Mark Kermode's DVD round-up

MyAnna Buring in the 'dizzying' Kill List.

There's an old adage, beloved of Stephen King, which says that scary fiction variously aims to horrify, terrify or (if all else fails) revolt. In the case of Kill List (2011, Studio Canal, 18), we should add to that list "oppress", so powerfully stifling is the atmosphere in director Ben Wheatley's urban gothic gem. Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley star as the workaday monsters with a disorientatingly down-to-earth approach to their (initially unspecified) dirty trade, trudging their way through an underworld in which cosy domesticity and ugly death sit side by side. MyAnna Buring is the tough-as-nails spouse who won't let her traumatised ex-soldier husband's lethal skills go to waste. Together they find themselves sucked into an unravelling nightmare in which paranoia becomes awful reality as dark comedy gives way to jet-black horror.

Building on the cross-generic promise of Down Terrace (a crime thriller which owed more to Mike Leigh than Guy Ritchie), Wheatley once again wrongfoots his audience, allowing familiar scenes of inter-family squabbling to bleed into outbursts of overpowering unpleasantness with dizzying results. Yet despite the BBFC's (entirely correct) description of the film as containing "very strong bloody violence", it is not the eruption of explicit dismemberment that packs the meanest punch. Instead, it is left to co-writer Amy Jump's Wicker Man-influenced script to catch the viewer within the suffocating coils of a spiralling narrative which inexorably wrestles all and sundry to the ground. The end result is one of the most genuinely disturbing films of the year, a ruthless exercise in audience manipulation that will put even the most hardened genre fans through the emotional mangler.

Ironically, while the devastating Kill List was passed uncut by the censors, the entirely silly 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011, Metrodome, 18) was cut by nearly three minutes after falling foul of the BBFC's laudable guidelines on material that demonstrates "a tendency to eroticise and endorse sexual violence". Depicting a typically outlandish "journey of sexual discovery" replete with Star Trek-like sets and gigantic CGI snake penises, this adaptation of The Carnal Prayer Mat dishes up a familiar mix of absurdist smut and Ming dynasty mumbo jumbo that has long proved a saleable staple of the Category III market. There are a couple of daft laughs along the way, and one or two foolishly memorable set pieces notable for the extravagance of their madness, but for the most part this is a handsomely mounted turd, often distractingly dull (in spite of the OTT insanity) and at least half an hour too long.

The cover artwork proudly proclaims it to be "the world's first 3D erotic film", which is also patently untrue; as far back as 1969 the stereoscopic T&A romp The Stewardesses ("These leggy lovelies leap off the screen and into your lap!") was doing beezer business at the box office, and indeed remains the most successful 3D movie ever made in terms of money spent and made. As for Sex and Zen, it may have been a smash hit in Hong Kong but it remains a damp squib in the UK.

Those in search of fantasy with a little more substance may be better advised to check out The Tempest (2010, Disney, PG), although even this stalwart Shakespeare text brings its fair share of disappointments. Flatly directed by Julie Taymor, who won accolades for The Lion King on Broadway before coming a cropper with the accident-prone Spider-Man, this rests largely on its central conceit of recasting Prospero as a woman (Prospera), a role magnificently relished by the magisterial Helen Mirren. Russell Brand (with whom Mirren co-starred in the dismal Arthur remake) goes full pantomime as Trinculo, while Djimon Hounsou is an arresting presence as the monstrous Caliban to Ben Whishaw's flibbertigibbet Ariel. It's an odd piece, scenically shot in Hawaii yet somehow lacking in visual scope. Remember, this is the same tale that has inspired such diverse gems as Fred M Wilcox's 50s sci-fi film Forbidden Planet and Derek Jarman's post-punk The Tempest, both of which have more than stood the test of time as cinematic milestones.

"We make a lot of shitty movies," declared Universal big cheese Ronald Meyer in a breathtaking fit of honesty while addressing the Savannah film festival last month, adding that "every one of them breaks my heart". Meyer went on to declare that "Land of the Lost was just crap… I mean, there was no excuse for it", and "The Wolfman stunk… the script never got it right, [the cast] was awful, the director was wrong". As for the festive DVD release Cowboys & Aliens (2011, Universal, 12), what need is there of critics when the studio head himself tells you to "forget all the smart people involved, it wasn't good enough".

Clarifying exactly what was wrong with actor-turned-director Jon Favreau's $160m tale of spacemen landing in Arizona in 1873, Meyer explained that "all those little creatures bouncing around were crappy" and concluded that "it was a mediocre movie and we all did a mediocre job with it". To which it remains only to add that the film's primary flaws lie in the multiple-attributed screenplay, which bears all the hallmarks of having been rewritten by committee and never comes close to making good on Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's promise to write "Unforgiven with aliens". Like the equally disappointing Snakes on a Plane, this is all title and no movie.

View the original article here

Angelina Jolie's harrowing war film startles the critics

Angelina Jolie on the set of her first film as a director, In the Land of Blood and Honey. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

Angelina Jolie's name has remained a byword for sex appeal for longer than most film stars could hope, but the 36-year-old Oscar-winner's status as one of the most compelling women in Hollywood is about to change. Her harrowing directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, has been met with such unexpected critical acclaim that a future for the actress behind the camera, as well as on screen, now looks certain.

The film, which premiered in New York this month, has already been recognised with a Stanley Kramer award for work in the cinema that draws attention to injustice and social issues. Last week it also received a Golden Globe nomination. And, in stark contrast to the recent directorial foray by fellow millionaire performer Madonna, Jolie's film has been judged by critics as an authentic attempt to inform and entertain.

"It's clear within the first few minutes of In the Land of Blood and Honey, a blunt and brutal look at genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s, that this is a serious piece of work and not simply a vanity project for its debuting writer-director," wrote the Hollywood Reporter.

Although Jolie's film is unlikely to become a mainstream hit, due to its uncompromising focus on the brutal war years in the former Yugoslavia, the scope of the director's ambition and her commitment to the difficult project are already making producers wonder what she might make next.

Speaking after the premiere, Jolie told reporters that, while she loved acting, she was happy to move on: "It is a very fun job and I have had great experiences, but my heart has been on these foreign policy issues, and my interests are there. So to be able to combine them and be part of international affairs that way, working toward solutions and being part of a good dialogue with good people, felt like a nice evolution to me."

The success of her story, filmed in two different versions – one in Bosnian, one in English – and shot in Hungary and Bosnia in only 42 days, seems to have taken the star by surprise. She wrote the screenplay in a month "as an excuse to get out some of my frustrations [with] the international community and justice issues", she has told Marie Claire magazine. "I just assumed nobody would ever see or read it."

Jolie has decided to release her film in Bosnian first, with English subtitles, and it will be screened in selected American cinemas from Friday, coming to Britain in the new year.

The project has been far from an easy ride for Jolie, however. Along the way she has been accused of misusing her role as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, of plagiarising her story, and of exploiting the misfortunes of thousands of rape victims in the war that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

And, despite the fact that some survivors of the atrocities committed around the city of Sarajevo during the conflict have spoken out in support of the film after seeing preview screenings, there are calls for it to be banned.

Branislav Dukic, president of the Republika Srpska [Bosnia's predominantly Serbian administrative territory] Association of Detainees, told reporters that he is "exasperated by the fact that the Serbs are once again assigned the role of main villain", and pledged that he and other members of his organisation would lobby the RS government to ban the film.

Dukic has not seen the film, but said "the response from Bosnian associations and their enthusiasm testify that the main message of this film is to re-charge the Serbs as the sole culprits for the war".

The film's plot controversially revolves around the love of a Bosnian Muslim rape camp prisoner, Ajla (played by Zana Marjanovic), and a Serbian soldier, Danijel (played by Goran Kostic). In July 2010, when press and survivors were gathering to mark the 15th anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica, news that Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt, were in eastern Bosnia researching a film about the "rape camps" went down badly. Inaccurate reports that Jolie's script was about a woman who falls in love with her rapist fuelled the row.

In fact the $13m film, which cast a mix of Serbs, Bosnian Muslims and Croats, has a subtler story to tell. One of the long-term supporters of the project, Enisa Salcinovic, president of the women's division of Sarajevo's association of concentration camp survivors, was pleased by what she saw on screen.

Stories of violent conflict have always interested Jolie, who has just returned from Libya and who played Mariane Pearl, wife of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, in the 2007 film A Mighty Heart. "I've always been drawn to war films," the actress recently told USA Today. Her father, the actor Jon Voight, won his Oscar for playing a paraplegic Vietnam veteran in the 1978 anti-war film Coming Home, one of the first to tackle the conflict.

She also told USA Today that she would direct again, offered the chance. "If I'm allowed, if I'm accepted, I will do it again. I am still very shy about it," she said. Her late mother Marcheline Bertrand, who died in 2007, was both an actor and a producer.

