Agnieszka Holland or the screenwriter talk to you during the process of making this movie? What were those conversations like?
I met Agnieska when the film was done already. I didn’t know that somebody was making the movie. It was always my wish that maybe the history would be made into a movie. Whoever heard about this story would say “There should be a movie.” I didn’t know and by coincidence I had heard that Agnieszka Holland was making the movie. Through email we got in touch and we met with her when she was in New York. And then in Toronto.
Was the Toronto Film Festival the first time you saw the movie?
It was the first time that I saw the movie finished. Before, I saw it when the finished the production. The producers from Canada wanted me to see if everything was ok – if I didn’t have any questions or maybe something isn’t true. When I saw it, I saw it with my husband, who is also a Holocaust survivor, and the producers. I said I don’t see any mistakes. It was really what happened.
What was it like for you to see this episode of your life on screen?
It was very emotional for me. Sitting and watching it the whole time I was shaking and tears were coming to my eyes. When I saw the reaction after the movie and Agnieszka came on the stage [for a post-premiere Q&A] and she said that she has a surprise and she called me, and the “little creature is here,” it was big applause and ovation and it was very emotional. I don’t think I will go and see the movie once more.
How did you hear about this film being made?
I heard it from a rabbi who lives in New Jersey. He knew my story because he wrote a year before an article about how I survived during the German occupation. One journalist from Poland read this article on the internet and she got in touch with [the rabbi] and told him that the movie is being made about this story. He called me and said “do you know that they are making a movie about this? How come you don’t know?”
So, my husband sent an email to Agnieska’s agency, and she immediately answered.
What did you think of the young actress who played you? Was it an accurate portrayal?
She was too energetic and full of life.
The screenwriter David Shamoon said that a big Hollywood director wanted to do this film before it went to Agniezska Holland.
I always thought that somebody would make a movie. And I always thought that it would be Agnieska Holland. I saw her movie “Europa Europa” and thought that it was so well done. I said if ever if happened that someone made a movie about this, I would like her to make the movie…then I got the news that she’s making it. I told her this. I didn’t want somebody from Hollywood to make the movie. I said this is such a tragic part of our life. I don’t like the Hollywood style. I would like that somebody from Europe who went through this and feels this made the movie.
She said she turned down the film, first because she thought it was going to be too emotionally exhausting, and then because the producers wanted to make it in English—and she wanted people to be speaking Yiddish, Polish, Russian and German, like they did at the time, which could potentially limit the audience for this kind of film.
It makes it much more realistic when Jews speak Polish or Yiddish and the Ukrainian speaks Ukrainian. I don’t think it will sound realistic if the actors speak English. I think it’s much better in the native languages.
A proposal to build a 151-ft. tower to celebrate "new atheism" in London has pitted some of Britain's most recognized non-believers against each other, The Guardian reports.
Actor John Hawkes, known for his roles in the HBO drama “Deadwood,” and indie darlings “Winter’s Bone” and “Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene,” generated a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival this week, following the premiere of his latest movie, “The Surrogate.”
The film tells the story of Mark O’Brien, a writer confined to an iron lung, who decides at the age of 38 that he’s going to lose his virginity. Fox Searchlight wound up winning a bidding war for the film ; the specialty distributor paid a reported $6 million for world-wide rights, making it the biggest deal at Sundance thus far this year.
“The Surrogate” also featured riveting performances by William H. Macy, as O’Brien’s thoughtful priest, and Helen Hunt, as the sex therapist who helps O’Brien learn what it’s like to “know” a woman in the biblical sense.
For director Ben Lewin, who, like O’Brien, was stricken with polio when he was a child, the key to the film was to avoid wallowing in self pity.
“It’s a film about human potential,” says Hawkes. “The fact that humor is abundant and unexpected, makes this a story that is even bigger than Mark’s, in a way.”
Speakeasy caught up with Hawkes at Sundance. Excerpts of the interview are below:
Were you surprised by the reaction to the film?
Oh yes. Very much so.
What about this story do you think makes it relatable to a broad audience?
I am not able to really put my finger on exactly what’s happening other than that Mark O’Brien was such a fascinating person. And I fell like Ben Lewin and the other actors were able to bring more to the story than would meet the eye. [William H.] Macy keeps making the point that it is a film that makes you not feel sorry for Mark, but have a feeling of what amazing animals human beings can be.
All week I kept referring to this as ‘The iron lung movie.’
Yes, you could also call it that.
My point is that I didn’t expect that it was going to be funny.
From the moment I even met Ben Lewin, before I had taken the role and before he’d offered the role to me, I thought it was important that we avoid self-pity all along. Mark should be always trying to solve his problem rather than wallowing. That was in accord with how Ben had written the script. But the situation is so fraught at the outset: Here’s a guy who lives in an iron lung. He can only be out of it for moments at a time. So we didn’t need to add any sentiment or pity to the story. We thought we should fight that at every turn and find humor everywhere we could. And Ben agreed with that.
Could you talk about how you prepared for the role?
At the first meeting with Ben, an essential question I had when we sat down—before it was decided I’d be in the movie—was, “Why not a disabled actor?” And Ben assured me that he’d been looking and that he found some wonderful actors but nobody who quite fit into how he saw Mark. He’d auditioned [disabled] actors. Ben being a polio survivor himself made me a little less nervous about taking work away from a group of people that’s under employed as it is. Once I was cast there was a lot of preparation. Physically I have worked out, for 25 years, every day. So, I stopped doing that [to lose muscle tone].
There was talk of a body double and I was not interested in that. I thought if I can’t make this work without gimmick then I didn’t want to do it. I felt it was important that there be no prosthetics or CGI or anything. I wore no makeup and used a device that I’d insisted on and helped design, a soccer ball piece of foam. I would lay it under the left side of my body to approximate Mark’s curved spine. The story speaks of that. As an actor you have to honor that and make it plausible. I call it the torture ball. So that was one piece of physical preparation.
How long did you lie there with a stick in your mouth, so you could type and dial numbers on a telephone?
I didn’t do many hours at a time with the mouth stick. I just made a mouth stick. Jessica Yu’s film “Breathing Lessons” [an Academy Award winning short documentary released in 1996] was the best tool an actor could ask for. So, I made a mouth stick like Mark’s. I’d practice an hour or two at a time tops…and because it’s a film and not a play, I knew if I had moments with the mouth stick that weren’t convincing they could cut around them. I got pretty good at turning pages and typing.
Ben Lewin mentioned that you took this role very personally and wanted to honor Mark. Did you read a lot of what he wrote and listen to him in recordings?
The only recordings of him speaking were in “Breathing Lessons,” which was enough. The film is basically 20 minutes basically of his voice. In my own low tech way, I was able to suck the audio out of the film onto a CD and listen to it in the car constantly to try to get his voice right. If that film hadn’t existed I would have taken a different approach but I always like specificity as an actor. And Mark’s timbre of his voice and dialect were quite specific, and I tried to emulate that as best I could. I read every article he had written, every poem he wrote, and a book called “How I Became a Human Being” that he co-wrote about his life, and that was also invaluable.
I heard that a lot of the actors, like the woman who plays Mark’s first attendant, are friends of yours.
That’s Rusty Schwimmer [played Hawkes’s love interest in 2000’s “A Perfect Storm”]. A lot of friends did really wonderful favors by coming in and being a part of this film and playing smaller parts than they would usually. That also includes Earl Brown and Robin Weigert, my “Deadwood” pals. And Adam Arkin wasn’t a friend of mine ahead of time but it was really kind of him to play a supporting role.
Fox Searchlight paid $6 million for this film, making it the biggest deal at Sundance so far. How do you feel about that?
It makes me nervous. You set yourself up. When something gets attention so quickly, people sometimes will look for reasons to find fault and tear it down. Hopefully people will see the film with an open mind and hopefully be as delighted as I was to be part of it.
A Texas district attorney has decided to re-try an Amarillo man on charges that he sexually assaulted a six-month old girl, just days after the state’s appeals court threw out his 2003 conviction.
ProPublica, PBS “Frontline,” and NPR examined the case against Ernie Lopez last year, raising questions about the soundness of the medical evidence used against him. The appeals court ruled that Lopez had received ineffective counsel because his lawyer failed to challenge testimony by the medical examiner and other prosecution witnesses that the child’s injuries were caused by abuse.
The baby, Isis Vas, died shortly after the alleged assault.
The court left it up to the local prosecutor to decide whether Lopez would go free or face a second trial.
“The case is not going to get dismissed,” Potter County District Attorney Randall Sims told ProPublica and PBS “Frontline.” Sims represents the state’s 47th Judicial District.
In a press conference yesterday, Sims made it clear that he will go forward with a second trial. “He’s coming back on the exact same charge,” said the prosecutor, according to the Amarillo Globe-News. “The case is at the exact same place any case would be right after it’s been indicted by the grand jury.”
In the years since the trial, Lopez’s appellate attorneys have marshaled an array of experts who’ve challenged the notion that he sexual assaulted and violently shook Vas, pointing to medical evidence suggesting she may have been killed by a blood disorder brought on by an infection. The condition can mimic the symptoms of child abuse.
The case highlights a growing international debate about the soundness of the science used to prosecute cases of fatal child abuse and sexual assault. At least 23 people in the U.S. and Canada have been wrongly accused of killing children, and in California, Gov. Jerry Brown is currently considering granting clemency to a woman convicted of shaking her 7-week-old grandson.
Prince Turki al-Faisal once worked as a diplomat for the kingdom, but now that he no longer wears that hat, he is free to express what he feels about his particularly troublesome neighbor, Iran.
The last year saw a flood of solo releases by members of the Allman Brothers band. The first three, by Gregg Allman, Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks’ Tedeschi Trucks Band, were all nominated for the Best Blues Album Grammy Award. But the fourth and final release may be the best of all: “Renaissance Man” by founding Allman Brothers drummer Jaimoe and his Jasssz Band.
Released December 17th by lil’Johnieboy Records, “Renaissance Man” is a laid-back delight. Jaimoe steers the band from behind his drum kit, while frontman Junior Mack, a New Jersey native and longtime staple of the New York blues scene, take center stage with his smooth, passionate singing and playing. The music, a mix of originals and diverse covers, is simultaneously urgent and laid-back, moving with verve and ease through jazz, blues, rock and even a bossa nova take on the Allmans’ classic acoustic ballad “Melissa.”
“I’m rooted in the blues, so that’s in any music I play, sing or write,” says Mack, 52. “Jaimoe’s playing is more free than other cats I’ve played with. There’s certain rawness and honesty there that inspires you to take chances and try things.”
