coment: Mei 2013

Jumat, 31 Mei 2013

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Kamis, 30 Mei 2013

CNN veteran Larry King to host Kremlin-funded TV show

MOSCOW (Reuters) - CNN veteran Larry King will host a new show on Kremlin-funded TV station Russia Today next month, RT said on Wednesday.

The English-language station, beamed to 630 million viewers worldwide, said it would launch "Politics with Larry King" in June.

The show will be produced by Ora TV, an online broadcaster founded by King and Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim last year, and recorded in RT America's Washington, DC, studio and Ora TV's Los Angeles studio.

RT said it also signed a deal to air the online talk show "Larry King Now", which has been hosted by web broadcasters Hulu.com and Ora.tv since last July. The U.S. branch will be the exclusive broadcaster for both programmes, it said.

"Whether a president or an activist or a rock star was sitting across from him, Larry King never shied away from asking the tough questions, which makes him a terrific fit for our network," said RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

RT and Ora TV declined to comment on King's salary in the deal.

Russia Today - considered a Kremlin exercise in image enhancement by critics - received 11 billion roubles ($349 million) from the state this year. It signed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange last year to host his own talk show.

King, 79, ended a 25-year run as the host of "Larry King Live" on CNN in 2010. He had interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin several times over his 13-year rule.

RT also made headlines in 2011 when U.S. airports refused to put up one of its controversial advertisements.

The billboards comparing U.S. President Barack Obama and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a tagline asking, "Who poses the greater nuclear threat?" did appear at airports across Europe.

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; editing by Mike Collett-White)

Coroner: NY crash victims include 4 kids, 3 adults

TRUXTON, N.Y. (AP) Authorities say the seven people killed in upstate New York when their minivan was hit by a trailer include four young children and three adults in their early 20s.

Cortland County Coroner Whitney Meeker tells The Associated Press Thursday morning that all seven victims, including four children under 10, were local residents.

They were killed and a man was injured when their van was hit by a trailer that broke away from a truck on Route 13 around 6 p.m. Wednesday in the rural town of Truxton, about 25 miles south of Syracuse.

Meeker says the children were from two different families, including one from Truxton.

Authorities haven't released the victims' names.

Officials say the trailer was loaded with crushed cars when it disconnected and slammed into the van.

Canada freezes trade with Iran over nuclear program, human rights

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada will freeze all remaining trade with Iran to protest the Tehran's nuclear ambitions and its human rights record, Foreign Minister John Baird said on Wednesday.

Canada, which has had increasingly poor relations with Iran for more than a decade, had already imposed a series of trade sanctions. In 2012, bilateral trade was worth around C$135 million ($130 million).

Baird said Canada was particularly concerned by the failure of the United Nations' nuclear agency this month to persuade Iran to let it resume an investigation into suspected atomic bomb research.

"The absence of progress ... leads Canada to ban effectively immediately all imports and exports from Iran," Baird told reporters.

Last September, Canada suspended diplomatic ties with Tehran, calling Iran the biggest threat to global security.

"Canada continues to have grave and sincere concerns over Iran's nuclear program, and their abhorrent human rights record and their continued support for international terrorism around the world," Baird said.

Statistics Canada data for 2012 shows exports to Iran were worth around C$95 million, mostly in the form of cereals, oil seeds and fruit as well as chemical products and some machinery. Iranian exports totaled C$40 million with fruits, nuts and textiles dominating.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Selasa, 28 Mei 2013

Jolie aunt dies of breast cancer days after op-ed

ESCONDIDO, Calif. (AP) Less than two weeks after Angelina Jolie revealed she'd had a double mastectomy to avoid breast cancer, her aunt died from the disease Sunday.

Debbie Martin died at age 61 at a hospital in Escondido, Calif., near San Diego, her husband, Ron Martin, told The Associated Press.

Debbie Martin was the younger sister of Jolie's mother, Marcheline Bertrand, whose own death from ovarian cancer in 2007 inspired the surgery that Jolie described in a May 14 op-ed in the New York Times.

According to her husband, Debbie Martin had the same defective BRCA1 gene that Jolie does, but didn't know it until after her 2004 cancer diagnosis.

"Had we known, we certainly would have done exactly what Angelina did," Ron Martin said in a phone interview.

Debbie Martin's death was first reported by E! News.

Ron Martin said after getting breast cancer, Debbie Martin had her ovaries removed preventively because she was also at very high genetic risk for ovarian cancer, which has killed several women in her family.

The 37-year-old Jolie said in her op-ed that her doctors estimated that she had a 50 percent risk of getting ovarian cancer but an 87 percent risk of breast cancer.

She had her breasts removed first, reducing her likelihood to a mere 5 percent.

She described the three-step surgical process in detail in the op-ed "because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience."

The story, a surprise to most save those closest to Jolie, spurred a broad discussion of genetic testing and pre-emptive surgery.

A message left with representatives seeking comment from Jolie was not immediately returned.

San Antonio drying out from heavy rains

SAN ANTONIO (AP) Warm weather and sunshine are helping the San Antonio area dry out after thunderstorms this weekend flooded area roads, rivers and creeks, killing three people who were swept away by rushing waters.

The National Weather Service on Monday discontinued a flood watch for the region. A flood warning did remain for the San Antonio River near Falls City, which is about 45 miles southeast of San Antonio.

The Texas Department of Transportation and other agencies reported Monday that only a few roads remained closed in San Antonio due to flooding.

The San Antonio Water System reported that two sewer lines were overwhelmed by the flooding, causing spills of more than 100,000 gallons. The utility said no adverse impacts had been reported from the spills.

Some states push back against new school standards

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) Some states are pushing back against a set of uniform benchmarks for reading, writing and math that have been fully adopted in most states and are being widely put in place this school year.

The new Common Core standards replace a hodgepodge of educational goals that had varied greatly from state to state. The federal government was not involved in the state-led effort to develop them but has encouraged the project.

While proponents say the new standards will better prepare students, critics worry they'll set a national curriculum for public schools rather than letting states decide what is best for their students.

There was little dissent when the standards were widely adopted in 2010, but that begun changing last year and debate picked up steam this year. The standards have divided Republicans, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush championing them and conservatives such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, opposing them.

Lawmakers and governors are reviewing the standards in Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Indiana, Alabama, South Carolina and Utah. Grassley, meanwhile, persuaded eight other senators to sign onto a letter in April asking the Senate Appropriations Committee to stop the Education Department from linking adoption of the standards to eligibility for other federal dollars. That same month, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution calling the standards an "inappropriate overreach."

Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Bush-backed Foundation for Excellence in Education, said conservatives historically have supported higher standards and greater accountability.

"The fact that they are opposed to Common Core now is a little surprising and disappointing given the fact that states came together to solve a need," Campbell said, adding that the new standards will allow for state-by-state comparisons that haven't been possible before. "We are going to have more rigorous assessments that are going to test kids against those higher standards and hopefully achieve what we all want, which is a dramatically greater quality of education in America."

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative, Washington-based think tank that espouses conservative policies in state legislatures, debated in November whether to oppose the Common Core standards. The group ultimately decided to remain neutral, but its discussion, along with concerns raised by conservative groups such as the Goldwater and Pioneer institutes, caught the attention of lawmakers.

States that adopt the standards are supposed to use them as a base on which to build their curricula and testing, but they can make their benchmarks tougher than Common Core. While the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found the new standards to be more rigorous than those that had been used by three-quarters of all states, critics question what will happen in states whose previous standards were tougher.

"So in that regard we really viewed Common Core as the race to the middle, not to the top," said Jamie Gass, director of the Center for School Reform at the Pioneer Institute.

Questions about testing also have arisen. In New York, among the first states to test students based on the standards, some students complained this spring that the Common Core-aligned English exams were too difficult to complete in the allotted time, and there were reports of students crying from stress.

Jonathan Butcher, education director for the Goldwater Institute, based in Phoenix, said opposition also is gaining traction because states and districts are at the point where money has to be appropriated to pay for the standards.

"As soon as states had to start spending money on the Common Core, as soon as it became a line item in the budget, people sit up and take notice," Butcher said. "And that wasn't going to happen until now, until states started to implement it. So it's unfortunate that there is so much attention to it so late in the game but that's kind of where we are. As soon as it starts to become a money issue people will pay attention."

Calculations on the cost of implementing the standards vary, with the Pioneer Institute and two other anti-Common Core conservative think tanks estimating it will cost $16 billion over seven years. Meanwhile, the Fordham Institute, which is pro-Common Core, said the cost over a one-to-three-year transition period could range from $8.3 billion to breaking even or even saving money, depending on things like whether the states purchase hard-copy textbooks or use open-source learning material written by experts, vetted by their peers and posted for free downloading.

One issue is that new tests tied to the standards will be computerized, requiring some states and districts to make technology upgrades. The Pioneer analysis included those technology costs; the Fordham one didn't.

In backing ultimately unsuccessful anti-Common Core legislation in Missouri, Rep. Kurt Bahr, a Republican from the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, said he was concerned that many communities lacked the bandwidth and hardware to administer the tests.

"We don't have that connectivity," Bahr said. "It's about to become a massive pocketbook issue."

The standards are the result of an initiative sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Carrie Heath Phillips, who oversees implementation of the standards for the council, played down the concerns about cost, noting that states periodically update their standards and that spending money to implement new ones is nothing new. She also acknowledged that technology upgrades can be a real issue for states that haven't invested in it, but asked, "If you're not moving into the 21st century now in 2013, when are you going to?"

The standards have a long list of supporters, including the National Parent Teacher Association, several education associations and businesses such as the Boeing Co. and Microsoft Corp.

Literacy teacher Jessica Cuthbertson said she attempted to fully implement the new standards in her sixth-grade Aurora, Colo., classroom for the first time this year and found her students' writing was "substantially better."

"I feel that often the debate isn't about the learning," said Cuthbertson, who also trains teachers to use the new standards as part of her job with a virtual teacher leadership initiative called the Center for Teaching Quality. "We're not talking about what the kids are producing and doing with these cool standards. We're talking about the big brother federal government controlling curriculum. I don't think it's really grounded in student learning, and yet in the hands of teachers focused on student learning, I just think there is nothing but hope."

While the federal government wasn't involved in developing the standards, it has provided $350 million to two consortiums developing Common Core tests. The federal Education Department also encouraged states to adopt the standards to compete for "Race to the Top" grants and seek waivers around some of the unpopular proficiency requirements of the No Child Left Behind federal education act.

"They have done some things that have kind of muddied the waters at the very least," said Butcher of the Goldwater Institute. "It's hard for me to say, 'Well, clearly the federal government has no interest in this.'"

But in Michigan, where the Republican-led Legislature is taking steps aimed at halting the standards, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder is defending them as a "really important opportunity" for the state.

"Unfortunately, it's been too much about politics," he said. "It's being viewed as the federal government putting another federal mandate on us. ... It was the governors of the states getting together ... to say we want a partner at the national level and all levels to say, 'Let's raise the bar.'"

___

Associated Press writers Chris Blank in Jefferson City, Mo., John Milburn in Topeka, Kan., Alanna Durkin in Lansing, Mich., Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Tom LoBianco in Indianapolis, Phillip Rawls in Montgomery, Ala., Seanna Adcox in Columbia, S.C., Michelle Price in Salt Lake City, Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., and Karen Matthews in New York contributed to this report.

Senin, 27 Mei 2013

Riots put Sweden's open-door immigration policy in spotlight

By Alistair Scrutton and Simon Johnson

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's worst riots in years might benefit a far-right party in elections next year if scenes of immigrants burning cars and smashing up buildings cause voters to rethink their traditional welcome to foreigners.

Even before the week of riots in the poorer neighborhoods of Stockholm, immigration had become a hot political issue, as the number of asylum seekers reached record levels.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party shot to third place in polls earlier this year and the riots could help them secure more political clout at 2014 elections.

