Akshay Kumar gets chatty on kicking it up a notch for Chandni Chowk to China
Chandni Chowk To China is semi autobiographical. True?
The only thing which is common between my life and Chandni Chowk To China is that I was born in Chandni Chowk. And while I was a cook, I play a halwai (laughs) in this film. When I heard this script, it was from Bombay To China but then they changed it to Chandni Chowk To China – and I am happy with the change.
You’ll be seen in an action avatar after a long time. Was it a conscious effort?
Warner Brothers were part of this project. So I took it on without giving much thought of whether it was an action or comedy.
How difficult was it to play this role?
Shooting on The Great Wall Of China, doing Kung-fu with Chinese masters, fighting with Sir Gordon Liu was really tough.
Have you seen any of Gordon Liu’s films?
Yes, of course. He is the guy who introduced Kung-fu to the big screen. He is awesome in 36 Chambers Of Shaolin. I must have seen the film over 50 times and still love watching it.
What was the most memorable incident while shooting for the movie?
The whole film was memorable. Until now, nobody has got a chance to shoot on The Great Wall Of China, not even for a Hollywood film. And I got a chance to run on it. This is India’s first Kung-fu Bollywood masala film which makes it really special.
The Bohemia song in which you have rapped proclaims that you are ‘the superstar’.
I am not saying I am ‘the superstar’, it’s just a rap. Shah Rukh and I are the only actors in Bollywood who have come this far on our own. Neither his nor my forefathers belong to this field. So if I can make it, if he can make it, everyone out there can also do so. One only needs one’s parents’ blessings, belief in God and hard work.
Which was the most difficult stunt?
I had to carry Deepika on my forearms (laughs). The most difficult job was learning Kung-fu.
Do you find any difference in the kind of action shown in Bollywood before vis a vis how it is projected now?
Yes, there is; because technology has changed for the better. Our Indian fight masters have improved by leaps and bounds. They have learnt a lot from the West.
You are acknowledged as a superstar but haven’t got a major award till date. How do you feel?
Aapko chaiye award ... aap le lo … Mere paas parre hote hain ... bahut milte hain (laughs).
Any specific reason why the movie is being premiered in Los Angeles?
If Warner Brothers were from Nepal, then we would have had to go to Nepal.
Dec 20, 2008
Columnists - Vir Sanghvi;How you can propel change, make a difference (G.Read)
Is there something that we can do with the anger that all of us feel in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks? Can we find some constructive way of channelling it apart from appearing on TV shows and demanding that so-called Pakistani flags be removed from slums near our favourite five-star hotels?
It saddens me that so many morons from Mumbai’s chattering classes went on TV to declare that on the whole terrorism was a bad thing but gosh, when it appeared this close to their doorstep it was so bad that we really had to give up on democracy/attack Pakistan/abandon our civil liberties/not pay taxes or whatever.
Because the middle class awakening can make a difference. There are ways in which the educated middle class can use this anger to push for changes in the system. The events of 26/11 exposed the structural weakness in the way India is protected. We may not have the votes to change the way in which it is governed, but we certainly have the power to push for changes in the way it is policed. I yield to nobody in my admiration for the Armed Forces (despite the odd admiral who may have behaved like a prat in the aftermath of the crisis) but the problems in our security structure do not have anything to do with our excellent army, air force or navy.
They have to do with the police. It worries me that the police have not got the credit they deserve for the successes of 26/11. If you look at the CCTV footage that was released by the authorities of the scene inside the Taj you realize that long before the commandos went in, lightly armed Mumbai police officers and constables were already inside risking their lives as automatic fire and grenades rained down on them.
The deaths of such officers as Hemant Karkare took place only because they led from the front, actually placing themselves in the line of fire. We forget also the sacrifices of individual lower-level officers and constables—the railway policemen who attacked the terrorists with their World War II vintage 303s and the policemen from Mumbai’s DB Marg station who using hand arms and lathis arrested Mohammed Ajmal Kasab—and got him alive. One sub-inspector, a 54-year-old man with a family, grabbed Kasab and did not let go of him even as he was shot several times. He died but his efforts put Kasab into custody.
We forget also that the NSG—the undoubted heroes of the siege—is a joint venture between the police and the army; the NSG’s director general, J.K. Dutt, who personally led the operation and impressed all of India with his modesty, clear-headedness and leadership qualities, is an officer from the Indian Police Service (he is now probably the one alumnus that students of Mayo College, where he studied, are most proud of but that’s another story).
The NSG was set up by Rajiv Gandhi (as was the Special Protection Group, India’s answer to the US Secret Service and one of our finest forces—also run by the IPS) specifically to fight terrorism and it has never failed at a single operation.
One problem is that successive governments have not had Rajiv Gandhi’s passion for security and intelligence and all the forces have been denied many of the facilities that they require to function effectively. A larger problem is that all state governments ignore the crucial issue of police reform for fear that a professional police force will not allow them to interfere with its functioning.
It’s here that the middle class has a role to play—it is one area where we can make a difference and can change things for the better.
Take the example of the NSG. No sooner had the media highlighted the fact that the force did not even have a designated plane than the government promptly ordered three planes for the NSG. Now, the strength of the NSG will go up and there will be NSG units stationed in major cities.
All this is entirely due to pressure from the media. It’s not just the media that can make a difference. I saw banker Amit Chandra, lawyer Cyril Shroff, businessman Cyrus Gazdar and others on Maneka Doshi’s CNBC programme and was impressed by the clear-headedness of their vision. Now that group has found more like them and taken the legal route. They’ve filed public interest litigation demanding that the Mumbai police be given the facilities they need to secure the city effectively.
They have also asked why successive reports of police commissions have been ignored. And they’ve urged the court to ask state governments to push ahead with police reform.
Those members of the group I have spoken to are realistic about their prospects. They know that the battle for reform of the police force—which involves many state governments and political parties—will be a long and hard one (can you see Mayawati agreeing to let go of her hold on the UP police, for instance?). But they think that the effort is worth it.
They are more optimistic about using the judicial system to get the Mumbai police the facilities they need. Their petition asks the court to appoint a citizens group to oversee the process. That way we can be sure that the money that is spent actually goes on the right things.
So yes, there is a role for the educated middle class. What a shame then that the buffoons of Mumbai’s Page 3 set nearly blew it for us.
It saddens me that so many morons from Mumbai’s chattering classes went on TV to declare that on the whole terrorism was a bad thing but gosh, when it appeared this close to their doorstep it was so bad that we really had to give up on democracy/attack Pakistan/abandon our civil liberties/not pay taxes or whatever.
Because the middle class awakening can make a difference. There are ways in which the educated middle class can use this anger to push for changes in the system. The events of 26/11 exposed the structural weakness in the way India is protected. We may not have the votes to change the way in which it is governed, but we certainly have the power to push for changes in the way it is policed. I yield to nobody in my admiration for the Armed Forces (despite the odd admiral who may have behaved like a prat in the aftermath of the crisis) but the problems in our security structure do not have anything to do with our excellent army, air force or navy.
They have to do with the police. It worries me that the police have not got the credit they deserve for the successes of 26/11. If you look at the CCTV footage that was released by the authorities of the scene inside the Taj you realize that long before the commandos went in, lightly armed Mumbai police officers and constables were already inside risking their lives as automatic fire and grenades rained down on them.
The deaths of such officers as Hemant Karkare took place only because they led from the front, actually placing themselves in the line of fire. We forget also the sacrifices of individual lower-level officers and constables—the railway policemen who attacked the terrorists with their World War II vintage 303s and the policemen from Mumbai’s DB Marg station who using hand arms and lathis arrested Mohammed Ajmal Kasab—and got him alive. One sub-inspector, a 54-year-old man with a family, grabbed Kasab and did not let go of him even as he was shot several times. He died but his efforts put Kasab into custody.
We forget also that the NSG—the undoubted heroes of the siege—is a joint venture between the police and the army; the NSG’s director general, J.K. Dutt, who personally led the operation and impressed all of India with his modesty, clear-headedness and leadership qualities, is an officer from the Indian Police Service (he is now probably the one alumnus that students of Mayo College, where he studied, are most proud of but that’s another story).
The NSG was set up by Rajiv Gandhi (as was the Special Protection Group, India’s answer to the US Secret Service and one of our finest forces—also run by the IPS) specifically to fight terrorism and it has never failed at a single operation.
One problem is that successive governments have not had Rajiv Gandhi’s passion for security and intelligence and all the forces have been denied many of the facilities that they require to function effectively. A larger problem is that all state governments ignore the crucial issue of police reform for fear that a professional police force will not allow them to interfere with its functioning.
It’s here that the middle class has a role to play—it is one area where we can make a difference and can change things for the better.
Take the example of the NSG. No sooner had the media highlighted the fact that the force did not even have a designated plane than the government promptly ordered three planes for the NSG. Now, the strength of the NSG will go up and there will be NSG units stationed in major cities.
All this is entirely due to pressure from the media. It’s not just the media that can make a difference. I saw banker Amit Chandra, lawyer Cyril Shroff, businessman Cyrus Gazdar and others on Maneka Doshi’s CNBC programme and was impressed by the clear-headedness of their vision. Now that group has found more like them and taken the legal route. They’ve filed public interest litigation demanding that the Mumbai police be given the facilities they need to secure the city effectively.
They have also asked why successive reports of police commissions have been ignored. And they’ve urged the court to ask state governments to push ahead with police reform.
Those members of the group I have spoken to are realistic about their prospects. They know that the battle for reform of the police force—which involves many state governments and political parties—will be a long and hard one (can you see Mayawati agreeing to let go of her hold on the UP police, for instance?). But they think that the effort is worth it.
They are more optimistic about using the judicial system to get the Mumbai police the facilities they need. Their petition asks the court to appoint a citizens group to oversee the process. That way we can be sure that the money that is spent actually goes on the right things.
So yes, there is a role for the educated middle class. What a shame then that the buffoons of Mumbai’s Page 3 set nearly blew it for us.
Entertainment - Tom Cruise's son makes his debut in Seven Pounds
LONDON: Actor Tom Cruise's son Connor Cruise is following his father's footsteps closely.
The 13-year-old Connor has made his acting debut in Seven Pounds which opens in theatres on Friday, six days before his father's latest film Valkyrie hits the cinemas.
The adopted son of Cruise and former wife Nicole Kidman has made his debut in Cruise's good friend Will Smith's movie, 'The Telegraph' reported.
But where Connor's role is limited to a few lines, his father is the star of Valkyrie, the story of how some German officers tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Cruise, recently said in an interview that he had been anxious not to put his children under pressure to become actors.
"Who knows what he's going to do?" he had said. "He's grown up on (acting). I've always had my kids there, in hair and makeup, just always around the sets. They've worked on sets," the actor said.
The Mission Impossible star said he attended Connor's audition for Seven Pounds and it was "a great father-son moment" for him.
But unfortunately Cruise said that he had to be shooed away from the room by the director.
Cruise said he has done role playing games with his children and they have watched him developing characters at home.
With Connor's mother Nicole Kidman also starring in the Baz Luhrmann's Australia, the extended Hollywood dynasty is dominating the box-office this festive season.
The 13-year-old Connor has made his acting debut in Seven Pounds which opens in theatres on Friday, six days before his father's latest film Valkyrie hits the cinemas.
The adopted son of Cruise and former wife Nicole Kidman has made his debut in Cruise's good friend Will Smith's movie, 'The Telegraph' reported.
But where Connor's role is limited to a few lines, his father is the star of Valkyrie, the story of how some German officers tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Cruise, recently said in an interview that he had been anxious not to put his children under pressure to become actors.
"Who knows what he's going to do?" he had said. "He's grown up on (acting). I've always had my kids there, in hair and makeup, just always around the sets. They've worked on sets," the actor said.
The Mission Impossible star said he attended Connor's audition for Seven Pounds and it was "a great father-son moment" for him.
But unfortunately Cruise said that he had to be shooed away from the room by the director.
Cruise said he has done role playing games with his children and they have watched him developing characters at home.
With Connor's mother Nicole Kidman also starring in the Baz Luhrmann's Australia, the extended Hollywood dynasty is dominating the box-office this festive season.
Entertainment - Jen ended up naked on GQ cover by 'accident'
NEW YORK: Jennifer Aniston says her naked photo for the cover of an American men's magazine was an accident because the shoot was intended to expose her in mere "moments of undress".
Aniston features on the GQ cover posing in a red and white striped tie, but insists she didn't quite intend to fully strip down, imdb.com reports.
She said: "There was a theme to that photoshoot. It was supposed to be moments of undress — starting off in a gown, and then the men were in their tuxedos, then we were going to have me in one of their shirts and then their pants and then somehow that all went out of the window and then there just ended up being a tie."
Aniston features on the GQ cover posing in a red and white striped tie, but insists she didn't quite intend to fully strip down, imdb.com reports.
She said: "There was a theme to that photoshoot. It was supposed to be moments of undress — starting off in a gown, and then the men were in their tuxedos, then we were going to have me in one of their shirts and then their pants and then somehow that all went out of the window and then there just ended up being a tie."
India - Babus paid more than athletes in Beijing Olympics
Eklavya Atray
NEW DELHI: Indian athletes may have brought home the country’s maiden gold and two bronze medals from the Olympics, but it was the bureaucrats and politicians accompanying them who were paid more by the government during their stay in Beijing.
In a reply to a query filed by DNA under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Union youth affairs and sports ministry said that while athletes and coaches were paid $50 each as daily pocket allowance, the babus and netas who went to Beijing as part of the official delegation received $75 a day.
The pocket allowance was over and above the spending on boarding and lodging. For the sports contingent these expenses were taken care of by the Beijing Olympic Committee while for the delegation, they were borne by the Indian embassy.
Among the people who received $75 a day were minister of state for youth affairs and sports MS Gill and Lok Sabha members Vijay Bahuguna and Krishna Tirath. The other members of the official delegation were Rajya Sabha member Bhubaneshwar Kalita and several bureaucrats, including sports secretary Sudhir Nath, two joint secretaries, and Sports Authority of India director-general Sayan Chatterjee.
The ministry said Rs12.19 lakh was spent on the travel of the 13 bureaucrats and politicians and arrangements for their lodging and boarding were made by the Indian embassy at Beijing.
“We used to get an allowance of $50 a day, which is hardly anything abroad...one hardly gets a few decent meals in it. The problem is much worse at the Asiad, where players get no allowance,” said Commonwealth boxer Virender Singh said.
Asiad medal-winning runner Bharat Kumar, said, “ If only players could get better allowances, they may change their lifestyle a little.”
NEW DELHI: Indian athletes may have brought home the country’s maiden gold and two bronze medals from the Olympics, but it was the bureaucrats and politicians accompanying them who were paid more by the government during their stay in Beijing.
In a reply to a query filed by DNA under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Union youth affairs and sports ministry said that while athletes and coaches were paid $50 each as daily pocket allowance, the babus and netas who went to Beijing as part of the official delegation received $75 a day.
The pocket allowance was over and above the spending on boarding and lodging. For the sports contingent these expenses were taken care of by the Beijing Olympic Committee while for the delegation, they were borne by the Indian embassy.
Among the people who received $75 a day were minister of state for youth affairs and sports MS Gill and Lok Sabha members Vijay Bahuguna and Krishna Tirath. The other members of the official delegation were Rajya Sabha member Bhubaneshwar Kalita and several bureaucrats, including sports secretary Sudhir Nath, two joint secretaries, and Sports Authority of India director-general Sayan Chatterjee.
The ministry said Rs12.19 lakh was spent on the travel of the 13 bureaucrats and politicians and arrangements for their lodging and boarding were made by the Indian embassy at Beijing.
“We used to get an allowance of $50 a day, which is hardly anything abroad...one hardly gets a few decent meals in it. The problem is much worse at the Asiad, where players get no allowance,” said Commonwealth boxer Virender Singh said.
Asiad medal-winning runner Bharat Kumar, said, “ If only players could get better allowances, they may change their lifestyle a little.”
Entertainment - Q&A Akon;India
Prithwish Ganguly
Your first visit to India was a while ago. What do you remember about it?
I had a wonderful time in India. I took back lots of memories. It was our first time there and I remember thinking that in Mumbai, the crowd is incredible. It reminded me of my home, Africa. I liked the hospitality and the food and am looking forward to returning.
Will the recent terror attacks on the city deter you?
Situations like that happen during a transition and do not last forever. It is all a matter of the people working together and coming up with agreements that benefit the whole race. I don’t think it will deter me from performing in India in future.
Your record — Snack That — was a hot favourite in India. What are your expectations from Freedom?
Expectations are always very high. I’m hoping this album does better than the last one. A lot of time and effort have gone into it; I hope people go out and pick up the album.
Have you seen any Bollywood movie?
I’m very bad with names but I remember watching some. The patent theme of love and romance is quite common in most. But some of the love stories are amazing.
What is your impression about Indian women?
Indian women are the most beautiful women in the world. I have no words to describe them.
You have teamed up with many international artistes like Michael Jackson, Gwen Stefani and Chamillionaire; who is your favourite?
I’m just blessed to be in a situation where I can work with different artistes who help me expand my audience everywhere. I love the fact that I can work with them and still keep the authenticity of what I’m doing. I can never say which one’s my favourite. They all play a big role in what I am doing
Your first visit to India was a while ago. What do you remember about it?
I had a wonderful time in India. I took back lots of memories. It was our first time there and I remember thinking that in Mumbai, the crowd is incredible. It reminded me of my home, Africa. I liked the hospitality and the food and am looking forward to returning.
Will the recent terror attacks on the city deter you?
Situations like that happen during a transition and do not last forever. It is all a matter of the people working together and coming up with agreements that benefit the whole race. I don’t think it will deter me from performing in India in future.
Your record — Snack That — was a hot favourite in India. What are your expectations from Freedom?
Expectations are always very high. I’m hoping this album does better than the last one. A lot of time and effort have gone into it; I hope people go out and pick up the album.
Have you seen any Bollywood movie?
I’m very bad with names but I remember watching some. The patent theme of love and romance is quite common in most. But some of the love stories are amazing.
What is your impression about Indian women?
Indian women are the most beautiful women in the world. I have no words to describe them.
You have teamed up with many international artistes like Michael Jackson, Gwen Stefani and Chamillionaire; who is your favourite?
I’m just blessed to be in a situation where I can work with different artistes who help me expand my audience everywhere. I love the fact that I can work with them and still keep the authenticity of what I’m doing. I can never say which one’s my favourite. They all play a big role in what I am doing
Entertainment - Rab Ne on way to becoming a big hit
MUMBAI: Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, which was released worldwide on December 12, has grossed Rs90 crore in its opening week, which is on a par with and in some places even higher than two of the highest opening-week grossers till date: Om Shanti Om and Singh Is Kinng.
The film's producer Yash Raj Films claimed that Rab Ne... had also broken all earlier opening-week collection records for the banner, having surpassed the opening week collections of Dhoom: 2 which is regarded as one of the highest grossing movies of all time.
The total collection for Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi in India is around Rs42 crore net (gross Rs70 crore). The total gross collection for all overseas markets is over $4 million (around Rs20 crore), a Yash Raj Films statement said.
In West Asia, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi has broken all previous records for first week collections, netting just under $1.3 million. The previous highest grossing film in the Gulf, which has a sizeable Indian expatriate population, was Dhoom: 2, which grossed approximately $1.86 million in its entire run.
Rab Ne..., a romantic film directed by Aditya Chopra and featuring newcomer Anushka Sharma, is on course to break this all-time record going into its second week, the statement claimed.
The film has also had a grand opening week across overseas markets, including the UK, USA, Australia, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and features in the list of highest grossers for the opening week in most of these territories.
"The film has the potential to finish as one of the biggest blockbusters of all time," the producer's statement said.
The film's producer Yash Raj Films claimed that Rab Ne... had also broken all earlier opening-week collection records for the banner, having surpassed the opening week collections of Dhoom: 2 which is regarded as one of the highest grossing movies of all time.
The total collection for Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi in India is around Rs42 crore net (gross Rs70 crore). The total gross collection for all overseas markets is over $4 million (around Rs20 crore), a Yash Raj Films statement said.
In West Asia, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi has broken all previous records for first week collections, netting just under $1.3 million. The previous highest grossing film in the Gulf, which has a sizeable Indian expatriate population, was Dhoom: 2, which grossed approximately $1.86 million in its entire run.
Rab Ne..., a romantic film directed by Aditya Chopra and featuring newcomer Anushka Sharma, is on course to break this all-time record going into its second week, the statement claimed.
The film has also had a grand opening week across overseas markets, including the UK, USA, Australia, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and features in the list of highest grossers for the opening week in most of these territories.
"The film has the potential to finish as one of the biggest blockbusters of all time," the producer's statement said.
Business - Panasonic to acquire Sanyo for up to $9 billion
Tokyo: Japan’s Panasonic Corp. said Friday it had cleared the way to acquire struggling Sanyo Electric Co. for up to nine billion dollars, forming an industry heavyweight amid the global downturn.
The deal is the first major realignment of Japan’s electronics industry since the start of the economic crisis, which has led companies to suspend production as consumer demand dries up.
Panasonic will buy Sanyo shares from US investment firm Goldman Sachs and Japan’s Daiwa Securities and Sumitomo Mitsui, giving a badly needed cash injection into the financial sector as it reels from the credit crunch.
“We, the electronics industry, are faced with the need to restructure amid the global recession as well as a downward shift in prices and the growth of emerging markets,” Panasonic president Fumio Ohtsubo told a news conference.
“Under these circumstances, it is all the more important to strengthen our management practices to grow further,” he said.
Sanyo, which started off making bicycle lamps after World War II, has cut thousands of jobs as it attempts to return to profit.
Recently it has tried to focus on environmental technologies including solar energy and rechargeable batteries - areas coveted by Panasonic.
Panasonic said it had reached a deal on a tender offer aiming to secure a 70.5 % stake in Sanyo at 131 yen a share, valuing the deal at a maximum of 800 billion yen (around $9 billion).
Ohtsubo said that the companies sought to increase operating profit by 80 billion yen in the 2012 financial year through the tie-up.
“What we want to add as our new core business is the energy business,” including batteries which are key to eco-friendly hybrid cars, Ohtsubo said.
“In order to accelerate the synergy effect of our two companies, we are ready to invest 100 billion yen,” mostly in the battery business but also in other fields, he said.
“We believe that we will evolve into a corporate group which will be highly admired globally, coexisting in harmony with the global environment,” he said.
Sanyo, which like Panasonic is based in the western Japanese metropolis of Osaka, will remain listed.
Sanyo has had a troubled few years. It was forced to raise cash by issuing new shares, effectively handing over control to Goldman Sachs and other financial firms.
Toshimasa Iue, a member of the founding family, stepped down last year after he clashed with the big investors over how far to restructure the company.
Panasonic, which is already Japan’s biggest seller of consumer electronics, has been seeking to raise its global profile against rivals -- notably Sony Corp. -- that enjoy solid name recognition.
Kazumasa Kubota, an analyst at Okasan Securities, said that despite the high cost, “in the longer term the acquisition is absolutely an advantage for Panasonic.”
“Sanyo reportedly holds hundreds of patents in the field of battery technology and has strengths in solar power,” he said.
Kubota credited Panasonic with negotiating shrewdly, knowing that Goldman Sachs needed cash.
Just two weeks earlier, Goldman Sachs had rejected an offer from Panasonic that was reported to be 130 yen per share - only one yen difference from the 131 yen in the agreement.
But on Tuesday, Goldman Sachs reported a 2.12 billion dollar net loss in the fiscal fourth quarter to November, the first time it has gone into the red since going public in 1999.
The deal is the first major realignment of Japan’s electronics industry since the start of the economic crisis, which has led companies to suspend production as consumer demand dries up.
Panasonic will buy Sanyo shares from US investment firm Goldman Sachs and Japan’s Daiwa Securities and Sumitomo Mitsui, giving a badly needed cash injection into the financial sector as it reels from the credit crunch.
“We, the electronics industry, are faced with the need to restructure amid the global recession as well as a downward shift in prices and the growth of emerging markets,” Panasonic president Fumio Ohtsubo told a news conference.
“Under these circumstances, it is all the more important to strengthen our management practices to grow further,” he said.
Sanyo, which started off making bicycle lamps after World War II, has cut thousands of jobs as it attempts to return to profit.
Recently it has tried to focus on environmental technologies including solar energy and rechargeable batteries - areas coveted by Panasonic.
Panasonic said it had reached a deal on a tender offer aiming to secure a 70.5 % stake in Sanyo at 131 yen a share, valuing the deal at a maximum of 800 billion yen (around $9 billion).
Ohtsubo said that the companies sought to increase operating profit by 80 billion yen in the 2012 financial year through the tie-up.
“What we want to add as our new core business is the energy business,” including batteries which are key to eco-friendly hybrid cars, Ohtsubo said.
“In order to accelerate the synergy effect of our two companies, we are ready to invest 100 billion yen,” mostly in the battery business but also in other fields, he said.
“We believe that we will evolve into a corporate group which will be highly admired globally, coexisting in harmony with the global environment,” he said.
Sanyo, which like Panasonic is based in the western Japanese metropolis of Osaka, will remain listed.
Sanyo has had a troubled few years. It was forced to raise cash by issuing new shares, effectively handing over control to Goldman Sachs and other financial firms.
Toshimasa Iue, a member of the founding family, stepped down last year after he clashed with the big investors over how far to restructure the company.
Panasonic, which is already Japan’s biggest seller of consumer electronics, has been seeking to raise its global profile against rivals -- notably Sony Corp. -- that enjoy solid name recognition.
Kazumasa Kubota, an analyst at Okasan Securities, said that despite the high cost, “in the longer term the acquisition is absolutely an advantage for Panasonic.”
“Sanyo reportedly holds hundreds of patents in the field of battery technology and has strengths in solar power,” he said.
Kubota credited Panasonic with negotiating shrewdly, knowing that Goldman Sachs needed cash.
Just two weeks earlier, Goldman Sachs had rejected an offer from Panasonic that was reported to be 130 yen per share - only one yen difference from the 131 yen in the agreement.
But on Tuesday, Goldman Sachs reported a 2.12 billion dollar net loss in the fiscal fourth quarter to November, the first time it has gone into the red since going public in 1999.
Entertainment - Yash Chopra takes control of Yash Raj
Kunal M Shah
Yash Chopra has been having sleepless nights after YRF’s recent film, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi didn’t prove to be as big a hit as expected. He has finally decided to take control of things.
Earlier this week, the long-expected meeting to get YRF back to its earlier glory took place between Aditya Chopra and his father, Yash Chopra.
This meeting was long overdue as industry insiders were wondering why Chopra Senior wasn’t taking the necessary steps to set things right at YRF after the banner suffered a loss of over Rs 100 crore in the last two years.
A well-placed source from YRF said, “Yashji was taken aback when the opening of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi wasn’t as encouraging as expected. The fact that the film’s collections improved after the first day and then dropped on Monday did not help much.
Earlier this week, Yashji had a meeting with Aditya to discuss these matters. Yashji was particularly against the idea of hiring several technicians, directors and writers on a contract basis.
Yashji was also quite concerned that the music of none of their recent films had done well. He felt that selling the music rights would have been a far better business decision.
According to the source, Yashji called for the meeting as he was upset that as many as 10 Yash Raj films have not done good business in the last two years.
The only films that did average business were Bachna Ae Haseeno and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Only two Yash Raj films, Dhoom 2 and Chak De! India proved to be successful.
Their experiment with animation (Roadside Romeo) also failed miserably. Even the audio and video divisions have failed. One of the first things that Yashji wants to do is start directing his long pending film which will probably feature Shah Rukh Khan and Katrina Kaif.
“Many directors like Sanjay Gadhvi and Kunal Kohli have left YRF and several actors like Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan don’t want to associate themselves with the banner.
Yashji wants to tackle these issues himself. He will be enforcing some rules after considering every aspect,” said the source.
The recent Yash Raj films that failed are Roadside Romeo, Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic, Tashan, Aaja Nachle, Laaga Chunri Mein Daag, Tara Rum Pum and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.
Despite sending repeated text messages, YRF remained unavailable for comment.
10 Yash Chopra commandments
• Reconsider the rates of YRF Studios as the shooting floor rents are very expensive
• Reconsider the rates of dubbing, canteen and preview theatre
• Start his directorial venture immediately
• Take a decision about the YRF Music label
• Reconsider selling video rights
• Rework the contracts of writers and directors who are hired on a monthly basis
• Think several times before acquiring films for distribution
• Closely look into every aspect of the film before it is released
• Don’t make films with newcomers
• Don’t demand exorbitant terms from exhibitors
Yash Chopra has been having sleepless nights after YRF’s recent film, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi didn’t prove to be as big a hit as expected. He has finally decided to take control of things.
Earlier this week, the long-expected meeting to get YRF back to its earlier glory took place between Aditya Chopra and his father, Yash Chopra.
This meeting was long overdue as industry insiders were wondering why Chopra Senior wasn’t taking the necessary steps to set things right at YRF after the banner suffered a loss of over Rs 100 crore in the last two years.
A well-placed source from YRF said, “Yashji was taken aback when the opening of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi wasn’t as encouraging as expected. The fact that the film’s collections improved after the first day and then dropped on Monday did not help much.
Earlier this week, Yashji had a meeting with Aditya to discuss these matters. Yashji was particularly against the idea of hiring several technicians, directors and writers on a contract basis.
Yashji was also quite concerned that the music of none of their recent films had done well. He felt that selling the music rights would have been a far better business decision.
According to the source, Yashji called for the meeting as he was upset that as many as 10 Yash Raj films have not done good business in the last two years.
The only films that did average business were Bachna Ae Haseeno and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Only two Yash Raj films, Dhoom 2 and Chak De! India proved to be successful.
Their experiment with animation (Roadside Romeo) also failed miserably. Even the audio and video divisions have failed. One of the first things that Yashji wants to do is start directing his long pending film which will probably feature Shah Rukh Khan and Katrina Kaif.
“Many directors like Sanjay Gadhvi and Kunal Kohli have left YRF and several actors like Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan don’t want to associate themselves with the banner.
Yashji wants to tackle these issues himself. He will be enforcing some rules after considering every aspect,” said the source.
The recent Yash Raj films that failed are Roadside Romeo, Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic, Tashan, Aaja Nachle, Laaga Chunri Mein Daag, Tara Rum Pum and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.
Despite sending repeated text messages, YRF remained unavailable for comment.
10 Yash Chopra commandments
• Reconsider the rates of YRF Studios as the shooting floor rents are very expensive
• Reconsider the rates of dubbing, canteen and preview theatre
• Start his directorial venture immediately
• Take a decision about the YRF Music label
• Reconsider selling video rights
• Rework the contracts of writers and directors who are hired on a monthly basis
• Think several times before acquiring films for distribution
• Closely look into every aspect of the film before it is released
• Don’t make films with newcomers
• Don’t demand exorbitant terms from exhibitors
Health - Some cough medicine overdoses deliberate: report
Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some children showing up in emergency rooms with overdoses of cough or cold syrup may have been intentionally medicated to keep them quiet, doctors cautioned on Thursday.
An analysis of 189 children who died from medication overdoses showed a significant percentage appeared to have been intentionally overdosed, the doctors reported in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
"This is a heads up," said Dr. Richard Dart, director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver.
In 79 of the cases, an adult gave the child nonprescription medicine. In 19 cases the adults clearly meant to help the child, but in 26 cases a panel of experts determined the intent was not to treat, Dart said.
He said a panel of experts had to agree that the intent was clear. "They were quite certain in all the cases they decided were intentional," Dart said in a telephone interview.
"We had some cases where the parent poured it into the kid's mouth directly from the bottle," he added.
In October, U.S. makers of over-the-counter cough and cold medications, urged by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, advised that these drugs should not be used in children under 4 and the FDA is considering requests to ban their use in children under 12.
Dart said complications from accidental misuse are known and dangerous.
"We aren't trying to say there aren't accidents. I am concerned that we have blinders on and we don't want to admit that there is a group of parents who all the warnings in the world won't help because they did it knowingly," he said.
"What we have is a group of adults who want to control the behavior of children and do it in a variety of ways," Dart added.
"Sometimes it is physical violence and sometimes it is drugs. They tend to be lower-income, under-educated parents, often with a history of child abuse or violence in the home. I think there is a clear population here for us to focus on that are involved in these events."
Parents should also be aware that some of the adults who gave the medications to the children were day-care providers who probably were not malevolent in their actions but simply overwhelmed and looking for a way to quiet down their charges, Dart said.
An estimated 4 million children under the age of 12 are treated with over-the-counter cough and cold products each week in the United States.
(Editing by Anthony Boadle)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some children showing up in emergency rooms with overdoses of cough or cold syrup may have been intentionally medicated to keep them quiet, doctors cautioned on Thursday.
An analysis of 189 children who died from medication overdoses showed a significant percentage appeared to have been intentionally overdosed, the doctors reported in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
"This is a heads up," said Dr. Richard Dart, director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver.
In 79 of the cases, an adult gave the child nonprescription medicine. In 19 cases the adults clearly meant to help the child, but in 26 cases a panel of experts determined the intent was not to treat, Dart said.
He said a panel of experts had to agree that the intent was clear. "They were quite certain in all the cases they decided were intentional," Dart said in a telephone interview.
"We had some cases where the parent poured it into the kid's mouth directly from the bottle," he added.
In October, U.S. makers of over-the-counter cough and cold medications, urged by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, advised that these drugs should not be used in children under 4 and the FDA is considering requests to ban their use in children under 12.
Dart said complications from accidental misuse are known and dangerous.
"We aren't trying to say there aren't accidents. I am concerned that we have blinders on and we don't want to admit that there is a group of parents who all the warnings in the world won't help because they did it knowingly," he said.
"What we have is a group of adults who want to control the behavior of children and do it in a variety of ways," Dart added.
"Sometimes it is physical violence and sometimes it is drugs. They tend to be lower-income, under-educated parents, often with a history of child abuse or violence in the home. I think there is a clear population here for us to focus on that are involved in these events."
Parents should also be aware that some of the adults who gave the medications to the children were day-care providers who probably were not malevolent in their actions but simply overwhelmed and looking for a way to quiet down their charges, Dart said.
An estimated 4 million children under the age of 12 are treated with over-the-counter cough and cold products each week in the United States.
(Editing by Anthony Boadle)
Health - Second-hand smoke tied to fertility problems
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who have ever been around smokers regularly may have more difficulty getting pregnant than those who have not, a new study suggests. The findings, researchers say, offer one more reason for women to kick the smoking habit.
Studies have found that women who smoke raise their risk of a number of pregnancy complications, as well as their infants' risk of health problems. Less is known about the dangers of second-hand smoke, though some studies have linked exposure during pregnancy to an elevated risk of miscarriage.
In the new study, of more than 4,800 women, researchers found those who'd grown up with a parent who smoked were more likely to report they'd had difficulty becoming pregnant -- defined as having to try for more than 1 year.
In addition, women who'd been exposed to second-hand smoke in both childhood and adulthood were 39 percent more likely to have suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth, and 68 percent more likely to have had problems getting pregnant.
"These statistics are breathtaking and certainly (point) to yet another danger of second-hand smoke exposure," said lead researcher Luke J. Peppone at the University of Rochester, New York.
"We all know that cigarettes and second hand smoke are dangerous," he added. "Breathing the smoke has lasting effects, especially for women when they're ready for children."
Peppone and his colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York report their findings in the December 5 online issue of the journal Tobacco Control.
For the study, the researchers analyzed surveys from 4,804 women who'd visited the university's Roswell Park Cancer Institute between 1982 and 1998 for health screening or cancer treatment. All had been pregnant at least once in their lives.
Overall, Peppone's team found 11 percent of the women had difficulty becoming pregnant, while one third had a miscarriage or stillbirth.
The risk of these problems tended to climb in tandem with the number of hours per day that a woman was exposed to second-hand smoke -- a pattern that suggests a cause-effect relationship.
Second-hand smoke contains a host of toxic compounds that could potentially harm a woman's reproductive health, Peppone and his colleagues note. Tobacco toxins may damage cells' genetic material, interfere with conception, raise the risk of miscarriage, or inhibit the hormones needed for conception and a successful pregnancy.
Studies have found that women who smoke raise their risk of a number of pregnancy complications, as well as their infants' risk of health problems. Less is known about the dangers of second-hand smoke, though some studies have linked exposure during pregnancy to an elevated risk of miscarriage.
In the new study, of more than 4,800 women, researchers found those who'd grown up with a parent who smoked were more likely to report they'd had difficulty becoming pregnant -- defined as having to try for more than 1 year.
In addition, women who'd been exposed to second-hand smoke in both childhood and adulthood were 39 percent more likely to have suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth, and 68 percent more likely to have had problems getting pregnant.
"These statistics are breathtaking and certainly (point) to yet another danger of second-hand smoke exposure," said lead researcher Luke J. Peppone at the University of Rochester, New York.
"We all know that cigarettes and second hand smoke are dangerous," he added. "Breathing the smoke has lasting effects, especially for women when they're ready for children."
Peppone and his colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York report their findings in the December 5 online issue of the journal Tobacco Control.
For the study, the researchers analyzed surveys from 4,804 women who'd visited the university's Roswell Park Cancer Institute between 1982 and 1998 for health screening or cancer treatment. All had been pregnant at least once in their lives.
Overall, Peppone's team found 11 percent of the women had difficulty becoming pregnant, while one third had a miscarriage or stillbirth.
The risk of these problems tended to climb in tandem with the number of hours per day that a woman was exposed to second-hand smoke -- a pattern that suggests a cause-effect relationship.
Second-hand smoke contains a host of toxic compounds that could potentially harm a woman's reproductive health, Peppone and his colleagues note. Tobacco toxins may damage cells' genetic material, interfere with conception, raise the risk of miscarriage, or inhibit the hormones needed for conception and a successful pregnancy.
Lifestyle - U.S. Teens Portrayed as Violent, Unethical
Robert Roy Britt
More than a quarter of all U.S. teenagers think violent behavior is at least sometimes acceptable, and one in five say they behaved violently toward another person in the past year, according to a new poll.
Most said self-defense (87 percent) or helping a friend (73 percent) were acceptable justifications for violence. But 34 percent said revenge was a sufficient motivation. The poll was conducted by Opinion Research for the school-support organization Junior Achievement and the tax and consulting firm Deloitte, LLC.
More than three-fourths of the respondents who said violence is acceptable also consider themselves ethically prepared to enter the work force. That sticks in the craw of David W. Miller, director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative and a professor of business ethics at Princeton University.
In an analysis released with the poll, Miller suggests the survey results bode ill for the future workforce. It's not clear that's the case, however. In fact, teens are known to think differently than adults because their brains have not matured. Scans reveal that teens' ethics change dramatically as they grow into adulthood. Or do they?
'Highly troubling'
The survey of 750 young people (half boys, half girls) age 12 to 17 was conducted between Oct. 9 and Oct. 12. The results were released this week.
"It is highly troubling that so many teenagers have a self-image of ethical readiness and the confidence in their ability to make good decisions later in life, yet at the same time freely admit to current behavior that is highly unethical," Miller said in a statement accompanying the poll results.
"Employers will have their hands full if a quarter of teens grow up still willing to resort to violence and other unethical behavior when it comes to making decisions about how to settle differences, protect their interests or get ahead," said Miller, who is also author of "God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement (Oxford University Press, 2006).
There are potential problems with Miller's take on the poll, however.
Teens lie
First, polls can be greatly skewed based on how questions are framed and by how honestly people respond. Adults are known to lie through their teeth in sex surveys, for example. In one Web-based survey, women claimed on average 8.6 lifetime sexual partners. The men claimed 31.9. Some researchers doubt those disparate figures are accurate. A follow-up survey found about 5 percent of each sex said they lied and more than 10 percent said they knew their answer wasn't accurate.
It's reasonable to assume that teenagers, who are prone to prevaricate and whose brains are known to be not fully formed, might fib, knowingly or unknowingly, about heavy questions on topics like violence.
In a telephone interview today, Miller agreed to this possibility, but he cites another question in the poll aimed at getting around this issue: Some 41 percent of the respondents reported a friend had behaved violently toward someone else in the past year. That response, Miller said, is less likely to involve lies.
Words vs. actions
Second, it's also quite possible few of the teens would actually act on the hypothetical responses they gave.
LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist Ben Radford points out that a study of teen virginity pledges, as an example, found that nearly 90 percent of them broke their vow. Another study at Harvard University found that more than half of adolescents who make signed, public pledges on things like virginity and violence give up on their pledges within one year. And in what will not sound ironic to any parent, three-fourths of the teens who pledged not to have sex but did, later denied having made the pledge.
Miller questions whether lying about sexual activity, which may be driven more by hormones than reason, translates to the poll on violence. "We lie about some things, and at the same time, we tell the truth about other things," he said. "Lying in one category does not mean logically we'll lie in others."
Miller also said, regarding words vs. deeds, that today's teens are exposed to exponentially more violence on TV, in video games, in movies, on the Internet, and even in popular extreme sports like kick boxing, "making violent acts seem normative. That's something prior generations didn't have."
Teens grow up
Third, without a similar version of this teen violence poll having been done decades ago, it is impossible to know whether Miller's basic concern - that the state of a teenage mind on such things as intentions and ethics actually predicts adult behavior - holds any water. In fact, science has plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite.
A 2006 study involving questions about how participants (teens and adults) would react to certain situations was, importantly, coupled with brain scans while they answered. Scientists found that teens, frankly, don't care about people's feelings as much as adults do. The part of the brain associated with higher-level thinking isn't fully operational.
Specifically, teens were found to barely use the part of the brain known to be involved in thinking about other people's emotions when considering a course of action.
"Thinking strategies change with age," said neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the University College London. "The fact that teenagers underuse the medial pre-frontal cortex when making decisions about what to do, implies that they are less likely to think about how they themselves and how other people will feel as a result of their intended action."
The idea of violence in a teen's mind, then, is not likely viewed the same as in an adult mind.
Miller, too, allows that teens change. "Let's hope so!" he said. "All teenagers in all generations go through a stage of boundary testing ... and figuring out where the right ethical boundaries are," he told me. "At some level there's nothing new in that. On the other hand, the data is pretty compelling."
Coupled with other data that suggest today's teenagers, and the millennials before them, "tend to embrace ethical relativism, that even as they mature into adults, they will have cultivated habits and brains that are capable of rationalizing behavior that serves their interests, irrespective of traditional societal expectations or understandings of right and wrong," he said.
"I wouldn't overreact" to the survey," Miller said, "but I think to under-react and interpret it as natural youth boundary testing is naive too."
Unethical adults
Lastly, Miller worries not just about violence but that teens will carry their ethical relativism into adulthood. On that point he might be right: A lot of adults have lousy ethics. One need look no farther than the Wall Street Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff or the New England Patriots head football coach Bill Belichick's cheating last year for proof.
Bad ethics is not just the purview of the powerful, either. Nearly 20 percent of U.S. adults think cheating on taxes is morally acceptable or is not a moral issue, according to a Pew Research Center survey in 2006. About 10 percent think it's okay to cheat on a spouse.
Cheating is not the same as violence, of course, but if the issue is modern teen ethics, then adults who supposedly grew up in a better era are not necessarily a model to which today's teens ought to aspire
More than a quarter of all U.S. teenagers think violent behavior is at least sometimes acceptable, and one in five say they behaved violently toward another person in the past year, according to a new poll.
Most said self-defense (87 percent) or helping a friend (73 percent) were acceptable justifications for violence. But 34 percent said revenge was a sufficient motivation. The poll was conducted by Opinion Research for the school-support organization Junior Achievement and the tax and consulting firm Deloitte, LLC.
More than three-fourths of the respondents who said violence is acceptable also consider themselves ethically prepared to enter the work force. That sticks in the craw of David W. Miller, director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative and a professor of business ethics at Princeton University.
In an analysis released with the poll, Miller suggests the survey results bode ill for the future workforce. It's not clear that's the case, however. In fact, teens are known to think differently than adults because their brains have not matured. Scans reveal that teens' ethics change dramatically as they grow into adulthood. Or do they?
'Highly troubling'
The survey of 750 young people (half boys, half girls) age 12 to 17 was conducted between Oct. 9 and Oct. 12. The results were released this week.
"It is highly troubling that so many teenagers have a self-image of ethical readiness and the confidence in their ability to make good decisions later in life, yet at the same time freely admit to current behavior that is highly unethical," Miller said in a statement accompanying the poll results.
"Employers will have their hands full if a quarter of teens grow up still willing to resort to violence and other unethical behavior when it comes to making decisions about how to settle differences, protect their interests or get ahead," said Miller, who is also author of "God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement (Oxford University Press, 2006).
There are potential problems with Miller's take on the poll, however.
Teens lie
First, polls can be greatly skewed based on how questions are framed and by how honestly people respond. Adults are known to lie through their teeth in sex surveys, for example. In one Web-based survey, women claimed on average 8.6 lifetime sexual partners. The men claimed 31.9. Some researchers doubt those disparate figures are accurate. A follow-up survey found about 5 percent of each sex said they lied and more than 10 percent said they knew their answer wasn't accurate.
It's reasonable to assume that teenagers, who are prone to prevaricate and whose brains are known to be not fully formed, might fib, knowingly or unknowingly, about heavy questions on topics like violence.
In a telephone interview today, Miller agreed to this possibility, but he cites another question in the poll aimed at getting around this issue: Some 41 percent of the respondents reported a friend had behaved violently toward someone else in the past year. That response, Miller said, is less likely to involve lies.
Words vs. actions
Second, it's also quite possible few of the teens would actually act on the hypothetical responses they gave.
LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist Ben Radford points out that a study of teen virginity pledges, as an example, found that nearly 90 percent of them broke their vow. Another study at Harvard University found that more than half of adolescents who make signed, public pledges on things like virginity and violence give up on their pledges within one year. And in what will not sound ironic to any parent, three-fourths of the teens who pledged not to have sex but did, later denied having made the pledge.
Miller questions whether lying about sexual activity, which may be driven more by hormones than reason, translates to the poll on violence. "We lie about some things, and at the same time, we tell the truth about other things," he said. "Lying in one category does not mean logically we'll lie in others."
Miller also said, regarding words vs. deeds, that today's teens are exposed to exponentially more violence on TV, in video games, in movies, on the Internet, and even in popular extreme sports like kick boxing, "making violent acts seem normative. That's something prior generations didn't have."
Teens grow up
Third, without a similar version of this teen violence poll having been done decades ago, it is impossible to know whether Miller's basic concern - that the state of a teenage mind on such things as intentions and ethics actually predicts adult behavior - holds any water. In fact, science has plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite.
A 2006 study involving questions about how participants (teens and adults) would react to certain situations was, importantly, coupled with brain scans while they answered. Scientists found that teens, frankly, don't care about people's feelings as much as adults do. The part of the brain associated with higher-level thinking isn't fully operational.
Specifically, teens were found to barely use the part of the brain known to be involved in thinking about other people's emotions when considering a course of action.
"Thinking strategies change with age," said neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the University College London. "The fact that teenagers underuse the medial pre-frontal cortex when making decisions about what to do, implies that they are less likely to think about how they themselves and how other people will feel as a result of their intended action."
The idea of violence in a teen's mind, then, is not likely viewed the same as in an adult mind.
Miller, too, allows that teens change. "Let's hope so!" he said. "All teenagers in all generations go through a stage of boundary testing ... and figuring out where the right ethical boundaries are," he told me. "At some level there's nothing new in that. On the other hand, the data is pretty compelling."
Coupled with other data that suggest today's teenagers, and the millennials before them, "tend to embrace ethical relativism, that even as they mature into adults, they will have cultivated habits and brains that are capable of rationalizing behavior that serves their interests, irrespective of traditional societal expectations or understandings of right and wrong," he said.
"I wouldn't overreact" to the survey," Miller said, "but I think to under-react and interpret it as natural youth boundary testing is naive too."
Unethical adults
Lastly, Miller worries not just about violence but that teens will carry their ethical relativism into adulthood. On that point he might be right: A lot of adults have lousy ethics. One need look no farther than the Wall Street Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff or the New England Patriots head football coach Bill Belichick's cheating last year for proof.
Bad ethics is not just the purview of the powerful, either. Nearly 20 percent of U.S. adults think cheating on taxes is morally acceptable or is not a moral issue, according to a Pew Research Center survey in 2006. About 10 percent think it's okay to cheat on a spouse.
Cheating is not the same as violence, of course, but if the issue is modern teen ethics, then adults who supposedly grew up in a better era are not necessarily a model to which today's teens ought to aspire
Tech - US gives green light for first commercial spaceport
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Federal Aviation Administration has given the green light for the world's first commercial spaceport, New Mexico authorities said Thursday.
The FAA granted Spaceport America a license for vertical and horizontal space launches following an environmental impact study, according to the New Mexico Space Authority (NMSA).
"These two governmental approvals are the next steps along the road to a fully operational commercial spaceport," said NMSA Executive Director Steven Landeene.
"We are on track to begin construction in the first quarter of 2009, and have our facility completed as quickly as possible."
The terminal and hangar facility for horizontal launches is planned for completion by late 2010.
NMSA hopes to sign a lease agreement later this month with Virgin Galactic, a branch of Virgin Atlantic owned by British airline magnate Richard Branson. The firm's SpaceShipTwo passenger craft will be the main attraction at the site.
The system plans to take passengers approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) into the sky. Virgin Galactic plans to welcome 500 passengers per year who will pay 200,000 dollars each for a suborbital flight lasting three to four minutes.
There have been several commercial launches from the site since April 2007, with more launches planned.
Spaceport America has also been working closely with aerospace firms Lockheed Martin, Rocket Racing Inc./Armadillo Aerospace, UP Aerospace, Microgravity Enterprises and Payload Specialties.
The Russian federal space agency currently offers the only orbital space tourism flights aboard the Soyuz spacecraft, which allows passengers to visit the International Space Station (ISS) for several days. The price for the trip recently increased from 20 million dollars to 35 million dollars.
The FAA granted Spaceport America a license for vertical and horizontal space launches following an environmental impact study, according to the New Mexico Space Authority (NMSA).
"These two governmental approvals are the next steps along the road to a fully operational commercial spaceport," said NMSA Executive Director Steven Landeene.
"We are on track to begin construction in the first quarter of 2009, and have our facility completed as quickly as possible."
The terminal and hangar facility for horizontal launches is planned for completion by late 2010.
NMSA hopes to sign a lease agreement later this month with Virgin Galactic, a branch of Virgin Atlantic owned by British airline magnate Richard Branson. The firm's SpaceShipTwo passenger craft will be the main attraction at the site.
The system plans to take passengers approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) into the sky. Virgin Galactic plans to welcome 500 passengers per year who will pay 200,000 dollars each for a suborbital flight lasting three to four minutes.
There have been several commercial launches from the site since April 2007, with more launches planned.
Spaceport America has also been working closely with aerospace firms Lockheed Martin, Rocket Racing Inc./Armadillo Aerospace, UP Aerospace, Microgravity Enterprises and Payload Specialties.
The Russian federal space agency currently offers the only orbital space tourism flights aboard the Soyuz spacecraft, which allows passengers to visit the International Space Station (ISS) for several days. The price for the trip recently increased from 20 million dollars to 35 million dollars.
Business - Video-Game Sales Remain Robust In November
Mark Long
The research firm NPD Group reports that U.S. retail video-game sales totaled $2.91 billion in November -- a 10 percent jump from one year earlier. Moreover, video-game sales grew 22 percent through the first 11 months of 2008 in comparison with the prior year.
Video-game software sales also grew 11 percent to $1.45 billion in November, and rose a whopping 31 percent to $8.21 billion in the year to date. The latest hard data confirms the results from an NPD Group survey released last month, in which consumers identified video games as the top product category in which they were least likely to make spending cutbacks this holiday season.
Top of the Charts
Earlier this autumn, 64 percent of the U.S. parents surveyed by Microsoft and Harris Interactive said they saw video games as a good way to devote more holiday time to an activity that the entire family could enjoy. Additionally, 60 percent of the respondents to another U.S.-based survey conducted by Microsoft in collaboration with Ipsos and StrategyOne said they anticipated spending the holiday season at home to save money.
For this reason, 81 percent of the parents surveyed said they were looking to buy gifts this year that would entertain everyone in the comfort of their living rooms. Nintendo agrees. "Shoppers are looking for gifts that can be enjoyed by the whole family," said Cammie Dunaway, an executive vice president at Nintendo of America.
According to NPD, the Xbox 360 releases Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War, topped the video-game charts in November with unit sales of 1.57 million and 1.41 million, respectively. Three games made for Nintendo consoles rounded out the top five best sellers: Wii Play (796,000 units), Wii Fit (697,000 units), and Mario Kart Wii (637,000 units). The best sales performers for Sony's consoles were Call of Duty: World at War and Resistance 2, which ranked at No. 6 and No. 9, respectively.
Building Momentum
Sony is hoping to make further inroads beginning this month by offering free downloads of PlayStation Home Beta -- a 3-D social-gaming community for the PS3 that enables users to create and customize their own unique avatars and interact with the virtual community in real time. "We are committed to providing PS3 users with exciting gaming experiences with PlayStation Home and, together with our partners and users, expand the new world of interactive entertainment as we move forward," said Kazuo Hirai, Sony CEO.
Nintendo intends to keep growing the popularity of its gaming platforms by unleashing a torrent of new releases in the first quarter of 2009, including the latest entry in its popular Pokémon series. "We're building on the momentum of a strong holiday season by offering new and experienced players an even greater library of game titles in 2009," Dunaway said.
Gaming-hardware sales also boomed in November, growing 10 percent to $1.21 billion in comparison with the year-earlier period, NPD said. Among the top three platforms, Wii led the pack with sales of 2.04 million, followed by 1.57 million for the Nintendo DS and 836,000 for Microsoft's Xbox 360. The combined sales of Sony's three PlayStation models reached the 1.05 million mark.
Though Xbox 360 sales lagged well behind Nintendo's console shipments in November, Microsoft said its sales on Black Friday -- the day after Thanksgiving -- delivered a modicum of holiday cheer. The software giant noted that its Xbox 360 console continues to enjoy the highest game-attach rate of any platform at 8.1 games per console.
The research firm NPD Group reports that U.S. retail video-game sales totaled $2.91 billion in November -- a 10 percent jump from one year earlier. Moreover, video-game sales grew 22 percent through the first 11 months of 2008 in comparison with the prior year.
Video-game software sales also grew 11 percent to $1.45 billion in November, and rose a whopping 31 percent to $8.21 billion in the year to date. The latest hard data confirms the results from an NPD Group survey released last month, in which consumers identified video games as the top product category in which they were least likely to make spending cutbacks this holiday season.
Top of the Charts
Earlier this autumn, 64 percent of the U.S. parents surveyed by Microsoft and Harris Interactive said they saw video games as a good way to devote more holiday time to an activity that the entire family could enjoy. Additionally, 60 percent of the respondents to another U.S.-based survey conducted by Microsoft in collaboration with Ipsos and StrategyOne said they anticipated spending the holiday season at home to save money.
For this reason, 81 percent of the parents surveyed said they were looking to buy gifts this year that would entertain everyone in the comfort of their living rooms. Nintendo agrees. "Shoppers are looking for gifts that can be enjoyed by the whole family," said Cammie Dunaway, an executive vice president at Nintendo of America.
According to NPD, the Xbox 360 releases Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War, topped the video-game charts in November with unit sales of 1.57 million and 1.41 million, respectively. Three games made for Nintendo consoles rounded out the top five best sellers: Wii Play (796,000 units), Wii Fit (697,000 units), and Mario Kart Wii (637,000 units). The best sales performers for Sony's consoles were Call of Duty: World at War and Resistance 2, which ranked at No. 6 and No. 9, respectively.
Building Momentum
Sony is hoping to make further inroads beginning this month by offering free downloads of PlayStation Home Beta -- a 3-D social-gaming community for the PS3 that enables users to create and customize their own unique avatars and interact with the virtual community in real time. "We are committed to providing PS3 users with exciting gaming experiences with PlayStation Home and, together with our partners and users, expand the new world of interactive entertainment as we move forward," said Kazuo Hirai, Sony CEO.
Nintendo intends to keep growing the popularity of its gaming platforms by unleashing a torrent of new releases in the first quarter of 2009, including the latest entry in its popular Pokémon series. "We're building on the momentum of a strong holiday season by offering new and experienced players an even greater library of game titles in 2009," Dunaway said.
Gaming-hardware sales also boomed in November, growing 10 percent to $1.21 billion in comparison with the year-earlier period, NPD said. Among the top three platforms, Wii led the pack with sales of 2.04 million, followed by 1.57 million for the Nintendo DS and 836,000 for Microsoft's Xbox 360. The combined sales of Sony's three PlayStation models reached the 1.05 million mark.