The accusation of plagiarisim levelled at the film has recently been batted away by Jolie as something that happens "on almost every film". The dispute centred on the 2007 book The Soul Shattering by James Braddock, an author also known as Josip Knezevic. He sued Jolie and the producers of her film, claiming they had infringed the copyright.

Dino Mustafic, a Bosnian movie and theatre director, told the Observer he realised from conversations with colleagues who contributed to the film that the movie was prepared very meticulously and carefully with serious responsibility from the author.

He claims that "artistic truth" doesn't have to be literal truth: "Art is not life, but the emotional shape and thought about a particular topic. War movies do not have to necessarily involve the author's personal experience, but it needs serious research, interviews, an analytical approach and full ethical responsibility in order to avoid manipulation of the victims of war."

Clint Eastwood Following an acting career that defined Hollywood's idea of the modern gunslinger, Eastwood has become one of the academy's most feted current directors thanks to Oscar-winning favourites including Unforgiven, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.

George Clooney Breaking free from the heart-throb image born on hit TV show ER, Clooney is now a respected filmmaker with politically-charged credits including Good Night and Good Luck and the recent The Ides of March.

Barbra Streisand The academy-award winning actress and singer/songwriter showed the range of her talents by moving into directing in the 1980s, winning praise for 1983's Yentl and The Prince of Tides in 1991.

View the original article here

Presidential candidates from the fringes of US politics – in pictures

Vern Wuensche, 66
Party: Republican
Website: http://www.voteforvern.com/
Hometown: Houston, Texas
Occupation: Owner of a kitchen and bath remodeling company.

Political Experience: Ran for President in 2008. Received 44 votes in the NH Primary.
Pet Domestic Issue: 'Improving the integrity and strength of America’s culture by using personal example and the bully pulpit.'

Richard Adams’s view: Presidential credentials from Wuensche’s time in business as a builder and designer: 'An unsuccessful competitor … later built the home of President George Bush.' Photograph: PR

View the original article here

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol engages Cruise control

Cruising for the top ... Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Photograph: AP/Paramount Pictures

The last couple of months have produced feeble results at the North American box office so it's pleasant to report that as 2011 winds down, this weekend produced some thrills and spills – even if several titles trailed in the wake of their franchise predecessors. The exception to this and the big story of the weekend was Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which enjoyed a thunderous limited launch through Paramount and can mean only one thing: Tom Cruise is back.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost ProtocolProduction year: 2011Country: USACert (UK): 12ARuntime: 133 minsDirectors: Brad BirdCast: Anil Kapoor, Darren Shahlavi, Jeremy Renner, Josh Holloway, Lea Seydoux, Michael Nyqvist, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Tom Cruise, Tom Wilkinson, Ving RhamesMore on this film

Cruise works a publicity campaign like nobody on Earth. Will Smith – who is preparing a comeback of his own with Men in Black III (out summer 2012) – is pretty incredible in this department too, but Cruise is the master. A Hollywood agent told me last week how he has been pressing the flesh in the Middle East and India (home to one of his Ghost Protocol co-stars Anil Kapoor) and on one occasion spent three hours shaking hands with fans before a premiere. The cynics will say he does it because ultimately it lines his pockets, and they'd be right in part; but the widely held view is that he loves what he does and genuinely gets a kick out of meeting fans.

The result was $13.6m from 425 screens – most of them Imax. A six-minute clip from The Dark Knight Rises (which is being shown as a trailer at MI:GP screenings) was a big draw too, but looking at critical opinion and the opening weekend figures, Ghost Protocol could become a smash. It's already dominating the marketplace outside North America and debuted in 36 markets on around $68m.

The record will show that Warner Bros' Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows opened at number one on an estimated $40m. While that may seem like a hefty number it was disappointing compared to Guy Ritchie's first Holmes movie, which arrived in second place behind Avatar on $62m on 25 December 2009. Ditto Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Fox's family release which arrived in second place on $23.5m but did better last time around – the second episode in the franchise also opened over the 25 December weekend (in 2009) and scored $49m.

Paramount's Young Adult, featuring an on-form Charlize Theron as a monstrously self-absorbed writer, shot up 11 places to number seven and has taken just over $4m after two weekends in limited release. It's sad to see that The Muppets and Arthur Christmas haven't done as well as they deserve. The former has grossed $70.9m after four weekends of release and represents a decent financial investment if the oft-quoted $45m price tag is accurate (don't forget Disney will have spent loads to market it). Aardman Animation's Arthur Christmas has taken $39m over the same period and will have cost a lot more than $45m. The arrival next weekend of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn brings another excellent animation and a question – it's already an international smash on $240m but will US audiences care? Let's hope so because it's one of the most exuberant pieces of film-making I've seen all year.

1 Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, $40m

2 Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, $23.5m

3 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, $13m. Total: $13.6m

4 New Year's Eve, $7.4m. Total: $24.8m

5 The Sitter, $4.4m. Total: $17.7m

6 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, $4.3m. Total: $266.4m

7 Young Adult, $3.7m. Total: $4.1m

8 Hugo, $3.6m. Total: $39.1m

9 Arthur Christmas, $3.6m. Total: $38.5m

10 The Muppets, $3.5m. Total: $70.9m

View the original article here

Nigeria praised by IMF's Lagarde

19 December 2011 Last updated at 12:35 GMT Ms Lagarde praised Mr Jonathan's efforts to create jobs IMF head Christine Lagarde, who is visiting Africa, has praised Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's efforts to transform his country's economy.

Ms Largarde held talks with the president after meeting the country's finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, earlier on Monday.

She is expected to focus on the fallout from the eurozone debt crisis and youth unemployment during her visit.

Ms Largarde is visiting Africa for the first time as head of the IMF.

On Tuesday, she is expected to attend a forum in Lagos on Africa's economic future before travelling to neighbouring Niger.

Corruption

"My mission is to come and listen and appreciate and understand exactly what economy programme will be implemented in Nigeria, and the initiative and leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan," Ms Lagarde said.

"I was extremely impressed with... the energy and pace at which he wants to transform the economy, create jobs and focus on agriculture."

Last month, Mr Jonathan sacked the head of the country's anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

Farida Waziri's removal was to "revitalise the fight against corruption", his spokesman said.

Nigeria has been plagued by allegations that its wealth has been used for corrupt purposes since the oil boom of the 1970s.

View the original article here

Boys charged over vehicle attacks

19 December 2011 Last updated at 10:50 GMT A moving train was hit with a stone at Brunstane Railway Station Two teenage boys have been charged with reckless conduct after a bottle was thrown at a bus, and a train was hit by a stone in Edinburgh.

The bus was targeted in Milton Road East on 25 August, and later a moving train was hit at Brunstane Railway Station.

Lothian and Borders Police and British Transport Police carried out a joint investigation.

A 13 and 14-year-old will now be reported to the Children's Reporter.

View the original article here

In pictures: Republic of the Moon

19 December 2011 Last updated at 12:41 GMT

N Korea's leader Kim Jong-il has died

The search for survivors in the Philippines

A Rwandan prison where inmates cook on biogas

Photos from around the world this week

24 hours of news images: 16 December

Readers' pictures on the theme chilly

Contemporary Nigerian photography

A hospital in West Bengal treats hundreds

24 hours of news photos: 15 December 2011

Grenade and gun attack in Liege

View the original article here

AUDIO: Woman ran 54 marathons in 57 days

19 December 2011 Last updated at 12:34 GMT Help

View the original article here

Missing party goer's photo issued

19 December 2011 Last updated at 12:30 GMT Haydn Evans did not have a coat or jacket with him, police say Police have released a photo of a teenager who has been missing since a works Christmas party three days ago.

A search is continuing for Haydn Evans, 18, from Mold, Flintshire, who attended an event at the Carden Park Hotel in Cheshire on Friday.

He was last seen by the hotel front door at about 01:00 GMT on Saturday.

Cheshire Police are asking anyone with outbuildings in the area to check them in case Mr Evans sought shelter. Anyone with information should call 101.

Mr Evans is described as about 5ft 9in (1.76m) and slim. He has short brown hair and blue eyes.

He was last seen wearing a dark long-sleeved shirt and trousers.

Police said he did not have a jacket or coat and are concerned he may have become disorientated with the extreme cold and unfamiliar surroundings.

Anyone who travelled on the A41 Whitchurch road or A534 Wrexham road and may have seen the teenager is asked to contact Cheshire Police on 101.

The hotel is east of Wrexham and south of Chester off the A534 near Clutton.

View the original article here

Angelina Jolie goes to war

Angelina Jolie: 'It was a time of great pain, and I wanted to depict how courageous people were.' Photograph: Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/ContourPhotos.com

When we meet in a cafe in Budapest, Angelina Jolie has just returned from the Libyan city of Misrata, which sustained one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war. But despite the journey, and what she has seen in the devastated city, she is not rattled. "When I go somewhere, I am always willing to learn about it. I get briefings, I read books, I talk to people," she says. "But mainly I try to go somewhere to bring awareness, to come home and pick up the phone and call someone and try to get something done."