Mack and Jaimoe bring their Jasssz Band to New York’s Gramercy Theater tonight for a headlining show. Jaimoe and the Allman Brothers will be back in Manhattan for their annual residency at the Beacon Theater, playing 10 shows starting March 9. We spoke with Jaimoe about his new project.
The Allman Brothers Band pioneered the use of two drummers in rock. After so many years as part of a team with Butch Trucks, was it difficult to adjust to being the sole drummer in your own band?
It took a little time. I’m glad I have the chance to do both. I play percussion on the drum set; that’s been my role in the Allman Brothers. Butch and I developed our style naturally and we complement each other and create a bigger, more interesting sound. A lot of drummers playing together play the exact same thing, which is ridiculous. That’s like having four guys singing in unison, instead of harmony, which makes for a much bigger, more interesting sound. You have to listen, find a space and add something. Some drummers just aren’t that musical, I guess.
Over the years, I stored up a lot of stuff in my head that I couldn’t use and now I can. If you listen to great musicians and try to analyze the difference between, say [saxophonists] Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane or [drummers] Max Roach and Tony Williams, you have to look beyond the notes; what made them great is their personalities. You can’t copy that. Drumming is more than keeping time and I’ve always been of the mindset of whatever you do, just do what you do and people will take notice.
Despite the name and a three-man horn section, the Jasssz Band isn’t really a jazz band.
You can call it more than ways than one. We have some jazz in our blues, some blues in our jazz and some rock in all of it. We do everything but hillbilly music. Maybe we should learn a Hank Williams song.
Junior played a lot of blues for a lot of years and that’s how people in the New York area think of him, but it’s not all he can do. When I grew up, everyone played baseball, basketball and football and that was normal. Same thing. He says that he was intimidated when he first started playing with us guys. Well, he was on the same level but didn’t realize it, but that’s okay; insecurity is the eye of the tiger!
Your CD is the sleeper pick from a great crop of Allman Brothers solo releases. You’ve been hidden behind the drums all these years….
Thanks. That was always in the back of my head. You know, Ringo Starr made a couple of great solo albums after the Beatles broke up and no one expected that either!
Alan Paul wrote WSJ.com’s award-winning The Expat Life column. He is the author of Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing. Visit him at alanpaul.net, or on Twitter: @AlPaul.
One year after a CIA contractor shot to death two Pakistanis, relatives of the victims are living off generous compensation they received in a deal that led authorities to free the American.
Oh, look - it's another BlackBerry Bold! But what's the catch? And where is the difference really? Sure it looks a bit smaller than the 9900 but it's the same QWERTY / touchscreen combo. So far, so good...
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria says a U.S. citizen kidnapped in the country's oil-rich southern delta has been released.
by Lois Beckett
An investigative series by the New York Times and a performance piece by Mike Daisey featured on This American Life have put the spotlight on Foxconn, the Taiwanese company whose massive Chinese factories manufacture some of the world's most popular consumer electronics.
As well as working with companies like Dell, Motorola, Nokia and Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn assembles popular Apple products like the iPhone and iPad.
Here's a quick look at what we know about Foxconn. (The company disputes workers' accounts of abusive conditions. In a 2010 company report, Foxconn said it promotes "employee respect, an atmosphere of trust, and personal dignity.")
Working for Foxconn
1.2 million: number of workers employed by Foxconn in China, according to the New York Times.
40: Estimated percent of the world's consumer electronics manufactured by Foxconn.
7: seconds it takes Foxconn's workers to complete a single step of their work, according to a survey cited by the New York Times.
12: Hours in a typical work shift, according to interviews with Foxconn employees.
83.2: Average hours of overtime worked each month, according to a 2010 survey of Foxconn employee.
13: age of a Foxconn employee Mike Daisey interviewed outside the gates of a Foxconn plant in Shenzhen.
91: cases of underage labor found by Apple's audits of its suppliers in 2010, the year Daisey visited China.
3,000: number of workers Foxconn could hire overnight, according to Apple's former worldwide supply demand manager.
10-20: percent estimated monthly turnover in Foxconn's workforce.
$7,500: amount founder Terry Gou used to start the anchor company of Foxconn Technology Group in 1974, according to the company website.
$5.7 billion: Terry Gou's estimated net worth as of March 2011.
Living Conditions
230,000: number of workers at "Foxconn City" in Shenzhen, according to the New York Times.
13: tons of rice prepared each day at the central kitchen at Foxconn City.
$0.65: meal allowance for dinner at the Foxconn City canteen in 2010.
2: number of free swimming pools there, according to The Telegraph, which noted that the pools "are said to be quite dirty."
70,000: number of workers at Foxconn's Chengdu plant who live in company dorms, according to the New York Times.
20: number of employees sometimes packed into a three-room apartment.
200: Reported number of police officers who responded to a Foxconn dormitory riot.
Deaths
17: Number of reported suicides of Foxconn workers in China between 2007 and February 2011, according to Wired. Eleven workers died after jumping off buildings in the Foxconn Campus in Shenzhen, which were then draped with preventive netting. (Wired noted that the rate actually seems to be below China's national averages.)
70: number of psychiatrists employed by Foxconn to prevent suicides, according to a 2010 announcement by CEO Terry Gou.
100: Estimated number of employees at a Foxconn factory in Wuhan who stood on the roof of a factory building this month to protest working conditions and wages. Several threatened to commit suicide, according to the New York Times.
$450: monthly salary a worker involved in that protest said employees had been promised for moving from the Foxconn campus in Shenzhen to one in Wuhan.
34: continuous hours a Foxconn employee worked in 2010 before he collapsed and died, according to media reports.
4: workers killed last year by an explosion at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China that assembles iPads.
$22: approximate daily salary earned by Lai Xiaodong, a 22-year-old college graduate, working at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, according to the New York Times.
$150,000: approximate amount the company wired Lai's family after he was killed in the aluminum dust explosion.
The French president says the country's soldiers in Afghanistan will resume their training mission as of Saturday and withdraw by the end of 2013.
While the world of filmdom trains its sights on the Sundance Film Festival this week, there are plenty of diversions in multiplexes for those of us who couldn’t make the trek to Park City. We’ve got a snowy survival story “The Grey,” starring Liam Neeson and Dermot Mulroney), a twisty heist thriller “Man on a Ledge,” starring Sam Worthington and Elizabeth Banks), and the tale of a sassy bounty hunter (“One For the Money,” starring Katherine Heigl and Jason O’Mara). (Incidentally, the latter two films are being released, respectively, by Lions Gate and its recently acquired subsidiary, Summit Entertainment). Find out what the critics have to say on Rotten Tomatoes.
“The Grey”
Liam Neeson is carving out a nice little niche as a middle-aged action hero, and critics say the smart and suspenseful “The Grey” offers further testament to his authoritative presence as a man locked in combat with nature. When a plane carrying a group of oil-drillers crashes in the unforgiving Alaska wild, Ottway (Neeson) must lead the survivors to safety through a stretch of wilderness that’s home to a particularly aggressive and bloodthirsty pack of wolves. “The Grey” is currently Certified Fresh at 79 percent on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer; check out some of the reviews here:
Fresh: “‘The Grey’ has a certain muscular pull: It’s a tough-as-nails study of hardened men struggling with the ostensibly conflicting pulls of stoic masculinity on one hand and love, faith and fear of death on the other.” — Ian Buckwalter, NPR
Fresh: “[Director Joe] Carnahan is smart enough to know what not to show. When those largely unseen wolves start hooting and moaning, the sound goes right through you: It’s a howl of existential pain from nature’s peanut gallery.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline
Fresh: “When I learned of Sarah Palin hunting wolves from a helicopter, my sensibilities were tested, but after this film, I was prepared to call in more helicopters.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Rotten: “The wolves seem to have watched a lot of ‘Friday the 13th’ movies, because they have a knack for pouncing out of the shadows that rivals the mad skills of Jason Voorhees.” — Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald
“Man on a Ledge”
Many thrillers require audiences to suspend their disbelief, but critics say the trouble with “Man on a Ledge” is that its plot is too convoluted and implausible to generate suspense, despite the best efforts of a talented cast. Sam Worthington stars as Nick Cassidy, a disgraced ex-cop who climbs out on a hotel ledge with the expressed purpose of jumping. However, as police psychologist Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) tries to talk him down, she suspects he may be part of a larger undertaking. It’s currently at 20 percent on the Tomatometer; read what the critics have to say here:
Rotten: “['Man on a Ledge' is] completely preposterous, relying on massively improbable twists of fate.” — Gary Thompson, Philadelphia Daily News
Rotten: “For a film with such a straightforward title, ‘Man on a Ledge’ turns out to be remarkably convoluted.” — Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly
Rotten: “This cloddishly contrived suspenser is too busy to bore, but too farfetched to thrill.” — Justin Chang, Variety
Fresh: “[Director Asger] Leth spins out the mystery quite effectively and while he’s doing so introduces a number of other elements that keep the film entertaining.” — John Hazelton, Screen International
“One For the Money”
It appears the folks behind “One For the Money” are afraid it isn’t one for the ages, since it wasn’t screened for critics prior to release. Based upon Janet Evanovich’s bestselling novel, the movie stars Katherine Heigl as a Jersey girl who takes a job as a recovery agent for a bail bondsman; soon, she’s tasked with bringing in a murder suspect who happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Check back with Rotten Tomatoes for reviews when they become available.
For more movie reviews, trailers, and pictures, check out Rottentomatoes.com.
by Minhee Cho
When popular websites like Wikipedia and Reddit decided to blackout their pages last week in protest of SOPA, otherwise known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, the controversial bill got thrown to the forefront of public discussion.
The problem was, as ProPublica's Dan Nguyen soon realized, it was extremely difficult to find information on where members of Congress stood on the bill.
"When I set out to look up information I was disappointed at how hard it was to really find much," Nguyen said. "Part of it is just the way information in general is organized for our government. It's not like there's some central site where politician A and B can just say, 'Here's my position on this,' and it's easy to find."
Lucky for us, Nguyen was inspired to independently research this information and mapped out his results on a news application he called SOPA Opera. In this week's podcast, he explains what SOPA and its Senate equivalent, Protect IP Act (PIPA), entail; how he came to create the news app; and his reaction to SOPA Opera going viral.
Read the full transcript below and subscribe to all of ProPublica's podcasts on iTunes.