Though Xbox 360 sales lagged well behind Nintendo's console shipments in November, Microsoft said its sales on Black Friday -- the day after Thanksgiving -- delivered a modicum of holiday cheer. The software giant noted that its Xbox 360 console continues to enjoy the highest game-attach rate of any platform at 8.1 games per console.
Business - The Rise of the Four-Day Work Week?
Olga Kharif
Like many companies, Pella is looking to cut expenses because of the economic downturn. But instead of laying off more workers, the Iowa manufacturer of windows and doors is instituting a four-day workweek for about a third of its 3,900 employees. Chris Simpson, a senior vice-president at the company, acknowledges it's an unconventional move. But Pella believes the economy could turn around faster than most people expect, and it doesn't want to be caught short of experienced workers. "Our contention is, consumer confidence will rebound," says Simpson. "If there's a (government) stimulus package of some kind, we think people are going to respond."
A few employers are following Pella's lead in shortening the workweek. They include steel companies such as AK Steel (NYSE:AKS - News), the city of Atlanta, small newspapers, and hospitals. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employees who normally work full-time but now clock fewer than 35 hours a week because of poor business conditions has climbed 72%, to 2.57 million in November 2008, from 1.49 million in November 2007. "More companies are exploring alternatives to layoffs," says John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "If they can keep people on until the business turns around, the company would be in much better shape to ramp up quickly."
In Atlanta, Mayor Shirley Franklin is cutting the hours and pay of 4,600 employees by 10% because the city is facing a $50 million budget shortfall. Franklin says that if she were to lay off more workers instead of slashing hours, "you'd have to eliminate major functions of the government. It's not just jobs we've saved, it's services."
Many American tech companies are shutting down for a few extra days over the holidays. For the first time, PC maker Dell (NasdaqGS:DELL - News) is allowing employees to take up to five days without pay during the quarter ending in January. Some analysts believe such shutdowns in Silicon Valley will evolve into four-day workweeks. "Our contacts are saying (short weeks) will start in January," says Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research.
Most employees prefer a reduction in hours to being laid off. But workers say there are costs either way. Pella employee Connie Davis says she plans to cut back on certain groceries when the four-day workweek takes effect in January. "Like anyone who's counting the pennies, I will tighten my belt a little bit," she says.
With Peter Coy
Join a debate about whether paid sick days should be mandatory
Like many companies, Pella is looking to cut expenses because of the economic downturn. But instead of laying off more workers, the Iowa manufacturer of windows and doors is instituting a four-day workweek for about a third of its 3,900 employees. Chris Simpson, a senior vice-president at the company, acknowledges it's an unconventional move. But Pella believes the economy could turn around faster than most people expect, and it doesn't want to be caught short of experienced workers. "Our contention is, consumer confidence will rebound," says Simpson. "If there's a (government) stimulus package of some kind, we think people are going to respond."
A few employers are following Pella's lead in shortening the workweek. They include steel companies such as AK Steel (NYSE:AKS - News), the city of Atlanta, small newspapers, and hospitals. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employees who normally work full-time but now clock fewer than 35 hours a week because of poor business conditions has climbed 72%, to 2.57 million in November 2008, from 1.49 million in November 2007. "More companies are exploring alternatives to layoffs," says John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "If they can keep people on until the business turns around, the company would be in much better shape to ramp up quickly."
In Atlanta, Mayor Shirley Franklin is cutting the hours and pay of 4,600 employees by 10% because the city is facing a $50 million budget shortfall. Franklin says that if she were to lay off more workers instead of slashing hours, "you'd have to eliminate major functions of the government. It's not just jobs we've saved, it's services."
Many American tech companies are shutting down for a few extra days over the holidays. For the first time, PC maker Dell (NasdaqGS:DELL - News) is allowing employees to take up to five days without pay during the quarter ending in January. Some analysts believe such shutdowns in Silicon Valley will evolve into four-day workweeks. "Our contacts are saying (short weeks) will start in January," says Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research.
Most employees prefer a reduction in hours to being laid off. But workers say there are costs either way. Pella employee Connie Davis says she plans to cut back on certain groceries when the four-day workweek takes effect in January. "Like anyone who's counting the pennies, I will tighten my belt a little bit," she says.
With Peter Coy
Join a debate about whether paid sick days should be mandatory
Business - Retailers hope for crowds in final holiday push
Alexandria Sage
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Retailers prepared to open their doors early on Saturday in a final, frenzied push to save holiday sales, with the added disruption of a winter storm hitting the country's Midwest and Northeast.
Foul weather kept many shoppers close to home on Friday, with freezing rain and snow expected for several regions through the weekend.
The storm hits at the worst possible time for U.S. store chains, which are trying to salvage the critical holiday shopping season and lure recession-struck consumers with last-minute deals before Christmas next week.
Many shoppers have said they are giving fewer gifts and looking only for marked-down merchandise, grim news for retailers who may see their weakest holiday season since the early 1990s.
Stacy Maites stopped in the snow to look at the window displays at Saks Fifth Avenue's flagship New York store on Friday. She is worried about her job at a technology company and has whittled down her annual holiday party to 20 people.
"It's minimal and only when I can find stuff on sale," she said of her gift-buying this year.
The National Retail Federation predicted on Friday that two-thirds of Americans still had holiday shopping left to do, while 44.5 million consumers still had not even begun.
"With so much shopping left to do, the weekend before Christmas will be one of the most important periods of the year for retailers," said NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin.
Stores like Macy's Inc and J.C. Penney Co Inc were primed to greet shoppers starting at 6 a.m. after staying open until midnight on Friday.
"It's our last one day sale before Christmas" announced Macy's in a full-page ad that ran in many U.S. newspapers, accompanied by a $10 coupon. The department store chain even kept its doors open 24 hours at some East Coast locations.
Gap Inc's Old Navy chain advertised $6 deals on items from scarves to slippers, while Toys "R" Us said certain toys would be 50 percent off.
A MAD SCRAMBLE
"Super Saturday" -- the Saturday before Christmas that represents the final major day of holiday shopping -- usually ranks just behind "Black Friday" as the single-largest holiday sales day. Black Friday fell on November 28 this year, the day after U.S. Thanksgiving.
This year, Saturday could be busier than expected, if storm conditions ease up. More severe weather was forecast for Sunday.
"You'll see a mad scramble... in the New York region because it's basically the only day we have," said Scott Bernhardt, chief operating officer for weather tracking firm Planalytics. "Once you shovel out, go to the mall because another one is coming on Sunday."
Still, fewer shoppers in stores on Friday and Sunday could be a serious blow to store chains, who may be forced to further mark down merchandise. Online stores like Amazon.com Inc may benefit as consumers can shop from home and still have gifts delivered by Christmas.
The weekend before Christmas typically accounts for some 11.5 percent of holiday sales, according to ShopperTrak, which monitors shoppers at more than 50,000 retail locations.
Last year, Super Saturday totaled $8.7 billion in retail sales of everything from apparel to sporting goods and books, up 1 percent from the same day in 2006.
While most U.S. stores have seen months of dismal sales results, many are willing to sacrifice their profit margins by offering steep discounts just to make sure they will not be left with excess inventory come January.
(Additional reporting by Nicole Maestri in New York; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Retailers prepared to open their doors early on Saturday in a final, frenzied push to save holiday sales, with the added disruption of a winter storm hitting the country's Midwest and Northeast.
Foul weather kept many shoppers close to home on Friday, with freezing rain and snow expected for several regions through the weekend.
The storm hits at the worst possible time for U.S. store chains, which are trying to salvage the critical holiday shopping season and lure recession-struck consumers with last-minute deals before Christmas next week.
Many shoppers have said they are giving fewer gifts and looking only for marked-down merchandise, grim news for retailers who may see their weakest holiday season since the early 1990s.
Stacy Maites stopped in the snow to look at the window displays at Saks Fifth Avenue's flagship New York store on Friday. She is worried about her job at a technology company and has whittled down her annual holiday party to 20 people.
"It's minimal and only when I can find stuff on sale," she said of her gift-buying this year.
The National Retail Federation predicted on Friday that two-thirds of Americans still had holiday shopping left to do, while 44.5 million consumers still had not even begun.
"With so much shopping left to do, the weekend before Christmas will be one of the most important periods of the year for retailers," said NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin.
Stores like Macy's Inc and J.C. Penney Co Inc were primed to greet shoppers starting at 6 a.m. after staying open until midnight on Friday.
"It's our last one day sale before Christmas" announced Macy's in a full-page ad that ran in many U.S. newspapers, accompanied by a $10 coupon. The department store chain even kept its doors open 24 hours at some East Coast locations.
Gap Inc's Old Navy chain advertised $6 deals on items from scarves to slippers, while Toys "R" Us said certain toys would be 50 percent off.
A MAD SCRAMBLE
"Super Saturday" -- the Saturday before Christmas that represents the final major day of holiday shopping -- usually ranks just behind "Black Friday" as the single-largest holiday sales day. Black Friday fell on November 28 this year, the day after U.S. Thanksgiving.
This year, Saturday could be busier than expected, if storm conditions ease up. More severe weather was forecast for Sunday.
"You'll see a mad scramble... in the New York region because it's basically the only day we have," said Scott Bernhardt, chief operating officer for weather tracking firm Planalytics. "Once you shovel out, go to the mall because another one is coming on Sunday."
Still, fewer shoppers in stores on Friday and Sunday could be a serious blow to store chains, who may be forced to further mark down merchandise. Online stores like Amazon.com Inc may benefit as consumers can shop from home and still have gifts delivered by Christmas.
The weekend before Christmas typically accounts for some 11.5 percent of holiday sales, according to ShopperTrak, which monitors shoppers at more than 50,000 retail locations.
Last year, Super Saturday totaled $8.7 billion in retail sales of everything from apparel to sporting goods and books, up 1 percent from the same day in 2006.
While most U.S. stores have seen months of dismal sales results, many are willing to sacrifice their profit margins by offering steep discounts just to make sure they will not be left with excess inventory come January.
(Additional reporting by Nicole Maestri in New York; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Lifestyle - New Space toilet & A Door
Tariq Malik
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station hooked up their brand new space toilet this week, but it's missing one last touch: A simple door, for privacy.
The $19 million space commode's curtain-like door was left off intentionally pending the completion of other work on nearby equipment early next month. But mission managers may move up its installation to jump-start use of the orbital toilet.
"Today the toilet's just wide open, and so it's not in use just yet," said Kirk Shireman, NASA's deputy space station program manager, in a Thursday briefing. "Mechanically and fluid-wise, it's fully functional today."
The Russian-built toilet is the second commode to be installed aboard the space station. Astronauts delivered the new toilet to the station's U.S. segment last month during an extreme orbital makeover to prime the outpost to double its crew size up to six astronauts next year.
While the toilet is vital to the station's ability to support larger crews, it's also part of a new regenerative life support system that collects astronaut sweat, urine and wastewater so it can be recycled back into potable water for drinking, food preparation, bathing and oxygen generation.
Shireman said engineers are considering having the toilet's door installed to begin using the space commode and fully testing the life support system.
"It's probably just an hour or two to put that thing up and to take it down again," he said.
Plumbing lines to pipe urine from the bathroom to the recycling system, are already in place along with others to route recycled water to a new kitchen also delivered last month.
Samples of water recycled from urine stored in containers aboard the station were returned to Earth for analysis and have checked out fine in tests, Shireman said. More purity tests are required before the water can cleared for human consumption, it has been approved for other uses, he added.
"We've approved for the crew to use it for bathing and shampooing their hair, just not for consumption," Shireman said, adding that the water is also being used to create oxygen aboard the station. "And we expect that to begin in late February or early March."
Shireman said space station astronauts also installed the outpost's new sleeping chambers this week and are gearing up for a planned Monday spacewalk.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station hooked up their brand new space toilet this week, but it's missing one last touch: A simple door, for privacy.
The $19 million space commode's curtain-like door was left off intentionally pending the completion of other work on nearby equipment early next month. But mission managers may move up its installation to jump-start use of the orbital toilet.
"Today the toilet's just wide open, and so it's not in use just yet," said Kirk Shireman, NASA's deputy space station program manager, in a Thursday briefing. "Mechanically and fluid-wise, it's fully functional today."
The Russian-built toilet is the second commode to be installed aboard the space station. Astronauts delivered the new toilet to the station's U.S. segment last month during an extreme orbital makeover to prime the outpost to double its crew size up to six astronauts next year.
While the toilet is vital to the station's ability to support larger crews, it's also part of a new regenerative life support system that collects astronaut sweat, urine and wastewater so it can be recycled back into potable water for drinking, food preparation, bathing and oxygen generation.
Shireman said engineers are considering having the toilet's door installed to begin using the space commode and fully testing the life support system.
"It's probably just an hour or two to put that thing up and to take it down again," he said.
Plumbing lines to pipe urine from the bathroom to the recycling system, are already in place along with others to route recycled water to a new kitchen also delivered last month.
Samples of water recycled from urine stored in containers aboard the station were returned to Earth for analysis and have checked out fine in tests, Shireman said. More purity tests are required before the water can cleared for human consumption, it has been approved for other uses, he added.
"We've approved for the crew to use it for bathing and shampooing their hair, just not for consumption," Shireman said, adding that the water is also being used to create oxygen aboard the station. "And we expect that to begin in late February or early March."
Shireman said space station astronauts also installed the outpost's new sleeping chambers this week and are gearing up for a planned Monday spacewalk.
Tech - Google increases search share in November: comScore
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Internet search giant Google slightly increased its share of the US search engine market in November, online researcher comScore Inc. reported.
The Reston, Virginia company said Google sites led the US search market in November with 63.5 percent of the searches conducted, a gain of 0.4 percentage points from October.
The number of searches conducted on Yahoo! sites fell 0.1 percentage points to 20.4 percent, comScore said.
Searches on Microsoft sites fell 0.2 percentage points to 8.3 percent. They were down by the same amount at Ask Network, which notched up 4.0 percent of total searches.
AOL gained 0.1 percentage points for 3.8 percent of the search market last month.
ComScore said Americans made a total of 12.3 billion searches in November, a three-percent decline from October, which had 31 days as opposed to 30.
It said that YouTube, the Google-owned video-sharing site, received 2.79 billion search queries in November, up from 2.58 billion in October.
The Reston, Virginia company said Google sites led the US search market in November with 63.5 percent of the searches conducted, a gain of 0.4 percentage points from October.
The number of searches conducted on Yahoo! sites fell 0.1 percentage points to 20.4 percent, comScore said.
Searches on Microsoft sites fell 0.2 percentage points to 8.3 percent. They were down by the same amount at Ask Network, which notched up 4.0 percent of total searches.
AOL gained 0.1 percentage points for 3.8 percent of the search market last month.
ComScore said Americans made a total of 12.3 billion searches in November, a three-percent decline from October, which had 31 days as opposed to 30.
It said that YouTube, the Google-owned video-sharing site, received 2.79 billion search queries in November, up from 2.58 billion in October.
Entertainment - PETA Deems Oprah a Friend of the Animals
Natalie Finn
Los Angeles (E! Online) – Turns out the one person who hasn't ruffled PETA's feathers this year is Oprah Winfrey.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has named the multimedia queen its 2008 Person of the Year for the efforts she has made through her talk show and other arenas "to help the less fortunate, including animals," the organization said in a statement.
Winfrey has "used her powerful voice to defend those without one," added PETA president Ingrid Newkirk.
Over the past year, Winfrey has done shows about puppy mills, the treatment of chickens and other animals living on factory farms, and the conditions that pigs and veal calves are subjected to before being put to slaughter.
In choosing Winfrey, PETA also cited the ultra-emotional reaction the TV icon had to the death of her cockerspaniel, Sophie, in March and the week that she went vegan at the behest of one of her guests.
Los Angeles (E! Online) – Turns out the one person who hasn't ruffled PETA's feathers this year is Oprah Winfrey.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has named the multimedia queen its 2008 Person of the Year for the efforts she has made through her talk show and other arenas "to help the less fortunate, including animals," the organization said in a statement.
Winfrey has "used her powerful voice to defend those without one," added PETA president Ingrid Newkirk.
Over the past year, Winfrey has done shows about puppy mills, the treatment of chickens and other animals living on factory farms, and the conditions that pigs and veal calves are subjected to before being put to slaughter.
In choosing Winfrey, PETA also cited the ultra-emotional reaction the TV icon had to the death of her cockerspaniel, Sophie, in March and the week that she went vegan at the behest of one of her guests.
Entertainment - Lisa Rinna Decides to Get Naked
Natalie Finn
Los Angeles (E! Online) – Not too shy to bare her bikini-ready bod, Lisa Rinna is apparently only gearing up for an even more revealing day in the sun.
The TV Guide Network correspondent and former Dancing With the Stars contestant has more or less confirmed rumors—well, she's certainly not doing anything to squelch them—that she's planning to pose nude for Playboy.
"I'm the worst liar on the planet, I can't lie, so...I think that could be a yes," she told Extra recently when asked about the possibility.
Not that this will be a new experience for the 45-year-old mother of two.
Rinna also took it all off for the House that Hef Built when she was Demi-on-the-cover-of-Vanity-Fair-pregnant with her and Harry Hamlin's now 10-year-old daughter, Delilah Belle, in 1998.
Los Angeles (E! Online) – Not too shy to bare her bikini-ready bod, Lisa Rinna is apparently only gearing up for an even more revealing day in the sun.
The TV Guide Network correspondent and former Dancing With the Stars contestant has more or less confirmed rumors—well, she's certainly not doing anything to squelch them—that she's planning to pose nude for Playboy.
"I'm the worst liar on the planet, I can't lie, so...I think that could be a yes," she told Extra recently when asked about the possibility.
Not that this will be a new experience for the 45-year-old mother of two.
Rinna also took it all off for the House that Hef Built when she was Demi-on-the-cover-of-Vanity-Fair-pregnant with her and Harry Hamlin's now 10-year-old daughter, Delilah Belle, in 1998.
Entertainment - New U2 on the Horizon
Los Angeles (E! Online) – This Horizon is drawing near.
U2 today officially confirmed the title (No Line on the Horizon) and release date (March 3) for the band's hugely anticipated 12th studio album.
Bono and the boys began writing and recording the new disc, the follow-up to 2005's Grammy-winning How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, in Fez, Morocco. Additional sessions took place in New York, Dublin and London.
According to Billboard, the Hall of Fame quartet had initially expected to unleash Horizon this month but decided on the extra time to polish the tracks and complete two last-minute new songs.
U2 initially hired studio wiz Rick Rubin to oversee the recording, but they eventually replaced him with usual suspects Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, along with Steve Lillywhite. The threesome had variously teamed with the band for such classics as War, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby! and All That You Can't Leave Behind and wound up producing all the material on the new disc.
In an interview last month, The Edge told Mojo the new material "doesn't sound like anything we've done before, and it doesn't really sound like anything that's happening at the moment."
U2 today officially confirmed the title (No Line on the Horizon) and release date (March 3) for the band's hugely anticipated 12th studio album.
Bono and the boys began writing and recording the new disc, the follow-up to 2005's Grammy-winning How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, in Fez, Morocco. Additional sessions took place in New York, Dublin and London.
According to Billboard, the Hall of Fame quartet had initially expected to unleash Horizon this month but decided on the extra time to polish the tracks and complete two last-minute new songs.
U2 initially hired studio wiz Rick Rubin to oversee the recording, but they eventually replaced him with usual suspects Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, along with Steve Lillywhite. The threesome had variously teamed with the band for such classics as War, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby! and All That You Can't Leave Behind and wound up producing all the material on the new disc.
In an interview last month, The Edge told Mojo the new material "doesn't sound like anything we've done before, and it doesn't really sound like anything that's happening at the moment."
World - UK:London's red buses to go green in 2011
LONDON (AFP) – A new environmentally-friendly version of London's iconic red double-decker bus will be introduced in the British capital from 2011, officials said Friday.
The new Routemaster buses could also feature the sleek lines of an Aston Martin, after the sports car maker jointly won a competition to design them along with top architecture firm Foster and Partners.
The Aston Martin-Fosters proposal will go forward with a design by a British bus maker, Capoco, as the basis for the final shape of the new generation of the world-famous bus.
Routemasters, featuring open rear platforms and a spiral staircase, were taken out of service at the end of 2005, replaced by elongated "bendy buses" as well as a new generation of driver-only double-deckers.
Routemasters are still in operation, albeit only on popular tourist routes in London city centre.
As part of his election campaign earlier this year, new London Mayor Boris Johnson promised to bring back the Routemaster in some form.
The Aston Martin-Foster design features a zero-emissions double-decker that remains highly manoeuvrable, with solar panels built into the glass roof, warm lighting and wooden floors while remaining accessible for disable passengers.
Capoco's proposed bus has a low flat floor to allow passengers to get on and off easily, with a Routemaster-esque front engine, an open rear platform and will also be low emission.
Transport for London said it expected to award a contract for the development and manufacture of the first new bus by the end of 2009, with the vehicles expected to hit the British capital's streets by 2011.
Overall, more than 700 entries were submitted for the competition, with children actively encouraged to take part and given special prizes for the best entries in various age groups.
"When I launched the competition, I asked for stylish and imaginative designs which would resonate with Londoners," Johnson said.
"We have had a phenomenal response, with ideas submitted from around the globe, and we now have, in our joint winners, two stunning designs that allow us to go forward and produce a truly iconic bus fit for 21st century London.
"I know that, like me, Londoners will be waiting eagerly to see how these ideas evolve into the final design that will appear on our roads."
The new Routemaster buses could also feature the sleek lines of an Aston Martin, after the sports car maker jointly won a competition to design them along with top architecture firm Foster and Partners.
The Aston Martin-Fosters proposal will go forward with a design by a British bus maker, Capoco, as the basis for the final shape of the new generation of the world-famous bus.
Routemasters, featuring open rear platforms and a spiral staircase, were taken out of service at the end of 2005, replaced by elongated "bendy buses" as well as a new generation of driver-only double-deckers.
Routemasters are still in operation, albeit only on popular tourist routes in London city centre.
As part of his election campaign earlier this year, new London Mayor Boris Johnson promised to bring back the Routemaster in some form.
The Aston Martin-Foster design features a zero-emissions double-decker that remains highly manoeuvrable, with solar panels built into the glass roof, warm lighting and wooden floors while remaining accessible for disable passengers.
Capoco's proposed bus has a low flat floor to allow passengers to get on and off easily, with a Routemaster-esque front engine, an open rear platform and will also be low emission.
Transport for London said it expected to award a contract for the development and manufacture of the first new bus by the end of 2009, with the vehicles expected to hit the British capital's streets by 2011.
Overall, more than 700 entries were submitted for the competition, with children actively encouraged to take part and given special prizes for the best entries in various age groups.
"When I launched the competition, I asked for stylish and imaginative designs which would resonate with Londoners," Johnson said.
"We have had a phenomenal response, with ideas submitted from around the globe, and we now have, in our joint winners, two stunning designs that allow us to go forward and produce a truly iconic bus fit for 21st century London.
"I know that, like me, Londoners will be waiting eagerly to see how these ideas evolve into the final design that will appear on our roads."
Entertainment - Music industry ends mass piracy lawsuits
Alex Dobuzinskis
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Recording Industry Association of America said on Friday it had abandoned mass lawsuits against Internet users who steal music, and instead would work with Internet service providers to discourage piracy.
The RIAA, which represents major U.S. record labels, will have the ISPs send warning notices to users who illegally download music files.
Since 2003, the music industry has sued about 35,000 Internet users for music piracy.
"We think this is going to be a different form of stick, but we absolutely think this will be a meaningful alternative approach that will have a significant impact," said Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA.
Other measures will be taken against Internet users who ignore their first warning notice to stop illegally downloading music, and if those users continue they could find their Internet connections disconnected, the RIAA said.
The RIAA declined to say which ISPs had signed on for the initiative, and it said it reserved the right to sue Internet users who ignored the warning notices.
The RIAA said it would pursue lawsuits already pending against Internet users accused of illegal downloads.
The RIAA's change in strategy comes as Internet users have become increasingly aware that downloading pirated songs is illegal.
The group Arts+Labs, a collaborative between technology companies and creative artists, said in a statement that it was "encouraged by this new effort by the record companies."
Major record labels include Warner Music Group Corp, Universal Music Group owned by Vivendi SA, EMI and Sony Music Entertainment, part of Sony Corp.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Recording Industry Association of America said on Friday it had abandoned mass lawsuits against Internet users who steal music, and instead would work with Internet service providers to discourage piracy.
The RIAA, which represents major U.S. record labels, will have the ISPs send warning notices to users who illegally download music files.
Since 2003, the music industry has sued about 35,000 Internet users for music piracy.
"We think this is going to be a different form of stick, but we absolutely think this will be a meaningful alternative approach that will have a significant impact," said Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA.
Other measures will be taken against Internet users who ignore their first warning notice to stop illegally downloading music, and if those users continue they could find their Internet connections disconnected, the RIAA said.
The RIAA declined to say which ISPs had signed on for the initiative, and it said it reserved the right to sue Internet users who ignored the warning notices.
The RIAA said it would pursue lawsuits already pending against Internet users accused of illegal downloads.
The RIAA's change in strategy comes as Internet users have become increasingly aware that downloading pirated songs is illegal.
The group Arts+Labs, a collaborative between technology companies and creative artists, said in a statement that it was "encouraged by this new effort by the record companies."
Major record labels include Warner Music Group Corp, Universal Music Group owned by Vivendi SA, EMI and Sony Music Entertainment, part of Sony Corp.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
Entertainment - Web site lets fans sing with the King
JOHN GEROME
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – So you fancy yourself a singer, eh ... alone, in your car, with the windows up, when no one's looking.
Well, now you can test your pipes against Martina McBride and Elvis Presley in private, and if you like what you hear, you can share them with your friends via email.
As a promotion for "Elvis Presley Christmas Duets" album, Sony BMG Music Entertainment has created a Web site that allows you to record "Blue Christmas" as a duet with Presley, singing McBride's part from the album.
The site, http://www.singwiththeking.com, provides a phone number and access code so you can belt out your lines over the phone. If you're pleased with the recording, you can send it in a Christmas ecard.
Or, if you discover you sound more like Alvin and the Chipmunks than Presley and McBride, you can send the album version of the song instead.
The whole thing is free.
"Someone in our digital area came up with the concept," said JJ Rosen, executive vice president of Sony BMG Music Entertainment's Commercial Music Group. "It fits the duets concept of the album so well."
Because the campaign leans heavily on technology, Rosen said it brings Presley and his music to a younger generation. "We're always trying to keep the Elvis brand alive."
The site launched Dec. 5 and has drawn 30,000 people from nine countries. It's scheduled to end sometime in January.
The promotion has been successful enough that Sony plans a similar one for Mariah Carey's upcoming release "The Ballads" for Valentine's Day.
Given Carey's vocal range, it could take some serious chops to keep up.
"Dreamlover" anyone?
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – So you fancy yourself a singer, eh ... alone, in your car, with the windows up, when no one's looking.
Well, now you can test your pipes against Martina McBride and Elvis Presley in private, and if you like what you hear, you can share them with your friends via email.
As a promotion for "Elvis Presley Christmas Duets" album, Sony BMG Music Entertainment has created a Web site that allows you to record "Blue Christmas" as a duet with Presley, singing McBride's part from the album.
The site, http://www.singwiththeking.com, provides a phone number and access code so you can belt out your lines over the phone. If you're pleased with the recording, you can send it in a Christmas ecard.
Or, if you discover you sound more like Alvin and the Chipmunks than Presley and McBride, you can send the album version of the song instead.
The whole thing is free.
"Someone in our digital area came up with the concept," said JJ Rosen, executive vice president of Sony BMG Music Entertainment's Commercial Music Group. "It fits the duets concept of the album so well."
Because the campaign leans heavily on technology, Rosen said it brings Presley and his music to a younger generation. "We're always trying to keep the Elvis brand alive."
The site launched Dec. 5 and has drawn 30,000 people from nine countries. It's scheduled to end sometime in January.
The promotion has been successful enough that Sony plans a similar one for Mariah Carey's upcoming release "The Ballads" for Valentine's Day.
Given Carey's vocal range, it could take some serious chops to keep up.
"Dreamlover" anyone?
India - Father of India's EMI culture says goodbye
Often credited as the person who brought scale to Indian retail banking, KV Kamath, through ICICI Bank, has changed the way Indians bank. Kamath took retail lending to the doorsteps of the Indian household, leading to a boom in demand for consumer durables, realty and automobiles.
He could well be the father of India's EMI culture. At a time when state run banks were very conservative and strict in their lending practices, Kamath saw and exploited the opportunity of providing easy access to loans.
While branding the bank and entering new segments, Kamath, within three years of its entry into the retail finance, turned ICICI Bank into a market leader in retail credit in 2003. His strongest ally in this transformation from a financial institution to a bank: technology.
Technology has been ICICI Bank's biggest growth and profits lever, through which Kamath introduced internet banking to the country and expanded the concept of automated teller machine (ATM) and tele-banking. The bank also has firsts in 100 per cent core banking solution at all its branches and also to the 8 to 8 banking concept (8AM to 8 PM).
Universal banking was Kamath's other major tool to expand beyond banking, as it moved into asset management, brokerage and insurance businesses, once again, becoming one of the leading players there. Through ICICI Securities, Kamath brought stock trading to the individual's personal computer, forcing many broking firms to follow.
Kamath also focused on expanding the bank's wings globally. The journey began in 2003, when the bank opened its representative offices in Singaore, Dubai, China, UK and Canada.
Since then, it has grown and the bank as of today is the leader in money remittance from abroad. With 29 years at ICICI Bank behind him, a dozen of them at the helm, this IIM Ahmedabad graduate was conferred with a trail of awards including the Padma Bhushan (one of the highest civilian honours in the country) in 2008 and Businessman of the Year by Forbes Asia in the previous year.
But along with reaching this leadership across all segments of finance came complaints, with the bank constantly in the news for customer harassment, leading to the courts fining the company repeatedly.
He could well be the father of India's EMI culture. At a time when state run banks were very conservative and strict in their lending practices, Kamath saw and exploited the opportunity of providing easy access to loans.
While branding the bank and entering new segments, Kamath, within three years of its entry into the retail finance, turned ICICI Bank into a market leader in retail credit in 2003. His strongest ally in this transformation from a financial institution to a bank: technology.
Technology has been ICICI Bank's biggest growth and profits lever, through which Kamath introduced internet banking to the country and expanded the concept of automated teller machine (ATM) and tele-banking. The bank also has firsts in 100 per cent core banking solution at all its branches and also to the 8 to 8 banking concept (8AM to 8 PM).
Universal banking was Kamath's other major tool to expand beyond banking, as it moved into asset management, brokerage and insurance businesses, once again, becoming one of the leading players there. Through ICICI Securities, Kamath brought stock trading to the individual's personal computer, forcing many broking firms to follow.
Kamath also focused on expanding the bank's wings globally. The journey began in 2003, when the bank opened its representative offices in Singaore, Dubai, China, UK and Canada.
Since then, it has grown and the bank as of today is the leader in money remittance from abroad. With 29 years at ICICI Bank behind him, a dozen of them at the helm, this IIM Ahmedabad graduate was conferred with a trail of awards including the Padma Bhushan (one of the highest civilian honours in the country) in 2008 and Businessman of the Year by Forbes Asia in the previous year.
But along with reaching this leadership across all segments of finance came complaints, with the bank constantly in the news for customer harassment, leading to the courts fining the company repeatedly.
Business - Bush throws lifeline to U.S. automakers
President George W. Bush bailed out U.S. automakers on Friday with $17.4 billion in emergency loans as he sought to stave off a collapse that would have cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Bush, seeking to bolster his legacy and bucking some fellow Republicans who would prefer the car industry to deal with its problems without government aid, said it would be irresponsible in a time of economic crisis to let carmakers die.
The government will offer up to $17.4 billion in loans to the U.S. automakers, reeling from a slump in consumer demand, and expects General Motors and Chrysler LLC to access the money immediately. The White House said the loan agreements had been signed.
Ford Motor Co , the other firm in Detroit's storied Big Three, said its liquidity was adequate for now and it did not need a loan at this point.
"If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers," Bush said, warning that to do nothing would deepen and prolong the U.S. recession.
U.S. stocks rose on the news of the lifeline to the sector, with GM shares jumping 10.9 percent.
The White House moved on its own after Republicans in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress blocked a deal last week. That plan followed weeks of negotiations that included desperate pleas on Capitol Hill from the auto chiefs.
Some $13.4 billion of the total package will be made available in December and January from a $700 billion Wall Street bailout fund originally designed to rescue struggling financial institutions.
Bush attached a string of conditions to the three-year loans and set a deadline of March 31 for the companies to prove they can restructure enough to ensure their survival or have the loans called back.
But the White House opted against a "car czar" proposal that was a cornerstone of the failed bailout efforts in Congress, and handed oversight responsibility to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson instead.
"We don't think that's something that we should impose ... just for 31 days when the next administration may or may not have a different view about how they want to handle it," deputy White House chief of staff Joel Kaplan said.
Democratic President-elect Barack Obama, who takes over from Bush on Jan. 20 and will inherit the handling of the deal, welcomed the loan move as a necessary step. But he said he wanted to make sure workers did not bear the brunt of the restructuring.
"My top priority in this administration is to create 2.5 million new jobs and I want some of those jobs to be in the auto industry," Obama said at a news conference.
Obama has been calling for short-term loans to the sector based on steps toward long-term viability.
LABOR TERMS
Other Democrats and the main auto labor union assailed the deal as unfair, saying workers were going to have to concede too much.
One provision in the loan terms on worker pay brought protests from the United Auto Workers union, and then a change in wording by the U.S. Treasury. The Treasury altered the wording of the terms for automakers to seek reductions in wages and benefits to levels "competitive with" Japanese rivals.
Under wording released earlier in the day, the Treasury said it would require reductions to levels "equal to" average compensation paid per hour and employee by Toyota Motor Corp, Nissan Motor Co and Honda Motor Corp in the United States.
The change was described as a correction of a grammatical error by a Treasury spokeswoman.
GM CEO Rick Wagoner said the company would now focus on fully implementing its restructuring plan and was confident of meeting the government's requirements.
Chrysler, widely seen as the weakest of the Big Three, said concessions would happen quickly and it would continue to undertake "significant cost reductions."
Private equity firm Cerberus said in a statement it would use the first $2 billion of proceeds from Chrysler's auto financing arm, Chrysler Financial, to backstop the government loan allocated to its struggling Chrysler car unit.
Ford, while not seeking an immediate loan under the program, has said it would like a line of credit from the government only to be used if its finances worsen significantly in 2009.
Analysts noted the automakers' woes were far from over.
"It's a lifeline, but it doesn't get them completely out of the woods. It takes them (GM and Chrysler) forward until March. Basically the next administration has to deal with it." said Erich Merkle, an analyst with Crowe Horwath in Michigan.
DIRE PICTURE
Some Republicans opposed to bailing out Detroit were dismayed at the loan package.
"I find it unacceptable that we would leave the American taxpayer with a tab of tens of billions of dollars while failing to receive any serious concessions from the industry," said Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who lost the presidential election to Obama on Nov. 4.
The White House presented a dire picture if it did not act, saying that if the auto industry were to collapse, it could reduce U.S. economic growth by more than 1 percent, put about 1.1 million workers out of jobs and cost some $13 billion in new unemployment claims.
Underscoring the damage already done, auto parts maker Federal Mogul Corp said on Friday it was cutting 4,600 jobs.
The loan conditions included limits on executive compensation. Auto companies must pay back all their loans to the government and show their firms can earn a profit and achieve a positive net worth. The automakers would also have to provide warrants for nonvoting stock.
WALL ST BAILOUT FUNDS
Both GM and Chrysler have said a bankruptcy filing is not an option they would chose because of the risk it would drive more consumers away from their brands. Both have idled plants and laid off thousands of workers across North America.
A bankruptcy filing by one company could topple suppliers and endanger the remaining two companies because of the overlap in their key parts suppliers.
The Treasury said the move to help the automakers had effectively exhausted the initial $350 billion of the Wall Street bailout funds approved by Congress and that it now needed to access the rest of the $700 billion.
The remaining $4 billion in autos aid is contingent on the administration seeking the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, an administration official said.
The loans would have an interest rate of at least 5 percent but could rise to 10 percent if the carmakers default, officials said.
In a ripple from the U.S. auto slump, Mexican conglomerate Alfa said on Friday it was temporarily halting production at its nine auto parts plants in Mexico that supply U.S. carmakers.
No automakers have been spared in the global sales slump.
Japan's Toyota Motor Corp could report its first annual parent-only operating loss in 71 years in the year to end-March, and may issue a profit warning at a scheduled year-end news conference on Monday, Japanese media reported.
Toyota, which declined to comment on the reports, last saw an operating loss in its first year of operation in 1937/38.
Japan's carmakers are also feeling the pinch from a strong yen.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was set to announce an aid package for his country's auto industry on Saturday. That aid could amount to several billion dollars.
(Additional reporting by U.S. autos team and Tokyo bureau)
Bush, seeking to bolster his legacy and bucking some fellow Republicans who would prefer the car industry to deal with its problems without government aid, said it would be irresponsible in a time of economic crisis to let carmakers die.
The government will offer up to $17.4 billion in loans to the U.S. automakers, reeling from a slump in consumer demand, and expects General Motors and Chrysler LLC to access the money immediately. The White House said the loan agreements had been signed.
Ford Motor Co , the other firm in Detroit's storied Big Three, said its liquidity was adequate for now and it did not need a loan at this point.
"If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers," Bush said, warning that to do nothing would deepen and prolong the U.S. recession.
U.S. stocks rose on the news of the lifeline to the sector, with GM shares jumping 10.9 percent.
The White House moved on its own after Republicans in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress blocked a deal last week. That plan followed weeks of negotiations that included desperate pleas on Capitol Hill from the auto chiefs.
Some $13.4 billion of the total package will be made available in December and January from a $700 billion Wall Street bailout fund originally designed to rescue struggling financial institutions.
Bush attached a string of conditions to the three-year loans and set a deadline of March 31 for the companies to prove they can restructure enough to ensure their survival or have the loans called back.
But the White House opted against a "car czar" proposal that was a cornerstone of the failed bailout efforts in Congress, and handed oversight responsibility to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson instead.
"We don't think that's something that we should impose ... just for 31 days when the next administration may or may not have a different view about how they want to handle it," deputy White House chief of staff Joel Kaplan said.
Democratic President-elect Barack Obama, who takes over from Bush on Jan. 20 and will inherit the handling of the deal, welcomed the loan move as a necessary step. But he said he wanted to make sure workers did not bear the brunt of the restructuring.
"My top priority in this administration is to create 2.5 million new jobs and I want some of those jobs to be in the auto industry," Obama said at a news conference.
Obama has been calling for short-term loans to the sector based on steps toward long-term viability.
LABOR TERMS
Other Democrats and the main auto labor union assailed the deal as unfair, saying workers were going to have to concede too much.
One provision in the loan terms on worker pay brought protests from the United Auto Workers union, and then a change in wording by the U.S. Treasury. The Treasury altered the wording of the terms for automakers to seek reductions in wages and benefits to levels "competitive with" Japanese rivals.
Under wording released earlier in the day, the Treasury said it would require reductions to levels "equal to" average compensation paid per hour and employee by Toyota Motor Corp, Nissan Motor Co and Honda Motor Corp in the United States.
The change was described as a correction of a grammatical error by a Treasury spokeswoman.
GM CEO Rick Wagoner said the company would now focus on fully implementing its restructuring plan and was confident of meeting the government's requirements.
Chrysler, widely seen as the weakest of the Big Three, said concessions would happen quickly and it would continue to undertake "significant cost reductions."
Private equity firm Cerberus said in a statement it would use the first $2 billion of proceeds from Chrysler's auto financing arm, Chrysler Financial, to backstop the government loan allocated to its struggling Chrysler car unit.
Ford, while not seeking an immediate loan under the program, has said it would like a line of credit from the government only to be used if its finances worsen significantly in 2009.
Analysts noted the automakers' woes were far from over.
"It's a lifeline, but it doesn't get them completely out of the woods. It takes them (GM and Chrysler) forward until March. Basically the next administration has to deal with it." said Erich Merkle, an analyst with Crowe Horwath in Michigan.
DIRE PICTURE
Some Republicans opposed to bailing out Detroit were dismayed at the loan package.
"I find it unacceptable that we would leave the American taxpayer with a tab of tens of billions of dollars while failing to receive any serious concessions from the industry," said Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who lost the presidential election to Obama on Nov. 4.
The White House presented a dire picture if it did not act, saying that if the auto industry were to collapse, it could reduce U.S. economic growth by more than 1 percent, put about 1.1 million workers out of jobs and cost some $13 billion in new unemployment claims.
Underscoring the damage already done, auto parts maker Federal Mogul Corp said on Friday it was cutting 4,600 jobs.
The loan conditions included limits on executive compensation. Auto companies must pay back all their loans to the government and show their firms can earn a profit and achieve a positive net worth. The automakers would also have to provide warrants for nonvoting stock.
WALL ST BAILOUT FUNDS
Both GM and Chrysler have said a bankruptcy filing is not an option they would chose because of the risk it would drive more consumers away from their brands. Both have idled plants and laid off thousands of workers across North America.
A bankruptcy filing by one company could topple suppliers and endanger the remaining two companies because of the overlap in their key parts suppliers.
The Treasury said the move to help the automakers had effectively exhausted the initial $350 billion of the Wall Street bailout funds approved by Congress and that it now needed to access the rest of the $700 billion.
The remaining $4 billion in autos aid is contingent on the administration seeking the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, an administration official said.
The loans would have an interest rate of at least 5 percent but could rise to 10 percent if the carmakers default, officials said.
In a ripple from the U.S. auto slump, Mexican conglomerate Alfa said on Friday it was temporarily halting production at its nine auto parts plants in Mexico that supply U.S. carmakers.
No automakers have been spared in the global sales slump.
Japan's Toyota Motor Corp could report its first annual parent-only operating loss in 71 years in the year to end-March, and may issue a profit warning at a scheduled year-end news conference on Monday, Japanese media reported.
Toyota, which declined to comment on the reports, last saw an operating loss in its first year of operation in 1937/38.
Japan's carmakers are also feeling the pinch from a strong yen.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was set to announce an aid package for his country's auto industry on Saturday. That aid could amount to several billion dollars.
(Additional reporting by U.S. autos team and Tokyo bureau)
Business - GourmetCITY awarded "Most Innovative New Concept" in global competition
Mumbai, Dec 18 (ANI/Business Wire India): GourmetCITY, the luxury, food and grocery shopping format from HyperCITY Retail (India) Ltd has been on a winning streak since its launch in September 2008.
The one-of-its kind store has been awarded the "Most Innovative New Concept - Hypermarket and Superstore" at the Planet Retail Innovation Awards 2008, beating US based Walmart's new upscale super-store in Toronto into second place. This award comes close on the heels of GourmetCITY also winning the 'Debutant Retailer of the Year' at the STAR Retailer Awards, held in New Delhi last month.
Speaking on the occasion, HyperCITY's Business Head for Food and Grocery, Ashutosh Chakradeo said: "We are humbled by the international recognition GourmetCITY has received over the last few months. The awards symbolize the successful effort that has been put into the making of another truly world class retail offer from HyperCITY Retail. GourmetCITY provides an epicurean adventure to those looking to experiment with food from around the world."
GourmetCITY has all one needs to make a memorable meal. It is the single destination offering an exotic range of premium products across food and beverages, bakery and confectionery products sourced from around the world. It also provides multiple experience counters ranging from a juice bar, deli counter, olive bar, salad counter, tea and coffee bars, seafood and sushi bar, fresh gourmet meals-to-go, handmade chocolates, to name a few.
All those looking for a Gastronomic experience need to look no further. GourmetCITY is the ultimate stop to 'Discover a world of food'. (ANI)
The one-of-its kind store has been awarded the "Most Innovative New Concept - Hypermarket and Superstore" at the Planet Retail Innovation Awards 2008, beating US based Walmart's new upscale super-store in Toronto into second place. This award comes close on the heels of GourmetCITY also winning the 'Debutant Retailer of the Year' at the STAR Retailer Awards, held in New Delhi last month.
Speaking on the occasion, HyperCITY's Business Head for Food and Grocery, Ashutosh Chakradeo said: "We are humbled by the international recognition GourmetCITY has received over the last few months. The awards symbolize the successful effort that has been put into the making of another truly world class retail offer from HyperCITY Retail. GourmetCITY provides an epicurean adventure to those looking to experiment with food from around the world."
GourmetCITY has all one needs to make a memorable meal. It is the single destination offering an exotic range of premium products across food and beverages, bakery and confectionery products sourced from around the world. It also provides multiple experience counters ranging from a juice bar, deli counter, olive bar, salad counter, tea and coffee bars, seafood and sushi bar, fresh gourmet meals-to-go, handmade chocolates, to name a few.
All those looking for a Gastronomic experience need to look no further. GourmetCITY is the ultimate stop to 'Discover a world of food'. (ANI)
Entertainment - Bollywood's year of 'wreckoning'
Mumbai, Dec 20 (IANS) Big banners flopped, the global meltdown spelt a cash crunch, the Mumbai terror attack kept audiences away for a while and even the small-budget wonders weren't that wonderful. Bollywood, a part of India's Rs.513 billion ($10.8 billion) entertainment and media industry, tried very hard to rock on in 2008 but had very little to cheer about.
About 125 films hit the screens this year, but except for 'Race', 'Jannat' and 'Rock On', most movies bombed, especially the big-budget, mega starrer ones.
That's not surprising. The ratio of success and failure in Bollywood has for the past many years been 5/6:100 - that is, of 100 movies released in a given year only five or six manage to hit the jackpot.
The year began with the lavish period film 'Jodhaa-Akbar', which had big stars like Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai. Though it accounted for the major business in the first quarter of this year, the Rs.450-million movie was a costly production and it took a long time for UTV to recover the cost.
But Abbas-Mustan's thriller 'Race' and Kunal Deshmukh's film about match fixing, 'Jannat', were declared genuine hits.
Later in the year, director Farhan Akhtar's acting debut, 'Rock On', broke the dry spell. The film not only redefined the parameters of mainstream Hindi cinema, it also brought some respite to the box office - but only in metros.
Much of the year saw the industry suffer a crippling blow with big films like 'Sarkar 2', 'Drona', 'Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic', 'Tashan', 'Krazzy 4' and 'Love Story 2050' falling flat at the box office.
Apart from flops, the industry was hit by the global meltdown and skyrocketing star prices.
Notwithstanding recession that led to cost-cutting becoming the buzzword of the world's biggest film factory, stars continued to charge hefty fees for a movie. Shah Rukh Khan, for instance, charged Rs.150 million plus percentage of profits, while Saif Ali Khan demanded Rs.200 million.
Imran Khan, who was the discovery of the year after 'Jaane Tu....Ya Jaane Na', confessed he was being paid an 'obscene' amount of money to appear at private functions. His second film 'Kidnap' tanked. But there was no rethink on star prices, not even when one of the biggest hits of the year 'Singh Is Kinng' failed to rake in the moolah for distributors and exhibitors.
Distributors said the film was so overpriced on the table that no amount of profits could bring back the investments.
By the end of the year, when 26/11 had served a numbing blow to the entertainment industry, stars were still charging many times the amount they deserved.
Akshay Kumar was paid a hefty amount just to lend his voice and presence to a dubbed Korean animation film called 'Jumbo'.
Does that make any business sense?
Salman Khan had three major flops - 'God Tussi Great Ho', 'Hello' and 'Yuvvraaj'. He was still paid what rock stars generally get in their prime, and not just for taking off their shirt.
The year also witnessed skin show from male actors - Zayed Khan and Vivek Oberoi did it in 'Mission Istaanbul', but it was John Abraham who made beefcake a fashion statement after the successful 'Dostana' where he flaunted his body generously.
Also, myths were being broken in 2008.
It was said female-oriented films don't do well. And yet 'Jodhaa Akbar' and 'Fashion' did good business. Costume dramas and dramas about costumes, they said, didn't work. So why did 'Jodhaa-Akbar' and 'Fashion' click?
The box office failure of small budget films like 'Sorry Bhai!', 'Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye', 'Maharathi' and 'Dil Kabaddi' has broken another myth that small is successful.
It was also the year of terrorism.
Filmmakers of all ilk and hue - from Neeraj Pandey's 'Wednesday' and Nishikant Kamat's 'Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan' to Jagmohan Mundhra's 'Shoot On Sight' and Rajkumar Gupta's 'Aamir' - pulled out all stops to explore the anatomy of terror.
Terror far more real awaited round the corner. And when, after the Nov 26-29 Mumbai terror strike, Ram Gopal Varma paid a fleeting visit to the Taj Mahal and Tower Hotel , he was accused of 'cannibalising carnage'.
The biggest scandal of the year was not Varma's Taj tour, but Shah Rukh and Salman Khan battling it out at Katrina Kaif's birthday party.
Parties and film premieres ceased to be the venue for scandals long ago. Or so we thought. Until the two superstars showed us otherwise.
Hrithik Roshan had his second son this year, while Viveik Oberoi's sister and John Abraham's brother got married.
But no star marriages. None of the high-profile celebrity couples from Preity Zinta-Ness Wadia to Kareena Kapoor-Saif were in a hurry to tie the knot.
Bollwyood also lost two legends this year - B.R. Chopra and Begum Para.
This was the year the blog became a vogue. Amitabh Bachchan showed the way... and before him Shekhar Kapur and Aamir Khan. By the year end, everyone, from Varma to Shilpa Shetty to Karan Johar, was blogging his or her heart out, prompting a section of the industry to wonder when do these guys get a chance to make movies?
Towards the end of the year, Shah Rukh, who was busy with Indian Premier League, made an impressive entry with 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' and it has changed the mood at the box office. He has given both the filmmakers and the audiences something to smile about.
Now trade circles have their hopes pinned on on Aamir Khan's 'Ghajini'.
About 125 films hit the screens this year, but except for 'Race', 'Jannat' and 'Rock On', most movies bombed, especially the big-budget, mega starrer ones.
That's not surprising. The ratio of success and failure in Bollywood has for the past many years been 5/6:100 - that is, of 100 movies released in a given year only five or six manage to hit the jackpot.
The year began with the lavish period film 'Jodhaa-Akbar', which had big stars like Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai. Though it accounted for the major business in the first quarter of this year, the Rs.450-million movie was a costly production and it took a long time for UTV to recover the cost.
But Abbas-Mustan's thriller 'Race' and Kunal Deshmukh's film about match fixing, 'Jannat', were declared genuine hits.
Later in the year, director Farhan Akhtar's acting debut, 'Rock On', broke the dry spell. The film not only redefined the parameters of mainstream Hindi cinema, it also brought some respite to the box office - but only in metros.
Much of the year saw the industry suffer a crippling blow with big films like 'Sarkar 2', 'Drona', 'Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic', 'Tashan', 'Krazzy 4' and 'Love Story 2050' falling flat at the box office.
Apart from flops, the industry was hit by the global meltdown and skyrocketing star prices.
Notwithstanding recession that led to cost-cutting becoming the buzzword of the world's biggest film factory, stars continued to charge hefty fees for a movie. Shah Rukh Khan, for instance, charged Rs.150 million plus percentage of profits, while Saif Ali Khan demanded Rs.200 million.
Imran Khan, who was the discovery of the year after 'Jaane Tu....Ya Jaane Na', confessed he was being paid an 'obscene' amount of money to appear at private functions. His second film 'Kidnap' tanked. But there was no rethink on star prices, not even when one of the biggest hits of the year 'Singh Is Kinng' failed to rake in the moolah for distributors and exhibitors.
Distributors said the film was so overpriced on the table that no amount of profits could bring back the investments.
By the end of the year, when 26/11 had served a numbing blow to the entertainment industry, stars were still charging many times the amount they deserved.
Akshay Kumar was paid a hefty amount just to lend his voice and presence to a dubbed Korean animation film called 'Jumbo'.
Does that make any business sense?
Salman Khan had three major flops - 'God Tussi Great Ho', 'Hello' and 'Yuvvraaj'. He was still paid what rock stars generally get in their prime, and not just for taking off their shirt.
The year also witnessed skin show from male actors - Zayed Khan and Vivek Oberoi did it in 'Mission Istaanbul', but it was John Abraham who made beefcake a fashion statement after the successful 'Dostana' where he flaunted his body generously.
Also, myths were being broken in 2008.
It was said female-oriented films don't do well. And yet 'Jodhaa Akbar' and 'Fashion' did good business. Costume dramas and dramas about costumes, they said, didn't work. So why did 'Jodhaa-Akbar' and 'Fashion' click?
The box office failure of small budget films like 'Sorry Bhai!', 'Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye', 'Maharathi' and 'Dil Kabaddi' has broken another myth that small is successful.
It was also the year of terrorism.
Filmmakers of all ilk and hue - from Neeraj Pandey's 'Wednesday' and Nishikant Kamat's 'Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan' to Jagmohan Mundhra's 'Shoot On Sight' and Rajkumar Gupta's 'Aamir' - pulled out all stops to explore the anatomy of terror.
Terror far more real awaited round the corner. And when, after the Nov 26-29 Mumbai terror strike, Ram Gopal Varma paid a fleeting visit to the Taj Mahal and Tower Hotel , he was accused of 'cannibalising carnage'.
The biggest scandal of the year was not Varma's Taj tour, but Shah Rukh and Salman Khan battling it out at Katrina Kaif's birthday party.
Parties and film premieres ceased to be the venue for scandals long ago. Or so we thought. Until the two superstars showed us otherwise.
Hrithik Roshan had his second son this year, while Viveik Oberoi's sister and John Abraham's brother got married.
But no star marriages. None of the high-profile celebrity couples from Preity Zinta-Ness Wadia to Kareena Kapoor-Saif were in a hurry to tie the knot.
Bollwyood also lost two legends this year - B.R. Chopra and Begum Para.
This was the year the blog became a vogue. Amitabh Bachchan showed the way... and before him Shekhar Kapur and Aamir Khan. By the year end, everyone, from Varma to Shilpa Shetty to Karan Johar, was blogging his or her heart out, prompting a section of the industry to wonder when do these guys get a chance to make movies?
Towards the end of the year, Shah Rukh, who was busy with Indian Premier League, made an impressive entry with 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' and it has changed the mood at the box office. He has given both the filmmakers and the audiences something to smile about.
Now trade circles have their hopes pinned on on Aamir Khan's 'Ghajini'.
World - US;US recovery in late 2009: IMF
The US economy looks set to pick up next year or early in 2010, although this scenario is by no means certain, the IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a newspaper interview on Thursday. "There is a reasonable probability ... of the US economy starting to recover at the end of 2009 or the start of 2010," he told Spanish newspaper Expansion.
He based this view on the likelihood that the housing market has touched a low point and as demand reacts to fiscal stimuli but added: "We recognize, however that the possibility of a recovery is plagued with uncertainty." If the US housing market continued to fall then deflation could not be ruled out, the former French finance minister said. "We are faced with an abrupt fall in activity and we should use all instruments available with the aim of simultaneously tackling three aims, the first restoring the stability and confidence of national financial markets." He reiterated that the IMF would cut its current 2.2 % forecast for global growth next month.
He based this view on the likelihood that the housing market has touched a low point and as demand reacts to fiscal stimuli but added: "We recognize, however that the possibility of a recovery is plagued with uncertainty." If the US housing market continued to fall then deflation could not be ruled out, the former French finance minister said. "We are faced with an abrupt fall in activity and we should use all instruments available with the aim of simultaneously tackling three aims, the first restoring the stability and confidence of national financial markets." He reiterated that the IMF would cut its current 2.2 % forecast for global growth next month.
India - Indian education cheap but professional, say foreign students
New Delhi, Dec 20 (IANS) Many Indian students want to study abroad, paying through their nose in the process. At the same time, students from across the world are filling university seats here for 'cheap, professional and internationally ranked' Indian education.
On an average, about 3,500 students visit India on educational programmes from over 70 countries every year, courtesy the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), one of its officials told IANS.
The ICCR awards 2,000 scholarships to these students every year.
'People from my country come to India because the cost of education here is very low. Besides, India offers really high quality and good education in a very short duration - the courses here do not take that much time to complete and we can go back home and easily get a job,' Jessica Dayal, a special education volunteer from Tanzania, told IANS.
Dayal is in Delhi for a year to learn how to help out children with disabilities.
Sam Kast, anothr Tanzanian, is studying pharmacy at the Jamia Hamdard University: 'India is constantly developing in terms of technology and that is also one reason we want to come here,' he said.