She took this focus and directness, this earnest approach, to her directorial debut, In The Land Of Blood And Honey, which opens in the US this month. She told me that when it came to the technicalities of making a film, "I wasn't afraid to ask the DP [director of photography]. And I listened to my cast, most of whom lived through the war. I listened to their stories and tried to incorporate it into the work." Against the backdrop of the fighting, she has created a love story about Danijel, a Serbian soldier, and Ajila, the Bosnian woman he re-encounters during the war.

At 3am, after we have talked mainly about the horrors of the Bosnian war – which erupted in the wake of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1991, pitted the nascent countries of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia against each other along complicated ethnic and religious lines, and left an estimated 100,000 people dead – her bodyguard pops his head in to gently remind us it is late. We've been talking and drinking for eight hours; still, she insists on walking me back to my hotel, so I arrive safely. "I want to make sure you're all right," she says.

As a journalist who lived through the siege of Sarajevo, I witnessed the ethnic cleansing, the burning of houses, the columns of refugees pouring from the country and, once, a dog running down the street with a human hand in its mouth. I went to see Blood And Honey with an especially critical eye. I was on the lookout for inauthentic details, since other films I've seen about Bosnia left me irritated and annoyed: why hadn't the director done more research? Why couldn't someone tell the true story of the brutal war in the heart of Europe at the end of the 20th century?

I emerged from Jolie's screening impressed. How could a woman who was only 17 when the conflict erupted in April 1992 have so captured the horror of a war that focused largely on indiscriminate and brutal attacks on civilians?

"At the time, I had no idea of the extent of the agony," she admits, describing how it was her later role as an ambassador to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that exposed her to the plight of the Bosnian civilians and made her want to learn more about the war.

Jolie replicates the city of Sarajevo – which endured the longest-running siege in modern history – exactly as I remember it. The humanitarian trucks being rocketed by Serb gunmen; the young rape victim slowly losing her mind after being held in captivity and repeatedly violated; the drunken snipers targeting a father and son running across a bridge.

Her film depicts the isolation of war. Early on in the fighting, I remember going for a walk, avoiding the Serb snipers near the Jewish cemetery on the hill, to a neighbourhood on the opposite side of the river where I lived. It was a time of intense bombing, sniping, starving and freezing. I had witnessed old people who had been abandoned in their frontline nursing home and died in their beds. I saw kids who got rocketed for building snowmen. At the beginning of the war, America did not want to get involved; it saw the conflict as a European problem. As the fighting spread between Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, the UN got involved, but it was not until Nato air strikes in 1994-95 that the opposing parties were forced to the negotiating table, where the US played a role in bringing about peace.

And yet early on, people hung American flags out of their windows. "Are they coming to save us?" they asked me, tugging at my sleeves. "When are the Americans coming?" Jolie's film shows what it is like to be one of those people – a poet, a bank clerk, a teacher, a mother – and to be transformed by the cruelty and betrayal of war.

"The people felt as though the world had forgotten them," Jolie says. "It was a time of great pain, and I wanted to depict how courageous people were – without offending anyone. It was made to remind everybody of the war – but only a small group of people will really understand," she says. Which is perhaps why she decided to release the film first in the Bosnian language, with English subtitles.

Goran Kostic as Danijel, a Serb officer forced to commit atrocities against his will. Photograph: Film District/Landmark Media

The authenticity of Blood And Honey comes from a team of talented actors from the former Yugoslavia – a mix of Serbs, Muslims and Croats. Some saw the war up close. The leading man, Goran Kostic, comes from a distinguished military family. His depiction of an officer who is forced to commit savage acts against his will is honest and painful. Vanesa Glodjo recalls how she was "shot at many times. But they didn't get me on my way to school. They wounded me in my own house with the granate [mortar]."

And then there is Ermin Bravo, a young actor who was a child during the siege. During filming he wore the patched, frayed combat trousers that his older brother had actually worn as a Sarajevo defender. Bravo recalled during his audition that he "forgot what a banana tasted like" (people lived on humanitarian aid packages, which largely consisted of rice, pasta, powdered milk and a kind of liquid cheese).

Yet conjuring up memories of a war that everyone wants to forget was not easy for any of them. "The [film shoot] was especially hard for me, as my father fought during the war while I was living with my mum and sister," Alma Terzic says. Terzic lost 28 members of her family in the fighting. "It was a huge responsibility," she says. "It was my duty to play it truthfully as much as possible."

The nuances Jolie brings to the film are equally important. "It was half script, half improvisation," she says, and she relied heavily on local staff. She understands that many of the Serb gunners were drinking a potent fruit brandy known as slivovitz throughout the war (she shows the commander with a bottle on his desk), and that the safest time to drive down Sniper Alley was in the morning when they were sleeping off their hangovers. She also portrays the inability of the UN peacekeepers to protect the civilian population because of their limited, and ineffective, mandate – they could fire only when they were fired upon, and technically protect only the humanitarian aid workers, not the civilians themselves (though there were some heroic souls who broke that mandate because they were so disgusted by their powerlessness).

There are minor details that are hugely important – street scenes, furniture, the way Bosnian women dress and talk. "The white shirt that the leading character wears throughout," she notes at one point, "it stayed white through the rape-camp scenes – and it bothered me. We kept talking about that white shirt."

In another poignant scene, the young Bosnian soldiers eat together in a bunker while the mortars fall around them, joking about what they will eat when the war ends. Only someone who was in Sarajevo at that time would understand their macabre banter (Sarajevans were famous in the former Yugoslavia for their clownlike humour).

The film was not made without controversy. I was in Sarajevo in July 2010, for the 15th anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica, when the news broke that Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt, were in Foca in eastern Bosnia. That was the scene of the "rape camps" in which Bosnian Muslim women were rounded up, then bused to halls and schools and repeatedly violated by Serb soldiers. Some of the victims told me they had been raped up to 10 times a day; one young woman was 12 when she was sent to Foca and raped alongside her mother.

But the rape issue is sensitive in Bosnia, as is anything to do with the war. At first people assumed Jolie was there in her role as a goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR. Soon word got out that she was planning to make a film. The press inaccurately reported that her script was about a woman who falls in love with her rapist. In fact, Blood And Honey is more complicated: telling the story of a couple who met before the war and a woman who is sent to the camps.

Jolie struggled to convey how prewar Sarajevo was a multicultural city and how later, neighbours who had gone to school together turned on their friends with vengeance and hatred. And yet throughout the filming (done in 42 days in Budapest and Bosnia, in two languages, once the government lifted a filming ban), even as Jolie was getting negative press from both Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, Bravo insists she made them all feel "safe and relaxed. She created a family atmosphere."

It took Jolie about a month to write the script, she tells me, "then it went through a lot of revisions, Brad read it, people read it." But the logistics of directing her first film must still have been daunting.

She approached the $13m project like a student. "I read a lot of books about the war. I talked to a lot of people, I watched, I listened. I just wanted to tell the real story." She repeats several times: "I wanted to be respectful of people."

With six children, she still manages to travel lightly, without much security, taking the same bumpy roads and dodgy planes and going through the same military checkpoints as I do when I report from conflict zones.

During dinner, she talks about her family, how she is educating them in their own languages and cultures, how she loves to fly around the world but how hard it is to be separated from them when she is away. She talks about how someone "who never was a babysitter" knew how to take care of Maddox as a 27-year-old single mother. "I didn't know whether to give one bottle or 30 bottles," she says, laughing, of her son's infant days. "I called my mother."

Her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, a former actor and producer, who died in 2007 at 58, was a major influence. Jolie adored her. When Bertrand was dying, Jolie says, her mother told her she had done exactly what she wanted to do with her life, by simply taking care of her children. "Her goodness had a huge impact on me," she says.

In the end, Jolie's film stays with you. Some scenes are as vivid and horrific as the real days of war. In one, Vanesa Glodjo leaves her infant at home while she goes to raid a bombed-out pharmacy because none of the neighbours has medicine. She comes home to find him dead from a sniper's bullet. Her screams of agony do not feel like acting. Glodjo lived through the war. More than 100,000 people died, including thousands of children. All of us who were there remember the children who were killed simply for playing. Or the "Romeo and Juliet" Muslim and Serb couple who, just after being married, were shot holding hands crossing a bridge on their way to tell their relatives the happy news. Their bodies lay on that bridge for days – snipers kept shooting at anyone who tried to move them away.

Jolie's couple meet before the war, in a time when Sarajevo was a former Olympic city of art and music and poetry. Through their eyes, we see the disintegration of that cafe society – and, more important, what humans do to other humans to survive.

• This article first appeared in Newsweek.