TRANSCRIPT
Mike Webb: Hi, I'm Mike Webb and welcome to the ProPublica Podcast. Last week, a passionate battle took place over a proposed bill in the House known as SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and a similar bill in the Senate called PIPA, the Protect IP Act. On one side were Hollywood entertainment companies who believe SOPA will curb the illegal distribution of movies and music. On the other side were online companies like Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia who were concerned that the bills would be too difficult to implement and tantamount to censorship. So what was true and what wasn't? That's what ProPublica news application developer Dan Nguyen wanted to know.
To find out, he created an online resource on his personal website with details about the bill and info on who was for SOPA and who was against it. When the staff at ProPublica saw it, we asked him to move it over to our site and it turned out to be one of the most viewed pages in ProPublica history.
Joining us in the storage closet studio to talk about the project is Mr. Dan Nguyen. Welcome to the podcast.
Dan Nguyen: Hey, Mike. How are you doing?
Mike: All right. Dan, what would SOPA actually do if it were enacted?
Dan: SOPA is trying to go after what it calls "foreign rogue websites," and these are websites that are not on American soil that are distributing the latest Hollywood movies or music and the U.S. system can't go after them as it stands now. The law would provide this legal framework in which companies like Google would be asked to de link these foreign sites that are sharing illegally pirated material. From the American perspective, it's still illegal for you to copy your movies and send them around, but, of course, the police here can come after you. They can't really do that for an overseas site, so this is one way to stop the spread of illegally pirated material from coming outside of America into America.
Mike: The online companies were against it because they didn't want to be held responsible?
Dan: Yes. They argue that this would create an undue burden on their operations. If they are already hosting pirated content because a user uploaded it to them, they have the responsibility once they're notified to remove it and they saw SOPA as increasing that burden to a degree that they couldn't follow. That was their interest in this whole thing. The fight over SOPA and its Senate version, Protect IP, has been going on for a while, actually. I briefly read about the bills, and in most of the major online forums it's been highly talked about for months. To be honest, I didn't really pay that much attention to it but over the holiday break I think the news was that this was an imminent thing as far as it progressing through Congress.
I just wanted to know more about the bill. I also thought, judging by the volume of controversy that it had generated, at least online, that this was like the healthcare bill in the way that every politician would have said something by now on it. When I set out to look up information I was disappointed at how hard it was to really find much.
Part of it is just the way information in general is organized for our government. It's not like there's some central site where politician A and B can just say, "Here's my position on this," and it's easy to find. The easiest thing to do is go on their Facebook page. Then during the Congressional recess not many politicians had taken a stand besides the many cosponsors, of course, and a couple of dozen politicians, mostly centered in the Bay Area, who obviously have constituents who are highly against it.
Otherwise, it was really, for me, just like looking up as many Congress members as I could. It really wasn't something that was high on anyone's list beyond the people who are deeply involved in authoring and pushing the bill forward.
Mike: Who had a stake. Everything was under the radar. You wanted to figure out what was what.
Dan: Like programming. Sorry, I should say that sometimes it's hard for me to get into programming, but when I have something like a goal in mind that I can make something useful to other people while practicing programming, that's always a good incentive. Yeah, I was annoyed at how hard it was to find this information. For me, the app wasn't really that complicated. It's pretty straightforward display of who was saying what about SOPA.
Mike: Was the hardest part trying to figure out where everybody stood on the bill?
Dan: Yeah. Trying to find that information was difficult because, again, not many people had said much about it. It wasn't even that you could just visit everyone's official page. Like everyone has a different kind of way they run their official Congressional page and some of them barely update them, some of them don't have a press releases section.
Mike: Did you go to each individual page to put it all together?
Dan: Yeah. There are a good number of legislative resources that non profits like govtrack.us and opencongress.org and the New York Times, they've got pretty good repositories of the official information, so finding the sponsors was easy, obviously. Then it was just basically going to Google, Google News, typing up some congress member's name and typing in SOPA and seeing if anything came up. Usually the answer was no. Yeah, I guess I wanted to show everyone in Congress and when I first put it up it had less than 100 people on it and that was just through a ton of research. Finding stuff like the hearings and all that is not at all straightforward.
Mike: Yeah. You did it all on your own, right?
Dan: Yeah. There's one hearing on SOPA and it's in this archaic Windows web format that I had to pull out an old laptop to try to get it to view. There was no printed transcript from what I could see and then the Senate site's completely different structured. When I made the site the initial response that I got from people was, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe Senator Franken is for this bill." Actually, that was the most common name that I saw. I think people associate his neutrality stance as being one that would also be against SOPA or Protect IP and, in fact, he's one of the most fervent defenders of the law.
Mike: Because he probably has a stake as an actor.
Dan: Yeah, you can say that he was in the industry and so has a different take on it. Even after the entire blackout thing many senators, many cosponsors, backed off. I think last Friday he wrote a pretty long blog post telling people tough luck. He feels very passionate about this. So anyway, when I was making the app the initial response from people was like, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe it has this much support," or, "I can't believe that this many Republicans are against it." Because, again, I think people automatically assume that one party or the other is trying to regulate things. And I think probably one of the most useful things my app did I mean, there are a lot of great resources out there. But I think one thing mine did well was to show right away, "Oh, there's a lot of red and blue here on both sides. This is a bipartisan issue."
And that's what the backers would say, too, is, hey, that's one thing you can say about his bill, it's united a lot of people for it. And so their reasoning is, "Oh, that must be a great bill."
Mike: I think the visual aspects is what made it so appealing. You can see who's for and against it right away. So you were getting decent traffic at your site, but then you moved it over to ProPublica. Why was that?
Dan: Yeah. I mean, that was always kind of the goal. I told my boss, Scott, that I just wanted to kind of demo it on my own. Since I was doing it on my own time, I don't have the time to make sure all my I's were dotted and all that. It was good to put it out there and see what kind of criticism I would get. For the most part it was all very positive in terms of people who were trying to find out information. I always thought that ProPublica was a natural place for it, because we try to make transparent these kind of issues. You could say we could do this for any law, but SOPA was kind of the talk of the town at that point.
And so, yeah, I knew it would get bigger exposure at ProPublica. It was getting pretty good traffic from Reddit and all that. But, yeah, I had also seen that very few mainstream news organizations had really spent much time covering this, so I thought we could be one of the first out the gate. So it worked out well for everyone.
Mike: It seemed like the hardest part was sort of keeping it up to date, because so many politicians were changing positions on the law.
Dan: From that point on, when I had gotten to work I was typing out emails as fast as I could to people who were sending me in updates. I literally would be typing an email and two more would come in. So people really engaged. Obviously having Craigslist and Wikipedia and all those other sites draw attention to it. Having Craigslist link to us, and Reddit, and various other sites. Yeah, people were very interested in getting as many people and telling us about what their legislators were saying. And telling us, "Oh, I called my legislator and this is what they said."
So, yeah, it was very difficult to keep up with that, but also very gratifying to see people take such an active stance on civic issues.
Mike: Do you think people really understood what was in the bill? Or some of the fears kind of coming from the online companies?
Dan: I think as with any big piece of legislation, things are simplified. And so the way to sell people on opposing this bill is to say, "Oh, it amounts to censorship." And of course the people who back it wouldn't I mean, there's actually language in there explicitly saying, "Hey, this isn't about censoring." But what the companies are arguing is it's tantamount to it, because if you put these kinds of penalties and responsibilities on the online company, they're going to move forward with their own corporate policies that dampen speech on their networks.
And so is that going too far that that's censorship? Obviously it depends on what side of the coin you are. Of course the people who back the law talk about it in very black and white terms of how this all about stopping piracy and protecting content creators. And of course it's not that simple as well.
Yeah, it's hard to say. And much of the law was still under discussion. It was supposed to go the before the holiday recess, they were still in the middle of amending it and they didn't get through it. And they were going to jump right back into it until this blackout happened. There was a lot of moving parts.
But, yeah, I don't think it was a very easy to understand law by anyone, either by the supporters or the opponents.
Mike: Why don't you tell us a little bit about the before and after visual you created? How you put that together.
Dan: Sure. For me, that took about a minute. And it was an obvious thing to do, because I know one constant thing I heard since making this was like, again, "Oh, my gosh, look at how many people are for this versus the people who are against it." It was like 80/30 before the blackout, and then afterwards it was 60 some to 130 or so, something like that. And that was even me being way, way behind on updates. This was like way past midnight too, so I didn't get them all in. But I know, for me, it was just cool to see, again, before the blackout it was hard to find anything on record from politicians about this, and then during the blackout apparently a lot decided to jump on the bandwagon. So I knew it would be a strong visual to see what one 24 hour day of activism can bring out with hundreds of thousands of calls pouring in to our legislator's offices.
Mike: What's the status of the bill now?
Dan: It's pretty much dead in the water.
Mike: Are they going to try to rewrite it?
Dan: Protect IP was a different law. A year ago, again, proposed by Senator Leahy and blocked by Senator Widen, who's also the principle opponent in the Senate against Protect IP. So, yeah, the backers who are behind it are very much still behind it. Senator Franken, again. So they probably will rewrite the bill. From their own admissions it sounded like they had tried to tackle too much at once. They were obviously clearly unprepared for the backlash by the online community. But, yeah, there was nothing, as far as the hundreds of statements that I looked at, there was nothing that was contrite in that. Like, "Oh, we should never have even thought about this." It was more like, "Oh, we obviously need to think about... We, the legislators still care very much about stopping online piracy, so we're going to go about it in a different way. Try to come up with a better law that meets everyone's needs."
So, yeah, this is clearly something that's going to be fought repeatedly over and over again in the future.
Mike: All right. Thanks for joining us, Dan.
Dan: Mm hmm.
Mike: For more information about SOPA and PIPA and to see Dan's work, visit Projects.ProPublica.org/SOPA. And now for our Officials Say the Darndest Things Tumblr Quote of the Week. "After the Wikipedia blackout, somewhere a student today is doing original research and getting his or her facts straight. Perish the thought." Who said it? Jonathan Lamy, senior vice president of the Recording Industry Association of America, regarding Wikipedia's blackout in protest of SOPA and PIPA.
OK, that's it for this week's show. Thanks as always to Minhee Cho for producing this podcast, and a long overdue offer of appreciation to our editor, Colin Tipton, who makes this program more listenable for you. Thanks you checking it out. For ProPublica, I'm Mike Webb. We'll catch you next time.
Transcription by CastingWords
Two days of bloody turmoil in Syria killed more than 50 people as forces loyal to President Bashar Assad shelled residential buildings, fired on crowds and left bleeding corpses in the streets in a dramatic escalation of violence, activists said Friday.