'Pursuing pharmacy back home for me would have taken around eight years and if I'd failed, it might have got stretched to even 12 years. However, in India, it's only for four years and I can do a specialization in the time I'd have taken just to graduate in Tanzania.'
Dody Siregar from Indonesia is majoring in economics from Khalsa College, Delhi University (DU). 'India is much cheaper in education costs compared to studies in the Education University (EU) of Indonesia,' he said.
'It is even more advanced here and easily accessible to outsiders. If we study over here, we get better job opportunities back home or anywhere in the world.'
Hasan Mir Ali, a musician from Uzbekistan studying Indian classical music at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra's college of music and dance, had the same reasons for shifting base.
Nick Mohammad Sultani from Afghanistan, a Bachelor of International Business and Finance (BIBF) student at Jamia Milia Islamia, came here to avoid ending up working in his country.
'Every student in Afghanistan prepares to come to India. In fact, most of the students don't want to work in their own countries; they want to study abroad and serve as a UN member and studying here makes it easier for them,' he said.
But 33-year-old Andre Deamidenko from Moscow, another student at the college of music, had a different reason for coming here.
'Most of our local culture was wiped off during the 70 years of Soviet rule and it is the thirst for culture that brings us here. There is no place to learn it but India. The well-preserved deep roots and the Vedic culture here call us,' he said.
On an average, about 3,500 students visit India on educational programmes from over 70 countries every year, courtesy the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), one of its officials told IANS.
The ICCR awards 2,000 scholarships to these students every year.
'People from my country come to India because the cost of education here is very low. Besides, India offers really high quality and good education in a very short duration - the courses here do not take that much time to complete and we can go back home and easily get a job,' Jessica Dayal, a special education volunteer from Tanzania, told IANS.
Dayal is in Delhi for a year to learn how to help out children with disabilities.
Sam Kast, anothr Tanzanian, is studying pharmacy at the Jamia Hamdard University: 'India is constantly developing in terms of technology and that is also one reason we want to come here,' he said.
'Pursuing pharmacy back home for me would have taken around eight years and if I'd failed, it might have got stretched to even 12 years. However, in India, it's only for four years and I can do a specialization in the time I'd have taken just to graduate in Tanzania.'
Dody Siregar from Indonesia is majoring in economics from Khalsa College, Delhi University (DU). 'India is much cheaper in education costs compared to studies in the Education University (EU) of Indonesia,' he said.
'It is even more advanced here and easily accessible to outsiders. If we study over here, we get better job opportunities back home or anywhere in the world.'
Hasan Mir Ali, a musician from Uzbekistan studying Indian classical music at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra's college of music and dance, had the same reasons for shifting base.
Nick Mohammad Sultani from Afghanistan, a Bachelor of International Business and Finance (BIBF) student at Jamia Milia Islamia, came here to avoid ending up working in his country.
'Every student in Afghanistan prepares to come to India. In fact, most of the students don't want to work in their own countries; they want to study abroad and serve as a UN member and studying here makes it easier for them,' he said.
But 33-year-old Andre Deamidenko from Moscow, another student at the college of music, had a different reason for coming here.
'Most of our local culture was wiped off during the 70 years of Soviet rule and it is the thirst for culture that brings us here. There is no place to learn it but India. The well-preserved deep roots and the Vedic culture here call us,' he said.
World - US;Chaos at US airports as winter storms strike
Washington, Dec 20 (DPA) Airports were shut down and several hundred flights were cancelled Friday as winter storms swept across the Midwest and northeastern US.
More than 500 flights were cancelled at airports across New York state, and the storm was expected to dump more than 20 centimetres of snow, and later sleet and rain in some areas.
Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport was shut down, and areas in southern Wisconsin received about 30 centimetres of snow.
Snow and ice created havoc at major international airports such as O'Hare International in Chicago and New York's John F. Kennedy International, where flights were at least three hours late. There were also delays reported in Detroit and Philadelphia, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The National Weather Service warned drivers to be prepared for slippery roads and limited visibility. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the city had 193,000 tonnes of salt ready and 2,000 workers clearing snow from the streets.
Forecasters said that the storm was part of the same weather system that brought snow Thursday to Las Vegas, causing the lowest temperatures for 20 years in some areas.
The 10 centimetres of snow that fell late Wednesday on Las Vegas' McCarran airport was the second highest total since 1967 and the highest for the month of December since records began in 1937
More than 500 flights were cancelled at airports across New York state, and the storm was expected to dump more than 20 centimetres of snow, and later sleet and rain in some areas.
Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport was shut down, and areas in southern Wisconsin received about 30 centimetres of snow.
Snow and ice created havoc at major international airports such as O'Hare International in Chicago and New York's John F. Kennedy International, where flights were at least three hours late. There were also delays reported in Detroit and Philadelphia, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The National Weather Service warned drivers to be prepared for slippery roads and limited visibility. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the city had 193,000 tonnes of salt ready and 2,000 workers clearing snow from the streets.
Forecasters said that the storm was part of the same weather system that brought snow Thursday to Las Vegas, causing the lowest temperatures for 20 years in some areas.
The 10 centimetres of snow that fell late Wednesday on Las Vegas' McCarran airport was the second highest total since 1967 and the highest for the month of December since records began in 1937
Lifestyle - What every woman wants is love
New Delhi, Dec 20 (IANS) A simple recipe to win a woman's heart is to give her loads of love. A recent survey revealed that 77 percent of women believe that their perfect man needs to be romantic and not rich.
'The Indian woman is honest and forthright with her feelings. While the survey reinforces the fact that she still believes in one true love, it also emphasises that she knows her mind, what she wants and knows how to get it,' said ad man Piyush Pandey.
The survey, carried out by cosmetics brand Ponds, also revealed that 56 percent of women believe their true love would be the one who would get along well with her family and just 15 percent of women rate physique as an important quality in their man.
'A woman is expected to blend with her in-laws' family and she does it efficiently. At the same time she also expects her would-be husband to share great bond with her parents and siblings,' Lakme's model Vipasha Aggarwal said.
Still, the most important ingredient of a successful relationship is love and women look for a combination of intelligence, humour, understanding, caring and romance in a man.
According to model-turned-actress Dipannita Sharma, her man should be a diehard romantic, with a good sense of humour and should understand her well and accept her the way she is.
For model Amanpreet Wahi love was the last thing in her mind till it actually happened and now she believes that it was a gift from God.
'It has been five years since I met my man - Raghav Narula. That time love was not my priority, but it just happened and today I feel that he fell in my lap from nowhere and filled my life with happiness,' Wahi told IANS.
'He is a simple man, yet he is special because he knows how to respect a woman and this is his best quality. Apart from this he is fun loving, honest, polite and of course good-looking,' she added.
She fondly remembers the day when Raghav proposed to her on the phone and rates that day as the most romantic day of her life.
Ponds brand ambassador Priyanka Chopra believes that true love will come calling; it is just a matter of time and so one has to be patient.
'I have always believed that true love will find you and so will the right man. Make sure that you do not close your mind to possibilities and do not work on the 'he-must-be-like-this' list,' Chopra said.
Bollywood director Sanjay Leela Bansali's 'Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam' had girls swooning over the quiet brooding character played by actor Ajay Devgan - a man who loved his wife to the extent that he willingly took her back to reunite with her first love.
Though it may sound crazy, Rupa Sehgal has a similar tale to share. 'At the time of my marriage I felt dead inside, unable to feel anything for the man whom I was marrying. But in the years that followed I saw my hubby loving me selflessly. From him I learnt that true love never asks for sacrifices, it gives,' Sehgal explained.
Not many women believe in the power of money when it comes to love.
'A rich man may have money to shower his woman with expensive gifts, but if he isn't sensitive enough to know how to woo the lady, his expensive gifts aren't worth anything,' said Suchita Verma.
'The Indian woman is honest and forthright with her feelings. While the survey reinforces the fact that she still believes in one true love, it also emphasises that she knows her mind, what she wants and knows how to get it,' said ad man Piyush Pandey.
The survey, carried out by cosmetics brand Ponds, also revealed that 56 percent of women believe their true love would be the one who would get along well with her family and just 15 percent of women rate physique as an important quality in their man.
'A woman is expected to blend with her in-laws' family and she does it efficiently. At the same time she also expects her would-be husband to share great bond with her parents and siblings,' Lakme's model Vipasha Aggarwal said.
Still, the most important ingredient of a successful relationship is love and women look for a combination of intelligence, humour, understanding, caring and romance in a man.
According to model-turned-actress Dipannita Sharma, her man should be a diehard romantic, with a good sense of humour and should understand her well and accept her the way she is.
For model Amanpreet Wahi love was the last thing in her mind till it actually happened and now she believes that it was a gift from God.
'It has been five years since I met my man - Raghav Narula. That time love was not my priority, but it just happened and today I feel that he fell in my lap from nowhere and filled my life with happiness,' Wahi told IANS.
'He is a simple man, yet he is special because he knows how to respect a woman and this is his best quality. Apart from this he is fun loving, honest, polite and of course good-looking,' she added.
She fondly remembers the day when Raghav proposed to her on the phone and rates that day as the most romantic day of her life.
Ponds brand ambassador Priyanka Chopra believes that true love will come calling; it is just a matter of time and so one has to be patient.
'I have always believed that true love will find you and so will the right man. Make sure that you do not close your mind to possibilities and do not work on the 'he-must-be-like-this' list,' Chopra said.
Bollywood director Sanjay Leela Bansali's 'Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam' had girls swooning over the quiet brooding character played by actor Ajay Devgan - a man who loved his wife to the extent that he willingly took her back to reunite with her first love.
Though it may sound crazy, Rupa Sehgal has a similar tale to share. 'At the time of my marriage I felt dead inside, unable to feel anything for the man whom I was marrying. But in the years that followed I saw my hubby loving me selflessly. From him I learnt that true love never asks for sacrifices, it gives,' Sehgal explained.
Not many women believe in the power of money when it comes to love.
'A rich man may have money to shower his woman with expensive gifts, but if he isn't sensitive enough to know how to woo the lady, his expensive gifts aren't worth anything,' said Suchita Verma.
World - Oil falls over 6 pct on demand outlook
Oil fell over 6 percent on Friday, as fears of economic slowdown weighed heavier than proposed production cuts by the world's major oil exporters. U.S. light crude for January delivery, which expired Friday, settled down $2.35 at $33.87 a barrel, the lowest since Feb. 10, 2004, when it ended at the same level. The more active February contract settled up 69 cents at $42.36 a barrel with cuts in OPEC production expected to take hold in that month. London Brent crude gained 64 cents, settling at $44.00. Friday marks the sixth consecutive day of falls in oil, off more than 29 percent from the $47.98 seen when prices last rose on Dec. 11. Oil prices have fallen more than $100 from their peak above $147 in July as a global economic downturn ripped into global oil demand, and looked set for one of their biggest weekly declines for years. Industry forecasters predict that global oil demand will contract for the first time since 1983. Pledges by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut output by 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) -- the largest ever reduction by the producer group -- failed to support January prices. "The market is signaling that it is taking a look at the OPEC cut and recognizing that is more likely to be evident in February," said Gene McGillian, analyst at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut. "The Feb contract has not been able to crack $40 yet, but if inventories and refinery use continue to drop then pressure will resume," he added. However, many traders doubt OPEC, whose third production cut since September has brought its total reduction to more than 4 million bpd or 5 percent of world supply, will fully implement the agreed cuts. "We believe that full implementation of the cuts is unlikely," Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note to clients. OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, speaking in London on Friday, said the kingdom would be pumping less oil in January and would be at its new output target in line with the group's latest cut.
"BITE THE BULLET" That reassurance appeared to be having some impact on the market in late European trade on Friday. "From a credibility standpoint, OPEC has no choice but to bite the bullet for the next few months," said Jonathan Kornafel, Asia Director of Hudson Capital Energy. "Until traders see a sustained drop-off in the rate of demand destruction, the market will have a hard time establishing a floor." OPEC President Chakib Khelil said on Friday he believed oil prices had found a floor around current levels. "I don't believe there is any reason for it to fall any further. I don't see it going lower," he told Reuters in London.
"BITE THE BULLET" That reassurance appeared to be having some impact on the market in late European trade on Friday. "From a credibility standpoint, OPEC has no choice but to bite the bullet for the next few months," said Jonathan Kornafel, Asia Director of Hudson Capital Energy. "Until traders see a sustained drop-off in the rate of demand destruction, the market will have a hard time establishing a floor." OPEC President Chakib Khelil said on Friday he believed oil prices had found a floor around current levels. "I don't believe there is any reason for it to fall any further. I don't see it going lower," he told Reuters in London.
Entertainment - Cruise, Theron to star in remake of French thriller
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Tom Cruise will share the screen with South African actress Charlize Theron for an American remake of 2005 French thriller "Antony Zimmer," Hollywood media reported Friday.
Directed by Indian-born Bharat Nalluri, the new version will also be the latest collaboration between Cruise and writer Christopher McQuarrie, tapped to rewrite the script.
McQuarrie co-wrote and produced "Valkyrie," Cruise's latest film set to open on Christmas Day in North America. He is also working on two other post-Valkyrie projects with Cruise, Variety magazine reported naming them as "Flying Tigers" and "The Champions."
Directed by Jerome Salle, the first "Anthony Zimmer" starred Yvan Attal and Sophie Marceau. An ordinary man is chased down by the Russian mafia and international police in a manipulative case of mistaken identity.
Directed by Indian-born Bharat Nalluri, the new version will also be the latest collaboration between Cruise and writer Christopher McQuarrie, tapped to rewrite the script.
McQuarrie co-wrote and produced "Valkyrie," Cruise's latest film set to open on Christmas Day in North America. He is also working on two other post-Valkyrie projects with Cruise, Variety magazine reported naming them as "Flying Tigers" and "The Champions."
Directed by Jerome Salle, the first "Anthony Zimmer" starred Yvan Attal and Sophie Marceau. An ordinary man is chased down by the Russian mafia and international police in a manipulative case of mistaken identity.
World - US;Obama likely to name Dennis Blair as intelligence chief
Washington, Dec 20 (DPA) US president-elect Barack Obama is expected to name retired navy admiral Dennis Blair as his top official for overseeing intelligences agencies.
Blair, 61, served as chief of the US Pacific Command from 1999 to 2002 before retiring and holding positions on company boards and heading a Pentagon-funded think tank. Pacific Command manages all US military operations in the Asia-Pacific region.
If confirmed by the Senate, Blair will become the director of national intelligence, coordinating the espionage and information gathering activities of the nation's 16 intelligence organisations.
Those include the Central Investigative Agency (CIA), the Defence Intelligence Agency and the super secretive National Security Agency, as well as outfits in the army, navy, air force, state department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Several US media outlets reported Friday that Blair was the pick. But Obama's transition team has not provided a date for any announcement on the decision and the president-elect departs Saturday on vacation in Hawaii.
Blair would also be responsible for providing the president with daily intelligence briefings, usually the first order of business for a president every morning.
By naming Blair, Obama would be taking another step toward filling his senior national security postings. He nominated Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state on Dec 1 and announced that Defence Secretary Robert Gates had agreed to stay in the post.
Retired Marine general James Jones will become his national security adviser. Obama has yet to identify his choice to head the CIA.
Obama wants to reform the intelligence community and could bring fresh faces into leadership positions. Many senior experienced candidates could be tainted by allegations that the CIA abused and even tortured suspects in the war on terrorism.
The director of national intelligence, or DNI, was created in 2004 after a commission investigating the Sep 11, 2001, terrorist attacks found the espionage community failed to communicate effectively throughout the various bureaucracies.
Blair, a Rhodes Scholar, would be the third person to hold the job. The former four star admiral began his naval career in 1968 and went on to command several warships. He eventually rose to serve under the joint chiefs of staff and on the National Security Council.
After leaving the navy, Blair became president of the Institute for Defence Analyses, the Pentagon think tank. He stepped down in 2006 after an internal Defence Department inquiry found he should have rescued himself from two studies on the F-22 programme because he served on two company boards involved in the fighter jet.
The Pentagon probe concluded there was a conflict of interest even though it determined Blair did not unduly influence the conclusiongs of the studies. Blair denied any wrongdoing.
Blair, 61, served as chief of the US Pacific Command from 1999 to 2002 before retiring and holding positions on company boards and heading a Pentagon-funded think tank. Pacific Command manages all US military operations in the Asia-Pacific region.
If confirmed by the Senate, Blair will become the director of national intelligence, coordinating the espionage and information gathering activities of the nation's 16 intelligence organisations.
Those include the Central Investigative Agency (CIA), the Defence Intelligence Agency and the super secretive National Security Agency, as well as outfits in the army, navy, air force, state department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Several US media outlets reported Friday that Blair was the pick. But Obama's transition team has not provided a date for any announcement on the decision and the president-elect departs Saturday on vacation in Hawaii.
Blair would also be responsible for providing the president with daily intelligence briefings, usually the first order of business for a president every morning.
By naming Blair, Obama would be taking another step toward filling his senior national security postings. He nominated Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state on Dec 1 and announced that Defence Secretary Robert Gates had agreed to stay in the post.
Retired Marine general James Jones will become his national security adviser. Obama has yet to identify his choice to head the CIA.
Obama wants to reform the intelligence community and could bring fresh faces into leadership positions. Many senior experienced candidates could be tainted by allegations that the CIA abused and even tortured suspects in the war on terrorism.
The director of national intelligence, or DNI, was created in 2004 after a commission investigating the Sep 11, 2001, terrorist attacks found the espionage community failed to communicate effectively throughout the various bureaucracies.
Blair, a Rhodes Scholar, would be the third person to hold the job. The former four star admiral began his naval career in 1968 and went on to command several warships. He eventually rose to serve under the joint chiefs of staff and on the National Security Council.
After leaving the navy, Blair became president of the Institute for Defence Analyses, the Pentagon think tank. He stepped down in 2006 after an internal Defence Department inquiry found he should have rescued himself from two studies on the F-22 programme because he served on two company boards involved in the fighter jet.
The Pentagon probe concluded there was a conflict of interest even though it determined Blair did not unduly influence the conclusiongs of the studies. Blair denied any wrongdoing.
Sport - Cricket;Dravid becomes first No. 3 batsman to score 8,000 runs
Mohali, Dec 19 (IANS) Rahul Dravid became the first batsman in the world to aggregate 8,000 runs while batting at number three. He reached the landmark when he was on 20 during his unbeaten 65 in the second Test against England here Friday.
He has an aggregate of 8,045 runs at the end of the first day's play. Close at heels is Australian skipper Ricky Ponting with an aggregate of 7,992 runs.
Dravid's 65 not out is his 60th fifty (19 hundreds and 41 half centuries) while batting at number three, which is a record for most fifties by a batsman batting at number three slot.
Dravid set up an Indian record for most fifties on home soil. His innings is his 24th half century on home soil. He wrested the record from Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar who have 23 half centuries on home soil.
This is Dravid's ninth half century against England. Other batsmen who have more half centuries are: Gavaskar (16), Gundappa Viswanath (12) and Tendulkar (10).
Gautam Gambhir, who scored an unbeaten 106 Friday, became the third Indian batsman to register three or more hundreds in the calendar year 2008. Others are Tendulkar (04) and Virender Sehwag (03).
Gambhir is one of the six opening batsmen who have registered three or more hundreds in the calendar year 2008. Others are: Greame Smith of South Africa (5), Simon Katich of Australia (4), Neil Mckenzie of South Africa (03), Virender Sehwag (3) and Andrew Strauss (3).
Gambhir needs 36 more runs to aggregate 1,000 runs in 2008.
This is Gambhir's fourth Test hundred. The other three were: 139 vs Bangladesh at Chittagong in Dec 2004, 104 vs Australia at Mohali in Oct 2008 and 206 vs Australia at Delhi in Oct 2008.
He has an aggregate of 8,045 runs at the end of the first day's play. Close at heels is Australian skipper Ricky Ponting with an aggregate of 7,992 runs.
Dravid's 65 not out is his 60th fifty (19 hundreds and 41 half centuries) while batting at number three, which is a record for most fifties by a batsman batting at number three slot.
Dravid set up an Indian record for most fifties on home soil. His innings is his 24th half century on home soil. He wrested the record from Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar who have 23 half centuries on home soil.
This is Dravid's ninth half century against England. Other batsmen who have more half centuries are: Gavaskar (16), Gundappa Viswanath (12) and Tendulkar (10).
Gautam Gambhir, who scored an unbeaten 106 Friday, became the third Indian batsman to register three or more hundreds in the calendar year 2008. Others are Tendulkar (04) and Virender Sehwag (03).
Gambhir is one of the six opening batsmen who have registered three or more hundreds in the calendar year 2008. Others are: Greame Smith of South Africa (5), Simon Katich of Australia (4), Neil Mckenzie of South Africa (03), Virender Sehwag (3) and Andrew Strauss (3).
Gambhir needs 36 more runs to aggregate 1,000 runs in 2008.
This is Gambhir's fourth Test hundred. The other three were: 139 vs Bangladesh at Chittagong in Dec 2004, 104 vs Australia at Mohali in Oct 2008 and 206 vs Australia at Delhi in Oct 2008.
Dec 19, 2008
Business - GoAir;Groping in the dark
Anjuli Bhargava
I don’t know if any one of you have been following these developments but Mumbai-based low-cost airline GoAir has suddenly taken a U-turn. From being a low-fare, low frills airline, it has out of the blue announced the launch of something called “GoComfort”.
GoComfort — by the airline’s own definition — is a fully flexible premium service providing all the key benefits that an Indian business passenger would need. “It is India’s only low-cost premium service offering business travelers a premium choice over any other low-fare airline”, whatever that means.
The airline says it is adding value by offering telecheck in and return check in, a wider selection of food and seat selection. GoComfort takers have been promised a seat (with increased pitch) in the first four rows of the aircraft (the times of squeezing in to a middle seat are over, according to the company’s official release). It goes on to promise that the middle seat will always be free (an easy enough promise to keep with load factors at an all-time low!).
In addition to the announcement of GoComfort, the airline has launched another series of schemes — GoYouth (targeted at persons below 21), GoSolution (targeted at corporate clients) and a buy 5, get one free offer. It has further announced that it will be increasing the total number of flights on offer to 9 destinations in this winter season from the 832 in October to 900. By March 2009, GoAir says, it is planning to add 18 aircraft to its fleet size (it has six A320s at present) and by March 2011 it has plans to increase its fleet size to 34.
All this appears to be part of its constant strategy — which can best be described as groping in the dark — to reinvent itself. GoAir’s endless announcements don’t convince me enough and I would advise flyers to take their promises with a largish dose of salt.
GoAir — when it was established in June 2004 — was envisaged as a low-fare airline that would commoditise air travel. On 9 June 2005, GoAir announced that it intended to launch operations in October 2005 with a fleet of 20 leased A320 aircraft. Initial flights would be in the southern and western areas of India with the first nine A320s, the remaining 11 aircraft being added in the second year. At that time the airline was in talks with both Airbus and Boeing on the purchase of between 20 and 40 new aircraft, with a contract to be in place by the end of 2005 and with deliveries to start by 2007. None of this ever happened. It did however launch in November 2005.
Then in July 2006, the airline again announced an order for 10 aircraft from the Airbus 320 family (with options for 10 more). This was followed by an announcement in mid-January 2007 that it plans to sell a large minority ownership position to assist it with funds for continued expansion. That investment never happened either.
In the few months that it had flown — and when the industry situation was reasonably rosy compared to what it is today — GoAir failed to establish itself as a credible low-cost option, unlike some of its competitors. IndiGo, for instance, launched later and managed to trounce most other low-cost carriers and established a pretty good reputation for itself, whereas SpiceJet managed to remain a serious contender. GoAir, in fact, was often compared with Air Deccan (which had by then bagged the reputation of being the worst in its category) and was considered just a tad behind Deccan in this regard.
In its defence, those who managed to fly the airline didn’t really have much to complain about (the aircraft was clean, the flight hassle-free, the brand identity chic and staff decent). The maximum noise came from those who had booked with the airline and would, more often than not, find the flight cancelled for some reason or the other, leaving them stranded. Although the airline claimed that its model was based on ‘punctuality, affordability and convenience’, this never translated into customer experience. The ease with which flights were simply cancelled made many believe that it appeared geared more to the convenience of the airline rather than the passengers. As one senior ministry official told me back then: “It may be a smart choice to fly GoAir but it’s a smarter one not to fly GoAir (the airline’s tag line is Fly Smart)”.
However as the industry situation worsened (since mid-2006, things have been grim for the Indian aviation industry), GoAir became more unreliable by the day. This was also partly due to its “flexible fleet management policy”, which its promoter Jeh Wadia said was its way of moderating capacity based on demand. To flyers, it just meant you never know which flight may get cancelled when.
Even today, I find GoAir’s various claims and schemes hard to swallow. To cite one example, the buy 5, get 1 free offer for this winter season is available — for some inexplicable reason — only to those registered on its website (attempts by me to register just to find out the price for this through the website failed as it asks for a PNR number which is hard to provide before one has booked). On further enquiries — from its newly-hired public relations agency — it turned out that the offer gives you one free ticket after you have flown with the carrier five times! Since I am yet to meet or hear of a GoAir frequent flyer, it makes one wonder how many people will be in a position to avail of this one.
In June 2005, when Wadia met me in his Lower Parel office in Mumbai just prior to the launch of his airline — and told me how his airline would change the way Indians travel (it has a 2.3 per cent market share today) — he said: “Every Indian should fly. We are one billion people and only 0.05 per cent of the country flies. Is that a joke or is that a joke?” It is a joke but not — as he may now have realised — a particularly funny one.
I don’t know if any one of you have been following these developments but Mumbai-based low-cost airline GoAir has suddenly taken a U-turn. From being a low-fare, low frills airline, it has out of the blue announced the launch of something called “GoComfort”.
GoComfort — by the airline’s own definition — is a fully flexible premium service providing all the key benefits that an Indian business passenger would need. “It is India’s only low-cost premium service offering business travelers a premium choice over any other low-fare airline”, whatever that means.
The airline says it is adding value by offering telecheck in and return check in, a wider selection of food and seat selection. GoComfort takers have been promised a seat (with increased pitch) in the first four rows of the aircraft (the times of squeezing in to a middle seat are over, according to the company’s official release). It goes on to promise that the middle seat will always be free (an easy enough promise to keep with load factors at an all-time low!).
In addition to the announcement of GoComfort, the airline has launched another series of schemes — GoYouth (targeted at persons below 21), GoSolution (targeted at corporate clients) and a buy 5, get one free offer. It has further announced that it will be increasing the total number of flights on offer to 9 destinations in this winter season from the 832 in October to 900. By March 2009, GoAir says, it is planning to add 18 aircraft to its fleet size (it has six A320s at present) and by March 2011 it has plans to increase its fleet size to 34.
All this appears to be part of its constant strategy — which can best be described as groping in the dark — to reinvent itself. GoAir’s endless announcements don’t convince me enough and I would advise flyers to take their promises with a largish dose of salt.
GoAir — when it was established in June 2004 — was envisaged as a low-fare airline that would commoditise air travel. On 9 June 2005, GoAir announced that it intended to launch operations in October 2005 with a fleet of 20 leased A320 aircraft. Initial flights would be in the southern and western areas of India with the first nine A320s, the remaining 11 aircraft being added in the second year. At that time the airline was in talks with both Airbus and Boeing on the purchase of between 20 and 40 new aircraft, with a contract to be in place by the end of 2005 and with deliveries to start by 2007. None of this ever happened. It did however launch in November 2005.
Then in July 2006, the airline again announced an order for 10 aircraft from the Airbus 320 family (with options for 10 more). This was followed by an announcement in mid-January 2007 that it plans to sell a large minority ownership position to assist it with funds for continued expansion. That investment never happened either.
In the few months that it had flown — and when the industry situation was reasonably rosy compared to what it is today — GoAir failed to establish itself as a credible low-cost option, unlike some of its competitors. IndiGo, for instance, launched later and managed to trounce most other low-cost carriers and established a pretty good reputation for itself, whereas SpiceJet managed to remain a serious contender. GoAir, in fact, was often compared with Air Deccan (which had by then bagged the reputation of being the worst in its category) and was considered just a tad behind Deccan in this regard.
In its defence, those who managed to fly the airline didn’t really have much to complain about (the aircraft was clean, the flight hassle-free, the brand identity chic and staff decent). The maximum noise came from those who had booked with the airline and would, more often than not, find the flight cancelled for some reason or the other, leaving them stranded. Although the airline claimed that its model was based on ‘punctuality, affordability and convenience’, this never translated into customer experience. The ease with which flights were simply cancelled made many believe that it appeared geared more to the convenience of the airline rather than the passengers. As one senior ministry official told me back then: “It may be a smart choice to fly GoAir but it’s a smarter one not to fly GoAir (the airline’s tag line is Fly Smart)”.
However as the industry situation worsened (since mid-2006, things have been grim for the Indian aviation industry), GoAir became more unreliable by the day. This was also partly due to its “flexible fleet management policy”, which its promoter Jeh Wadia said was its way of moderating capacity based on demand. To flyers, it just meant you never know which flight may get cancelled when.
Even today, I find GoAir’s various claims and schemes hard to swallow. To cite one example, the buy 5, get 1 free offer for this winter season is available — for some inexplicable reason — only to those registered on its website (attempts by me to register just to find out the price for this through the website failed as it asks for a PNR number which is hard to provide before one has booked). On further enquiries — from its newly-hired public relations agency — it turned out that the offer gives you one free ticket after you have flown with the carrier five times! Since I am yet to meet or hear of a GoAir frequent flyer, it makes one wonder how many people will be in a position to avail of this one.
In June 2005, when Wadia met me in his Lower Parel office in Mumbai just prior to the launch of his airline — and told me how his airline would change the way Indians travel (it has a 2.3 per cent market share today) — he said: “Every Indian should fly. We are one billion people and only 0.05 per cent of the country flies. Is that a joke or is that a joke?” It is a joke but not — as he may now have realised — a particularly funny one.
Business - L'affaire Satyam
The Satyam bid to merge itself with two infrastructure companies controlled by the same promoter group (the Raju family) will rightly go down in Indian corporate history as an object lesson in corporate misgovernance. The company’s board has quickly reversed the merger decision, in the wake of a shareholder revolt and a crash in the company’s share price (by about 50 per cent in New York), and it now seeks to recover lost ground through a share buyback offer. But it is worth bearing in mind that, in the case of many companies, such an offer has ended up being nothing more than a bid to bolster the share price, without any shares actually being bought back.
How this will end is therefore too early to forecast, but there can be little doubt that the promoter group, led by the company’s founder-chairman, B Ramalinga Raju, has lost a good deal of shareholder trust, and some of it may never be regained—with good reason. It passes understanding as to how a promoter group can hope to change a company’s principal business without going to the general body of shareholders for their approval, especially when the promoters hold no more than 8.6 per cent of the company. The decision is even more dubious when the addition of a main line of business (with which there is no synergy or indeed any connection whatsoever) is sought to be achieved by a merger with firms controlled by the same group—with no transparency on how the relative valuations was done, because this information too has not been given to shareholders.
Promoter families taking other shareholders for granted is not new; indeed, it is all too common. They got away with it in the past because retail shareholders felt powerless to influence the way the company was being run, while domestic institutional investors (both the public financial institutions of old as well as mutual funds) usually adopted a compliant attitude, even when they were represented on the board. Things began to change after foreign institutional investors (FIIs) came on to the scene some 15 years ago; in the latest episode too, it was the FIIs who led the revolt and immediately dumped the company’s stock.
It is worth noting that it was not any corporate governance rule or action by the stock market watchdog that stopped the company in its tracks; nor was it the independent directors, on whom so much reliance is placed in corporate governance regulation. Indeed, the Satyam board was packed with independent directors who are men of standing, and whose credentials no one would ordinarily question: the dean of a prestigious business school, a well-known professor of Harvard Business School, a former director of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, a retired cabinet secretary, and the like. That such worthies could be parties to a decision that met with instant shareholder anger raises legitimate questions about whether too much faith is in fact placed on independent directors. The fundamental weakness in this model is the fact that independent directors usually have no stake in the success of the business; indeed, in some other cases it has been revealed that independent directors were being financially benefited in a variety of indirect ways (like supplier contracts to relatives), and therefore beholden to the company management. In the case of Reliance, for instance, the level of adherence to corporate governance norms became known to the world at large only when there was dissension in the promoter group, leading to several startling revelations.
While it would be wrong to paint everyone with the same brush, the Satyam episode certainly raises questions about what standards of corporate governance exist, beyond the talk at seminars and the many codes that have been framed. It is unfortunate that Corporate India’s image should be dented in this fashion; but it would be even more unfortunate if the Satyam case did not lead to a more careful scrutiny of what exactly goes on in Corporate India.
How this will end is therefore too early to forecast, but there can be little doubt that the promoter group, led by the company’s founder-chairman, B Ramalinga Raju, has lost a good deal of shareholder trust, and some of it may never be regained—with good reason. It passes understanding as to how a promoter group can hope to change a company’s principal business without going to the general body of shareholders for their approval, especially when the promoters hold no more than 8.6 per cent of the company. The decision is even more dubious when the addition of a main line of business (with which there is no synergy or indeed any connection whatsoever) is sought to be achieved by a merger with firms controlled by the same group—with no transparency on how the relative valuations was done, because this information too has not been given to shareholders.
Promoter families taking other shareholders for granted is not new; indeed, it is all too common. They got away with it in the past because retail shareholders felt powerless to influence the way the company was being run, while domestic institutional investors (both the public financial institutions of old as well as mutual funds) usually adopted a compliant attitude, even when they were represented on the board. Things began to change after foreign institutional investors (FIIs) came on to the scene some 15 years ago; in the latest episode too, it was the FIIs who led the revolt and immediately dumped the company’s stock.
It is worth noting that it was not any corporate governance rule or action by the stock market watchdog that stopped the company in its tracks; nor was it the independent directors, on whom so much reliance is placed in corporate governance regulation. Indeed, the Satyam board was packed with independent directors who are men of standing, and whose credentials no one would ordinarily question: the dean of a prestigious business school, a well-known professor of Harvard Business School, a former director of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, a retired cabinet secretary, and the like. That such worthies could be parties to a decision that met with instant shareholder anger raises legitimate questions about whether too much faith is in fact placed on independent directors. The fundamental weakness in this model is the fact that independent directors usually have no stake in the success of the business; indeed, in some other cases it has been revealed that independent directors were being financially benefited in a variety of indirect ways (like supplier contracts to relatives), and therefore beholden to the company management. In the case of Reliance, for instance, the level of adherence to corporate governance norms became known to the world at large only when there was dissension in the promoter group, leading to several startling revelations.
While it would be wrong to paint everyone with the same brush, the Satyam episode certainly raises questions about what standards of corporate governance exist, beyond the talk at seminars and the many codes that have been framed. It is unfortunate that Corporate India’s image should be dented in this fashion; but it would be even more unfortunate if the Satyam case did not lead to a more careful scrutiny of what exactly goes on in Corporate India.
India - Taj, Trident flooded with reservation requests for December 21
Swaraj Baggonkar & Sapna Agarwal
Hotels lining up special menus, Taj to use Jaguar cars for guest transfers.
The Trident and Taj Mahal Palace and Tower said they have been flooded with requests for reservations at their restaurants when they reopen December 21, almost a month after the terrorist attacks on these landmark hotels destroyed significant portions of both buildings.
"Considering the kind of response we have seen ever since we opened reservations we are expecting the restaurants to be packed on reopening day,’’ an official of East India Hotels (EIH) said, declining to be identified. “It will be difficult to share the exact details about the number of people who have booked so far but we are sure that it will be a full-house."
EIH is the holding company of Trident and Oberoi hotels. The hotel has four restaurants — Frangipani, India Jones, Opium Den and Verandah. "Our guests have been asking for reservations at our restaurants till December 31," added the official.
Meanwhile, Taj officials today said the tower wing of the Taj — or the “new wing” — will open The Zodiac Grill, Souk, Masala Kraft, Aquarius, Shamiana, Starboard and La Patisserie on December 21 at 7.30 in the evening.
The iconic Taj Heritage – commonly known as the “old wing” — bore the brunt of the terrorist attacks and will be closed for renovation for some more time.
One or more restaurants will have special menus on that day, a Taj food and beverages (F&B) executive said.
Taj is also making special transport arrangements for guests to arrive and depart from the hotel. The Tata-owned property will add two Jaguars to its fleet for guest transfers.
According to estimates, F&B accounts for more than half the revenues of the Taj Mahal and Trident revenues.
"We do not see revenue from the food and beverage segment going down despite the risk factor. We are already into the peak holiday season when business generally booms for hoteliers,” said Harleen Babber, research associate, Almondz Research.
“We see this trend being extended beyond December 31 till March-April next year," Babber added.
Even as last month’s three-day terrorist attacks severely impacted the day-to-day business of most hotels in Mumbai, the management at Trident expects occupancy levels of 25 to 30 per cent on reopening day. Both Taj and Trident are offering discounts on room tariffs in an effort to attract guests.
Hotels lining up special menus, Taj to use Jaguar cars for guest transfers.
The Trident and Taj Mahal Palace and Tower said they have been flooded with requests for reservations at their restaurants when they reopen December 21, almost a month after the terrorist attacks on these landmark hotels destroyed significant portions of both buildings.
"Considering the kind of response we have seen ever since we opened reservations we are expecting the restaurants to be packed on reopening day,’’ an official of East India Hotels (EIH) said, declining to be identified. “It will be difficult to share the exact details about the number of people who have booked so far but we are sure that it will be a full-house."
EIH is the holding company of Trident and Oberoi hotels. The hotel has four restaurants — Frangipani, India Jones, Opium Den and Verandah. "Our guests have been asking for reservations at our restaurants till December 31," added the official.
Meanwhile, Taj officials today said the tower wing of the Taj — or the “new wing” — will open The Zodiac Grill, Souk, Masala Kraft, Aquarius, Shamiana, Starboard and La Patisserie on December 21 at 7.30 in the evening.
The iconic Taj Heritage – commonly known as the “old wing” — bore the brunt of the terrorist attacks and will be closed for renovation for some more time.
One or more restaurants will have special menus on that day, a Taj food and beverages (F&B) executive said.
Taj is also making special transport arrangements for guests to arrive and depart from the hotel. The Tata-owned property will add two Jaguars to its fleet for guest transfers.
According to estimates, F&B accounts for more than half the revenues of the Taj Mahal and Trident revenues.
"We do not see revenue from the food and beverage segment going down despite the risk factor. We are already into the peak holiday season when business generally booms for hoteliers,” said Harleen Babber, research associate, Almondz Research.
“We see this trend being extended beyond December 31 till March-April next year," Babber added.
Even as last month’s three-day terrorist attacks severely impacted the day-to-day business of most hotels in Mumbai, the management at Trident expects occupancy levels of 25 to 30 per cent on reopening day. Both Taj and Trident are offering discounts on room tariffs in an effort to attract guests.
India - Govt plans to bring 354 drugs under control list
The government proposes to bring 354 medicines under control list to bring down the prices of essential drugs, Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ramvilas Paswan told the Lok Sabha today.
Replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour, he said the government has asked state-run hospitals to use generic drugs for treatment of patients in a bid to make healthcare more accessible to the poor.
Paswan said the government has launched health insurance scheme for BPL families under which free medicines of up to Rs 35,000 would be made available for treatment.
He said a Group of Ministers (GoM) is deliberating the draft National Pharmaceutical Policy, which has provisions for strengthening of the drug regulatory system and the patent office infrastructure, focus on research and development, human resource development in pharma sciences, rationalisation of excise duty on pharmaceuticals and streamlining system of bulk procurement of drugs by the government.
“The final decision on the issue of pharmaceutical policy can only be taken after the GoM takes a decision in this regard. The finalisation of the policy is therefore delayed,” Paswan said.
Requisite information on clarifications sought by the GoM have already been furnished. The department is constantly making efforts for expediting the decision of the GoM for early finalisation of the pharma policy, he said.
Replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour, he said the government has asked state-run hospitals to use generic drugs for treatment of patients in a bid to make healthcare more accessible to the poor.
Paswan said the government has launched health insurance scheme for BPL families under which free medicines of up to Rs 35,000 would be made available for treatment.
He said a Group of Ministers (GoM) is deliberating the draft National Pharmaceutical Policy, which has provisions for strengthening of the drug regulatory system and the patent office infrastructure, focus on research and development, human resource development in pharma sciences, rationalisation of excise duty on pharmaceuticals and streamlining system of bulk procurement of drugs by the government.
“The final decision on the issue of pharmaceutical policy can only be taken after the GoM takes a decision in this regard. The finalisation of the policy is therefore delayed,” Paswan said.
Requisite information on clarifications sought by the GoM have already been furnished. The department is constantly making efforts for expediting the decision of the GoM for early finalisation of the pharma policy, he said.
Entertainment - Q&A;Ajay Bijli, chairman and MD of PVR Ltd
Meenakshi Varma Ambwani
Entertainment business generally does well during a downturn. Even this time, the so-called recession-proof industry appears to be doing just fine. Ajay Bijli, chairman and managing director of PVR Ltd, discusses with ET the impact of economic slowdown and credit crunch on the multiplex industry.
What is the impact of the slowdown on the entertainment industry?
I, like some of my peers in the industry, hold the view that the entertainment industry is largely recession proof. It is mostly dependent on the supply of good content. At the beginning of the year, during the Indian Premier League (IPL), production houses delayed releasing their movies, that was when footfalls in multiplexes witnessed a drop. Again during the terror attacks in different cities, movie buffs didn’t feel safe enough to go to multiplexes. But in the last few months it has become clear that whenever good movies have been released, movie buffs have come to the multiplexes. The recent release Rab Ne Bana De Jodi is a case in point.
I think it’s not economic slowdown that has affected sales of tickets, it is the quality of content which governs footfalls generated in the multiplex. Fortunately, India is still a growth story and to a certain extent the slowdown is more psychological than real. Hence, I do not see the slowdown, as I would like to call it, having any impact on the entertainment industry. I believe that the Indian entertainment industry will continue to grow in healthy double digits.
But has the slowdown affected the multiplex growth plans and the deals that are struck between real estate developers and multiplex operators?
There have been instances in recent times where some multiplex players have walked out of deals that they struck with real estate players for an amount which was not economically feasible for them anymore. This has, in fact, led to a correction in rentals. As far as PVR is concerned, we have accelerated our pace and are now seriously looking at markets and opportunities, which were unaffordable earlier. Newer formats such as revenue-sharing with developers are also in the offing. I’m sure if mall construction is delayed, multiplex expansion plans could be delayed as well. So it all depends on how adversely affected the real estate developer is with whom one has an agreement.
How has the credit crunch affected the multiplex industry?
Any good project, which is based on sound business model, will not have problem getting funding. Once people begun to overcome their mental block on recession, with so much of liquidity being infused into the economy, investments will get channelled into good projects. Yes, I agree that a correction in real estate prices is taking place, which is good for the industry. Overall, I see a tremendous growth and at the same time consolidation in the industry. There is going to be more transparency and openness in real estate deals and only serious players will be able to survive in the long run.
How do you see the future of multiplex and its growth vis-a-vis single screens, given that multiplex screens account for less than 10% of the total screen count in India?
Firstly, the contribution to box office collections is more important than screen count. PVR with 101 screens contributes 13% of all-India theatrical collections of all Hindi movies. I still maintain that India is a screen-starved country compared to the movies being made here and also in comparison with some of the mature markets in the world like the US and UK. For example, a UNESCO study says that India has 12 screen per million vis-Ã -vis 117 screens per million in the United States.
Multiplexes are now expanding to smaller town and cities, the collection base for the entire industry is bound to grow. If we look at the international trend, single screen theatres have given way to multiplex because of the business dynamics. The days when a 1,000 plus seating capacity theatre could be run profitably are shrinking. With multiple entertainment options emerging, both out of home and in home, the shelf life of movies are getting shorter. Instead of single screen theatres coming up mostly it is multiple screens being built and that too in a family entertainment complex like a mall. The idea is to have one stop entertainment hubs.
Entertainment business generally does well during a downturn. Even this time, the so-called recession-proof industry appears to be doing just fine. Ajay Bijli, chairman and managing director of PVR Ltd, discusses with ET the impact of economic slowdown and credit crunch on the multiplex industry.
What is the impact of the slowdown on the entertainment industry?
I, like some of my peers in the industry, hold the view that the entertainment industry is largely recession proof. It is mostly dependent on the supply of good content. At the beginning of the year, during the Indian Premier League (IPL), production houses delayed releasing their movies, that was when footfalls in multiplexes witnessed a drop. Again during the terror attacks in different cities, movie buffs didn’t feel safe enough to go to multiplexes. But in the last few months it has become clear that whenever good movies have been released, movie buffs have come to the multiplexes. The recent release Rab Ne Bana De Jodi is a case in point.
I think it’s not economic slowdown that has affected sales of tickets, it is the quality of content which governs footfalls generated in the multiplex. Fortunately, India is still a growth story and to a certain extent the slowdown is more psychological than real. Hence, I do not see the slowdown, as I would like to call it, having any impact on the entertainment industry. I believe that the Indian entertainment industry will continue to grow in healthy double digits.
But has the slowdown affected the multiplex growth plans and the deals that are struck between real estate developers and multiplex operators?
There have been instances in recent times where some multiplex players have walked out of deals that they struck with real estate players for an amount which was not economically feasible for them anymore. This has, in fact, led to a correction in rentals. As far as PVR is concerned, we have accelerated our pace and are now seriously looking at markets and opportunities, which were unaffordable earlier. Newer formats such as revenue-sharing with developers are also in the offing. I’m sure if mall construction is delayed, multiplex expansion plans could be delayed as well. So it all depends on how adversely affected the real estate developer is with whom one has an agreement.
How has the credit crunch affected the multiplex industry?
Any good project, which is based on sound business model, will not have problem getting funding. Once people begun to overcome their mental block on recession, with so much of liquidity being infused into the economy, investments will get channelled into good projects. Yes, I agree that a correction in real estate prices is taking place, which is good for the industry. Overall, I see a tremendous growth and at the same time consolidation in the industry. There is going to be more transparency and openness in real estate deals and only serious players will be able to survive in the long run.
How do you see the future of multiplex and its growth vis-a-vis single screens, given that multiplex screens account for less than 10% of the total screen count in India?
Firstly, the contribution to box office collections is more important than screen count. PVR with 101 screens contributes 13% of all-India theatrical collections of all Hindi movies. I still maintain that India is a screen-starved country compared to the movies being made here and also in comparison with some of the mature markets in the world like the US and UK. For example, a UNESCO study says that India has 12 screen per million vis-Ã -vis 117 screens per million in the United States.
Multiplexes are now expanding to smaller town and cities, the collection base for the entire industry is bound to grow. If we look at the international trend, single screen theatres have given way to multiplex because of the business dynamics. The days when a 1,000 plus seating capacity theatre could be run profitably are shrinking. With multiple entertainment options emerging, both out of home and in home, the shelf life of movies are getting shorter. Instead of single screen theatres coming up mostly it is multiple screens being built and that too in a family entertainment complex like a mall. The idea is to have one stop entertainment hubs.
Business - Toyota headed for first year in the red: media report
TOKYO: Japan's largest car company Toyota is expected to run into the red for the year, which would be its first annual operating loss yet, Japanese
financial newspaper Nikkei said Friday.
In addition to the worldwide financial crisis, the rapid rise of the value of the Japanese currency, the yen, were named as the main reasons for it, according to the report which did not cite sources. Toyota in early November drastically reduced its expectations for its current business year, which ends March 31.
The prognosis for earnings was reduced to 600 billion yen ($6.7 billion), a billion yen less than had been earlier projected. But the financial situation has considerably worsened since then, the newspaper
financial newspaper Nikkei said Friday.
In addition to the worldwide financial crisis, the rapid rise of the value of the Japanese currency, the yen, were named as the main reasons for it, according to the report which did not cite sources. Toyota in early November drastically reduced its expectations for its current business year, which ends March 31.
The prognosis for earnings was reduced to 600 billion yen ($6.7 billion), a billion yen less than had been earlier projected. But the financial situation has considerably worsened since then, the newspaper
Business - ICICI names Chanda Kochhar CEO from May 09
MUMBAI: ICICI Bank, India's second-largest lender, said on Friday Joint Managing Director Chanda Kochhar would succeed Chief Executive K.V. Kamath
who retires in April 2009.
Kamath, chief executive since 1996 at India's top private sector bank, will become non-executive chairman from May 2009 replacing N.Vaghul who retires.
who retires in April 2009.
Kamath, chief executive since 1996 at India's top private sector bank, will become non-executive chairman from May 2009 replacing N.Vaghul who retires.
India - LNG to cost up to 35 pc more
NEW DELHI: Imported LNG for fertiliser and power plants like Dabhol is likely to cost by up to 35 per cent more from next month as Qatar will hike
rates for supplies from 2009.
About one-fourth of the nation's natural gas needs are met through import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by state- promoted Petronet LNG Ltd, which currently sells the fuel at USD 4.98 per million British thermal unit.
This rate from January 1 would rise to USD 6.3 to 6.7 per mmBtu, pushing up cost of power generation and urea production, a source in know of the development said.
The price is not inclusive of sales tax, pipeline transportation charges and marketing margin. "The delivered price at burner tip is likely to range between USD 7.2 and 7.8 per mmBtu," he said.
This LNG would be the most expensive fuel in the country with Reliance Industries' D6 gas field at USD 4.2 per mmBtu being the cheapest outside the administrative pricing regime.
Petronet imports LNG from Qatar under two contracts - one long term at cheaper rates and the other short term on spot prices. These two rates are pooled to make price affordable to users such as Dabhol.
Currently, the long-term LNG costs USD 2.53 per mmBtu ex-ship while short-term LNG is priced at USD 8.5 per mmBtu and the two rates are pooled to get USD 4.98 per mmBtu price.
Sources said from January, the long-term rates will rise to USD 3.12 per mmBtu while the short-term LNG rates have been renegotiated at around USD 12 per mmBtu, the source said.
The short-term LNG contract for one million tonnes of LNG will run till September 2009 and has been pegged to Japanese Crude Cocktail (JCC) price of USD 60-70 a barrel.
Anticipating an increase in LNG price, the Government had recently decided to allocate D6 gas for Dabhol power plant. Dabhol currently gets pooled price gas from Petronet, but once Reliance starts gas production, the nation's largest gas-fired power plant would shift to D6 gas.
Petronet currently imports LNG from RasGas of Qatar at a fixed pre-shipping cost (or fob price) of USD 2.53 per mmBtu.
The five-year fixed price period will end in January when the price will move to a price band linked to Japanese Crude Cocktail (JCC), the source said.
From January, the free-on-board (fob) price will move up to USD 3.12 per mmBtu. After adding shipping cost, import duty, re-gasification charges, pipeline tariff, marketing margin and sales tax, the delivered price would be USD 5.5188 per mmBtu in January.
The ex-terminal price of RasGas LNG currently works out to be USD 3.86 per mmBtu. This would result in rise in fuel cost for power and fertiliser units, sources said.
The fob price will change every month based on the moving average of JCC, and LNG from Qatar will cost USD 4.25 per mmBtu in January 2010, USD 5.59 in 2011, USD 6.91 in 2012, USD 8.24 in 2013 and USD 8.73 per mmBtu in December 2013.
The source said the delivered price of Petronet's gas in January 2009 would be nearly four times the price of domestic gas produced by ONGC.
The gas produced by ONGC from fields given to it on nomination basis is priced at USD 1.9 per mmBtu. This price may go up to USD 2.4 per mmBtu if the government accepts Tariff Commission's recommendations for raising the fuel prices.
Of the free-market gas, Reliance Industries would be charging the least at USD 4.20 per mmBtu, while the Panna Mukta Tapti fields in Mumbai Offshore commands USD 5.70 per mmBtu price for fuel.
rates for supplies from 2009.
About one-fourth of the nation's natural gas needs are met through import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by state- promoted Petronet LNG Ltd, which currently sells the fuel at USD 4.98 per million British thermal unit.
This rate from January 1 would rise to USD 6.3 to 6.7 per mmBtu, pushing up cost of power generation and urea production, a source in know of the development said.
The price is not inclusive of sales tax, pipeline transportation charges and marketing margin. "The delivered price at burner tip is likely to range between USD 7.2 and 7.8 per mmBtu," he said.
This LNG would be the most expensive fuel in the country with Reliance Industries' D6 gas field at USD 4.2 per mmBtu being the cheapest outside the administrative pricing regime.
Petronet imports LNG from Qatar under two contracts - one long term at cheaper rates and the other short term on spot prices. These two rates are pooled to make price affordable to users such as Dabhol.
Currently, the long-term LNG costs USD 2.53 per mmBtu ex-ship while short-term LNG is priced at USD 8.5 per mmBtu and the two rates are pooled to get USD 4.98 per mmBtu price.
Sources said from January, the long-term rates will rise to USD 3.12 per mmBtu while the short-term LNG rates have been renegotiated at around USD 12 per mmBtu, the source said.
The short-term LNG contract for one million tonnes of LNG will run till September 2009 and has been pegged to Japanese Crude Cocktail (JCC) price of USD 60-70 a barrel.
Anticipating an increase in LNG price, the Government had recently decided to allocate D6 gas for Dabhol power plant. Dabhol currently gets pooled price gas from Petronet, but once Reliance starts gas production, the nation's largest gas-fired power plant would shift to D6 gas.
Petronet currently imports LNG from RasGas of Qatar at a fixed pre-shipping cost (or fob price) of USD 2.53 per mmBtu.
The five-year fixed price period will end in January when the price will move to a price band linked to Japanese Crude Cocktail (JCC), the source said.
From January, the free-on-board (fob) price will move up to USD 3.12 per mmBtu. After adding shipping cost, import duty, re-gasification charges, pipeline tariff, marketing margin and sales tax, the delivered price would be USD 5.5188 per mmBtu in January.
The ex-terminal price of RasGas LNG currently works out to be USD 3.86 per mmBtu. This would result in rise in fuel cost for power and fertiliser units, sources said.
The fob price will change every month based on the moving average of JCC, and LNG from Qatar will cost USD 4.25 per mmBtu in January 2010, USD 5.59 in 2011, USD 6.91 in 2012, USD 8.24 in 2013 and USD 8.73 per mmBtu in December 2013.
The source said the delivered price of Petronet's gas in January 2009 would be nearly four times the price of domestic gas produced by ONGC.
The gas produced by ONGC from fields given to it on nomination basis is priced at USD 1.9 per mmBtu. This price may go up to USD 2.4 per mmBtu if the government accepts Tariff Commission's recommendations for raising the fuel prices.
Of the free-market gas, Reliance Industries would be charging the least at USD 4.20 per mmBtu, while the Panna Mukta Tapti fields in Mumbai Offshore commands USD 5.70 per mmBtu price for fuel.
India - World Bank's Rs 14000-cr largess for Indian tech institutes
NEW DELHI: The technical educational institutes in the country are set for massive upgrade in infrastructure and software facilities with World Bank
assisted Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) entering the second phase this year.
The Ministry of HRD has signed an MoU with the World Bank for the second phase of the project which will be implemented for another three years.
"The engineering institutions will be provided assistance to upgrade their infrastructure and software facilities. Besides, faculty development will be a focused area under the second phase of the project," a senior ministry official told PTI.
As per the agreement, World Bank will provide Rs 14,000 crore, while HRD Ministry will contribute Rs 500 crore for the project. The states will have a share in the project.
"Forty per cent of the amount will be spent on infrastructure," he said.
However, the government is yet to finalise the institutes to be provided with the benefits.
The World Bank is understood to have objected to the idea of providing assistance on the criteria of backwardness of the area where the institute is located.
It is not yet decided whether quality or backwardness would be criteria for providing the assistance.
The TEQIP project was first launched in 2002, aiming to up-scale and support ongoing efforts in improving quality of technical education and enhancing existing capacities of the institutes to become demand-driven, quality conscious, efficient and responsive to rapid economic and technological developments both at national and international levels.
In the first phase, the total cost of the project was Rs 1,550 crore. About 127 institutes, including 18 Centrally funded and 109 state institutions, participated in first phase of TEQIP.
The state Institutes were from 13 States -- Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.
The 18 Central institutes include 17 NITs and NIFFT, Ranchi. The 109 state institutions included 90 engineering colleges and 19 polytechnics.
assisted Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) entering the second phase this year.
The Ministry of HRD has signed an MoU with the World Bank for the second phase of the project which will be implemented for another three years.