View the original article here

Arthur Scargill's old union HQ is to become a casino

How times change. NUM leader Arthur Scargill at the height of his career, facing up to police with riot shields before the 'battle of Orgreace' near Sheffield. Photograph: Don McPhee/The Guardian

Some sort of allegory here: the former headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers in Sheffield is to be turned into a casino.

Apt, maybe, for a place associated with men who took a very big gamble and lost it, by going ahead with the 1984/5 pit strike without a ballot of members.

The building did not last long as the NUM's national base in spite of careful architectural detailing including its shape which is based on a miner's pick. The NUM moved there from London in 1988 but then decamped to the old Yorkshire regional office in Barnsley – nick-named King Arthur's Castle, as the industry dwindled and the union's membership likewise.

It was never a happy residence either, with endless planning rows which led to the main entrance never being completed; a strange gap persisted between the pavement in Holly Street and the planned, but unused, front doors.

The city hall and Peace Gardens. Planners think that new use of the old NUM HQ will enliven the central area. Sheffield. Photograph: Alamy

Sheffield's Labour-led city council has approved conversion of the building to house a 38,000 sq ft (3,500 sq m) casino which will be open round the clock. There will also be two restaurants and a rooftop bar. The development ends the city's distinguished claim to be the only one of its size in the UK without a central casino.

There were only seven objection to the plan, all raising the possibility of late-night noise and anti-social behaviour related to drinking. But Andrew Stevens of the developers Brook Leisure says:

We will respect our neighbours. Casinos tend not to be as noisy as some other venues in the city.

The council's planning committee agreed with its officers that renewed life for the building would make:

a significant contribution to the appearance of the building and the wider area.

Work will begin in the conversion in the spring and Brook Leisure says that the project is expected to create about 130 jobs.

PS on a completely different subject: Occupy Leeds are having carols in City Square from around 1.30pm today, Tuesday 20 December. Hope to bring you a post later but they always welcome visitors of all views. And singers...

View the original article here

Saab owner files for bankruptcy

19 December 2011 Last updated at 09:26 GMT Saab's owner had been in talks with companies about raising further finance Troubled Swedish carmaker Saab has filed for bankruptcy after failing to secure fresh funds from potential Chinese investors.

General Motors (GM), which owns part of Saab, did not want Chinese carmakers accessing technology licences.

Production has been suspended at Saab's main plant in Trollhattan, Sweden, since April as the company has struggled to pay its suppliers.

Workers have complained that they have not been paid since last month.

'Insolvent'

Saab had been in takeover talks with several Chinese companies, including Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile.

The Swedish carmaker said the breakdown of these talks - following the intervention of GM - left it will little option but to file for bankruptcy.

"After having received the recent position of GM on the contemplated transaction with Saab Automobile, Youngman informed Saab Automobile that the funding to complete the reorganisation of Saab could not be concluded," the carmaker said.

"The board subsequently decided that the company, without further funding, will be insolvent, and that filing bankruptcy is in the best interests of its creditors."

Last week, the Dutch financial market regulator halted trading in Saab shares.

Earlier this month, a Swedish court told Saab's owners to come up with a credible rescue plan or else enter bankruptcy.

General Motors sold Saab in 2010 to Dutch luxury carmaker Spyker - now renamed Swedish Automobile - but the US automotive giant remains a stakeholder and a supplier.

View the original article here

Bale barred from Chinese activist

16 December 2011 Last updated at 11:40 GMT Christian Bale is in China to promote his new film The Flowers of War The actor Christian Bale has been blocked by security guards from visiting a Chinese human rights activist living under house arrest.

Footage by CNN showed the Batman star being pushed and shoved by security guards at the entrance to the Shandong village where Chen Guangcheng lives.

Bale is in China promoting The Flowers of War, a film about the massacre of Chinese by the Japanese at Nanjing.

Mr Chen is one of the country's best-known activists.

The blind human rights lawyer was imprisoned after alleging the authorities had carried out forced abortions under the country's one-child policy. He has since been released but activists say he is being confined to his house.

'Newsworthy figure'

Bale travelled to Dongshigu village in the eastern province of Shandong, eight hours from the capital Beijing, with a TV crew from CNN.

He was stopped by unidentified men who ordered them to leave, the video footage indicates.

Continue reading the main story

What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is”

End Quote Christian Bale Actor After Bale asked why he had not been permitted to pass through, the guards tried to grab a small video camera he was carrying.

"What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is," Bale was quoted as saying by CNN.

Earlier this year, a media group, The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, warned journalists to be careful trying to go to the village, after several cases of reporters being manhandled by security personnel.

CNN said Bale had invited them to join him on the trip.

"Chen Guangcheng is a newsworthy figure... and as such it is in the interest of CNN's global viewers to hear from him," CNN said in a statement.

But the broadcaster's role drew criticism from some who say it raises questions about the distinction between journalism and activism.

"It made me instantly uncomfortable, wondering how it all came together," David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project website at the University of Hong Kong, told the Associated Press news agency.

"It raises questions about where the lines are drawn."

Bale's new film, which portrays the 1937 massacre of Chinese by Japan's imperial army in Nanjing, is due for release in China on Friday and next week in the US.

The actor has defended it from critics who say it is nationalistic and anti-Japanese, and amounts to propaganda.

View the original article here

VIDEO: What is Quantitative Easing?

28 October 2011 Last updated at 14:27 GMT Help

View the original article here

Paris museum buys Bronte treasure

15 December 2011 Last updated at 13:34 GMT The miniature magazine contains 19 pages, each measuring 35mm x 61mm (1.4in x 2.4in) A French museum has won a bidding war for an unpublished Charlotte Bronte manuscript, dashing hopes that it could return to the author's former home.

The Musee des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris bought the second issue of Young Men's Magazine at auction for £690,850.

It outbid the Bronte Parsonage Museum, based in the family's former house in Haworth, West Yorkshire.

The work, written when Bronte was 14, is regarded as important for the light it sheds on her literary development.

The miniature manuscript, dated 1830, smashed its pre-sale estimate of £200,000 - £300,000 and set a new auction record for a manuscript by any of the Bronte sisters.

Charlotte Bronte, best known for Jane Eyre, created six hand-written editions of the magazine as part of an imaginary world she built with her famous sisters and her brother.

The issue sold on Thursday contains a story that is a precursor to the famous passage in Jane Eyre in which Mr Rochester's insane wife, who is kept in the attic, seeks revenge by setting fire to his bed curtains.

Dr Philip Errington, director of books and manuscripts at auction house Sotheby's, said the work, which contains over 4,000 words on 19 pages, had "huge literary significance".

"This tiny manuscript represents her first burst of creativity and provides a rare and intimate insight into one of history's great literary minds," he said.

The Bronte Parsonage Museum already owns four of the six copies of the magazine. The whereabouts of the remaining edition are unknown.

The museum was awarded a grant of £613,140 by the National Heritage Memorial Fund to buy the artefact, as well as receiving a number of smaller donations.

But it was not enough to secure the book, which will now go on display in Paris in January.

Andrew McCarthy, director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, said it was "the most significant manuscript to come to light in decades".

Author and Bronte Society president Bonnie Greer said the book "puts down in luminous prose not only the daydreams of a little Yorkshire girl, but it also contains the seed of the work of one of the greatest writers in the English language".

Andrew McCarthy, director of Bronte Parsonage Museum: "Very disappointed. The outcome is clearly not one that we would have hoped for"

"It will not be going home, back to the place where it all began, the Parsonage at Haworth," she said.

"Its presence there would have placed it not only at the heart of the proud community in which she was born and raised, but would have brought full circle a Yorkshire story, a northern story, a British story, a world story."

The Young Men's Magazine Number Two was sold by an anonymous private European collector.

View the original article here

Former US mortgage bosses charged

16 December 2011 Last updated at 21:15 GMT The SEC said the former executives had made "material mis-statements" The US financial regulator has brought civil fraud charges against six former top executives at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the executives had misled investors about the companies' exposure to risky subprime mortgages they held when the housing bubble burst.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were rescued by the US government in 2008.

Those charged include former chiefs Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron.

Mr Mudd was fired from Fannie after the government took over. Mr Syron resigned from Freddie in 2008.

In a statement released through his lawyer, Mr Mudd said the lawsuit "should never have been brought" and said the government had reviewed and approved all of the company's financial disclosures.

"The SEC is wrong, and I look forward to a court where fairness and reason - not politics - is the standard for justice," he said.

Mr Syron's lawyers said the case was "without merit" and said the term subprime "had no uniform definition in the market" at that time.

Fannie and Freddie both entered into agreements with the government on Friday, accepting responsibility for their conduct without admitting or denying the charges.

The companies also agreed to co-operate with the SEC on the cases against the former executives.

View the original article here

Official: Life rafts spotted near capsized rig (AP)

MOSCOW – Rafts carrying people have been spotted off Russia's east coast where a floating oil rig sank in remote, freezing waters, the owner said Monday, but the government would not confirm the report and it was not clear whether there were survivors.