Nokia have now confirmed via their official Twitter feed that major updates have already begun rolling out to a number of devices currently running Symbian Anna, bumping them up to Symbian Belle, news that a lot of Nokia fans will no doubt welcome with open arms. Devices including the N8, as well as the likes of Nokia's E7, C7, E6, X7, C6-01 and 500 will all now ship with Symbian Belle...
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 film “Spartacus,” after the rebel gladiator of the title is captured, all his men rise, one at a time, willing to take his place and his identity. Something similar has happened with the Starz series “Spartacus: Vengeance.” The original lead, fan-favorite Andy Whitfield, passed away in Sydney, Australia of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma at 39 years old. Now, Australian-born actor Liam McInyre is standing up, ready to fill Whitfield’s awfully big sandals.
McIntyre called Speakeasy to discuss “Spartacus: Vengeance,” which launches its new season on Starz tonight.
How did you get the job?
It’s been one hell of a journey. I don’t know how I won it. I came in having just done another show where I was 45 pounds underweight, looking like a skeleton. I don’t know what they saw in me, but they kept training me, putting me through harder and harder training routines to see if I could look like a gladiator again and I guess four months later they said yes. And you throw on top of that the horrible situation with Andy having to let the job go, it’s been a unique and difficult life-changing experience.
You had some contact with Andy Whitfield before he passed. What was your relationship with him like?
It’s a sad story because when I got the job, Andy reached out to the producers and said he’d like to meet me, and we kept trying to organize meetings because he was up in Sydney and I was in Melbourne and that’s not far, but he was sick and he had to keep looking after himself and so we never got to meet in person. He emailed me. The guy must have had so much heart and strength to go through that kind of personal crisis and still reach out to this new guy and say good luck. It’s amazingly humbling. I don’t know if I could be that strong in the same situation.
Did you have any reservations about taking over the role from him when he decided to relinquish it?
Until I got the role, I was so sure I had no chance. Even the day before I was told yes, I was like this is just some crazy dream, there’s no way this will actually happen. This seems impossible for 100 reasons. When they actually said yes—I’d been a fan of the show before, before I even tried out, so when they said it’s yours, I felt this amazing almost fan-driven responsibility to the show to do the best job I possibly could both for the amazing legacy that Andy left behind and to a show that I loved anyways. I tried to put that out of my head and just think—just work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life and come what may.
Is there something about Australians that makes them good Roman gladiators? Of course, Russell Crowe [born in New Zealand but raised in Australia] starred in “Gladiator.”
I don’t know! That was my dream job was I started being an actor. Oh man, what I wouldn’t do. I don’t know what it is. Everyone says it’s because of the rugged and rough landscape and all that. But I had a pretty gentle childhood in a pretty nice neighborhood. I didn’t grow up on a farm or anything. So I don’t know. I hope it’s that we’re just down-to-earth people. And in the simpler times of Rome, maybe that’s appropriate.
Speakeasy will post more with McIntyre on a later date. Please check back in.
Christopher John Farley is the editorial director of the Wall Street Journal blogs. Follow him on Twitter at @cjfarley
Large marches of protesters chanting antimilitary slogans streamed from mosques around Cairo to join tens of thousands massed in central Tahrir Square in a new uprising anniversary rally Friday, with many demanding an early transfer of power by the ruling military and the trial of generals for the killing of protesters.
A recently leaked RIM roadmap reveals all the upcoming BlackBerries for 2012. Unfortunately there is nothing really interesting scheduled before November this year. Notice you should consider the mentioned months, not quarters RIM is preparing two new mid-range Curves for the spring season - 9220 and 9320 - for Q1 and Q2 release respectively. White Bold 9790 and Curve 9380 will hit the...
The Bada 2.0 update certainly took its time to arrive, but it's finally seeding to S8500 Wave smartphones. So if you have resisted the temptation to flash it by yourselves from one of the leaked ROMs, you time has come. The release isn't officially announced by Samsung just yet and there is no information about its rollout schedule, but we suspect it will go global quite quickly. Bada is not...
We're seeking anyone who has had personal experience with certain X-ray devices. Please see the bottom of the story for information on how you can contribute.
U.S. law enforcement agencies are exposing people to radiation in more settings and in increasing doses to screen for explosives, weapons and drugs. In addition to the controversial airport body scanners, which are now deployed for routine screening, various X-ray devices have proliferated at the border, in prisons and on the streets of New York.
Not only have the machines become more widespread, but some of them expose people to higher doses of radiation. And agencies have pushed the boundaries of acceptable use by X-raying people covertly, according to government documents and interviews.
While airport scanners can show objects on the surface of the body, prisons have begun to use X-rays that can see through the body to detect contraband hidden in cavities. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is in the process of deploying dozens of drive-through X-ray portals to scan cars and buses at the border with their passengers still inside.
X-ray scanners have been tested at ferry crossings, for visitor entries at the Pentagon and for long-range detection of suicide bombers at special events. And drawing the ire of privacy groups, Customs and the New York Police Department have deployed unmarked X-ray vans that can drive to a location and look inside vehicles for drugs and explosives.
Most federal health regulations for medical X-rays do not apply to security equipment, leaving the decision of when and how to use the scanners almost entirely in the hands of security officials.
Although the 9/11 attacks provided the impetus and prompted the spending to develop such equipment, most of the machines have been deployed only in the last few years. New attacks and ever-tighter security measures have made law enforcement officials more willing to expose the public to X-ray devices that were once taboo.
When the body scanners were introduced in prisons in the late 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration convened an advisory panel. Several of the outside scientists warned that once the longstanding practice of X-raying humans only for health reasons was ended, it was just a matter of time before the machines would become acceptable in airports, courthouses and schools.
"This is exactly what I was afraid was going to happen back when we had the FDA meetings," said Kathleen Kaufman, who as director of Los Angeles County's radiation management program served on the advisory panel.
The FDA has little authority to regulate the use of electronic products emitting radiation. Because security scanners are not classified as medical devices, the agency doesn't approve them for safety before sale. And it can go after only the manufacturers for excessive radiation -- not the users of the machines for deploying them too frequently or in other questionable ways.
Handicapping its power even more, the FDA ultimately went against the advisory panel's recommendation to adopt a federal safety standard for the new security devices. Instead, it followed congressional direction to use industry standards wherever possible and let the scanners fall under voluntary guidelines set by a nonprofit group made up largely of manufacturers and agencies that wanted to use the X-ray machines.
It is difficult to estimate the long-term health risks of low levels of radiation. At higher levels, ionizing radiation -- the energy used in the scanners -- has been shown to damage DNA and mutate genes, potentially leading to cancer. A comprehensive study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the more radiation a person gets, however little at a time, the greater their lifetime risk of dying from cancer.
The manufacturers counter that their machines emit extremely low levels of radiation, hundreds of times less than a chest X-ray. Humans are constantly exposed to background radiation from radon in the ground and cosmic rays in the atmosphere. In comparison, the radiation from security devices is trivial, they say.
Moreover, the X-ray scanners have produced a number of success stories, intercepting immigrant smugglers, unearthing tons of cocaine and other drugs, preventing contraband in jails and adding a layer of protection to the nation's transportation system, according to the agencies that use them.
But the rapid expansion raises serious questions about whether the United States is sacrificing safety in the name of security.
"Because of the wide proliferation of these things, we don't know who's using them and how frequently," said Peter Rez, an Arizona State University physicist who has criticized the use of the machines. "It's not that the radiation from these machines is very high. It's 'Does the benefit outweigh the risk?'"
X-rays on Wheels
One of the first technologies after 9/11 that would expose humans to X-rays was the Z Backscatter Van -- essentially a x-ray scanner on a truck -- made by American Science & Engineering.
The device, which was deployed by the military to detect car bombs in war zones, uses X-rays that are designed to find organic materials such as drugs and explosives. The rays scatter back to a detector rather passing through an object as in a medical X-ray. The van can scan while driving alongside a line of vehicles or while parked as they pass by.
According to a company presentation obtained by a civil liberties group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a backscatter van delivers a radiation dose about twice that of an airport body scanner.
Soldiers serving in Iraq nicknamed the vans "white devils." Customs officers call them "ice cream trucks."
Customs and Border Protection has purchased 75 backscatter vans for use at border crossings, ports, Border Patrol checkpoints and even the Super Bowl, according to agency records. Customs spokeswoman Jenny Burke said passengers must exit the vehicle before the scan.
While the Transportation Security Administration hasn't bought them, it tested them at a Delaware ferry crossing in 2004 and at a Long Island ferry crossing in 2009, spokesman Greg Soule said. In the first test, passengers weren't in the vehicles. But in the second test, passengers remained in the vehicles but could opt out, he said. Another TSA test in 2009 was conducted in northern New Jersey on empty commuter train cars in a rail yard.
The X-ray vans have also shown up on American streets. In 2010, Homeland Security officials conducted an exercise scanning tractor-trailers on Interstate 20. And the New York Police Department uses the vans.
The NYPD has declined to release details about the use of the machines.
ABC News reporters Richard Esposito and Ted Gerstein provide one of the few accounts of the backscatter van in a book they wrote chronicling a year inside NYPD's bomb squad. Describing the security ahead of President Bush's motorcade to the 2004 Republican convention, they wrote that every vehicle entering the street in front of the hotel was ordered to drive between two unmarked white vans, which X-rayed each vehicle for bombs.
Such covert use of radiation, if done without informed consent, would violate the industry standard.
"The institution operating the system shall inform each person being screened that the system emits radiation," the standard states. It also requires that people be told the radiation dose and that there be a visible indicator when X-rays are emitted.
Joe Reiss, AS&E's vice president of marketing, said although the vans are designed for covert use, the vans comply with the standard because they have two lights that flash when a scan is in progress.
Kevin Barry, an NYPD bomb squad detective who retired in 2002, said that when he was there, the police ensured that the area was clear of people any time they used X-ray equipment and that officers wore film badges to monitor radiation exposure.
"They're very cognizant of the fact that if there's a radiation issue that they have to monitor the health issue," he said.
But even if a violation were discovered, there is little the FDA can do because the standard is voluntary and not a federal regulation.
The FDA, which said it doesn't regulate the "use" of security scanners emitting radiation, referred questions to New York State, which also said it does not regulate the scanners and referred questions to the New York City Department of Health, which also said it does not regulate the devices.
Drive-through Scanners
Customs and Border Protection is also installing 35 drive-through X-ray portals purchased with economic stimulus money, according to a company report posted on the government's stimulus website, Recovery.gov.