"The engineering institutions will be provided assistance to upgrade their infrastructure and software facilities. Besides, faculty development will be a focused area under the second phase of the project," a senior ministry official told PTI.
As per the agreement, World Bank will provide Rs 14,000 crore, while HRD Ministry will contribute Rs 500 crore for the project. The states will have a share in the project.
"Forty per cent of the amount will be spent on infrastructure," he said.
However, the government is yet to finalise the institutes to be provided with the benefits.
The World Bank is understood to have objected to the idea of providing assistance on the criteria of backwardness of the area where the institute is located.
It is not yet decided whether quality or backwardness would be criteria for providing the assistance.
The TEQIP project was first launched in 2002, aiming to up-scale and support ongoing efforts in improving quality of technical education and enhancing existing capacities of the institutes to become demand-driven, quality conscious, efficient and responsive to rapid economic and technological developments both at national and international levels.
In the first phase, the total cost of the project was Rs 1,550 crore. About 127 institutes, including 18 Centrally funded and 109 state institutions, participated in first phase of TEQIP.
The state Institutes were from 13 States -- Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.
The 18 Central institutes include 17 NITs and NIFFT, Ranchi. The 109 state institutions included 90 engineering colleges and 19 polytechnics.
India - Delhi joins elite club with 100% mobile penetration
Joji Thomas Philip
NEW DELHI: Delhi has become the first Indian city to have over 100% telecom penetration. The latest government data shows that the city has a mobile
tele-density of 109.9%, or has over 109 mobile connections for every 100 residents.
Delhi, which had about 19-million mobile subscribers as of October-end, also joins the global league of cities with over 100% mobile penetration such as London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Delhi’s telecom penetration would be much higher, if the landline figures are also taken into account. The Capital was the first Indian city where mobile services were launched in 1995.
“Delhiites love to live well, enjoy life and spend more compared to any other city in India. It’s therefore no surprise that the city’s mobile penetration is more than 100%,” said GSM operators’ lobby COAI director general TV Ramachandran.
Despite an over 100% mobile penetration, the city still has significant scope of adding several million users. It is estimated that nearly a fifth of the city’s population of 17 million, who are in the lower income bracket, do not have a mobile connection.
“Urban markets have achieved near saturation, while the rural market is largely untapped. Operators and handset makers will need to have two different strategies for these markets,” said Nokia India chief D Shivakumar. For operators, this means focus on additional services and better quality in urban India. Companies will have to sell mobility to rural users.
NEW DELHI: Delhi has become the first Indian city to have over 100% telecom penetration. The latest government data shows that the city has a mobile
tele-density of 109.9%, or has over 109 mobile connections for every 100 residents.
Delhi, which had about 19-million mobile subscribers as of October-end, also joins the global league of cities with over 100% mobile penetration such as London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Delhi’s telecom penetration would be much higher, if the landline figures are also taken into account. The Capital was the first Indian city where mobile services were launched in 1995.
“Delhiites love to live well, enjoy life and spend more compared to any other city in India. It’s therefore no surprise that the city’s mobile penetration is more than 100%,” said GSM operators’ lobby COAI director general TV Ramachandran.
Despite an over 100% mobile penetration, the city still has significant scope of adding several million users. It is estimated that nearly a fifth of the city’s population of 17 million, who are in the lower income bracket, do not have a mobile connection.
“Urban markets have achieved near saturation, while the rural market is largely untapped. Operators and handset makers will need to have two different strategies for these markets,” said Nokia India chief D Shivakumar. For operators, this means focus on additional services and better quality in urban India. Companies will have to sell mobility to rural users.
India - 25m mobiles to be disconnected on January 6
Rashmi Pratap
MUMBAI: Come January 6 and some 25 million mobile phones could get disconnected. Concerned over terrorist attacks in various parts of the country,
the department of telecom (DoT) has asked telecom service providers to disconnect handsets which do not have an international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number.
IMEI number is a unique 15-digit code that can identify a handset to a GSM network. It prevents stolen handsets from being used and allows lawful interception. Every time a call is made, the IMEI number shows on the operators's network. DoT has asked service providers to equip networks with Equipment Identity Register (EIR) to check if calls are being made from genuine handsets.
“Wherever such facility is not available in switches, necessary hardware and software should be put in place within a period of three months of the date of issue of this letter and compliance reported,” it added in a letter to operators on October 6.
According to the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), the use of illegal IMEI handsets is possible because there is no validation of IMEI in mobiles entering India through the sea or air route. Also, there is no central mechanism to prohibit stolen phones from being used. Bulk of the grey market phones are without genuine IMEI numbers. ICA estimates around 25 million such handsets are running on networks in the country.
However, some operators ET spoke to express their inability in meeting the DoT deadline due to technical reasons.
“What the DoT is trying to do is to block all calls with zeroes as IMEI numbers or from blacklisted numbers. That adds extra load on networks. There are so many combinations of non-genuine IMEI numbers that it is extremely difficult to block them. Network upgradation is required to block all such calls and not all of our multiple equipment vendors are equipped to do it,” a senior official at a telco told ET.
MUMBAI: Come January 6 and some 25 million mobile phones could get disconnected. Concerned over terrorist attacks in various parts of the country,
the department of telecom (DoT) has asked telecom service providers to disconnect handsets which do not have an international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number.
IMEI number is a unique 15-digit code that can identify a handset to a GSM network. It prevents stolen handsets from being used and allows lawful interception. Every time a call is made, the IMEI number shows on the operators's network. DoT has asked service providers to equip networks with Equipment Identity Register (EIR) to check if calls are being made from genuine handsets.
“Wherever such facility is not available in switches, necessary hardware and software should be put in place within a period of three months of the date of issue of this letter and compliance reported,” it added in a letter to operators on October 6.
According to the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), the use of illegal IMEI handsets is possible because there is no validation of IMEI in mobiles entering India through the sea or air route. Also, there is no central mechanism to prohibit stolen phones from being used. Bulk of the grey market phones are without genuine IMEI numbers. ICA estimates around 25 million such handsets are running on networks in the country.
However, some operators ET spoke to express their inability in meeting the DoT deadline due to technical reasons.
“What the DoT is trying to do is to block all calls with zeroes as IMEI numbers or from blacklisted numbers. That adds extra load on networks. There are so many combinations of non-genuine IMEI numbers that it is extremely difficult to block them. Network upgradation is required to block all such calls and not all of our multiple equipment vendors are equipped to do it,” a senior official at a telco told ET.
Lifestyle - Now, mums-to-be can share their babies' 'kicks' on Facebook!
Melbourne, Dec 18 (ANI): Mums-to-be will now be able to share the exciting feeling of the little feet kicking inside their wombs with their friends on social networking sites like Facebook - courtesy stretchy pregnancy belt.
The Kickbee belt was developed by PhD student Corey Menscher, of New York University after his wife became pregnant.
However, the belt is still in the prototype stage.
It uses sensors to track the movement of the fetus in the womb that will allow expectant mothers to automatically post daily progress reports of their child on the Internet.
It sends a signal to a computer every time the baby moves, with a message such as: "I kicked mummy at 11.38am."
The sensors on the belt generate a small electrical current when tapped or vibrated by a baby's movement.
The microcontroller in the belt transmits the signal directly to the website using wireless Bluetooth technology.
"As a baby grows inside the womb, pregnant mothers are constantly aware of its presence, mostly through its movements," the CourierMail quoted Menscher as saying.
"As an expectant father, I wanted to create a device that would give me a chance to be aware of our baby's movements.
"With the Kickbee, I intend to extend a baby's minute contact with the world beyond the mother's body by sensing these movements and transmitting them," he added. (ANI)
The Kickbee belt was developed by PhD student Corey Menscher, of New York University after his wife became pregnant.
However, the belt is still in the prototype stage.
It uses sensors to track the movement of the fetus in the womb that will allow expectant mothers to automatically post daily progress reports of their child on the Internet.
It sends a signal to a computer every time the baby moves, with a message such as: "I kicked mummy at 11.38am."
The sensors on the belt generate a small electrical current when tapped or vibrated by a baby's movement.
The microcontroller in the belt transmits the signal directly to the website using wireless Bluetooth technology.
"As a baby grows inside the womb, pregnant mothers are constantly aware of its presence, mostly through its movements," the CourierMail quoted Menscher as saying.
"As an expectant father, I wanted to create a device that would give me a chance to be aware of our baby's movements.
"With the Kickbee, I intend to extend a baby's minute contact with the world beyond the mother's body by sensing these movements and transmitting them," he added. (ANI)
Sport - Cricket;IPL puts pressure on Oz players to choose between money, country
Sydney, Dec 18 (ANI): Australian players participating in the second edition of the Indian Premier League, which starts on April 10, could suffer greatly, because the postponed tour of Pakistan has been rescheduled to overlap with the event.
Franchise owners will see little value in signing a player who is not available for the entire series, having now lost the contingency of replacement options, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
IPL commissioner Lalit Modi has also opened the way for teams to sign as many state and county players as they wish, putting greater pressure on internationals to choose between money and country.
The Delhi Daredevils on Wednesday signed New South Wales youngster David Warner to a deal worth nearly 300,000 dollars a year, while Kolkata last week nabbed his teammate Moises Henriques for about 460,000 dollars.
Franchises were allowed to purchase replacements if their international players had to represent their national teams during the first edition of the tournament. That opened the way for IPL teams to spend upwards of one million dollar on players including Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds, knowing that they would pay him per game, and sign a back-up when Symonds and the Australian team returned home to prepare for the West Indies tour.
The International Cricket Council has maintained that its future tours program outlined until 2012 should not be changed if international cricket is to remain the priority.
But national bodies, particularly from lesser-performing nations whose players are not well paid, will feel the burden of shifting or scrapping tours to allow their stars to capitalise on IPL earnings.
Sri Lanka recently caved to a 70 million dollars offer from the Indian board - which runs the IPL - to abandon a series against England and instead allow its players to compete in the IPL. (ANI)
Franchise owners will see little value in signing a player who is not available for the entire series, having now lost the contingency of replacement options, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
IPL commissioner Lalit Modi has also opened the way for teams to sign as many state and county players as they wish, putting greater pressure on internationals to choose between money and country.
The Delhi Daredevils on Wednesday signed New South Wales youngster David Warner to a deal worth nearly 300,000 dollars a year, while Kolkata last week nabbed his teammate Moises Henriques for about 460,000 dollars.
Franchises were allowed to purchase replacements if their international players had to represent their national teams during the first edition of the tournament. That opened the way for IPL teams to spend upwards of one million dollar on players including Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds, knowing that they would pay him per game, and sign a back-up when Symonds and the Australian team returned home to prepare for the West Indies tour.
The International Cricket Council has maintained that its future tours program outlined until 2012 should not be changed if international cricket is to remain the priority.
But national bodies, particularly from lesser-performing nations whose players are not well paid, will feel the burden of shifting or scrapping tours to allow their stars to capitalise on IPL earnings.
Sri Lanka recently caved to a 70 million dollars offer from the Indian board - which runs the IPL - to abandon a series against England and instead allow its players to compete in the IPL. (ANI)
India - 'India Inc may not raise salaries in 2009'
Anticipating a decline in its business performance in 2009, India Inc is likely to cut back on the planned salary increase in the coming year, while most firms want to avoid huge job cuts, a latest survey says.
Majority of companies in the country are trying to be selective in planning the workforce, compensation and benefit cuts for 2009, while they anticipate a decline in their company's business performance in 2009, according to global HR consultancy Mercer.
The survey revealed that as much as 83 per cent of companies expect salary increases in the coming year to be lower than originally planned by them. The responses indicate that the companies are planning to look closely at holding down the level of compensation increases in 2009.
However, only 19 per cent of survey respondents are considering the more drastic step of freezing 2009 salaries at 2008 figures.
The results for companies in India generally match survey findings from other parts of the world. In China, Australia, the UK and the US as well between 20 and 30 per cent respondents believe that the 2009 bonus payout would be reduced from those originally planned.
"India grew on the back of her knowledge and people-centric industries such as financial services, information technology and retail, among others. However, primarily due to employee costs having risen in India at double-digit rates since 2003, cost structures have been coming under severe strain," Mercer Consulting (India) country leader Padma Ravichandar said.
Most companies in India plan to avoid significant workforce reductions, but they do not plan significant hiring either, the survey revealed.
Nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) of companies surveyed revealed that a significant reduction in workforce was unlikely even as only one in four firms expect to continue their hiring activities at or above replacement levels.
This current situation should be perceived as a cooling-down period in terms of talent costs. This is a levelling act which may help India remain cost competitive in the long run. In the near term, the adverse impact of business sentiment seems all pervasive, Ravichandar added.
Over 80 per cent of respondents expect their company's business performance to decline in 2009, the Mercer survey noticed.
Further, corporate India expects mergers and acquisitions to be severely affected in the next year, with fewer than seven per cent of survey respondents expecting increased MandA activity.
Mercer's survey, conducted in early November, collected responses from over 100 human resource and finance professionals in India, as part of more than 1,000 responses from around the world.
Majority of companies in the country are trying to be selective in planning the workforce, compensation and benefit cuts for 2009, while they anticipate a decline in their company's business performance in 2009, according to global HR consultancy Mercer.
The survey revealed that as much as 83 per cent of companies expect salary increases in the coming year to be lower than originally planned by them. The responses indicate that the companies are planning to look closely at holding down the level of compensation increases in 2009.
However, only 19 per cent of survey respondents are considering the more drastic step of freezing 2009 salaries at 2008 figures.
The results for companies in India generally match survey findings from other parts of the world. In China, Australia, the UK and the US as well between 20 and 30 per cent respondents believe that the 2009 bonus payout would be reduced from those originally planned.
"India grew on the back of her knowledge and people-centric industries such as financial services, information technology and retail, among others. However, primarily due to employee costs having risen in India at double-digit rates since 2003, cost structures have been coming under severe strain," Mercer Consulting (India) country leader Padma Ravichandar said.
Most companies in India plan to avoid significant workforce reductions, but they do not plan significant hiring either, the survey revealed.
Nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) of companies surveyed revealed that a significant reduction in workforce was unlikely even as only one in four firms expect to continue their hiring activities at or above replacement levels.
This current situation should be perceived as a cooling-down period in terms of talent costs. This is a levelling act which may help India remain cost competitive in the long run. In the near term, the adverse impact of business sentiment seems all pervasive, Ravichandar added.
Over 80 per cent of respondents expect their company's business performance to decline in 2009, the Mercer survey noticed.
Further, corporate India expects mergers and acquisitions to be severely affected in the next year, with fewer than seven per cent of survey respondents expecting increased MandA activity.
Mercer's survey, conducted in early November, collected responses from over 100 human resource and finance professionals in India, as part of more than 1,000 responses from around the world.
World - Amar Singh, Lakshmi Mittal, CII, Reliance among major donors to Clinton Foundation
New York, Dec 19 (IANS) Several Indian big-wigs, including industrialist Lakshmi Mittal, politician Amar Singh, corporate houses Reliance and Ranbaxy, media house India Today group and Confederation of Indian Industry figure in the list of prominent donors to the Clinton Foundation, according to the information made public Thursday.
Though the exact amounts donated were not released, steel-tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh fall in the category wherein they donated between one million to five million US dollars. So did Tulsi R. Tanti-headed Suzlon Energy Limited, which is based in Amsterdam, and is a leading supplier of wind turbines.
A close friend of the Clinton family, successful Indian American entrepreneur Vinod Gupta, donated between quarter million to half a million US dollars, so did hotelier Lalit Suri who died in October 2006. Ajit Gulabchand, chairman and managing director of Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) also made a similar donation.
The list of donors was released by the William J. Clinton Foundation, established by the former US President, Bill Clinton, as part of an agreement with the president-elect, Barack Obama, under which he nominated the former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, as his Secretary of State.
'As soon as Senator Clinton was nominated to be Secretary of State, the Foundation staff began working with President-elect Obama's transition team to ensure that not even the appearance of a conflict of interest existed between the Clinton Foundation's operations and Senator Clinton's anticipated service as Secretary of State,' the Foundation said in a statement issued in New York.
The Foundation is involved in charitable work particularly in the underdeveloped world and in Africa. A large number of its donors are from outside the US. The biggest donors include the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, UNITAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, kingdom of Saudi Arabia and government of Norway.
President Clinton's efforts are unprecedented and go above and beyond what the law requires and are intended to allow the important work of the Foundation to continue.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) donated between half a million to one million US dollars, according to the list released by the Clinton Foundation. Major Indian and Indian American donors in the category of $100,000 to quarter million include the India Today group, Lata Krishnan, Mike Patel, Raani Corporation, Ranbaxy Pharmacuticals and Reliance Europe Limited.
Though the exact amounts donated were not released, steel-tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh fall in the category wherein they donated between one million to five million US dollars. So did Tulsi R. Tanti-headed Suzlon Energy Limited, which is based in Amsterdam, and is a leading supplier of wind turbines.
A close friend of the Clinton family, successful Indian American entrepreneur Vinod Gupta, donated between quarter million to half a million US dollars, so did hotelier Lalit Suri who died in October 2006. Ajit Gulabchand, chairman and managing director of Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) also made a similar donation.
The list of donors was released by the William J. Clinton Foundation, established by the former US President, Bill Clinton, as part of an agreement with the president-elect, Barack Obama, under which he nominated the former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, as his Secretary of State.
'As soon as Senator Clinton was nominated to be Secretary of State, the Foundation staff began working with President-elect Obama's transition team to ensure that not even the appearance of a conflict of interest existed between the Clinton Foundation's operations and Senator Clinton's anticipated service as Secretary of State,' the Foundation said in a statement issued in New York.
The Foundation is involved in charitable work particularly in the underdeveloped world and in Africa. A large number of its donors are from outside the US. The biggest donors include the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, UNITAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, kingdom of Saudi Arabia and government of Norway.
President Clinton's efforts are unprecedented and go above and beyond what the law requires and are intended to allow the important work of the Foundation to continue.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) donated between half a million to one million US dollars, according to the list released by the Clinton Foundation. Major Indian and Indian American donors in the category of $100,000 to quarter million include the India Today group, Lata Krishnan, Mike Patel, Raani Corporation, Ranbaxy Pharmacuticals and Reliance Europe Limited.
India - Goa bans beach parties from Dec 23 to Jan 5
Panaji, Dec 19 (IANS) In a move which could send wrong signals to Goa-bound vacationers, the state government Thursday banned parties and celebrations on beaches and other open areas from Dec 23 to Jan 5 citing 'safety reasons'.
Home minister Ravi Naik told reporters after a Congress Legislative Party (CLP) meeting that parties and celebrations inside hotels and other closed areas would be permitted. He further said that the ban was ordered following a recommendation by the CLP, which is headed by Chief Minister Digambar Kamat.
'The CLP has recommended that the beach parties should not be allowed between December 23 and January 5 due to safety reasons and to avoid crowding on the beaches and open spaces,' Naik said. 'The hotels can hold their parties. The ban is on those events which are organised on beaches and open spaces,' Naik said.
'The Collectors have been asked to draw up formal orders about the ban, which should be done by tomorrow,' an official told IANS.
The CLP's decision comes on the heels of an extremely lean patch for the Goan tourism industry, which is reeling under the effects of global recession and the Mumbai terror strikes.
According to a recently circulated cabinet note and other intelligence inputs, Goa is also reported to be on the Al Qaeda radar. The Goa Police have upped the security in the state by several degrees following the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes.
During the festive week starting from Christmas to New Year, Goa is popular for beach parties which are a huge draw for tourists, as well as dances and jam sessions that are a rage with the Goan youth.
These essentially open air events during the latter part of the year, also form the backbone of the Goan entertainment industry, which will be severely affected by the decision.
Goa, which in the past saw nearly two million tourists flocking to its shore each tourist season, is witnessing its worst tourism season yet.
Home minister Ravi Naik told reporters after a Congress Legislative Party (CLP) meeting that parties and celebrations inside hotels and other closed areas would be permitted. He further said that the ban was ordered following a recommendation by the CLP, which is headed by Chief Minister Digambar Kamat.
'The CLP has recommended that the beach parties should not be allowed between December 23 and January 5 due to safety reasons and to avoid crowding on the beaches and open spaces,' Naik said. 'The hotels can hold their parties. The ban is on those events which are organised on beaches and open spaces,' Naik said.
'The Collectors have been asked to draw up formal orders about the ban, which should be done by tomorrow,' an official told IANS.
The CLP's decision comes on the heels of an extremely lean patch for the Goan tourism industry, which is reeling under the effects of global recession and the Mumbai terror strikes.
According to a recently circulated cabinet note and other intelligence inputs, Goa is also reported to be on the Al Qaeda radar. The Goa Police have upped the security in the state by several degrees following the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes.
During the festive week starting from Christmas to New Year, Goa is popular for beach parties which are a huge draw for tourists, as well as dances and jam sessions that are a rage with the Goan youth.
These essentially open air events during the latter part of the year, also form the backbone of the Goan entertainment industry, which will be severely affected by the decision.
Goa, which in the past saw nearly two million tourists flocking to its shore each tourist season, is witnessing its worst tourism season yet.
World - UK;LSE pips Oxford to become UK's top academic institution
The London School of Economics has become the UK's top-ranked higher education research institution after beating Oxford and Cambridge.
This is the first time LSE has won the top league position in a table devised exclusively for 'The Independent' by the leading research organisation Research Fortnight from official government statistics.
The rankings will determine how the lion's share of 1.5billion worth of government funding for university research will be distributed from next year, reports the 'Independent'.
LSE's position was determined by the proportion of 4* ratings its researchers received - particularly in areas such as economics - where 60 per cent of the research it submitted for accreditation was given the top ranking.
Besides LSE, University College London achieved a higher than 50 per cent ranking for the level of research into economics ranked world class (55 per cent).
This is the first time LSE has won the top league position in a table devised exclusively for 'The Independent' by the leading research organisation Research Fortnight from official government statistics.
The rankings will determine how the lion's share of 1.5billion worth of government funding for university research will be distributed from next year, reports the 'Independent'.
LSE's position was determined by the proportion of 4* ratings its researchers received - particularly in areas such as economics - where 60 per cent of the research it submitted for accreditation was given the top ranking.
Besides LSE, University College London achieved a higher than 50 per cent ranking for the level of research into economics ranked world class (55 per cent).
World - Malaysia makes pre-marriage HIV screening test mandatory
Alarmed by rising cases of HIV in the country, Malaysia on Thursday made it compulsory for all Malaysian Muslims intending to get married to undergo a Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) screening beginning next year.
Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, who chaired a Cabinet meeting on AIDS, said the screening will be made part of pre-marriage courses. The decision was taken to reduce HIV infections, especially among women, which statistics show, is increasing.
"Cumulatively, there are 83,527 HIV cases so far and of this, 14,317 are AIDS cases of which 12,425 people have died," he said, adding that AIDS still posed a serious threat to the country.
However, he noted that the country's HIV infection rate has dropped by half over the past five years. There are only 3452 cases this year compared to 6756 in 2003, media reports said.
The deputy premier said more concerted and focused efforts has contributed to the drop in the number of HIV infections annually. Among the major contributors was the Harm Reduction Programme which will be continued to achieve the government's goal of 11 cases per 100,000 population by 2015 compared with 12.8 cases per 100,000 population now, he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, who chaired a Cabinet meeting on AIDS, said the screening will be made part of pre-marriage courses. The decision was taken to reduce HIV infections, especially among women, which statistics show, is increasing.
"Cumulatively, there are 83,527 HIV cases so far and of this, 14,317 are AIDS cases of which 12,425 people have died," he said, adding that AIDS still posed a serious threat to the country.
However, he noted that the country's HIV infection rate has dropped by half over the past five years. There are only 3452 cases this year compared to 6756 in 2003, media reports said.
The deputy premier said more concerted and focused efforts has contributed to the drop in the number of HIV infections annually. Among the major contributors was the Harm Reduction Programme which will be continued to achieve the government's goal of 11 cases per 100,000 population by 2015 compared with 12.8 cases per 100,000 population now, he said.
India - Terror-hit hotels may end up with claims worth Rs 500 cr
Mumbai's two terror-hit hotels, the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, and the Oberoi-Trident, may generate a total insurance claims of Rs 500 crore, much less than what it was earlier expected earlier. PK Bhagat, deputy general manager, GIC Re, said though the final calculation about the total claim was yet to be made, the total amount may not go beyond Rs 500 crore as the hotels have already announced their plans to restart business. Bhagat was speaking at a conference on 'Growth Dynamics for Insurnace Industry: Embracing The Future' organised by the Asia Insurance Post in Mumbai.
GIC Re will administer the Terrorism Pool out of which the claims for the terror-hit hotels will be made. Bhagat revealed that currently the pool has a corpus of Rs 1,500 crore, including Rs 150 crore of re-insurance which has been done under the leadership of Glacier Re. "Officials from Galcier Re have already visited the hotels and completed the prelimnary survey to settle claims,'' he said.
Speaking to FE at the conference, Trevor Bull, managing director, Tata AIG Life InsuranceM said that the company's operations in India hacve progrssed as usual despite the fact that one of the partners of the company, American International Group is currently facing a tough time in the US.
"We have infused Rs 106 crore in our life insurnace joint ventue and are planning to invest more before Christimas. Both the partners are committed to the growth of the company which has sufficient solvency,'' he said. Trevour said that the company would be interested in foraying into the pension business when the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority will allow new players under New Pension Scheme (NPS). Addressing the connference, P Nandagopal, CEO, Reliance Life Insurance, said that domestic life insurers have established a more powrful distribution system than any other player in the financial sector, including banks and mutual funds. Distribution plays the most vital role in insurance industry,'' he said. He said that agency channels remain the lifeline of the life insurance industry. However, he lamented that despite the downturn, the industry did not get enough talents for the agency channel.
According to Nandagopal, bancassurance could not be a just channel, but startegy for insurers."We may not have many bancassurance partners, but we will utilise it as a strategy to grow our business,'' he said.
Sudip Mukhopadhyay, country head , medical and health insurance, Swiss Re, India, pointed out that only 2% of the population had health insurance policies. "Insurance companies have become unnecessarily competitive as the market is vast enough accomodate all,'' he said.
Highlighting the current trends in India, he said that 80% of the expenses relating to healthcare, not paid by the policy, was borne by the policy holder.
"Even in BRIC countries, the government spend on healthcare is much higher than that of India,'' he said.
GIC Re will administer the Terrorism Pool out of which the claims for the terror-hit hotels will be made. Bhagat revealed that currently the pool has a corpus of Rs 1,500 crore, including Rs 150 crore of re-insurance which has been done under the leadership of Glacier Re. "Officials from Galcier Re have already visited the hotels and completed the prelimnary survey to settle claims,'' he said.
Speaking to FE at the conference, Trevor Bull, managing director, Tata AIG Life InsuranceM said that the company's operations in India hacve progrssed as usual despite the fact that one of the partners of the company, American International Group is currently facing a tough time in the US.
"We have infused Rs 106 crore in our life insurnace joint ventue and are planning to invest more before Christimas. Both the partners are committed to the growth of the company which has sufficient solvency,'' he said. Trevour said that the company would be interested in foraying into the pension business when the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority will allow new players under New Pension Scheme (NPS). Addressing the connference, P Nandagopal, CEO, Reliance Life Insurance, said that domestic life insurers have established a more powrful distribution system than any other player in the financial sector, including banks and mutual funds. Distribution plays the most vital role in insurance industry,'' he said. He said that agency channels remain the lifeline of the life insurance industry. However, he lamented that despite the downturn, the industry did not get enough talents for the agency channel.
According to Nandagopal, bancassurance could not be a just channel, but startegy for insurers."We may not have many bancassurance partners, but we will utilise it as a strategy to grow our business,'' he said.
Sudip Mukhopadhyay, country head , medical and health insurance, Swiss Re, India, pointed out that only 2% of the population had health insurance policies. "Insurance companies have become unnecessarily competitive as the market is vast enough accomodate all,'' he said.
Highlighting the current trends in India, he said that 80% of the expenses relating to healthcare, not paid by the policy, was borne by the policy holder.
"Even in BRIC countries, the government spend on healthcare is much higher than that of India,'' he said.
World - Vertical Farming
Bryan Walsh
Dickson Despommier became the guru of vertical farming because his students were bummed out. A professor of environmental health at Columbia University in New York City, Despommier teaches about parasitism, environmental disruption and other assorted happy topics. Eventually his students complained; they wanted to work on something optimistic. So the class began studying the idea of rooftop gardening for cities. They quickly discarded that approach--too small-scale--in favor of something more ambitious: a 30-story urban farm with a greenhouse on every floor. "I think vertical farming is an idea that can work in a big way," says Despommier.
Why would we want to build skyscrapers filled with lettuce when we've been farming on the ground for 10,000 years? Because as the world's population grows--from 6.8 billion now to as much as 9 billion by 2050--we could run out of productive soil and water. Most of the population growth will occur in cities that can't easily feed themselves. Add the fact that modern agriculture and everything associated with it--deforestation, chemical-laden fertilizers and carbon-emitting transportation--is a significant contributor to climate change, and suddenly vertical farming doesn't seem so magic beanstalk in the sky.
"Vertical farming could allow food to be grown locally and sustainably," says Glen Kertz, CEO of Valcent, a tech company based in El Paso, Texas, that's trying out the process. His firm uses hydroponic greenhouse methods to grow upward rather than out. The result saves space--vital in urban areas--and allows farmers to irrigate and fertilize with far less waste.
At Valcent's El Paso lab, potted crops grow in rows on clear vertical panels that rotate on a conveyor belt. Moving them gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients needed, an optimization that Kertz says lets him grow 15 times as much lettuce per acre as on a normal farm, using 5% of the water that conventional agriculture does. The company aims to finish a commercial-scale facility by early 2009.
Despommier's plans are even grander. He has drawn up models for a 30-story, city-block-size vertical farm that would have transparent walls to maximize sunlight and would produce enough food for 50,000 people. "With about 160 of these buildings, you could feed all of New York," he says. His idea has intrigued architects, but Despommier concedes that it would cost hundreds of millions to build a full-scale skyscraper farm. That's the main drawback: construction and energy costs would probably make vertically raised food more costly than traditional crops. At least for now.
Dickson Despommier became the guru of vertical farming because his students were bummed out. A professor of environmental health at Columbia University in New York City, Despommier teaches about parasitism, environmental disruption and other assorted happy topics. Eventually his students complained; they wanted to work on something optimistic. So the class began studying the idea of rooftop gardening for cities. They quickly discarded that approach--too small-scale--in favor of something more ambitious: a 30-story urban farm with a greenhouse on every floor. "I think vertical farming is an idea that can work in a big way," says Despommier.
Why would we want to build skyscrapers filled with lettuce when we've been farming on the ground for 10,000 years? Because as the world's population grows--from 6.8 billion now to as much as 9 billion by 2050--we could run out of productive soil and water. Most of the population growth will occur in cities that can't easily feed themselves. Add the fact that modern agriculture and everything associated with it--deforestation, chemical-laden fertilizers and carbon-emitting transportation--is a significant contributor to climate change, and suddenly vertical farming doesn't seem so magic beanstalk in the sky.
"Vertical farming could allow food to be grown locally and sustainably," says Glen Kertz, CEO of Valcent, a tech company based in El Paso, Texas, that's trying out the process. His firm uses hydroponic greenhouse methods to grow upward rather than out. The result saves space--vital in urban areas--and allows farmers to irrigate and fertilize with far less waste.
At Valcent's El Paso lab, potted crops grow in rows on clear vertical panels that rotate on a conveyor belt. Moving them gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients needed, an optimization that Kertz says lets him grow 15 times as much lettuce per acre as on a normal farm, using 5% of the water that conventional agriculture does. The company aims to finish a commercial-scale facility by early 2009.
Despommier's plans are even grander. He has drawn up models for a 30-story, city-block-size vertical farm that would have transparent walls to maximize sunlight and would produce enough food for 50,000 people. "With about 160 of these buildings, you could feed all of New York," he says. His idea has intrigued architects, but Despommier concedes that it would cost hundreds of millions to build a full-scale skyscraper farm. That's the main drawback: construction and energy costs would probably make vertically raised food more costly than traditional crops. At least for now.
Sport - Football;An Englishman in the Land Of Smiles
Andrew marshall
"Thais believe that a person's soul abides in the crown of the hair on top of the head. To bump, hit, rub, or touch the head is to offend the soul, perhaps causing it to run away from home." — Handbook for foreign students at a Thai university
Peter Reid is doing that thing with his mouth again. First, the skin around his sky-blue eyes starts to wrinkle. Then the corners of his thin lips slowly curl up toward thick sideburns. Then you catch a glimpse of dentistry and it's unmistakable. He's actually doing it: Peter Reid is smiling.
He should be. After years in the soccer wilderness, the famously dour 52-year-old has just signed a lucrative contract to manage the national team of Thailand, the self-styled Land of Smiles. The former Everton midfielder seems an unlikely choice. Thailand is a well-mannered country where fun comes first and losing your temper is a sign of weakness. Reid is known for high-volume, expletive-rich team talks and a habitually grim expression. At Sunderland, an English team he once managed, supporters used to sing, to the tune of the Monkees' "Daydream Believer," "Cheer up, Peter Reid ..." Land of Smiles? Dream on. Reid's face is built for bollocking.
Yet many Thais hope his no-nonsense style will help their national team achieve something unprecedented: a place at the World Cup finals in 2014. It is a daunting task. Reid must motivate not only talented yet underperforming young Thai players but also millions of cynical Thai fans who would much rather watch English Premier League football than their often amateurish homegrown variety. Though Reid has a four-year contract, his honeymoon period will be much shorter. "People want the Thai team to upgrade itself, and not just into an Asian powerhouse," says Tor Chittinand, soccer correspondent for the Bangkok Post. "We're aiming for the World Cup."
Reid's first major test is this month's ASEAN Football Championship, also known as the Suzuki Cup, which Thailand is co-hosting with Indonesia. Before taking the job, he had only visited Thailand twice. He first went in 1984 with Everton, which had just won the F.A. Cup. He was 28. "It was a bit of a piss-up," he recalls, "but we played a couple of matches." Two decades of breakneck growth has transformed Bangkok, although for Reid some things have stayed the same. "Don't talk to me about the f___ing traffic," he growls.
Like any expatriate who lands a plum management position overseas, Reid must now wrestle with an alien culture and a tricky language. But unlike other foreign execs, he must manage not a company but a national team — at a time of national crisis. "Football is about nothing," British comedian Peter Cook once said, "unless it is about something." These days, Reid will discover, everything in Thailand is about politics — including football.
"Thais will attempt to label you by your appearance and may expect you to behave in ways that they have previously experienced with people similar to you. This is a normal reaction to your strangeness."
If thailand has high expectations of Reid, it is partly because their most successful manager so far was also a Liverpudlian named Peter. Under former striker Peter Withe, the national team won two regional championships, in 2000 and 2002, and even beat London giants Arsenal in a Bangkok friendly. But Withe had a turbulent relationship with his employers, the Football Association of Thailand (FAT), and was sacked in 2003. Since then, the team's fortunes have declined under a succession of coaches, including a Brazilian, a German and two Thais.
Thailand is now ranked 116th by world soccer body FIFA, thanks to erratic and occasionally farcical performances that date back to the team's notorious match against Indonesia at the 1998 ASEAN championships. Both teams set out to lose, since the winner would play a stronger team in the next round. Indonesia lost 3-2 after deliberately scoring against themselves. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Thai national team has a less than fanatical following. Only 25,000 spectators went to watch the team play Japan in Bangkok earlier this year — and most of those were Japanese. (Thailand lost 3-0.)
As Thai football has lost its way, so has the country. Within weeks of Reid's arrival, two people were killed and hundreds injured in antigovernment riots in Bangkok. Protesters occupied the offices of beleaguered Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, and then, on Nov. 25, stormed the capital's airport. Tourists and investors are fleeing the country, the stock market is tanking. The famous Thai smile is fading fast. A Bangkok pollster calculated that the nation's "Gross Domestic Happiness Index" measured a mere 4.84 out of 10, the lowest for almost three years. Cheer up, Peter Reid? He's probably the only happy man left in Thailand.
One reason to be cheerful: a contract reported to be worth $1.5 million a year. While that's small compared to the nearly $9 million Fabio Capello is paid to manage England's national squad, it's very big money by Thai standards. Reid's base salary is 33 times bigger than that of his predecessor, Charnvit Polcheewin, who resigned after Thailand's failure to qualify for the 2010 World Cup.
Who is bankrolling Reid's generous salary? Could it be former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled billionaire who — so his enemies claim — was pulling the strings behind the Somchai government? Thaksin was toppled in a 2006 military coup and the following year bought Manchester City, a struggling football club where Reid was once player-manager. Sentenced in absentia in October to two years in jail for conflict of interest, Thaksin remains a deeply divisive figure, loved by rural Thais but loathed by the urban élite.
"Thaksin loves football," said FAT president Worawi Makudi in July. "He loves his country and he has offered to help us with anything." But today, Worawi, who once sat on Manchester City's board of directors, will not say who is bankrolling the best-paid man in Thai football. The matter is "confidential," he says. Is it Thaksin? "I don't want to answer that question," replies Worawi, his voice rising. Asked the same question, Reid offers a bizarre nondenial: "Not as far as I know."
"Smiling has many meanings in Thai culture. Gradually you will begin to understand why people are smiling as you begin to appreciate the subtlety of Thai culture. Do not forget to keep smiling."
Dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, Reid sits alone in a glass-fronted VIP area above the main stand at the Bangkok stadium of Chulalongkorn United. Below him are a few hundred home fans and, opposite them, a few dozen supporters of the Provincial Electricity Authority, the league leaders. Reid has been watching as many league games as possible before picking his national squad. When asked what he's looking for in potential squad members, he replies, "Talent. Pace. Attitude." There are players with all three on the pitch, but Reid has a problem: the stadium's floodlighting is so patchy that he can barely make out the numbers on the shirts. That's par for the course in Thailand's shambolic and unpopular league, where facilities are poor, and players and officials often outnumber fans. The game ends 0-0, but Reid doesn't wait for the final whistle — he nips off early to watch a live broadcast of Manchester United playing Liverpool. Who can blame him? Every football fan in Thailand is doing exactly the same.
A month later, Reid names a squad of 36 players and calls them to a meeting at the National Football Center, a grand name for a spartan two-story building set amid rice fields in the Bangkok boondocks. "It feels like a rehab clinic," grumbles one of Reid's staff. On the desk in front of him is the squad roster, a pristine copy of a book called English-Thai: The Fun Way to Learn the Language and a three-page cheat sheet of footballing phrases in Thai. Reid studies it. "Poo rack sah bra too," he says hesitantly. Phu rak-saa bpra-dtuu (goalkeeper). "Goalie," he grins. "Brilliant. Got to have a go, haven't you?"
Reid vows to join his players in the blazing afternoon sun for a warm-up. "I'll be knackered," he grins. "I'll be on me knees after that, though." The players arrive. "Is this the boys?" says Reid, jumping to his feet. "Brilliant." Thirty young men file in, subdued and unsmiling. Reid greets them in both Thai ("Sawadee khrap!") and his native Liverpudlian ("All right, boys?"). They bow their heads and clasp their hands together in a wai, the traditional Thai gesture of respect. "Even though training will be hard, I like enjoying it," Reid tells them. "I like smiling." The players look unconvinced.
"Thais consider it extraordinarily rude to express anger in public ... If you cannot keep a 'cool head,' many Thais will actually think you are insane or dangerous. When angry, remember to smile."
In the past, reid's motivational style has inclined toward shouting and swearing, usually at the same time. But he has promised a new approach in Thailand. "I want to get the best out of these players and you can't do that shouting at anyone," he told reporters. Instead, Reid puts his primitive Thai to comic effect on the training ground. "Despite the language problem, you can have laughs," he says, before gamely — if not entirely successfully — attempting to count to five in Thai.
On the training ground, Reid will also have to boost his team's fitness and morale: many players flag in the second half or hang their heads when they are a goal down. "You're not going to win every football match," he says. "I'm not that daft. But you've got to try to do it."
Thailand beat Vietnam 2-0 and Laos 6-0 in their opening games at the Suzuki Cup, which were played in Phuket due to political unrest in Bangkok. Reid knows that only three of the tournament's eight national teams are coached by nationals. A Russian manages Laos, while Vietnam has just signed a Portuguese. There's a Serbian in Singapore and a Brazilian in Burma. While Thai players have found it hard to adjust to England, English managers seem to fare better in Thailand. A journalist once asked Peter Withe if he missed home, and his pithy reply said more about globalization than a stack of doctoral theses: "Not really. You can get a pint of Tetley's pretty much anywhere these days." Peter Reid — older, wiser and apparently with expletives depleted — also seems comfortable in Thailand. "It's an adventure," he says. "Even though you do miss home, I can get English radio through me laptop and the Premier League and European games are always on. It's a small world these days."
It's also a world full of stronger footballing nations. As he prepares his young squad, Reid might remember that there is not one Thai smile but many. They range from yim thang nam taa (I'm so happy I'm crying) to yim soo (I am smiling in the face of an impossible struggle). Reid should practice both, just in case.
"Thais believe that a person's soul abides in the crown of the hair on top of the head. To bump, hit, rub, or touch the head is to offend the soul, perhaps causing it to run away from home." — Handbook for foreign students at a Thai university
Peter Reid is doing that thing with his mouth again. First, the skin around his sky-blue eyes starts to wrinkle. Then the corners of his thin lips slowly curl up toward thick sideburns. Then you catch a glimpse of dentistry and it's unmistakable. He's actually doing it: Peter Reid is smiling.
He should be. After years in the soccer wilderness, the famously dour 52-year-old has just signed a lucrative contract to manage the national team of Thailand, the self-styled Land of Smiles. The former Everton midfielder seems an unlikely choice. Thailand is a well-mannered country where fun comes first and losing your temper is a sign of weakness. Reid is known for high-volume, expletive-rich team talks and a habitually grim expression. At Sunderland, an English team he once managed, supporters used to sing, to the tune of the Monkees' "Daydream Believer," "Cheer up, Peter Reid ..." Land of Smiles? Dream on. Reid's face is built for bollocking.
Yet many Thais hope his no-nonsense style will help their national team achieve something unprecedented: a place at the World Cup finals in 2014. It is a daunting task. Reid must motivate not only talented yet underperforming young Thai players but also millions of cynical Thai fans who would much rather watch English Premier League football than their often amateurish homegrown variety. Though Reid has a four-year contract, his honeymoon period will be much shorter. "People want the Thai team to upgrade itself, and not just into an Asian powerhouse," says Tor Chittinand, soccer correspondent for the Bangkok Post. "We're aiming for the World Cup."
Reid's first major test is this month's ASEAN Football Championship, also known as the Suzuki Cup, which Thailand is co-hosting with Indonesia. Before taking the job, he had only visited Thailand twice. He first went in 1984 with Everton, which had just won the F.A. Cup. He was 28. "It was a bit of a piss-up," he recalls, "but we played a couple of matches." Two decades of breakneck growth has transformed Bangkok, although for Reid some things have stayed the same. "Don't talk to me about the f___ing traffic," he growls.
Like any expatriate who lands a plum management position overseas, Reid must now wrestle with an alien culture and a tricky language. But unlike other foreign execs, he must manage not a company but a national team — at a time of national crisis. "Football is about nothing," British comedian Peter Cook once said, "unless it is about something." These days, Reid will discover, everything in Thailand is about politics — including football.
"Thais will attempt to label you by your appearance and may expect you to behave in ways that they have previously experienced with people similar to you. This is a normal reaction to your strangeness."
If thailand has high expectations of Reid, it is partly because their most successful manager so far was also a Liverpudlian named Peter. Under former striker Peter Withe, the national team won two regional championships, in 2000 and 2002, and even beat London giants Arsenal in a Bangkok friendly. But Withe had a turbulent relationship with his employers, the Football Association of Thailand (FAT), and was sacked in 2003. Since then, the team's fortunes have declined under a succession of coaches, including a Brazilian, a German and two Thais.
Thailand is now ranked 116th by world soccer body FIFA, thanks to erratic and occasionally farcical performances that date back to the team's notorious match against Indonesia at the 1998 ASEAN championships. Both teams set out to lose, since the winner would play a stronger team in the next round. Indonesia lost 3-2 after deliberately scoring against themselves. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Thai national team has a less than fanatical following. Only 25,000 spectators went to watch the team play Japan in Bangkok earlier this year — and most of those were Japanese. (Thailand lost 3-0.)
As Thai football has lost its way, so has the country. Within weeks of Reid's arrival, two people were killed and hundreds injured in antigovernment riots in Bangkok. Protesters occupied the offices of beleaguered Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, and then, on Nov. 25, stormed the capital's airport. Tourists and investors are fleeing the country, the stock market is tanking. The famous Thai smile is fading fast. A Bangkok pollster calculated that the nation's "Gross Domestic Happiness Index" measured a mere 4.84 out of 10, the lowest for almost three years. Cheer up, Peter Reid? He's probably the only happy man left in Thailand.
One reason to be cheerful: a contract reported to be worth $1.5 million a year. While that's small compared to the nearly $9 million Fabio Capello is paid to manage England's national squad, it's very big money by Thai standards. Reid's base salary is 33 times bigger than that of his predecessor, Charnvit Polcheewin, who resigned after Thailand's failure to qualify for the 2010 World Cup.
Who is bankrolling Reid's generous salary? Could it be former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled billionaire who — so his enemies claim — was pulling the strings behind the Somchai government? Thaksin was toppled in a 2006 military coup and the following year bought Manchester City, a struggling football club where Reid was once player-manager. Sentenced in absentia in October to two years in jail for conflict of interest, Thaksin remains a deeply divisive figure, loved by rural Thais but loathed by the urban élite.
"Thaksin loves football," said FAT president Worawi Makudi in July. "He loves his country and he has offered to help us with anything." But today, Worawi, who once sat on Manchester City's board of directors, will not say who is bankrolling the best-paid man in Thai football. The matter is "confidential," he says. Is it Thaksin? "I don't want to answer that question," replies Worawi, his voice rising. Asked the same question, Reid offers a bizarre nondenial: "Not as far as I know."
"Smiling has many meanings in Thai culture. Gradually you will begin to understand why people are smiling as you begin to appreciate the subtlety of Thai culture. Do not forget to keep smiling."
Dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, Reid sits alone in a glass-fronted VIP area above the main stand at the Bangkok stadium of Chulalongkorn United. Below him are a few hundred home fans and, opposite them, a few dozen supporters of the Provincial Electricity Authority, the league leaders. Reid has been watching as many league games as possible before picking his national squad. When asked what he's looking for in potential squad members, he replies, "Talent. Pace. Attitude." There are players with all three on the pitch, but Reid has a problem: the stadium's floodlighting is so patchy that he can barely make out the numbers on the shirts. That's par for the course in Thailand's shambolic and unpopular league, where facilities are poor, and players and officials often outnumber fans. The game ends 0-0, but Reid doesn't wait for the final whistle — he nips off early to watch a live broadcast of Manchester United playing Liverpool. Who can blame him? Every football fan in Thailand is doing exactly the same.
A month later, Reid names a squad of 36 players and calls them to a meeting at the National Football Center, a grand name for a spartan two-story building set amid rice fields in the Bangkok boondocks. "It feels like a rehab clinic," grumbles one of Reid's staff. On the desk in front of him is the squad roster, a pristine copy of a book called English-Thai: The Fun Way to Learn the Language and a three-page cheat sheet of footballing phrases in Thai. Reid studies it. "Poo rack sah bra too," he says hesitantly. Phu rak-saa bpra-dtuu (goalkeeper). "Goalie," he grins. "Brilliant. Got to have a go, haven't you?"
Reid vows to join his players in the blazing afternoon sun for a warm-up. "I'll be knackered," he grins. "I'll be on me knees after that, though." The players arrive. "Is this the boys?" says Reid, jumping to his feet. "Brilliant." Thirty young men file in, subdued and unsmiling. Reid greets them in both Thai ("Sawadee khrap!") and his native Liverpudlian ("All right, boys?"). They bow their heads and clasp their hands together in a wai, the traditional Thai gesture of respect. "Even though training will be hard, I like enjoying it," Reid tells them. "I like smiling." The players look unconvinced.
"Thais consider it extraordinarily rude to express anger in public ... If you cannot keep a 'cool head,' many Thais will actually think you are insane or dangerous. When angry, remember to smile."
In the past, reid's motivational style has inclined toward shouting and swearing, usually at the same time. But he has promised a new approach in Thailand. "I want to get the best out of these players and you can't do that shouting at anyone," he told reporters. Instead, Reid puts his primitive Thai to comic effect on the training ground. "Despite the language problem, you can have laughs," he says, before gamely — if not entirely successfully — attempting to count to five in Thai.
On the training ground, Reid will also have to boost his team's fitness and morale: many players flag in the second half or hang their heads when they are a goal down. "You're not going to win every football match," he says. "I'm not that daft. But you've got to try to do it."
Thailand beat Vietnam 2-0 and Laos 6-0 in their opening games at the Suzuki Cup, which were played in Phuket due to political unrest in Bangkok. Reid knows that only three of the tournament's eight national teams are coached by nationals. A Russian manages Laos, while Vietnam has just signed a Portuguese. There's a Serbian in Singapore and a Brazilian in Burma. While Thai players have found it hard to adjust to England, English managers seem to fare better in Thailand. A journalist once asked Peter Withe if he missed home, and his pithy reply said more about globalization than a stack of doctoral theses: "Not really. You can get a pint of Tetley's pretty much anywhere these days." Peter Reid — older, wiser and apparently with expletives depleted — also seems comfortable in Thailand. "It's an adventure," he says. "Even though you do miss home, I can get English radio through me laptop and the Premier League and European games are always on. It's a small world these days."
It's also a world full of stronger footballing nations. As he prepares his young squad, Reid might remember that there is not one Thai smile but many. They range from yim thang nam taa (I'm so happy I'm crying) to yim soo (I am smiling in the face of an impossible struggle). Reid should practice both, just in case.
Health - Permanent Birth Control
Jeninne Lee
Getting your tubes tied is not the most appealing phrase, but it's way more user-friendly than sterilization. Maybe that's why the maker of Essure--a newer, cheaper, faster, scalpel-free alternative to tubal ligation--is marketing the procedure as "permanent birth control."
It took just two minutes for Theresa Jackson to get sterilized. On a recent afternoon in Gallatin, Tenn., the 35-year-old mother of three lay on an exam table in the office of her ob-gyn, Dr. Alan Bennett, with her feet in stirrups and her husband by her side. She was awake and relaxed enough to let me watch (weird, I know) as Bennett inserted first a thin camera into her uterus and then, using a video monitor as a guide, a small coil into each of her Fallopian tubes. Afterward, Jackson walked to her car and went home to her kids.
Each year about 700,000 women in the U.S. get their tubes tied, with the surgeries typically requiring general anesthesia, a hospital stay and a week of recovery. But according to Millennium Research Group, there are plenty of women who are done having kids but don't want to go under the knife. The health-care data firm projects the female-sterilization market will more than triple, from $80 million in 2007 to $245 million, by 2012, as these women opt for quick fixes like Essure that can cost patients as little as a doctor's visit co-pay.
Jackson said the local-anesthesia shots she got before the implantation were "painful." And afterward, she had cramps for a few hours akin to the ones during her period. The 1 1/2-in.-long (38 mm) coils--which are like pen springs but smaller and softer--contain fibers that irritate the tubes and prompt scar tissue to grow into and around the tiny loops. After three months, the Fallopian tubes are blocked, preventing eggs from reaching the uterus to be fertilized.
Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2002, Essure coils were implanted mostly in hospitals until last year, when Conceptus, the Mountain View, Calif., manufacturer, started training lots of docs to perform the procedure in their offices. The firm recently launched its first big advertising campaign. Rival company Hologic hopes to gain FDA approval in 2009 for Adiana, a soft silicone polymer similarly inserted to seal off the Fallopian tubes.
Unlike some tubal-ligation methods, Essure cannot be reversed. One general concern among doctors is that women who choose to get sterilized might later change their minds. In a study in Obstetrics & Gynecology of 11,232 women who had been voluntarily sterilized, 20% of those who were younger than 30 at the time of the operation felt regret later, compared with 6% of those who were older than 30. Bennett, who stopped performing tubal ligations a year ago and now sterilizes only with Essure, says, "The most important job we have is to make sure people are absolutely certain." He discussed the issue for a year with Chastity Taylor, who is only 29 and has one daughter, before implanting the coils in her in September. The doctor, his patient and her husband are convinced it was the right choice; otherwise, Taylor says, "I would have stayed on the IUD forever."
Of course, there is another choice for couples who don't want to take any chances--right, gents? But twice as many married women as married men in the U.S. get sterilized. "I would've gotten a vasectomy, if that's what she wanted," says Theresa Jackson's husband Mike. "But then we talked about Essure," he says. "And I'm a sissy."
Getting your tubes tied is not the most appealing phrase, but it's way more user-friendly than sterilization. Maybe that's why the maker of Essure--a newer, cheaper, faster, scalpel-free alternative to tubal ligation--is marketing the procedure as "permanent birth control."
It took just two minutes for Theresa Jackson to get sterilized. On a recent afternoon in Gallatin, Tenn., the 35-year-old mother of three lay on an exam table in the office of her ob-gyn, Dr. Alan Bennett, with her feet in stirrups and her husband by her side. She was awake and relaxed enough to let me watch (weird, I know) as Bennett inserted first a thin camera into her uterus and then, using a video monitor as a guide, a small coil into each of her Fallopian tubes. Afterward, Jackson walked to her car and went home to her kids.
Each year about 700,000 women in the U.S. get their tubes tied, with the surgeries typically requiring general anesthesia, a hospital stay and a week of recovery. But according to Millennium Research Group, there are plenty of women who are done having kids but don't want to go under the knife. The health-care data firm projects the female-sterilization market will more than triple, from $80 million in 2007 to $245 million, by 2012, as these women opt for quick fixes like Essure that can cost patients as little as a doctor's visit co-pay.
Jackson said the local-anesthesia shots she got before the implantation were "painful." And afterward, she had cramps for a few hours akin to the ones during her period. The 1 1/2-in.-long (38 mm) coils--which are like pen springs but smaller and softer--contain fibers that irritate the tubes and prompt scar tissue to grow into and around the tiny loops. After three months, the Fallopian tubes are blocked, preventing eggs from reaching the uterus to be fertilized.
Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2002, Essure coils were implanted mostly in hospitals until last year, when Conceptus, the Mountain View, Calif., manufacturer, started training lots of docs to perform the procedure in their offices. The firm recently launched its first big advertising campaign. Rival company Hologic hopes to gain FDA approval in 2009 for Adiana, a soft silicone polymer similarly inserted to seal off the Fallopian tubes.
Unlike some tubal-ligation methods, Essure cannot be reversed. One general concern among doctors is that women who choose to get sterilized might later change their minds. In a study in Obstetrics & Gynecology of 11,232 women who had been voluntarily sterilized, 20% of those who were younger than 30 at the time of the operation felt regret later, compared with 6% of those who were older than 30. Bennett, who stopped performing tubal ligations a year ago and now sterilizes only with Essure, says, "The most important job we have is to make sure people are absolutely certain." He discussed the issue for a year with Chastity Taylor, who is only 29 and has one daughter, before implanting the coils in her in September. The doctor, his patient and her husband are convinced it was the right choice; otherwise, Taylor says, "I would have stayed on the IUD forever."
Of course, there is another choice for couples who don't want to take any chances--right, gents? But twice as many married women as married men in the U.S. get sterilized. "I would've gotten a vasectomy, if that's what she wanted," says Theresa Jackson's husband Mike. "But then we talked about Essure," he says. "And I'm a sissy."
Food - Welcome back,Spam
Joel Stein
Those once crucial food-shopping decisions between local and organic became a lot less important when the recession rolled in. Sales of Spam, which comes in neither of those varieties, haven't been this big since World War II, when soldiers overseas were sent vacuum-sealed cans of cooked pork shoulder, ham, water, sugar, salt, sodium nitrite (to maintain the porcine color) and potato starch (to maintain the cat-food-like consistency).
I grew up in the 1970s, and even though my suburban menu included Velveeta, Saucy Susan and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, we did not eat Spam. So when I tried it in Hawaii--by far the biggest Spam-eating state, thanks to an influx of World War II soldiers, poverty and a palate used to poi--I was surprised that it wasn't bad. Kind of smoky and not at all gelatinous. With many of the top restaurants hurting, I figured I'd ask some of the country's best chefs what kind of cheap dishes they could make with the stuff--since they might have to soon. (See the Top 10 food trends of the year.)