Time appeared to be running out for the scores of oil workers still missing the day after their floating platform was downed in a severe storm. Workers have already pulled out 10 bodies from the Sea of Okhotsk, and there are four more bodies that haven't been retrieved yet, the ministry said.

Of the 67 men aboard, 14 were plucked alive from the icy waters immediately after the accident and taken to a hospital.

Chances of survival are negligible as the water temperature in the area is 1 degree Celsius (33.8 Fahrenheit).

An official at the rig's owner Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka, who asked not to be named because the offshore oil exploration firm is not authorized to comment on the rescue operation, told The Associated Press that rescue vessels have spotted four rafts with people aboard, but it was not clear if they were alive or not. The Emergencies Ministry and military officials would not confirm.

The ministry said there are four vessels, one helicopter and one airplane in the area searching for the missing men. Helicopter shots from the area on NTV television showed nothing floating on the partly ice-bound sea.

Russia produces most of its oil onshore and it hasn't seen any significant oil platform accidents in the past years.

The floating oil rig capsized Sunday morning as it was being towed about 200 kilometers (120 miles) off the coast of Sakhalin Island amid a fierce storm. It started sinking after a strong wave broke some of its equipment and the portholes in the crew's dining room.

One of the survivors, Sergei Grauman, said on Russian state television that the platform's portholes were smashed in a second and the crew had struggled to fix them.

"Everyone rushed to the deck," he told the First Channel station. "It all felt like a movie."

The Kolskaya platform — 70 meters (226 feet) long and 80 meters (262 feet) wide — was built in Finland in 1985. It has recently done some work for Russian energy giant Gazprom and was on its way to a port in the Far East when it capsized.

There has been no report of environmental damage, but there is likely to be little because the rig only carried a small amount of fuel.

Russian newspapers on Monday speculated about whether there could have been fewer deaths if the rig's owner had taken more people off the rig before it was moved.

Russian law allows only a "minimal number of crew members" to be aboard the platform while it is being towed and bars any non-crew members or passengers. Reports said that at least 14 people aboard were not crew members.

______

Varya Kudryavtseva contributed to this report.

View the original article here

South Korea military on emergency alert in swift reaction to Kim Jong-il's death

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/8964964/South-Korea-military-on-emergency-alert-in-swift-reaction-to-Kim-Jong-ils-death.html

View the original article here

Your week in pictures

18 December 2011 Last updated at 14:13 GMT

N Korea's leader Kim Jong-il has died

The search for survivors in the Philippines

A Rwandan prison where inmates cook on biogas

Photos from around the world this week

24 hours of news images: 16 December

Readers' pictures on the theme chilly

Contemporary Nigerian photography

A hospital in West Bengal treats hundreds

24 hours of news photos: 15 December 2011

Grenade and gun attack in Liege

View the original article here

Kim Jong Il death sparks hysterical outpouring of grief in North Korea

The news was met with public outpourings of grief across the communist state.

People on the streets of the North Korean capital wailed, some kneeling on the ground or bowing repeatedly as they learned the news that their 'Dear Leader' had died of heart failure while carrying out official duties on a train trip.

"How could the heavens be so cruel? Please come back, general. We cannot believe you're gone," Hong Son Ok cried in an interview with the country's official broadcaster, her body shaking.

The dictator's passing has also come as a shock in neighbouring South Korea, the North’s arch enemy.

South Korea’s news agency Yonhap said its President has placed all government workers on “emergency alert”, and reported that the Finance Ministry was holding emergency meetings.

The Defence Ministry was reported as saying it had not monitored any “unusual military movement”.

View the original article here

Russell Brand lands US TV series

16 December 2011 Last updated at 10:29 GMT Brand began his controversial career as a TV presenter and stand-up comic British comedian and actor Russell Brand has landed a TV series in the US, it has been announced.

The star will front a six-episode late-night series on Fox's sister channel, FX, beginning in the spring.

FX executive Nick Grad said the network was "excited" about working with Brand's "bracingly funny, original, and honest voice".

The Forgetting Sarah Marshall star will also co-create and voice an animated series for Fox.

Brand made his US breakthrough presenting the MTV awards in 2008, causing outrage when he branded then-President George W Bush "a retarded cowboy fella" who "wouldn't be trusted with scissors" in England.

Despite the controversy, he was asked back in 2009 and went on to score acting roles in Hollywood comedies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the recent remake of Dudley Moore's 1981 film, Arthur.

Mr Grad said the FX channel was looking forward to Brand his partner Troy Miller creating something "daring and unfiltered" for audiences.

In a statement, the channel said the show would feature Brand's "unvarnished, unfiltered take on current events, politics and pop culture", suggesting it will follow the format of his UK series Ponderland, which ran on Channel 4 from 2007 - 2008.

The FX Channel is home to other shows such as Dexter, The Walking Dead and Family Guy.

Brand began his career in the UK as a TV presenter and stand-up comedian.

He was sacked from his role as a presenter on the British MTV network when he turned up for work dressed as Osama bin Laden the day after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

Despite that, he went on to present a Big Brother spin-off show, before landing a role with the BBC as a radio DJ.

But his Radio 2 show came to an end following thousands of complaints over jokes he and Jonathan Ross made about veteran actor Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter.

View the original article here

VIDEO: Why do banks go bust?

21 October 2011 Last updated at 21:00 GMT Help

View the original article here

North Korea mourns the death of 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il

Kim Jong-il, the mercurial and enigmatic longtime leader who ran his nation with an iron rod has died at the age of 69. A television presenter, wearing black and fighting back tears, made the emotional announcement on the state-run station. She said Kim died “of fatigue” while on a train. His youngest son, Kim Jong-un, is likely to be appointed leader to continue the family dynasty that has administrated a tyrannical government since the end of the Korean War.

Picture: Reuters

View the original article here

Making a He-Man action hero gold

16 December 2011 Last updated at 09:11 GMT Can Jamie Moakes transform the mass-produced 1980s action figure Ram Man into a valuable commodity by buying as many of them as he can?

In Jamie Moakes' flat in Colchester a battalion of armoured men stands at the end of his bed all facing to the side because he says the sight of them all peering at him in the morning is very unnerving.

This figure, according to Jamie, is a new commodity, one to replace gold, silver and copper.

This is Ram Man, a minor character in the 1980s television show He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe.

Mr Moakes is trying to buy as many as possible in order to make them rare.

Homes versus gold

His fascination with the character started after he became annoyed at the seemingly imagined value that we give to commodities.

"Everyone was saying 'stop investing in a home and invest in gold', but the only reason [people say that] is because everyone agrees that gold is worth money," he says.

He thought that if he could convince the public that something was the new gold then he could prove that anyone could create a new commodity and play their own part in the economy.

The problem is Jamie is no economist. In fact he has no knowledge of economics at all. So he called in Professor Eric Smith, head of economics at the University of Essex.

Prof Smith thought Jamie had a point. "Gold has certain properties as a commodity that made it pretty useful and Ram Man doesn't necessarily have that, but Jamie's initial idea about the fact that gold has more value than its pure utilitarian or material usages was quite a good insight."

Buy low, sell high

And of course, Jamie is not the first to try to monopolise a particular commodity in this way.

Continue reading the main story

Gold has certain properties as a commodity that made it pretty useful and Ram Man doesn't necessarily have that”

End Quote Prof Eric Smith University of Essex "The tradition of cornering the market is to get sufficient control of the market and get hold of enough of it to manipulate the price. Once the price gets high you can sell high," adds Prof Smith.

So how much is Jamie paying for his Ram Man figures?

"There is no consistency at all. I've bought ones for 20p, up to £192.50, that was a mint Ram Man in a box."

It gets worse too. He sold it - he will not say how much for, but admits it was not for a profit.

There is a second plank of Jamie's plan to push up the price of Ram Man. He is a performance artist, and has a show where he tries to convince people that Ram Man is the new gold.

He then sells one of the toys from his collection at the end.

It may seem like a good idea, but Prof Smith says this may be his second mistake.

"He's publicly announcing that he's trying to corner the market. If you were trying to corner the market you would want to buy slowly and carefully. If people think you're going to buy a lot they will perhaps hold out for a higher price."

Price rising

And his problems do not end there. He currently has 151 Ram Man figures and has already spent about £1,500 building the collection.

To truly corner the market he needs to collect as many as possible. The makers Mattel will not say how many there are but some estimate that about two million were produced.

However, Jamie is undeterred:

"I have noticed the price going up very slowly, but Ram Man didn't sell, and no-one considered him to be worth that much money, and slowly me buying them looks like they're selling more."

But the problem with this may be that although the price may be rising, he is the only person buying the figures.

Jamie may be on a hiding to nothing with Ram Man, but had he chosen something a little more sought-after, he might have had more success - initially at least.