A test system was installed at the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego in 2008 and portals will soon be deployed in El Paso and Laredo, Texas, and elsewhere on the Southwest border, according to contract documents obtained by the privacy group EPIC.
The portals, made by AS&E, can scan cars and buses from the top and sides as their drivers pass through at 3 mph.
The scanners' X-rays have to penetrate metal and glass. But according to Customs and the company, the radiation dose is equivalent to an airport body scan.
The dose is low because Customs officers do not need as high a resolution to see bulk explosives or drugs as a TSA screener would need to see a tiny detonator or a razor blade, said Rez, the Arizona State physicist. He estimated the dose by analyzing the images with a computer program.
The company says the portal is safe for everyday use. But Burke, the Customs spokeswoman, said it won't be used on every driver crossing the border -- only those who raise suspicion and require additional inspection. Passengers will be allowed to opt out and have a Customs officer drive it through the portal for them.
Ginger McCall, director of EPIC's Open Government program, is skeptical.
"You know what else started out as a secondary screening mechanism?" she asked. "Airport backscatter machines. The TSA said 'don't worry' to the American public. 'These are only going to be used as secondary screening devices.' And look how that turned out."
"Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance"
There are now about 250 X-ray body scanners in airports nationwide. But government agencies are exploring additional uses for the technology.
In 2010, the military brought two TSA body scanners to the Pentagon visitors' entrance, where they were tested by Defense Department staff. But plans were put on hold pending TSA testing of new privacy software that wouldn't show an image of a person's body.
"There's now technology which makes it look like a cartoon figure," said Chris Layman, spokesman for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. "We wanted to make sure that if we did this, all the privacy concerns are taken care of."
The Department of Homeland Security has funded research for walk-through X-ray body scanners that could be used at special events, and for long-range X-ray scanners to detect suicide bombers in crowds, according to documents obtained by EPIC.
Using similar backscatter technology, the walk-through scanner would speed up checks that now require people to stand with their hands over their heads while scanned. In tests of the long-distance scanner, according to contract documents, officials wanted to see whether it could identify people with metal and dense plastic from up to 30 feet away.
"Customers need a greater capability than what is currently available for detecting IEDs on people," Homeland Security officials wrote in a statement of work for a technology dubbed the "Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance Platform." "This is especially relevant at high-volume public areas and entrances to important infrastructure."
The radiation dose for such a scanner was listed in 2006 as 10 times higher than that of an airport scanner.
Intelligence released last summer that terrorist groups are considering implanting bombs in their bodies has raised concerns that the TSA would one day deploy X-ray scanners that can see into the body. In the past, the agency has declined to say whether it had ever considered the technology, known as "transmission X-rays."
But other Homeland Security documents, also obtained by EPIC and provided to ProPublica, show that in 2010, Homeland Security's science and technology division entered into an agreement with the FDA to test such technology.
"Transmission X-ray devices are being considered by DHS for passenger screening," the statement of work says. "The proposed use of transmission methods for routine passenger screening may have significant health & safety implications and requires special study and evaluation."
John Verrico, a spokesman for the department's science and technology division, said the proposed tests never went forward and the discussion of transmission X-rays was ultimately removed from the final statement of work.
"Transmission X-ray systems have not been tested," he said in an email. "Personnel have viewed vendors' demonstrations at their locations to evaluate the maturity of the equipment and the state of the technology."
"Treating People Like Luggage"
Such machines, however, were introduced in prisons in 2011.
A transmission X-ray body scanner, the RadPRO SecurPASS, is sold by Virtual Imaging, a Florida subsidiary of Canon USA. In the last year, it has been installed at the Cook County Jail in Chicago; several jails in Florida and Alabama; and the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, a temporary detention center for inmates being transported across the country.
The dose has two settings. The standard setting delivers a radiation dose about 10 times higher than that of an airport body scanner. But to produce a better image, the operator has the ability to switch to a higher exposure, said Kris Kessler, creative marketing manager for Virtual Imaging.
That dose is still a fraction of the radiation received in a chest X-ray or cross-country flight. But it's more than 50 times higher than that of an airport scanner.
Even with the standard setting, the quality of the image produced by the SecurPASS is so good that people don't have to take off their jackets or shoes, as they do before going through the airport scanners, Kessler said.
"It's almost like we're treating people like luggage," he said.
The device has already made some interesting finds. One inmate was found to have swallowed 10 pouches of heroin, Steve Patterson, then the Cook County Sheriff's Office spokesman, told ProPublica last year. Another inmate, he said, was found to have kidney stones.
Jails use the SecurPASS mostly on prisoners as they leave and come back from work detail, Kessler said. But some facilities are considering using it on employees as well, he added, to prevent them from bringing in contraband.
Dennis Wolfe, Virtual Imaging's national sales manager for security products, said he has had conversations with the TSA and that a test lasting several months was overseen by Homeland Security science and technology staff in 2010 and 2011. The department denied that.
The device, which was initially used to prevent theft in diamond mines, has already been used at London's Heathrow Airport to scan suspected drug mules. (Customs officials in the United States and other countries can, with a traveler's consent, order a medical X-ray, which would deliver a higher radiation dose.)
For now, however, Virtual Imaging is focusing on corrections facilities.
Chris Burke, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said the system is running a pilot test of various scanners but has not made a decision.
Still, Wolfe said he expects many federal prisons and larger jail systems to be using the SecurPASS in the next few years. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist," he said. "If somebody's hiding something up their butt, which technology are you going to use?"
The rapid growth of X-ray scanning for security and the limited authority granted to regulators make it difficult to keep track of the equipment.
Two airport body scanners, for example, were recently auctioned off by the General Services Administration. A new scanner typically sells for $170,000. But these scanners, which had been in storage, were sold for a total of $600.
Under FDA regulations, sellers would normally be required to keep records of who purchases their X-ray products. But because the FDA never adopted a mandatory safety standard for the airport body scanners, this rule does not apply.
To help determine the extent of the use of these devices, we're seeking stories from those who have had personal experience. Please share your stories in a private email to xray@propublica.org.
We are especially interested in the following:
Any information is appreciated.
The first Xperia to have stripped itself of the Ericsson brand, the upcoming Sony Xperia S, is rumored to feature a sunlight-activated coating which should help repel dirt and other stain-forming materials, as well as a quick-charge battery. Dirt and chocolate stains on the cover are said to come off easily after the UV coating is exposed to sunlight for several seconds, and the battery charge...
Try as she might, Madonna can’t get away from hydrangeas. During a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal a bouquet of Queen Madge’s least favorite bloom sat on a table at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Royal Suite, where she was meeting with press.
“People can’t resist sending them to my room, just to annoy me,” she said, as several gardenia-scented Diptyque candles burned.
Here’s the back story: At the Venice Film Festival, where her new film “W.E.” premiered last summer, a male fan approached the pop-star-cum-director at a press conference, professed his love, and gave her a hydrangea.
“I absolutely loathe hydrangeas,” Madonna said, a little too loudly and in her signature vaguely British accent. Unfortunately, her microphone was still on.
The press had a field day, and so did Madonna. She fired back amid the media maelstrom, with a hilarious video in which she apologizes to the hydrangea for offending it.
Madonna has always displayed a subversive sense of humor. At the Golden Globes earlier this month, host Ricky Gervais joked that she was “just like a virgin” and smirked, before she presented an award. Taking the stage, she delivered a zinger, telling him that if she is in fact a virgin, he ought to do something about it before calling his masculinity into question: “I haven’t kissed a girl in a few years…on TV,” she said, a reference to her makeout session with Britney Spears at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2003.
But when it comes to reviews of her new film, “W.E.” Madonna isn’t laughing. Indeed, she says she refuses to read anything about herself or her work in the press. Here are some additional outtakes from the interview with Madonna, whose new film, about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, will be released on Feb. 3 via the Weinstein Co.
You don’t read your reviews, but your close friends must tell you what people are saying, right?
They’ll say stuff like, “They’re giving you a hard time because you’re you.” But that’s not specific enough. And I just go, “Oh, OK, that’s all I need to know.”
The Duchess of Windsor seems like a woman who could be alternately attractive and repellant, in terms of her excessive materialism. Could you talk about that tension?
It’s like anything. It’s like peeling back the onion layers. When I first read the story I was like, “Oh my god—it’s so romantic. I can’t believe he abdicated the throne for her.” And then I was like, “Oh, he just kept buying her jewelry.” Then I peeled back the layers a bit and thought, that she really did do everything she could to kind of avoid this situation. So, my opinions kept moving and changing. Sometimes they were more human to me than others. Sometimes I felt more compassion towards them than others. But by the end of the journey I thought of them as human beings. I think she had a very tough life. I think he did too. In the end I felt that they endeared themselves to me.
You co-wrote this script, which interweaves the story of the Duke and Duchess with a modern-day drama about a woman in an unhappy marriage. Could you tell me why you chose this narrative device?
The creation of Wally [the modern-day character, played by Abbie Cornish] was based on the auction [of the belongings of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor] and the auction took place in the late 1990s. I spent a couple of years researching the story of the Duke and Duchess, and found out about the auction of the contents of their home after the home itself was sold to Mohammed Al Fayed. After reading about this very famous and very successful auction, I decided that that was the best way to tell the story, using the items from the auction as a device to go back and forth in time. So, once I decided on that, I had to create the character, who was at the auction house, who was picking up these items, who was invested in that world. So I played with the idea of Wally, a girl who used to work at Sotheby’s.
What do you think the Wally character brings to the story?
Wally thinks that if she could be loved by a man the way the Duchess was loved by Edward that she would be so happy, only to realize that they didn’t have a perfect love. I think that getting rid of that whole fairytale ideal that we’re all raised with, that our knight in shining armor is going to come along and sweep us off our feet and we are going to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after—you know, even in this day and age we’re raised on that theory.
The movie has more than one scene where Wally is defending the Duchess about her alleged Nazi sympathies. Could you talk about that?
In addition to the idea of exploring what I just mentioned, I had a desire to set the record straight about a person who I felt was very misaligned in history, and trying to understand and investigate the notion of what is perfect love, and is there such a thing as perfect love.
This film has a surprising array of fun dance sequences. How involved were you in choreographing them?