It turns out that a lot of the chefs had already cooked Spam. Rick Moonen, the brilliant seafoodie in Las Vegas, once made some exhausted mountain-biking friends Spam and eggs procured at a produce-unfriendly general store in the middle of the Catskills. "They say it was one of the best meals of their life," he says. Likewise, Michael Fiorello of Chicago's Mercat a la Planxa was with a girlfriend a couple of years ago in an area without an open grocery store, so after a trip to CVS, he worked up a pizza with canned pineapples, canned corn and Spam that went over pretty well. "I don't know why people knock it," he says of the oft maligned spiced ham. Celebri-chef Kerry Simon is also a Spam defender. "Anything you can think of that you want to try, it's capable of," he says
Brandon Boudet of Dominick's in Los Angeles wasn't so sure. A Spam virgin, he blanched a bit when it plonked out of the can, all pink like a newborn mole rat. After bravely sautéing some little squares of Spam--for Spamghetti carbonara--he tested one and was surprised. It was pleasantly hamlike and not as salty as he had expected. And it was eerily airy. He was so confused, he grabbed the can and scanned the ingredients. It was the potato starch. That's what holds the shape but kind of melts in your mouth. He ate some more, still thrown by its lightness, and thought it would work better in a frisée-and-lardon salad, fried into light little bacony croutons. Or in a taco. "It could almost take the place of chicharrón," he says. "It's a healthier version." A healthier version of fried pork rind. I'm sure Spam will take whatever nutritional compliments it can get.
Those once crucial food-shopping decisions between local and organic became a lot less important when the recession rolled in. Sales of Spam, which comes in neither of those varieties, haven't been this big since World War II, when soldiers overseas were sent vacuum-sealed cans of cooked pork shoulder, ham, water, sugar, salt, sodium nitrite (to maintain the porcine color) and potato starch (to maintain the cat-food-like consistency).
I grew up in the 1970s, and even though my suburban menu included Velveeta, Saucy Susan and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, we did not eat Spam. So when I tried it in Hawaii--by far the biggest Spam-eating state, thanks to an influx of World War II soldiers, poverty and a palate used to poi--I was surprised that it wasn't bad. Kind of smoky and not at all gelatinous. With many of the top restaurants hurting, I figured I'd ask some of the country's best chefs what kind of cheap dishes they could make with the stuff--since they might have to soon. (See the Top 10 food trends of the year.)
It turns out that a lot of the chefs had already cooked Spam. Rick Moonen, the brilliant seafoodie in Las Vegas, once made some exhausted mountain-biking friends Spam and eggs procured at a produce-unfriendly general store in the middle of the Catskills. "They say it was one of the best meals of their life," he says. Likewise, Michael Fiorello of Chicago's Mercat a la Planxa was with a girlfriend a couple of years ago in an area without an open grocery store, so after a trip to CVS, he worked up a pizza with canned pineapples, canned corn and Spam that went over pretty well. "I don't know why people knock it," he says of the oft maligned spiced ham. Celebri-chef Kerry Simon is also a Spam defender. "Anything you can think of that you want to try, it's capable of," he says
Brandon Boudet of Dominick's in Los Angeles wasn't so sure. A Spam virgin, he blanched a bit when it plonked out of the can, all pink like a newborn mole rat. After bravely sautéing some little squares of Spam--for Spamghetti carbonara--he tested one and was surprised. It was pleasantly hamlike and not as salty as he had expected. And it was eerily airy. He was so confused, he grabbed the can and scanned the ingredients. It was the potato starch. That's what holds the shape but kind of melts in your mouth. He ate some more, still thrown by its lightness, and thought it would work better in a frisée-and-lardon salad, fried into light little bacony croutons. Or in a taco. "It could almost take the place of chicharrón," he says. "It's a healthier version." A healthier version of fried pork rind. I'm sure Spam will take whatever nutritional compliments it can get.
Travel - Taste of North Korea in Beijing
Lara Day
Wangjing, a sprawling residential district in northeast Beijing, is known locally as Little Korea. The nickname makes sense: it's where 100,000 Koreans live, work and play. Naturally, they all need to eat, and while excellent barbecue and bibimbap joints abound, it's the North Korean eateries that are really worth a visit. If you have yet to set foot in the D.P.R.K., Wangjing will give you your very own taste, minus the visa hassle.
Take Daeseong Sanguang, which can translate as "greatly successful senior official." Part café, part bar lounge, this venue, tel: (86-10) 8471 3331, caters mainly to South Koreans hungry for Northern staples such as naengmyeon (cold noodles) and soondae (various kinds of sausage). Stepping inside is like entering a surreal parallel universe where the D.P.R.K. graduates from finishing school and decides that its sole purpose is to charm you into submission: sultry black-and-white propaganda-film stills adorn the walls, pretty North Korean waitresses push carts of liquor to your orange-suede banquette, and your drinks menu boasts slow-sipping cocktails with names like Tong Il (Unification), U Li Neun Hana (We Are One) and Namnam Buknyeo (Southern Man, Northern Woman). (See 10 things to do in Beijing.)
The main draw, however, is a nightly cabaret show staged by the uniformed waitstaff, who take to the mic while executing perfectly timed formation dance moves; meantime, their colleagues provide musical accompaniment on Yamaha keyboard, semi-acoustic guitar and fiddle. The result finds its closest sonic equivalent in the bleeping score of the 1980s video game Tetris, while a flashing LED screen provides a mesmerizing bonus feature in the background.
If you're lucky, all this will be capped off with a magic trick, which may or may not involve two drinking glasses being lifted with a chopstick. O.K., so it might not be an accurate reflection of the real Pyongyang — but it's probably a lot more fun.
Wangjing, a sprawling residential district in northeast Beijing, is known locally as Little Korea. The nickname makes sense: it's where 100,000 Koreans live, work and play. Naturally, they all need to eat, and while excellent barbecue and bibimbap joints abound, it's the North Korean eateries that are really worth a visit. If you have yet to set foot in the D.P.R.K., Wangjing will give you your very own taste, minus the visa hassle.
Take Daeseong Sanguang, which can translate as "greatly successful senior official." Part café, part bar lounge, this venue, tel: (86-10) 8471 3331, caters mainly to South Koreans hungry for Northern staples such as naengmyeon (cold noodles) and soondae (various kinds of sausage). Stepping inside is like entering a surreal parallel universe where the D.P.R.K. graduates from finishing school and decides that its sole purpose is to charm you into submission: sultry black-and-white propaganda-film stills adorn the walls, pretty North Korean waitresses push carts of liquor to your orange-suede banquette, and your drinks menu boasts slow-sipping cocktails with names like Tong Il (Unification), U Li Neun Hana (We Are One) and Namnam Buknyeo (Southern Man, Northern Woman). (See 10 things to do in Beijing.)
The main draw, however, is a nightly cabaret show staged by the uniformed waitstaff, who take to the mic while executing perfectly timed formation dance moves; meantime, their colleagues provide musical accompaniment on Yamaha keyboard, semi-acoustic guitar and fiddle. The result finds its closest sonic equivalent in the bleeping score of the 1980s video game Tetris, while a flashing LED screen provides a mesmerizing bonus feature in the background.
If you're lucky, all this will be capped off with a magic trick, which may or may not involve two drinking glasses being lifted with a chopstick. O.K., so it might not be an accurate reflection of the real Pyongyang — but it's probably a lot more fun.
Travel - Australia's Magnetic Island
Phil Brown
At picturesque horseshoe Bay on Magnetic Island, five miles (8 km) off the tropical northern coast of Queensland, Australia, a young koala scampers past astonished picnickers, prompting the exclamation, "That's the fastest I've ever seen a koala move!" The young marsupial's speed is a real eye-opener for anyone used to thinking of koalas as eternally somnolent gray shapes, dwelling motionless in the branches of eucalyptus trees. But then one of the attractions of holidaying so close to one of the largest wild colonies of koalas in the country is the chance to witness such atypical behavior.
Koalas were first introduced to the island in the 1930s. Their habitats on the Australian mainland were shrinking, and their numbers were being reduced by disease and attacks from feral dogs and domestic cats. They have been thriving in their insular haven ever since. The popular 90-minute trek to Magnetic Island's decaying World War II forts offers probably the best chance of spotting them. You can also cuddle them, for a fee, at a local koala sanctuary. (For more travel tips and stories visit time.com/travel.)
Set within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, this ruggedly beautiful Coral Sea isle was dubbed Magnetic Island in 1770 when Lieut. James Cook, sailing past in H.M. Bark Endeavour, noticed the ship's compass going haywire. In fact, Cook bestowed colorful names on many landmarks along Australia's eastern seaboard, such as Mount Warning and the Glass House Mountains, and the names remain. The population of the island has changed, however, and very few descendants of the original inhabitants — the Wulgurukaba, or "canoe people," who knew their home as Yunbenun — are counted in the current population of just over 2,100.
Visiting Maggie Island, as it's known, is easy. It's a mere 20-minute ferry ride from mainland Townsville — an exhilarating crossing when gusty summer trade winds blow — and there's plenty of holiday accommodation available, including the usual backpacker places. A recent addition, Peppers Blue on Blue Resort at Nelly Bay, www.peppers.com.au, adds a slicker option, complete with lagoon pool and day spa.
Beyond the numerous sand-fringed azure bays, the terrain is heavily forested (but don't expect rainforest — this is the dry tropics). Just over half of this 12,810-acre (5,184 hectare) island is national park, and ramblers will love the 15 miles (24 km) of walking tracks. Another way of getting around is the reliable local bus service, but many visitors hire a Mini Moke — a topless vehicle that features natural air-conditioning, so prepare to be windblown. If you want to get on the water, there are tours of the coral reefs around the island — ideal for snorkeling and scuba diving — or you can catch a boat out to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.
A day trip from the mainland is fine, but you shouldn't be surprised if you're taken by the urge to linger longer. Magnetic Island is a place of powerful attractions.
At picturesque horseshoe Bay on Magnetic Island, five miles (8 km) off the tropical northern coast of Queensland, Australia, a young koala scampers past astonished picnickers, prompting the exclamation, "That's the fastest I've ever seen a koala move!" The young marsupial's speed is a real eye-opener for anyone used to thinking of koalas as eternally somnolent gray shapes, dwelling motionless in the branches of eucalyptus trees. But then one of the attractions of holidaying so close to one of the largest wild colonies of koalas in the country is the chance to witness such atypical behavior.
Koalas were first introduced to the island in the 1930s. Their habitats on the Australian mainland were shrinking, and their numbers were being reduced by disease and attacks from feral dogs and domestic cats. They have been thriving in their insular haven ever since. The popular 90-minute trek to Magnetic Island's decaying World War II forts offers probably the best chance of spotting them. You can also cuddle them, for a fee, at a local koala sanctuary. (For more travel tips and stories visit time.com/travel.)
Set within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, this ruggedly beautiful Coral Sea isle was dubbed Magnetic Island in 1770 when Lieut. James Cook, sailing past in H.M. Bark Endeavour, noticed the ship's compass going haywire. In fact, Cook bestowed colorful names on many landmarks along Australia's eastern seaboard, such as Mount Warning and the Glass House Mountains, and the names remain. The population of the island has changed, however, and very few descendants of the original inhabitants — the Wulgurukaba, or "canoe people," who knew their home as Yunbenun — are counted in the current population of just over 2,100.
Visiting Maggie Island, as it's known, is easy. It's a mere 20-minute ferry ride from mainland Townsville — an exhilarating crossing when gusty summer trade winds blow — and there's plenty of holiday accommodation available, including the usual backpacker places. A recent addition, Peppers Blue on Blue Resort at Nelly Bay, www.peppers.com.au, adds a slicker option, complete with lagoon pool and day spa.
Beyond the numerous sand-fringed azure bays, the terrain is heavily forested (but don't expect rainforest — this is the dry tropics). Just over half of this 12,810-acre (5,184 hectare) island is national park, and ramblers will love the 15 miles (24 km) of walking tracks. Another way of getting around is the reliable local bus service, but many visitors hire a Mini Moke — a topless vehicle that features natural air-conditioning, so prepare to be windblown. If you want to get on the water, there are tours of the coral reefs around the island — ideal for snorkeling and scuba diving — or you can catch a boat out to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.
A day trip from the mainland is fine, but you shouldn't be surprised if you're taken by the urge to linger longer. Magnetic Island is a place of powerful attractions.
Columnists - Steven Spielberg on Zhang Yimou
On the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008, 2 billion TV viewers and thousands in attendance in the now famous Bird's Nest were treated to an unforgettable spectacle at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.
Behind it all was the creative genius of Chinese film director Zhang Yimou. Drawing from the depths of the cultural heritage and ingenuity of the Chinese people, showcasing ancient Chinese inventions — paper, printing, gunpowder, ceramics and the compass — that have shaped civilization and channeling the sensibility and spirit that unite his fellow 1.3 billion citizens, Zhang told China's story to a watching world. He created arguably the grandest spectacle of the new millennium, and it was viewed by nearly one-third of the world's population. With this work, Zhang obtained a stature shared by very few peers.
In telling China's story, Zhang explored the character he, or peaceful harmony — an ideal critical to Chinese culture. This level of thematic and creative artistry is rare in the controlled realm of filmmaking, let alone in a multidimensional arena with thousands of performers and visual set pieces that seemed to border on the impossible — yet it was all happening live, before the eyes of the world.
There is much mythologizing surrounding Zhang's rise to prominence, given that his first job was as a farmhand and then a laborer in a cotton mill. But the story I enjoy most is that he gave blood over a period of months to earn enough money to purchase his first camera. He was 25. When the Beijing Film Academy reopened in 1978 after the Cultural Revolution, he was 27, already considered too old to become a filmmaker and lacking many of the necessary credits. Undaunted, he offered his portfolio of photographic works and was admitted to the department of cinematography.
Zhang became a filmmaker, and for the past two decades, he has inspired the world's fascination with China through his cinematic vision. Not since the great British director Michael Powell has a director used color so effectively to tell stories. In Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1990) and his magnum opus, Raise the Red Lantern (1991), the vivid use of red in the manufacturing of wine, the traditional wedding gown, the process of dyeing silk and even the crimson splashes of blood illuminate Zhang's celebration of life, exoticism and death. Ju Dou was the first Chinese film to be nominated for an Academy Award; Raise the Red Lantern was the second.
Zhang also brought the actress Gong Li to prominence, casting her in starring roles in six of his films. Together they are credited with introducing sensuality and eroticism to Chinese cinema. Western audiences are probably familiar with Zhang more from his action movies: Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and his most Shakespearean work, Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), in which he choreographed giant armies in ways not seen since the heyday of the Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza.
Zhang was no stranger to live theatrical events either. In 1998 he staged and directed Puccini's opera Turandot at the Forbidden City in Beijing. He directed a folk musical in 2003 and staged it outdoors on the Li River. In 2006 he mounted Tan Dun's The First Emperor for New York City's Metropolitan Opera.
All this work and its complexity should have prepared me for the depth and breadth of Zhang's vision, apparent even in its early stages when he first contacted me in 2005 regarding the Beijing ceremonies. We met on a sunny afternoon in East Hampton, N.Y., and I knew immediately we were going to become good friends. With computer renderings on his laptop, he showed me what he was thinking. That was when I realized that every movie he had ever made would be a luminous precursor to what was surely going to be a personal journey of destiny. Zhang would be the creator-director of the Olympic ceremonies, with the honor of putting on what would become the greatest show on earth, with China at center stage. I was honored to have been one of the first people stirred and inspired by Zhang's ideas.
At the heart of Zhang's Olympic ceremonies was the idea that the conflict of man foretells the desire for inner peace. This theme is one he's explored and perfected in his films, whether they are about the lives of humble peasants or exalted royalty. This year he captured this prevalent theme of harmony and peace, which is the spirit of the Olympic Games. In one evening of visual and emotional splendor, he educated, enlightened and entertained us all. In doing so, Zhang secured himself a place in world history.
Spielberg has won three Academy Awards, two for Best Director. He withdrew as an adviser to the Olympic ceremonies to encourage greater efforts by China to bring peace to Darfur
Behind it all was the creative genius of Chinese film director Zhang Yimou. Drawing from the depths of the cultural heritage and ingenuity of the Chinese people, showcasing ancient Chinese inventions — paper, printing, gunpowder, ceramics and the compass — that have shaped civilization and channeling the sensibility and spirit that unite his fellow 1.3 billion citizens, Zhang told China's story to a watching world. He created arguably the grandest spectacle of the new millennium, and it was viewed by nearly one-third of the world's population. With this work, Zhang obtained a stature shared by very few peers.
In telling China's story, Zhang explored the character he, or peaceful harmony — an ideal critical to Chinese culture. This level of thematic and creative artistry is rare in the controlled realm of filmmaking, let alone in a multidimensional arena with thousands of performers and visual set pieces that seemed to border on the impossible — yet it was all happening live, before the eyes of the world.
There is much mythologizing surrounding Zhang's rise to prominence, given that his first job was as a farmhand and then a laborer in a cotton mill. But the story I enjoy most is that he gave blood over a period of months to earn enough money to purchase his first camera. He was 25. When the Beijing Film Academy reopened in 1978 after the Cultural Revolution, he was 27, already considered too old to become a filmmaker and lacking many of the necessary credits. Undaunted, he offered his portfolio of photographic works and was admitted to the department of cinematography.
Zhang became a filmmaker, and for the past two decades, he has inspired the world's fascination with China through his cinematic vision. Not since the great British director Michael Powell has a director used color so effectively to tell stories. In Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1990) and his magnum opus, Raise the Red Lantern (1991), the vivid use of red in the manufacturing of wine, the traditional wedding gown, the process of dyeing silk and even the crimson splashes of blood illuminate Zhang's celebration of life, exoticism and death. Ju Dou was the first Chinese film to be nominated for an Academy Award; Raise the Red Lantern was the second.
Zhang also brought the actress Gong Li to prominence, casting her in starring roles in six of his films. Together they are credited with introducing sensuality and eroticism to Chinese cinema. Western audiences are probably familiar with Zhang more from his action movies: Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and his most Shakespearean work, Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), in which he choreographed giant armies in ways not seen since the heyday of the Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza.
Zhang was no stranger to live theatrical events either. In 1998 he staged and directed Puccini's opera Turandot at the Forbidden City in Beijing. He directed a folk musical in 2003 and staged it outdoors on the Li River. In 2006 he mounted Tan Dun's The First Emperor for New York City's Metropolitan Opera.
All this work and its complexity should have prepared me for the depth and breadth of Zhang's vision, apparent even in its early stages when he first contacted me in 2005 regarding the Beijing ceremonies. We met on a sunny afternoon in East Hampton, N.Y., and I knew immediately we were going to become good friends. With computer renderings on his laptop, he showed me what he was thinking. That was when I realized that every movie he had ever made would be a luminous precursor to what was surely going to be a personal journey of destiny. Zhang would be the creator-director of the Olympic ceremonies, with the honor of putting on what would become the greatest show on earth, with China at center stage. I was honored to have been one of the first people stirred and inspired by Zhang's ideas.
At the heart of Zhang's Olympic ceremonies was the idea that the conflict of man foretells the desire for inner peace. This theme is one he's explored and perfected in his films, whether they are about the lives of humble peasants or exalted royalty. This year he captured this prevalent theme of harmony and peace, which is the spirit of the Olympic Games. In one evening of visual and emotional splendor, he educated, enlightened and entertained us all. In doing so, Zhang secured himself a place in world history.
Spielberg has won three Academy Awards, two for Best Director. He withdrew as an adviser to the Olympic ceremonies to encourage greater efforts by China to bring peace to Darfur
Columnists - Tony Blair on Nicolas Sarkozy
There are times when Nicolas Sarkozy resembles a force of nature rather than a conventional political leader. He has energy, ideas and vitality in abundance, as he showed in such matters as his handling of the Georgia crisis and the global economic downturn. Of course, as with any new leader, 18 months — Nicolas was elected President of France in May 2007 — is insufficient time to make a final judgment. But certain elements are already clear.
First, Nicolas has the hallmark of any true leader: a capacity to take decisions and implement them. He sees a problem and wants to solve it. What's more, he believes he can.
Second, he is prepared to think outside the box. Reflect for a moment, and the construction of his government in France is a remarkable achievement. His Foreign Minister — the immensely capable Bernard Kouchner — is a Socialist, as are several other ministers. Nicolas has adopted bipartisanship with not only a natural grace but also a wholehearted and sincere embrace. He stands in the modern postideological mold. He wants to get things done, and he wants the best people to do them.
Nicolas recognizes the value of a broad base and of consensus to provide the context for his policies. This is not so that there can be a politics of the lowest common denominator but so as to ensure that no necessary radical step is seen as an act of ideology rather than one of necessity. And we should not omit from the list of his achievements the appointment of France's first black female and Muslim ministers — or, indeed, the feel of a government of youth and vigor.
With such an attitude, Nicolas' political opponents are often surprised and confounded, left uncertain as to how to retain their own bearings in the changing political landscape created by his maneuvers. People can accuse him of acting from lack of political principle. He can just as easily say he is acting with a lack of party prejudice.
Third, he has put France on the map. He has a high profile and a real standing in the world. You agree or disagree with him: you can't ignore him. This is not to be underestimated in modern politics. It gives a country traction, it draws in allies, and it helps create a sense that other countries need to befriend a nation on the rise, one whose view counts. Nicolas' reaching out to the U.S., under President Bush, was not expected except by those who knew him. But it has been effective. The U.S. sees him as an ally. The disputes of the past have not been forgotten, but they have been put to one side.
Today France can play a role in the Israel-Palestine question. In June, Nicolas went to the Knesset and did a typically Sarkozy thing. He exhibited that he understood Israeli anxieties and concerns. He showed himself a friend. He then delivered a sharp and direct message, saying that "there can be no peace without stopping settlement." The message was all the more telling precisely because it was from someone who genuinely came across as a supporter of Israel, not someone indifferent to it.
Fourth, he showed, as President of the European Union, that he knows how to take center stage and get action. The differences within Europe over exactly the right action to stimulate the European economy will remain. But under his leadership, Europe looked as if it were acting in concert. He reached out to Britain, though it is not a member of the euro zone. The G-20 summit in November with President Bush, for which Nicolas had advocated, yielded as much as could be reasonably anticipated in the circumstances. There was a dynamism surrounding the French E.U. presidency that was impressive and important. In the crisis over Georgia, for example, where Nicolas brokered a cease-fire, you felt Europe had a voice, a presence and a policy. It has not always been so when a crisis has occurred.
The economic and financial crises have dominated political coverage in all political systems. They overwhelm preconceived ideas and positions. But we shouldn't forget that Nicolas came to power espousing the politics of la rupture; in other words, advocating a specific break with the past and being up front about the need for radical reform in France. These reforms are still a work in progress. But they provide a clue as to his essential nature as a politician. For Nicolas is determined to do what he believes in or do nothing. He has no interest in occupying the Elysée for the sake of it. It is too early to tell whether he will win through on all fronts. But of his determination, there is no doubt. And that is what makes him a leader of significance and stature.
Blair, former Prime Minister of Britain, is the Middle East envoy for the Quartet
First, Nicolas has the hallmark of any true leader: a capacity to take decisions and implement them. He sees a problem and wants to solve it. What's more, he believes he can.
Second, he is prepared to think outside the box. Reflect for a moment, and the construction of his government in France is a remarkable achievement. His Foreign Minister — the immensely capable Bernard Kouchner — is a Socialist, as are several other ministers. Nicolas has adopted bipartisanship with not only a natural grace but also a wholehearted and sincere embrace. He stands in the modern postideological mold. He wants to get things done, and he wants the best people to do them.
Nicolas recognizes the value of a broad base and of consensus to provide the context for his policies. This is not so that there can be a politics of the lowest common denominator but so as to ensure that no necessary radical step is seen as an act of ideology rather than one of necessity. And we should not omit from the list of his achievements the appointment of France's first black female and Muslim ministers — or, indeed, the feel of a government of youth and vigor.
With such an attitude, Nicolas' political opponents are often surprised and confounded, left uncertain as to how to retain their own bearings in the changing political landscape created by his maneuvers. People can accuse him of acting from lack of political principle. He can just as easily say he is acting with a lack of party prejudice.
Third, he has put France on the map. He has a high profile and a real standing in the world. You agree or disagree with him: you can't ignore him. This is not to be underestimated in modern politics. It gives a country traction, it draws in allies, and it helps create a sense that other countries need to befriend a nation on the rise, one whose view counts. Nicolas' reaching out to the U.S., under President Bush, was not expected except by those who knew him. But it has been effective. The U.S. sees him as an ally. The disputes of the past have not been forgotten, but they have been put to one side.
Today France can play a role in the Israel-Palestine question. In June, Nicolas went to the Knesset and did a typically Sarkozy thing. He exhibited that he understood Israeli anxieties and concerns. He showed himself a friend. He then delivered a sharp and direct message, saying that "there can be no peace without stopping settlement." The message was all the more telling precisely because it was from someone who genuinely came across as a supporter of Israel, not someone indifferent to it.
Fourth, he showed, as President of the European Union, that he knows how to take center stage and get action. The differences within Europe over exactly the right action to stimulate the European economy will remain. But under his leadership, Europe looked as if it were acting in concert. He reached out to Britain, though it is not a member of the euro zone. The G-20 summit in November with President Bush, for which Nicolas had advocated, yielded as much as could be reasonably anticipated in the circumstances. There was a dynamism surrounding the French E.U. presidency that was impressive and important. In the crisis over Georgia, for example, where Nicolas brokered a cease-fire, you felt Europe had a voice, a presence and a policy. It has not always been so when a crisis has occurred.
The economic and financial crises have dominated political coverage in all political systems. They overwhelm preconceived ideas and positions. But we shouldn't forget that Nicolas came to power espousing the politics of la rupture; in other words, advocating a specific break with the past and being up front about the need for radical reform in France. These reforms are still a work in progress. But they provide a clue as to his essential nature as a politician. For Nicolas is determined to do what he believes in or do nothing. He has no interest in occupying the Elysée for the sake of it. It is too early to tell whether he will win through on all fronts. But of his determination, there is no doubt. And that is what makes him a leader of significance and stature.
Blair, former Prime Minister of Britain, is the Middle East envoy for the Quartet
Lifestyle - Basketball & Barack (G.Read)
Craig Robinson
My father Fraser Robinson and my basketball coach at Princeton, Hall of Famer Pete Carril, used to say the same thing: "On the court, you can tell who's a selfish jerk." And let's just say they used a less printable word than jerk.
When Michelle started dating Barack Obama, she finally had someone serious enough to bring home to meet the family. As it turned out, he had played basketball in high school and kind of thought he was pretty good. My sister said, "I want you to take him to play, to see what type of guy he is when he's not around me." So I invited Barack to play pickup hoops with a few friends of mine in Chicago. Some of these guys played in college, some didn't, but they were all pretty good players. I like to think I was the first guy to vet him. (See pictures of Barack Obama's family tree.)
I was very nervous because I had already met Barack a few times and liked him a lot. My sister didn't have many long-term boyfriends. So I was thinking, This guy seems like a pretty good guy; I hope he makes it. I was rooting for him. But here I am with this responsibility: if he turns out to be a, er, jerk, I've got to be the one to tell her.
He handled everything perfectly. We played a hard five-on-five, so there were definitely potholes for him to fall into. He wasn't the best guy out there, but he wasn't the worst guy. I liked the fact that he was confident but wasn't cocky or talking trash. Barack was very team-oriented, very unselfish. He fit in like he was one of us — he wasn't trying to be president of the Harvard Law Review. But the best part about it was that when we were on the same team, he did not pass me the ball every single time. He wasn't trying to suck up to my sister through me. I thought, You know, I like that. I was relieved to give my sister the good news: "Your boy is straight, and he can ball." (See pictures of Obama's college years.)
People always ask me to describe my brother-in-law's game. Well, he has a very nice outside shot that has gotten better over the years, because as we get older, we can't go to the basket as easily. He's very thin, but he's not weak. You can tell the guy has played. He is extremely left-handed. Most left-handed guys are quicker going to their right. Well, he's better going to his left. I'll have to work on that with him.
Basketball is very therapeutic for Barack. He's always in a great mood before and after he's played. He looks forward to it. About 40 of us played on Election Day in Chicago, and there was an unspoken nonaggression pact. Not only was everyone afraid of giving Barack a fat lip before a possible victory speech to the entire world, but also, no one there wanted to sprain an ankle or something. We all wanted to participate, pain-free, in whatever might take place later that night. We set up four teams and played a round-robin tournament. Let's just say Barack fared better on election night than he did in hoops earlier that day.
What does Barack's game say about the man, about the way he's going to lead this country through these very trying times? Well, he's competitive yet inclusive. He's unselfish, which, where I come from, is the greatest compliment you can give both a player and a leader. And he's consistent. You've got a guy at the top who ran a campaign — and who is going to run a government — in a classy, efficient and considerate manner. That's the same guy I got to know playing hoops when he was dating my sister.
There's been a lot of talk about Barack's building a basketball court somewhere in his new home. I sure hope he does. I'd love to tell people I played hoops in the White House. Plus it would be great, from a national health-care perspective, to see the President working out on a regular basis. People may say, Look, if the President is playing ball three times a week — or however much he ends up playing; I know he'll be pretty busy — maybe I can go out there and do something for my health too. And how cool would it be to hear about some piece of legislation that was sealed after a pickup game between Democrats and Republicans? That would really make me proud as a ballplayer, a coach and a U.S. citizen. You can tell I'm lobbying for it.
Your ball, Mr. President. I know you're going to drain the big shots.
Robinson, Obama's brother-in-law, was a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year at Princeton in the early 1980s. He is now the head men's basketball coach at Oregon State University
My father Fraser Robinson and my basketball coach at Princeton, Hall of Famer Pete Carril, used to say the same thing: "On the court, you can tell who's a selfish jerk." And let's just say they used a less printable word than jerk.
When Michelle started dating Barack Obama, she finally had someone serious enough to bring home to meet the family. As it turned out, he had played basketball in high school and kind of thought he was pretty good. My sister said, "I want you to take him to play, to see what type of guy he is when he's not around me." So I invited Barack to play pickup hoops with a few friends of mine in Chicago. Some of these guys played in college, some didn't, but they were all pretty good players. I like to think I was the first guy to vet him. (See pictures of Barack Obama's family tree.)
I was very nervous because I had already met Barack a few times and liked him a lot. My sister didn't have many long-term boyfriends. So I was thinking, This guy seems like a pretty good guy; I hope he makes it. I was rooting for him. But here I am with this responsibility: if he turns out to be a, er, jerk, I've got to be the one to tell her.
He handled everything perfectly. We played a hard five-on-five, so there were definitely potholes for him to fall into. He wasn't the best guy out there, but he wasn't the worst guy. I liked the fact that he was confident but wasn't cocky or talking trash. Barack was very team-oriented, very unselfish. He fit in like he was one of us — he wasn't trying to be president of the Harvard Law Review. But the best part about it was that when we were on the same team, he did not pass me the ball every single time. He wasn't trying to suck up to my sister through me. I thought, You know, I like that. I was relieved to give my sister the good news: "Your boy is straight, and he can ball." (See pictures of Obama's college years.)
People always ask me to describe my brother-in-law's game. Well, he has a very nice outside shot that has gotten better over the years, because as we get older, we can't go to the basket as easily. He's very thin, but he's not weak. You can tell the guy has played. He is extremely left-handed. Most left-handed guys are quicker going to their right. Well, he's better going to his left. I'll have to work on that with him.
Basketball is very therapeutic for Barack. He's always in a great mood before and after he's played. He looks forward to it. About 40 of us played on Election Day in Chicago, and there was an unspoken nonaggression pact. Not only was everyone afraid of giving Barack a fat lip before a possible victory speech to the entire world, but also, no one there wanted to sprain an ankle or something. We all wanted to participate, pain-free, in whatever might take place later that night. We set up four teams and played a round-robin tournament. Let's just say Barack fared better on election night than he did in hoops earlier that day.
What does Barack's game say about the man, about the way he's going to lead this country through these very trying times? Well, he's competitive yet inclusive. He's unselfish, which, where I come from, is the greatest compliment you can give both a player and a leader. And he's consistent. You've got a guy at the top who ran a campaign — and who is going to run a government — in a classy, efficient and considerate manner. That's the same guy I got to know playing hoops when he was dating my sister.
There's been a lot of talk about Barack's building a basketball court somewhere in his new home. I sure hope he does. I'd love to tell people I played hoops in the White House. Plus it would be great, from a national health-care perspective, to see the President working out on a regular basis. People may say, Look, if the President is playing ball three times a week — or however much he ends up playing; I know he'll be pretty busy — maybe I can go out there and do something for my health too. And how cool would it be to hear about some piece of legislation that was sealed after a pickup game between Democrats and Republicans? That would really make me proud as a ballplayer, a coach and a U.S. citizen. You can tell I'm lobbying for it.
Your ball, Mr. President. I know you're going to drain the big shots.
Robinson, Obama's brother-in-law, was a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year at Princeton in the early 1980s. He is now the head men's basketball coach at Oregon State University
World - Q&A Barack Obama (V.G.Read)
Richard Stengel
On Friday, Dec. 5, the President-elect sat down with TIME managing editor Richard Stengel, editor-at-large David Von Drehle and Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey in Obama's spartan transition offices in Chicago to discuss his plans for the coming months, the improbability of his victory and how he's fighting to stay in touch with the real world from inside the presidential bubble. Excerpts from their conversation:
What kind of mandate do you have?
Well, I think we won a decisive victory. Forty-seven percent of the American people still voted for John McCain. And so I don't think that Americans want hubris from their next President. I do think we received a strong mandate for change ... It means a government that is not ideologically driven. It means a government that is competent. It means a government, most importantly, that is focused day in, day out on the needs and struggles, the hopes and dreams, of ordinary people. And I think there is a strong mandate for Washington as a whole to be responsive to ordinary Americans in a way that it has not been for quite some time.
When voters look at your Administration two years from now, in the off-year election, how will they know whether you're succeeding?
I think there are a couple of benchmarks we've set for ourselves during the course of this campaign. On [domestic] policy, have we helped this economy recover from what is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? Have we instituted financial regulations and rules of the road that assure this kind of crisis doesn't occur again? Have we created jobs that pay well and allow families to support themselves? Have we made significant progress on reducing the cost of health care and expanding coverage? Have we begun what will probably be a decade-long project to shift America to a new energy economy? Have we begun what may be an even longer project of revitalizing our public-school systems so we can compete in the 21st century? That's on the domestic front.
On foreign policy, have we closed down Guantánamo in a responsible way, put a clear end to torture and restored a balance between the demands of our security and our Constitution? Have we rebuilt alliances around the world effectively? Have I drawn down U.S. troops out of Iraq, and have we strengthened our approach in Afghanistan — not just militarily but also diplomatically and in terms of development? And have we been able to reinvigorate international institutions to deal with transnational threats, like climate change, that we can't solve on our own?
And outside of specific policy measures, two years from now, I want the American people to be able to say, "Government's not perfect; there are some things Obama does that get on my nerves. But you know what? I feel like the government's working for me. I feel like it's accountable. I feel like it's transparent. I feel that I am well informed about what government actions are being taken. I feel that this is a President and an Administration that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information, that believes in making decisions based on facts and on science as opposed to what is politically expedient." Those are some of the intangibles that I hope people two years from now can claim.
When you look at the economic issues that you ran on in the campaign, does [all the bad financial news] change your priorities about how quickly you've got to act on, say, jobs vs. energy?
Fortunately, most of the proposals that we made apply not only to our long-term economic growth but also fit well into what we need to do short term to get the economy back on track. I have talked during the campaign about the need to rebuild our infrastructure, and that obviously gives us an opportunity to create jobs and drive demand at a time when the economy desperately needs jobs and demand. I've talked about a tax cut for 95% of working families, and that fits into a stimulus package, and we can get that money out into people's pockets fairly quickly. I've talked about the need for us to contain health-care costs, and it turns out there's some spending that has to be done on information technology, for example, that we can do fairly swiftly. So there's no doubt that most of the priorities that I had are ones that will serve our short-term economic needs as well as our long-term economic needs.
The drop in oil prices, I do think, makes the conversation about energy more difficult, not less necessary. More than ever, I think, a wholesale investment in transforming our economy — from retrofitting buildings so that they're energy-efficient to changing our transportation patterns and thinking about how to rebuild our electricity grid — those are all things that we're going to need now more than ever. But with people not paying $4 a gallon for gas, it means it drops on their priority list. And that makes the politics of it tougher than it might have been six months ago.
So how long and how deep a recession should the American public be ready for?
I don't have a crystal ball, and economists are all over the map on this. I think we should anticipate that 2009 is going to be a tough year. And if we make some good choices, I'm confident that we can limit some of the damage in 2009 and that in 2010 we can start seeing an upward trajectory on the economy. But this is a difficult hole that we've dug ourselves into. You know, Japan found itself in a somewhat similar situation in the '90s, made some poor decisions, didn't squarely face some of the problems in its banking system and, despite significant stimulus, still saw this thing drag on for almost a decade. On the other hand, you've got countries like Sweden that went through this and acted forcefully and boldly and in two years were back on track and were growing at a really healthy clip. So the decisions we make are going to have an impact on it. But next year's going to be tough.
You made a very bold choice for Secretary of State. If she were sitting here with you now and you were to say, "Madame Secretary, here are the three stops I want you to make on your itinerary once you get in the job," what would those three places be?
Well, since we're literally having that conversation, I think, a day or two after this publication comes out, I'm not going to have her read it in TIME magazine. But I mentioned to you earlier some of our key priorities. There's no doubt that managing the transition in Iraq is going to be a top priority. Managing a more effective strategy in Afghanistan will be a top priority. Recognizing that it is not simply an Afghanistan problem but it's an Afghanistan-Pakistan-India-Kashmir-Iran problem is going to be a priority. Sorting through our policy with respect to Iran effectively — that will be a priority. Dealing with our transatlantic alliance in a more constructive way and trying to build a more effective relationship with the newly assertive and, I believe, inappropriately aggressive Russia, when it comes to the invasion of Georgia — that is going to be a priority. And seeing if we can build on some of the progress, at least in conversation, that's been made around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be a priority.
Now, I mention those things, but keep in mind that some of the long-term priorities I identified in the campaign remain just as urgent today. I already mentioned nuclear proliferation. I already mentioned climate change. I think dealing with development and poverty around the world is going to be a critical component of our foreign policy. It's good for our security and not just charity. And so, part of the goal that Senator [Hillary] Clinton and I both share — as do [Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates and [National Security Adviser nominee] General [James] Jones — is moving our foreign-assistance agenda to the center of our national-security conversations as opposed to the periphery. Paying more attention to Latin America. You know, we have neglected our neighbors in our own hemisphere, and there is an enormous potential for us to work with other countries — Brazil, for example, which is in some ways ahead of us on energy strategies. That, I think, would be very important. And finally, managing our relationship with China and the entire Pacific Rim, I think, is something that will keep not just me busy but my successor busy.
Was there ever a point in the election when you thought you were going to lose?
Sure.
When was it?
Well, let me say it this way: There were multiple points throughout the election when I thought I could lose. Including the day I announced. And honestly, you know, we had a bunch of ups and downs in the campaign. I'll tell you what, though: the way Michelle and I talked about it before we made the decision to get in this race was, if we run the kind of race that I wanted to run, if we were engaging people and exciting people and bringing new people into the process, if I was speaking honestly and truthfully about what I thought my priorities were, then I always thought we had a good chance of winning. And if we lost, that wouldn't be such a terrible thing. And that's why I think I stayed pretty steady throughout this race, despite the ups and downs.
There weren't that many occasions during this campaign — there were a few, but not that many — where I wasn't proud of what we were doing or felt somehow that I was making compromises of my core principles. Michelle and I pledged that whatever happened, we'd come out of this thing whole. And there wasn't any point in this campaign where I thought we were in danger of losing who we were.
What's the best piece of advice that you've gotten from someone about being President, about how to go about it, about how that feels?
Well, precisely because it's sui generis, the only people that really know are the collection of ex-Presidents that we have. And I want to protect the confidentiality of those conversations since I expect to go back to them for advice, and I want to feel that they can give me unvarnished advice. I can tell you that all of them have said that it is important to carve out time to think and not spend your entire day reactive. Because there's always a crisis coming at you, there's always a meeting you could be doing, there's always a press conference or a group of supporters that you could be responding to. And so I think maintaining that kind of discipline is important.
Something that I have already experienced, and I have not fully solved, is how to break out of the bubble, which is extraordinarily powerful ... As a consequence of the security concerns surrounding this office, it is very hard for me to do what ordinary people do. That is the biggest adjustment, and that is not an adjustment I've made yet. And I'm not sure I'll want to make it entirely. The inability to go to the gas station and pump your own gas. Or go to the store and buy groceries. Or take your kids to the park. Those are experiences that aren't just intrinsically good, but they also keep me in touch with what Americans are going through. And so I'm trying to negotiate more space and do so in a way that doesn't put Secret Service members in more jeopardy. I'm trying to negotiate hanging on to some sort of electronic communication with the outside world. And so far, between the lawyers and the Secret Service and the bureaucrats, I'm not sure I'm winning that battle.
Given the economic situation, the picture you've painted of '09, are there any taxes that can be raised in this environment?
Well, I have said that I will be providing a net tax cut. Ninety-five percent of working Americans will be getting a tax cut. In part to pay for the tax cut for people who desperately need it, I've proposed that people who are making more than a quarter-million dollars a year lose the tax cuts they received from George [W.] Bush and that we go back to the rates they had in the 1990s. And that is a pledge I intend to keep.
But is that by letting them expire in '10 or by repealing them in '09?
Well, one way or another, they are going to lose those tax breaks under my Administration. My economic team is reviewing right now what the best option is.
Considering the economic hole we're in, and particularly the joblessness crisis right now, does that move health care up or down on the agenda in terms of real structural reform of providing health care?
I think it keeps it right where it is, which is one of my top three domestic priorities. How we sequence a movement toward affordable, accessible health care may vary because of the current economic situation.
What is it about your executive style that makes you good at standing up to big organizations to meet unprecedented challenges — whether it's the way you ran your campaign or now — so quickly?
I don't think there's some magic trick here. I think I've got a good nose for talent, so I hire really good people. And I've got a pretty healthy ego, so I'm not scared of hiring the smartest people, even when they're smarter than me. And I have a low tolerance of nonsense and turf battles and game-playing, and I send that message very clearly. And so over time, I think, people start trusting each other, and they stay focused on mission, as opposed to personal ambition or grievance. If you've got really smart people who are all focused on the same mission, then usually you can get some things done.
Do you ever get angry, and if you do, how would we know it?
If you want to tail me and [spokesman Robert] Gibbs for a few days, I could tell you, we've had it out a couple times. You know, my staff knows when I get angry. I'm not a shouter. I find that what was always effective with me as a kid, and Michelle and I find it effective with our kids, is just making people feel really guilty. Like "Boy, I am disappointed in you. I expected so much more." And I think people generally want to do the right thing, and if you're clear to them about what that right thing is, and if they see you doing the right thing, then that gives you some leverage. Hollering at people isn't usually that effective. Now, there are exceptions. There are times where guilt doesn't work, and then you have to use fear.
Now for a deeply personal question, which you may not feel comfortable answering. Did your grandmother die confident that you were going to be President?
You know, I don't know. But I know she voted for me. The last week of her life, she was in and out of consciousness. But I'd say three weeks before the election — or was it two weeks? About two weeks before the election, I think at that point, you know, the signs were that I might pull this off.
She was incredulous, I think, until the very end. I mentioned this in another interview. My grandmother would not have believed that this was possible. Not because of the race issues but because she was just a very Midwestern, steady person who generally was skeptical of these kinds of things and would have preferred I'd never gone into politics and done something sensible like try to become a judge or something after law school. My mother, on the other hand, I think would've never had a doubt because she was absolutely convinced that her son and her daughter were perfect. So it's a reflection more on their personalities.
But you think about my grandmother's life. I mean, here's a woman who was born in, let's see, 1912 or '22 — I've got to do my math — she was 86, so '22, rather. She really grew up in the Depression, in a small town in Kansas, and never got a college degree. Somehow found herself in Hawaii. Somehow found her daughter marrying an African guy. Raised this mixed kid who got in all kinds of trouble during his teenage years. You know, the likelihood of that little boy ending up President of the United States was pretty low.
So in some ways her life tracks this American — this remarkable American journey, where all of these different forces and cultures can come together and the possibility of upward mobility and opportunity for successive generations is a reality. Maybe not as much as we'd like it to be. Maybe not as fast as we'd like it to be. But it's there nonetheless.
All right?
On Friday, Dec. 5, the President-elect sat down with TIME managing editor Richard Stengel, editor-at-large David Von Drehle and Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey in Obama's spartan transition offices in Chicago to discuss his plans for the coming months, the improbability of his victory and how he's fighting to stay in touch with the real world from inside the presidential bubble. Excerpts from their conversation:
What kind of mandate do you have?
Well, I think we won a decisive victory. Forty-seven percent of the American people still voted for John McCain. And so I don't think that Americans want hubris from their next President. I do think we received a strong mandate for change ... It means a government that is not ideologically driven. It means a government that is competent. It means a government, most importantly, that is focused day in, day out on the needs and struggles, the hopes and dreams, of ordinary people. And I think there is a strong mandate for Washington as a whole to be responsive to ordinary Americans in a way that it has not been for quite some time.
When voters look at your Administration two years from now, in the off-year election, how will they know whether you're succeeding?
I think there are a couple of benchmarks we've set for ourselves during the course of this campaign. On [domestic] policy, have we helped this economy recover from what is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? Have we instituted financial regulations and rules of the road that assure this kind of crisis doesn't occur again? Have we created jobs that pay well and allow families to support themselves? Have we made significant progress on reducing the cost of health care and expanding coverage? Have we begun what will probably be a decade-long project to shift America to a new energy economy? Have we begun what may be an even longer project of revitalizing our public-school systems so we can compete in the 21st century? That's on the domestic front.
On foreign policy, have we closed down Guantánamo in a responsible way, put a clear end to torture and restored a balance between the demands of our security and our Constitution? Have we rebuilt alliances around the world effectively? Have I drawn down U.S. troops out of Iraq, and have we strengthened our approach in Afghanistan — not just militarily but also diplomatically and in terms of development? And have we been able to reinvigorate international institutions to deal with transnational threats, like climate change, that we can't solve on our own?
And outside of specific policy measures, two years from now, I want the American people to be able to say, "Government's not perfect; there are some things Obama does that get on my nerves. But you know what? I feel like the government's working for me. I feel like it's accountable. I feel like it's transparent. I feel that I am well informed about what government actions are being taken. I feel that this is a President and an Administration that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information, that believes in making decisions based on facts and on science as opposed to what is politically expedient." Those are some of the intangibles that I hope people two years from now can claim.
When you look at the economic issues that you ran on in the campaign, does [all the bad financial news] change your priorities about how quickly you've got to act on, say, jobs vs. energy?
Fortunately, most of the proposals that we made apply not only to our long-term economic growth but also fit well into what we need to do short term to get the economy back on track. I have talked during the campaign about the need to rebuild our infrastructure, and that obviously gives us an opportunity to create jobs and drive demand at a time when the economy desperately needs jobs and demand. I've talked about a tax cut for 95% of working families, and that fits into a stimulus package, and we can get that money out into people's pockets fairly quickly. I've talked about the need for us to contain health-care costs, and it turns out there's some spending that has to be done on information technology, for example, that we can do fairly swiftly. So there's no doubt that most of the priorities that I had are ones that will serve our short-term economic needs as well as our long-term economic needs.
The drop in oil prices, I do think, makes the conversation about energy more difficult, not less necessary. More than ever, I think, a wholesale investment in transforming our economy — from retrofitting buildings so that they're energy-efficient to changing our transportation patterns and thinking about how to rebuild our electricity grid — those are all things that we're going to need now more than ever. But with people not paying $4 a gallon for gas, it means it drops on their priority list. And that makes the politics of it tougher than it might have been six months ago.
So how long and how deep a recession should the American public be ready for?
I don't have a crystal ball, and economists are all over the map on this. I think we should anticipate that 2009 is going to be a tough year. And if we make some good choices, I'm confident that we can limit some of the damage in 2009 and that in 2010 we can start seeing an upward trajectory on the economy. But this is a difficult hole that we've dug ourselves into. You know, Japan found itself in a somewhat similar situation in the '90s, made some poor decisions, didn't squarely face some of the problems in its banking system and, despite significant stimulus, still saw this thing drag on for almost a decade. On the other hand, you've got countries like Sweden that went through this and acted forcefully and boldly and in two years were back on track and were growing at a really healthy clip. So the decisions we make are going to have an impact on it. But next year's going to be tough.
You made a very bold choice for Secretary of State. If she were sitting here with you now and you were to say, "Madame Secretary, here are the three stops I want you to make on your itinerary once you get in the job," what would those three places be?
Well, since we're literally having that conversation, I think, a day or two after this publication comes out, I'm not going to have her read it in TIME magazine. But I mentioned to you earlier some of our key priorities. There's no doubt that managing the transition in Iraq is going to be a top priority. Managing a more effective strategy in Afghanistan will be a top priority. Recognizing that it is not simply an Afghanistan problem but it's an Afghanistan-Pakistan-India-Kashmir-Iran problem is going to be a priority. Sorting through our policy with respect to Iran effectively — that will be a priority. Dealing with our transatlantic alliance in a more constructive way and trying to build a more effective relationship with the newly assertive and, I believe, inappropriately aggressive Russia, when it comes to the invasion of Georgia — that is going to be a priority. And seeing if we can build on some of the progress, at least in conversation, that's been made around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be a priority.
Now, I mention those things, but keep in mind that some of the long-term priorities I identified in the campaign remain just as urgent today. I already mentioned nuclear proliferation. I already mentioned climate change. I think dealing with development and poverty around the world is going to be a critical component of our foreign policy. It's good for our security and not just charity. And so, part of the goal that Senator [Hillary] Clinton and I both share — as do [Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates and [National Security Adviser nominee] General [James] Jones — is moving our foreign-assistance agenda to the center of our national-security conversations as opposed to the periphery. Paying more attention to Latin America. You know, we have neglected our neighbors in our own hemisphere, and there is an enormous potential for us to work with other countries — Brazil, for example, which is in some ways ahead of us on energy strategies. That, I think, would be very important. And finally, managing our relationship with China and the entire Pacific Rim, I think, is something that will keep not just me busy but my successor busy.
Was there ever a point in the election when you thought you were going to lose?
Sure.
When was it?
Well, let me say it this way: There were multiple points throughout the election when I thought I could lose. Including the day I announced. And honestly, you know, we had a bunch of ups and downs in the campaign. I'll tell you what, though: the way Michelle and I talked about it before we made the decision to get in this race was, if we run the kind of race that I wanted to run, if we were engaging people and exciting people and bringing new people into the process, if I was speaking honestly and truthfully about what I thought my priorities were, then I always thought we had a good chance of winning. And if we lost, that wouldn't be such a terrible thing. And that's why I think I stayed pretty steady throughout this race, despite the ups and downs.
There weren't that many occasions during this campaign — there were a few, but not that many — where I wasn't proud of what we were doing or felt somehow that I was making compromises of my core principles. Michelle and I pledged that whatever happened, we'd come out of this thing whole. And there wasn't any point in this campaign where I thought we were in danger of losing who we were.
What's the best piece of advice that you've gotten from someone about being President, about how to go about it, about how that feels?
Well, precisely because it's sui generis, the only people that really know are the collection of ex-Presidents that we have. And I want to protect the confidentiality of those conversations since I expect to go back to them for advice, and I want to feel that they can give me unvarnished advice. I can tell you that all of them have said that it is important to carve out time to think and not spend your entire day reactive. Because there's always a crisis coming at you, there's always a meeting you could be doing, there's always a press conference or a group of supporters that you could be responding to. And so I think maintaining that kind of discipline is important.
Something that I have already experienced, and I have not fully solved, is how to break out of the bubble, which is extraordinarily powerful ... As a consequence of the security concerns surrounding this office, it is very hard for me to do what ordinary people do. That is the biggest adjustment, and that is not an adjustment I've made yet. And I'm not sure I'll want to make it entirely. The inability to go to the gas station and pump your own gas. Or go to the store and buy groceries. Or take your kids to the park. Those are experiences that aren't just intrinsically good, but they also keep me in touch with what Americans are going through. And so I'm trying to negotiate more space and do so in a way that doesn't put Secret Service members in more jeopardy. I'm trying to negotiate hanging on to some sort of electronic communication with the outside world. And so far, between the lawyers and the Secret Service and the bureaucrats, I'm not sure I'm winning that battle.
Given the economic situation, the picture you've painted of '09, are there any taxes that can be raised in this environment?
Well, I have said that I will be providing a net tax cut. Ninety-five percent of working Americans will be getting a tax cut. In part to pay for the tax cut for people who desperately need it, I've proposed that people who are making more than a quarter-million dollars a year lose the tax cuts they received from George [W.] Bush and that we go back to the rates they had in the 1990s. And that is a pledge I intend to keep.
But is that by letting them expire in '10 or by repealing them in '09?
Well, one way or another, they are going to lose those tax breaks under my Administration. My economic team is reviewing right now what the best option is.
Considering the economic hole we're in, and particularly the joblessness crisis right now, does that move health care up or down on the agenda in terms of real structural reform of providing health care?
I think it keeps it right where it is, which is one of my top three domestic priorities. How we sequence a movement toward affordable, accessible health care may vary because of the current economic situation.
What is it about your executive style that makes you good at standing up to big organizations to meet unprecedented challenges — whether it's the way you ran your campaign or now — so quickly?
I don't think there's some magic trick here. I think I've got a good nose for talent, so I hire really good people. And I've got a pretty healthy ego, so I'm not scared of hiring the smartest people, even when they're smarter than me. And I have a low tolerance of nonsense and turf battles and game-playing, and I send that message very clearly. And so over time, I think, people start trusting each other, and they stay focused on mission, as opposed to personal ambition or grievance. If you've got really smart people who are all focused on the same mission, then usually you can get some things done.
Do you ever get angry, and if you do, how would we know it?
If you want to tail me and [spokesman Robert] Gibbs for a few days, I could tell you, we've had it out a couple times. You know, my staff knows when I get angry. I'm not a shouter. I find that what was always effective with me as a kid, and Michelle and I find it effective with our kids, is just making people feel really guilty. Like "Boy, I am disappointed in you. I expected so much more." And I think people generally want to do the right thing, and if you're clear to them about what that right thing is, and if they see you doing the right thing, then that gives you some leverage. Hollering at people isn't usually that effective. Now, there are exceptions. There are times where guilt doesn't work, and then you have to use fear.
Now for a deeply personal question, which you may not feel comfortable answering. Did your grandmother die confident that you were going to be President?
You know, I don't know. But I know she voted for me. The last week of her life, she was in and out of consciousness. But I'd say three weeks before the election — or was it two weeks? About two weeks before the election, I think at that point, you know, the signs were that I might pull this off.
She was incredulous, I think, until the very end. I mentioned this in another interview. My grandmother would not have believed that this was possible. Not because of the race issues but because she was just a very Midwestern, steady person who generally was skeptical of these kinds of things and would have preferred I'd never gone into politics and done something sensible like try to become a judge or something after law school. My mother, on the other hand, I think would've never had a doubt because she was absolutely convinced that her son and her daughter were perfect. So it's a reflection more on their personalities.
But you think about my grandmother's life. I mean, here's a woman who was born in, let's see, 1912 or '22 — I've got to do my math — she was 86, so '22, rather. She really grew up in the Depression, in a small town in Kansas, and never got a college degree. Somehow found herself in Hawaii. Somehow found her daughter marrying an African guy. Raised this mixed kid who got in all kinds of trouble during his teenage years. You know, the likelihood of that little boy ending up President of the United States was pretty low.
So in some ways her life tracks this American — this remarkable American journey, where all of these different forces and cultures can come together and the possibility of upward mobility and opportunity for successive generations is a reality. Maybe not as much as we'd like it to be. Maybe not as fast as we'd like it to be. But it's there nonetheless.
All right?
Health - Study Boosts Low-Glycemic Diet
Alice Park
First it was fat, then it was carbs and, in recent years, the buzzword for the diet-conscious has become glycemic index. That's a measure of how quickly a food is broken down and absorbed by the body, and it's the driving principle behind such weight-loss plans as the Atkins and South Beach diets. But while scientific studies have documented the impact of too much dietary fat and carbohydrate on the body — making us heavier and increasing our risk of diabetes and heart disease — the evidence has not been as clear for high- or low-glycemic index foods. So, a new study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association adds welcome evidence in favor of keeping your glycemic load in check — particularly if you have diabetes.
