Michael Sheen and Rachel McAdams reveal how much they enjoyed working in the romantic French capital with director Woody Allen when they filmed his latest comedy ‘Midnight in Paris.’ (May 27)
Continue reading …By Thursday afternoon, it was hard to recognize the voice of Nino Burjanadze, the Georgian opposition leader, who normally speaks as though she has a bullhorn built into her throat. The night before, she had led a street protest meant to overthrow President Mikheil Saakashvili, her former ally turned political nemesis. But riot police had moved in with tear gas and rubber bullets, beating scores of people and arresting hundreds, and the would-be revolution failed. Holed up in her office the next day, Burjanadze fielded calls and waited for the police to knock on the door. “There’s practically no one here,” she said in an exhausted whisper. “Everyone has already been arrested.” Considering…
Continue reading …With all the hubbub surrounding competing 3DTV technology , it’s easy to forget the all important delivery process : how is your TV getting its content, and what does it mean for the viewer? It may seem trivial, but the answer is all-too important to the folks at NHK, who are hoping to facilitate Full HD delivery for 3D content using a new hybrid broadcast system. Think you already have Full HD 3D? Think again: most broadcast 3D content is delivered via side by side transmission, forcing two images (one for each eye) into a single 1080p frame. This allows 3D content to pipe through existing HD channels, but when the separate images are reconstituted and upscaled, resolution and picture quality suffer. NHK hopes to resolve this by fusing broadcast transmission with broadband streaming, what it calls Hybridcast. In a recent dual-stream demo, NHK sent the image for one eye over standard HD TV broadcast pipes, and the other through those wondrous internet tubes, eventually reassembling the two streams into a single, Full HD image, ready for your hungry eyeballs. This prototype delivery system is little more than a demo right now, but with any luck, it’ll be giving us a whole new reason to freak out about broadband bandwidth caps in the near future. NHK demos Hybridcast streaming, teams up internet and cable TV for superior 3D delivery originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 May 2011 04:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …It took a while , but that O2-exclusive white Xperia Play is finally with us. Earlier this month, the UK carrier had promised to deliver the Play in June, but evidently things have gone better than expected, as we now see in stock signage next to both the black and white models of Sony Ericsson’s gaming phone. Pricing is identical for both color variants, starting at “free” when attached to expensive (
Continue reading …Aid being compiled in Deauville aims to foster democracy and economic growth in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia Arab countries in transition to democracy are to be offered as much as £12bn in aid, loans and debt relief as a result of pledges being compiled at the G8 group of nations summit on Friday. The money will come from international financial institutions and members of the G8. Leaders of both Egypt and Tunisia, the two chief recipients of the aid, will speak to leaders of the G8, currently chaired by the French on the second day of its summit in Deauville, and stress that they need money urgently to ensure their shift to democracy is smooth and not hampered by economic crisis. Both countries have been severely hit by falling economic growth, high inflation, high youth unemployment and loss of tourism, on which both depend. Tunisia has been especially hit by the continuing war in neighbouring Libya. The aid is likely to be conditional on further steps to democracy; both countries are struggling with disputes over the pace of change. In Tunisia, the electoral commission is insisting elections are deferred from the summer to October to allow more time to prepare a workable electoral roll, a move that is disputed by the interim government. In Egypt, some of the groups responsible for the initial protests that led to the overthrow of Mubarak in February are calling for a second day of rage in Cairo on Friday to protest at the way in which the army appears to be dominating the transition process. Many groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, have warned against further demonstrations. The £12bn ($20bn) figure, although impressive-sounding, will have to be examined carefully to see how much represents grants as opposed to loans. The money will predominantly come from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the US and the EU. Both the UK and France have offered bilateral sums: France offered Egypt up to $250m a year in development aid on Thursday and David Cameron set aside £110m over four years for political and economic development. Cameron, who is under pressure from rightwing press over Britain’s aid budget, said: “We’re demonstrating that there is a chance for people in north Africa to choose their own future and their own freedom rather than having to put up with appalling dictators like Gaddafi.” The summit brings together