Very. I work with a woman named Stefanie Roos and I’ve worked with her on many, many tours. She is a dancer herself, and she’s always been the second-in-command with the director of all my shows. She plays me, basically, when I do my shows and need to step back and see the staging and choreography. She even wears my costume, does all my dancing, everything. She’s my stand-in. We’ve developed a relationship over the years and she understands me and knows exactly what I want, just like Arianne [Phillips] who did my costumes, we have a way of communicating with each other. We can read each other’s minds without saying much. Stefanie worked with me and with the actors, and we brought in a lot of dancers who we’ve worked with on the bigger dance scene, so we knew we were surrounded by people who could dance.
You’ve appeared in many films as an actress, and used to be married to a director, Guy Ritchie. Did any of those people you’ve worked with before inspire you here?
No. There are filmmakers from the past that truly inspired me, and people from today. I am a huge fan of Terrence Malick—I love his stillness. I love the silence of his characters, how they don’t say much but they say everything. I am a huge fan of Wong Kar Wai. I love the way his stories are so enigmatic and mysterious and you kind of have to figure them out for yourself. I like the way he used music and moves his cameras around. And I am a huge fan of directors from the past, whether it’s Ingmar Bergman or Alain Resnais, and Antonioni, Visconti…I could go on and on.
You have a new album coming out in a few months. Because you were simultaneously working on this film, were you thinking about love and romance when you made the album?
Yes, but it’s also kind of cheeky and ironic. I am dealing with a lot of issues of romance, forgiveness, redemption, revenge, betrayal. The song I wrote for the film [which will run with the closing credits], “Masterpiece,” is really a very romantic song. So it runs the gamut of every emotion you can imagine: girls gone wild, having a sense of abandonment, having fun, getting in your car and turning up the radio so loud you can’t hear anything, escapism.
There’s a song “Gimme All Your Luvin’” that leaked on the Internet. How did you feel about that?
What leaked was an early demo without [Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.] on it. It’s happened before, but it never happened so quickly. Now, it doesn’t take much. It’s really disappointing because you don’t want things to come out till you’re done with them, till you’re ready. It’s like everybody looking at your unfinished painting. It’s like, “Wait a minute. I didn’t finish that. That’s not fair.”
What made you want to work with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.?
I like their music and I like what they represent. They are strong, independent girls with a unique voice.
During Samsung's earnings call, they took a minute to talk about the Exynos 5250 System-on-a-Chip (SoC) they announced last year. It's already sampling to manufacturers and it will go into mass production in Q2 this year. The chipset packs two Cortex-A15 cores running at 2.0GHz, which reportedly have double the performance of their Cortext-A9 predecessors. We can't wait to see how Exynos 5250...
“Welcome Back Kotter” star Robert Hegyes dies; “Let’s Stay Together” sales boosted by Obama…
“Welcome Back Kotter” Star Dies: Robert Hegyes, known for his role as Juan Epstein on “Welcome Back Kotter,” has passed away at the age of 60. According to Reuters, Hegyes was in cardiac arrest when paramedics took the sitcom star to the hospital. The actor would later die at John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey. On “Welcome Back Kotter,” Hegyes played “Juan Luis Pedro Felipo de Huevos Epstein,” a Jewish Puerto Rican student in a remedial class of kids known colloquially as the “Sweathogs.” His catchphrase was “Hey, Mr. Kotter, I got a note!” and he would often mouth the words of the note as his teacher read it aloud, suggesting that Epstein had actually penned the excuse himself. “Kotter’s'” comedy was gentle, but the show is fondly remembered because it focused on the outcasts at school, and not on the students at the top of the food chain. The program also featured friendships that crossed ethnic boundaries. The cast, including series star John Travolta, reunited on the TV Land Awards and on “Good Morning America” in 2011. “My reality far exceeded my dreams when this thing came along, it just did,” Hegyes said then. (You can leave your thoughts about “Welcome Back Kotter” and Hegyes in the comments.)
“Let’s Stay Together” Sales Boosted By Obama: President Barack Obama’s decision to sing a line of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” has managed to help the economy. Since crooning a part of the tune at the Apollo Theatre, sales of the the classic Al Green number have increased by 490%, according to the Hollywood Reporter. As a result of the demand, the single had its best week since Nielsen began tracking downloads back in 2003. The presidential performance helped the song sell more than 16,000 downloads in the week ending Jan. 22, according to Nielsen Soundscan. The video of President Obama has been a social media hit garnering millions of views.
A few days ago leaked the first images of the rumored as the Optimus 3D successor - LG CX2. The CX2 is supposed to feature a better processor, superior display, slimmer shell and even better connectivity options (incl. NFC). Today a reportedly trustful source disclosed to GSM Israel the market name for the CX2 - it's going to be the LG 3D MAX or rather Optimus 3D MAX. LG 3D MAX In...
We've been seeing plenty of financial results and now it's Motorola's turn. Along with their Q4 and full year report, Moto also included an update on the merger with Google in their press release. Let's start with the financial side of things first. Motorola Mobility reported net revenues of $3.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011 and a net loss of $80 million (compared to a net earnings of...
A private jet approaches landing at St.Gallen-Altenrhein Airport, one of several arrival points for Davos (Kecko)
*NEWSBITES
TAGES-ANZEIGER/Worldcrunch
ZURICH - The preferred mode of transportation for arriving at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos is, unsurprisingly, private jet. But this year there appears to be an unprecedented overflow of private planes arriving in Switzerland's airports.
Zurich airport spokeswomen, Sonja Zöchling, said they were counting on 1,000 extra flights coming in and out during the forum, which runs through Jan. 29. There is space to park 54 planes. “Anything over and above that has to be distributed to other airports,” Zöchling said.
One of the alternative parking spots in past years has been the military airport in Dübendorf. Stefan Hofer, head of communication for the Swiss army’s high command, said demand for space has risen. “We usually make space for 15 planes available,” said Hofer. “This year, depending on the size of the plane, we’re making room for 25 to 30 planes.”
Normally, the planes would stay parked until the end of the five-day meeting, “but there are exceptions.” Normal operations at the airport are not affected by the extra traffic, Hofer said.
As they have been in the past, communities near the Dübendorf airport were informed that there would be extra traffic during Davos week. But locals, who tolerated air traffic for military necessities, are losing patience with all the WEF air and noise pollution. In nearby Volketswil, town clerk Beat Grob expressed astonishment that traffic at the airport had doubled during the WEF meeting, but said that only after the meeting was over would they be able to establish exactly how much extra traffic there had been.
The town clerk of Wangen-Brüttisellen, Christoph Bless, said that when the army starts using the field again in 2014, with the exception of Rega rescue helicopters, "there should be no civil aviation at all there.”
Read the full story in German by Tina Fassbind
Photo – Kecko
*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations
Argentine energy company YPF has recently discovered large shale gas deposits (nestor galina)
By Juan Pablo Dalmasso
AMÉRICA ECONOMÍA/Worldcrunch
CORDOBA – Things could soon get very busy for Marcelo Guiscardo and his colleagues at QM Equipment, an Argentine firm that designs and produces specialized equipment - including rock-breaking machines – of the type used in shale gas extraction.
Up to now, the company’s production has almost exclusively been for export, with customers in South America, Oman, Egypt and Russia. That could soon change. Argentina, it turns out, is parked on top of an immense reserve of shale gas: the third largest reserve in the world after the United States and China. There are now hints the country is ready to begin exploiting those reserves, meaning QM – which already has its hands full trying to meet foreign demand – could soon have more business than they can even handle.
According to a 2011 US Department of Energy report, Argentina’s “technically recoverable” resources are over 22 billion cubic meters, equivalent to about 11% of the world’s shale gas reserves. To put things in perspective, even if just 10% of Argentina’s estimated reserves are exploitable, the country would still be looking at an amount more than seven times greater than the reserves at the Loma La Lata field in the western province of Neuquén. When it was discovered, Loma La Lata, the country’s largest single natural gas deposit, shifted both Argentine and Chilean energy policies towards natural gas.
Finally cost effective
Shale gas is an unconventional type of gas deposit. In order to exploit it, operators must fracture rock by injecting high-pressure water horizontally. The water contains numerous chemical additives used to prevent the fractured rock from closing. “On average, [a shale gas well] is about six times as expensive as a regular well. And it is exhausted much more quickly since, with current technology, only around 20% of the gas is extracted,” says Jorge Feriol, president of the Argentine Committee of the World Energy Council.
Energy start-ups began applying shale gas technology in the United States around 20 years ago. In 2000 it barely represented 1% of U.S. oil and gas production, but by 2010 it had reached 25%. It is estimated to reach 50% in the coming decades. Some say that the United States, thanks to shale gas, could go from being an energy importer to being an energy exporter.
Despite Argentina’s huge reserves, shale gas production has been slow to take off – until recently, local selling prices were simply too low to make it cost-effective.
That’s finally changing thanks to efforts by the Argentine government to significantly increase the permitted prices for the shale gas. As a result, several U.S. companies, including Apache, have jumped into the market. Since 2008 they have drilled more than 70 exploration wells.
The Argentine oil giant YPF has been talking about shale gas since 2009. Last November it announced the discovery of a major reserve of shale gas at the Loma La Lata fields. If estimates prove accurate, the discovery would increase Argentina’s total gas reserves by 40%. Waiting in the wings are several other big name energy companies, including Total, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Petrobras.
Shooting for self-sufficiency
Considering these developments, it is easy to understand why the Argentine energy secretary, Daniel Cameron, announced enthusiastically that Argentina will, in the near future, once again be energy self-sufficient. If that indeed does come to pass, Argentina stands to cut its energy expense by some $5.5 billion per year. Other analysts, however, are a bit more reserved in their energy forecast, saying the goal is reachable, but isn’t likely to happen overnight. Even in a best case scenario, Argentina’s shale gas wells will not be fully functioning for another five or six years.
That, in turn, assumes that current prices hold. Another potential stumbling block is equipment. International demand is high right now, meaning the necessary machinery is scarce. For local companies like QM equipment, a potential Argentine shale gas boom would mean opportunity, but could also present serious logistical problems.
Could Argentina eventually position itself as an energy exporter? Not a chance, say analysts. That would mean at least a decade of investments and, above all else, rebuilding consumer confidence. Chile still remembers bitterly the 2004 energy crisis, when energy shortages in Argentina caused gas exports to Chile to drop substantially, forcing Chile to quickly build coal-fired plants to meet its population’s energy needs. Chile also scrambled to build a large liquefied natural gas reconversion port, which allows it now to buy much of its natural gas from overseas.
Argentina also faces competition closer to home. Many other South American countries, including Brazil, have substantial shale gas reserves of their own. “But we’re still leaders when it comes to exporting technology and know-how,” says QM’s Marcelo Guiscardo.
