Booker-prizewinning novelist to write sci-fi drama for television, citing The Wire, The Sopranos and Mad Men as an inspiration Salman Rushdie is to make a sci-fi television series in the belief that quality TV drama has taken over from film and the novel as the best way of widely communicating ideas and stories. “It’s like the best of both worlds,” said the novelist in an interview with the Observer . “You can work in movie style productions, but have proper control.” The new work, to be called The Next People is being made for Showtime, a US cable TV network. The plot will be based in factual science, Rushdie said, but will contain elements of the supernatural or extra-terrestrial. Although filming is yet to begin, a pilot has been commissioned and written. It will have what Rushdie described as “an almost feature-film budget”. Showtime has announced that the hour-long drama will deal with the fast pace of change in modern life, covering the areas of politics, religion, science, technology and sexuality. “It’s a sort of paranoid science-fiction series, people disappearing and being replaced by other people,” said Rushdie, 63, best known for Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses . “It’s not exactly sci-fi, in that there is not an awful lot of science behind it, but there are certainly elements which are not naturalistic,” he said in the interview, which will appear in full in the Observer later this month. The idea that Rushdie might create a television show came from his US agents who suggested that he would have more creative influence than with a feature-film script. “They said to me that what I should really think about is a TV series, because what has happened in America is that the quality – or the writing quality – of movies has gone down the plughole. “If you want to make a $300m special effects movie from a comic book, then fine. But if you want to make a more serious movie… I mean you have no idea how hard it was to raise the money for Midnight’s Children .” Deepa Mehta, an Oscar-nominated director, is currently making a film version of Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize winning novel, under the title Winds of Change , that will be co-scripted by the author. “I’m in this position where, for the first time in my writing life, I don’t have a novel on the go, but I have a movie and a memoir and a TV series,” said Rushdie, who is working on an account of the most famous and troubled era of his life – the period when his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses put him at the centre of a dangerous international controversy. In 1989, Tehran radio broadcast a fatwa, or religious edict, from the Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran, which called the book blasphemous and put a price on the author’s head. Rushdie lived through the next decade in hiding. The former advertising copywriter’s first novel Grimus , was partly science fiction and his novels since have often been described as examples of the vivid literary school of “magical realism”. Rushdie agreed that “my writing has always had elements of the fantastical” but said that he was drawn to television by the comparatively high status of the writer in the process. “In the movies the writer is just the servant, the employee. In television, the 60-minute series, The Wire and Mad Men and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist. “You have control in the way that you never have in the cinema. The Sopranos was David Chase, West Wing was Aaron Sorkin,” he explained. Rushdie said that he is also considering doing much of the writing for an ensuing series alone. “Matthew Wiener on Mad Men writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.” The Next People is being made by Working Title, the film company behind many of the most successful British Films of the last 20 years from Four Weddings and A Funeral to Bean, Shaun of the Dead and the Nanny McPhee films. Rushdie has written the first draft of the script and will executive-produce the show, alongside British producers Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Shelley McCrory, the former NBC executive who runs the company’s TV projects. Salman Rushdie US television Vanessa Thorpe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Explosion in jellyfish numbers may lead to ecological disaster, warn scientists
June 11, 2011 No CommentA dramatic global increase in jellyfish swarms could damage the marine food chain Global warming has long been blamed for the huge rise in the world’s jellyfish population. But new research suggests that they, in turn, may be worsening the problem by producing more carbon than the oceans can cope with. Research led by Rob Condon of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in the US focuses on the effect that the increasing numbers of jellyfish are having on marine bateria, which play an important role by recycling nutrients created by decaying organisms back into the food web. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , finds that while bacteria are capable of absorbing the constituent carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other chemicals given off by most fish when they die, they cannot do the same with jellyfish. The invertebrates, populating the seas in ever-increasing numbers, break down into biomass with especially high levels of carbon, which the bacteria cannot absorb well. Instead of using it to grow, the bacteria breathe it out as carbon dioxide. This means more of the gas is released into the atmosphere. Dr Carol Turley, a scientist at Plymouth University’s Marine Laboratory, said the research highlighted the growing problem of ocean acidification, the so-called “evil twin” of global warming. “Oceans have been taking up 25% of the carbon dioxide that man has produced over the last 200 years, so it’s been acting as a buffer for climate change. When you add more carbon dioxide to sea water it becomes more acidic. And already that is happening at a rate that hasn’t occurred in 600 million years.” The acidification of the oceans is already predicted to have such a corrosive effect that unprotected shellfish will dissolve by the middle of the century.” Condon’s research also found that the spike in jellyfish numbers is also turning the marine food cycle on its head. The creatures devour huge quantities of plankton, thus depriving small fish of the food they need. “This restricts the transfer of energy up the food chain because jellyfish are not readily consumed by other predators,” said Condon. The increase in the jellyfish population has been attributed to factors including climate change, over-fishing and the runoff of agricultural fertilisers. The rise in sea temperature and the elimination of predators such as sharks and tuna has made conditions ideal, and “blooms” – when populations explode in great swarms, sparking regular panics on beaches around the world– are being reported in ever-increasing size and frequency. Last year scientists at the University of British Columbia found that global warming was causing 2,000 different jellyfish species to appear earlier each year and expanding their number. The proliferation of jellyfish has caused problems for seaside power and desalination plants in Japan, the Middle East and Africa . The blooms are also perilous to swimmers; the effects of a jellyfish sting range across the species from painless to tingling to agony and death. Marine life Wildlife Oceans Carbon emissions Climate change Tracy McVeigh guardian.co.uk
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Defence Environment and Safety Board warns that austerity will ‘undoubtedly place a severe strain on systems’ An official Ministry of Defence report has warned that cutbacks threaten to compromise safety at the UK’s leading military sites and on its aircraft, submarines and ships. The Defence Environment and Safety Board is the senior panel that reports to ministers about all aspects of safety across the MoD estate, including nuclear weapons sites. Its 2010 report, just published , concludes that, while the outcome of the government’s ongoing defence reform review is unclear, “the need to reduce costs and the severe reduction in personnel numbers will undoubtedly place a severe strain on safety systems”. It finds there has been “little evidence of improvement” in safety levels since last year and notes the number of safety-related deaths of MoD personnel more than doubled over the year, rising from 7 to 15. In addition, four Crown Improvement Notices, requiring urgent action to tackle safety shortcomings, were issued last year, compared with none in 2009. The report warns: “It will become increasingly difficult to maintain that the defence nuclear programmes are being managed with due regard for the protection of the workforce, the public and the environment”, noting the principal threats to safety in the medium term “are the adequacy of resources… and the maintenance of a sustainable cadre of suitably competent staff”. “A private company would never be able to get away with such a poor safety performance as that shown by the Ministry of Defence,” said Peter Burt, of the Nuclear Information Service, which is opposed to nuclear weapons. The report also says much of the military’s fuels storage infrastructure must be classed as high risk, because it “is beyond its designated life” and “falls below current legislative requirements in key areas”. Defence policy Public sector cuts Nuclear weapons Public services policy Public finance Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Yet another big name in al-Qaeda looks to have gone down: Somalia says security forces shot dead Fazul Adbullah Mohammed, who planned the US embassy truck bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, reports AFP . Mohammed, thought to have been al-Qaeda’s top leader…
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Total spend on the scrapped FireControl call centres scheme will be more than half a billion More than half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money has been committed to providing the fire service with eight empty buildings that will never be used for their intended purpose. FireControl, a private finance initiative to replace England’s 46 emergency call centres with nine regional sites, became mired in technical problems that proved fatal to the scheme. The eight sites outside London have been cancelled, although the London site will go ahead. But, in spite of the scheme’s partial demise last year, the Observer has established that £342m of taxpayers’ money is committed to paying rent on the empty sites that will never be used to house the new system. Because the properties were purpose-built, it is unclear how they could be converted to an alternative use. Several