the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with the leaders of the US, Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia, Canada and Italy in a windswept coastal resort. The presence of Russia has ensured there are tensions over the way in which Nato is escalating the bombing campaign in Libya – the Russians have repeatedly warned they regard the attacks on the regime go well beyond the parameters set out in the UN resolution allowing all necessary means to protect Libyan civilians. Britain and France have agreed to send ground attack helicopters to the region in a move that will intensify the attacks on the Libyan regime’s command and control sites. Britain will send as many as eight Apache helicopters. Sarkozy has tried to persuade the US to deploy A-10 attack aircraft and AC-130 gunships in Libya. The draft declaration by the G8 will urge Muammar Gaddafi to declare a ceasefire and agree to a political solution, officials said. The Arab Union meeting this week also called for a ceasefire, but did not call for Gaddafi to stand aside. Russia’s ambassador to France, Alexander Orlov, said the Nato coalition has gone “too far”. G8 Egypt Tunisia Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa Foreign policy David Cameron Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Serbian war crimes suspect having medical tests before resumption of hearing which is expected to send him to The Hague Doctors in Serbia are assessing the health of genocide suspect Ratko Mladic before he can resume his appearance at an extradition hearing which is expected to transfer him to a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Europe’s most wanted war crimes suspect was undergoing medical tests in Belgrade to determine the length of sessions he could face, according to media reports. Mladic was said to be “in poor physical state” after his arrest in a north Serbian village 16 years after commanding the worst atrocity on the continent since the Nazi era. His speech was said to be slurred but coherent. Mladic, reported to have suffered strokes in the past and be paralysed in one arm, is expected to face continuous health checks during the extradition process, which is likely to last at least six days. War crimes prosecutors hoped Mladic would appear before the examining judge again on Friday to complete the first stage of the extradition process. This will be followed by a three-day gap and Mladic will have three days after that to decide whether to appeal. The Serbian ministry of justice will then determine the extradition request. Authorities in The Hague expect Mladic to be there next week and will give him a full medical examination. Mladic is waiting on the approval of the Belgrade judge to let his family visit him. His wife, Bosiljka, was seen entering the court building in Belgrade this morning, media reported. The surprise arrest of Mladic, who is wanted for the mass murder of almost 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica, turned a page in the history of the Balkans, offering Serbia closure on decades as a virtual international pariah and giving the country a chance to take its place as a pivotal regional democracy eventually anchored in the European Union. The 69-year-old retired general, who commanded the Bosnian Serb military during the 1992-95 war and earned a fearsome reputation as the “butcher of Bosnia”, was taken to a special court pending extradition after being arrested at a cousin’s home in Lazarevo, north-east of Belgrade. When Mladic appeared in court he looked frail and walked slowly. He wore a baseball cap and could be heard on state TV saying “good day” to those present. Mladic’s lawyer said the judge cut short the questioning because the suspect’s “poor physical state” left him unable to communicate. “He is aware he is under arrest, he knows where he is, and he said he does not recognise The Hague tribunal,” Milos Saljic said. The deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said Mladic was taking a lot of medicine, but “responds very rationally to everything that is going on”. Announcing the arrest of Mladic, President Boris Tadic said: “We have lifted the stain from Serbia and from Serbs wherever they live. We have ended a difficult period in our history.” More details have emerged of the capture of Mladic, who had been living under the alias Milorad Komadic. According to officials in Belgrade and accounts to the Serbian media, Mladic wore no disguise and put up no resistance when detained by the Serbian security services and Serbian war crimes unit. “I am the person you are looking for,” he reportedly said when arrested in part of a cottage once occupied by the now dead parents of his cousin Branko Mladic. He is said to have been dressed in multiple layers of clothing, including pullovers, although it is summer in Serbia. He had his own identity card, although it formally expired in 1999. There were two guns at the property. Asked why Mladic did not resist arrest, his lawyer is reported to have said the officers were “just children”, in other words very young. Reports about his life there differ. One version holds that he spent a lot of time indoors, while one 20-year-old has claimed to a newpaper