Dr. David Jenkins at the University of Toronto and St. Michael's Hospital and his colleagues report that a low-glycemic-index diet — including foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, flaxseed and quinoa — is better at lowering blood glucose levels in patients with diabetes than a high-fiber diet. Patients in the study who were assigned a low-glycemic diet reduced their blood glucose levels, as measured by the amount of hemoglobin A1C in their blood, by 0.50%, compared to an 0.18% drop in similar patients eating a diet high in cereal fiber. (See the top 10 food trends of 2008.)
Although the overall blood-sugar reductions were small, "this is a very important trial," says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children's Hospital in Boston. Many previous studies in the field have been underpowered, involving small numbers of subjects, Ludwig says, but this trial was large and looked at important endpoints. "Its results carry additional weight compared to many of the past trials," he says.
The Canadian team analyzed data from 210 diabetes patients, all of whom were taking medication to control their blood sugar. Because the medical management of diabetes still leaves patients with two to four times the average risk of heart disease, the study's authors wanted to explore whether a stricter diet could reduce that risk. The theory is that foods that break down quickly in the gut and flood the blood with glucose — high-glycemic foods — put an exceedingly heavy burden on the body to churn out enough insulin to process the sugar, leading to diabetes. Low-glycemic foods, which take longer to break down and result in a more even tide of glucose in the blood after a meal, should therefore be easier for the body to handle and may stave off the progression of diabetes.
Half of the patients in the study were placed on a low-glycemic index diet, and kept a journal of what they ate for six months. The other half consumed a "brown," or high-fiber, diet rich in cereal fibers including wheat, whole-grain breads, brown rice and potatoes with their skins, and also kept a journal of their food choices. All participants were told to avoid high-glycemic foods (the glycemic index of a food is typically measured as the amount by which a 50 g portion raises blood sugar compared with white bread or pure sugar), such as pancakes, muffins, bagels, French fries, potato chips and cookies.
After the six months, not only did the low-glycemic diet group show lower levels of blood glucose, but they also enjoyed a 1.7 mg/dL boost in HDL, or good cholesterol, while the high-fiber group experienced a .2 mg/dL drop in their HDL. Studies have shown that raising HDL levels is one way to prevent heart attacks, but it's not clear yet whether the current findings translate to any practical protection against heart disease. (See 9 kid foods to avoid.)
Jenkins is the first to admit that the glycemic index of particular foods is only one of many dietary factors that may impact heart disease risk in diabetes patients. Critics of the glycemic-index concept note that the way the body processes food — and the time that it takes to break it down — is affected by myriad factors, including how food is cooked, in what combinations it's eaten, and even what time of day a person eats. Al dente pasta, for example, has a lower glycemic index than fully cooked pasta, and for some people, eating later in the day raises the glycemic index of foods that would be lower if eaten earlier. Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center argues, therefore, that it may be more instructive to focus on the "glycemic load" of an entire meal — a combined measure of the glycemic indices of individual foods — rather than looking at one food at a time. "Measuring the glycemic property of a diet at large is in fact quite useful," he says.
So, what does that mean for people who are deciding which diet to try in the new year? Researchers say it's too soon to eschew a high-fiber (or low-fat or low-carb) plan to go low-glycemic load. "There are certain quirks that make [understanding] the glycemic index more complicated than understanding carbohydrates and fats," says Dr. John Buse, president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association. "The science in the low-glycemic index field is certainly less robust than in other nutrition management fields." Buse notes that the study's findings do not discount the value of a high-fiber diet in diabetes prevention — in this particular trial, the low-glycemic index diet was in fact higher in fiber than the high-fiber plan.
"There is this sense that we have a beauty contest of diets," says Katz. "But I don't think we are really obligated to chose between a low-glycemic diet and a high-fiber diet. There are benefits to combining them, for everyone." In other words, the bottom line is the same as it's always been: Eating a well-balanced diet — with enough fruits, veggies and low-fat protein, and restricting excess fat, sugar and processed foods — is probably the smartest choice for anyone, whether or not you have diabetes.
First it was fat, then it was carbs and, in recent years, the buzzword for the diet-conscious has become glycemic index. That's a measure of how quickly a food is broken down and absorbed by the body, and it's the driving principle behind such weight-loss plans as the Atkins and South Beach diets. But while scientific studies have documented the impact of too much dietary fat and carbohydrate on the body — making us heavier and increasing our risk of diabetes and heart disease — the evidence has not been as clear for high- or low-glycemic index foods. So, a new study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association adds welcome evidence in favor of keeping your glycemic load in check — particularly if you have diabetes.
Dr. David Jenkins at the University of Toronto and St. Michael's Hospital and his colleagues report that a low-glycemic-index diet — including foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, flaxseed and quinoa — is better at lowering blood glucose levels in patients with diabetes than a high-fiber diet. Patients in the study who were assigned a low-glycemic diet reduced their blood glucose levels, as measured by the amount of hemoglobin A1C in their blood, by 0.50%, compared to an 0.18% drop in similar patients eating a diet high in cereal fiber. (See the top 10 food trends of 2008.)
Although the overall blood-sugar reductions were small, "this is a very important trial," says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children's Hospital in Boston. Many previous studies in the field have been underpowered, involving small numbers of subjects, Ludwig says, but this trial was large and looked at important endpoints. "Its results carry additional weight compared to many of the past trials," he says.
The Canadian team analyzed data from 210 diabetes patients, all of whom were taking medication to control their blood sugar. Because the medical management of diabetes still leaves patients with two to four times the average risk of heart disease, the study's authors wanted to explore whether a stricter diet could reduce that risk. The theory is that foods that break down quickly in the gut and flood the blood with glucose — high-glycemic foods — put an exceedingly heavy burden on the body to churn out enough insulin to process the sugar, leading to diabetes. Low-glycemic foods, which take longer to break down and result in a more even tide of glucose in the blood after a meal, should therefore be easier for the body to handle and may stave off the progression of diabetes.
Half of the patients in the study were placed on a low-glycemic index diet, and kept a journal of what they ate for six months. The other half consumed a "brown," or high-fiber, diet rich in cereal fibers including wheat, whole-grain breads, brown rice and potatoes with their skins, and also kept a journal of their food choices. All participants were told to avoid high-glycemic foods (the glycemic index of a food is typically measured as the amount by which a 50 g portion raises blood sugar compared with white bread or pure sugar), such as pancakes, muffins, bagels, French fries, potato chips and cookies.
After the six months, not only did the low-glycemic diet group show lower levels of blood glucose, but they also enjoyed a 1.7 mg/dL boost in HDL, or good cholesterol, while the high-fiber group experienced a .2 mg/dL drop in their HDL. Studies have shown that raising HDL levels is one way to prevent heart attacks, but it's not clear yet whether the current findings translate to any practical protection against heart disease. (See 9 kid foods to avoid.)
Jenkins is the first to admit that the glycemic index of particular foods is only one of many dietary factors that may impact heart disease risk in diabetes patients. Critics of the glycemic-index concept note that the way the body processes food — and the time that it takes to break it down — is affected by myriad factors, including how food is cooked, in what combinations it's eaten, and even what time of day a person eats. Al dente pasta, for example, has a lower glycemic index than fully cooked pasta, and for some people, eating later in the day raises the glycemic index of foods that would be lower if eaten earlier. Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center argues, therefore, that it may be more instructive to focus on the "glycemic load" of an entire meal — a combined measure of the glycemic indices of individual foods — rather than looking at one food at a time. "Measuring the glycemic property of a diet at large is in fact quite useful," he says.
So, what does that mean for people who are deciding which diet to try in the new year? Researchers say it's too soon to eschew a high-fiber (or low-fat or low-carb) plan to go low-glycemic load. "There are certain quirks that make [understanding] the glycemic index more complicated than understanding carbohydrates and fats," says Dr. John Buse, president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association. "The science in the low-glycemic index field is certainly less robust than in other nutrition management fields." Buse notes that the study's findings do not discount the value of a high-fiber diet in diabetes prevention — in this particular trial, the low-glycemic index diet was in fact higher in fiber than the high-fiber plan.
"There is this sense that we have a beauty contest of diets," says Katz. "But I don't think we are really obligated to chose between a low-glycemic diet and a high-fiber diet. There are benefits to combining them, for everyone." In other words, the bottom line is the same as it's always been: Eating a well-balanced diet — with enough fruits, veggies and low-fat protein, and restricting excess fat, sugar and processed foods — is probably the smartest choice for anyone, whether or not you have diabetes.
Tech - Sewage That's Clean Enough to Drink
Bryan Walsh
The world has a water crisis — that much is undeniable. But it's also our own doing. Although just a tiny fraction of the world's 326 quintillion gal. of water is usable by humans, we would have more than enough to go around if we took care of it. We don't. From industrial accidents like the benzene spill in northeastern China three years ago, which contaminated the drinking water of millions of people, to the lack of toilets (or proper sanitation) throughout much of the developing world, we're making good water unusable. As a result, our supplies of viable water for agriculture, industry and drinking are dwindling, even as population demands continue to grow. We don't just have a water crisis, according to Maude Barlow, who last week was named the first U.N. senior adviser on water, "we have a clean-water crisis."
That makes what's happening in Orange County, Calif., all the more important. One of the richest residential areas in the country, the Los Angeles suburb is known for swimming pools, golf courses and lush lawns — all of which need water. But like much of Southern California, Orange County is dry and getting drier, and the aquifer from which the county pumps much of its water is slowly draining. Importing water from wetter Northern California is an option, but an expensive one (at least $530 per acre-foot, or about 326,000 gal., of water). Meanwhile, population growth means that officials have to do something with the increasing amount of wastewater that residents and businesses are producing.
Orange County water officials decided to solve both problems at the same time. The result is the Groundwater Replenishment System (GRS), a glistening, $480 million facility that sits next to an older sewage-treatment plant. The GRS takes in about 70 million gal. of wastewater a day, puts it through a multistep cleaning process, then discharges the treated water into Orange County's aquifers. About half forms a barrier against seawater, which has been infiltrating groundwater sources as the county has dried up, while the other half slowly filters into the aquifers that supply drinking water for the county's 2.3 million residents. The GRS is believed to be the world's largest facility dedicated to what's known as indirect potable reuse (if you're in favor of it) or toilet-to-tap (if you're not). But there's a better term: water recycling, and it might be the world's answer to the clean-water crisis.
Whether or not we know it, most of us drink water that has had contact with sewage at some point. Municipal water authorities discharge treated wastewater — and in times of heavy rains, untreated water — into rivers like the Colorado or the Mississippi, where the sheer volume of water dilutes any remaining contaminants or pathogens. Orange County, however, is trying something different. Because some of its treated wastewater is injected directly into its reservoirs, residents are effectively drinking water that is mixed with highly treated sewage. It's not surprising then that it took years for the GRS to go forward in the face of public unease. "There was the yuck factor," admits Michael Markus, general manger of the Orange County water district.
A visit to the plant shows those fears to be unfounded. Orange County's wastewater undergoes more stringent treatment than almost any water source on the planet. First, the dark beer-colored sewage is pulled through a series of tubes stuffed with thousands of fibers pierced with holes 1/300th the size of a human hair. Anything larger than 0.2 millionth of a meter — which includes suspended solids and bacteria — is left behind. The cleansed water is then forced at high pressure through hundreds of tubes that are filled with tightly wound plastic membranes. Reverse osmosis, as the process is called, stops nonwater molecules — including viruses and pharmaceuticals. (The last part is particularly important; an Associated Press investigation earlier this year found trace amounts of prescription drugs in the drinking water of more than 40 million Americans.) Lastly, the filtered water is treated with the disinfectant hydrogen peroxide, and then dosed with ultraviolet light, which neutralizes anything that might remain. What's left is as pure as distilled water — and I can say from personal experience that it tastes perfectly fine. "This is the future of water treatment," says Markus.
Water-strapped Singapore already uses a similar process to augment its reservoirs, and water managers from around the globe have been visiting Orange County to study GRS. Especially in the drier parts of the world — such as the American Southwest, northern China amd the Middle East — water recycling could be a way to allow development without turning to even more expensive methods of water reclamation, like desalinization. But what we really need to do is treat water as the limited resource it is, first by limiting pollution, then by reusing it as much as possible. The U.N.'s Barlow — whose mandate is to increase access to clean water for the 1.7 billion people worldwide who now lack it — is doubtful about the cost of recycling programs like Orange County's, especially for poorer countries. She'd like to see more focus on keeping water sources clean in the first place. But she knows recycling is a necessity. "Water is far, far too precious to waste," she says. "It's a universal human right." We just have to treat it as one.
The world has a water crisis — that much is undeniable. But it's also our own doing. Although just a tiny fraction of the world's 326 quintillion gal. of water is usable by humans, we would have more than enough to go around if we took care of it. We don't. From industrial accidents like the benzene spill in northeastern China three years ago, which contaminated the drinking water of millions of people, to the lack of toilets (or proper sanitation) throughout much of the developing world, we're making good water unusable. As a result, our supplies of viable water for agriculture, industry and drinking are dwindling, even as population demands continue to grow. We don't just have a water crisis, according to Maude Barlow, who last week was named the first U.N. senior adviser on water, "we have a clean-water crisis."
That makes what's happening in Orange County, Calif., all the more important. One of the richest residential areas in the country, the Los Angeles suburb is known for swimming pools, golf courses and lush lawns — all of which need water. But like much of Southern California, Orange County is dry and getting drier, and the aquifer from which the county pumps much of its water is slowly draining. Importing water from wetter Northern California is an option, but an expensive one (at least $530 per acre-foot, or about 326,000 gal., of water). Meanwhile, population growth means that officials have to do something with the increasing amount of wastewater that residents and businesses are producing.
Orange County water officials decided to solve both problems at the same time. The result is the Groundwater Replenishment System (GRS), a glistening, $480 million facility that sits next to an older sewage-treatment plant. The GRS takes in about 70 million gal. of wastewater a day, puts it through a multistep cleaning process, then discharges the treated water into Orange County's aquifers. About half forms a barrier against seawater, which has been infiltrating groundwater sources as the county has dried up, while the other half slowly filters into the aquifers that supply drinking water for the county's 2.3 million residents. The GRS is believed to be the world's largest facility dedicated to what's known as indirect potable reuse (if you're in favor of it) or toilet-to-tap (if you're not). But there's a better term: water recycling, and it might be the world's answer to the clean-water crisis.
Whether or not we know it, most of us drink water that has had contact with sewage at some point. Municipal water authorities discharge treated wastewater — and in times of heavy rains, untreated water — into rivers like the Colorado or the Mississippi, where the sheer volume of water dilutes any remaining contaminants or pathogens. Orange County, however, is trying something different. Because some of its treated wastewater is injected directly into its reservoirs, residents are effectively drinking water that is mixed with highly treated sewage. It's not surprising then that it took years for the GRS to go forward in the face of public unease. "There was the yuck factor," admits Michael Markus, general manger of the Orange County water district.
A visit to the plant shows those fears to be unfounded. Orange County's wastewater undergoes more stringent treatment than almost any water source on the planet. First, the dark beer-colored sewage is pulled through a series of tubes stuffed with thousands of fibers pierced with holes 1/300th the size of a human hair. Anything larger than 0.2 millionth of a meter — which includes suspended solids and bacteria — is left behind. The cleansed water is then forced at high pressure through hundreds of tubes that are filled with tightly wound plastic membranes. Reverse osmosis, as the process is called, stops nonwater molecules — including viruses and pharmaceuticals. (The last part is particularly important; an Associated Press investigation earlier this year found trace amounts of prescription drugs in the drinking water of more than 40 million Americans.) Lastly, the filtered water is treated with the disinfectant hydrogen peroxide, and then dosed with ultraviolet light, which neutralizes anything that might remain. What's left is as pure as distilled water — and I can say from personal experience that it tastes perfectly fine. "This is the future of water treatment," says Markus.
Water-strapped Singapore already uses a similar process to augment its reservoirs, and water managers from around the globe have been visiting Orange County to study GRS. Especially in the drier parts of the world — such as the American Southwest, northern China amd the Middle East — water recycling could be a way to allow development without turning to even more expensive methods of water reclamation, like desalinization. But what we really need to do is treat water as the limited resource it is, first by limiting pollution, then by reusing it as much as possible. The U.N.'s Barlow — whose mandate is to increase access to clean water for the 1.7 billion people worldwide who now lack it — is doubtful about the cost of recycling programs like Orange County's, especially for poorer countries. She'd like to see more focus on keeping water sources clean in the first place. But she knows recycling is a necessity. "Water is far, far too precious to waste," she says. "It's a universal human right." We just have to treat it as one.
Business - Why Is Steve Jobs Skipping MacWorld?
Josh Quittner
Apple's true believers are being put to the test. Late Tuesday the company announced that Steve Jobs will not be giving the keynote address at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo. Apple also said that Phil Schiller, its top marketing guy, will be giving the keynote this coming year, and that this will be the last Macworld in which Apple will participate.
Jobs has battled pancreatic cancer and has been looking exceptionally thin since the summer. Rumors that he'd be skipping the event had circulated for days. Still, the announcement itself was about as shocking as hearing that Barack Obama would be skipping the Inauguration and sending Joe Biden in his stead
Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, deflected any questions about Jobs' health. When asked if Jobs canceled because of illness, Dowling said, "Phil is giving the keynote because this is Apple's last year in the show, and it doesn't make sense for us to make a major investment in a trade show we will no longer be attending." Asked again about Jobs' health, Dowling gave a similar answer, never using the word Jobs or anything related to his condition.
It's difficult to find a company of Apple's caliber whose fortunes are so closely tied to the health of its CEO. Apple is Jobs and Jobs is Apple. Unless he makes a public appearance, it's likely that the news will continue to hammer Apple's stock, which took a beating Monday after analysts downgraded it. (It dropped more than 2.5% within a few hours of the announcement.) A report by the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales, showed that Apple store sales declined 1% in November compared with a year ago, even at a time when PC sales increased 2%. Analysts, extrapolating to the pending post-holiday doldrums, when No One Will Buy Anything Ever Again, deemed this significant. If people stop buying stuff, that goes double for expensive stuff. And Apple occupies the premium space in the computing world. Jobs has famously and consistently refused to dance the price-cutting limbo with PC makers. As recently as October, he told analysts he wasn't "tremendously worried" that recession-wary customers would flock to $300 PCs.
Apple fans had been hoping that Jobs would unveil a "netbook" at the upcoming Macworld, to be held the first week of January. Two years ago, at the same conference, he announced the iPhone, which has become the hottest thing in the computer world. Tens of millions of people will own one by the end of next year; before the recession hit, some analysts predicted that as many as 45 million folks would buy one. (That figure may hold as Apple moves into Wal-Mart at the end of the month.) Even at the current rate, 1 billion applications for the device could be downloaded by the middle of next year. That alone could generate as much as $1 billion in new revenues from applications; never mind how many more songs, movies and TV shows Apple will sell from the iTunes store to all those new iPhone users.
Of course, Jobs has been staging his own launch events with greater frequency during the past few years. And a number of Apple observers have pointed out that the company has been trying to get out of its relationship with IDG, which runs the Macworld trade show, for years. John Gruber, who runs the well-sourced Apple blog, Daring Fireball, said in an email that he's inclined to accept the press release at face value: "I think that the set-in-stone scheduling of Macworld Expo has always been a thorn in Apple's side. "January looks worse and worse as a month for major announcements," he said. "They need to make big announcements *before* the holiday quarter, not after."
Perhaps. Certainly, the successor to the iPhone, the iPhone 3G, was unveiled this summer at a developers' conference. But why wait until the last minute and raise the obvious questions about Jobs's health? The faithful are praying that Tuesday's announcement is exactly what Apple says it is, and not at all what it looks like.
Apple's true believers are being put to the test. Late Tuesday the company announced that Steve Jobs will not be giving the keynote address at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo. Apple also said that Phil Schiller, its top marketing guy, will be giving the keynote this coming year, and that this will be the last Macworld in which Apple will participate.
Jobs has battled pancreatic cancer and has been looking exceptionally thin since the summer. Rumors that he'd be skipping the event had circulated for days. Still, the announcement itself was about as shocking as hearing that Barack Obama would be skipping the Inauguration and sending Joe Biden in his stead
Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, deflected any questions about Jobs' health. When asked if Jobs canceled because of illness, Dowling said, "Phil is giving the keynote because this is Apple's last year in the show, and it doesn't make sense for us to make a major investment in a trade show we will no longer be attending." Asked again about Jobs' health, Dowling gave a similar answer, never using the word Jobs or anything related to his condition.
It's difficult to find a company of Apple's caliber whose fortunes are so closely tied to the health of its CEO. Apple is Jobs and Jobs is Apple. Unless he makes a public appearance, it's likely that the news will continue to hammer Apple's stock, which took a beating Monday after analysts downgraded it. (It dropped more than 2.5% within a few hours of the announcement.) A report by the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales, showed that Apple store sales declined 1% in November compared with a year ago, even at a time when PC sales increased 2%. Analysts, extrapolating to the pending post-holiday doldrums, when No One Will Buy Anything Ever Again, deemed this significant. If people stop buying stuff, that goes double for expensive stuff. And Apple occupies the premium space in the computing world. Jobs has famously and consistently refused to dance the price-cutting limbo with PC makers. As recently as October, he told analysts he wasn't "tremendously worried" that recession-wary customers would flock to $300 PCs.
Apple fans had been hoping that Jobs would unveil a "netbook" at the upcoming Macworld, to be held the first week of January. Two years ago, at the same conference, he announced the iPhone, which has become the hottest thing in the computer world. Tens of millions of people will own one by the end of next year; before the recession hit, some analysts predicted that as many as 45 million folks would buy one. (That figure may hold as Apple moves into Wal-Mart at the end of the month.) Even at the current rate, 1 billion applications for the device could be downloaded by the middle of next year. That alone could generate as much as $1 billion in new revenues from applications; never mind how many more songs, movies and TV shows Apple will sell from the iTunes store to all those new iPhone users.
Of course, Jobs has been staging his own launch events with greater frequency during the past few years. And a number of Apple observers have pointed out that the company has been trying to get out of its relationship with IDG, which runs the Macworld trade show, for years. John Gruber, who runs the well-sourced Apple blog, Daring Fireball, said in an email that he's inclined to accept the press release at face value: "I think that the set-in-stone scheduling of Macworld Expo has always been a thorn in Apple's side. "January looks worse and worse as a month for major announcements," he said. "They need to make big announcements *before* the holiday quarter, not after."
Perhaps. Certainly, the successor to the iPhone, the iPhone 3G, was unveiled this summer at a developers' conference. But why wait until the last minute and raise the obvious questions about Jobs's health? The faithful are praying that Tuesday's announcement is exactly what Apple says it is, and not at all what it looks like.
Business - Hotels try to adapt to hard times
Deirdre Van Dyk
Boom times for hoteliers pretty much ended a year ago. But the industry went into a real dive this past fall with occupancy rates dropping 6.5% in October and another 10% to 12% in November, estimates Smith Travel Research. "It's like someone has taken the punch bowl away," says Peter Yesawich, CEO of Y Partnership, and a travel industry consultant
Hotels are struggling to attract patrons with everything from free breakfast to quirky promotions like an adults-only couples weekend at a resort in Bermuda, complete with counseling by sex therapists. There are more upgrades, more freebies — and more top hotels quietly offering their rooms at lower rates on Priceline.com
Part of the industry's current problem is an oversupply of rooms. Sheraton, for example, is opening up 54 hotels this year, at a rate of one every three weeks, financed in the days when the economy was roaring and money was cheap. As the room glut deepens, hotel builders are slamming on the brakes — there is a 75% increase in projects being stopped. But demand is falling quickly too. "There's [been] nothing like this in history, in terms of falling demand" says Bjorn Hanson an industry analyst with New York University's hotel school. With the strengthening dollar, hotels are losing the European traveler; slumping corporate profits mean conventions are seeing fewer attendees; and as the job picture worsens, family vacation travel is down.
When times get tough airlines can ground planes and cut routes, but hotels don't have that option. You can close wings, or certain floors, Hansen points out, "but the problem is, in markets like Miami" — which just saw the re-opening of the 1,504 room Fontainebleau in November — "you can't shut down air conditioning because you'll have mold and mildew."
So hotels are looking at other options: one is to cut services — closing gyms, shutting business centers earlier and no more 24-hour room service. Of course, this is easier for mid-price hotels to cut than luxury hotels, where customers expect a certain level of service.
One option most are rejecting is reducing the overall room rates, because hotels feel they got burned doing that in 2001. "They found that the math doesn't work," says Yesawich; "you have to book too many more rooms to make up the lost revenue." What they are doing this time around is offering promotions and upgrades: Fairmont is offering third night free and $100 gift cards.
Discreet discounts, on the other hand, are all the rage. Priceline, for example is expanding its roster of top-flight inns. "Hotels that we've wanted for a long time, like five-star hotels, are coming in," says Chris Soder, president of North American travel. Yesawich explains that hotels are taking a portion of their inventory, maybe 20 to 50 rooms, and selectively discounting them in this opaque way. "Even a modest rate is better than no rate at all."
To keep the business traveler, hotels are bargaining with corporate travel managers, offering lower room rates than in the past, "I'm hearing that they're doing better in negotiating with hotel pricing," says Caleb Tiller of the National Business Travel Association. He estimates that there will only be a 1% to 4% increase in room rates — "very small compared with years past," he says. Corporate managers are also in a good position to negotiate with hotels for add-ons, like free WiFi, gym use and breakfast.
Tiller says that business travel will slow but not disappear altogether. "It's more mixed that people think," he says. "We're hearing that pharma and agra companies are actually increasing their travel budget." Companies, while not cutting out travel, are looking for ways to tighten their belt. "Instead of sending 10 people, they'll send 7 to a convention, for fewer days." Instead of sending managers to meet with colleagues, "they'll be spending that money on sending salespeople to meet with their clients." If those salespeople are smart, they'll haggle for freebies and upgrades.
Boom times for hoteliers pretty much ended a year ago. But the industry went into a real dive this past fall with occupancy rates dropping 6.5% in October and another 10% to 12% in November, estimates Smith Travel Research. "It's like someone has taken the punch bowl away," says Peter Yesawich, CEO of Y Partnership, and a travel industry consultant
Hotels are struggling to attract patrons with everything from free breakfast to quirky promotions like an adults-only couples weekend at a resort in Bermuda, complete with counseling by sex therapists. There are more upgrades, more freebies — and more top hotels quietly offering their rooms at lower rates on Priceline.com
Part of the industry's current problem is an oversupply of rooms. Sheraton, for example, is opening up 54 hotels this year, at a rate of one every three weeks, financed in the days when the economy was roaring and money was cheap. As the room glut deepens, hotel builders are slamming on the brakes — there is a 75% increase in projects being stopped. But demand is falling quickly too. "There's [been] nothing like this in history, in terms of falling demand" says Bjorn Hanson an industry analyst with New York University's hotel school. With the strengthening dollar, hotels are losing the European traveler; slumping corporate profits mean conventions are seeing fewer attendees; and as the job picture worsens, family vacation travel is down.
When times get tough airlines can ground planes and cut routes, but hotels don't have that option. You can close wings, or certain floors, Hansen points out, "but the problem is, in markets like Miami" — which just saw the re-opening of the 1,504 room Fontainebleau in November — "you can't shut down air conditioning because you'll have mold and mildew."
So hotels are looking at other options: one is to cut services — closing gyms, shutting business centers earlier and no more 24-hour room service. Of course, this is easier for mid-price hotels to cut than luxury hotels, where customers expect a certain level of service.
One option most are rejecting is reducing the overall room rates, because hotels feel they got burned doing that in 2001. "They found that the math doesn't work," says Yesawich; "you have to book too many more rooms to make up the lost revenue." What they are doing this time around is offering promotions and upgrades: Fairmont is offering third night free and $100 gift cards.
Discreet discounts, on the other hand, are all the rage. Priceline, for example is expanding its roster of top-flight inns. "Hotels that we've wanted for a long time, like five-star hotels, are coming in," says Chris Soder, president of North American travel. Yesawich explains that hotels are taking a portion of their inventory, maybe 20 to 50 rooms, and selectively discounting them in this opaque way. "Even a modest rate is better than no rate at all."
To keep the business traveler, hotels are bargaining with corporate travel managers, offering lower room rates than in the past, "I'm hearing that they're doing better in negotiating with hotel pricing," says Caleb Tiller of the National Business Travel Association. He estimates that there will only be a 1% to 4% increase in room rates — "very small compared with years past," he says. Corporate managers are also in a good position to negotiate with hotels for add-ons, like free WiFi, gym use and breakfast.
Tiller says that business travel will slow but not disappear altogether. "It's more mixed that people think," he says. "We're hearing that pharma and agra companies are actually increasing their travel budget." Companies, while not cutting out travel, are looking for ways to tighten their belt. "Instead of sending 10 people, they'll send 7 to a convention, for fewer days." Instead of sending managers to meet with colleagues, "they'll be spending that money on sending salespeople to meet with their clients." If those salespeople are smart, they'll haggle for freebies and upgrades.
Lifestyle - Is It Healthy for Couples to Travel Apart?
Judy Mcguire
The first time I went on vacation without my long-term, live-in boyfriend, I went to Seattle and, I must confess, I enjoyed every single second of it. From the posh hotel with the king-sized bed (all mine! no snoring!) to seafood dinners with fabulous friends he's never met to a solo stroll through touristy Pike Place Market, I could not stop smiling.
So, I had a wonderful time without him. Does that mean we're disconnected, destined for separate lives? Definitely not.
Ask Coloradan Shari Rogoff Moraga. She and her Chilean-born husband, Rodrigo, have been happily married for more than six years, but have always made it a point to get out of town regularly sans partner. "My most favorite trips without Rodrigo are the ones I have taken to Mexico for DÃa de Los Muertos," she says, in reference to the holiday that Mexicans spend paying respect to friends and relatives who have died. The annual trip has become a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts for Rogoff Moraga: "It is something I will never give up and would not enjoy if he went. One of my favorite times was when I was deep in the mountains with only locals and not one tourist — only me — for Los Muertos."
Rogoff Moraga's husband prefers a more active — and if you ask me, scary — type of vacation. While she's in Mexico, she says, "he goes skiing in Chile, heli-skiing in Telluride — any kind of extreme ski or mountain bike trip." Which is not to say the two don't stay in touch when they're far away. "We call or email a lot to share what we have been doing — maybe to the annoyance of the other people we are traveling with," Rogoff Moraga says.
So, are separate vacations a good idea? Ian Kerner, a sex and relationships counselor and the best-selling author of She Comes First and Sex Recharge, wishes more couples would take them. "I certainly think [separate vacations] would be an excellent trend because absence does make the heart grow fonder."
Still, many couples I spoke with wouldn't dream of going away without their mates. "Where's the fun in that?" asked one devoted husband. Another woman revealed that she used to vacation without her ex-husband all the time. "But," she confided, "only so I could cheat." (I think it's safe to say that marriage had issues beyond the odd solo trip.)
Far from being a symptom of a troubled relationship, Kerner says solo vacationing is often quite the opposite: "I think it's cool to be able to travel separately — it's an indication that you're in trusting, safe, secure relationship," he says.
"If you don't trust your spouse enough to have some separate time, then that should be examined, not why you would want to have a separate vacation once in a while," says Rogoff Moraga.
Another fundamental question is: Why do you want to travel alone? If it's to get away from a partner you feel is a burden or boring or otherwise not enjoyable to be with, then you probably need to take a better look at whether you're in the right relationship. But if your aim is to take a little "me-time" or to pursue activities and interests that you and your mate happen not to share, then there's no shame in leaving him or her at home. It's probably better that you do.
My most recent solo trip, however, wasn't nearly as much fun as the first. My boyfriend and I had made plans to spend a week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with another couple. At the last minute, he ran into passport problems that made it impossible for him to leave the country, so I had to go without him. Although the town was beautiful and the company entertaining, I spent most of the week missing him and feeling alternately cranky because of his carelessness in planning and depressed because I was the third wheel on what should've been a romantic vacation. So, it turns out, in some cases, vacations are a lot more fun when he's around.
The first time I went on vacation without my long-term, live-in boyfriend, I went to Seattle and, I must confess, I enjoyed every single second of it. From the posh hotel with the king-sized bed (all mine! no snoring!) to seafood dinners with fabulous friends he's never met to a solo stroll through touristy Pike Place Market, I could not stop smiling.
So, I had a wonderful time without him. Does that mean we're disconnected, destined for separate lives? Definitely not.
Ask Coloradan Shari Rogoff Moraga. She and her Chilean-born husband, Rodrigo, have been happily married for more than six years, but have always made it a point to get out of town regularly sans partner. "My most favorite trips without Rodrigo are the ones I have taken to Mexico for DÃa de Los Muertos," she says, in reference to the holiday that Mexicans spend paying respect to friends and relatives who have died. The annual trip has become a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts for Rogoff Moraga: "It is something I will never give up and would not enjoy if he went. One of my favorite times was when I was deep in the mountains with only locals and not one tourist — only me — for Los Muertos."
Rogoff Moraga's husband prefers a more active — and if you ask me, scary — type of vacation. While she's in Mexico, she says, "he goes skiing in Chile, heli-skiing in Telluride — any kind of extreme ski or mountain bike trip." Which is not to say the two don't stay in touch when they're far away. "We call or email a lot to share what we have been doing — maybe to the annoyance of the other people we are traveling with," Rogoff Moraga says.
So, are separate vacations a good idea? Ian Kerner, a sex and relationships counselor and the best-selling author of She Comes First and Sex Recharge, wishes more couples would take them. "I certainly think [separate vacations] would be an excellent trend because absence does make the heart grow fonder."
Still, many couples I spoke with wouldn't dream of going away without their mates. "Where's the fun in that?" asked one devoted husband. Another woman revealed that she used to vacation without her ex-husband all the time. "But," she confided, "only so I could cheat." (I think it's safe to say that marriage had issues beyond the odd solo trip.)
Far from being a symptom of a troubled relationship, Kerner says solo vacationing is often quite the opposite: "I think it's cool to be able to travel separately — it's an indication that you're in trusting, safe, secure relationship," he says.
"If you don't trust your spouse enough to have some separate time, then that should be examined, not why you would want to have a separate vacation once in a while," says Rogoff Moraga.
Another fundamental question is: Why do you want to travel alone? If it's to get away from a partner you feel is a burden or boring or otherwise not enjoyable to be with, then you probably need to take a better look at whether you're in the right relationship. But if your aim is to take a little "me-time" or to pursue activities and interests that you and your mate happen not to share, then there's no shame in leaving him or her at home. It's probably better that you do.
My most recent solo trip, however, wasn't nearly as much fun as the first. My boyfriend and I had made plans to spend a week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with another couple. At the last minute, he ran into passport problems that made it impossible for him to leave the country, so I had to go without him. Although the town was beautiful and the company entertaining, I spent most of the week missing him and feeling alternately cranky because of his carelessness in planning and depressed because I was the third wheel on what should've been a romantic vacation. So, it turns out, in some cases, vacations are a lot more fun when he's around.
Business - In the Downturn, Europe's Airlines Scramble to Merge
Adam Smith
Aside from bankers and automakers, few can claim as rough a ride in 2008 as those in the airline business. Eye-watering fuel prices in the first half of the year and the onset of a global slump in the second will mean a $5 billion loss for the industry this year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). More than 30 carriers from Hong Kong to the U.S. have gone under in 2008. Desperate to trim costs and bolster revenues, carriers are turning to mergers to survive, and nowhere is that happening more than in Europe. "The name of the game," says Geoff van Klaveren, an airlines analyst at Exane BNP Paribas in London, "is consolidation."
This month the game is looking frenzied. On Dec. 1, Ryanair made a $1 billion takeover bid for Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus, the second such offer from Ireland's no-frills airline in as many years. The Irish carrier has rebuffed the offer, but shareholders have until Jan. 5 to decide
On Dec. 10, Virgin Atlantic said it was in talks with Germany's Lufthansa over the future of BMI, a British airline that Lufthansa is currently taking over. This year the German carrier has taken a 42% stake in Austrian Airlines, with plans to pick up the rest later, and a similar share in Brussels Airlines, which handed the Cologne-based carrier access to west Africa. British Airways has been talking to Spain's Iberia and Australian carrier Qantas about a merger.
All that activity reflects the grim prospects facing the industry next year. IATA expects the world's airlines to lose an additional $2.5 billion in 2009. Passenger traffic, it forecasts, will slide 3%, the first fall since 2001. Next year looks particularly bleak for European carriers. Having hedged more than U.S. rivals against the spiraling fuel costs earlier this year, European airlines — now locked in to fuel contracts — are less able to benefit from the steep slide in the price of oil in recent weeks. American carriers have also reacted quicker than European rivals when it comes to cutting back on capacity. So while U.S. airlines account for most of the global industry's losses this year, IATA expects them to turn a profit in 2009. Losses in Europe are forecast to rise tenfold, to $1 billion.
Not all the deals will happen, of course. Bosses at both Iberia and Qantas have warned BA that it can join forces with only one of them, and on Dec. 18, Qantas and BA said talks had come to an end after the airlines failed to agree on "key terms" of a deal. One of the problems in Europe is that few airlines — Ryanair and Lufthansa are exceptions — have enough cash on hand to simply buy smaller rivals.
Those airlines lacking resources and scale may have little choice but to yield to larger ones, analysts say. Alongside Air France-KLM — Europe's biggest airline and still a favorite to grab a minority stake in beleaguered Italian flag carrier Alitalia — and the ever growing Lufthansa, an enlarged BA and Ryanair would mean "for most of the smaller network airlines who have a very weak balance sheet, they're going to have to fold into one of those four groups," says Exane BNP Paribas' Van Klaveren. Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), for one, "will survive 2009, but I doubt it can survive 2010 on its own," he says. And while banks or carmakers can be too big to fail, "the days of every country in Europe having their own national airline are gone."
Aside from bankers and automakers, few can claim as rough a ride in 2008 as those in the airline business. Eye-watering fuel prices in the first half of the year and the onset of a global slump in the second will mean a $5 billion loss for the industry this year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). More than 30 carriers from Hong Kong to the U.S. have gone under in 2008. Desperate to trim costs and bolster revenues, carriers are turning to mergers to survive, and nowhere is that happening more than in Europe. "The name of the game," says Geoff van Klaveren, an airlines analyst at Exane BNP Paribas in London, "is consolidation."
This month the game is looking frenzied. On Dec. 1, Ryanair made a $1 billion takeover bid for Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus, the second such offer from Ireland's no-frills airline in as many years. The Irish carrier has rebuffed the offer, but shareholders have until Jan. 5 to decide
On Dec. 10, Virgin Atlantic said it was in talks with Germany's Lufthansa over the future of BMI, a British airline that Lufthansa is currently taking over. This year the German carrier has taken a 42% stake in Austrian Airlines, with plans to pick up the rest later, and a similar share in Brussels Airlines, which handed the Cologne-based carrier access to west Africa. British Airways has been talking to Spain's Iberia and Australian carrier Qantas about a merger.
All that activity reflects the grim prospects facing the industry next year. IATA expects the world's airlines to lose an additional $2.5 billion in 2009. Passenger traffic, it forecasts, will slide 3%, the first fall since 2001. Next year looks particularly bleak for European carriers. Having hedged more than U.S. rivals against the spiraling fuel costs earlier this year, European airlines — now locked in to fuel contracts — are less able to benefit from the steep slide in the price of oil in recent weeks. American carriers have also reacted quicker than European rivals when it comes to cutting back on capacity. So while U.S. airlines account for most of the global industry's losses this year, IATA expects them to turn a profit in 2009. Losses in Europe are forecast to rise tenfold, to $1 billion.
Not all the deals will happen, of course. Bosses at both Iberia and Qantas have warned BA that it can join forces with only one of them, and on Dec. 18, Qantas and BA said talks had come to an end after the airlines failed to agree on "key terms" of a deal. One of the problems in Europe is that few airlines — Ryanair and Lufthansa are exceptions — have enough cash on hand to simply buy smaller rivals.
Those airlines lacking resources and scale may have little choice but to yield to larger ones, analysts say. Alongside Air France-KLM — Europe's biggest airline and still a favorite to grab a minority stake in beleaguered Italian flag carrier Alitalia — and the ever growing Lufthansa, an enlarged BA and Ryanair would mean "for most of the smaller network airlines who have a very weak balance sheet, they're going to have to fold into one of those four groups," says Exane BNP Paribas' Van Klaveren. Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), for one, "will survive 2009, but I doubt it can survive 2010 on its own," he says. And while banks or carmakers can be too big to fail, "the days of every country in Europe having their own national airline are gone."
Health - Behind a Face Transplant Breakthrough
Jeffrey Kluger
It can take just an instant to fall in love with a face; it can take a lifetime to forget one. Now, according to an announcement from the Cleveland Clinic on Wednesday, it has taken a team of eight surgeons 22 hours to replace one. Sometime during the past two weeks, the clinic successfully performed the world's first near-total facial transplant, lifting a face nearly whole from a recently deceased donor and grafting it onto an anonymous woman who had suffered extreme disfigurement to more than 80% of her own face. Her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin are all that remain of her original features. The rest is entirely new — and so, the doctors say, is the life that has been restored to her.
"I'm very proud and very emotional," says microsurgeon Maria Siemionow, who headed the surgical team. "Our patient is someone who had been called names and humiliated, who suffered whenever she appeared in public. Now, she may be able to go comfortably from her home and face the world."
The breakthrough achieved by Siemionow and her team was a longtime goal in facial surgery. Partial face transplants had been successfully performed by teams in France in 2005 and 2007 and in China in 2006, all on patients who had been disfigured either by animal attacks or disease. But no one had ever attempted a procedure on the scale undertaken by the Cleveland team.
In 2004, the Cleveland Clinic gave Siemionow the green light for the improbable operation, one that involved the transplantation of about 500 sq cm of skin, arteries, veins, nerves, muscles and bony structure, all of which had to be attached with sufficient dexterity to restore the patient's ability to feel, blink, eat, smell, speak and — not incidentally — smile. This was not what doctors call solid-organ transplant; it was a multitissue transplant, which is an order of magnitude more difficult than, say, a heart transplant or a hand graft.
"You have to find all of the appropriate vessels and nerves and you must connect them all properly," explained Siemionow. "And much of it is done microsurgically."
Before the doctors could proceed, they needed not only extensive practice, but also to resolve the complex issues involved in selecting the right patient for the landmark operation. That's because transplanting a face transforms a patient's identity. Even though differences in the underlying bony structure mean the recipient is unlikely to resemble the donor once the procedure is completed, it's impossible for the patient's sense of self not to be profoundly shaken. "Picture yourself as a person who has received a face transplant," says Dr. Eric Kodish, the team's lead bioethicist. "Now use your moral imagination."
Those concerns prompted the doctors to establish very high standards for surgical candidates. They had to have exhausted all other reconstructive procedures, had to be emotionally stable and had to understand fully the implications and risks of the procedure. And, of course, they truly had to want the operation. Says Siemionow: "We asked all of the patients, 'Is it you who wants a face transplant or is it someone in your family. Do you understand you'll be living with the face of someone who is deceased?' "
It took four years of screening before the team had chosen its recipient, a woman whose cause of disfigurement is being kept secret along with her name. Once she'd been chosen, the surgical team had to await a compatible donor — someone whose tissue matched the recipient's, but also, for esthetic and psychological reasons, who was of the same race, gender and approximate age. The call to alert Siemionow that a donor had finally been found came in the middle of the night earlier this month, and her team was hastily gathered. The operation began at 5:30 that afternoon. As the recipient was being prepped, the transplant tissue was harvested from the donor, an exhaustive procedure that took more than nine hours. "The doctors transferred all of the facial muscles, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses and some of the teeth," says Dr. Toby Cosgrove, the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic.
At 5:10 the following morning, the grafting of that harvested tissue began. Just two hours and 40 minutes later, the surgeons saw the key sign of their success: the transplanted face began turning a healthy pink, indicating that blood flow had been restored.
The recipient has a long, long way to go before she can leave the hospital and resume her life. It will be weeks or months before the postsurgical swelling goes down, and only then will she be able to begin physical therapy. It will be a year or more before sensation and muscle control will be achieved, and it is by no means certain that either one will be fully restored. And the patient must overcome the always-present risk of tissue rejection, for which she will require immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of her life. "You can see rejection immediately if it begins," says Siemionow. "It will appear as a rash or redness or swelling. So far, none of this has happened with this patient."
The Cleveland team is now consulting with the Department of Defense to explore facial transplants for severely disfigured soldiers, though it will be quite some time before the procedure becomes even remotely routine. For now, the doctors are focusing on their first successful transplant patient. And while she has not even gotten a good look at her new face yet, she has found another way to experience it. "She has lifted her hands and run them over her face," says Siemionow. "She feels that she once again has a nose and a jaw." For someone who had lost so much, that, for the moment, is probably more than enough.
It can take just an instant to fall in love with a face; it can take a lifetime to forget one. Now, according to an announcement from the Cleveland Clinic on Wednesday, it has taken a team of eight surgeons 22 hours to replace one. Sometime during the past two weeks, the clinic successfully performed the world's first near-total facial transplant, lifting a face nearly whole from a recently deceased donor and grafting it onto an anonymous woman who had suffered extreme disfigurement to more than 80% of her own face. Her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin are all that remain of her original features. The rest is entirely new — and so, the doctors say, is the life that has been restored to her.
"I'm very proud and very emotional," says microsurgeon Maria Siemionow, who headed the surgical team. "Our patient is someone who had been called names and humiliated, who suffered whenever she appeared in public. Now, she may be able to go comfortably from her home and face the world."
The breakthrough achieved by Siemionow and her team was a longtime goal in facial surgery. Partial face transplants had been successfully performed by teams in France in 2005 and 2007 and in China in 2006, all on patients who had been disfigured either by animal attacks or disease. But no one had ever attempted a procedure on the scale undertaken by the Cleveland team.
In 2004, the Cleveland Clinic gave Siemionow the green light for the improbable operation, one that involved the transplantation of about 500 sq cm of skin, arteries, veins, nerves, muscles and bony structure, all of which had to be attached with sufficient dexterity to restore the patient's ability to feel, blink, eat, smell, speak and — not incidentally — smile. This was not what doctors call solid-organ transplant; it was a multitissue transplant, which is an order of magnitude more difficult than, say, a heart transplant or a hand graft.
"You have to find all of the appropriate vessels and nerves and you must connect them all properly," explained Siemionow. "And much of it is done microsurgically."
Before the doctors could proceed, they needed not only extensive practice, but also to resolve the complex issues involved in selecting the right patient for the landmark operation. That's because transplanting a face transforms a patient's identity. Even though differences in the underlying bony structure mean the recipient is unlikely to resemble the donor once the procedure is completed, it's impossible for the patient's sense of self not to be profoundly shaken. "Picture yourself as a person who has received a face transplant," says Dr. Eric Kodish, the team's lead bioethicist. "Now use your moral imagination."
Those concerns prompted the doctors to establish very high standards for surgical candidates. They had to have exhausted all other reconstructive procedures, had to be emotionally stable and had to understand fully the implications and risks of the procedure. And, of course, they truly had to want the operation. Says Siemionow: "We asked all of the patients, 'Is it you who wants a face transplant or is it someone in your family. Do you understand you'll be living with the face of someone who is deceased?' "
It took four years of screening before the team had chosen its recipient, a woman whose cause of disfigurement is being kept secret along with her name. Once she'd been chosen, the surgical team had to await a compatible donor — someone whose tissue matched the recipient's, but also, for esthetic and psychological reasons, who was of the same race, gender and approximate age. The call to alert Siemionow that a donor had finally been found came in the middle of the night earlier this month, and her team was hastily gathered. The operation began at 5:30 that afternoon. As the recipient was being prepped, the transplant tissue was harvested from the donor, an exhaustive procedure that took more than nine hours. "The doctors transferred all of the facial muscles, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses and some of the teeth," says Dr. Toby Cosgrove, the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic.
At 5:10 the following morning, the grafting of that harvested tissue began. Just two hours and 40 minutes later, the surgeons saw the key sign of their success: the transplanted face began turning a healthy pink, indicating that blood flow had been restored.
The recipient has a long, long way to go before she can leave the hospital and resume her life. It will be weeks or months before the postsurgical swelling goes down, and only then will she be able to begin physical therapy. It will be a year or more before sensation and muscle control will be achieved, and it is by no means certain that either one will be fully restored. And the patient must overcome the always-present risk of tissue rejection, for which she will require immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of her life. "You can see rejection immediately if it begins," says Siemionow. "It will appear as a rash or redness or swelling. So far, none of this has happened with this patient."
The Cleveland team is now consulting with the Department of Defense to explore facial transplants for severely disfigured soldiers, though it will be quite some time before the procedure becomes even remotely routine. For now, the doctors are focusing on their first successful transplant patient. And while she has not even gotten a good look at her new face yet, she has found another way to experience it. "She has lifted her hands and run them over her face," says Siemionow. "She feels that she once again has a nose and a jaw." For someone who had lost so much, that, for the moment, is probably more than enough.
World - In Mexico, a Kidnapping Negotiator Is Kidnapped
Tim Padgett & Dolly Mascarenas
There are two kinds of kidnappings in Mexico: those meant for ransom and those meant as a warning. This month's abduction of Felix Batista in the northern state of Coahuila was most likely the latter — and it's one of the more chilling messages that Mexico's ubiquitous police-linked kidnapping industry has ever sent.
Batista, a U.S. citizen who works for ASI Global, a Houston-based security company, is a prominent expert on how to avert kidnapping. Ironically, he was nabbed in the industrial city of Saltillo after giving antiabduction seminars to businessmen last week — classes that few others but local cops knew about. A Coahuila source familiar with the investigation tells TIME that one of the executives with Batista was also kidnapped but was returned, badly beaten, earlier this week. The abductors' unspoken warning to Mexican and U.S. officials alike: We will no longer tolerate anyone who makes our work more difficult. "Sometimes a kidnapping group takes someone not so much for money but to coerce," says Mexican security expert Arturo Alvarado of the Colegio de Mexico. "This sounds like one of those times."
It's little surprise that Batista, who has worked as an antikidnapping instructor and kidnapping-release negotiator all over Mexico, was taken in Coahuila. Just as Mexico's powerful drug cartels have lashed out with an insurgency against President Felipe Calderón's anti-narco offensive — Mexico has had more than 5,000 drug-related murders this year, double last year's record — kidnapping bosses in Coahuila, on the border with Texas, are fighting back against the state government's antiabduction crusade. Batista was a consultant to Enrique Martinez, who was Coahuila's governor from 1999 to 2005, and he greatly reduced kidnappings there. Martinez's successor, Governor Humberto Moreira, has even called for Mexico to revive the death penalty, at least in abduction cases that end in homicide. (See pictures of Mexico's police.)
As a result, two directors of the state's recently created antikidnapping unit have been abducted and are still missing. Many believe Batista's kidnapping is part of that counteroffensive. "This is clearly a message to back off," says a former Mexican senator.
U.S. officials will not comment yet on Batista's case. But as ASI, his family and Mexican authorities now try to win his release, Batista, a Cuban American from Miami, can only hope they're using a negotiator as talented as he is. Dozens of Mexican families who have endured kidnapping ordeals praise him. Says one Mexican who watched Batista successfully broker the releases of a relative and a friend, "He is resourceful and honest, something that one needs in these cases." (See the top 10 news stories of 2008.)
Public security in Mexico has all but collapsed under the blood-soaked weight of a drug cartel war and an equally vicious convulsion of criminal abduction. Kidnapping is such a booming business south of the border that an astonishing 5% of the country's 106 million people report having been a victim or having known one, according to a new survey by the Mexican polling firm Gabinete de Comunicacion Estrategica. In the same poll, 45% of Mexicans who have a phone line said they've been victims of telephone extortion, in which persons call a residence, claim they've abducted a family member and demand a ransom. Often the claims of abduction are false; but either way, because the fear of kidnapping is so high in Mexico, the callers usually get money.
Worse, a growing number of Mexican kidnappings end up as murders — including the cases of two affluent teenagers found killed this year in Mexico City. The family of one, Fernando Marti, 14, had actually already paid a ransom of more than $2 million. Even those victims who are spared are increasingly returned with body parts like ears missing: their abductors send them to relatives to frighten them into delivering ransom more quickly. "We cannot live under this pressure," says one upper-middle-class Saltillo woman who has seen several family members kidnapped in recent years. "All the time we are looking over our shoulder, the car windows always up, ringing the children on the cell at all times, having special passwords and codes in case, God forbid, of 'trouble.' This is not a life." (See pictures of Mexico's drug wars.)
Batista's Dec. 10 kidnapping seems to point to a likely source of that scared life: Mexican police. Not because they fail to catch the kidnappers but because they often are the kidnappers. Sometimes narco-criminals, especially the notorious Zetas gang, do the deed; but since Mexico's abduction spree began more than a decade ago, cops have almost always been involved (as they often are in narco-related crime as well). Federal police officers who allegedly form a kidnapping gang called La Banda de la Flor (the Flower Gang) were recently arrested in the case of Marti, whose decomposed body was found in a car trunk last summer. He had been kidnapped two months before when the armored car he was riding in was stopped at a federal police checkpoint.
According to Reporte Indigo, a prominent Mexican online newsmagazine, government memos show that federal authorities had known about La Banda's kidnapping activities as early as five years ago but did nothing to stop them. Says Luis Simon, a friend of another young abduction-murder victim in Mexico City, Silvia Vargas, "Silvia was a victim not only of the kidnappers but also of our authorities."
Mexico's criminal police are a product of the financial neglect and social scorn heaped on public law enforcement by the country's élite — the same ostentatiously upper-crust families who are now rampant kidnapping targets. Either way, cops are the main reason only 2% of Mexico's criminal cases are ever solved, according to the National Commission for Human Rights. Officially, Mexico is second only to war-torn Colombia in the number of kidnappings, but many security experts believe Mexico may have overtaken the South American nation in recent years. Thousands of abductions take place each year, they note, but only hundreds actually get reported because most families are too reluctant to seek out the very same police they assume are in on the abduction in the first place.
There are two kinds of kidnappings in Mexico: those meant for ransom and those meant as a warning. This month's abduction of Felix Batista in the northern state of Coahuila was most likely the latter — and it's one of the more chilling messages that Mexico's ubiquitous police-linked kidnapping industry has ever sent.
Batista, a U.S. citizen who works for ASI Global, a Houston-based security company, is a prominent expert on how to avert kidnapping. Ironically, he was nabbed in the industrial city of Saltillo after giving antiabduction seminars to businessmen last week — classes that few others but local cops knew about. A Coahuila source familiar with the investigation tells TIME that one of the executives with Batista was also kidnapped but was returned, badly beaten, earlier this week. The abductors' unspoken warning to Mexican and U.S. officials alike: We will no longer tolerate anyone who makes our work more difficult. "Sometimes a kidnapping group takes someone not so much for money but to coerce," says Mexican security expert Arturo Alvarado of the Colegio de Mexico. "This sounds like one of those times."
It's little surprise that Batista, who has worked as an antikidnapping instructor and kidnapping-release negotiator all over Mexico, was taken in Coahuila. Just as Mexico's powerful drug cartels have lashed out with an insurgency against President Felipe Calderón's anti-narco offensive — Mexico has had more than 5,000 drug-related murders this year, double last year's record — kidnapping bosses in Coahuila, on the border with Texas, are fighting back against the state government's antiabduction crusade. Batista was a consultant to Enrique Martinez, who was Coahuila's governor from 1999 to 2005, and he greatly reduced kidnappings there. Martinez's successor, Governor Humberto Moreira, has even called for Mexico to revive the death penalty, at least in abduction cases that end in homicide. (See pictures of Mexico's police.)
As a result, two directors of the state's recently created antikidnapping unit have been abducted and are still missing. Many believe Batista's kidnapping is part of that counteroffensive. "This is clearly a message to back off," says a former Mexican senator.
U.S. officials will not comment yet on Batista's case. But as ASI, his family and Mexican authorities now try to win his release, Batista, a Cuban American from Miami, can only hope they're using a negotiator as talented as he is. Dozens of Mexican families who have endured kidnapping ordeals praise him. Says one Mexican who watched Batista successfully broker the releases of a relative and a friend, "He is resourceful and honest, something that one needs in these cases." (See the top 10 news stories of 2008.)
Public security in Mexico has all but collapsed under the blood-soaked weight of a drug cartel war and an equally vicious convulsion of criminal abduction. Kidnapping is such a booming business south of the border that an astonishing 5% of the country's 106 million people report having been a victim or having known one, according to a new survey by the Mexican polling firm Gabinete de Comunicacion Estrategica. In the same poll, 45% of Mexicans who have a phone line said they've been victims of telephone extortion, in which persons call a residence, claim they've abducted a family member and demand a ransom. Often the claims of abduction are false; but either way, because the fear of kidnapping is so high in Mexico, the callers usually get money.