of the empty properties are owned by anonymous trusts and companies, two of which are based in the tax haven of Jersey. The rent commitments mean the taxpayer is now paying £1.4m each month on the empty buildings at a time when the government is implementing swingeing cuts. Coming amid the financial crisis gripping the Southern Cross care homes, the debacle is likely to raise fresh questions about the merits of bringing in the private sector to help run vital services. Sources close to the trusts have confirmed privately that there is nothing the government can do to extricate itself from the deals and that it will be obliged to pay the rents for the entirety of the contracts, which range from 20 to 25 years. The £342m commitment is in addition to the £40m that the government has been forced to write off on the IT systems for FireControl. A further £140m in “project management costs” that went to civil servants and consultants takes the total amount spent on the failed system to £522m. The project was largely scrapped in December, although it will continue to be rolled out across London ahead of the Olympics at an estimated cost of £60m. The Observer has established that five of the empty buildings – in Wolverhampton, Wakefield, Durham, Cambridge and Castle Donington – are controlled by Control Centre General Partner (CGCP), an offshore company based in Jersey and owned by a City investment bank, Evans Randall. CGCP is an investment vehicle established by Evans Randall on behalf of clients seeking a stable return on their investments. The company has raised tens of millions of pounds from wealthy investors in the Middle East in the past, although it declined to say who has invested in CGCP. Another empty building, in Warrington, is owned by AAIM Warrington Unit Trust, also based in Jersey. The pensions firm Canada Life owns another in Kite’s Croft, Hampshire, while a private lettings company, Leafrange, based in Leytonstone, east London, owns one in Taunton. Aviva, the financial services company, owns the remaining building in London, which is still intended for its original use. At a time when trade unions warn that the fire service is facing massive cuts, the wasted money is likely to be a huge concern to ministers. The figures involved dwarf the revelation last month that the NHS is spending £2.8m a year on empty buildings. “This is a public scandal when frontline fire services are being decimated because of budget cuts,” said the Fire Brigades Union’s general secretary, Matt Wrack. “The frontline is being slashed, while offshore property speculators are raking in millions of pounds for empty buildings, which will never be used for the purpose they were built.” The rent commitments massively exceed the costs of constructing the buildings. The empty Durham property cost only £12.4m to build, but will cost the taxpayer £31m over the next 20 years. The cost of equipping the buildings has also raised eyebrows. Brian Coleman, chairman of the London Fire Brigade, told parliament’s local government select committee that a £25,000 coffee machine had been installed in the London centre. The National Audit Office is due to publish a report on FireControl in July that is expected to be strongly critical of the way the deal was structured. A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said it would offer the purpose-built buildings to other tenants if the fire service did not use them. “Our aim is to be fair to fire and rescue services and achieve the best possible value for money for the taxpayer,” he said. Even if this proposal is successful, the income generated is unlikely to match even a fraction of the rent commitments on the properties agreed by the previous Labour government. Firefighters Public sector cuts Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
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Plumber whose wife had a 10-year affair was investigated by an elite serious crime unit and faces charges for pursuing his grievances online A plumber who used the internet to highlight his wife’s affair with a director of one of the world’s largest financial companies will appear in court on harassment charges. Lawyers believe the case could help define the limits of free expression on the internet. Ian Puddick, 41, from east London, was incensed after learning that his wife had conducted a 10-year relationship with her boss, a director of Guy Carpenter, a reinsurance company that advises clients on risk management. Puddick pleaded guilty to harassment charges in an earlier trial after admitting that he telephoned the company’s directors to alert them to the affair and had visited the home of his love rival. However, since the original court case he has set up a series of websites, a Twitter account and a blog to draw further attention to the affair, alleging that the director, who he named, was pursuing an affair with his wife on the company’s time and expenses, a claim rejected by Guy Carpenter. The company maintains that Puddick’s actions forced the director to leave his position due to stress. Puddick’s legal team are expected to use the three-day hearing at Westminster magistrates court to examine the actions of the City of London police, which dispatched its serious crime unit to raid his home and office in search of evidence. Puddick’s legal team is seeking to summon a number of Guy Carpenter’s executives to appear