that he had worked for a time in the nearby industrial town of Zrenjanin. After his arrest, Mladic indicated that he had been following media reports of the war crimes prosecutors’ long pursuit of him. President Tadic, who has been taking the credit for Mladic’s arrest, insisted to CNN that claims his government knew where Mladic was hiding were “rubbish”. “I will reiterate once again that we have worked very hard in order to arrest him and finally managed to do that.” On Thursday night residents took to the streets to show their support for Mladic, singing Serbian nationalist songs. “To us, Mladic is a hero, a military hero,” said one, who would only give his name as Paul. “He protected us from Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, even Slovenia. He saved our families.” The image of a frail and sickly rural retiree was a far cry from the strutting, imperious commander of the 1990s who was a monstrous figure to the Muslims of Bosnia. His name is synonymous with the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 when Mladic’s forces overran the Bosnian Muslim “safe haven” hill town, then methodically rounded up the males and murdered almost 8,000. The arrest represents a huge boost to Serbia’s attempts to move on from a violent past and to try to catch up with other parts of the Balkans in the race towards integration in the European Union and possibly Nato. • Additional reporting by Kevin Burden in Lazarevo Ratko Mladic Serbia War crimes Bosnia and Herzegovina Europe Peter Beaumont Ian Traynor James Meikle guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Third of Four Parts Books, newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, websites and cutting edge videos. The pieces of the George Soros media empire are as diverse as the nations of the world and just as widespread. From nakedly partisan left-wing media like Think Progress, the blog for the Center for American Progress, and a TV show on MSNBC, to the supposedly impartial National Public Radio, Soros has impact on the flow of information worldwide. It gives him incredible influence. Every month, reporters, writers and bloggers at the many outlets he funds easily reach more than 330 million people around the globe. The U.S. Census estimates the population of the entire United States to be just less than 310 million. That's roughly the entire population of the United States with the population of Australia thrown in for good measure – every single month. This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media. Just counting 13 prominent operations of the 180 media organizations he has funded equals 332 million people each month. Included in that total are big players like NPR, which received $1.8 million from Soros, as well as the little known Project Syndicate and Public News Service, both of which also claim to reach millions of readers. And that's really just the beginning. That tally takes into account only a few of the bigger Soros-funded media operations. Many numbers simply aren't available. 'Democracy Now!' – “a daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez' – is known for its left-wing take on global news. Its vitriol ranges from attacks on Blackwater founder Erik Prince and supporters of Andrew Breitbart (whom it calls 'Electronic Brownshirts' ), to claims the U.S. is opposed to Arab democracy . Just that one Soros-funded operation is heard 'on over 900 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the United States.” But it posts no formal audience numbers. Phone calls to 'Democracy Now!' were not returned. Laughably, Soros denies he has a media empire, despite spending easily mo re than $48 million on that empire and having top journalists from more than 30 major news organizations serving on the boards of groups he funds. “Another trick is to accuse your opponent of the behavior of which you are guilty, like Fox News accusing me of being the puppet master of a media empire,” wrote Soros in the introduction to his new self-promotional book “The Philanthropy of George Soros .” That book, appropriately, was written by former New York Times reporter Chuck Sudetic who now works for Soros' Open Society Foundations. It is the second such Soros promotional book written by a Times staffer. But Soros wildly understates his own impact. On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on “media reform”' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, which has received $1.4 million from Soros. Free Press has two major agenda items – undermining Internet freedom by pushing so-called “net neutrality,” and advocating for government-funded media to the tune of $35 billion a year. Many of those attending or speaking were affiliated with Soros-funded operations. Free Press is just one of the better funded Soros groups. They also include the Center for American Progress ($7.3 million) , which operates the heavily staffed Think Progress blog. That blog “now has 30 writers and researchers,” according to Politico. Other well-funded operations include the investigative reporting operations at the Center for Public Integrity ($3.7 million) and Center for Investigative Reporting ($1.1 million), as well as Media Matters ($1.1 million) and