It has been tried before and one notable example was that of Yasuo Hamanaka or Mr Copper as he became known.

"He systematically tried to corner the world market in copper by buying up not only futures but the physical substance itself," says John Gapper of the Financial Times who has recently written about Hamanaka.

Collapse

"At one point he controlled 5% of the world copper market and it was sitting in warehouses around the world.

"For a long time it actually worked out pretty well for him.

"Every time people tried to trade against him he bought more and more and squeezed them out and made consistently a lot of profits."

But then in 1995 the whole thing collapsed.

"He drove up the price [which] made it more economical to mine the stuff, and then of course China started doing it. As more and more copper came onto the market, he found it harder and harder to control the market and in the end prices fell, and Sumitomo removed him from his job."

Given what happened to Hamanaka, John Gapper says that, in one way at least, Jamie has made a wise decision: "I think he's got a good target in a physical product that nobody can expand the supply of, but it's still a very tricky business.

"The trick though is once you've actually controlled all of this supply, you've got to start selling it in order to make a profit, and if people know what you're doing they can sell against you."

Of course what it all may come down to, is as much as Jamie loves his Ram Man figures, and as much as he might succeed in putting the prices up, he might discover no-one else is willing to buy.

More or Less will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Friday, 16 December at 16:30 GMT and Sunday 18 December at 20:00 GMT. Listen again via the BBC Radio 4 website or download the programme podcast.

View the original article here

Kim Jong-il dead: family tree

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Stern lands US talent show role

16 December 2011 Last updated at 12:40 GMT Auditions for the seventh series began in October in major cities across the US Controversial radio DJ Howard Stern is to replace Piers Morgan on the judging panel of America's Got Talent, it has been announced.

Stern, 57, who presents a daily radio show on Sirius XM, will join Howie Mandel and Sharon Osbourne on the team.

The star has vowed to give honest opinions and said it was likely that "feelings are going to be hurt".

An original "shock jock", Stern has often been in trouble for off-colour remarks and comic transgressions.

In 2004, he was dropped by media giant Clear Channel after it was fined for indecency.

Despite his sometimes offensive and often sexual language, the DJ says he does not deliberately set out to cause controversy.

"I'm not some desperate, out-of-control loser trying to outrage people to get ratings," he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1990.

"What the show's about is me trying to be funny, trying to tell the truth and trying to make a living."

America's Got Talent is made by the NBC network. Stern was employed by its now-defunt radio arm WNBC in the 1980s - where he was suspended for broadcasting a controversial skit in his first month.

He was later reinstated, but eventually fired by the network in 1985. Much of Private Parts, the 1997 film adaptation of his bestselling book, detailed the DJ's running battles with WNBC's managment.

Paul Telegdy, current president of NBC Television, defended his newest signing, saying his track record in broadcasting was "truly remarkable".

He added: "Howard Stern's larger-than-life personality will bring a thrilling new dynamic to America's Got Talent starting this summer."

Auditions for the reality show's seventh series began in October in major cities across the US.

During Stern's radio show on Thursday, the DJ said: "I am going to tell you [that] your kiddie has no talent. This nonsense of Howie and Sharon putting through less than talented people has got to stop.

"Under my administration, there will be no Frank Sinatra impersonators winning. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but feelings are going to be hurt."

Production of the live broadcast of the show will relocate to New York to accommodate Stern's radio schedule.

Morgan left the show last season to concentrate on his weeknight interview program on CNN.

Last year, blues singer Michael Grimm was named the winner of the talent programme.

View the original article here

With morgues full, Philippine flood victims buried (AP)

ILIGAN, Philippines – With funeral parlors overwhelmed, authorities in a flood-stricken southern Philippine city on Monday organized the first mass burial of some of nearly 700 people who were swept to their deaths in one of worst calamities to strike the region in decades.

For the first time in a day, the staggering death toll from Friday night's disaster, spawned by a tropical storm, remained little changed but the number of missing varied widely. Official figures put the missing at 82, while the Philippine Red Cross estimated 800.

The disparity underscores the difficulty in accounting for people who could be buried in the mud and debris littering much of the area or could be alive but lost in crowded evacuation centers or elsewhere.

"We lost count of how many are missing," said Benito Ramos, head of the government's Office of Civil Defense.

In Iligan, a coastal industrial hub of 330,000 people, Mayor Lawrence Cruz said the city's half a dozen parlors were full to capacity and no longer accepting bodies. The first burial of 50 or so unclaimed bodies was to take place later Monday in individual tombs at the city cemetery, he said.

"For public health purposes, we're doing this. The bodies are decomposing and there is no place where we can place them, not in an enclosed building, not in a gymnasium," Cruz told The Associated Press.

He said many of the Iligan dead — 279 by official count — "are just piled and laid outside the morgues," which ran out of formaldehyde for embalming and coffins.

"We're using plastic bags, whatever is available," Cruz said.

In nearby Cagayan de Oro city, the situation was more chaotic and people were resisting mass burials, instead demanding that bodies be interned until relatives can claim them.

About 340 died in Cagayan de Oro, most of them women and children and many of whom lived along river banks. Flood waters came gushing after 12 hours of pounding rain, catching most of them in their sleep.

Residents told local officials that plans for a mass burial was "un-Christian," said Cagayan de Oro city administrator Griscelda Joson.

Mayor Vicente Emano called a meeting later Monday to discuss the problem. Funeral parlors have asked authorities to do something about the unclaimed bodies because of the stench and complaints from neighbors, she said.

More bodies continue to be found. While city officials were meeting Sunday, more than 40 bodies were seen floating off an island but the coast guard could not recover them, Joson said.

In a grim sign of desperation, a funeral parlor dumped about 30 badly decomposed bodies in a city garbage dump over the weekend, sparking protests from distraught villagers who were looking for the missing loved ones.

Ramos, the head of the agency that is spearheading the recovery and relief operations, attributed the high casualties "partly to the complacency of people because they are not in the usual path of storms" despite warnings by officials that one was approaching.

"We've had flooding before but nothing like this," Cruz, the Iligan mayor said, recalling floods in the early 1950s. "We have a good drainage system but it as simply overwhelmed. The rainfall fell heavily on the mountains and this flowed down to two of our river systems and they overflowed and swept away houses and covered the highway and residential areas."

About 143,000 people were affected in 13 southern and central provinces, including 45,000 who fled to evacuation centers. About 7,000 houses were swept away, destroyed or damaged, the Office of Civil Defense said.

An estimated 35 percent of evacuees are children, said Trevor Clark, head of UNICEF in the southern Mindanao region. Running water and hygiene were major concerns, followed by a lack of clothing, blankets and even shoes for young children, he said.

Although he said government agencies were responding in a quick and efficient manner, they were overwhelmed and the United Nations was preparing an appeal for urgent assistance from donors and foreign governments.

___

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez and Hrvoje Hranjski in Manila contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Quiz of the week's news

BBC News - Quiz of the week's news BBC

Accessibility links

Skip to content Skip to local navigation Skip to bbc.co.uk navigation Skip to bbc.co.uk search Help Accessibility Help Magazine Home UK Africa Asia Europe Latin America Mid-East US & Canada Business Health Sci/Environment Tech Entertainment Video Magazine In Pictures Also in the News Editors' Blog Have Your Say World Radio and TV Special Reports 16 December 2011Last updated at 09:11 GMT Share this page Delicious Digg Facebook reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Email Print Quiz of the week's news Continue reading the main story/*div.story-body div#quiz_container{width:448px;border:1px solid;padding-left:16px;}*/

Info

It's the Magazine's 7 days, 7 questions quiz - an opportunity to prove to yourself and others that you are a news oracle. Failing that, you can always claim to have had better things to do during the past week than swot up on current affairs.

1.) Multiple Choice Question

Elizabeth Taylor's jewellery collection fetched a record-setting $115m (£74m) at auction in New York this week. Among personal items up for sale was a print signed: "To my true love Elizabeth. I love you forever". Who was it from?

Michael Jackson
Richard Burton
Elton John

2.) Missing Word Question

Hairy limbs keep * at bay

bed bugs
body odour
itching

3.) Multiple Choice Question

Google has revealed some of the most popular search terms in the UK over the past year. The list of "fastest-rising searches" was topped by the Royal Wedding. What was second?

Arab Spring
iPhone 5
Twilight

4.) Multiple Choice Question

Sir Graham Watson MEP has challenged an EU Commissioner - via Twitter - to a what-eating competition?

Pie
Potato
Prune

5.) Multiple Choice Question

Scientists say they've found signs of the fabled Higgs boson. Higgs is a British theoretical physicist (pictured). Where did the word "boson" come from?

A nautical term
Another physicist's name
A unit of measurement

6.) Multiple Choice Question

The Time Person of the Year has been revealed to be "the protester". Who was second?