The riots, where many youths torched cars and threw stones at police and rescue services, happened as violent attacks on soldiers in Britain and France, blamed on Islamist militants, raised urgent questions about intolerance and integration.

"It is tragic. This is not good for us as immigrants. It becomes harder for us to live here," said Rahimzadagan Abdolsaheb, 49, an Iranian-born taxi driver. "There will surely be more racism because of this."

Many Nordic anti-immigration parties - backed by just a small minority in a region famous for its tolerance of minorities - lost support after Anders Behring Breivik, a white supremacist, murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011.

But they are once again on the rise.

Immigration Minister Tobias Billstrom broke government ranks earlier this year to say that Sweden's intake of immigrants was "not sustainable".

Billstrom sparked furor when he said people protecting illegal immigrants were no longer "blonde and blue-eyed" but fellow migrants exploiting cheap labor.

Rising concern about immigration has coincided with worries about employment, with heavy job losses in the car industry and at companies including Ericsson and airline SAS.

Reflecting a hardening in rhetoric, the pro-immigration prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, called the rioting "hooliganism".

INCREASING POLARISATION

Opinion polls show most Swedes support immigration and that many are more tolerant of foreigners than 20 years ago.

But while those opposed to immigration are in a minority, their number may be on the rise and could be further boosted by the riots.

"It will be a step to increasing polarization on the issue of integration in Sweden," said Andreas Johansson Heino, a political scientist at Sweden's Timbro think-tank. "These kinds of things benefit parties like the Sweden Democrats."

Some 43,900 asylum seekers arrived in 2012, a nearly 50 percent jump from 2011 and the second highest on record. Nearly half were from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia and will get at least temporary residency. There was a total of 103,000 new immigrants.

Some 15 percent of Sweden's population is foreign born, the highest in the Nordic region. Asylum seekers in particular are drawn by Sweden's robust economy and tradition of helping refugees.

Sweden's liberal-minded mainstream parties are concerned about what happened in Denmark when an anti-immigrant party held the balance of power in the last government, pushing policies including tightening border controls that fuelled tension with other European nations.

The Sweden Democrats have advanced in voter surveys to nearly 10 percent from 5 percent at the last election in 2010. Before the riots, a poll by Novus showed around 20 percent of Swedes believed the Sweden Democrats had the best immigration policy.

"What is happening on the fringes of our big cities is a direct result of irresponsible immigration politics which have created deep divisions in Swedish society," said Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Akesson.

"These splits can't be bridged by building more recreation centers or by the police grilling sausages with youths."

But there are also those who believe Sweden's asylum policies will remain intact after the disturbances and that the Sweden Democrats may have reached a poll ceiling.

"The government and opposition have made it very clear ever since the Sweden Democrats got into parliament it would not in any way affect Swedish immigration," said Ulf Bjereld, professor of political science at Gothenburg. "They have kept their promise."

(Additional reporting by Johan Ahlander, Mia Shanley and Philip O'Connor; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Ireland readies diplomatic corps to rebuff tax haven claims

By Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland is preparing to officially reject accusations by U.S. Senators this week that it acts as a tax haven for large multinationals and launch a diplomatic offensive to repair the damage done to its reputation abroad.

Ireland has been forced to defend its low corporate tax rate after the Senate said last week that iPhone and iPad maker Apple paid little or no tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits channeled through Irish subsidiaries and that it had effectively negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than 2 percent.

Irish ministers and officials have lined up to insist that their tax system is transparent and that other countries were responsible if Apple paid tax at such low rates. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said Ireland would not be the "whipping boy" for the Senate subcommittee.

The government will likely put its response on the record this week, two government sources said, and will tell the committee led by veteran tax sleuth Senator Carl Levin that Ireland is not a tax haven, nor did it cut Apple a special tax deal.

"Undoubtedly there's a risk of reputational damage if we don't defend our corner and set out the facts, so of course that's happening," Ireland's European Affairs Minister Lucinda Creighton told Reuters, referring to the response being drafted.

"I've no doubt there will be a strong response, and we will strongly defend Ireland as a safe, a legally sound and a good place to do business. What you see is what you get, and that is why so many global companies are headquartered in Ireland."

Creighton was speaking from Dublin airport ahead of a four-day trip to Washington and New York where she will meet business leaders and politicians and address the prestigious Columbia University.

While the trade mission was planned long before last week's revelations on Capitol Hill, Creighton said she and her fellow ministers would use every opportunity to put right the "misinformation" heard in the Senate last week.

Ireland has a network in place to quickly spread that message. After it took a financial bailout in late 2010, Dublin set up its Economic Messaging Unit to coordinate communications between all government agencies, departments and embassies.

Irish embassies from Beijing to Buenos Aires were issued rebuttal points last week, a normal practice for major stories, while Ireland's ambassador in Washington held a conference call with government departments and the state agency charged with attracting investment into Ireland to discuss the next steps.

DINNER JOKES IN BRUSSELS

Within weeks of coming to office in 2011, Prime Minister Enda Kenny summoned all the country's ambassadors to Dublin to brief them on how best to restore a reputation he said was in tatters.

The fresh assault will be similar, one diplomatic source said, adding that the key focus would be liaising with a strong network of contacts in the U.S. Administration and on Capitol Hill, where the leaders of Ireland and the United States traditionally meet for lunch to mark St. Patrick's Day.

While Dublin was able to call on ex-President Bill Clinton to tell U.S. companies last year that they would be "nuts" not to invest in Ireland, the task could be trickier this time with the criticism emanating from its normally friendly ally.

"That was a blindside for Ireland Inc. because we always thought we were on the same page as Anglo-American capitalism. We thought it would stick up for us," said Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in Brussels.

"The PR side of it is really bad for Ireland because Ireland and tax haven are going together in mainstream conversation in Brussels. It hasn't done our image much good when people start making dinner jokes about Apple being an Irish company."

While Ireland will concentrate its energy in the United States to keep attracting jobs from the likes of Apple, Google and Pfizer, it will also need to keep an eye out for any backlash in Europe where its low corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent has drawn criticism in the past.

One influential member of the European Parliament said that while Dublin should be given time to adjust, it should adopt a standardized European Union tax system and ultimately a minimum rate of corporation tax.

"Ireland should take its hands out of other countries' pockets. Ireland's tax system is designed to tax income other people have earned," Sven Giegold told Reuters, underscoring how emotive the issue will be in elections in his native Germany.

"If you want to heat up a room in an election meeting in Germany, you have to talk about tax avoidance. It has become one of the most emotional topics. People are outraged."

(Additional reporting by John O'Donnell in Brussels; Editing by Will Waterman)

Huge crowd cheers Argentine leader's 10-year rule

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) Argentine President Cristina Fernandez rallied a huge crowd Saturday night celebrating the 10-year government that she and her late husband Nestor Kirchner began in 2003. Her voice breaking, she called it a victorious decade, "won not by a government but by the people."

This year's election will determine whether Fernandez has enough votes in congress to undo constitutional term limits and extend her rule beyond 2015. But she suggested Saturday night that she won't try. She said "I'm not eternal, nor do I want to be."

Putting human rights violators on trial and pushing to put more of Argentina's wealth in the hands of its poorest people will continue to be the pillars of this government, she said. "Equality is the grand symbol of this decade and of those to come," she vowed.

Her opponents took aim at the "decade won" theme, noting that the years of strong economic growth have ended, and saying that if this is what victory looks like, Argentina is in big trouble.

Whether the Kirchners' decade will be remembered for its historic achievements or its missed opportunities depends on whom you talk with in Argentina, where society is bitterly divided over their legacy.

Analysts consulted by The Associated Press said they deserve credit for fostering 7 percent average growth and restoring power to the presidency. Kirchner was inaugurated on May 25, 2003 at a chaotic time; the country was still suffering from its 2001 crisis, and poverty was extreme.

The Kirchners began an era of social inclusion, external debt reduction and state intervention that was the exact opposite of the privatization binge and anything-goes capitalism that characterized Argentina in the 1990s.

Ten years later and going it alone after her husband died of a heart attack, Fernandez has intensified her government's control over the economy and diverted billions of dollars more to subsidizing the poor.

"This is an extraordinarily significant decade in Argentine history," said philosopher Ricardo Forster, a supporter. The transformations have managed to enrich the social, cultural, political and economic life."

But Fernandez's approval ratings have dropped sharply recently amid rising inflation and crime, corruption allegations involving top appointees and allied businessmen; increasingly heavy-handed economic controls; and efforts to transform the justice system. Critics say the real goal is eliminating challengers to presidential power.

"This decade represents a tremendous missed opportunity, which you can see by looking at what other countries in the region have done with similar possibilities and limitations," said sociologist and attorney Roberto Gargarella, a government critic.

Thousands of citizens have joined a series of pot-banging protests in recent months, and the crowd gathering in the Plaza de Mayo to hear Fernandez speak Saturday night was intended to provide a powerful counterpoint. Hundreds of thousands of people were bused in by the "organized and united" network of pro-government groups, and their flags and huge TV screens were installed in nearby streets.

"This is the government I always dreamed of and fought for in the 1970s," said Paloma Perez Galdos, a 58-year-old bank worker. "It's time that we have a justice system for everyone, not just for the rich."

"Social inclusion" under the Kirchners has involved providing billions of dollars in cash welfare payments families with children and people working in the informal economy. The government has raised pensions and minimum wages, and directed vast amounts of government revenue to keep the economy moving.

"Unemployment has gone from 25 percent to 7 percent ten years later ... in an economy that grew as fast as China," said Ramiro Castineira, an economic analyst with the Econometrica firm.

Castineira and Gargarella disagree on many aspects of the Kirchners' legacy, but they both say intervening in the government statistics service in 2007 was a critical mistake. Ever since, official annual inflation has refused to budge over 10 percent, even as Argentine shoppers watch prices double and triple each year. Many other statistics based on consumer prices have become widely disregarded.

"All the numbers on unemployment, poverty, inflation and inequality are falsified," Gargarella said.

"Misrepresenting the numbers was a strong blow to market confidence; that raised the country risk and made it impossible for Argentina to take on foreign debt. That's why the government turned to expanding the money supply," Castineira agreed.

Since 2008, the government has sought to capture more of the windfall profits from soy exports. But that alone couldn't finance the spending, so it printed more money and changed currency and tax rules forcing businesses to keep profits inside Argentina. That dissuaded investors, spurred capital flight and pushed annual inflation to as much 30 percent right now, private analysts say.

Economic instability now threatens to undo much of what the Kirchners accomplished.

"Today it's clear that Argentina, under the leadership of the Kirchners, has not known how to take advantage of the opportunity that this first decade of the 21st century has represented for Latin America, which is the strongest growth in two centuries of history," political analyst Rosendo Fraga said. "Instead of taking the path of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Uruguay, it's taking that of Venezuela."

___

Associated Press Writer Damian Pachter contributed to this story.

Minggu, 26 Mei 2013

Protest in Paris against France's gay marriage law

PARIS (AP) Tens of thousands of people protested against France's new gay marriage law in central Paris on Sunday, and police clashed with right-wing demonstrators.

The law came into force over a week ago, but organizers decided to go ahead with the long-planned demonstration to show their continued opposition as well as their frustration with President Francois Hollande, who had made legalizing gay marriage one of his keynote campaign pledges in last year's election.

Marchers set off from three separate points across Paris, and by early evening they filled the Invalides esplanade just across the Seine River from the Champs Elysees.

As night fell, several hundred protesters clashed with police, throwing bottles and chasing journalists.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said police had arrested around 100 far-right protesters who refused to leave following the end of the demonstration.

Meanwhile, in southern France, the 66th Cannes Film Festival gave the Palm d'Or, its top honor, to "Blue is the Warmest Color: The Life of Adele," a French film about a tender, sensual lesbian romance.