Worse, a growing number of Mexican kidnappings end up as murders — including the cases of two affluent teenagers found killed this year in Mexico City. The family of one, Fernando Marti, 14, had actually already paid a ransom of more than $2 million. Even those victims who are spared are increasingly returned with body parts like ears missing: their abductors send them to relatives to frighten them into delivering ransom more quickly. "We cannot live under this pressure," says one upper-middle-class Saltillo woman who has seen several family members kidnapped in recent years. "All the time we are looking over our shoulder, the car windows always up, ringing the children on the cell at all times, having special passwords and codes in case, God forbid, of 'trouble.' This is not a life." (See pictures of Mexico's drug wars.)
Batista's Dec. 10 kidnapping seems to point to a likely source of that scared life: Mexican police. Not because they fail to catch the kidnappers but because they often are the kidnappers. Sometimes narco-criminals, especially the notorious Zetas gang, do the deed; but since Mexico's abduction spree began more than a decade ago, cops have almost always been involved (as they often are in narco-related crime as well). Federal police officers who allegedly form a kidnapping gang called La Banda de la Flor (the Flower Gang) were recently arrested in the case of Marti, whose decomposed body was found in a car trunk last summer. He had been kidnapped two months before when the armored car he was riding in was stopped at a federal police checkpoint.
According to Reporte Indigo, a prominent Mexican online newsmagazine, government memos show that federal authorities had known about La Banda's kidnapping activities as early as five years ago but did nothing to stop them. Says Luis Simon, a friend of another young abduction-murder victim in Mexico City, Silvia Vargas, "Silvia was a victim not only of the kidnappers but also of our authorities."
Mexico's criminal police are a product of the financial neglect and social scorn heaped on public law enforcement by the country's élite — the same ostentatiously upper-crust families who are now rampant kidnapping targets. Either way, cops are the main reason only 2% of Mexico's criminal cases are ever solved, according to the National Commission for Human Rights. Officially, Mexico is second only to war-torn Colombia in the number of kidnappings, but many security experts believe Mexico may have overtaken the South American nation in recent years. Thousands of abductions take place each year, they note, but only hundreds actually get reported because most families are too reluctant to seek out the very same police they assume are in on the abduction in the first place.
World - The Planet Gets Cooler in '08. Say What?
Bryan Walsh
The 2008 climatological report: partly cloudy. Or partly sunny — it depends on your point of view, which underscores why it can be so easy to misunderstand the mechanism of climate change. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday released its weather analysis for the year and found that 2008 has been the coolest year since the turn of the century. Using data gathered from Britain's Hadley Centre, the University of East Anglia and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the WMO reported that the average global temperature in 2008 was 57.74 degrees F (14.3 degrees C), cooler than the past several years. That's due in part to the chilling action of the climatological effect known as La Niña, which cooled the Pacific.
So does that mean global warming has ceased?
Afraid not. Even though 2008 is cooler than the past several years, it's still likely to rank as the 10th warmest year since the beginning of climate records in the 1850s. And despite the cooling of the Pacific, several parts of the Earth — especially the Arctic, where sea ice melted to its second lowest level ever this summer — were far above normal temperatures. Globally, 2008 was about 0.56 degrees F (0.31 degrees C) warmer than the annual average between 1961 and 1990. But if the heat seemed to have been turned down during 2008, that could owe to the fact that the gradual warming trend has changed our idea of a normal temperature. As Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at Oxford University, explains, "Globally, this year would have been considered warm, even as recently as the 1970s or 1980s, but [it would have been] a scorcher for our Victorian ancestors."
During 2008, we kept pouring billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, so it's easy to assume that the climate would keep warming uniformly — and therefore to use evidence to the contrary as grounds for doubting that human activity really causes climate change. But the climate and the weather are not the same thing: we experience only the weather, which is the day-to-day, sometimes hour-to-hour changes of temperature, precipitation, wind and more. The climate, on the other hand, refers to the cumulative average of the weather around us over decades, centuries and longer.
So we can't track global warming through changes in the weather, even from one year to the next. Instead we need to look at the long-term trends, and here the evidence is undeniable. "The trend for warming is still there," says Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the WMO. There will be oscillations, up and down trends, thanks to other climatological factors like La Niña, its warming opposite El Niño, even large volcanic eruptions, which can throw sulfur into the atmosphere and temporarily cool the planet. But unless we reverse the steady increase in greenhouse-gas emissions, over the long term, the world's temperature is going in one direction: up.
The 2008 climatological report: partly cloudy. Or partly sunny — it depends on your point of view, which underscores why it can be so easy to misunderstand the mechanism of climate change. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday released its weather analysis for the year and found that 2008 has been the coolest year since the turn of the century. Using data gathered from Britain's Hadley Centre, the University of East Anglia and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the WMO reported that the average global temperature in 2008 was 57.74 degrees F (14.3 degrees C), cooler than the past several years. That's due in part to the chilling action of the climatological effect known as La Niña, which cooled the Pacific.
So does that mean global warming has ceased?
Afraid not. Even though 2008 is cooler than the past several years, it's still likely to rank as the 10th warmest year since the beginning of climate records in the 1850s. And despite the cooling of the Pacific, several parts of the Earth — especially the Arctic, where sea ice melted to its second lowest level ever this summer — were far above normal temperatures. Globally, 2008 was about 0.56 degrees F (0.31 degrees C) warmer than the annual average between 1961 and 1990. But if the heat seemed to have been turned down during 2008, that could owe to the fact that the gradual warming trend has changed our idea of a normal temperature. As Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at Oxford University, explains, "Globally, this year would have been considered warm, even as recently as the 1970s or 1980s, but [it would have been] a scorcher for our Victorian ancestors."
During 2008, we kept pouring billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, so it's easy to assume that the climate would keep warming uniformly — and therefore to use evidence to the contrary as grounds for doubting that human activity really causes climate change. But the climate and the weather are not the same thing: we experience only the weather, which is the day-to-day, sometimes hour-to-hour changes of temperature, precipitation, wind and more. The climate, on the other hand, refers to the cumulative average of the weather around us over decades, centuries and longer.
So we can't track global warming through changes in the weather, even from one year to the next. Instead we need to look at the long-term trends, and here the evidence is undeniable. "The trend for warming is still there," says Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the WMO. There will be oscillations, up and down trends, thanks to other climatological factors like La Niña, its warming opposite El Niño, even large volcanic eruptions, which can throw sulfur into the atmosphere and temporarily cool the planet. But unless we reverse the steady increase in greenhouse-gas emissions, over the long term, the world's temperature is going in one direction: up.
Travel - Barefoot Luxury in Indonesia
Ed Peters
"Boutique" is no longer chic: the next generation of Asian resorts is all about "barefoot luxury" — an upmarket restatement of the backpacker beach holiday, stressing simplicity and raw nature. Nikoi Island, www.nikoi.com, is a good example.
Ringed by white-sand beaches and coral reefs, and lying some 53 miles (85 km) southeast of Singapore, the Indonesian island of Nikoi comprises 37 rainforest-covered acres (15 hectares). The six two-story thatched beach houses (nine more are due to open in mid-2009) were built using driftwood. Double-vaulted roofs draw hot air up, so there's no need for air-conditioners. Guests will search in vain for televisions, but there are iPod speakers, stone-floored open bathrooms, a pavilion for massages and direct access to the beach. (For more travel tips and stories visit time.com/travel.)
Meals are served on a dining-room table carved from a 30-ft. (9 m) slab of driftwood. Guests can also head out for a picnic on a nearby deserted island. A quartet of bars comprises the pre- and postprandial entertainment.
Two swimming pools have been sculpted among granite boulders on the north side of the island, and there are ample opportunities for sailing, windsurfing, snorkeling and rock-climbing. Movies are screened outdoors, and a nightly beach bonfire provides the perfect chance for stargazing. Mainstream destinations like Phuket and Bali used to supply au naturel pleasures such as these; the good news is that Nikoi is not going to change.
"Boutique" is no longer chic: the next generation of Asian resorts is all about "barefoot luxury" — an upmarket restatement of the backpacker beach holiday, stressing simplicity and raw nature. Nikoi Island, www.nikoi.com, is a good example.
Ringed by white-sand beaches and coral reefs, and lying some 53 miles (85 km) southeast of Singapore, the Indonesian island of Nikoi comprises 37 rainforest-covered acres (15 hectares). The six two-story thatched beach houses (nine more are due to open in mid-2009) were built using driftwood. Double-vaulted roofs draw hot air up, so there's no need for air-conditioners. Guests will search in vain for televisions, but there are iPod speakers, stone-floored open bathrooms, a pavilion for massages and direct access to the beach. (For more travel tips and stories visit time.com/travel.)
Meals are served on a dining-room table carved from a 30-ft. (9 m) slab of driftwood. Guests can also head out for a picnic on a nearby deserted island. A quartet of bars comprises the pre- and postprandial entertainment.
Two swimming pools have been sculpted among granite boulders on the north side of the island, and there are ample opportunities for sailing, windsurfing, snorkeling and rock-climbing. Movies are screened outdoors, and a nightly beach bonfire provides the perfect chance for stargazing. Mainstream destinations like Phuket and Bali used to supply au naturel pleasures such as these; the good news is that Nikoi is not going to change.
Lifestyle - While Zimbabweans starve,Mugabe holds a feast
Alex Perry
Zimbabwe's farms are ruined, its economy has evaporated, and its people have begun to starve and die of cholera. What better time to call a feast? According to reports in Zimbabwe's domestic press on Thursday, President Robert Mugabe and delegates to the annual conference of his ruling Zanu-PF Party will chomp their way through 124 cattle, 81 goats and 18 pigs over the course of their deliberations in the central town of Bindura. "Even if no more beasts are donated," said Geoffrey Nyarota, managing editor of thezimbabwetimes.com, referring to the practice of delegates donating animals to the leadership, "124 head of cattle is an inordinately large quantity of beef." With 5,000 delegates expected to attend, he added, it worked out to "40 delegates per bovine over four days — that is not to mention the pork, the goat, the maize-meal, the rice, among other basic foodstuffs currently in acute shortage throughout Zimbabwe." Noting he had attended weddings at which two bulls had fed 400 guests, Nyarota added, "This truly is incredible, especially in a country where millions of impoverished souls are starving."
The catering arrangements for the ruling party's annual shindig only reinforces the sense of grand delusion pervading the top ranks of Zimbabwe's regime amid the catastrophe they have brought upon their country. The U.N. has raised its estimate of the death toll from the cholera epidemic to 1,111, with 20,580 people infected. Concern is also growing over the fate of more than 20 opposition and civil-society leaders and activists who have not been seen since their abduction this past month. Mystery also surrounds an attempted assassination attempt against Zimbabwe's air-force chief Perrance Shiri, who was shot in the arm by unknown gunmen who stopped his car on Tuesday. Shiri is a key member of Mugabe's inner circle who commanded the notorious North Korean–trained 5th Brigade that massacred tens of thousands of supporters of a rival political movement during the 1980s
The government response to the expanding crisis is increasingly bizarre. Mugabe has denied that the cholera epidemic exists. (A spokesman later claimed he was being sarcastic.) And some of his ministers and spokesmen have blamed a Western conspiracy — which they claim is running militia training camps in neighboring Botswana with the eventual aim of recolonizing Zimbabwe — for the assassination attempt on Shiri. Even the cholera outbreak forms part of this dark conspiracy: Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described the disease as part of a "serious biological chemical war ... a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by ... the unrepentant former colonial power [Britain], which has enlisted support from its American and Western allies so that they invade the country." A senior Zanu-PF official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told TIME that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was behind the attack on Shiri. "It is the MDC and its Western donors who are trying to destabilize our country because we took land from the whites," he said. "We are going to stand firm to our values."
South Africa President Kgalema Motlanthe has dismissed the regime's claims. But University of Zimbabwe lecturer John Makumbe believes the purpose of touting these incredible fictions is that "the regime wants to create an impression that it is a victim when it is actually the perpetrator of violence."
Driving Zanu-PF's hysterical self-deception is the party's loss of popular support. The erstwhile liberation movement lost a general election in March, and after 28 years in power, Mugabe finished second in the presidential race behind MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The regime, which has always claimed for itself the mantle of revolutionary vanguard of the Zimbabwean people, responded with violence, killing close to 200 MDC members and jailing and torturing thousands more. Mugabe has since opened power-sharing talks with the MDC, but those have collapsed over the incumbent's insistence on keeping absolute control over the police and army, his key instruments of power. But without a political solution, Zimbabwe cannot escape economic disaster, because aid donors refused to prop up a dictatorial regime.
But Mugabe remains defiant. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, former Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa, a former Mugabe ally, said the 84-year-old dictator believed in violence as the only remedy. "When I was in government and in Zanu-PF, I used to tell Mugabe not to victimize and use violence against the MDC, but he did not listen. He refused to stop using violence against the MDC, saying that the power base of Zanu-PF was threatened. He was unrepentant. He believes violence is the solution." The U.N. estimates that 5.8 million people out of a population of up to 12 million will need food aid in the first quarter of next year. But that won't stop the cadres of Zanu-PF from eating their fill in Bindura.
—With reporting by correspondents inside Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's farms are ruined, its economy has evaporated, and its people have begun to starve and die of cholera. What better time to call a feast? According to reports in Zimbabwe's domestic press on Thursday, President Robert Mugabe and delegates to the annual conference of his ruling Zanu-PF Party will chomp their way through 124 cattle, 81 goats and 18 pigs over the course of their deliberations in the central town of Bindura. "Even if no more beasts are donated," said Geoffrey Nyarota, managing editor of thezimbabwetimes.com, referring to the practice of delegates donating animals to the leadership, "124 head of cattle is an inordinately large quantity of beef." With 5,000 delegates expected to attend, he added, it worked out to "40 delegates per bovine over four days — that is not to mention the pork, the goat, the maize-meal, the rice, among other basic foodstuffs currently in acute shortage throughout Zimbabwe." Noting he had attended weddings at which two bulls had fed 400 guests, Nyarota added, "This truly is incredible, especially in a country where millions of impoverished souls are starving."
The catering arrangements for the ruling party's annual shindig only reinforces the sense of grand delusion pervading the top ranks of Zimbabwe's regime amid the catastrophe they have brought upon their country. The U.N. has raised its estimate of the death toll from the cholera epidemic to 1,111, with 20,580 people infected. Concern is also growing over the fate of more than 20 opposition and civil-society leaders and activists who have not been seen since their abduction this past month. Mystery also surrounds an attempted assassination attempt against Zimbabwe's air-force chief Perrance Shiri, who was shot in the arm by unknown gunmen who stopped his car on Tuesday. Shiri is a key member of Mugabe's inner circle who commanded the notorious North Korean–trained 5th Brigade that massacred tens of thousands of supporters of a rival political movement during the 1980s
The government response to the expanding crisis is increasingly bizarre. Mugabe has denied that the cholera epidemic exists. (A spokesman later claimed he was being sarcastic.) And some of his ministers and spokesmen have blamed a Western conspiracy — which they claim is running militia training camps in neighboring Botswana with the eventual aim of recolonizing Zimbabwe — for the assassination attempt on Shiri. Even the cholera outbreak forms part of this dark conspiracy: Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described the disease as part of a "serious biological chemical war ... a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by ... the unrepentant former colonial power [Britain], which has enlisted support from its American and Western allies so that they invade the country." A senior Zanu-PF official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told TIME that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was behind the attack on Shiri. "It is the MDC and its Western donors who are trying to destabilize our country because we took land from the whites," he said. "We are going to stand firm to our values."
South Africa President Kgalema Motlanthe has dismissed the regime's claims. But University of Zimbabwe lecturer John Makumbe believes the purpose of touting these incredible fictions is that "the regime wants to create an impression that it is a victim when it is actually the perpetrator of violence."
Driving Zanu-PF's hysterical self-deception is the party's loss of popular support. The erstwhile liberation movement lost a general election in March, and after 28 years in power, Mugabe finished second in the presidential race behind MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The regime, which has always claimed for itself the mantle of revolutionary vanguard of the Zimbabwean people, responded with violence, killing close to 200 MDC members and jailing and torturing thousands more. Mugabe has since opened power-sharing talks with the MDC, but those have collapsed over the incumbent's insistence on keeping absolute control over the police and army, his key instruments of power. But without a political solution, Zimbabwe cannot escape economic disaster, because aid donors refused to prop up a dictatorial regime.
But Mugabe remains defiant. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, former Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa, a former Mugabe ally, said the 84-year-old dictator believed in violence as the only remedy. "When I was in government and in Zanu-PF, I used to tell Mugabe not to victimize and use violence against the MDC, but he did not listen. He refused to stop using violence against the MDC, saying that the power base of Zanu-PF was threatened. He was unrepentant. He believes violence is the solution." The U.N. estimates that 5.8 million people out of a population of up to 12 million will need food aid in the first quarter of next year. But that won't stop the cadres of Zanu-PF from eating their fill in Bindura.
—With reporting by correspondents inside Zimbabwe
World - Time's Top 10 Everything of 2008
Check it out here
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10
Entertainment - Top 10 Songs of the year
Josh Tyrangiel
Read more here - http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1863440,00.html
1.Kanye West's Love Lockdown
2.Pink's So What
3.Ida Maria's Oh My God
4.Lil Wayne's A Milli
5.Fleet Foxes' White Winter Hymnal
6.Jonas Brothers' Burnin' Up
7.Beyonce's Single Ladies
8.MGMT's Time to Pretend
9.Duffy's Rockferry
10.Gnarls Barkley's Going On
Read more here - http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1863440,00.html
1.Kanye West's Love Lockdown
2.Pink's So What
3.Ida Maria's Oh My God
4.Lil Wayne's A Milli
5.Fleet Foxes' White Winter Hymnal
6.Jonas Brothers' Burnin' Up
7.Beyonce's Single Ladies
8.MGMT's Time to Pretend
9.Duffy's Rockferry
10.Gnarls Barkley's Going On
Entertainment - Top 10 Movies
Richard Corliss
Wall-E
Most smart filmmakers want to parade their facility with all the tools in the modern movie box. Andrew Stanton, the director and cowriter of the Pixar animated feature WALL-E, experimented with what talking pictures could plausibly do without. Talking, for example: the first third of the movie has almost no dialogue. How about depriving the two main characters — the humble, lonely trash compacter WALL-E and his space princess EVE — of emotional signifiers like a mouth, eyebrows, shoulders, elbows? Yet with all the limitations he imposed on himself and his robot stars, Stanton still connected with a huge audience. Great science-fiction love stories (there aren't many) will do that. So will futurist adventures that evoke the splendor of the movie past. A dirt-of-the-earth guy hooking up with the ultimate ethereal gal, WALL-E and EVE could be the 29th century version of Tracy and Hepburn, or Seth Rogen and any attractive woman. It hardly matters that the movie is not-quite-silent, when it blends art and heart as spectacularly as WALL-E does.
Synecdoche
Ambition. That's what most independent films lack, and what the directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has, ad infintum, ad gloriam. It's an epic tragicomedy about Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a Schenectady, N.Y., theater director who moves to Manhattan with the gigantic notion of putting on a realistic drama as big as all New York City. A self-styled truth-teller (his full name anagrams to Acted Candor), Caden manages to exasperate or repel the fascinating women (including Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Michelle Williams) who cross his downward path. The project drags on — it's his life's work, and it may take that long to finish — but Kaufman's imagination never falters. The movie keeps getting bigger and weirder and denser and sadder and finnier, till all the pressure on Caden leads to a final implosion. A movie so human you'll want to argue with it, spank it, take it home or give it some Xanax, Synecdoche is the richest, most devious — I'll cut to the chase and say best — live-action film of the year.
My Winnipeg
In 1942 the city of Winnipeg held an "If Day," dressing its burghers up as Nazis to show the locals some of the terrors of life under the Third Reich. For Canadian deranged-genius filmmaker Guy Maddin, every day is an If Day: his movies transform his hometown reality into comedy-dramas of sibling rivalry and family life that would give Freud the creeps. So Maddin is not the most reliable reporter. In spite or because of that, My Winnipeg is a trip: a "docufantasia" that mixes the city's history with Maddin family values. He moves back into the home where he grew up, hiring actors to play his relatives — including Ann Savage, the notorious harridan of the 1945 cheapo-noir classic Detour, as his mom. Filming in black-and-white, streaking the frame, explaining the action with silent-movie intertitles, Maddin must want us to understand that, in movies, nothing is real, and everything is true. Oh, and My Winnipeg: it's weird-hilarious.
4 months,3 Weeks & 2 Days
In Romania under the Ceausescu regime, abortion was banned, and within 20 years some half a million women had died from having botched illegal abortions. This severe thriller from writer-director Christian Mungiu focuses on Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), a pregnant college student, and her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who finds a man who'll do the job: a quietly thuggish fellow who calls himself Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). Remorseless long takes build the suspense as the young women secure a hotel room and, when Bebe explains how they'll have to pay, question whether it's worth the price. Strap yourself in for this minimalist, splendidly acted horror film — and count your blessings that you live in a country where choosing an abortion doesn't mean losing a life
Milk
Affable and driven, Harvey Milk was a San Francisco politician who succeeded by inspiring crowds rather than making backroom deals. The country's first gay city supervisor, he used his energy and intelligence to help homosexuals secure civil rights. This exceptional docudrama — written by Darren Lance Black, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Sean Penn — covers the last eight years of Milk's life, which ended when he was shot by fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin). Penn, who’s in nearly every scene, manages the neat trick of merging his star personality with the public figure well known from the 1984 documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. Sunny, pushy and convincingly gay, Penn embodies a man hopeful for the future of his fellows but dreading what he believes is awaiting him. A how-to exercise in marshalling dozens of characters and one big political issue into exemplary, edifying entertainment, Milk is a must-see, right now.
The Curious case of Benjamin Button
"He was born old." That expression, referring to the prematurely middle-aged among us, must have been what spurred F. Scott Fitzgerald to create his puckish 1922 short story about Benjamin Button, who was born an old man and got a day younger every day. In this greatly expanded, much less frivolous film version, Benjamin's birth year is moved from 1860 to 1918; instead of fighting in the Spanish-American War, Benjamin sees action in World War II. What neither of those times possessed was the technological legerdemain that enables Brad Pitt to play Benjamin, through computer effects work (and old-fashioned makeup), for most of the character's long life. But the most satisfying tricks are performed by writers Eric Roth and Robin Swicord and director David Fincher. They give flesh and feelings to the essentially passive Benjamin and provide him with a willful, glamorous partner: the dancer Daisy (Cate Blanchett). Of all the movie's dazzling effects, the most special are the internal ones. Benjamin, a minority of one, can raise his resignation into wonder, and lift the viewer along with him.
Slumdog Millionaire
Who wants to be a millionaire? Not 18-year-old Jamal, though he'd like enough to live on, since he's been scrambling to survive since he and his brother Salim were brutally orphaned as children. But he's gone on a nationwide quiz show hoping that his brief celebrity will catch the attention of the ravishing, unlucky Latika, whom he's loved for most of his life. Simon Beaufoy's script tells the three lives in flashbacks that illuminate India's dynamic and troubled history over the past 15 years (though not, obviously, of the last few weeks). As gaudy wealth and abasing poverty coexist in Mumbai, so Danny Boyle's movie catches the contradictions of slum drama, love story, social document and Bollywood musical in its capacious embrace. With its nonstop pace and fearless dives into affairs of the heart, Slumdog Millionaire is a dervish delight.
Iron Man
The weapons designed by arms manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) are no sleeker, and his bombs no smarter, than the narrative lines of this marvelous Marvel Comics movie. A tin man who realizes that, if he is to become human, he must build himself a heart — and then a big red metallic airborne suit for buzzing unsuspecting planes and vanquishing his enemies. What a kick it is to see the thing fly. Same with the movie, for, like Tony, Iron Man is the perfect expression of Hollywood's engineering ingenuity. In an excellent year for action films (Wanted, Hellboy II, The Dark Knight and, as you'll soon see, Speed Racer), this was the coolest movie machine.
Speed Racer
Opening the week after Iron Man, the Wachowski brothers' race-car movie flopped at the box office. What can we say? Not every avant-garde FX masterpiece receives instant audience validation. This tale of a family of racers — Racer is the family name — exists simultaneously in the 1950s and today, in a live-action world and its own complementary alternate cyber-universe. Operating a pitch of delirious precision, the movie is a rich, cartoonish dream: non-stop Op art, and a triumph of virtual virtuosity. Maybe a lot of civilians didn't go see the picture, but you can bet it attracted the smart boys in Hollywood. They will pilfer its effects and, by next summer, produce a domesticated, more palatable version. My advice: Don't wait for the rip-offs; accept no substitutes. Speed Racer is the future of movies, on DVD now.
Encounters at the End of the World
If the German director-explorer Werner Herzog were to write an autobiography, this could be the title, for his 40 years of movies record his need to chronicle the lives of people as obsessed as he. The dramatic movies Aguirre the Wrath of God, Heart of Glass, Nosferatu the Vampire and Fitzcarraldo, and documentaries like The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Grizzly Man and The White Diamond, are all about men with grand or deranged dreams, dizzied by the helium of their aspirations, which drives them to triumph or catastrophe. Even sane men, scientists in the remote clarity of Antarctica, have this intoxicating thirst. Encounters could be called a travelog: on a grant from the National Geographic Society, Herzog spent some time at the McMurdo Research Station, chatting up the scholars, technicians and workmen, following them on their expeditions across the ice and below it. Since Herzog has eyes as restless as they are acute, you'll see wonders here: active volcanoes, string band concerts, singing seals. The strangest, most affecting creatures are the men and women who've slipped down the modern world to end up here. They are adventurers, sometimes tearful with joy, and kindred souls to this great ecstatic filmmaker.
Wall-E
Most smart filmmakers want to parade their facility with all the tools in the modern movie box. Andrew Stanton, the director and cowriter of the Pixar animated feature WALL-E, experimented with what talking pictures could plausibly do without. Talking, for example: the first third of the movie has almost no dialogue. How about depriving the two main characters — the humble, lonely trash compacter WALL-E and his space princess EVE — of emotional signifiers like a mouth, eyebrows, shoulders, elbows? Yet with all the limitations he imposed on himself and his robot stars, Stanton still connected with a huge audience. Great science-fiction love stories (there aren't many) will do that. So will futurist adventures that evoke the splendor of the movie past. A dirt-of-the-earth guy hooking up with the ultimate ethereal gal, WALL-E and EVE could be the 29th century version of Tracy and Hepburn, or Seth Rogen and any attractive woman. It hardly matters that the movie is not-quite-silent, when it blends art and heart as spectacularly as WALL-E does.
Synecdoche
Ambition. That's what most independent films lack, and what the directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has, ad infintum, ad gloriam. It's an epic tragicomedy about Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a Schenectady, N.Y., theater director who moves to Manhattan with the gigantic notion of putting on a realistic drama as big as all New York City. A self-styled truth-teller (his full name anagrams to Acted Candor), Caden manages to exasperate or repel the fascinating women (including Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Michelle Williams) who cross his downward path. The project drags on — it's his life's work, and it may take that long to finish — but Kaufman's imagination never falters. The movie keeps getting bigger and weirder and denser and sadder and finnier, till all the pressure on Caden leads to a final implosion. A movie so human you'll want to argue with it, spank it, take it home or give it some Xanax, Synecdoche is the richest, most devious — I'll cut to the chase and say best — live-action film of the year.
My Winnipeg
In 1942 the city of Winnipeg held an "If Day," dressing its burghers up as Nazis to show the locals some of the terrors of life under the Third Reich. For Canadian deranged-genius filmmaker Guy Maddin, every day is an If Day: his movies transform his hometown reality into comedy-dramas of sibling rivalry and family life that would give Freud the creeps. So Maddin is not the most reliable reporter. In spite or because of that, My Winnipeg is a trip: a "docufantasia" that mixes the city's history with Maddin family values. He moves back into the home where he grew up, hiring actors to play his relatives — including Ann Savage, the notorious harridan of the 1945 cheapo-noir classic Detour, as his mom. Filming in black-and-white, streaking the frame, explaining the action with silent-movie intertitles, Maddin must want us to understand that, in movies, nothing is real, and everything is true. Oh, and My Winnipeg: it's weird-hilarious.
4 months,3 Weeks & 2 Days
In Romania under the Ceausescu regime, abortion was banned, and within 20 years some half a million women had died from having botched illegal abortions. This severe thriller from writer-director Christian Mungiu focuses on Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), a pregnant college student, and her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who finds a man who'll do the job: a quietly thuggish fellow who calls himself Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). Remorseless long takes build the suspense as the young women secure a hotel room and, when Bebe explains how they'll have to pay, question whether it's worth the price. Strap yourself in for this minimalist, splendidly acted horror film — and count your blessings that you live in a country where choosing an abortion doesn't mean losing a life
Milk
Affable and driven, Harvey Milk was a San Francisco politician who succeeded by inspiring crowds rather than making backroom deals. The country's first gay city supervisor, he used his energy and intelligence to help homosexuals secure civil rights. This exceptional docudrama — written by Darren Lance Black, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Sean Penn — covers the last eight years of Milk's life, which ended when he was shot by fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin). Penn, who’s in nearly every scene, manages the neat trick of merging his star personality with the public figure well known from the 1984 documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. Sunny, pushy and convincingly gay, Penn embodies a man hopeful for the future of his fellows but dreading what he believes is awaiting him. A how-to exercise in marshalling dozens of characters and one big political issue into exemplary, edifying entertainment, Milk is a must-see, right now.
The Curious case of Benjamin Button
"He was born old." That expression, referring to the prematurely middle-aged among us, must have been what spurred F. Scott Fitzgerald to create his puckish 1922 short story about Benjamin Button, who was born an old man and got a day younger every day. In this greatly expanded, much less frivolous film version, Benjamin's birth year is moved from 1860 to 1918; instead of fighting in the Spanish-American War, Benjamin sees action in World War II. What neither of those times possessed was the technological legerdemain that enables Brad Pitt to play Benjamin, through computer effects work (and old-fashioned makeup), for most of the character's long life. But the most satisfying tricks are performed by writers Eric Roth and Robin Swicord and director David Fincher. They give flesh and feelings to the essentially passive Benjamin and provide him with a willful, glamorous partner: the dancer Daisy (Cate Blanchett). Of all the movie's dazzling effects, the most special are the internal ones. Benjamin, a minority of one, can raise his resignation into wonder, and lift the viewer along with him.
Slumdog Millionaire
Who wants to be a millionaire? Not 18-year-old Jamal, though he'd like enough to live on, since he's been scrambling to survive since he and his brother Salim were brutally orphaned as children. But he's gone on a nationwide quiz show hoping that his brief celebrity will catch the attention of the ravishing, unlucky Latika, whom he's loved for most of his life. Simon Beaufoy's script tells the three lives in flashbacks that illuminate India's dynamic and troubled history over the past 15 years (though not, obviously, of the last few weeks). As gaudy wealth and abasing poverty coexist in Mumbai, so Danny Boyle's movie catches the contradictions of slum drama, love story, social document and Bollywood musical in its capacious embrace. With its nonstop pace and fearless dives into affairs of the heart, Slumdog Millionaire is a dervish delight.
Iron Man
The weapons designed by arms manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) are no sleeker, and his bombs no smarter, than the narrative lines of this marvelous Marvel Comics movie. A tin man who realizes that, if he is to become human, he must build himself a heart — and then a big red metallic airborne suit for buzzing unsuspecting planes and vanquishing his enemies. What a kick it is to see the thing fly. Same with the movie, for, like Tony, Iron Man is the perfect expression of Hollywood's engineering ingenuity. In an excellent year for action films (Wanted, Hellboy II, The Dark Knight and, as you'll soon see, Speed Racer), this was the coolest movie machine.
Speed Racer
Opening the week after Iron Man, the Wachowski brothers' race-car movie flopped at the box office. What can we say? Not every avant-garde FX masterpiece receives instant audience validation. This tale of a family of racers — Racer is the family name — exists simultaneously in the 1950s and today, in a live-action world and its own complementary alternate cyber-universe. Operating a pitch of delirious precision, the movie is a rich, cartoonish dream: non-stop Op art, and a triumph of virtual virtuosity. Maybe a lot of civilians didn't go see the picture, but you can bet it attracted the smart boys in Hollywood. They will pilfer its effects and, by next summer, produce a domesticated, more palatable version. My advice: Don't wait for the rip-offs; accept no substitutes. Speed Racer is the future of movies, on DVD now.
Encounters at the End of the World
If the German director-explorer Werner Herzog were to write an autobiography, this could be the title, for his 40 years of movies record his need to chronicle the lives of people as obsessed as he. The dramatic movies Aguirre the Wrath of God, Heart of Glass, Nosferatu the Vampire and Fitzcarraldo, and documentaries like The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Grizzly Man and The White Diamond, are all about men with grand or deranged dreams, dizzied by the helium of their aspirations, which drives them to triumph or catastrophe. Even sane men, scientists in the remote clarity of Antarctica, have this intoxicating thirst. Encounters could be called a travelog: on a grant from the National Geographic Society, Herzog spent some time at the McMurdo Research Station, chatting up the scholars, technicians and workmen, following them on their expeditions across the ice and below it. Since Herzog has eyes as restless as they are acute, you'll see wonders here: active volcanoes, string band concerts, singing seals. The strangest, most affecting creatures are the men and women who've slipped down the modern world to end up here. They are adventurers, sometimes tearful with joy, and kindred souls to this great ecstatic filmmaker.
Entertainment - Top 10 Movie performances this year
Richard Corliss
Kate Winslet in The Reader
Kate Winslet can make a scowl sexy. That's partly physical: her pretty mouth naturally turns down. But it's also because her intelligence as an actress is essentially critical; it gives an erotic taunt and charge to any encounter. Most movie characters have a need to get somewhere else, but Winslet women usually proceed from an enveloping restlessness, a resentment of the status quo. In another December film, Revolutionary Road, her character wants to flee suburbia for Paris, in an attempt to rekindle a happier past. In The Reader, Hanna Schmitz's past was anything but idyllic. Coming of age in the Third Reich, she is part of a generation whose war scars, inflicted or endured, still sting. Now it's 1958, and the carnal, almost feral intensity of a brief affair she has with a teenager (the very impressive David Kross) can't blot out that past. If Hanna is the sum of what she's done, then she is satanic. If she is the repository of Michael's adolescent love for her — and the moviegoer's fascination with her — then she's saved from eternal condemnation. Winslet puts across Hanna's misery and moral blind spots in a performance with very few words, a desperate passion and that laser stare.
Viola Davis in Doubt
There's plenty of Acting, heaven knows, in the John Patrick Shanley movie about a nun (Meryl Streep), the principal of a Catholic School in the Bronx in 1964, who suspects a popular priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of molesting a young black student. Most of the heavy emoting is done by Streep, whose meanness is pitched at the same near-hysterical level as her giddiness in Mamma Mia! But there's also genuine acting, the kind that opens a window onto a complex, troubled soul, and that's thanks to Davis, in a supporting role as the boy's mother. Drop by careful drop, she pours out her heart, revealing the aspirations and desperation of any parent who'll fight to insure her son has a better life than she has. Davis has said that Shanley impressed on her the deference a lower-middle-class black woman in 1964 was expected to show a nun. That's part of the contained power of this performance: no showboating here, just emotional precision and devastating honesty.
Dakota Fanning in The Secret Life of Bees
Another movie about abused children and nurturing black mother figures in 1964, Gina Prince-Bythewood's version of the Sue Monk Kidd best-seller may cast its characters' miseries in a slightly too-rosy radiance. But that glow helps illuminate some potent star acting from Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Hudson and, above all, Dakota Fanning as a white girl searching for truths about herself and her dead mother. Fanning, 14, was seven when she emerged as a self-possessed little scene-stealer in the Sean Penn I Am Sam. Now she is negotiating early adolescence with the same gravity and poise. She has the eerie ability to lure the moviegoer's eye over to the part of the screen where she is, seemingly doing nothing. (There are few film pleasures as rewarding as watching Fanning listen.) She also has the gift of living inside the character without editorializing about it. She never pushes an emotion; she's like a doctor with a sixth sense for detecting internal ailments. Fanning wills Lily from fictional stereotype into persuasive movie life, and one of the sweet anticipations in moviegoing will be watching her mature into adult roles. Here's hoping the guys of Hollywood provide some good ones for her
Kimberly Rivers Roberts in Trouble the Water
"Katrina, she's a bad chick," observes Kim Rivers, 24, an aspiring rap artist (Black Kold Madina) and unassuming real-life heroine. In August 2005, as the awful hurricane battered New Orleans, Kim and her husband Scott Roberts saved lives by bringing flood victims to the attic of their house in the Ninth Ward. She is also the star, and in a way the director, of this soul-roiling nonfiction film by Carl Deal and Tina Lessin. Just before the storm, Kim had bought a video camera, which she used to document the ravages that nature and an indifferent bureaucracy can wreak. "Me and Scott, we're the last two Mohicans," she says as the street becomes a river, six, eight feet high. "We truly under siege. Nobody left with no valuables, nothin' but our lives." It's because of Kim Rivers that this record of hopelessness and heroism exists. In one of her autobiographical rap songs, she says, "I don't need y'all to tell me I'm amazin', just look at me." Seriously. Just look at the good she did, the person she is, in this movie. Amazing.
Angelina Jolie in Wanted
Jolie certainly has the skill and, even more, the ambition to be a serious actress, as indicated by her bereaved heroines in A Mighty Heart and Changeling. But the contours of her face and body are so improbable and arresting, her stature and sexuality so imposing, that she's simply not designed to play ordinary people. She's much more satisfying as a fantasy or cartoon character. In Timur Bekmambetov's zazzy action film, she plays Fox, a member of Morgan Freeman's gang of supposedly sanctified assassins. The role is a blend of Jolie's previous adventuresses: the CIA killer lady in Mr. and Mrs. Smith crossed with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the daredevil pilot from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and the witch-goddess of Beowulf. (Oh, and her Tigress in Kung Fu Panda.) Densely tattooed, richly skilled in the automotive and firearm arts, Fox reeks of a take-charge sexiness we'll call feminismo. The actress herself might be a saint from some cinematic fertility cult: Holy Jolie.
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Ledger's death at 28, six months before his last big movie opened, stoked a morbid want-see. Was his Joker as extravagant and chilling as early reports suggested? Might the performance offer clues to Ledger's demise? Well, it's a wild and meticulous construct: the scourge of Gotham, stalking around like Groucho, talking in a nasal Chicago accent (the film was shot there), propelling every conversation by sticking his face close to that of his listener as if he could take a bite any second. Reviewers evoked Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter — the same mock-ingratiating tone, same sadistic ingenuity — but this Joker is the bigger, gaudier showman, with a sick kid's need to watch the damage he's caused. His ornate facial scars (possibly self-inflicted) suggest a traumatic past, but unlike Lecter the Joker has no backstory; he can't be read as the sum of what his parents, or a girl, or the Iraq War, did to him. He comes out of nowhere, creates chaos, disappears. Ledger thus had the freedom to invent his own nightmare. What a creepy-terrific job he did... before he, too, vanished.
Jean Claude Van Damme in JCVD
The Muscles from Brussels: a best actor? An actor, even? In 25 years of martial arts melodramas, he's displayed fast kicks, a surly-seraphic demeanor and an uneasy command of English. But in this low-budget French-language thriller shot in his home town, Van Damme is superb at playing himself, or, as director Mabrouk el Mechri would have it, a semi-realistic version of same: a worn-down ex-star who gets involved in a bank heist with tough guys eager to exploit his residue of celebrity. The wow moment is a six-minute take of Van Damme confessing his sins to the camera: a brave, bravura exhibition of shouting, tears, emotional scab-pulling. Is this wrenching revelation factual? Is it fake? Let's call it fake-tual, and, for now, call Jean Claude Van Damme a bold, gifted actor.
Vlad Ivanov in 4 months,3 weeks and 2 Days
You need to get an illegal abortion in Communist Romania, 1987, you go to a hotel room and wait for the guy who calls himself, with leaden irony, Mr. Bebe (pronounced bay-bay, as in the French word for baby). In the year's best foreign-language film, Bebe is a monster, no question, but not a screamer. His voice is icily controlled; he could issue a death sentence without inflection. Solidly built and sporting a leather jacket, Ivanov suggests the Brando of The Wild One — just extract the humanity and leave in the sociopathic brutality. I know nothing about the actor except that he's made movies in four languages (Romanian, Russian, French and English) and that his name suggests a Russian heritage. In fact, he has some of Vladimir Putin's glacial charisma and sexual threat. I wouldn't care to be in a hotel room with either of them; but I look forward to more Ivanov movies, to see if he's got the same sick radiance, like a walking Chernobyl.
Brandon Walters in Australia
Baz Luhrmann's swoony historical romance stars Nicole Kidman, hunk de l'année Hugh Jackman and just about every actor who made Australian cinema's coming-of-age party so exciting in the '70s. Yet the focal character of this Gone with the Wizard superproduction is an 11-year-old who'd never made a film before, and who nearly died from leukemia when he was six. As Nullah, the half-aboriginal adopted by Kidman and Jackman, Walters must be strong, winsome, questing, questioning and of course adorable. He doesn't steal scenes, exactly, since they're often built around him; but he magnetizes all eyes and hearts. Goodonya, little mate
Ben Burtt in Wall-E
The lonely robo-boy of Andrew Stanton's fabulous fantasy doesn't say much ("WALL-E," "Eva," "Ta-DA!"), but there's a future-world of humor and emotion in each syllable. Those intonations, and nearly every other sound in the movie — the machines, the weapons, the whole aural environment — are the amazing achievement of Ben Burtt, who for 28 years soundscaped George Lucas films (the light saber in Star Wars, the whipcrack in Raiders of the Lost Ark) before coming to Pixar. WALL-E's voice is Burtt's own, which he stretched, distorted and metallicized on his computer keyboard; he also voiced Mo, the neat-freak droid on the spaceship WALL-E and EVE visit. Hal the cockroach, WALL-E's sole companion on Earth, gets his chirps from "a raccoon, speeded up," and his clicks from the rattling of a cop's handcuffs. (The liquid loveliness of EVE's voice comes from Pixar staffer Elissa Knight.) All these could have been purely computer-generated, but, says Burtt, "The problem with real synthetic voices is that they lack character. You don't get the sense of a soul behind the voice." You do get that with WALL-E, which makes Burtt the Soul Man of 2008
Kate Winslet in The Reader
Kate Winslet can make a scowl sexy. That's partly physical: her pretty mouth naturally turns down. But it's also because her intelligence as an actress is essentially critical; it gives an erotic taunt and charge to any encounter. Most movie characters have a need to get somewhere else, but Winslet women usually proceed from an enveloping restlessness, a resentment of the status quo. In another December film, Revolutionary Road, her character wants to flee suburbia for Paris, in an attempt to rekindle a happier past. In The Reader, Hanna Schmitz's past was anything but idyllic. Coming of age in the Third Reich, she is part of a generation whose war scars, inflicted or endured, still sting. Now it's 1958, and the carnal, almost feral intensity of a brief affair she has with a teenager (the very impressive David Kross) can't blot out that past. If Hanna is the sum of what she's done, then she is satanic. If she is the repository of Michael's adolescent love for her — and the moviegoer's fascination with her — then she's saved from eternal condemnation. Winslet puts across Hanna's misery and moral blind spots in a performance with very few words, a desperate passion and that laser stare.
Viola Davis in Doubt
There's plenty of Acting, heaven knows, in the John Patrick Shanley movie about a nun (Meryl Streep), the principal of a Catholic School in the Bronx in 1964, who suspects a popular priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of molesting a young black student. Most of the heavy emoting is done by Streep, whose meanness is pitched at the same near-hysterical level as her giddiness in Mamma Mia! But there's also genuine acting, the kind that opens a window onto a complex, troubled soul, and that's thanks to Davis, in a supporting role as the boy's mother. Drop by careful drop, she pours out her heart, revealing the aspirations and desperation of any parent who'll fight to insure her son has a better life than she has. Davis has said that Shanley impressed on her the deference a lower-middle-class black woman in 1964 was expected to show a nun. That's part of the contained power of this performance: no showboating here, just emotional precision and devastating honesty.
Dakota Fanning in The Secret Life of Bees
Another movie about abused children and nurturing black mother figures in 1964, Gina Prince-Bythewood's version of the Sue Monk Kidd best-seller may cast its characters' miseries in a slightly too-rosy radiance. But that glow helps illuminate some potent star acting from Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Hudson and, above all, Dakota Fanning as a white girl searching for truths about herself and her dead mother. Fanning, 14, was seven when she emerged as a self-possessed little scene-stealer in the Sean Penn I Am Sam. Now she is negotiating early adolescence with the same gravity and poise. She has the eerie ability to lure the moviegoer's eye over to the part of the screen where she is, seemingly doing nothing. (There are few film pleasures as rewarding as watching Fanning listen.) She also has the gift of living inside the character without editorializing about it. She never pushes an emotion; she's like a doctor with a sixth sense for detecting internal ailments. Fanning wills Lily from fictional stereotype into persuasive movie life, and one of the sweet anticipations in moviegoing will be watching her mature into adult roles. Here's hoping the guys of Hollywood provide some good ones for her
Kimberly Rivers Roberts in Trouble the Water
"Katrina, she's a bad chick," observes Kim Rivers, 24, an aspiring rap artist (Black Kold Madina) and unassuming real-life heroine. In August 2005, as the awful hurricane battered New Orleans, Kim and her husband Scott Roberts saved lives by bringing flood victims to the attic of their house in the Ninth Ward. She is also the star, and in a way the director, of this soul-roiling nonfiction film by Carl Deal and Tina Lessin. Just before the storm, Kim had bought a video camera, which she used to document the ravages that nature and an indifferent bureaucracy can wreak. "Me and Scott, we're the last two Mohicans," she says as the street becomes a river, six, eight feet high. "We truly under siege. Nobody left with no valuables, nothin' but our lives." It's because of Kim Rivers that this record of hopelessness and heroism exists. In one of her autobiographical rap songs, she says, "I don't need y'all to tell me I'm amazin', just look at me." Seriously. Just look at the good she did, the person she is, in this movie. Amazing.
Angelina Jolie in Wanted
Jolie certainly has the skill and, even more, the ambition to be a serious actress, as indicated by her bereaved heroines in A Mighty Heart and Changeling. But the contours of her face and body are so improbable and arresting, her stature and sexuality so imposing, that she's simply not designed to play ordinary people. She's much more satisfying as a fantasy or cartoon character. In Timur Bekmambetov's zazzy action film, she plays Fox, a member of Morgan Freeman's gang of supposedly sanctified assassins. The role is a blend of Jolie's previous adventuresses: the CIA killer lady in Mr. and Mrs. Smith crossed with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the daredevil pilot from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and the witch-goddess of Beowulf. (Oh, and her Tigress in Kung Fu Panda.) Densely tattooed, richly skilled in the automotive and firearm arts, Fox reeks of a take-charge sexiness we'll call feminismo. The actress herself might be a saint from some cinematic fertility cult: Holy Jolie.
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Ledger's death at 28, six months before his last big movie opened, stoked a morbid want-see. Was his Joker as extravagant and chilling as early reports suggested? Might the performance offer clues to Ledger's demise? Well, it's a wild and meticulous construct: the scourge of Gotham, stalking around like Groucho, talking in a nasal Chicago accent (the film was shot there), propelling every conversation by sticking his face close to that of his listener as if he could take a bite any second. Reviewers evoked Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter — the same mock-ingratiating tone, same sadistic ingenuity — but this Joker is the bigger, gaudier showman, with a sick kid's need to watch the damage he's caused. His ornate facial scars (possibly self-inflicted) suggest a traumatic past, but unlike Lecter the Joker has no backstory; he can't be read as the sum of what his parents, or a girl, or the Iraq War, did to him. He comes out of nowhere, creates chaos, disappears. Ledger thus had the freedom to invent his own nightmare. What a creepy-terrific job he did... before he, too, vanished.
Jean Claude Van Damme in JCVD
The Muscles from Brussels: a best actor? An actor, even? In 25 years of martial arts melodramas, he's displayed fast kicks, a surly-seraphic demeanor and an uneasy command of English. But in this low-budget French-language thriller shot in his home town, Van Damme is superb at playing himself, or, as director Mabrouk el Mechri would have it, a semi-realistic version of same: a worn-down ex-star who gets involved in a bank heist with tough guys eager to exploit his residue of celebrity. The wow moment is a six-minute take of Van Damme confessing his sins to the camera: a brave, bravura exhibition of shouting, tears, emotional scab-pulling. Is this wrenching revelation factual? Is it fake? Let's call it fake-tual, and, for now, call Jean Claude Van Damme a bold, gifted actor.
Vlad Ivanov in 4 months,3 weeks and 2 Days
You need to get an illegal abortion in Communist Romania, 1987, you go to a hotel room and wait for the guy who calls himself, with leaden irony, Mr. Bebe (pronounced bay-bay, as in the French word for baby). In the year's best foreign-language film, Bebe is a monster, no question, but not a screamer. His voice is icily controlled; he could issue a death sentence without inflection. Solidly built and sporting a leather jacket, Ivanov suggests the Brando of The Wild One — just extract the humanity and leave in the sociopathic brutality. I know nothing about the actor except that he's made movies in four languages (Romanian, Russian, French and English) and that his name suggests a Russian heritage. In fact, he has some of Vladimir Putin's glacial charisma and sexual threat. I wouldn't care to be in a hotel room with either of them; but I look forward to more Ivanov movies, to see if he's got the same sick radiance, like a walking Chernobyl.
Brandon Walters in Australia
Baz Luhrmann's swoony historical romance stars Nicole Kidman, hunk de l'année Hugh Jackman and just about every actor who made Australian cinema's coming-of-age party so exciting in the '70s. Yet the focal character of this Gone with the Wizard superproduction is an 11-year-old who'd never made a film before, and who nearly died from leukemia when he was six. As Nullah, the half-aboriginal adopted by Kidman and Jackman, Walters must be strong, winsome, questing, questioning and of course adorable. He doesn't steal scenes, exactly, since they're often built around him; but he magnetizes all eyes and hearts. Goodonya, little mate
Ben Burtt in Wall-E
The lonely robo-boy of Andrew Stanton's fabulous fantasy doesn't say much ("WALL-E," "Eva," "Ta-DA!"), but there's a future-world of humor and emotion in each syllable. Those intonations, and nearly every other sound in the movie — the machines, the weapons, the whole aural environment — are the amazing achievement of Ben Burtt, who for 28 years soundscaped George Lucas films (the light saber in Star Wars, the whipcrack in Raiders of the Lost Ark) before coming to Pixar. WALL-E's voice is Burtt's own, which he stretched, distorted and metallicized on his computer keyboard; he also voiced Mo, the neat-freak droid on the spaceship WALL-E and EVE visit. Hal the cockroach, WALL-E's sole companion on Earth, gets his chirps from "a raccoon, speeded up," and his clicks from the rattling of a cop's handcuffs. (The liquid loveliness of EVE's voice comes from Pixar staffer Elissa Knight.) All these could have been purely computer-generated, but, says Burtt, "The problem with real synthetic voices is that they lack character. You don't get the sense of a soul behind the voice." You do get that with WALL-E, which makes Burtt the Soul Man of 2008
Entertainment - Yes Man and Seven Pounds: Santas for Hard Times
Richard Corliss
Americans in the economic trough this holiday season will find fantasy solutions to their money woes in the weekend's two big new movies. Wouldn't it be nice if Jim Carrey were your local bank officer, who smilingly approved every loan, even if your need were bizarre and your collateral nonexistent? Wouldn't your soul be soothed if Will Smith were a Treasury agent who gave you a six-month extension on the pile you owe the IRS? You needn't be a financial tycoon to get a home- or pension-saving Christmas gift — not when these two stars are playing Santa.
The weekend face-off sets the top comedy star of the '90s against the top action-and-drama star of the last decade. Industry handicappers are predicting that Carrey, with a familiar role in an easy-to-sell story, will score a box office win over Smith, whose movie's central and unrevealable plot twists make it a challenge to describe. (They're saying it could be Smith's first film since the 2001 Ali not to break $100 million domestic.) But both films play to their star's acting strengths, which means that you will probably laugh along with Yes Man; and in Seven Pounds, if you have a soft spot for noble sacrifice, you will cry
The scenarios for Yes Man, the Carrey comedy, and Seven Pounds, the Smith drama, could have emerged from the same screenwriting class. Premise: An ordinary man who's lost his wife has become remote from his family and friends. To resolve his ennui, he determines to become a do-gooder — Carrey's Carl Allen by answering in the affirmative to every vagrant request, Smith's Ben Thomas by choosing seven strangers whose lives he can drastically improve. And in the process he finds a new woman to give him hope or assuage his guilt.
Jim Carrey: Yes Man
We couldn't summarize Yes Man better than Carrey did on The Tonight Show on Tuesday, when he purported to fall asleep and offered this precis between snores: "Carl Allen is a guy who doesn't engage in life. Then he decides to say yes to everything, no matter how silly or deranged it is. Critics are calling it a panacea for our dark times we're living in." In a little swipe at the competition, Carrey said of Yes Man, "It's the only movie this weekend where nobody dies in the end."
When we meet him, Carl is living by the Alcoholics Anonymous mantra that "no" is a complete sentence. He gamely deflects every dinner invitation by inventing outlandish excuses about how busy he is. At the bank, he automatically rejects every loan application. He can rouse himself to passion only when watching a Saw movie in his cocoon of a home, cheering on the man who has to amputate his foot: "Oh, come on, you're halfway through, Cut it off already."
In other Carrey movies, the star needed magical or divine intervention to change his ways: a boy's wish that his dad will tell the truth for 24 hours in Liar Liar, and, in Bruce Almighty, God's command that he try being omnipotent and learn how tough it is to be in charge of the universe. This time it's just an excitable friend (John Michael Higgins) who drags Carl to one of those personal-help messiahs who pock the California mindscape. The word from this shock-haired swami (Terence Stamp) is "Yes." By saying yes to every chance that comes your way — a homeless man's plea for your money, a street peddler's flier for a band concert, a loan request from any indigent who wanders into the bank — you will open yourself to unexpected possibilities in life and love. You may also end up broke, bereft and unemployed, but that's a different movie. (For one: It's a Wonderful Life, or most of it.)
Director Peyton Reed's early features, Bring It On and Down With Love, were in-your-face comedies with a pop-art design scheme; they aimed to get to endearing by going through aggressive. Reed found a subtler tone in his Vince Vaughn–Jennifer Aniston hit The Break-Up, where both the humor and the despair rose from domestic behavior that, if it was exaggerated for dramatic effect, was still recognizable. Yes Man straddles those two styles. It ambles along, Judd Apatow-style (and includes a fellatio gag that should have earned the movie an R rating) while affording Carrey a few opportunities for his patented rubber-face comedy pyrotechnics. The more impressionable kids will be imitating his "Red Bull" riff throughout the holidays.
Though the movie is no more than agreeable, it does provide a swell showcase for New Zealand wundercomic Rhys Darby (Murray the hapless agent on HBO's Flight of the Conchords) and gives the astrally adorable Zooey Deschanel a rare shot at a lead role in a big Hollywood movie. Casting directors, please take note.
Will Smith: No, Man
Everybody in Yes Man, including Carrey in his depressive phase, is pretty darned perky — a mood that applies to no one in Seven Pounds. And whereas Carl is using his personal epiphany to make himself happy, Ben Thomas does good only for others; he's paying it forward, not inward. A child undergoing cancer treatment, a mother whose boyfriend abuses her, a blind pianist (Woody Harrelson), a young woman (Rosario Dawson) suffering from congenital heart failure — each of these and three others, he showers with rejuvenating gifts. His motive is the movie's secret.
Directed by Gabriele Muccino and written by Grant Nieporte, Seven Pounds continues a string of movies — The Pursuit of Happyness, I Am Legend, Hancock — in which Smith's characters are isolated and superior, estranged from normal life, ultimately trying to make contact with ordinary folks. It's been ages since the star flashed his charismatic smile for a whole movie. Here he speaks to people with a precise courtesy that seems learned rather than felt. Pain pulses just behind his fretted eyebrows; he carries himself like a hero too gentlemanly to show his grief, too weighed down to hide it. Those Ben touches see that he's on a mission beyond making their lives more bearable. The same may be true of Smith: rashly or bravely, he's using his immense celebrity to lure audiences into an alternate movie world where kindness and desperation feed off each other.