Regardless of Argentina’s place in the world market, business has been very good for his company, which has received a number of new orders for high-horsepower fracturing equipment.
Read more from AméricaEconomía in Spanish
Photo - nestor galina
An "absorption center" in Jerusalem, Israel (Vladim Lavrusik)
By Serge Dumon
LE TEMPS/Worldcrunch
JERUSALEM -- “Don’t look at me like a savage,” declares Molat Araro. Until relatively recently, the 26-year-old was almost completely unknown within his Israel-based community of Falashas, black Ethiopian Jews. And he was even more anonymous in the rest of the Hebrew state where these Africans, who are taken for descendants of the mythical Queen of Sheba, are usually very discreet.
But everything changed when this physical education student set off on a march against racism, wearing an Israeli flag and with half his face painted blue. This pilgrimage took him from Kiryat Malahi, a small town in the south of Israel where 20% of the inhabitants are Falashas, to the doors of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem.
Approximately 5,000 other Falashas were waiting for him there to denounce the discrimination they face in Israel. “When our parents emigrated en masse at the start of the 1980s, they thought they were escaping to paradise. But all they have found is contempt,” says Adissu Mohal, a 40-year-old supermarket employee. “Not a day goes by without someone treating me like a cockroach because of the color of my skin.”
“They should be grateful”
The Falashas discontent spilled over three weeks ago when the white inhabitants of Kiryat Malahi agreed in writing not to rent or sell any goods to the blacks. The town hall supported the agreement. “We don’t want these shits in our buildings,” town residents told television reporters. In response, the Falashas, who hadn’t protested since 1995, took to the streets. “We are just like you, listen to us!” the protestors shouted.
Israel’s minister for immigration and integration, on the other hand, denies that a problem exists. Minister Sofa Landver, a Russian-born therapist, said the Falashas would be well advised to keep quiet. “They should be grateful to the State for everything that has been done for them,” she said.
It is this kind of open disdain that spurred 5,000 ex-Ethiopians to give Molat Araro a hero’s welcome upon his arrival in Jerusalem. They hope to protest in even greater numbers in Tel-Aviv over the coming months.
“In Israel, you don’t get anywhere if you don’t shout. The time has come to act, because our situation is unbearable,” says Kfissa, a single mother whose two daughters, aged 8 and 11, remain at home because no school will accept them. “We have had enough of not being good enough for anything except emptying bins for a meagre wage or begging for welfare.”
There are only about 100,000 Falashas in Israel. Together they represent just 1.5% of the population and have no representation in government. A disturbing sign of just how desperate conditions are for some Falashas are the numerous murder-suicide cases that have occurred over the past decade. There have been at least 30 cases of unemployed and depressed Falasha men killing their wives and children before taking their own lives. Dozens of others have attempted, unsuccessfully, to do the same.
Aware of the seriousness of the problem, the Ministry of Immigration commissioned a study in 2009, but the results were so damning for the State’s integration policies that the most sensitive chapters were never released.
Read the original article in French
Photo - Vladim Lavrusik
The Dec. 24 protest in Moscow (max trudo)
By Olga Allenova
KOMMERSANT/Worldcrunch
MOSCOW – Across Russia’s political spectrum, from the radical left to the extreme right, a coalition has formed called the Citizen’s Movement. Aiming to establish a “people’s government” and a “change in the political regime,” the popular movement coalesced after contested Parliamentary elections in December, with an eye toward the March ballot where Vladimir Putin hopes to return to the presidency.
But beyond a shared desire to take on the current powers-that-be, there are growing signs that the previous spirit of unity may be splintering. Or to put it more bluntly: liberal reformists worry that they could wind up with Neo-Nazis for bedfellows.
The first wake-up call for many in the pro-democracy camp was the protest on Dec. 24, in which several hard-core nationalist groups participated. Several prominent nationalist leaders spoke at the demonstrations, with one telling the crowd that the current wave of protests would not have been possible if the nationalists hadn’t demonstrated in December 2010 in response to a botched investigation of a soccer fan’s death at the hands of a migrant from the North Caucasus. That earlier protest had a distinctly anti-immigrant atmosphere.
During the protests last month, the nationalist leaders also called for the abolition of the law against extremism, which has been used to imprison Neo-Nazi gang leaders. And then there was nationalist blogger Aleksei Navalny’s strange threat to the Kremlin that: “we could take over, but we won’t.” Didn’t people protest on the street precisely to take over the Kremlin?
But at the time, people were willing to overlook these details. The most important thing turned out to be the feeling of unity that arose among thousands of disenchanted people. But later, once the magic of the moment dissipated, social networks lit up with discussion of how unacceptable joint actions with the nationalists are.
At the beginning of January, the Facebook group, “Russia without Hitler” (a play on the protestors’ slogan ‘Russia without Putin), started a discussion regarding the ‘anti-fascist’ opposition groups and their role in the upcoming demonstration. One of the group’s organizers, Konstantin Borovoi, declared: “For me, it is unacceptable to take part in a protest side-by-side with nationalists.” But a consensus on what path to take, even among people who agree politically, was elusive.
Picking your slogans
The well-known blogger Aleksei Devotchenko, for example, has suggested that the liberal reformists create their own group within the larger opposition forces, and march under their own, democratic and anti-fascist, slogans.
Leaders on the political left have come up with a similar initiative: their Facebook group page touts a separate “leftist section” that will march with slogans that are more focused on social and welfare issues.
At the same time, the leaders of the Solidarity movement Ivan Tyutrin and Mikhail Schneider (who both insisted that they were not speaking on behalf of the whole organization), said that they did not support the idea of different sections in the march, precisely because it would lead to reports of schisms in the opposition. Both leaders of Solidarity said that they spoke up in support of protesting with the nationalists because the nationalists had just as much right to take part in the protests as anyone else. In their opinion, as long as the nationalists are helping with the mass protests, they are working toward the common goal. There will be time to rein them in later.
But what if the nationalists show up on February 4th with fascist slogans and banners? “We are doing everything we can to make sure that does not happen,” Schneider said.
One possibility that several of the protest leaders have considered is to participate in the joint actions with the nationalists, but to prevent them from speaking at the event.
On January 17, a planning meeting for the February 4 protest was unable to settle on a speakers list. However, the three representatives of nationalist groups present at the meeting signed the organizers’ platform, which included language specifying “equal rights for all citizens of our country, regardless of race, nationality, sex or religion.”
Afterward, many liberals said that they could not ignore this positive step from the nationalists, and that as long as the nationalists signed the platform statement, they would have a much harder time disassociating them from the movement.
“Working with the nationalists is not very pleasant, of course,” one liberal protester said. “But right now we have the same goal - changing the political system in this country. Once we reach that goal, our paths will diverge.”
Minority and majority
Some are convinced that the nationalist groups do not have the public support to change the course of the democratic development in Russia. On the other hand, though, a survey done about one year ago, just after the nationalist protests in December 2010, showed that 58 percent of Russians agreed with the phrase “Russia for Russians. Perhaps the opposition is confusing wishful thinking with reality.
The head of the human rights organization Memorial, Oleg Orlov, said that he is not worried that nationalists could one day win at the polls, but rather that their participation in the opposition protests has legitimized them. “They are sitting at the same table as opposition leaders and leading the discussion,” he said. But regardless, Orlov plans to go to the protest on February 4. “They are in the minority. They do not have an influence on the situation. And it is very important to support this protest, which represents all of society.”
But journalist and blogger Andrei Loshak worries that the nationalists “have a plan.”
“They want to take over the crowd of ‘liberal suckers’, as they call us, so that they can ride the energy of the protest movement into power,” Loshak says. “But if they do get into power, then our current regime is going to seem like a paradise, because at least the current regime doesn’t hate anyone. The nationalists live off of hating people who are different. And that is endlessly dangerous.”
Read the original article in Russian
Photo - max trudo
Murray Gell-Man at the Annual Meeting 2012 of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
By Norbert Lossau
DIE WELT/Worldcrunch
DAVOS - “Homo davosiensis,” as participants of the annual summit in Davos, Switzerland have come to be called, is a species plagued with self-doubt – even as it maintains a blind faith in the benefits of globalization. Thanks to the flow of merchandise, data, and capita, participants agree, things seem to be working okay economically speaking, despite financial crises here and there that take even the experts, astonishingly enough, by surprise.
And yet questions still abound. How does one satisfy the need for energy in a booming global economy? How sure can we be of oil supplies? What dangers does cyberspace pose? Can climate change be brought under control? Now that dangerous causes of illness can spread rapidly around the world, is there increased danger of deadly pandemics? Maybe the world has already become so complex that mankind can no longer target and drive development but has become a ball tossed around by the processes of fate.
What these questions have in common is that they can’t be answered by economic competence or political decision-making alone. Yes, “Homo davosiensis” has cottoned on to the fact that many processes in a globalized world come down to natural inevitabilities. Viruses, for example, aren’t going to stop spreading because someone forbids them to. Nor are energy problems going to disappear. Even the ever darker cloud of climate change can only be understood in the context of the laws of nature even if these are still not understood in all their details by the experts.
Such are the themes on the agenda of this year’s World Economic Forum, where more events than ever before are being devoted to scientific subjects. Indeed, “Homo davosiensis” is being asked to look beyond the confines of economics. The species has come to understand that many of the globalized world’s challenges can only be mastered with the help of scientists, researchers and engineers.
Exploring energy and Internet
“The global energy context” was one of the first topics tackled on the very first day, even before German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave the opening speech. On the eve of the opening, American TV channel CNBC held a several-hour-long brainstorming session about “energy innovation” with creative conference participants. If there were no simple answers, there were many promising ideas.
Another major talking point in Davos this year is the subject of resources – water, food, primary goods, as are the risks of a world linked via the Internet. Invited to talk about the latter is 82-year-old Nobel laureate for physics Murray Gell-Mann, who after a career researching elementary particles founded the famous Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. The institute’s website states that it is dedicated to “complexity research expanding the boundaries of science.” Physics – where highly complex things are not exactly unusual -- is the point of departure but work at the institute is interdisciplinary.
Complexity can also concern financial markets or social processes. Quite naturally, a central question being raised at this year’s gathering is how the Santa Fe researchers’ models can be applied to describing and understanding economic systems.
Actually tallying up this year’s WEF program shows that events with scientific and medical themes in fact outnumber events devoted to the euro crisis, an issue that many assumed would dominate discussions. The fate of the euro will not be decided in the snowed-under Graubünden mountain resort town of Davos. But if the world’s economic leaders can learn something about the various interdependent scientific phenomena at play in our globalized world, the summit could end up proving far more valuable than if they had spent the whole time contemplating currency markets.