US Navy's William McRaven
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei
Duchess of Cambridge, nee Kate Middleton

7.) Multiple Choice Question

The first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest has failed in her attempt to make a comeback in the annual song-fest. She was hoping to represent the same country she sang for in 1956 - which one?

Switzerland
Ireland
Luxembourg

Answers

It was Michael Jackson. With regards to the jewellery, everything from her famous 33-carat diamond ring, a gift from Burton, to her charm bracelets sold for many times their estimates.It's bed bugs. Hungry bugs placed on shaved arms were more likely to try to feed compared with those on unshaved arms, the journal Biology Letters reported this week.It was the iPhone 5, an object that didn't actually exist. After a long wait, Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S.It's prune - after the EU rejected claims prunes have a laxative effect. The European Food Safety Agency is investigating the health claims on food products.It's from the name of another physicist. Satyendra Nath Bose was an Indian physicist who collaborated with Albert Einstein.It was Admiral Bill McRaven, who masterminded the raid on Bin Laden's compound by Seal Team Six, the elite commandos of the US Navy. Weiwei and the duchess were on the shortlist.It's Switzerland. Lys Assia, 87, was hoping to become the oldest singer to take part in the contest that she previously won with the song Refrain. According to reports, her latest song lacked "modern elements".

Your Score

0 - 2 : Nul points

3 - 4 : Runner up

5 - 7 : On song

Continue reading the main story Computer programs National animals CVs Baking For past quizzes including our weekly news quiz, 7 days 7 questions, expand the grey drop-down below - also available on the Magazine page (and scroll down).

More on This Story Magazine quizzes - all in one place Computer programs National animals CVs Baking Dinosaurs Costume dramas 7 days (9 Dec) 7 days (2 Dec) 7 days (25 Nov) 7 days (18 Nov) 7 days (11 Nov) 7 days (4 Nov) Share this page Delicious Digg Facebook reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Email Print Top Stories N Korean leader Kim Jong-il dies Syria signs Arab League agreement Sun 'stops chickenpox spreading' Fresh violence hits Tahrir Square Nigeria arrests 'Islamist leader' Features & AnalysisTroubled times

Was 2011 the most eventful year yet?

Going postal Watch

A love letter to America's disappearing mail offices

Day in pictures

24 hours of news images from around the world.

In harm's way

Somali piracy takes a heavy toll on Filipino mariners

Most PopularShared 1: N Korean leader Kim Jong Il dies 2: Touchless phones 'to be out soon' 3: 'My husband chopped off my fingers' 4: A year in the life of a press photographer: Leon Neal 5: Saab owner files for bankruptcy Read 1: N Korean leader Kim Jong Il dies 2: Touchless phones 'to be out soon' 3: The year when a lot happened 4: Kim Jong-il dies 5: Raft seen after Russian rig sinks 6: In pictures: North Koreans mourn 7: Syria signs Arab League agreement 8: Sun 'stops chickenpox spreading' 9: Kim Jong-il death: World reaction in quotes 10: Rare fossils found in old quarry Video/Audio 1: 'My husband chopped off my fingers' Watch 2: N Koreans weep over leader's death Watch 3: Son 'not ready' to lead North Korea Watch 4: Glimpses of real North Korean life behind the facade Watch 5: Third day of clashes in Cairo Watch 6: America's disappearing post offices Watch 7: One-minute World News Watch 8: North Korea's Kim Jong-il dies at 69 Watch 9: Kim Jong-il's death is announced Watch 10: Heli-hiking in the remote Canadian Rockies Watch Elsewhere on BBC NewsCost-free culture

Why the Chinese government is scrapping museum and library admission charges by the end of 2012

ProgrammesFast Track Watch

An adrenaline filled trip into the remote reaches of the Canadian Rockies - only accessible by helicopter

Services  News feeds  Mobile  Podcasts  Alerts  E-mail news About BBC News Editors' blog BBC College of Journalism News sources World Service Trust Mobile

Search term:

bbc.co.uk navigation News Sport Weather Travel TV Radio More CBBC CBeebies Comedy Food Health History Learning Music Science Nature Local Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Full A-Z of BBC sites BBC links About the BBC BBC Help Contact Us Accessibility Help Terms of Use Careers Privacy & Cookies Advertise With Us Ad Choices

BBC © 2011 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.

View the original article here

US inflation stable in November

16 December 2011 Last updated at 15:08 GMT Many economists believe US inflation will start to fall US consumer prices were unchanged in November as motorists paid less for cars and petrol, figures from US Labor Department show.

Food prices rose 0.1%, but the cost of gasoline fell 2.4%.

On an annual basis, consumer prices were 3.4% higher from November 2010, down from a rate of 3.5% the month before and the lowest rate since April.

"Core" annual inflation, which strips out food and energy costs, rose from 2.1% in October to 2.2% in November.

Clothing prices have risen at the fastest pace in 20 years over the past 12 months, partly because of higher cotton costs.

Clothing costs jumped 0.6% in November, the seventh increase in eight months. In the past 12 months, clothing prices have risen 4.8%.

Many economists say inflation probably has peaked and is likely to decline next year.

Some energy and commodities have fallen from highs reached in the spring. And slower growth in China and a possible recession in Europe have reduced global demand for energy and other goods.

View the original article here

Britney Spears is engaged

Britney Spears is engaged to her boyfriend Jason Trawick.

The singer posted a message on Twitter about receiving "the one gift" for which she has longed.

She then confirmed the news on Facebook when she changed her relationship status to engaged.

The pop princess has been dating her former agent Trawick since May 2010.

Spears was previously married to dancer Kevin Federline for two years, with whom she has two children.

The singer also spontaneously wed childhood friend Jason Alexander during a trip to Las Vegas in 2004.

That marriage lasted 55 hours before the singer annulled the union.

View the original article here

Resistant bed-bugs 'from tropics'

12 December 2011 Last updated at 11:05 GMT Bed-bugs, and their close cousins bat-bugs, are renowned for their bizarre sex lives New results suggest that insecticide use in the tropics is to blame for the re-emergence of bed-bug infestations.

Exposure to treated bed nets and linens meant that populations of bed-bugs had become resistant to the chemicals used to kill them, researchers said.

The findings could help convince pest controllers to find alternative remedies to deal with the problem.

The results were presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's 60th annual meeting.

Since almost vanishing from homes in industrialised countries in the 1950s, populations of the common bed-bug have become re-established in these regions over the past decade or so.

These mostly nocturnal feeders are difficult to control, not only because they are adept at avoiding detection by crawling into creases of soft furnishing but also because they have developed a resistance to many of the chemicals that have been used to kill them.

Findings presented at the gathering in Philadelphia showed that 90% of 66 populations sampled from 21 US states were resistant to a group of insecticides, known as pyrethroids, commonly used to kill unwanted bugs and flies.

Female bed-bugs, hidden in furniture creases, can each lay up to 300 eggs

One of the co-authors - evolutionary biologist Warren Booth, from North Caroline State University in Raleigh - explained that the genetic evidence he and his colleagues had collected showed that the bed-bugs infecting households in the US and Canada in the last decade were not domestic bed bugs, but imports.

"If bed-bugs emerged from local refugia, such as poultry farms, you would expect the bed-bugs to be genetically very similar to each other," explained entomologist and co-author Coby Schal, also from North Carolina State University. "This isn't what we found."

In samples collected from across the eastern US, the team discovered populations of bed-bugs that were genetically very diverse.

This suggested that the bugs originated from elsewhere, and relatively recently because the different populations had not had time to interbreed, Dr Schal explained.

He suggested that the source for the new outbreaks was warmer climes, where the creatures would have probably developed a resistance to chemicals.

"The obvious answer is the tropics, where they have used treated bed nets [and] high levels of insecticides on clothing and bedding to protect the military," Dr Booth told BBC News.

He explained that although bed-bugs were essentially eradicated from industrialised countries in the 1950s, they continued to thrive in Africa and Asia.

"Its very likely that it is from one of these areas where insecticide resistance evolved," he said.

'Home-grown'

However, UK-based pest management specialist Clive Boase questioned that hypothesis.

He said bed nets, to protect against mosquito-transmitted malaria and dengue, were only used in parts of Africa that were hot, where the tropical bed-bug (Cimex hemipterus) was found.

But, he added, it was not the tropical bed-bug that was the problem in the US and UK; instead it was their temperate cousin, Cimex lectularius.

Dr Boase explained that comprehensive records showed that infestations of bed-bugs in Europe were less pervasive in the 1970s and 80s, but they were still present.

By continually exposing these populations to insecticides, which came on the market in the late 1970s, these creatures likely developed resistance, he said.

"We don't have to invoke stories of disease control programmes in Africa; all the evidence here in the UK is that our problem is home-grown."

Dr Boase wondered that if the US had similar long-term records whether the researchers would have reached a different conclusion.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Naylor from the University of Sheffield agreed: "I am kind of surprised by [their interpretation].