Police estimated around 150,000 people took part in the demonstration in Paris, but march organizers claimed on their Twitter account that more than a million people did.

A similar protest in March drew about 300,000.

Around 5,000 police were on duty Sunday because previous anti-gay marriage protests also had seen clashes between far-right protesters and the police.

okedaichi.blogspot.com

At Cannes' movie palace, talk of TV's rise

Posted: 25 May 2013 02:55 AM PDT

CANNES, France (AP) The annual Cannes festival on the French Riviera is the grandest platform in the world for the highest ambitions of film, a place where the art form is worshipped with wild passion and adoring reverence. Movies are projected pristinely in regal theaters, where they're greeted by the world's cinephiles with feverish excitement.

But even at this bastion of the big screen, director after director has come through preaching the opportunities of the small screen. Up and down the Croisette, talk of TV's ascendance is rampant.

"The way that things are moving because of the financing of films, television has almost become where a lot of people seek creativity," said Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, who premiered at the festival his Bangkok noir "Only God Forgives," starring Ryan Gosling. "It's opened up a whole new arena."

Danish TV's current quality has spread internationally (including "The Killing," which was remade in America). Refn, the director of "Drive," is working on his television debut, a version of the 1969 French science fiction film "Barbarella" for France's Canal Plus.

Refn said that in the past 10 years, TV has leveled the field, creatively, and is now "sometimes much more satisfying than anything around."

"I love television," he said. "I love the size of it. I love to touch them. I like to watch them. I love the remote control. I love the power of the remote control. I love everything about the television."

One of this year's most notable films in competition won't even be released theatrically in the U.S.: Steven Soderbergh's Liberace melodrama "Behind the Candelabra." Hollywood studios passed on the film, which stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, suggesting that it was too gay to play at the box office. HBO picked up the $23 million film and will air it Sunday.

Soderbergh, long considered one of America's finest filmmaking talents, is stepping away from moviemaking, but is enthusiastically moving into television. He'll reportedly make a 10-episode series about a turn-of-the-century New York hospital, starring Clive Owen. (Soderbergh also produced the 2003 Washington, D.C., drama "K Street.")

"There's a lot of great stuff being made," said Soderbergh. "You can go narrow and deep, and I like that. And this is all ("Sopranos" creator) David Chase. He single-handedly rebuilt the landscape. Anything that's on now that's any good is standing on his shoulders."

"I don't hear anybody talking about movies the way they talk about TV right now," said Soderbergh.

But Cannes remains one of the great arguments for the vibrancy of movies. Year after year, it gathers together many of the world's best films, and this year's festival, the 66th, has been no different in that respect.

Audiences have been wowed by the Coen brothers' wry melancholy ("Inside Llewyn Davis"), the classical skillfulness of James Gray ("The Immigrant"), the shambling grandeur of Paolo Sorrentino ("The Great Beauty") and many other sensory feasts. At Cannes, cinema is utterly alive.

But there are economic forces at work that have contributed to the shift. As audiences have becoming increasingly fractured, studios have concentrated more on enormous blockbusters. While advances in film equipment have made making a movie easier, getting it seen has become harder.

Director James Toback premiered at Cannes his "Seduced and Abandoned," a documentary he made with Alec Baldwin. The two filmed their sometimes humiliating efforts to find financing and the necessary marketing budget for an adult drama. With appearances from Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski, the movie often feels like a funeral for the days of popular, dangerous movies.

"The movie business is tough, and it's tougher now than ever," said Baldwin, who largely stepped out of film to star in Tina Fey's acclaimed sitcom "30 Rock." ''Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever make another movie again."

"Seduced and Abandoned," fittingly, was picked up not for theatrical release, but by HBO. (The network will also broadcast another film at Cannes playing out of competition, Stephen Frears' documentary "Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight.")

David Fincher's entry to television with the political thriller "House of Cards" for Netflix sent reverberations through the business, partly because Fincher is such a widely respected filmmaker.

But talent is increasingly flocking to TV because of acclaimed shows like "Mad Men," ''Downton Abbey," ''Girls," ''Breaking Bad" and many others. The medium allows for more novelistic storytelling and, often, greater exposure.

"It's nice for actors because more people see it," said Kristin Scott Thomas, who stars in "Only God Forgives." ''You can spend weeks and weeks and weeks making a film that very few people will see, and that's sort of dispiriting."

"It's very satisfying when millions see something," she added. "It's as simple as that."

Not everyone, though, endorsed TV at Cannes. The 87-year-old Jerry Lewis barked: "Never watch television, if you can help it." Henri Behar, the moderator of Lewis' press conference, noted that that was an appropriate sentiment at a film festival.

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

Sabtu, 25 Mei 2013

A controversial victory lap for Lewis at Cannes

CANNES, France (AP) Jerry Lewis, so beloved in France, isn't quite overcome with emotion now that he's back at the Cannes Film Festival.

The festival, he says, is "for snobs," and when he meets a reporter from his native land, he exhales, "It's so nice to hear an American." To him, Cannes isn't an epicenter of rabid Lewis fandom, it's simply "business," he says, chomping on gum.

And at 87, Lewis is back in business. Nearly two decades since his last film, he's at Cannes with "Max Rose," a modest independent film in which he stars as an elderly man reconciling himself to life without his late wife.

"I'm very happy to relax and stay home with my family, and if something comes up, I'll consider it," Lewis, in an interview, said of his return to movies. "That's the nice part about 87. You just tell people: Oh, you're very tired."

At Cannes, Lewis has been anything but tired, both burnishing and tarnishing his legacy as a brilliant comedic performer. His Cannes tribute the festival paid "homage" to him in an out-of-competition screening of "Max Rose," as well as with a screening of his 1961 classic "The Ladies Man" has been overshadowed by his views about female comedians.

In a press conference, Lewis told reporters that his earlier-stated feelings haven't changed in recent years: Comedy isn't for women, he claims. A day after his comments roiled women across the Internet, Lewis wasn't apologetic, saying he sees females as mothers, not stand-ups.

"It's the truth. I can't help it," Lewis says, shrugging. "Women, it's just wrong. I don't care that the audience laughs at it and likes it. I don't happen to like it. I have too much respect for the gender. And I think that they are wrong in doing it. I can't expect them to stop working, but just don't work anywhere where I have to look at it."

It's a clearly out-of-date attitude that has turned many away from Lewis. In Cannes, "Max Rose" didn't help his reputation. The film, by first-time filmmaker Daniel Noah, drew terrible reviews at the festival. Variety said only "the most irrationally charitable of Lewis' fans" will appreciate it.

But such opinions mean little to Lewis. He made the film with Noah purely because he liked the script the best he's ever read, he says. It's the rare film to tell a story about the struggles of growing older, featuring a downbeat performance from Lewis far from the elastic farce his fans are accustomed to seeing.

Asked why he hadn't made a film since 1995's "Funny Bones," Lewis responds: "You see the movies they're putting out? What am I going to do, discuss that?"

Noah, who wrote the script based on his grandfather, sought out Lewis with little expectation of landing him. Months after sending the screenplay, Lewis called him and committed over the phone. Lewis told him he hadn't planned to make another film, but decided, "I gotta give them one more Jerry picture."

"I was braced for a difficult experience," says Noah. "I saw nothing but horror stories about how he was controlling and irascible and unpredictable and moody. . But I cannot explain to you the chasm between the man that othjcoers seem to know and the man that I know. I have not had a single moment of tension with him, of difficulty. He has been like a grandfather to me."

Noah says Lewis who helmed more than a dozen films in his career, including 1963's "The Nutty Professor" left the directing completely to him. He gave his famous star little direction, save for the occasional reminder to be more minimal, more "sad clown," says Noah.

"He's a wonderful kid," says Lewis. "When you're 87, almost everybody's a kid."

Lewis has continued to perform concerts "a wonderful way to make a fortune," he says. Retirement is not on the table. "I'm happiest when I'm on the stage," says Lewis, who was honored with the Academy Awards' humanitarian award in 2009 after years of telethon hosting for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

"Wherever the audience is is where you want to go," he says. "And if you're a ham, like me, you go wherever the action is. You see a lens and a crew and say, 'Yeah!'"

At the press conference in Cannes, Lewis proved that he still has his pugnacious wit and eagerness for laughs.

Asked about Dean Martin, Lewis' famed comedy partner in the '50s, he responded: "He died, you know. When I arrived here and he wasn't here I knew something was wrong." (Martin, with whom Lewis parted acrimoniously, died in 1995.)

"I've worked hard to sustain a reputation of: If you buy a ticket, you know you're going to get entertained," says Lewis. "That's what I was taught."

Lewis may be many things talented, funny, honest, out-of-touch, sexist but perhaps above all else, he's an entertainer. "Max Rose" marks his 82nd year performing.

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

Thousands of bridges at risk of freak collapse

SEATTLE (AP) Thousands of bridges around the U.S. may be one freak accident or mistake away from collapse, even if the spans are deemed structurally sound.

The crossings are kept standing by engineering design, not supported with brute strength or redundant protections like their more modern counterparts. Bridge regulators call the more risky spans "fracture critical," meaning that if a single, vital component of the bridge is compromised, it can crumple.

Those vulnerable crossing carry millions of drivers every day. In Boston, a six-lane highway 1A near Logan airport includes a "fracture critical" bridge over Bennington Street. In northern Chicago, an I-90 pass that goes over Ashland Avenue is in the same category. An I-880 bridge over 5th Avenue in Oakland, Calif., is also on the list.

Also in that category is the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River north of Seattle, which collapsed into the water days ago after officials say an oversized truck load clipped the steel truss.

Public officials have focused in recent years on the desperate need for money to repair thousands of bridges deemed structurally deficient, which typically means a major portion of the bridge is in poor condition or worse. But the bridge that collapsed Thursday is not in that deficient category, highlighting another major problem with the nation's infrastructure: Although it's rare, some bridges deemed to be fine structurally can still be crippled if they are struck hard enough in the wrong spot.

"It probably is a bit of a fluke in that sense," said Charles Roeder, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington.

While the I-5 truck's cargo suffered only minimal damage, it left chaos in its wake, with two vehicles catapulting off the edge of the broken bridge into the river below. Three people involved escaped with non-life threatening injuries.

The most famous failure of a fracture critical bridge was the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis during rush hour on Aug. 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100 others. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the cause of the collapse was an error by the bridge's designers a gusset plate, a key component of the bridge, was too thin. The plate was only half of the required one-inch thickness.

Because the bridge's key structures lacked redundancy, where if one piece fails, there is another piece to prevent the bridge from falling, when the gusset plate broke, much of the bridge collapsed.

Mark Rosenker, who was chairman of the NTSB during the I-35W bridge investigation, said the board looked into whether other fracture critical bridges were collapsing. They found a few cases, but not many, he said.

"Today, they're still building fracture critical bridges with the belief that they're not going break," Rosenker said.

Fracture critical bridges, like the I-5 span in Washington, are the result of Congress trying to cut corners to save money rather than a lack of engineering know-how, said Barry B. LePatner, a New York real estate attorney and author of "Too Big to Fall: America's Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward."

About 18,000 fracture critical bridges were built from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s in an effort to complete the nation's interstate highway system, which was launched under President Dwight Eisenhower, LePatner said in an interview. The fracture critical bridge designs were cheaper than bridges designed with redundancy, he said.

Thousands of those bridges remain in use, according to an AP analysis.

"They have been left hanging with little maintenance for four decades now," he said. "There is little political will and less political leadership to commit the tens of billions of dollars needed" to fix them.

There has been little focus or urgency in specifically replacing the older "fracture critical" crossings, in part because there is a massive backlog of bridge repair work for thousands of bridges deemed to be structurally problematic. Washington state Rep. Judy Clibborn, a Democrat who leads the House transportation committee, has been trying to build support for a tax package to pay for major transportation projects in the state. But her plan wouldn't have done anything to revamp the bridge that collapsed.

