News Today

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From The Guardian

Banksy rat disappears down drain thanks to Australian builder

A Melbourne builder has inadvertently destroyed a valuable piece of street art by the British graffiti artist Banksy by drilling a hole through it to put in a bathroom pipe.

Melbourne resident Tina McKenzie told Australia's Network Ten she had lived above Banksy's Parachuting Rat for almost a decade.

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From The Guardian

Cannes 2012 review: Moonrise Kingdom

The sweetness, sadness and charm of Wes Anderson's new film — co-written with Roman Coppola – opened the Cannes film festival in a delicate minor key. In some ways, it might have made a more piquant closing gala.

This was an evocation of young love in a younger, more innocent America. It was a very charming, beautifully wrought, if somehow depthless film — eccentric but heartfelt, and thought through to the tiniest, quirkiest detail in the classic Anderson style: there were the familiar rectilinear shots, and compositions with letters and drawings suddenly filled the screen like courtroom exhibits.

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From The Irish Times

Time to end silent suffering of gay students

TODAY IS International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (Idaho), when governments, communities, families and individuals act to end discrimination and violence towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

Idaho is marked in over 100 countries, as well as at the UN.

This year’s Idaho theme is Combating Homophobic and Transphobic Bullying in Our Schools. This is an important theme in Ireland because this form of bullying has resulted in generations of LGBT young students suffering in silence.

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From The Irish Times

US has Iran strike plan 'ready'

US plans for a possible military strike on Iran are ready and the option is "fully available", the US ambassador to Israel said, days before Tehran resumes talks with world powers which suspect it of seeking to develop nuclear arms.

Like Israel, the United States has said it considers military force a last resort to prevent Iran using its uranium enrichment to make a bomb. Iran insists its nuclear programme is for purely civilian purposes.

"It would be preferable to resolve this diplomatically and through the use of pressure than to use military force," Ambassador Dan Shapiro said in remarks about Iran aired by Israel's Army Radio today.

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May 18 2012

From The Guardian

Greek and Spanish fears hit markets again

France's new prime minister had harsh words for European leaders this morning for their failure to help Greece through the financial crisis.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, a former German teacher, added his voice to the chorus calling for a new growth agenda. Ayrault urged Brussels to put spare structural funds to work to help the Greek economy return to growth:

We waited too long before helping Greece. This has been going on for two years now and only gets worse....

[baksheesh]

From The Guardian

Barack Obama tells EU: boost growth now or face a global crisis

Barack Obama is to put pressure on Germany to ease the pain of austerity with policies to boost growth, as he uses two days of talks with the G8 industrial nations to warn Europe that it needs to act swiftly to spare the world economy from a second deep recession in four years.

Prior to the G8 summit at Camp David this weekend, a warning from the ratings agency Fitch that Greece's days in the single currency could be numbered heightened fears in Washington that the worsening crisis in the eurozone poses a threat to America's fragile recovery and President Obama's re-election chances.

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From The Guardian

Chinese fugitive Lai Changxing sentenced to life in prison

A billionaire entrepreneur who symbolised the wild excesses of China's economic rise in the 1990s has been jailed for life on charges of smuggling and bribery.

Lai Changxing's conviction by a court in Xiamen - a port city once considered his personal fiefdom - came after a 12-year extradition battle that ended last year, when Canada handed over the man often described as China's most wanted fugitive on condition that he not be given the death penalty.

[baksheesh]

From The Guardian

Iran's persecution of gay community revealed

The lifestyles of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Iran are comprehensively and systematically denied by the Islamic regime, which exposes them to horrific punishment, bullying and risk of suicide, a study has found.

The first detailed report on Iran's LGBT community has found that its members live under social and state repression, with some being persecuted, forced into exile or even sentenced to death.

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From The Guardian

Trayvon Martin postmortem reveals traces of drugs in 17-year-old's system

Trayvon Martin had traces of marijuana in his system on the night he was killed by a neighbourhood watch leader later charged with the teenager's murder, a postmortem report has revealed.