Read the original article in German
Photo – World Economic Forum
Sex clubs are legal in Switzerland (pppspics)
By Caroline Riegel
LE TEMPS/Worldcrunch
GENEVA - Lisa, who runs Venusia, a legal and regulated house of prostitution in Geneva, has just about had enough. "France is trying to get rid of its prostitutes by sending them abroad. So they come here," she says. "We’re sick and tired of this situation."
M. A., an employee of the Gclub, an erotic massage parlor, said the Swiss city is attracting a harmful "new kind of prostitution," where young women try to make a living in big hotels at night without having to pay taxes. "Geneva is becoming the brothel of Europe," she said.
Though most agree that the prostitution market in Geneva is booming, the local police vice unit is not concerned, saying that the increase will eventually level off. "In the 1980s, Geneva prostitutes were already complaining about competition from German prostitutes," says Michel Félix, a member of Aspasie, an association that has been protecting the rights of prostitutes for 30 years. "Then other nationalities started arriving – it works in cycles."
Fewer than 1,000 prostitutes were registered in Geneva in 2004, compared to 4,100 in 2011, with 900 new applications for 2011 alone. The number of French prostitutes is rising dramatically, believed to be linked to crackdowns by law enforcement in France, where the practice remains strictly prohibited. Bertrand Jacquet, leader of the Geneva police vice unit, says French now represent 28% of sex workers in Geneva, and have been the biggest group since 2005. Since 2010, their numbers have increased by 75% according to the Swiss census.
But Jacquet notes that there has also been a 150% rise in the number of Hungarian prostitutes over the same period.
"We need money right now," says T., a beautiful 23-year-old mother who commutes from Lyon to Switzerland every day. "This is not a career. What we want is to make as much money as possible so we don’t have to wait 20 years before we can afford to buy a business or an apartment."
Across the border in France, a country that dreams of a society without prostitution, authorities are pragmatic. France, they say, is not going to break down and cry because its sex workers are moving abroad – they have every right to.
The dark side
Lisa angrily accuses the media of hyping up the Swiss Eldorado’s huge salaries, thus attracting throngs of girls lured by easy money. Girls can indeed bring in 15,000 to 20,000 Swiss francs (12,000 to 17,000 euros) a month. But rates are actually comparable to those in the other European capitals. As the Gclub puts it: "Customers will usually pay 150 to 300 Swiss francs (120 to 250 euros) in high-class places, but 25 to 40 euros to turn a trick in the street -- that’s really slashing prices."
This leads workers like Lisa to remind people of the dark side of this practice: "There’s quick money to be made, sure, but never easy money. It's a very hard job."
"It’s still an immoral activity," says M. A., "You have to stay strong in your mind. There’s a kind of addiction to money. Everything changes, your needs, your habits, you can’t go back."
Félix Michel adds: "Many workers are disappointed and have to leave because of the costs; renting prices in Geneva are exorbitant, close to unreasonable sometimes."
Credit, debts, families that need supporting: the girls say they chose to work in Switzerland for the money, but also for safety reasons. "Working in France is way too dangerous," says T. from Lyon. "We’re scared to death," adds S. from Annemasse in the southeast of France.
The vice unit in Geneva, praised by all parties concerned, explains: "Women here are not prey. The regulations are very tight and well thought out with good measures in place. And it’s working. We’ve got excellent control over the scene, and there’s no human trafficking or mafia networks. Pure and simple, abolition [as is advocated in France] is simply impossible to achieve."
Michel Félix says that a prostitute who has a legal status and is a full citizen has no reason to turn to these networks to find work. But in Annemasse, the police vice unit is less optimistic: "France will never take its inspiration from Switzerland because morality still has a significant influence on the law. And it looks like the French are heading towards an even more conservative approach. Even the Netherlands is backpedalling, and soon it’ll be Geneva’s turn to return to stricter measures."
Julie Huissoud, from the Appart 74 association that helps prostitutes, says: "In France, it is assumed that the prostitute is a victim. Here, women can talk about their sufferings. When you end up performing fellatio for 5 or 10 euros, it’s called prostitution for survival, no less."
In Geneva, in the small common room of the erotic club, the floor is covered with a jumble of stilettoes, underwear, magazines and empty plates. People wait. A bell rings. Agitated whispers. Girls hastily put on their bras and quickly go on stage. The fleeting silhouettes of indistinct clients make their way upstairs, following the click of high heels. Other girls return, sit down, put on some nail polish, have a quick bite to eat.
"They may drive us off the streets and out of everywhere else," says M., a married woman with two children from the Doubs department in eastern France. "But women will always find a way to do this job."
Read more from Le Temps in French
Photo - pppspics
Jersey Shore time!
Danny comes to the house to inform the roommates the deal is to have eight people in the house and to work at the Shore Store. He has been displeased with their work ethic. Vinny went home and Mike has disappeared and is pretty useless even when he’s around. He announces that he’s looking for more people and the cast needs to make room for new roommates. Snooki complains that they don’t have any room in the house but that doesn’t seem to phase the boss. Danny says he’s looking for a big effort at work due to the busy season. Snooki is dead set against new roommates and isn’t afraid to kick people to hold onto her turf.
Mike emerges from wherever he’s been and gets the news they are looking for new roommates. Mike is upset and tells Snooki and Deana that he’s been having a tough time around his birthday. He explains to the camera that he isolates himself to see if anyone goes “that extra mile” for his birthday.
He’s like that guy that says he doesn’t want to go to the party just because he wants you to beg him.
Mike says Cancers are sensitive people. Snooki laments to the camera that while Mike is complaining, he has no idea they are throwing a big surprise party for him and Pauly. They ask him not to “dip off anymore” – it’s against GTL code.
Pauly, Deena and Snooki are off to work early the next morning and are well rested for a big day. They are all ready to make sales because they just don’t want another roommate.
Pauly wasn’t expecting much effort from the Meatballs but is surprised they are pulling their weight today. However, he wonders how long that effort will last.
Back at the house, the girls call Vinny to see if he is going to come to the surprise party but he declines because he’s working on getting better. Deena, Snooki and Sammi beg him to come back but he’s not ready and they are getting the feeling he won’t come back at all.
Apparently the Meatballs cannot walk with “swag”. You’re just born with it, according to Pauly.
The girls go to Karma to start setting up for the surprise party which will include strippers. There they get a crash course on how creepy a stripper’s handler actually is. The handler, or ‘the Wiz’, is very interested in how much bodily harm the strippers should inflict.
A day after Danny dropped the hammer for their work ethic, Mike and Ronnie are running late for work. Danny starts posting ‘help wanted – see manager’ signs all over the store, because that’s exactly how the original cast was chosen, right? In a weak economy, the Shore Store is a job creator.
And the candidates start pouring in! Two girls inquire about the job, and while they probably didn’t make it past MTV casting, Ronnie thinks one of them was cute if she’d lose the Michael Jackson fedora.
When Jenni sees the help wanted sign, she immediately rips it down but Danny is persistent. He makes Jenni make a new sign, but Mike suggests to add ‘see the old dude’.
They say they’re not comfortable bringing in a new roommate that hasn’t been through the reality show ringer like the rest of them.
The Meatballs go to the party store for party favors and balloons but make the ultimate impulse buy – a bunny costume – to boost house morale and satisfy their furry fetish.
Excitement for the surprise party is building and Mike and Pauly have no idea what’s about to go down.
When the group walks into Karma, Mike and Pauly are surprised by their friends and loved ones for the second time this season. The usually paranoid Mike said he had no idea, while Pauly is getting his second birthday party in a week. Each guy got his own cake in the shape of specific female anatomy. If that isn’t friendship, I don’t know what is.
All the stress was worth it, according to Snooki. She even hugs and exchanges ‘love you’s with Mike, her mortal enemy since Italy.
Mike is touched by the gesture.
Shots, balloons, wheelchairs and handcuffs follow in that order. Two giant paper mache cakes are wheeled out containing two slender, half-naked women.
Mike is touched by the stripper.
Soon after, Mike is bringing home one of the dancers to his newly cleaned room while Pauly has met a DTF brunette. But Mike’s fortunes surprisingly take a turn due to mismatched socks. His girl asks for a pair of socks to wear, which baffles Mike since he plans on getting it in sans clothes. Her criticism of his sock selection turns him off and he decides to call it a night. You just don’t make fun of a man for having holes in his tube socks.
Late night at the house and Deena and Ronnie are still sad about Vinny. Their phone call goes to Vinny’s voicemail and the reality is sinking in that Vinny may not come back.
The next morning, Snooki and Deena break out the bunny costume to scare Jenni. It works.
And then…couples night! Even Mike and Deena bring dates to Bamboo. The bar is packed and before you know it, there is chaos on the floor. Sammi gets into a knockdown, drag out brawl with a girl that grabbed her weave – you just don’t yank a girl’s weave! Apparently, this girl didn’t watch season 3 and her fight with Jenni, because Sammi definitely holds her own. She gets kicked out and the rest of the gang goes with her.
Mike performs his cologne ritual on his bed and undercarriage before getting it in with lady friend Paula, while Deena’s attempt to ‘do sex’ is continuously interrupted by her alarm clock.
For the first time on the show, Mike is showing actual feelings for one of the girls he brings home. He says Paula might get a second date. Snooki approves of Paula as a mate for Mike due to their insanity and her hotness.
Determined to pull himself out of his Vinny-induced funk, Pauly decides to lead the gang to Staten Island to kidnap his best friend and bring him back to Seaside. First stop is the Shore Store to make t-shirts with Vinny’s sayings showing their solidarity – ‘Vinning All Day’, ‘Free Vinny’, etc.
It’s GTGVB. Gym, Tan, Get Vinny Back.
On arrival, the roommates storm his house like an episode of Cops looking for a perp. While still not 100 percent, once Vinny sees his friends, that’s all he needs to come back.
Also, Vinny has been busy in the one week that he’s been gone. He got a large tattoo across his chest – Let Go, Let God – which looks good but confuses the roommates as to its meaning.
Vinny’s first order of business back at the shore: getting it in.
Now that Vinny is back with the group, everything is peaches, Snooki says. The guys and girls drive back to Seaside mooning each other along the way.
Next week: Snooki has a UTI and the bunny costume returns to accost everyone. Also, Mike is acting overly friendly but seems to have an ulterior motive.
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