National bridge records say the I-5 crossing over the Skagit River had a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100 a score designed to gauge the ability of the bridge to remain in service. To qualify for federal replacement funds, a bridge must have a rating of 50 or below. A bridge must have a sufficiency rating of 80 or below to qualify for federal rehabilitation funding.

Hundreds of bridges in Washington state have worse ratings than the one that collapsed, and many around the country have single-digit ratings.

Clibborn said the Skagit River crossing wasn't even on the radar of lawmakers because state officials have to prioritize by focusing on bridges with serious structural problems that are at higher risk of imminent danger.

Along with being at risk of a fatal impact, the I-5 bridge was deemed to be "functionally obsolete," which essentially means it wasn't built to today's standards. Its shoulders were narrow, and it had low clearance.

There are 66,749 structurally deficient bridges and 84,748 functionally obsolete bridges in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Highway Administration. That's about a quarter of the 607,000 total bridges nationally. States and cities have been whittling down that backlog, but slowly. In 2002, about 30 percent of bridges fell into one of those two categories.

Spending by states and local government on bridge construction adjusted for inflation has more than doubled since 1998, from $12.3 billion to $28.5 billion last year, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. That's an all-time high.

"The needs are so great that even with the growth we've had in the investment level, it's barely moving the needle in terms of moving bridges off these lists," said Alison Premo Black, the association's chief economist.

There is wide recognition at all levels of government that the failure to address aging infrastructure will likely undermine safety and hinder economic growth. But there is no consensus on how to pay for improvements. The federal Highway Trust Fund, which provides construction aid to states, is forecast to go broke next year. The fund gets its revenue primarily from federal gas and diesel taxes. But revenues aren't keeping up because people are driving less and there are more fuel-efficient cars on the road.

Neither Congress nor the White House has shown any willingness to raise federal gas taxes, which haven't been increased since 1993. Many transportation thinkers believe a shift to taxes based on miles traveled by a vehicle is inevitable, but there are privacy concerns and other difficulties that would preclude widespread use of such a system for at least a decade.

Transportation spending got a temporary boost with the economic stimulus funds approved by Congress after President Barack Obama was elected. Of the $27 billion designated for highway projects under the stimulus program, about $3 billion went to bridge projects, Black said.

States are looking for other means to raise money for highway and bridge improvements, including more road tolls, dedicating a portion of sales taxes to transportation and raising state gas taxes. Clibborn, the Washington state lawmaker, has proposed a 10-cent gas hike to help pay for projects, though the effort has been held up by a dispute over how to rebuild the Columbia River bridge connecting Vancouver, Wash., and Portland, Ore.

"We can't possibly do it all in the next 10 years, but we're going to do the first bite of the apple," Clibborn said.

___

Lowy reported from Washington, D.C. AP Writers Manuel Valdes and Gene Johnson contributed to this report.

Hezbollah, Syria government forces push for advance in Qusair

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian government forces and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah launched a fierce campaign to seize more rebel territory in the border town of Qusair on Saturday, sources on both sides of the conflict said.

Rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad said additional tanks and artillery had been deployed around opposition-held territory in Qusair, a Syrian town close to the Lebanese border.

"I've never seen a day like this since the battle started," said Malek Ammar, an activist speaking from the town by Skype. "The shelling is so violent and heavy. It's like they're trying to destroy the city house by house."

Rebels are largely surrounded in Qusair, a town of 30,000 that has become a strategic battleground. Assad's forces want to take the area to secure a route between the capital Damascus and his stronghold on the Mediterranean coast, effectively dividing rebel-held territories in the north and south.

The opposition has been fighting back, seeing it as critical to maintain cross-border supply routes and stop Assad from gaining a victory they fear may give him the upper hand in proposed U.S.-Russia led peace talks next month.

Syria's two-year uprising against four decades of Assad family rule began as peaceful protests but devolved into an armed conflict that has killed more than 80,000 people.

Assad's forces are believed to have seized about two-thirds of Qusair, but the price has been high and rebels insist they are preventing any further advances.

A fighter from Hezbollah forces in Qusair told Reuters that advances were happening at a very slow pace.

"We are in the second phase of our plan of attack but the advance has been quite slow and difficult. The rebels have mined everything, the streets, the houses. Even the refrigerators are mined."

The fighting in Qusair has also highlighted the increasingly sectarian tone of Syria's political struggle, which is not only overshadowing the revolt but threatening to destabilize the region. Israel has launched two air strikes in Syria, and Lebanon, which fought its own sectarian-fuelled 15-year civil war, has seen a rise in Syria-linked violence.

Syria's Sunni Muslim majority has led the struggle to topple Assad, and has been joined by Islamist fighters across the region, some of them linked to the militant group al Qaeda.

Assad comes from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, and has relied on an army led mostly by Alawite forces. He has been bankrolled by regional Shi'ite power Iran, a longtime ally, and now increasingly by the country's Lebanese proxy, Shi'ite Hezbollah, founded as a resistance movement to Israel.

Syrian rebels now say that whatever the outcome, they will plot sectarian revenge attacks on Shi'ite and Alawite villages on either side of the border.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition monitoring group with a network of activists across Syria, said Assad forces led by Hezbollah were trying to advance from three directions in the city.

"Every area they didn't have a foothold in, they are trying to gain one now," Rami Abdelraham, head of the Observatory, told Reuters by telephone.

The violence in Qusair, part of Syria's central Homs province, has sparked clashes in the nearby Lebanese city of Tripoli.

More than 25 people have been killed in seven days of fighting in Tripoli, one of the bloodiest episodes of Syria-related fighting in the coastal city. Both sides of the conflict accuse the other of using Tripoli as a part of the supply chain over the border into Syria.

Rebels from across Syria say they have sent some of their units into Qusair.

Colonel Abdeljabbar al-Okaidi, the Aleppo-based regional leader of a moderate, internationally-backed Supreme Military Council said he and the Islamist brigade al-Tawheed had sent forces to the outskirts of the town to help the Qusair fighters.

But activist Malek Ammar said no forces had arrived yet and insisted the rebels locked in Qusair were still on their own.

"No one is helping Qusair other than its own men," he said.

(Reporting by Erika Solomon; Additional reporting by Laila Bassam; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Dozens march in Ukraine's first-ever gay rally

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) At least 50 gay rights activists have marched peacefully in the country's first gay rally despite a court ban and attempts to disrupt the event.

Participants of the Saturday's rally in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, held banners against discrimination and derogatory stereotypes of gays.

Riot police guarded the rally and prevented attempts by a dozen men to attack the activists.

While the recognition of gay rights advances in much of the West, antipathy toward homosexuals remains strong in Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

Homosexuality was a criminal offense in the Soviet Union and societal resistance to it remains strong more than two decades later.

The highly influential Orthodox Church vehemently opposes gay rights.

U.S. weather-watcher satellite fails just before hurricane season

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A key satellite positioned to track severe weather in the eastern United States has failed, just as the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season is about to start.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) activated a spare satellite, which will provide coverage of the East Coast, while it is trying to fix the failed one, the agency said in a status report on its website on Friday.

"There is no estimate on return to operations at this time," NOAA said.

The Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season starts on June 1 and lasts six months. NOAA expects this year's season to be "extremely active," with 13 to 20 tropical storms and seven to 11 of those strengthening into hurricanes.

The agency's three current Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, known as GOES, were built by Boeing and designed to last 10 years. The failed spacecraft, GOES-13, was launched in 2006.

NOAA typically operates two GOES spacecraft over the United States, overlooking the East and West coasts, plus one on-orbit spare. The satellites are outfitted with imagers to watch for clouds and developing storms, and atmospheric sounders to measure temperatures and humidity.

The first sign of trouble with GOES-13, the primary East Coast satellite, surfaced late Wednesday when it failed to relay expected images, NOAA status reports show.

GOES-13 is located over 75 degrees west longitude. Though activated, the spare remains in its storage orbit at 105 degrees west.

NOAA said it currently is not planning to drift the spare east, while efforts to troubleshoot its failed sister satellite are under way.

NOAA also has an older GOES-12 satellite, launched in 2001, parked at 60 degrees west that provides coverage of South America.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Jane Sutton and Eric Beech)

U.S. weather-watcher satellite fails just before hurricane season

Stone Temple Pilots sue ex-frontman Scott Weiland

LOS ANGELES (AP) The Stone Temple Pilots accuse former frontman Scott Weiland of misusing the band's name to further his solo career and want a judge to strip the rocker of his ability to use the group's name or songs.

A lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles accuses Weiland of being chronically late to concerts while the group was together and having his lawyer attempt to interfere with the airplay of the group's new single "Out of Time."

Weiland and Stone Temple Pilots parted ways in February, and the 45-year-old singer said at the time that he learned of his ouster from a statement released to the media.

The lawsuit sheds light on the band's breakup, accusing Weiland of interacting with band mates only through lawyers or managers and showing up late to the group's 2012 shows. It cites Weiland's addiction struggles and poor performances as detriments to the band's earning potential.

"The band endured much strife and lost significant opportunities because of Weiland," the suit states.

In a message posted to his website Friday, Weiland said his former band mates shouldn't call themselves Stone Temple Pilots either.

"First of all they don't have the legal right to call themselves STP because I'm still a member of the band," he said. "And more importantly, they don't have the ethical right to call themselves Stone Temple Pilots because it's misleading and dishonest to the millions of fans that have followed us for so many years."

The suit claims the band owns the rights to the name Stone Temple Pilots, and the band's songs, copyrights and trademarks. Weiland has used many of the band's hits in his solo shows, the lawsuit states. The band wants a judge to block him from even calling himself a former member of the band.

The band has been reconstituted with Chester Bennington of Linkin Park taking the frontman role.

Although he did not mention the lawsuit, Weiland disputed that he is using the band's name to promote his new shows.

"When I tour on my own, it's never as Stone Temple Pilots. It's as Scott Weiland," he wrote. "The fans deserve to know what they're getting."

The lawsuit claims that Weiland's lawyer called the head of programming at KROQ, a Los Angeles modern rock station, and said if the station played "Out of Time" it would be infringing on Weiland's rights.

"Enough is enough," the band's lawsuit states. "Without relief from the court, Weiland will continue violating STP's rights, misappropriating STP assets and interfering with the band's livelihood."

The lawsuit states the band entered into agreements in 1996 and 2010 that state that no former members can use the Stone Temple Pilots name.

The band's hits include "Vasoline," ''Interstate Love Song" and "Plush," which won a Grammy in 1993 for best hard rock performance with vocal.

Weiland alluded to lawyers getting involved when the band's statement about his departure was released.

Phone messages left for Weiland's manager Andrea Pett-Joseph and lawyer Gary Stiffelman were not immediately returned Friday.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

Unhappy with how your fave series is faring? Amazon gives you a say

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon is once again shaking up traditional publishing models. This time, it's giving fans a chance to add their own personal touches to their favorite fiction - and get paid in the process.

This week, Amazon.com Inc announced "Kindle Worlds," which offers aspiring writers an opportunity to pen their own takes on franchises in books, TV, movies, even games and comics. The world's largest Internet retailer plans to license content, then accept submissions online that may then be sold through its Kindle ebook store.

Things will kick off with Amazon licensing three teen TV series - "Gossip Girl", "Pretty Little Liars" and "The Vampire Diaries" - from Warner Bros Television Group's Alloy Entertainment, Amazon said on its website. More content deals will be announced in coming weeks.

Amazon has in the past decade emerged as the most disruptive force in publishing. It popularized digital books with its Kindle store and e-reader, contributing to the demise of traditional bookstores such as Borders.

In its effort to legitimize fan fiction, the company is establishing a model under which it acts as publisher and pays fan-writers between 20 and 35 percent of sales, depending on length.

"There's probably not an author/fangirl alive who hasn't fantasized about being able to write about her favorite show," budding novelist Trish Milburn enthused on Amazon's website. "The fact that you can earn royalties doing so makes it even better."