the Sundance Institute ($1 million). That's not all. “Soros' foundations gave 34 grants from 1997 to 2010 to local NPR member stations and specific programs that have totaled nearly $3.4-million,” said the foundations' [spokesperson Maria] Archuleta. Recipients included WNYC and Minnesota Public Radio,' wrote outgoing NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard. In fact, Soros funds nearly every major left-wing media source in the United States. Forty-five of those are financed through his support of the Media Consortium . That organization “is a network of the country's leading, progressive, independent media outlets.” The list is predictable – everything from Alternet to the Young Turks. A report by the Media Consortium detailed how progressives had created an “echo chamber” of outlets “in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times.” According to the report called “The Big Thaw,” “if done well, the message within the echo chamber can become the accepted meme, impact political dynamics, shift public opinion and change public policy.” That mindset plays out in much of what the consortium's members do. Alternet describes itself as an ” award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources.” It hates Tea Parties and complains about “hatemongering” as the “ugly side of Evangelical Christianity.” The site gets 1.5 million unique visitors to its unique view of the world. Brave New Films, also funded by the Media Consortium, is run by the same people who run Brave New Foundation. Robert Greenwald and Jim Miller produce and distribute videos attacking businesses and conservatives. The site brags about a 2008 election video “that exposes John McCain's double talk , for instance, and receive 9 million views around the world.” Their latest effort is yet another attack on Koch Industries, attempting to halt a much-needed pipeline from the Canada to the U.S. Then there's the Young Turks and MSNBC host Cenk Uygur. In 2010, he was welcomed to the network with a press release detailing his web impact. “One of YouTube's Top 100 Partners, the irreverent talk show averages over 18 million views per month and has over 320 million views overall on its YouTube Channel .” The list goes on and on. Project Syndicate calls itself “the world's pre-eminent source of original op-ed commentaries.'”It has wide reach. “As of May 2011, Project Syndicate membership included 462 leading newspapers in 150 countries.” Its monthly circulation is 72,815,528. Naturally, “support comes from the Open Society Institute,” the primary Soros foundation. Project Syndicate's columnist line-up, spread to 462 newspapers, is impressively left-leaning or globalist: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as lefty economists Jeffrey Sachs and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. Those two are on the board of the Soros-funded Institute for New Economic Thinking, which was founded with $50 million from Soros. Public News Service describes itself as “a member-supported news service that advocates journalism in the public interest.” It is a 'network of state-based news services' in 33 states. It claims it reaches “a combined national weekly audience of 24 million.” PNS is proud of its 2010 success . “Last year the Public News Service produced over 4,000 stories featuring public interest content that were redistributed several hundred thousand times on 6,114 radio stations, 928 print outlets, 133 TV stations and 100s of websites. Nationally, an average of 60 outlets used each story.” The Soros “echo chamber” is even larger. Many of his organizations have a media component – from New Orleans, where he funds The Lens, to nations that were once part of the former Soviet Union. But he doesn't have a media empire. Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center's Vice President for Business and Culture . His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.
Continue reading …This week brought news that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 would be released into the wild in just a few days . Today, a WiFi tablet from the Korean company made its way through the FCC bearing model number GT-P7310. Which, you see, is slightly different from the GT-P7510 moniker we saw in another FCC filing earlier this month, and this ended up being the limited edition 10.1 passed out at Google I/O. While some may think that this could well be the 8.9-inch version of Sammy’s Android tablet, the above drawing is actually identical to the previous one bar the extra text at the bottom, so our money’s on 10.1 again — maybe this variant is destined for other countries? We shall see. Update : A big more digging found a pair of 10.1-inchers demonstrated in Monaco with models listed as the GT-P7300 (a WiFi plus 3G Galaxy Tab 10.1) and GT-P7310, which, you guessed it, is a WiFi-only version. Another Samsung WiFi Galaxy Tab 10.1 hits the FCC, this time dubbed GT-P7310 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 May 2011 05:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Hollystories says: Olivia Wilde, Bradley Cooper : Hollywood's New Romance – LimeLife (blog) http://goo.gl/fb/rE4sm
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