According to the document released on Thursday by prosecutors in Florida, traces of the drug THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient of marijuana, were found in Martin's blood and urine during an autopsy on 27 February, the day after he was killed in a confrontation with George Zimmerman.

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From The Guardian

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Why I won't be going to the London Olympics

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has said he would like to come to the London Olympics but will not be attending because Britain has "a problem" with him.

His decision to stay away highlights a dilemma for the British government, which faces an unprecedented influx of leaders from unsavoury regimes for the opening ceremony on 27 July.

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From The Guardian

Ai Weiwei supporters strip off as artist faces 'porn' investigation

When artist Ai Weiwei disappeared, supporters made online appeals for his return. When authorities handed him a £1.5m tax bill, they sent money to help pay it. And now that he faces an investigation for spreading pornography – his admirers have stripped off.

Internet users began tweeting their nude photographs after Ai announced that authorities had questioned his cameraman over pictures which showed the artist and four women naked.

Many Chinese contemporary artists have taken pictures of themselves without clothes, and the pictures of Ai that have emerged so far do not appear sexually charged. Some suspect that it may be an attempt by the authorities to smear the artist, whose 81-day detention this spring caused international outrage.

[baksheesh]

From The Guardian

Chinese fugitive Lai Changxing sentenced to life in prison

A billionaire entrepreneur who symbolised the wild excesses of China's economic rise in the 1990s has been jailed for life on charges of smuggling and bribery.

Lai Changxing's conviction by a court in Xiamen - a port city once considered his personal fiefdom - came after a 12-year extradition battle that ended last year, when Canada handed over the man often described as China's most wanted fugitive on condition that he not be given the death penalty.

[baksheesh]

From The Guardian

How to carry out the perfect snub

One can decry the anachronism that is any royal family until one's face is the hue of royal blood, but sometimes even those of us who are the staunchest of republicans must concede that there are certain fields in which royal members do simply reign above the rest of us. Wearing nude tights. Maintaining neutral facial expressions while watching performances of obscure forms of provincial dance. Visiting Tesco with an entourage of security. And, as robustly demonstrated this week by Queen Sofia of Spain, the execution of a perfect snub.

This week, the Spanish queen has dared to snub our very own – and she's done it with exquisite, icy style. Having accepted an invitation to the Queen's jubilee lunch at Windsor Castle on Friday, Sofia has now declared (or rather, had her people declare) that she won't be coming after all because "it would be inappropriate … in the current circumstances" – the unspoken but crystal clear circumstances being that Spain is still totally not cool with the way Britain is hanging on to Gibraltar.

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From The Guardian

Meet the planet's most powerful star. It's none other than Jennifer Lopez. Yes, really

Forbes magazine puts J-Lo at No 1 in the celebrity stakes – thereby making this the most ridiculous of all power lists.

You know how some of the stars we can see now actually died gazillions of years ago, but their light is only just reaching us? Please bear that in mind as we discuss this week's announcement that the world's most powerful star is Jennifer Lopez. Scientists are believed to be working round the clock to repair the tear in the fabric of space-time that has taken us back to 2001 – the prime of Miss Jennifer Lopez – but in the meantime Lost in Showbiz is urging you to be careful out there. If you hold any Enron stock, you might care to sell it, while the Nepalese royal family is advised to dine in bullet-proof vests until June is out.

We may return to the quantum-physical implications of the news later. For now, you should know that "respected business bible" Forbes has just anointed J-Lo the most powerful celebrity on the planet. Like the actual Bible, of course, Forbes carries its fair share of total and utter cobblers, and you have to think Jennifer's supremacy is the sort of thing only silly or frightened people could possibly believe.

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From The Guardian

Donna Summer's death: pop mourns singer who transformed dance music

Donna Summer, the singer who perhaps more than any other defined the disco era, has died aged 63 of cancer.

Stars of the film and music industry paid tribute to the influential singer, whose tracks included I Feel Love and Hot Stuff.