(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

okedaichi.blogspot.com

Toronto mayor denies, finally, use of crack cocaine
Venezuela to create new workers militia
Kid Rock, Rolling Stones on scalping, summer tours
Apple, former Washington wallflower, now at center of tax fight
Big Earthquakes Create Global-Scale GPS Errors
Canada businessman's corruption trial on in Cuba
Jersey shore reopens for 1st post-Sandy summer
Wash. I-5 bridge collapse caused by oversize load
Stephen Hawking Gets Superhero Treatment in New Comic
Sorrentino serves up a cinema banquet at Cannes
China's Lenovo buys and diversifies to outshine PC rivals
West Bank and romance prominent in 'Omar'
Moore Tornado Damage Revealed in Google Maps Image
Kerry meets Israelis, Palestinians in bid to revive talks
Simple Vision Test Predicts IQ
How the White Tiger Got His Coat
Runways at Heathrow Airport shut after BA incident

Toronto mayor denies, finally, use of crack cocaine

Posted: 25 May 2013 12:50 AM PDT

By Julie Gordon

TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, under pressure to respond to allegations he was filmed using drugs, said on Friday that he does not smoke crack cocaine and could not comment on a video he had not seen or does not exist.

"There has been a serious accusation from the Toronto Star that I use crack cocaine. I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine," he told a news conference.

The Toronto Star and Internet gossip blog Gawker reported last week they had separately seen a cellphone video that allegedly shows Ford smoking a substance from a crack pipe while in the company of people involved in the drug trade.

"As for a video, I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist," said Ford, who did not take questions from reporters.

His comments mark his first direct response to the allegations since the Star and Gawker stories were published last Thursday. Shortly afterward, he called the reports "ridiculous," but did not give a full statement or denial.

Since the allegations surfaced, he has been hounded by news media at every turn, while several city councilors and allies have encouraged him to confront the issue directly.

The Toronto Sun, a right-leaning newspaper generally considered to be Ford-friendly, published an editorial on Thursday demanding the mayor either strongly deny the allegations or step down from office to seek medical help.

Earlier on Friday, six members of the mayor's executive committee, including Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, published an open letter to the mayor urging him to confront the allegations.

Ford told reporters he had remained quiet on the advice of his solicitor.

The video, which Reuters cannot independently verify, is allegedly being shopped around by people involved in the drug trade. Gawker launched a "Crackstarter" campaign to raise $200,000 to buy it and publish it online.

The controversy, meanwhile, has made headlines across Canada and around the world, and drawn ridicule from late-night TV humorists Jimmy Kimmel and John Stewart.

On Wednesday, Ford lost his much-loved job as a volunteer high school football coach, and on Thursday he fired his chief of staff.

This is not the first controversy for Ford, who has drawn criticism for skipping city council meetings to coach football and engaging in a confrontation outside his home with a reporter.

He was briefly ordered out of office in 2012 after being found guilty of a conflict of interest, but won an appeal and was allowed to finish his four-year term.

(With additional writing by Cameron French; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Philip Barbara)

Venezuela to create new workers militia

Posted: 24 May 2013 10:11 AM PDT

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) Venezuela's president has ordered the creation of a new workers' militia as part of an existing pro-government fighting force.

President Nicolas Maduro gave few details about the militia including how many members it would consist of.

It would be part of the Bolivarian Militia created by late President Hugo Chavez, which consists of roughly 120,000 volunteers.

The announcement in a speech in Caracas late Wednesday got little attention in the Venezuelan media.

Maduro urged the crowd to imagine the respect the working class would command if it had "300,000, 500,000, 1 million, 2 million uniformed workers, armed, prepared to defend the sovereignty of the homeland."

Critics have warned such militias could be used to cement the socialist government's hold on power.

Kid Rock, Rolling Stones on scalping, summer tours

Posted: 24 May 2013 10:00 AM PDT

NEW YORK (AP) Kid Rock is a scalper.

The 42-year-old Grammy winner, who is launching a summer tour where most tickets are priced at $20, said he's scalping about 1,000 tickets from each show to make up for the cheaper regular price.

"I'm in the scalping business, but you know what? We told everyone. A lot of artists have been doing this for years behind fans' backs, taking all these backdoor deals," he said. "We look at StubHub and other places and see what they're selling them for and we just undercut them."

Kid Rock's "$20 Best Night Ever Tour" kicks off June 28 in Bristow, Va., and the Detroit native, who released his debut album in 1990, said he likely scalped secretly on past tours.

"I'm sure we have," he said. "I can't say for sure, but I'm not going to say that we haven't. I wouldn't be surprised if we did."

Kid Rock's discount ticket pricing is leading a change in tours where scalpers play a major role as the marketplace for secondary sources for tickets continues to grow, especially in a summer when key acts like The Rolling Stones, Beyonce, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z are on the road.

"If I see a scalper, I'll scalp him," the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards said, laughing.

He said he would like to play free shows to balance the high cost for tickets; The Rolling Stones' "50 & Counting Tour" has a range of ticket prices, and Pollstar reported that the average price of a ticket among the tour's seven shows was $355.14.

"I'd do some free shows. I'd work my butt off and I don't care how much. But these are set up above my head, man," Richards said in a recent interview. "You're kind of locked in a thing here whether you like it or not. I wish it was five bucks a ticket."

The Rolling Stones did play a secret show at the Echoplex club in Los Angeles last month, where fans got in by winning a lottery and had to be ID'd and given photo bracelets to eliminate the chance of scalping the tickets, which were just $20.

But Mick Jagger said there isn't much the artists can do about scalping and secondary sources for tickets.

"The artist is totally powerless in this. People have made a lot of fuss about it before, but on the other side, some people are like, 'We might as well participate in it.' And you can't really blame the artist for participating in it because why shouldn't they in a way?" he said. "I know we don't participate in it, but nevertheless, I don't blame people if they wanted to do it."

"You can look at it like, 'Well, no one's making any money except these secondary ticket selling companies and they're making more money than anyone,'" Jagger continued. "It's completely legal so until it's illegal, there's nothing much anyone can do about that."

Ticketmaster's North American President Jared Smith said Kid Rock's deal, which he completed with Ticketmaster partner Live Nation, is a first of more to come, though they might not be as risky as Kid Rock's plan, which also includes $4 draft beers and $20 T-shirts.

"I absolutely believe that we're starting to see the real acceleration of some really healthy things in pricing that are going to create new opportunities for fans to come and experience it in a really special way," Smith said.

A small way that artists have been able to control scalping is through paperless tickets, which only allows the buyers of the tickets to use them at shows and are not allowed to resell them. Smith said paperless tickets, which launched five years ago, accounts for "about 1 percent" of the tickets at Ticketmaster.

"It hasn't grown necessarily as a percentage of the total tickets that we sell, but we certainly see more artists employing it," Smith said. "When it really first started, it was kind of looked at as a tool to use across the entire seats in the arena, but it's really become a tool for the best seats in the house. Increasingly we see artists using it very, very targeted for like the top 500 seats in the house or the top 1,000 seats."

Bruce Springsteen, Keith Urban, New Kids on the Block, Radiohead, Rascal Flatts, Selena Gomez, Muse, Miley Cryus, Iron Maiden, Atoms for Peace and Eric Church are among the acts using paperless tickets.

On his "Wrecking Ball World Tour" last year, Springsteen used paperless tickets for 20 percent of the seats, and Ticketmaster said its data showed that Springsteen's decision helped reduce scalping by 75 percent. (New York is the only state where Springsteen couldn't offer paperless tickets because the state does not allow nontransferable tickets).

StubHub, the largest reseller of tickets, said business is booming thanks to the top acts on the road as well as summer festivals. But the company, which has a partnership with AEG, knows the idea of paperless tickets hurts their business.

"That limits a person's right to resell or transfer or to just give away their ticket. We do not support that because we believe in a fan's right to do whatever they want with their tickets," said Alison Salcedo, the head of U.S. Communications for StubHub. Fan Freedom, an organization that supports the rights of ticket holders, echoed StubHub's thoughts on paperless tickets.

"I don't see any reason why nontransferable tickets need to be the solution," said Joe Potter, the CEO of Fan Freedom, which is financially supported by StubHub. "Scalpers get tickets through pre-sale and fan club memberships."

Ticketmaster isn't against the idea of reselling tickets, in fact they resell concert tickets online.

"More often or not tickets are underpriced, that's why you see so much resell activity," Smith said. "What we try to do is make sure it's done very transparently."

Ticket holders are allowed to sell tickets at any price on sites like StubHub and ticketsnow.com, that's why Kid Rock isn't selling tickets for the first two rows at his shows. He's randomly pulling fans from the nose bleed sections to enjoy his concert from the venue's best view. And the first 20 rows at his shows are seats offered through paperless ticketing.

"We really don't know what we're going to make yet. We were doing estimates on it and they're already going through a lot of these numbers, and it looks like it's going to be a good summer," he said of what his potential tour earnings.

Kid Rock, whose tour openers include ZZ Top, Uncle Kracker and Kool and the Gang, is playing the same venues he's performed at in the past, but he said he's filling up more seats and selling tickets faster. Even scalpers have approached the performer to cut deals.

"I've had people in the scalping business come at me already and try to make side deals like, 'I can make you thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash if you'll just flip a few of these tickets our way for certain shows,'" he recalled.

_____

Follow Mesfin Fekadu at http://www.twitter.com/MusicMesfin

Apple, former Washington wallflower, now at center of tax fight

Posted: 24 May 2013 09:25 AM PDT

By Andy Sullivan, Gabriel Debenedetti and Poornima Gupta

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For years, Apple Inc kept a low profile in Washington as it grew into one of the most valuable companies in the world. Now the iPad maker has taken the lead, perhaps inadvertently, on a top priority for U.S. business: simplifying America's tax code.

Chief Executive Tim Cook, who was called before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday to answer questions about Apple's alleged tax avoidance, used his appearance to plead for an overhaul of corporate taxes. That marked a sharp turnabout for a company that until now has been content to let rivals like Google and Microsoft fight Washington policy battles.

And even though the scrutiny Apple has come under in Washington could further challenge the company as it copes with a sagging stock price, rising competition and questions about its labor practices, it may have little choice but to commit fully to the fight over the corporate tax code.

"They are very, very tactical," said a former Apple lobbyist who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. "They only join issues they really care about."

Recently, Apple has backed unsuccessful legislation that would have allowed international companies to bring overseas profits back home without paying the 35 percent corporate income tax.

Repatriation of profits has been a top concern for U.S. companies, which collectively have more than $1.5 trillion sitting offshore. Most say they keep the money there to avoid the taxes they would face by bringing it home.

Bowing to increasing shareholder pressure to distribute some of the $100 billion it keeps overseas, Apple has opted to borrow money at low interest rates rather than bring the cash home and take the tax hit.

Apple's Washington office referred questions to its California headquarters. Officials there declined to comment.

Apple has spent far less than other corporate titans on Washington lobbying over the past decade, records show, and the company has often declined to work with other technology companies on issues affecting the industry as a whole. It dropped out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009 after it disagreed with the business lobby's stance on climate change.

The company spent about $2 million on lobbying last year, up from $180,000 in 1999, records show. This year it is on pace to nearly double last year's figure.

Apple's lobbying expenditures still pale in comparison with those of Microsoft Corp., which spent $8.1 million in 2012, and Google, which spent $16.5 million, records show.

And unlike other businesses such as AT&T and Exxon Mobil, Apple has not set up a political action fund to distribute employee contributions to congressional allies - a common tool for wielding influence in Washington.

"Clearly, Apple does not have a huge footprint for the tech sector. I don't mean to denigrate almost $2 million (spent on)lobbying - that's a lot of money - but it's not as much as other tech companies have been spending," said Bill Allison, editorial director for the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit that deals with money in politics.