at his trial, a move that promises unwanted publicity for a company that likes to keep a relatively low profile. Internal Guy Carpenter emails obtained by Puddick’s legal team and seen by the Observer show that the firm employed a subsidiary – Kroll, a global private investigation agency used by many blue chip companies – in its quest to establish that Puddick was waging a harassment campaign. Kroll briefed Guy Carpenter executives that the police had “offered significant assistance” in dealing with Puddick, whom it believed might be “dangerously unstable”. One Kroll director emailed several Guy Carpenter executives on 23 July 2009, following a meeting with City police. “They … warn that the penalties for harassment are not very severe, unless you reoffend, and that the prosecution will be out of our control once the police and the Criminal Prosecution Service agree there is a case to answer. We should remember Puddick may relish the prospect of a day in court.” The email continues: “The civil route has the advantage of us being able to cease the prosecution at any stage, and tougher penalties. However, if the police take this on we can avoid being seen to have any role in prosecuting Puddick, which also has advantages. One way to combine the two may be to talk to Puddick post arrest, and warn him of our options in the civil courts to stop him
Continue reading …Jethro Tull’s 1971 album Aqualung may be a certified classic, but the band’s frontman calls it flawed. “It wasn’t a great sounding album,” Ian Anderson tells Bloomberg . The church-turned-studio where it was recorded was “big, echoey, daunting and rather dark,” he notes. “It had all the ghosts of its past,…
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New York Democratic congressman to seek professional help after sending sexually suggestive images to women online Embattled Democrat Anthony Weiner announced he has requested a leave of absence from Congress following growing pressure from senior party members to resign after admitting he sent sexually suggestive images of himself to several women. A spokeswoman for the 46-year-old New York congressman made the disclosure in a statement shortly after Democratic leaders demanded Weiner quit, adding that he would be receiving “professional treatment” at an undisclosed location. The House Democrat leader, Nancy Pelosi, said Weiner had “the love of his family, the confidence of his constituents and the recognition that he needs help”. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, described the incident as a sordid affair that had become “an unacceptable distraction”. Weiner’s spokeswoman, Risa Heller, revealed that the congressman had departed “to seek professional treatment to focus on becoming a better husband and healthier person”. She added: “In light of that, he will request a short leave of absence from the House of Representatives so that he can get evaluated and map out a course of treatment to make himself well.” The development came just 24 hours after Weiner first acknowledged he had exchanged online messages with a 17-year-old girl in the state of Delaware, although he insisted nothing improper had passed between them. He also finally admitted sending a picture of himself in his underpants via Twitter to another woman. Democrats said the concerted call for Weiner’s resignation had been brewing for days, as senior party officials concluded the scandal was interfering with their attempts to gain political momentum in advance of the 2012 elections. Democrats hope to rebound from a devastating election last November in which the Republicans won control of the House. “We had decided we were not going to have one more week of Anthony Weinergate,” said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official added that Pelosi had spoken numerous times with Weiner in an attempt to persuade him to step down for the good of the party, telling him that because of the media focus on his predicament their attacks on a Republican Medicare proposal were going unnoticed. The Republicans have proposed major cuts in the government-run Medicare programme which provides healthcare to the elderly. Pelosi, Wasserman Schultz and others had been notably reticent in public in the days since Weiner held a news conference to announce he had exchanged lewd photos, and more, with a handful of women. On Thursday, an X-rated photo surfaced on a website, and in response, Weiner’s office issued a statement that did not deny it had been taken of him. Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton. She is pregnant with the couple’s first child and is travelling with Clinton in Africa. Anthony Weiner New York United States James Orr guardian.co.uk
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At least 34 people have been killed and another 100 injured after two explosions ripped through a busy market area Two explosions ripped through a busy market in Pakistan’s volatile northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 34 people and injuring nearly
Continue reading …Michele Bachmann gets the “weekend interview” treatment today in the Wall Street Journal , and editorial board member Stephen Moore writes that he has “no doubt” she will be announcing her candidacy soon and that it would be a “mistake to count her out.” Some highlights from the flattering piece: What…
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