In these recent movies, Smith's stature has kept him from connecting with anyone but his own son (in The Pursuit of Happyness, also directed by Muccino) and the mass of moviegoers. Here, though — and this is what lifts Seven Pounds above other Smith dramas — he does tentatively allow another adult onto his solitary planet. Dawson, glammed down in hospital gowns and an invalid's grayish sheen, is knowing, giving and (her word and ours) hot. She's splendid at showing how someone who's tucked herself into the reclusion of her illness wills herself to bloom in the presence of someone with a secret mournfulness greater, and perhaps less curable, than her own. It's a lovely performance, in part because her character throws every charm she's got at the one man who seems doomed to deflect it.
The message of Seven Pounds (other than: Don't text-message while driving) is that even the most depressive person can find a way to make other people happy. If that doesn't sound like a movie to buoy your Christmas spirit, ask yourself this: How often do you sit through a film's closing credits so you have a little private time to wipe away the tears?
Americans in the economic trough this holiday season will find fantasy solutions to their money woes in the weekend's two big new movies. Wouldn't it be nice if Jim Carrey were your local bank officer, who smilingly approved every loan, even if your need were bizarre and your collateral nonexistent? Wouldn't your soul be soothed if Will Smith were a Treasury agent who gave you a six-month extension on the pile you owe the IRS? You needn't be a financial tycoon to get a home- or pension-saving Christmas gift — not when these two stars are playing Santa.
The weekend face-off sets the top comedy star of the '90s against the top action-and-drama star of the last decade. Industry handicappers are predicting that Carrey, with a familiar role in an easy-to-sell story, will score a box office win over Smith, whose movie's central and unrevealable plot twists make it a challenge to describe. (They're saying it could be Smith's first film since the 2001 Ali not to break $100 million domestic.) But both films play to their star's acting strengths, which means that you will probably laugh along with Yes Man; and in Seven Pounds, if you have a soft spot for noble sacrifice, you will cry
The scenarios for Yes Man, the Carrey comedy, and Seven Pounds, the Smith drama, could have emerged from the same screenwriting class. Premise: An ordinary man who's lost his wife has become remote from his family and friends. To resolve his ennui, he determines to become a do-gooder — Carrey's Carl Allen by answering in the affirmative to every vagrant request, Smith's Ben Thomas by choosing seven strangers whose lives he can drastically improve. And in the process he finds a new woman to give him hope or assuage his guilt.
Jim Carrey: Yes Man
We couldn't summarize Yes Man better than Carrey did on The Tonight Show on Tuesday, when he purported to fall asleep and offered this precis between snores: "Carl Allen is a guy who doesn't engage in life. Then he decides to say yes to everything, no matter how silly or deranged it is. Critics are calling it a panacea for our dark times we're living in." In a little swipe at the competition, Carrey said of Yes Man, "It's the only movie this weekend where nobody dies in the end."
When we meet him, Carl is living by the Alcoholics Anonymous mantra that "no" is a complete sentence. He gamely deflects every dinner invitation by inventing outlandish excuses about how busy he is. At the bank, he automatically rejects every loan application. He can rouse himself to passion only when watching a Saw movie in his cocoon of a home, cheering on the man who has to amputate his foot: "Oh, come on, you're halfway through, Cut it off already."
In other Carrey movies, the star needed magical or divine intervention to change his ways: a boy's wish that his dad will tell the truth for 24 hours in Liar Liar, and, in Bruce Almighty, God's command that he try being omnipotent and learn how tough it is to be in charge of the universe. This time it's just an excitable friend (John Michael Higgins) who drags Carl to one of those personal-help messiahs who pock the California mindscape. The word from this shock-haired swami (Terence Stamp) is "Yes." By saying yes to every chance that comes your way — a homeless man's plea for your money, a street peddler's flier for a band concert, a loan request from any indigent who wanders into the bank — you will open yourself to unexpected possibilities in life and love. You may also end up broke, bereft and unemployed, but that's a different movie. (For one: It's a Wonderful Life, or most of it.)
Director Peyton Reed's early features, Bring It On and Down With Love, were in-your-face comedies with a pop-art design scheme; they aimed to get to endearing by going through aggressive. Reed found a subtler tone in his Vince Vaughn–Jennifer Aniston hit The Break-Up, where both the humor and the despair rose from domestic behavior that, if it was exaggerated for dramatic effect, was still recognizable. Yes Man straddles those two styles. It ambles along, Judd Apatow-style (and includes a fellatio gag that should have earned the movie an R rating) while affording Carrey a few opportunities for his patented rubber-face comedy pyrotechnics. The more impressionable kids will be imitating his "Red Bull" riff throughout the holidays.
Though the movie is no more than agreeable, it does provide a swell showcase for New Zealand wundercomic Rhys Darby (Murray the hapless agent on HBO's Flight of the Conchords) and gives the astrally adorable Zooey Deschanel a rare shot at a lead role in a big Hollywood movie. Casting directors, please take note.
Will Smith: No, Man
Everybody in Yes Man, including Carrey in his depressive phase, is pretty darned perky — a mood that applies to no one in Seven Pounds. And whereas Carl is using his personal epiphany to make himself happy, Ben Thomas does good only for others; he's paying it forward, not inward. A child undergoing cancer treatment, a mother whose boyfriend abuses her, a blind pianist (Woody Harrelson), a young woman (Rosario Dawson) suffering from congenital heart failure — each of these and three others, he showers with rejuvenating gifts. His motive is the movie's secret.
Directed by Gabriele Muccino and written by Grant Nieporte, Seven Pounds continues a string of movies — The Pursuit of Happyness, I Am Legend, Hancock — in which Smith's characters are isolated and superior, estranged from normal life, ultimately trying to make contact with ordinary folks. It's been ages since the star flashed his charismatic smile for a whole movie. Here he speaks to people with a precise courtesy that seems learned rather than felt. Pain pulses just behind his fretted eyebrows; he carries himself like a hero too gentlemanly to show his grief, too weighed down to hide it. Those Ben touches see that he's on a mission beyond making their lives more bearable. The same may be true of Smith: rashly or bravely, he's using his immense celebrity to lure audiences into an alternate movie world where kindness and desperation feed off each other.
In these recent movies, Smith's stature has kept him from connecting with anyone but his own son (in The Pursuit of Happyness, also directed by Muccino) and the mass of moviegoers. Here, though — and this is what lifts Seven Pounds above other Smith dramas — he does tentatively allow another adult onto his solitary planet. Dawson, glammed down in hospital gowns and an invalid's grayish sheen, is knowing, giving and (her word and ours) hot. She's splendid at showing how someone who's tucked herself into the reclusion of her illness wills herself to bloom in the presence of someone with a secret mournfulness greater, and perhaps less curable, than her own. It's a lovely performance, in part because her character throws every charm she's got at the one man who seems doomed to deflect it.
The message of Seven Pounds (other than: Don't text-message while driving) is that even the most depressive person can find a way to make other people happy. If that doesn't sound like a movie to buoy your Christmas spirit, ask yourself this: How often do you sit through a film's closing credits so you have a little private time to wipe away the tears?
Dec 18, 2008
Health - Now drink the world's healthiest wine
MELBOURNE: An Australian doctor claims to have created the world's healthiest wine which cleans blood vessels and reduces the risk of heart attack as one drinks it.
According to Sydney-based doctor and wine historian Dr Philip Norrie, each bottle contains up to 100 times the amount of resveratrol -- a naturally occurring anti-oxidant found in grapes -- than a standard drop.
Resveratrol helped to maintain blood flow by keeping arteries free of fatty deposits called atherosclerotic plaque and a wine infused with high levels of the tasteless anti- oxidant would act as a "vascular pipe-cleaner", Norrie said.
"While the positive effects of moderate wine consumption have long been documented, the inclusion of such large quantities of this beneficial anti-oxidant is very good news for wine drinkers.
"What we've been able to do is boost the amount of resveratrol in wine and you wont even know its there... you're effectively clearing your arteries while you drink.
"Getting people to stop smoking, exercise and lose weight, is a nice idea but in reality it doesn't happen. Drinking two glasses of wine is realistic, enjoyable and also good for you and I've made it even healthier," he told AAP.
Now, Dr Norrie is producing his own range of wine, including a chardonnay and a shiraz, each containing 100mg/L of resveratrol per bottle. He said this was as much as is contained in 70 to 100 bottles of standard white wine or 15 to 20 bottles of standard red.
"I stress that these benefits are best realised with moderate drinking," he said in a warning to any connoisseurs planning a wine-based health kick.
According to Sydney-based doctor and wine historian Dr Philip Norrie, each bottle contains up to 100 times the amount of resveratrol -- a naturally occurring anti-oxidant found in grapes -- than a standard drop.
Resveratrol helped to maintain blood flow by keeping arteries free of fatty deposits called atherosclerotic plaque and a wine infused with high levels of the tasteless anti- oxidant would act as a "vascular pipe-cleaner", Norrie said.
"While the positive effects of moderate wine consumption have long been documented, the inclusion of such large quantities of this beneficial anti-oxidant is very good news for wine drinkers.
"What we've been able to do is boost the amount of resveratrol in wine and you wont even know its there... you're effectively clearing your arteries while you drink.
"Getting people to stop smoking, exercise and lose weight, is a nice idea but in reality it doesn't happen. Drinking two glasses of wine is realistic, enjoyable and also good for you and I've made it even healthier," he told AAP.
Now, Dr Norrie is producing his own range of wine, including a chardonnay and a shiraz, each containing 100mg/L of resveratrol per bottle. He said this was as much as is contained in 70 to 100 bottles of standard white wine or 15 to 20 bottles of standard red.
"I stress that these benefits are best realised with moderate drinking," he said in a warning to any connoisseurs planning a wine-based health kick.
Sport - Cricket;India calls off cricket tour of Pakistan
NEW DELHI: India today called off the cricket team’s tour of Pakistan, which was scheduled to begin next month.
The tour has been called off on account of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) spokesman Rajiv Shukla said. The terrorists are believed to have come from Pakistan by sea to carry out the attacks. The sole terrorist to be captured alive has reportedly disclosed that he was a resident of a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
According to a government source, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and sports and youth affairs minister MS Gill spoke to BCCI president Shashank Manohar to convey their decision not to permit the tour to go ahead.
The Indian team was scheduled to play three Tests, five one-day internationals, and one Twenty20 match in Pakistan
The tour has been called off on account of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) spokesman Rajiv Shukla said. The terrorists are believed to have come from Pakistan by sea to carry out the attacks. The sole terrorist to be captured alive has reportedly disclosed that he was a resident of a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
According to a government source, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and sports and youth affairs minister MS Gill spoke to BCCI president Shashank Manohar to convey their decision not to permit the tour to go ahead.
The Indian team was scheduled to play three Tests, five one-day internationals, and one Twenty20 match in Pakistan
Sport - Cricket;Dhoni in two minds on demoting Dravid in the batting order
MOHALI: India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Thursday revealed the team think-tank was toying with the idea of dropping off-colour Rahul Dravid down the batting order but said it was in two minds fearing the ploy may boomerang in the
second and final Test against England.
Dhoni said promoting VVS Laxman at number three was one of the options before the Indian team in the match starting on Friday but felt it was not a foolproof idea of helping Dravid wriggle out of his bad patch.
"We are thinking about that but as of now, it's not confirmed," Dhoni said.
"Shifting Rahul to number five and asking VVS to bat at number three seems ok at times. VVS has scored runs at number three and it would be easy for Rahul too. But it can also boomerang," he said.
"If VVS gets a good ball and gets out, there is already pressure on Rahul and once you lose three wickets, the pressure is always on the number five batsman. It's really tough to tackle that," Dhoni explained.
"At least batting at number three gives you the freedom to play your natural game," he said.
Since the home series against South African, Dravid has been a pale shadow of his former self and continuous failure has reduced the Mr Dependable to the weakling of the side.
Dhoni, however, once again threw his weight behind the senior batsman and said once he manages to survive the early overs, things would be alright for Dravid.
second and final Test against England.
Dhoni said promoting VVS Laxman at number three was one of the options before the Indian team in the match starting on Friday but felt it was not a foolproof idea of helping Dravid wriggle out of his bad patch.
"We are thinking about that but as of now, it's not confirmed," Dhoni said.
"Shifting Rahul to number five and asking VVS to bat at number three seems ok at times. VVS has scored runs at number three and it would be easy for Rahul too. But it can also boomerang," he said.
"If VVS gets a good ball and gets out, there is already pressure on Rahul and once you lose three wickets, the pressure is always on the number five batsman. It's really tough to tackle that," Dhoni explained.
"At least batting at number three gives you the freedom to play your natural game," he said.
Since the home series against South African, Dravid has been a pale shadow of his former self and continuous failure has reduced the Mr Dependable to the weakling of the side.
Dhoni, however, once again threw his weight behind the senior batsman and said once he manages to survive the early overs, things would be alright for Dravid.
Entertainment - The Hindi movie channels dilemma - rate on repeats
Hindi movie channels in India, largely, cope with the format of airing repeat titles. The premier of the big titles especially is done on the general entertainment channels. The year 2008 has also seen the launch of channels like UTV Movies that operate on a model, where big titles are premiered on the Hindi movie channel itself.
A closer look at the Hindi movie channels’ ratings in 2008 shows that some of the most viewed movies in the year, on the leading movie channels, were as old as Koi Mil Gaya (2003), Vivah (2006), Chandramukhi, Rajnikant (2005) and so on. UTV Movies on the other hand premiered movies like ‘Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal’, ‘Aamir’, ‘Halla Bol’ and ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ – the strategy had allowed the channel to show good numbers but not good enough to get it in the top three channels.
In a conversation with exchange4media, Hindi movie channels’ heads state that the ‘repeat model’ works, and from a network point of view, makes sense.
Mohan Gopinath, Business Head, Zee Cinema admitted that premiering a movie on a general entertainment channel would always be more revenue generating than premiering it on a movie channel. At the same time though, the movie channel attracts a different audience. He said, “We draw a particular kind of audience that is built over a period of time on the basis of our library. We have undertaken initiatives like two-minute promos or two-minute brand films along with special offerings of movies to delight and hence develop our viewers and viewership.”
Sneha Rajani, Business Head and EVP, Max explained that across the world, revenue generation of premiere blockbusters on a general entertainment is higher as compared to a movie channel, and that this is a reason why big titles that are more expensive to acquire, are aired on Hindi GECs. She said, “We follow the same strategy as part of our organisational strategy. The nature of these movies is so compelling that even a repeat telecast pulls more audience than a repeat soap.”
STAR India was perhaps one of the first networks that experimented with airing big titles on the movie channel instead of the general entertainment channel three years back with titles like ‘Swades’. The strategy was immediately changed to a triple premier move, where the title was shown on Star Plus, Star Gold and Star One at the same time. As it stands now, the network takes a call on whether a movie would premier on Star Plus or Star Gold depending on the acquisition rate of the movie, and how big the title is and its rating potential. Sameer Rao, General Manager Star group explained, “Blockbuster titles would air first on Star Plus, whereas mid-tier and smaller titles would air first on Star Gold.”
Rao elaborated further on the factors that the channel counts on in absence of showing new titles to keep the viewership of the channel going. He said, “Concepts like movie festivals such as the recent ‘Tata Indicom Chandni Chowk to Bollywood’ and tent-pole events like ‘Comedy Honors’ and ‘Lux Sabsey Favourite Kaun 2009’, which are long term Star Gold franchise properties are the aspects we bank on when we cannot show new movies.”
(Inputs from Geetanjali Minhas)
A closer look at the Hindi movie channels’ ratings in 2008 shows that some of the most viewed movies in the year, on the leading movie channels, were as old as Koi Mil Gaya (2003), Vivah (2006), Chandramukhi, Rajnikant (2005) and so on. UTV Movies on the other hand premiered movies like ‘Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal’, ‘Aamir’, ‘Halla Bol’ and ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ – the strategy had allowed the channel to show good numbers but not good enough to get it in the top three channels.
In a conversation with exchange4media, Hindi movie channels’ heads state that the ‘repeat model’ works, and from a network point of view, makes sense.
Mohan Gopinath, Business Head, Zee Cinema admitted that premiering a movie on a general entertainment channel would always be more revenue generating than premiering it on a movie channel. At the same time though, the movie channel attracts a different audience. He said, “We draw a particular kind of audience that is built over a period of time on the basis of our library. We have undertaken initiatives like two-minute promos or two-minute brand films along with special offerings of movies to delight and hence develop our viewers and viewership.”
Sneha Rajani, Business Head and EVP, Max explained that across the world, revenue generation of premiere blockbusters on a general entertainment is higher as compared to a movie channel, and that this is a reason why big titles that are more expensive to acquire, are aired on Hindi GECs. She said, “We follow the same strategy as part of our organisational strategy. The nature of these movies is so compelling that even a repeat telecast pulls more audience than a repeat soap.”
STAR India was perhaps one of the first networks that experimented with airing big titles on the movie channel instead of the general entertainment channel three years back with titles like ‘Swades’. The strategy was immediately changed to a triple premier move, where the title was shown on Star Plus, Star Gold and Star One at the same time. As it stands now, the network takes a call on whether a movie would premier on Star Plus or Star Gold depending on the acquisition rate of the movie, and how big the title is and its rating potential. Sameer Rao, General Manager Star group explained, “Blockbuster titles would air first on Star Plus, whereas mid-tier and smaller titles would air first on Star Gold.”
Rao elaborated further on the factors that the channel counts on in absence of showing new titles to keep the viewership of the channel going. He said, “Concepts like movie festivals such as the recent ‘Tata Indicom Chandni Chowk to Bollywood’ and tent-pole events like ‘Comedy Honors’ and ‘Lux Sabsey Favourite Kaun 2009’, which are long term Star Gold franchise properties are the aspects we bank on when we cannot show new movies.”
(Inputs from Geetanjali Minhas)
Tech - Now ads directly on your mobile screens
K Rajani Kanth
Till now, the only way an advertiser could place an advertisement on a mobile phone was through a formal SMS. When you opened an SMS, the advertiser’s message would be found at the bottom or the SMS itself would be an text ad. How about a new advertising platform where the beep sound of an SMS would not disturb the user and in fact the user will not even have to even key into the inbox to read it?
Hyderabad-based technology company, NowPos (short for NowPossible) Online Services Private Limited, has developed a new process — Beep — where one can place brand logos or miniature advertisements on mobile screens.
Ayyappa Nagubandi, chairman and CEO, NowPos, said: “The idea is to create an image-based advertising platform, where a mobile phone user can see the advertisement directly on his screen — as long as the advertiser wants him to — anywhere from one minute to 24 hours.”
Claiming the Beep software to be the world’s first, the company had recently filed a patent application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, he added. The software occupies 112 KB of memory in a mobile device.
NowPos has tied-up with Airtel to run a pilot of its GSM-based Beep software in Andhra Pradesh. The firm is offering Rs 100 free talktime to the latter’s 25,000 subscribers for downloading the software on their mobile phones.
“The Indian mobile industry is possibly among the fastest growing sectors in the country. From 280 million mobile phones in May 2008, the industry is expected to grow up to 737 million mobile phones by 2012, making the mobile screen one of the most visible and sought after media in the world by every advertiser,” Nagubandi said.
The closely-held company is currently in talks with other mobile operators in India including BSNL, Vodafone and Idea, besides initiating talks with telecom companies in West Asia. “We expect these talks to reach fruition by the end of next quarter,” he said, adding the company expected its subscriber-base to touch 100,000 in a month.
Till now, the only way an advertiser could place an advertisement on a mobile phone was through a formal SMS. When you opened an SMS, the advertiser’s message would be found at the bottom or the SMS itself would be an text ad. How about a new advertising platform where the beep sound of an SMS would not disturb the user and in fact the user will not even have to even key into the inbox to read it?
Hyderabad-based technology company, NowPos (short for NowPossible) Online Services Private Limited, has developed a new process — Beep — where one can place brand logos or miniature advertisements on mobile screens.
Ayyappa Nagubandi, chairman and CEO, NowPos, said: “The idea is to create an image-based advertising platform, where a mobile phone user can see the advertisement directly on his screen — as long as the advertiser wants him to — anywhere from one minute to 24 hours.”
Claiming the Beep software to be the world’s first, the company had recently filed a patent application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, he added. The software occupies 112 KB of memory in a mobile device.
NowPos has tied-up with Airtel to run a pilot of its GSM-based Beep software in Andhra Pradesh. The firm is offering Rs 100 free talktime to the latter’s 25,000 subscribers for downloading the software on their mobile phones.
“The Indian mobile industry is possibly among the fastest growing sectors in the country. From 280 million mobile phones in May 2008, the industry is expected to grow up to 737 million mobile phones by 2012, making the mobile screen one of the most visible and sought after media in the world by every advertiser,” Nagubandi said.
The closely-held company is currently in talks with other mobile operators in India including BSNL, Vodafone and Idea, besides initiating talks with telecom companies in West Asia. “We expect these talks to reach fruition by the end of next quarter,” he said, adding the company expected its subscriber-base to touch 100,000 in a month.
Business - India;FMCG firms offer more for less price
Sapna Agarwal
The FMCG industry is responding to low consumer sentiments with new price points across more categories to counter the trend of downtrading (settling for cheaper goods) during an economic slowdown.
Companies are now moving beyond the Re 1 and Rs 2 categories. For instance, in the July-September quarter, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) launched Clinic Plus multi-sachet — a pack of 4 targeted at a family of 4 for Rs 3. HUL also launched a Clinic All Clear triple pack shampoo sachet for Rs 5. Whereas, Marico recently launched the Rs 4 sachet of its Hair & Care product Silk-n-Shine. Marico also offers Parachute Advanced Starz shampoo sachets for kids at Rs 3.
Saugata Gupta, chief executive officer, Marico said: “The Rs 10 and below price point Stock Keep Units (SKUs) are very attractive to the consumers and account for 15 per cent of our overall revenues and we will continue the trend to introduce innovative price points within a product line.”
Even for CavinKare which has the Chik Satin and Fairever brands, “The Rs 10 and below price points account for 60 per cent of our revenues,” said C K Ranganathan, managing director, CavinKare.
Also as most of the fmcg goods like shampoos and soaps have become routine usage, FMCG companies like CavinKare are postponing their investments in research for products that require customers to make a change in their habits.
“We expect downtrading to take place during a slowdown. Hence we will not launch hi-end experimental products and will focus on building our brands at the lower-end of the pyramid,” said Ranganathan.
Sharing the trends that are coming to the fore as the economy enters into a slowdown Adi Godrej, chairman of Godrej Industries said, “I expect consumers will look for more value for money products than in the past.” As such, he continues, “FMCG companies are likely to experiment more with lower unit cost sizes in most categories.” The second trend, he adds, “Will be more emphasis on consumer promotions.”
“The bottom of the pyramid accounts for 60-70 per cent of our overall sales,” said Harsh Mariwala, chairman and managing director, Marico, which has products like Parachute and the anti-lice shampoo Medicare targeted at the mass markets. “The company is planning to focus on more activation and channelising of spends for rural markets as the rural markets show higher growth than the urban markets,” shared Gupta.
On the flip side, the consumers are also uptrading when they see value like in the oral care segment.
“There is a trend where consumers using toothpowder are moving to toothpaste. The sale of tooth powder has dropped by 3 per cent and the sale of toothpaste has increased by 10 per cent. The oral care categories’ volume growth has been 4.4 per cent and value growth 6.5 per cent,” said Abheek Singhi, managing partner, Boston Consulting Company.
The FMCG industry is responding to low consumer sentiments with new price points across more categories to counter the trend of downtrading (settling for cheaper goods) during an economic slowdown.
Companies are now moving beyond the Re 1 and Rs 2 categories. For instance, in the July-September quarter, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) launched Clinic Plus multi-sachet — a pack of 4 targeted at a family of 4 for Rs 3. HUL also launched a Clinic All Clear triple pack shampoo sachet for Rs 5. Whereas, Marico recently launched the Rs 4 sachet of its Hair & Care product Silk-n-Shine. Marico also offers Parachute Advanced Starz shampoo sachets for kids at Rs 3.
Saugata Gupta, chief executive officer, Marico said: “The Rs 10 and below price point Stock Keep Units (SKUs) are very attractive to the consumers and account for 15 per cent of our overall revenues and we will continue the trend to introduce innovative price points within a product line.”
Even for CavinKare which has the Chik Satin and Fairever brands, “The Rs 10 and below price points account for 60 per cent of our revenues,” said C K Ranganathan, managing director, CavinKare.
Also as most of the fmcg goods like shampoos and soaps have become routine usage, FMCG companies like CavinKare are postponing their investments in research for products that require customers to make a change in their habits.
“We expect downtrading to take place during a slowdown. Hence we will not launch hi-end experimental products and will focus on building our brands at the lower-end of the pyramid,” said Ranganathan.
Sharing the trends that are coming to the fore as the economy enters into a slowdown Adi Godrej, chairman of Godrej Industries said, “I expect consumers will look for more value for money products than in the past.” As such, he continues, “FMCG companies are likely to experiment more with lower unit cost sizes in most categories.” The second trend, he adds, “Will be more emphasis on consumer promotions.”
“The bottom of the pyramid accounts for 60-70 per cent of our overall sales,” said Harsh Mariwala, chairman and managing director, Marico, which has products like Parachute and the anti-lice shampoo Medicare targeted at the mass markets. “The company is planning to focus on more activation and channelising of spends for rural markets as the rural markets show higher growth than the urban markets,” shared Gupta.
On the flip side, the consumers are also uptrading when they see value like in the oral care segment.
“There is a trend where consumers using toothpowder are moving to toothpaste. The sale of tooth powder has dropped by 3 per cent and the sale of toothpaste has increased by 10 per cent. The oral care categories’ volume growth has been 4.4 per cent and value growth 6.5 per cent,” said Abheek Singhi, managing partner, Boston Consulting Company.
India - TAM domination threatened as govt eyes aMap tie-up
Ashish Sinha
In a move that will challenge the domination of television viewership rating company TAM (Television Audience Measurement), Prasar Bharati is planning to tie up with rival online rating agency aMap to collect and generate data, which will focus on rural homes across the country.
The move will help the marketers get a detailed insight into the demographic profile of the rural population residing in over 5,000 towns, where Doordarshan is a popular network, as well as a dominant force to reckon with. Out of the total 80 million cable and satellite homes, industry estimates around 20 per cent are in rural India. However, there are over 50 million television homes in rural India which get nothing but Doordarshan.
According to the proposal, this panel will be funded by Prasar Bharati, with some investments from the online television ratings monitoring agency aMap. Initially, the rural panel will have a sample size of 2,000 homes, at a one-time cost of about Rs 10 crore and a recurring cost of Rs 4.65 crore. According to Prasar Bharati, this investment would be recovered within two years of operations from the sale of data to the interested parties.
According to Prasar Bharati, such a move will also end the monopoly of TAM that currently supplies the viewership data, based on sample size of about 10,000 homes in 23 urban-towns that excludes several states like Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar and the seven states in the North-East.
But based on the current TAM's rating data, the course of about Rs 8,000 crore worth of advertising revenue spent by the marketers like FMCG, auto, banking, telecom, education and others is decided.
“The current ratings mechanism based on the data collected from 23 towns is not enough. If somehow the rural market is mapped, it will help the media planners divert their ad-spendings in a much better manner,” said Anita Nayyar, CEO, Havas Media, a Gurgaon-based leading media agency.
Additionally, based on the viewership profile, demographics, spending habits and other relevant parameters, aMap and Prasar Bharati may churn more data on the rural market that will be available on a fees, government sources said.
Prasar Bharati has made these suggestions before the Standing Committee on Information Technology that is looking into the issue of television audience measurement in the country.
“The state will have to fund any such initiative whenever it decides to roll it out. The data captured from the rural homes will be of immense help to the marketers to get a better access to the rural markets and their mindsets,” Amit Varma, CEO, aMap said.
However, according to experts, the sample homes will have to be scaled up to at least 20,000 rural homes and an investment of about Rs 200 crore to Rs 250 crore will be required to get the marketers interested.
Recently, broadcasters received the go ahead to set up their own alternative rating agency. However, work on setting up alternative ratings agencies, controlled by the broadcasters and advertisers together, is still to begin.
In a move that will challenge the domination of television viewership rating company TAM (Television Audience Measurement), Prasar Bharati is planning to tie up with rival online rating agency aMap to collect and generate data, which will focus on rural homes across the country.
The move will help the marketers get a detailed insight into the demographic profile of the rural population residing in over 5,000 towns, where Doordarshan is a popular network, as well as a dominant force to reckon with. Out of the total 80 million cable and satellite homes, industry estimates around 20 per cent are in rural India. However, there are over 50 million television homes in rural India which get nothing but Doordarshan.
According to the proposal, this panel will be funded by Prasar Bharati, with some investments from the online television ratings monitoring agency aMap. Initially, the rural panel will have a sample size of 2,000 homes, at a one-time cost of about Rs 10 crore and a recurring cost of Rs 4.65 crore. According to Prasar Bharati, this investment would be recovered within two years of operations from the sale of data to the interested parties.
According to Prasar Bharati, such a move will also end the monopoly of TAM that currently supplies the viewership data, based on sample size of about 10,000 homes in 23 urban-towns that excludes several states like Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar and the seven states in the North-East.
But based on the current TAM's rating data, the course of about Rs 8,000 crore worth of advertising revenue spent by the marketers like FMCG, auto, banking, telecom, education and others is decided.
“The current ratings mechanism based on the data collected from 23 towns is not enough. If somehow the rural market is mapped, it will help the media planners divert their ad-spendings in a much better manner,” said Anita Nayyar, CEO, Havas Media, a Gurgaon-based leading media agency.
Additionally, based on the viewership profile, demographics, spending habits and other relevant parameters, aMap and Prasar Bharati may churn more data on the rural market that will be available on a fees, government sources said.
Prasar Bharati has made these suggestions before the Standing Committee on Information Technology that is looking into the issue of television audience measurement in the country.
“The state will have to fund any such initiative whenever it decides to roll it out. The data captured from the rural homes will be of immense help to the marketers to get a better access to the rural markets and their mindsets,” Amit Varma, CEO, aMap said.
However, according to experts, the sample homes will have to be scaled up to at least 20,000 rural homes and an investment of about Rs 200 crore to Rs 250 crore will be required to get the marketers interested.
Recently, broadcasters received the go ahead to set up their own alternative rating agency. However, work on setting up alternative ratings agencies, controlled by the broadcasters and advertisers together, is still to begin.
Mktg - India;Dell sets up success story website to motivate entrepreneurs
Kapil Ohri
Dell, a US-based computer company that sells desktop computers and laptops, is running an online banner ad campaign across major portals and search marketing to drive traffic to a microsite called Takeyourownpath.com.
The site is targeted at entrepreneurs and small and medium size businesses (SMBs) and is a part of Dell’s first brand-building campaign in India. The campaign comprises online, print and out-of-home media.
Though Dell has always used the online medium to push its sales or sell its products directly to consumers, this website is not intended for any such purpose. In fact, it does not even display Dell products.
Instead, it carries the real-life success stories of five Dell consumers who have established themselves as entrepreneurs. It shares the challenges they faced and how Dell helped them to evolve and grow in their industry.
The entrepreneurs whose success stories are chronicled on the website are P Rajendran, cofounder and chief operating officer of NIIT; Raman Roy, who founded Spectramind and now runs Quattro, a BPO company; VK Prakash, a filmmaker and the founder of Trends AdFilm Makers; Prasad Bidappa, a fashion consultant; and Sanjan Ratnam, a bridal fashion designer.
The website indicates clearly that there has been a change in Dell’s sales strategy in India. Speaking to afaqs!, Krishna Kumar, director, marketing, Dell India, reveals, “A year ago, Dell changed its sales strategy worldwide. It decided to focus more on emerging countries and to target entrepreneurs and SMBs as its prospective customers, in addition to large business organisations.”
He adds, “There are 7.5 million entrepreneurs and SMBs in India and they form the backbone of the Indian economy. Out of these, 3.9 million entrepreneurs are information technology addressable or our prospective customers. Their planning to purchase cycle is short as compared to that of large business organisations.”
Kumar says, “Our research indicated that every entrepreneur or SMB has great aspirations and they are always thinking of competing and becoming the best in the world. Takeyourownpath.com talks about real-life heroes who started small on their own and grew over a period of time and how Dell, as a technology provider, helped them to scale up their businesses. We want to convey that Dell has products and solutions which can help SMBs to grow.”
He adds, “We opted for real-life heroes, instead of using celebrity endorsements, because we wanted to make our campaign more credible. And we think that the best way of conveying the benefits of using Dell computers or laptops or how Dell technology can help you grow is by narrating real-life success stories.”
The company claims that the entrepreneurs used in the banner ads and website are actual Dell consumers. Kumar says, “We went through our list of customers and shortlisted different people from different segments and approached them for the campaign.”
Apart from the success stories, the website also provides tools that will help entrepreneurs to run or set up their business. Information on ways to write a business plan, calculate return on investment, find customers and motivate employees is also available on the site.
Dell India was not ready to share the traffic and budget details of the campaign, but it indicated that it was spending a large chunk of its advertising budget on online communications.
The online campaign was conceptualised by Dell and Enfatico, a WPP agency created specially for Dell Worldwide. Interactive Avenues helped Dell in the execution of the campaign in India.
Dell, a US-based computer company that sells desktop computers and laptops, is running an online banner ad campaign across major portals and search marketing to drive traffic to a microsite called Takeyourownpath.com.
The site is targeted at entrepreneurs and small and medium size businesses (SMBs) and is a part of Dell’s first brand-building campaign in India. The campaign comprises online, print and out-of-home media.
Though Dell has always used the online medium to push its sales or sell its products directly to consumers, this website is not intended for any such purpose. In fact, it does not even display Dell products.
Instead, it carries the real-life success stories of five Dell consumers who have established themselves as entrepreneurs. It shares the challenges they faced and how Dell helped them to evolve and grow in their industry.
The entrepreneurs whose success stories are chronicled on the website are P Rajendran, cofounder and chief operating officer of NIIT; Raman Roy, who founded Spectramind and now runs Quattro, a BPO company; VK Prakash, a filmmaker and the founder of Trends AdFilm Makers; Prasad Bidappa, a fashion consultant; and Sanjan Ratnam, a bridal fashion designer.
The website indicates clearly that there has been a change in Dell’s sales strategy in India. Speaking to afaqs!, Krishna Kumar, director, marketing, Dell India, reveals, “A year ago, Dell changed its sales strategy worldwide. It decided to focus more on emerging countries and to target entrepreneurs and SMBs as its prospective customers, in addition to large business organisations.”
He adds, “There are 7.5 million entrepreneurs and SMBs in India and they form the backbone of the Indian economy. Out of these, 3.9 million entrepreneurs are information technology addressable or our prospective customers. Their planning to purchase cycle is short as compared to that of large business organisations.”
Kumar says, “Our research indicated that every entrepreneur or SMB has great aspirations and they are always thinking of competing and becoming the best in the world. Takeyourownpath.com talks about real-life heroes who started small on their own and grew over a period of time and how Dell, as a technology provider, helped them to scale up their businesses. We want to convey that Dell has products and solutions which can help SMBs to grow.”
He adds, “We opted for real-life heroes, instead of using celebrity endorsements, because we wanted to make our campaign more credible. And we think that the best way of conveying the benefits of using Dell computers or laptops or how Dell technology can help you grow is by narrating real-life success stories.”
The company claims that the entrepreneurs used in the banner ads and website are actual Dell consumers. Kumar says, “We went through our list of customers and shortlisted different people from different segments and approached them for the campaign.”
Apart from the success stories, the website also provides tools that will help entrepreneurs to run or set up their business. Information on ways to write a business plan, calculate return on investment, find customers and motivate employees is also available on the site.
Dell India was not ready to share the traffic and budget details of the campaign, but it indicated that it was spending a large chunk of its advertising budget on online communications.
The online campaign was conceptualised by Dell and Enfatico, a WPP agency created specially for Dell Worldwide. Interactive Avenues helped Dell in the execution of the campaign in India.
Mktg - Rang Rasiya trying to create buzz through art
Tarana Khan
Bollywood director Ketan Mehta's latest film, Rang Rasiya, is based on the true story of an Indian artist in the 19th century, Raja Ravi Varma, who was taken to court for his controversial paintings. The film is slated to be released on January 23. Since the movie is not run of the mill Bollywood fare, the producers have decided to create a buzz about it through a Freedom of Expression art competition that will span three months.
Starting December 21, artists and people interested in art can register on the website of the movie, www.rangrasiya.com, and upload their entries till January 15. Subsequently, the participants will have to go through four phases of selection. The winner will receive a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh at a gala event to be held in March. The total prize money that will be given out is more than Rs 25 lakh.
The idea was conceptualised by co-producers Aanand Mahendroo and Deepa Sahi. Speaking to afaqs!, Mahendroo says, “Today, every film is promoted widely. People spend crores of rupees in putting up hoardings everywhere, but this project is different. Raja Ravi Varma was a man with a vision. He lived in his own imaginary world, interpreted the gods in his own way and touched the lives of many people. Similarly, we wanted to do something which would touch people and which would not be perceived as a (publicity) stunt.”
Rahul Bhattacharya, historian and artist, has also played a key role in the conceptualisation of the competition.
After the entries are received online, they will be sifted and the genuine entries picked out. After the online registration, the contestants will be asked to send the actual paintings.
In the second phase, 1,000 contestants will be chosen to send in larger paintings based on any of the five given themes. They will have to submit these at any of the five regional centres – Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram and Bhopal. The judges will select four finalists from each region, who will move on to the next phase.
The 20 finalists will be taken to Badami, an archaeological site, where they will be asked to paint the film's lead actress, Nandana Sen, in terms of their own interpretation. There will also be an entertainment event at the location.
In the third phase, the finalists will be taken to a film studio with modular furniture and given the task of designing their living space out of the material provided to them. “The idea of this activity is to see their skills as artists. We are not just looking at ‘paintbrush’ artists,” says Mahendroo.
The fourth and final phase will be about community art: The finalists will be taken to the Marol Village Community in Mumbai and divided into five teams. Their task here will be to create art with the assistance and inputs of the villagers.
The winners will be announced in March at an entertainment event. The 17 judges for the competition include artists, historians, art buyers and designers, including George Martin, Maharaja Ranjit Singh Gaekwad, Pritish Nandy and Sabyasachi Mukerjee.
“We haven't taken just artists (as judges), but also people who stand for values,” explains Mahendroo.
The competition will be promoted through a mass campaign starting December 21, through hoardings, radio, newspapers, TV and the Internet. Mahendroo says that Rs 2.5 crore will be spent on the promotions.
Besides the official website on the Internet, the producers have created a website, www.freedomofexpression.in, where entries are to be submitted, and also a blog, Coloursofpassion.net.
Interestingly, while Rang Rasiya is slated for release on January 23, the competition will continue much beyond that, reiterating Mahendroo's point that this is not just about the promotion of the film.
Rang Rasiya has been released internationally in English as Colours of Passion and has been screened at the 52nd London Film Festival. The lead actors of the film are Randeep Hooda, who plays the artist, and Nandana Sen, his muse. The film, promoted by Infinity Film Entertainment, also stars Jim Boeven, Paresh Rawal, Rajat Kapoor and Tom Alter.
Bollywood director Ketan Mehta's latest film, Rang Rasiya, is based on the true story of an Indian artist in the 19th century, Raja Ravi Varma, who was taken to court for his controversial paintings. The film is slated to be released on January 23. Since the movie is not run of the mill Bollywood fare, the producers have decided to create a buzz about it through a Freedom of Expression art competition that will span three months.
Starting December 21, artists and people interested in art can register on the website of the movie, www.rangrasiya.com, and upload their entries till January 15. Subsequently, the participants will have to go through four phases of selection. The winner will receive a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh at a gala event to be held in March. The total prize money that will be given out is more than Rs 25 lakh.
The idea was conceptualised by co-producers Aanand Mahendroo and Deepa Sahi. Speaking to afaqs!, Mahendroo says, “Today, every film is promoted widely. People spend crores of rupees in putting up hoardings everywhere, but this project is different. Raja Ravi Varma was a man with a vision. He lived in his own imaginary world, interpreted the gods in his own way and touched the lives of many people. Similarly, we wanted to do something which would touch people and which would not be perceived as a (publicity) stunt.”
Rahul Bhattacharya, historian and artist, has also played a key role in the conceptualisation of the competition.
After the entries are received online, they will be sifted and the genuine entries picked out. After the online registration, the contestants will be asked to send the actual paintings.
In the second phase, 1,000 contestants will be chosen to send in larger paintings based on any of the five given themes. They will have to submit these at any of the five regional centres – Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram and Bhopal. The judges will select four finalists from each region, who will move on to the next phase.
The 20 finalists will be taken to Badami, an archaeological site, where they will be asked to paint the film's lead actress, Nandana Sen, in terms of their own interpretation. There will also be an entertainment event at the location.
In the third phase, the finalists will be taken to a film studio with modular furniture and given the task of designing their living space out of the material provided to them. “The idea of this activity is to see their skills as artists. We are not just looking at ‘paintbrush’ artists,” says Mahendroo.
The fourth and final phase will be about community art: The finalists will be taken to the Marol Village Community in Mumbai and divided into five teams. Their task here will be to create art with the assistance and inputs of the villagers.
The winners will be announced in March at an entertainment event. The 17 judges for the competition include artists, historians, art buyers and designers, including George Martin, Maharaja Ranjit Singh Gaekwad, Pritish Nandy and Sabyasachi Mukerjee.
“We haven't taken just artists (as judges), but also people who stand for values,” explains Mahendroo.
The competition will be promoted through a mass campaign starting December 21, through hoardings, radio, newspapers, TV and the Internet. Mahendroo says that Rs 2.5 crore will be spent on the promotions.
Besides the official website on the Internet, the producers have created a website, www.freedomofexpression.in, where entries are to be submitted, and also a blog, Coloursofpassion.net.
Interestingly, while Rang Rasiya is slated for release on January 23, the competition will continue much beyond that, reiterating Mahendroo's point that this is not just about the promotion of the film.
Rang Rasiya has been released internationally in English as Colours of Passion and has been screened at the 52nd London Film Festival. The lead actors of the film are Randeep Hooda, who plays the artist, and Nandana Sen, his muse. The film, promoted by Infinity Film Entertainment, also stars Jim Boeven, Paresh Rawal, Rajat Kapoor and Tom Alter.
Columnists - Sitaram Yechury;We need to plan big,very big
One response to this column, (Box that slide, October 23) suggesting measures we in India need to adopt to tackle the impact of the global capitalist crisis posed an interesting question — why should communists offer solutions to capitalism on how it should tackle its crisis. After all, communists seek to replace capitalism with socialism.
The manner in which the crisis is tackled defines the priorities. Communists seek human liberation and emancipation. Hence, they put people before profits. The current bailout packages announced across the globe, however, do the opposite. Even the New York Times was constrained to point out that the $700 billion bailout package “helped strengthen bank balance sheets” but did not “mandate new lending or support specific investment projects in the United States”. Such bailouts help finance capital which, in the first place, created this crisis and do not prevent a recessionary slide. Around 240,000 jobs were lost in October in the US and the unemployment rate soared to 6.5 per cent.
In sharp contrast, China has announced a two-year $586 billion public investment. This is designed to improve people’s welfare through projects like low-cost housing, strengthen infrastructure and re-build areas devastated by natural disasters like earthquakes. The consequent employment generation would boost aggregate domestic demand, fuelling growth. Consider this example: the planned expansion of 10,000 km of railways, as a part of this package, by the end of 2010 will employ six million people and would require 20 million tonnes of steel and 120 million tonnes of cement. Such public investment, China expects, will offset the negative impact of the sharp fall in exports caused by the global recession.
What is happening in India? Compared to 13.8 per cent growth in the manufacturing sector in October 2007, it is minus 1.2 per cent in October 2008. For the first time in 15 years, India's overall industrial production recorded a negative growth of minus 0.4 per cent. Similarly, exports that contribute around 22 per cent of our GDP fell by 12.1 per cent. India’s much-famed IT sector, with annual revenues of over $50 billion accounting for around 16 per cent of exports, estimates a fall of over 50 per cent of its revenues. The FIIs who put in $17.4 billion last year have virtually vanished, leading to a crash in the stock market. The rupee has weakened by about 20 per cent against the dollar despite the RBI selling up to $2 billion a day.
All this is leading to large-scale closures of export units and layoffs of workers. The consequent decline in purchasing power amongst the people will further depress growth. This may well push India also into a recession. Under these circumstances, however cheap credit may be made with lower interest rates etc, there will be very few takers. What is required is a massive dose of public investment to generate employment and domestic demand, thus stimulating growth. The Prime Minister has announced a Rs 20,000 crore investment programme. This translates into a pitiable $4 billion.
This gross inadequacy must be urgently corrected. A massive public works programme will only help us in improving our woefully inadequate infrastructural facilities. India has the world’s second-biggest road network of 3.3 million km. However, the much tom-tomed national highways are only 2 per cent of the total and only 12 per cent of them (8,000 km) are dual carriage ways. By the end of 2007, China had nearly 54,000 km of four or more lanes roads. Similar inadequacies are there in other crucial sectors. Last year, peak demand for electricity outstripped supply by nearly 15 per cent. According to the World Bank, 9 per cent of India's potential industrial output is lost due to power cuts. Nearly 60 per cent of Indians do not have direct electricity connections. Last year, we added only about 7,000 mw compared to 100,000 mw added by China.
There is so much to be done in the field of social infrastructure. Nearly 1000 children die every day due to preventable illnesses. Only 13 per cent of the sewage is treated; 70 per cent of our people do not have access to a toilet; and, over 50 per cent do not have access to potable water. Half of enrolled children drop out from schools by the age of 14. Enrolment in higher education rose from 7 to 13 per cent only. Yet, this is sufficient to create waves of fear in the Western capitals of an Indian cerebral takeover. Fifty-four per cent of Indians are below the age of 25. If we can give them proper health, education and employment, then they shall build a new, better India.
The current global crisis can well provide an opportunity for India. With the domestic savings rate rising to 35.5 per cent of the GDP, resources must be marshaled to put in place a massive programme of public investment. It is in this process of mobilising popular pressure to force the government to adopt such a course that the communists will strengthen the movement for socialism.
Sitaram Yechury is Rajya Sabha MP and member, CPI(M) Politburo
The manner in which the crisis is tackled defines the priorities. Communists seek human liberation and emancipation. Hence, they put people before profits. The current bailout packages announced across the globe, however, do the opposite. Even the New York Times was constrained to point out that the $700 billion bailout package “helped strengthen bank balance sheets” but did not “mandate new lending or support specific investment projects in the United States”. Such bailouts help finance capital which, in the first place, created this crisis and do not prevent a recessionary slide. Around 240,000 jobs were lost in October in the US and the unemployment rate soared to 6.5 per cent.
In sharp contrast, China has announced a two-year $586 billion public investment. This is designed to improve people’s welfare through projects like low-cost housing, strengthen infrastructure and re-build areas devastated by natural disasters like earthquakes. The consequent employment generation would boost aggregate domestic demand, fuelling growth. Consider this example: the planned expansion of 10,000 km of railways, as a part of this package, by the end of 2010 will employ six million people and would require 20 million tonnes of steel and 120 million tonnes of cement. Such public investment, China expects, will offset the negative impact of the sharp fall in exports caused by the global recession.
What is happening in India? Compared to 13.8 per cent growth in the manufacturing sector in October 2007, it is minus 1.2 per cent in October 2008. For the first time in 15 years, India's overall industrial production recorded a negative growth of minus 0.4 per cent. Similarly, exports that contribute around 22 per cent of our GDP fell by 12.1 per cent. India’s much-famed IT sector, with annual revenues of over $50 billion accounting for around 16 per cent of exports, estimates a fall of over 50 per cent of its revenues. The FIIs who put in $17.4 billion last year have virtually vanished, leading to a crash in the stock market. The rupee has weakened by about 20 per cent against the dollar despite the RBI selling up to $2 billion a day.
All this is leading to large-scale closures of export units and layoffs of workers. The consequent decline in purchasing power amongst the people will further depress growth. This may well push India also into a recession. Under these circumstances, however cheap credit may be made with lower interest rates etc, there will be very few takers. What is required is a massive dose of public investment to generate employment and domestic demand, thus stimulating growth. The Prime Minister has announced a Rs 20,000 crore investment programme. This translates into a pitiable $4 billion.
This gross inadequacy must be urgently corrected. A massive public works programme will only help us in improving our woefully inadequate infrastructural facilities. India has the world’s second-biggest road network of 3.3 million km. However, the much tom-tomed national highways are only 2 per cent of the total and only 12 per cent of them (8,000 km) are dual carriage ways. By the end of 2007, China had nearly 54,000 km of four or more lanes roads. Similar inadequacies are there in other crucial sectors. Last year, peak demand for electricity outstripped supply by nearly 15 per cent. According to the World Bank, 9 per cent of India's potential industrial output is lost due to power cuts. Nearly 60 per cent of Indians do not have direct electricity connections. Last year, we added only about 7,000 mw compared to 100,000 mw added by China.
There is so much to be done in the field of social infrastructure. Nearly 1000 children die every day due to preventable illnesses. Only 13 per cent of the sewage is treated; 70 per cent of our people do not have access to a toilet; and, over 50 per cent do not have access to potable water. Half of enrolled children drop out from schools by the age of 14. Enrolment in higher education rose from 7 to 13 per cent only. Yet, this is sufficient to create waves of fear in the Western capitals of an Indian cerebral takeover. Fifty-four per cent of Indians are below the age of 25. If we can give them proper health, education and employment, then they shall build a new, better India.
The current global crisis can well provide an opportunity for India. With the domestic savings rate rising to 35.5 per cent of the GDP, resources must be marshaled to put in place a massive programme of public investment. It is in this process of mobilising popular pressure to force the government to adopt such a course that the communists will strengthen the movement for socialism.
Sitaram Yechury is Rajya Sabha MP and member, CPI(M) Politburo
World - Protect the diaspora
Dabiru Sridhar Patnaik
In 2000, December 18 was declared International Migrants Day by the United Nations. But eight years on, the UN is still striving to obtain a ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. There are more than 150 million migrants (workers, refugees, asylum-seekers, permanent immigrants and others) and this convention wants to put an end to the abuses they face, though migrants contribute to the social, political and cultural dimensions of the societies they live in.
The efforts for an international agreement started in 1970 when illegal trafficking of labour came to light. The first World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, held in 1978, recommended the elaboration of a convention for protecting the rights of migrant workers. The convention came into force in 2003. But as of October 2008, only 39 nations have ratified it.
The convention outlines the rights of a migrant worker and provides a set of binding international standards to address the treatment, welfare and human rights of both documented and undocumented migrants as well as the obligations and responsibilities on the part of the sending and receiving States. The Convention defines the term ‘migrant worker’ as “a person who is to be engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national”. Some of the rights of migrant workers are: right to life, liberty, protection from collective expulsion and to adequate conditions of work, freedom of movement and residence within the territory of the host county and equal treatment with nationals in respect of protection against dismissal from employment.
Further, the convention imposes a series of obligations on the signatories: promotion of sound, equitable, humane and lawful conditions for the international migration of workers and their family members and establishes rules for migrant workers and for their return to the States of their origin. These requirements include the establishment of policies on migration; the exchange of information with other States parties; the provision of information to employers, workers and their organisations on policies, laws and regulations; and assistance to migrant workers and their families. The convention seeks to put an end to the illegal recruitment and trafficking of migrants and discourages the employment of migrant workers in an irregular or undocumented situation.
However, the convention has failed to gather momentum. Even some of the important migrant-receiving countries in Europe have not signed it. India is also not a party to it though on average 450,000 Indians go abroad annually for employment. It is important to review India’s stand regarding the convention as it can have implications for the security and prosperity of its migrant workers.
The Labour Ministry needs to examine the compatibility of the existing national legislation with the convention to set the stage to becoming a party to the same. But even if there is incompatibility between the national legislation and the convention, it should not stop us from becoming a party. Appropriate national legislation can be drafted upon ratification of the convention. The other reasons for not becoming a party appear to be fear of complications for the State as migration may even create security risks and social friction.
Dabiru Sridhar Patnaik is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Society of International Law, New Delhi
In 2000, December 18 was declared International Migrants Day by the United Nations. But eight years on, the UN is still striving to obtain a ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. There are more than 150 million migrants (workers, refugees, asylum-seekers, permanent immigrants and others) and this convention wants to put an end to the abuses they face, though migrants contribute to the social, political and cultural dimensions of the societies they live in.
The efforts for an international agreement started in 1970 when illegal trafficking of labour came to light. The first World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, held in 1978, recommended the elaboration of a convention for protecting the rights of migrant workers. The convention came into force in 2003. But as of October 2008, only 39 nations have ratified it.
The convention outlines the rights of a migrant worker and provides a set of binding international standards to address the treatment, welfare and human rights of both documented and undocumented migrants as well as the obligations and responsibilities on the part of the sending and receiving States. The Convention defines the term ‘migrant worker’ as “a person who is to be engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national”. Some of the rights of migrant workers are: right to life, liberty, protection from collective expulsion and to adequate conditions of work, freedom of movement and residence within the territory of the host county and equal treatment with nationals in respect of protection against dismissal from employment.
Further, the convention imposes a series of obligations on the signatories: promotion of sound, equitable, humane and lawful conditions for the international migration of workers and their family members and establishes rules for migrant workers and for their return to the States of their origin. These requirements include the establishment of policies on migration; the exchange of information with other States parties; the provision of information to employers, workers and their organisations on policies, laws and regulations; and assistance to migrant workers and their families. The convention seeks to put an end to the illegal recruitment and trafficking of migrants and discourages the employment of migrant workers in an irregular or undocumented situation.
However, the convention has failed to gather momentum. Even some of the important migrant-receiving countries in Europe have not signed it. India is also not a party to it though on average 450,000 Indians go abroad annually for employment. It is important to review India’s stand regarding the convention as it can have implications for the security and prosperity of its migrant workers.
The Labour Ministry needs to examine the compatibility of the existing national legislation with the convention to set the stage to becoming a party to the same. But even if there is incompatibility between the national legislation and the convention, it should not stop us from becoming a party. Appropriate national legislation can be drafted upon ratification of the convention. The other reasons for not becoming a party appear to be fear of complications for the State as migration may even create security risks and social friction.
Dabiru Sridhar Patnaik is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Society of International Law, New Delhi
India - Kozhikode to become 'hunger-free' city
At a time when several states are making efforts to sell rice at Rs two per kg to the poor, the municipal corporation in Kozhikode plans to provide the mid-day meal at the same price to make it a hunger-free city.
"The primary aim is to make Kozhikode a hunger-free city by providing mid-day meals to the needy at Rs two," Corporation Deputy Mayor PT Abdul Latheef said.
The idea to launch the novel scheme was mooted at a recent meeting of government officials of the health and finance department in Kozhikode.
"A project report in this regard has already been submitted to the government and the modalities to implement it will be worked out at a ministerial-level meeting to be held in Kozhikode on December 22," he said, but declined to provide details of cost estimates.
Full details of how the project will be implemented will be revealed after the meeting, he said.
A year after it was declared as 'litter-free' city, the Corporation is now keen on achieving another first by becoming a 'hunger-free' city, Latheef said.
Initially, the Corporation plans to implement the scheme at government hospitals where the visitors would be offered the meal. "Then, it will be extended to all who find it hard to meet both the ends," he said.
Unlike the free noon meal scheme offered in schools in some states, the Rs two mid-day meal will be made available for all. "We will form separate centres for the purpose from where any person can have the meal," Latheef said.
"The primary aim is to make Kozhikode a hunger-free city by providing mid-day meals to the needy at Rs two," Corporation Deputy Mayor PT Abdul Latheef said.
The idea to launch the novel scheme was mooted at a recent meeting of government officials of the health and finance department in Kozhikode.
"A project report in this regard has already been submitted to the government and the modalities to implement it will be worked out at a ministerial-level meeting to be held in Kozhikode on December 22," he said, but declined to provide details of cost estimates.
Full details of how the project will be implemented will be revealed after the meeting, he said.
A year after it was declared as 'litter-free' city, the Corporation is now keen on achieving another first by becoming a 'hunger-free' city, Latheef said.
Initially, the Corporation plans to implement the scheme at government hospitals where the visitors would be offered the meal. "Then, it will be extended to all who find it hard to meet both the ends," he said.
Unlike the free noon meal scheme offered in schools in some states, the Rs two mid-day meal will be made available for all. "We will form separate centres for the purpose from where any person can have the meal," Latheef said.