Lobbyists not associated with the firm privately said Apple's minimal Washington presence could have put it in the crosshairs of the Senate subcommittee, which on Monday accused the company of ducking $9 billion in U.S. taxes through offshore subsidiaries. The lobbyists pointed to the example of Microsoft, which had little presence in Washington before antitrust investigators at the Department of Justice nearly succeeded in splitting the company up in the 1990s.

Though Apple, like many other Silicon Valley companies, served as an important source of campaign money for Democratic candidates in the 2012 election, it has enlisted experienced Republicans to make its case in Washington.

Apple's chief lobbyist, Catherine Novelli, served as a top trade official in Republican President George W. Bush's administration. Other in-house lobbyists have worked as aides to senior Republican lawmakers, including Texas Representative Joe Barton, who used to oversee tech issues as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, records show.

The company also has hired outside firms to extend its reach in Congress and throughout government. Lobbyists at Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock and Capitol Tax Partners have worked for the Bush administration and top Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The Glover Park Group and the Franklin Square Group have provided lobbyists from the Democratic side of the aisle who lobby on tax, broadband, electronic waste and spectrum issues.

The company has also enlisted Jon Bernstein, a former Democratic staffer at the Federal Communications Commission, to lobby that agency and the White House on subsidies for broadband access and technology-related legislation.

None of the lobbyists immediately responded to requests for comment.

The company does have one ace in its pocket: its sleek gadgets. Even lawmakers who grilled Cook on Apple's tax practices said they were avid iPhone and iPad users.

"I love Apple!" Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill declared.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan and Gabriel Debenedetti in Washington and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Tim Dobbyn)

Big Earthquakes Create Global-Scale GPS Errors

Posted: 24 May 2013 08:59 AM PDT

Thirteen years of supersized earthquakes, such as today's (May 24) magnitude-8.3 in Russia, have contaminated GPS sites around the world, a new study finds.

The Global Positioning System is a network of satellites and ground stations that provide location information anywhere on Earth. Except for spots in Australia, western Europe and the eastern tip of Canada, every GPS site on the ground underwent small but important shifts since 2000 because of big earthquakes, according to a study published May 6 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

The research confirms that great earthquakes, those bigger than magnitude 8.0, can have far-reaching effects on the Earth's crust. And because GPS is critical for everything from calculating satellite orbits to sea level rise to earthquake hazards, scientists can't ignore these tiny zigs and zags, the researchers conclude.

"We have to find a way to deal with it," said Paul Tregoning, lead study author and a geophysicist at Australia National University in Canberra. "The community needs to work out how to find all the offsets, estimate them accurately and get everyone to agree on how to correct them," he told LiveScience.

Tregoning and his colleagues modeled the sudden jolts in Earth's crust from each of the 15 biggest earthquakes since 2000. They discovered that crust thousands of miles away from the faults had moved horizontally by as much as a tenth of an inch (a few millimeters). The model was checked against a few spots around the planet. On average, the earthquakes deformed the crust by a hundredth of an inch every year (0.4 millimeters a year) about the width of the lead in a mechanical pencil. [7 Craziest Ways Japan's Earthquake Affected Earth]

"It's quite amazing to us that we can see this and detect this," Tregoning said.

These tiny effects won't make a difference to the GPS in cars or phones, or the tough little units carried by hikers and mountaineers. But scientists who need precise measurements to calculate sea level rise or satellite orbits should be concerned, Tregoning said.

The changing Earth

Here's why these seemingly small changes matter. Scientists who rely on GPS need to compare one place to another. There are a handful of stable spots around the world, usually in the interior of continents, called the terrestrial reference frame. For example, a geologist measuring the speed of the Pacific plate would compare it with the North American reference frame. But Tregoning's study shows these stable spots were shifted by the massive earthquakes.

Disturbing the reference frame will introduce errors into GPS measurements, Tregoning said. It could also throw off calculations of satellite orbits. "If the coordinates of the tracking stations are wrong, then the orbit isn't right either," he said.

"I think he's identified a good problem," said Don Argus, a principal research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., who was not involved in the study. Argus is part of a group that uses GPS to calculate satellite orbits and conduct research on the changing Earth.

"It's difficult to find a stable frame with these post-seismic transients," Argus said. "The earthquakes are making things a little hard for the people on our floor."

While Argus and his colleagues already account for the deformation caused by earthquakes, it takes computers at JPL 24 hours to churn through the calculations, Argus said. "I've got the best plate motion model out there," he told LiveScience.

Tregoning hopes that the next update to the International Terrestrial Reference Frame System, the internationally agreed upon reference for GPS research, will consider the wide-ranging effects of big earthquakes.

"We have to agree on how to improve the reference frame," he said. "People doing regional studies will find that they potentially get a different answer, and it will potentially be a more accurate answer."

Editor's note: This story was updated May 24 to include information about the May 24 Okhotsk earthquake.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye Image Gallery: This Millennium's Destructive Earthquakes 10 Best GPS Navigation Systems Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Canada businessman's corruption trial on in Cuba

Posted: 24 May 2013 07:22 AM PDT

HAVANA (AP) A Canadian businessman caught up in a corruption probe in Cuba apparently went on trial Thursday, nearly two years after he was detained and his import company, Tri-Star Caribbean, was shuttered.

Sarkis Yacoubian arrived at an Interior Ministry courthouse in Havana in a black sedan with tinted windows, and was seen being escorted inside by two men.

He did not speak to reporters, nor did Canadian Ambassador Matthew Levin, who also attended the proceedings. Foreign journalists were not allowed access to the court, and government officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Raul Castro has repeatedly spoken of a need to root out entrenched corruption on this Communist-run island, and his anti-graft drive has swept up foreign business executives from at least five nations, as well as government officials and dozens of Cuban employees at key state-run companies.

The Toronto Star and El Nuevo Herald reported last week that Yacoubian was indicted last month on charges of bribery, tax evasion and "activities damaging to the economy." He reportedly faces up to 12 years in prison.

In a phone interview from jail, he said he had no choice but to pay island officials to secure business contracts, and claimed to have blown the whistle on corruption involving Tri-Star and other companies.

"They found out this was an epidemic going all over the place and I was the fall guy," Yacoubian was quoted as saying by the Star and El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald's Spanish-language sister newspaper. "They want to give an example to the rest of the businessmen. They want to scare them to death."

Another Canadian businessman, Cy Tokmakjian, president of the Tokmakjian Group, which was raided and closed down in September 2011, is also awaiting trial, as is a Briton who headed the investment firm Coral Capital Group.

In late April, Havana announced that the Tokmakjian Group's operating license had been rescinded due to unspecified actions "that are contrary to the principles and ethics that should characterize commercial activity and contravene Cuban judicial order."

Other acknowledged or rumored corruption probes have targeted food distributor Rio Zaza, run by a Chilean man who was close to former President Fidel Castro; Cuba's civil aviation authority; cigar manufacturer Habanos SA, and state telecom Etecsa.

More than 150 foreign businesspeople and scores of small South American and European companies have been kicked out of the country.

Thursday's court proceedings took place at the same converted mansion where U.S. government subcontractor Alan Gross was sentenced to 15 years for crimes against the state after he was caught bringing restricted communications equipment onto the island and setting up unauthorized Internet networks.

___

Associated Press journalist Fernando Gonzalez in Havana contributed to this report.

___

Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

Jersey shore reopens for 1st post-Sandy summer

Posted: 24 May 2013 07:10 AM PDT

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. (AP) New Jersey rolled out some of its big guns Friday to proclaim that the shore is back following Superstorm Sandy, using Gov. Chris Christie and the cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore" to tell a national audience the state is ready for summer fun.

In fact, they even hired fun. the rock band whose anthem "We Are Young" captures the spirit of this blue-collar oceanfront playground that was devastated by the Oct. 29 storm and has been furiously rebuilding ever since. The band played a free concert on the beach.

"This is known as a happy place," said Paul "Pauly D" Del Vecchio, one of the cast members of "Jersey Shore," which was filmed here until wrapping up last year. "Right after the storm, it was the exact opposite: dead, silent. To see this place being rebuilt makes me happy."

Christie, who has been racing up and down the shore opening boardwalks and talking up shore tourism all week as the summer kickoff approached, appeared on the "Today" show Friday, giving him a national pulpit to preach his message of recovery.

"Anybody who lives in New Jersey, the Jersey shore is in your heart," Christie said. "This means everything to our state."

The show was broadcast from Seaside Heights, where the storm swept a roller coaster into the ocean, making for one of Sandy's iconic images. The roller coaster was taken away this month, but Casino Pier, the seaside amusement park where it used to sit, plans to have 18 rides open this summer.

Christie said about 80 percent of the shore will look as it did last summer, and acknowledged more work needs to be done to fully recover. He is to tour parts of the storm-hit shore next Tuesday with President Obama.

Declaring the shore officially open for the summer, the governor cut a 5-mile long ribbon symbolically linking some of the shore towns that were hardest hit by the storm. He and organizers said they hope it will qualify for the Guinness World Records title for the longest ribbon-cutting.

Tourism is a $38 billion industry in New Jersey, and shore towns are counting on a good summer to help them recoup major losses they incurred after the storm. A storm that parked itself over the shore and was expected to bring rain through Sunday morning didn't exactly help.

But Kevin Stewart, owner of JR's Ocean bar & Grill on the boardwalk, led a Champagne toast with his bar employees right after Christie cut the ribbon.

"Here's to a great summer!" he said as they clinked plastic cups that would normally be filled with beer.

JR's only put up its new sign at 5:30 a.m. Friday, about 90 minutes before Christie arrived for his broadcast. The business was devastated by Sandy, with 6 feet of water in it that left behind 5 feet of sand. It lost all its inventory and signs, which cost about $300,000 to replace.

But Stewart said he is optimistic about this summer at the shore.

"If we get good weather, the people will still come here," he said. "Ninety percent or better of this town is rebuilt and ready to go. At the end of the day, this just might work."

Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, of "Jersey Shore," said crowds will be back this summer.

"You just come here to have a good time," she said. "It's a great place. You come here with your friends. Everybody's here, it's getting rebuilt; it's just amazing."

Her cast-mate Deena Cortese urged tourists to patronize Seaside Heights as it recovers.

"It's kind of like a family on the boardwalk here," she said. "Everybody needs to come this summer, especially for them."

Mark Romanowski, a bartender at JR's, said the "Jersey Strong" slogan that has adorned T-shirts, bumper stickers and sweatshirts for fundraising efforts since the storm is not a cliche.

"It really is the mentality we have here," he said. "People in Jersey, we may have our differences but the one common denominator is we have each other's backs."

___

Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

.

Wash. I-5 bridge collapse caused by oversize load

Posted: 24 May 2013 06:52 AM PDT

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. (AP) A truck carrying an oversize load struck a bridge on the major thoroughfare between Seattle and Canada, sending a section of the span and two vehicles into the Skagit River below, though all three occupants suffered only minor injuries.

It happened about 7 p.m. Thursday on the four-lane Interstate 5 bridge near Mount Vernon, about 60 miles north of Seattle, and disrupted travel in both directions.

Initially, it wasn't clear if the bridge just gave way on its own. But at an overnight news conference, Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste blamed it on a tractor-trailer carrying a tall load that hit an upper part of the span.

"For reasons unknown at this point in time, the semi struck the overhead of the bridge causing the collapse," he said.

The truck made it off the bridge and the driver remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators.

Two other vehicles went into the water about 50 feet below as the structure crumbled. Three people were rescued and were recovering Friday.

Drivers were told to expect delays. Detours have been set up to try to ease the congestion. Batiste urged drivers to avoid the area if possible, especially over the Memorial Day weekend. Traffic along the heavily travelled route could be affected for some time. The bridge is used by an average of 71,000 vehicles a day.

"The I-5 corridor is totally disrupted," said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who went to the scene Thursday night.