"It doesn't seem that difficult to develop resistance or lose it; in lab cultures, if you stop exposing [bed-bugs] to pyrethroids it drops out of lab populations very quickly," he said.

Mr Naylor asked that if the US bed bugs had been exposed to the chemicals elsewhere in the past, "why would they still be resistant?"

View the original article here

Buble fans walk out over language

15 December 2011 Last updated at 15:27 GMT Michael Buble recently topped the UK album chart with his Christmas record Canadian singer Michael Buble has revealed how some people walk out of his concerts because of his bad language on stage.

In a Daily Telegraph interview, the star said he regularly receives letters of complaint from fans.

"Almost every night when I'm on stage my agent will say to me: 'Well kid, 30 people wanted their money back'," the 36-year-old said.

"At first it was a real worry for my agents," he added.

"They kept saying: 'Mike, you're losing the audience'. Especially when I wasn't playing to that many people.

"I remember my American agent saying: 'Tonight it was huge, 70 people wanted their money back'.

"And I said: 'Give them their money back. I don't want them at my show. I don't want some stuck-up prudes [who] can't laugh at themselves'. Give me my kind of people and we'll be fine.

"I get letters saying: 'I really liked you, but you were crude, you were rude, you used foul language, you were suggestive'," he said.

Despite the walkouts, the singer has sold 35 million albums worldwide and is the world's most popular contemporary male vocalist.

His music career began in his teenage years, when he won a Canadian talent search and began releasing a series of independent albums.

Eventually, the youngster was spotted by music producer David Foster (Madonna, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion) and given a record deal with Reprise Records - an offshoot of Warner Brothers, originally founded by Frank Sinatra in 1960.

The pair produced his self-titled breakthrough album, which featured jazzy interpretations of songs like Van Morrison's Moondance.

Since then, he has released a new record every two years, winning several Grammy awards in the "pop vocal" category.

Last month, Buble celebrated his second number one album in the UK after his Christmas covers album topped the UK chart.

View the original article here

Why are so many Indians dying from toxic alcohol?

15 December 2011 Last updated at 14:08 GMT Hospitals in Calcutta are overflowing with patients suffering from alcohol-related ailments More than 100 people have died after drinking toxic alcohol in the Indian state of West Bengal, in the latest example of fatal poisoning in the country. So why does it happen?

Stomach ache, vomiting, fits and even death.

The consequences of drinking illegal alcohol sold on India's streets could not be more serious. An estimated 126 people have died this week in West Bengal, but it's a problem that has blighted the country for years.

In 2008, at least 107 deaths were recorded in Karnataka, with another 41 in Tamil Nadu. The following year, more than 100 died in Gujarat, where alcohol is prohibited - the authorities last week introduced the death penalty for those supplying it.

One of the fatal ingredients is believed to be methyl alcohol, or methanol, a substance which sweetens it but which has industrial purposes as a solvent and antifreeze. Another is ammonium nitrate.

So why are such harmful substances being used to make alcoholic drinks?

One reason is the huge unfulfilled demand for booze which drives supply underground into an unregulated industry, says Aniruddha Mookherjee, who is writing a book about indigenous Indian alcohol.

"The state controls the alcohol business in India, almost completely. In many states, the alcohol is produced by state-appointed groups of people who are friends of the political parties that rule various states. West Bengal is one of the few states where this doesn't happen but in Delhi, for example, all alcohol is sold in government shops," he says.

Continue reading the main story Demand for cheap alcohol provides huge black marketBut errors of judgement in distillation can be fatalIngredients like methanol and ammonium nitrate can increase strength of flavour but can be fatalJust 30ml of methanol is enough to kill a personKnown as IMFL - Indian made foreign liquor - the legal supply is produced from molasses, a by-product of India's huge sugar industry. But a heavy duty means it's priced beyond the reach of about 80% of Indians, he says, so about 700ml of whisky or rum can cost as much as 400 rupees (£4.81).

In contrast, the illegal stuff, known as "hooch", derived from cane sugar, is sold for a fraction of the price, about 25 or 30 rupees for a plastic pouch or glass. It's sold discreetly by word of mouth. And without a culture of social drinking, says Mr Mookherjee, people are looking for something that can offer them a cheap kick.

But distilling it safely requires a precise control of the temperature, because if that rises above a certain level then methyl alcohol can form. Sometimes, certain herbs or chemicals might be added to increase the strength or improve the flavour, and these can react badly with other chemicals.

"It's usually a mistake because no-one who does this business wants people killed, because they end up with no business. There's sometimes an error of judgement or sometimes it's deliberately spiked by a rival. These are usually the two reasons why this happens."

Continue reading the main story confusion loss of co-ordination vomiting irregular or slow breathing blue-tinged or pale skin low body temperature (hypothermia) stupor (being conscious but unresponsive) unconsciousness (passing out)

Source: Institute of Psychiatry, London

So what do these kind of ingredients do to the body?

"When swallowed in high concentrations, ammonium nitrate may cause headache, dizziness, abdominal pain, vomiting, heart irregularities, convulsions, collapse, and death," says Dr Bob Patton of the Addictions Department at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London.

"Methyl alcohol, or methanol, which is commonly used for antifreeze, can also be added to illicit liquor to increase its alcohol content. Methanol is highly toxic to humans, and ingestion of just 10ml can result in blindness, and 30ml or more is usually fatal."

There have also been cases in Europe of deaths resulting from illegal alcohol production. In Italy in 1986, 23 people died from drinking methanol-adulterated wine, and a year previously, diethylene glycol was found to have been added to Austrian white wine to make it sweeter, but fortunately no-one died.

Alcohol is a poison and in large doses it can kill, says Dr Patton, and the danger with alcohol produced illicitly is that the consumer does not know what substances have been used to produce the liquor, or indeed how much alcohol is present.

In the UK alone, about 500 people go to accident and emergency departments each week with alcohol poisoning, he adds.

View the original article here

Med student Clarke wins 'Survivor: South Pacific' (AP)

By DERRIK J. LANG, AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang, Ap Entertainment Writer – 2 hrs 26 mins ago

LOS ANGELES – Sophie Clarke slayed the competition on "Survivor: South Pacific."

The brainy 22-year-old medical student from Willsboro, N.Y., overcame 39-year-old "Survivor" veteran Benjamin "Coach" Wade of Susanville, Calif., and 26-year-old high school baseball coach Albert Destrade of Plantation, Fla., to win the CBS reality competition's $1 million grand prize Sunday. Clarke earned six votes from the nine-person jury of former players.

"I think I had my finger on the pulse of the game the whole time," said Clarke after it was announced she won.

Clarke secured her place among the final three contestants on the 23rd edition of "Survivor" by forging a strong alliance from the outset and winning three individual immunity challenges, including the final physical competition, which ousted seasoned 30-year-old "Survivor" veteran Oscar "Ozzy" Lusth of Venice, Calif., from the 39-day survival contest.

"I knew the only one that could beat me at a challenge — no offense, guys — was Sophie," Lusth said.

Wade, who previously competed on the "Tocantins" and "Heroes vs. Villains" editions, and Lusth, who was featured on the "Cook Islands" and "Micronesia" editions, formed strong alliances with new contestants, though Lusth spent most of the game's second half on Redemption Island battling fellow voted-off castaways for a chance to return to the game.

At the end of the finale, show host Jeff Probst announced that the 24th season would be titled "Survivor: One World" and would feature two tribes competing against each other while living together on one island. "One World" is set to premiere in February.

___

CBS is a division of CBS Corp.

___

Online:

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor/

___

AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang/.

View the original article here

Who colour-coded Christmas?

16 December 2011 Last updated at 00:02 GMT

Santa's crimson and fur-lined coat? Shiny holly leaves and berries? Colourful poisonous, hallucinogenic mushrooms? Or medieval paintings in East Anglian churches? Just how did red, green and white become the conventional colours of Christmas?

Dr Spike Bucklow from Cambridge University's Hamilton Kerr Institute is questioning the common belief that the traditional festive shades are a legacy of the Victorians. For the past three years, he has researched the art history of medieval wooden rood screens in churches across Norfolk and Suffolk.

Here - from the bright rainbow palette of the 21st Century Christmas - he travels back in time to present a theory on who might have colour-coded Christmas.

Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Dr Spike Bucklow's research is supported by The Leverhulme Trust.

Images courtesy PA, Getty Images, Science Photo Library, Spike Bucklow, Lucy Wrapson and Coca-Cola.

Music by St Paul's Cathedral Choir, The Bach Choir, Elton John and KPM Music.

Audio slideshow produced by Paul Kerley. Publication date 16 December.

Related:

Spike Bucklow and the Alchemy of Paint

Cambridge University

Churches of East Anglia

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

More audio slideshows:

How have history lessons changed?

The Middle Ages in colour

Exploring Hogarth's House

Colourful remembrances of lost birds

View the original article here