"Thanks to the rescuers and a little bit of luck, we had three Skagitonians who made it out of the Skagit River alive," Inslee said.

Dan Sligh and his wife were in their pickup on Interstate 5 heading to a camping trip when a bridge before them disappeared in a "big puff of dust."

"I hit the brakes and we went off," Sligh told reporters from a hospital, adding he "saw the water approaching ... you hold on as tight as you can."

Sligh, his wife and another man in a different vehicle were dumped into the chilly waters of the Skagit River.

Sligh and his wife were taken to Skagit Valley Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The other man was reported in stable condition at United General Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, hospital CEO Greg Reed said.

Sligh said his shoulder was dislocated in the drop into the water, and he found himself "belly deep in water in the truck." He said he popped his shoulder back in and called out to his wife, who he described as being in shock initially as they waited for rescuers to arrive in boats.

The bridge was inspected twice last year and repairs were made, Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson said.

"It's an older bridge that needs a lot of work just like a good number of bridges around the state," she said.

Transportation officials are working on plans for either a temporary or permanent replacement, she said.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending an investigative team.

Jeremiah Thomas, a volunteer firefighter, said he was driving nearby when he glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye and turned to look.

"The bridge just went down, it crashed through the water," he said. "It was really surreal."

Deyerin said the water depth was about 15 feet, and the vehicles half-visible in the water likely were resting on portions of the collapsed bridge.

Crowds of people lined the river to watch the scene unfold.

"It's not something you see every day," said Jimmy O'Connor, the owner of two local pizza restaurants who was driving on another bridge parallel to the one that collapsed. "People were starting to crawl out of their cars."

He said he and his girlfriend were about 400 yards away on the Burlington Bridge when they heard "just a loud bang."

"Then we looked over and saw the bridge was down in the water," he said.

He pulled over and saw three vehicles in the water, including the camping trailer that landed upside-down, he said.

The bridge was not classified as structurally deficient, but a Federal Highway Administration database listed it as being "functionally obsolete" a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath.

The bridge was built in in 1955 and had a sufficiency rating of 47 out of 100 at its November 2012 inspection, Transportation Department spokesman Noel Brady said Friday. Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state's bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington's 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

The mishap was reminiscent of the August 2007 collapse of an I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people and injured another 145 when it buckled and fell into the Mississippi River during rush-hour.

Sligh was thankful.

His wife was "doing OK" and that he had "lots of cuts," he said. "You're kind of pinching yourself and realize you're lucky to be alive."

___

Baker reported from Olympia, Wash. Associated Press writers Chris Grygiel in Seattle and Terry Tang in Phoenix also contributed to this report.

Stephen Hawking Gets Superhero Treatment in New Comic

Posted: 24 May 2013 03:34 AM PDT

Living legend Stephen Hawking has already achieved superhero status in the eyes of many science geeks, and now his ideas are being honored in comic book form.

"Stephen Hawking: Riddles of Time & Space" (Bluewater) details the life story of the physicist, from his early days at Cambridge and struggles with a body-wrecking disease to his academic achievements and current fame.

Hawking, 71, is widely considered one of the greatest scientific minds since Albert Einstein, and he has greatly enriched our understanding of the universe over the past several decades. His work with fellow cosmologist Roger Penrose helped unite Einstein's general theory of relativity and quantum theory. Hawking also studied black holes, with a groundbreaking theory that the cosmic monsters do actually emit a faint glimmer of radiation. [The 10 Best Time-Traveling Heroes of All Time]

But his life has been marked by physical challenges. At age 21, Hawking was diagnosed with the motor neuron disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The disease eventually robbed him of his mobility and later his ability to speak; today, Hawking uses a speech-generating device controlled by the muscles in his cheek.

"The very concept of making an engaging comic book where the protagonist is essentially immobile is a pretty tall order, but I think the key to us keeping it exciting was being able to get inside his mind (one of the greatest of our time) and show some of his most abstract concepts in a visual and dynamic way," artist Zach Bassett said in a statement.

One page detailing Hawking's ideas about black holes puts the scientist into conversation with Einstein, picturing him as Michelangelo's Adam reaching out to Einstein as God.

"Additionally, we got several chances to tip our hat to many famous artistic icons of pop culture, as well as famous people that he's met, taken inspiration from or even inspired himself," Bassett added. Hawking has been featured on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "The Simpsons," "Futurama" and "The Big Bang Theory."

"The most surprising thing about Stephen Hawking is his razor wire wit that is sometimes withering and other times matched with a puckish sense of humor," the comic book's writers, Michael Lent and Brian McCarthy, said in a statement.

The scientist is indeed prone to pithy comments. Lent and McCarthy said their favorite Hawking quote is: "I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."

The comic was released on April 21 and is also available as an e-book.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Portrait of Genius: Stephen Hawking Exhibit Photos Now and Then: 10 Mind-Bending Time Travel Stories in Comics 8 Shocking Things We Learned From Stephen Hawking's Book Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Sorrentino serves up a cinema banquet at Cannes

Posted: 24 May 2013 03:06 AM PDT

CANNES, France (AP) Paolo Sorrentino has a thing about food appropriately enough, for the director of a sumptuous feast of a film, "The Great Beauty."

The Italian auteur's Cannes Film Festival entry is a journey through Rome in the company of observant but aimless writer Jep Gambardella (actor Toni Servillo). Sorrentino's camera takes viewers through the sacred, profane and teeming streets to medieval churches and grand palazzi, modernist homes and debauched poolside parties. All are wearily watched by Jep, who is turning 65 and trying to recapture his passion for life.

Along the way the film provides sharp portraits of characters who have lost their way amid the endless distractions of urban living including a Roman Catholic Cardinal too busy dispensing his favorite recipes to offer spiritual counsel. It's one of many signs in the film of a society that has come unmoored from its bearings.

"When I think about it, I find it's quite extravagant the way everyone talks about food," the director said during an interview in Cannes. "I think this obsession with food has reached people who should deal with the Holy Spirit.

"I fall into the trap myself," he admitted. "One of my favorite shows is 'Masterchef.'"

"The Great Beauty" the title can refer to the Eternal City, or to life itself has been well received at Cannes, where Servillo is being mentioned as a candidate for the best-actor prize in Sunday's awards.

Some viewers, though, found it overwhelming: too rich in strange and beautiful imagery a flock of flamingoes and a giraffe make memorable appearances and too suffused with talk and ideas.

Sorrentino says that's partly the point life and Rome are both overwhelming. One early scene shows a tourist photographing a sublime view of Rome, and keeling over dead.

"The perception of beauty is one of the strongest feelings you can have. You can even die from it," said Sorrentino, a weary-eyed man most people are after a few days at the festival who is given to succinct answers.

Or, the film suggests, you can simply be numbed into aimlessness by the distractions of urban life.

Sorrentino said the original idea for the movie came from the image of "a very long party."

"I wanted to reproduce the idea that sometimes you go to parties with extremely high expectations, and then you are longing to get away as quickly as you can," he said.

"Our country offers marvelous opportunities, but people don't seize them, because they're too busy partying and enjoying themselves. That's why we have so many missed opportunities.

"If I wanted to give a political interpretation of the movie, I'd say the theme was missed opportunities.

"But the film focuses on feelings, on human beings' feelings, which are undermined by the fatigue of living, of human existence. I think that is not just an Italian characteristic."

In contrast to his main character, a 65-year-old writer coasting on the success of his sole novel, 42-year-old Sorrentino is impressively prolific. One of 20 films in the running for Cannes' coveted Palme d'Or, "The Great Beauty" is Sorrentino's fifth movie to compete at the festival. He won the third-place Jury Prize in 2008 for "Il Divo" a dramatization of the life of Italian politician Giulio Andreotti and was last here in 2011 with his English-language comedy-drama "This Must Be the Place," which starred Sean Penn as a rock star.

"The Great Beauty" takes him back to Italy, and with its air of melancholy and regret, feels like the work of a much older director.

"I take that as a compliment," Sorrentino said. "I hope that when I get older I'll have the opportunity to make the movies I should have made when I was young.

"I'm trying not to waste my time. I'm trying to seize opportunities when I can, because I'm a lucky man my job is connected to my amusement. Job and fun in my case coincide. I work a lot because I like it a lot."

___

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

China's Lenovo buys and diversifies to outshine PC rivals

Posted: 24 May 2013 02:13 AM PDT

By Lee Chyen Yee and Umesh Desai

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Lenovo Group Ltd's bold acquisitions in its flagship PC business, a foray into mobile gadgets, and a relatively light debt load are setting it apart from PC rivals as industry shipments take their steepest fall in decades.

Lenovo, a sliver away from unseating Hewlett-Packard Co as the world's top PC maker by shipments, posted on Thursday an estimate-beating 90 percent rise in quarterly profit, its fastest in seven quarters.

"They have been aggressive in acquiring several distributors in different regions such as Brazil, Europe and Japan over the past few years, so that basically gave them better distribution, as well as gains in market share," said Warren Lau, an analyst at Maybank Kim Eng Securities in Hong Kong.

The Chinese PC maker posted net profit of $126.9 million in the quarter ended in March, up from $66.8 million a year earlier, based on Reuters calculations using full-year and nine-month financial data.

That beat expectations of a $110 million net profit and was the fastest pace since the first quarter of the 2011/2012 fiscal year, when growth doubled.

Research firm IDC said global PC shipments fell 13.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2013, the biggest decline since it began tracking the market on a quarterly basis in 1994, as consumers switched to mobile computing and Windows 8 sales fell short of expectations.

With shipments unchanged in the first quarter, Lenovo is outstripping other vendors. PC shipments from HP, Dell Inc, Acer Inc and Asustek Computer Inc fell by 11-33 percent during the same period, IDC said.

The latest IDC data showed that Lenovo's market share was 15.3 percent, just 0.4 percentage points lower than HP.

Lenovo shares far outperformed those of its rivals last year. This year Lenovo, up 3 percent, is still beating Acer.

Dell and HP have staged strong recoveries, but Lenovo's quarterly net profit has risen consistently over the past few years. By contrast, HP's net profit was down 32 percent and Dell's was down 79.5 percent year-on-year, according to the companies' latest quarterly financial results.

For the full year, Lenovo's net profit rose by a third to $635.1 million, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange, beating an estimate of $618.2 million in a poll of 31 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

STRATEGIC BUYS

Lenovo has spent heavily over the past few years to strengthen its PC business, with purchases such as Brazilian electronics maker CCE last year, Germany's Medion in 2011 and IBM's PC business in 2005.

Its slew of acquisitions has also sparked market talk that it might be interested in IBM Corp's server business, as well as handset makers Research In Motion Ltd and Nokia Oyj.

Lenovo has declined to comment on the rumors.

Lenovo has cash totaling $4.5 billion, vastly outweighing debt of $423 million, and giving it the muscle for more buyouts.

HP and Dell have total debt of $28.2 billion and $7.2 billion respectively, compared with their cash balances of $12.6 billion and $10.9 billion.

"We expect Lenovo to remain acquisitive as it is hungry for growth and so despite high cash balances they will not hike the dividend," said Jefferies technology analyst Ken Hui.

The Beijing-based company has shed its staid image as the maker of all-business ThinkPads, and now churns out multi-colored IdeaPad Yoga convertible ultrabooks which have helped build its brand in China and beyond.

Though newer to smartphones than to its core PC business, Lenovo is the No.2 smartphone and media tablet vendor in China, a success it hopes to duplicate in other emerging markets such as Russia and India, where competition from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Apple Inc and others is fierce.

"They are in the right niche markets and hitting the right segments at the right price points. But this is not sustainable in the long run unless the mobility business steps up," said a Hong Kong-based technology banker.

(Additional reporting by Tripti Kalro in BANGALORE and Twinnie Siu in HONG KONG; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

West Bank and romance prominent in 'Omar'

Posted: 24 May 2013 02:02 AM PDT

CANNES, France (AP) One of the more buzzed-about films at the Cannes Film Festival, "Omar," is set in the West Bank, and the Palestinian conflict is a key part of the plot.

But the film's lead actor, Adam Bakri, says the location or political motif isn't that important.

"The fact is that it is an international story, it happens in the West Bank but it doesn't even say in the film that it happens in the West Bank," he explained.

"So everybody can identify with it. Everybody can really go with it. I think it has a very strong political message but it is underneath, it is not straightforward, which I think is the genius of the film."

"Omar," which is being shown in the "A Certain Regard" section of Cannes, is directed by Hany Abu-Assad, director of the 2005 film "Paradise Now," which won earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for best foreign film.

In his latest film, the Israeli-born director of Palestinian descent uses the political upheaval between Palestinians and Israel as the backdrop to a love story between characters Omar and Nadia. Omar must climb the separation wall between the Palestinian territories and Israel to see his love, and during one attempt, he is brutally attacked by an Israeli soldier. Afterward, he and his friends band together to kill an Israeli soldier in revenge, and the plot takes more twists.

Despite the political threads in the film, Abu-Assad said the film's romantic plot is the key component.

"I don't know anybody in this world who didn't enter the experience of being madly in love with someone. Me too. And I am always fascinated by how people lose themselves in this subject and how they become insecure. Actual insecurity is the reason why people are in love, but also why this love ends up very badly," he said.

"All love stories in history end up tragic, 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'Othello,' but also like in our modern history, 'Casablanca,' even the 'Titanic' you know, it is a tragic ending. 'In the Mood for Love,' that is a great love story," Abu-Assad continued. "All of these examples gave me the inspiration to do something about my version of love and betrayal but involved in a political thriller because I love political thrillers. These two genres I tried to mix in a way that could become an exceptional movie."

American-born actor Waleed F. Zuaiter is among the actors in "Omar" and also helped Abu-Assad get financing for the film. Abu-Assad has said it is the first film to be completely financed by Palestinians.

"I jumped into it head first, asked as many questions as I possibly could to learn things on the producer's side, and here we are," Zuaiter said.

___

Follow Sian Watson at http://www.twitter.com/nekeamumbi

Moore Tornado Damage Revealed in Google Maps Image

Posted: 24 May 2013 01:55 AM PDT

A satellite image available via Google Maps shows the path that a deadly tornado took as it tore through Moore, Okla., on Monday (May 20) and the scar it etched into the suburban landscape.

In the Google Maps image, you can also click on tabs to see local reports of damage purple tabs indicate the most severe damage.

At its most intense, the twister was a rare EF5, the most devastating type of tornado. Its winds likely exceeded 200 mph (322 km/h) when it barreled through Moore.

The tornado cleared a path up to 1.3 miles (2 kilometers) wide along a 17-mile-long (27 km) stretch of central Oklahoma, according to the National Weather Service. The twister touched down 4.4 miles (7.1 km) west of Newcastle at 2:45 p.m. CDT and ended 4.8 miles (7.7 km) east of Moore, a southern suburb of Oklahoma City, at 3:35 p.m. CDT.

At first, the tornado caused little damage on the ground. But it ramped up quickly, intensifying to EF4 levels in about 10 minutes, the NWS said. The twister produced widespread EF4 scale damage, as can be seen in the image in the center of its path.

At least 24 people were killed by the tornado, and more than 300 were injured, according to local officials. The precise amount of damage will take several days to fully evaluate, but as this and other images of the Moore tornadoshow, it was severe.

EF5 tornadoes are strong enough to blow away big houses and collapse tall buildings. EF4 tornadoes can level sturdy homes and send cars and other large objects flying.

"The debris ball from the tornado, as seen on Doppler radar, expanded to over 2 miles in diameter, and debris was carried over 100 miles [160 km] from Moore," Jeff Masters of Weather Underground wrote on his WunderBlog.

Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Oklahoma Tornado - 'This Is War Zone Terrible' | Video The Top 5 Deadliest Tornado Years in U.S. History 4 Things You Need to Know About Tornado Season Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Kerry meets Israelis, Palestinians in bid to revive talks

Posted: 24 May 2013 01:49 AM PDT

By Arshad Mohammed

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Thursday and acknowledged there was considerable skepticism that the two sides would resume peace negotiations.

There were no signs of any breakthrough as Kerry visited Israel for the fourth time in his four months in office to try to revive a peace process that has been moribund for more than two years.

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke down in late 2010 in a dispute over Israeli construction of Jewish settlements on occupied West Bank land that the Palestinians want as part of their future state.

"I know this region well enough to know that there is skepticism. In some quarters there is cynicism and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment," Kerry said as he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posed for pictures.

"It is our hope that by being methodical, careful, patient, but detailed and tenacious, that we can lay out a path ahead that can conceivably surprise people but certainly exhaust the possibilities of peace."

Kerry met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for lunch in the West Bank city of Ramallah and returned to Jerusalem to see Shimon Peres, who holds Israel's largely ceremonial post of president. He will have breakfast on Friday with Netanyahu.

Before their meeting on Thursday morning, Netanyahu said he wanted to restart peace talks.

"It's something I hope the Palestinians want as well and we ought to be successful for a simple reason - when there's a will, we'll find a way," Netanyahu said.

The two men discussed ways to advance peace, Kerry's ideas for an economic plan to boost Palestinian growth and the "escalating violence" in neighboring Syria's civil war, a senior U.S. State Department official told reporters after the meeting.

Peres wished Kerry success in his mission but the U.S. top diplomat responded by saying success would be a prize for the adversaries, not his.

"You said that 'if you succeed' or 'if you fail' - I think it's not me, Mr. President. It really is a question of whether Israel and the Palestinians make the choices," Kerry told Peres and added that regional players had reached a "critical moment".

"This moment is a really critical moment for the region and particularly for Israel and for Palestine and for Jordan ... the importance of trying to resolve this in this moment, where there is a willingness for people to look for a way, can't be overstated," Kerry said.

SETTLEMENTS

Last week, Kerry telephoned Netanyahu to voice U.S. concern at Israel's plan to declare legal four unauthorized West Bank settler outposts.

Most of the world deems all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal. Israel, which captured the land in the 1967 Middle East War, disputes this. There are about 120 government-authorized settlements in the West Bank and dozens of outposts built by settlers without official sanction.

The main issues that would have to be resolved in a peace agreement include the borders between Israel and a Palestinian state, the future of Jewish settlements, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

In his visits to the region, Kerry is also trying to put together an economic package for the Palestinians to go alongside the U.S. political initiative.

European diplomats, in meetings with Palestinian leaders, have been trying to steer them away from any notion the European Union might present a peace plan of its own. British Foreign Secretary of William Hague also held talks with Netanyahu and Abbas on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Simple Vision Test Predicts IQ

Posted: 24 May 2013 01:46 AM PDT

A simple visual test is surprisingly accurate at predicting IQ, according to new research.

The study, published today (May 23) in the journal Current Biology, found that people's ability to efficiently filter out visual information in the background and focus on the foreground is strongly linked to IQ. The findings could help scientists identify the brain processes responsible for intelligence.

That doesn't mean snappy, efficient visual processing leads to smarts, said study co-author Duje Tadin, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in New York. Instead, common brain processes may underlie both intelligence and efficient visual processing.

IQ hunting

Since the 1800s, the forefathers of IQ testing, including Sir Francis Galton (who also pioneered the science of fingerprinting), suspected that highly intelligent people also have supersensory discrimination.

But studies in the subsequent decades have found only a modest connection between IQ-test scores and people s ability to quickly or accurately spot motion in images.

Tadin and his colleagues were studying a separate question on visual perception in 12 participants when they found something striking: IQ seemed to be correlated strongly with performance on a visual task.

The test asked users to spot the direction of motion on a series of black-and-white stripes on a screen. Sometimes, the lines formed inside a small central circle, and other times, they were large stripes that took up the entire screen. Participants also completed a short IQ test. [Watch Video of Motion and Test Your Smarts]

The team noticed that people with higher IQs were good at spotting motion in the small circles, but terrible at detecting motion in the larger black-and-white stripes.

Because they had looked at so few people, Tadin and his colleagues wondered if their results were a fluke. They repeated the experiment with 53 people, who also took a full IQ test.

The ability to visually filter the motion strongly predicted IQ in fact, motion suppression (the ability to focus on the action and ignore background movements) was as predictive of total IQ as individual subsections of the IQ test itself.

Relevant information

As people walk, the background scenery is always changing, so efficient brains may be better at filtering out this irrelevant visual information. And that efficiency could be operating across a wide range of tasks, Tadin said.

"What happens in brains of high-IQ people is, they're automatically processing motion of small moving objects efficiently, whereas they're suppressing the background," Tadin said.

The findings reshape the conventional view that quick thinking leads to smarts.

"Speedy processing does matter, but it's only half the story. It's how you filter out things that are less relevant and focus your speedy resources on what is important," Tadin said.

Big variation

The study reveals new insights into brain efficiency and smarts, said Kevin McGrew, director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics and owner of www.themindhub.com.

Even though the link between IQ and visual filtering was very strong, IQ tests won't be replaced by motion tracking anytime soon, said McGrew, who was not involved in the study.

"Their task accounts for or explains about 50 percent of the IQ scores," McGrew told LiveScience. "That is impressive in psychology, but it still means there is 50 percent of the scores that they're not explaining."

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain Top 10 Things that Make Humans Special Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

How the White Tiger Got His Coat

Posted: 24 May 2013 01:44 AM PDT

The strikingly beautiful, milky coats of white tigers are caused by a single change in a known pigment gene, a new study finds.

Since their discovery in the Indian jungle centuries ago, white tigers, a variant of Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris), have had a certain mystique. Captive white tigers have been inbred to preserve the recessive white coat trait, leading some to speculate the trait is a genetic defect. But the genetic basis of tiger whiteness was not known. (A recessive trait will only show up if the individual gets two genes for that trait, one each from mom and dad.)

White tigers have now disappeared from the wild. "The white tiger represents part of the natural genetic diversity of the tiger that is worth conserving, but is now seen only in captivity," study author Shu-Jin Luo of China's Peking University said in a statement. [Iconic Cats: All 9 Subspecies of Tiger]

Luo and colleagues are calling for a captive management program to maintain both white and orange Bengal tigers, and possibly to reintroduce the cats back into the wild.

To find out the genetics responsible for white tigers' creamy hue, Luo's team mapped the genomes of a family of 16 tigers both white and orange in China's Chimelong Safari Park. The researchers also sequenced the full genomes of the three parent tigers. They validated their findings in 130 unrelated tigers.

The team focused on a pigment gene called SLC45A2, which is linked to light coloration in modern Europeans as well as horses, chickens and fish. The white tigers carried a variant of this gene that inhibits the production of red and yellow pigments without affecting black pigments, results showed.

The gene variant explains why the majestic cats lack the rich orange shade of their feline cousins but still have their famous dark stripes. The findings are detailed today (May 23) in the journal Current Biology.

Now that the researchers have identified the white color gene, they want to investigate how these two color varieties, white and orange, have survived through evolution.

Records of white tigers in India date back to the 1500s, Luo and colleagues say. They appear able to survive in the wild, as their primary prey, such as deer, are probably colorblind. The animals were widely hunted, and the last known free-ranging white tiger was shot in 1958. Habitat destruction probably contributed to the cats' decline.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Gallery: Tiger Species of the World Image Gallery: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth In Images: Tigers Rebound in Asia Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Runways at Heathrow Airport shut after BA incident

Posted: 24 May 2013 01:37 AM PDT

LONDON (Reuters) - London's Heathrow Airport closed both its runways on Friday following an incident with a British Airways plane, the airport operator said.

British Airways said it was investigating the issue and operator Heathrow Limited said all the passengers had been evacuated.

(Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Stephen Addison)