The actor Liza Minelli said: "When you lose a friend you feel like they are gone forever ... that is not true with my dear friend Donna. She was a queen, the Queen of disco, and we will be dancing to her music forever. My thoughts and prayers are with her family always."

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From The Guardian

Art's great nudes have gone skinny

Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano has taken some great (and, to be honest, not so great) paintings of nudes from the past and reimagined what they would look like if their bodies conformed to what the 21st-century thinks of as an ideal of beauty. The results are revealing – and quite shocking in what they say about our modern attitudes to women's bodies

[Blue Train]

Unknown language found stamped in ancient clay tablet

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/sh...-language.html

[Blue Train]

Registry tallies over 2,000 wrongful convictions since 1989

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,1446543.story

[Blue Train]

the Darwin Correspondence Project and Cambridge "somewhat" recreated one of Darwin's strangest tests.


http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/resul...ons-experiment


P.S. They have a great deal of Darwin's letters.

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May 22 2012

From The Guardian

US-Pakistan tensions deepen as Obama snubs Zardari at Nato summit

The rift between the US and Pakistan deepened on Monday as the Nato summit in Chicago broke up without a deal on Afghanistan supply routes.

Barack Obama, at a press conference to wind up the summit, made no attempt to conceal his exasperation, issuing a pointed warning to Pakistan it was in its wider interest to work with the US to avoid being "consumed" by extremists.

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From The Guardian

Greece heading out of euro, say UK voters

Voters are convinced the euro is heading for the rocks, but divided on whom they will blame if the double-dip recession deepens, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll.

By a crushing margin of 72% to 20% the British public believes that Greece is on its way out of the single currency club, and a majority of 52% judges that the eurozone's disintegration will go further, with other countries also being forced to leave. Some 26% believe we are set for a total unravelling, with a return to old national currencies like the French franc and the Deutsche mark in the heartland of the EU.

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From The Guardian

Shafilea Ahmed 'honour killing' witnessed by sister, court told

The sister of a teenager who was murdered by her parents when she refused to agree to an arranged marriage saw the killing, a court was told on Monday.

Alesha Ahmed told police she watched her parents "acting together" during the murder of her older sister Shafilea Ahmed, 17, in September 2003, Chester crown court heard.

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From The Guardian

Facebook shares tumble as underwriters desert stock

Shares in Facebook fell by 11% on Monday as underwriters deserted the stock and questions continued to be asked about how Nasdaq, the second largest US stock exchange, handled the flotation.

Pre-market trading had seen heavy selling of the stock, which was supported just above its $38 listing price on Friday by the leading banks who bought shares ahead of the initial public offering (IPO).

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From The Guardian

Gaddafi's former spy chief charged in Mauritania

Muammar Gaddafi's former intelligence chief, who is wanted by France, the international criminal court and Libya, has been charged by Mauritania's public prosecutor in a secret court hearing, his first public appearance since fleeing Libya's crumbling regime to the desert country.

Abdullah Senussi, a confidante and brother-in-law to Gaddafi, will face trial for entering Mauritania illegally with a falsified Malian passport, a crime that carries a maximum three-year jail term, a judicial source said.

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From The Guardian

Star Trek's Scotty to be blasted into orbit

Star Trek fans remember him as the USS Enterprise's chief engineer, a no-nonsense Scot whose role at the controls of the ship's transporter system spawned one of sci-fi's most legendary catchphrases.

On Tuesday however, it will be the turn of actor James Doohan himself to be "beamed up" to where few have ventured before when his remains, and that of more than 300 hardcore space enthusiasts, are blasted into orbit aboard a privately owned rocket.

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From The Guardian

Cannes film festival gets glimpse of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained

It was all very exciting. A crowd of journalists in Cannes was invited to a special presentation of "footage" of Quentin Tarantino's new film Django Unchained on Monday night at the Majestic Hotel on the Croisette, outside which there is a poster for the movie so massive it can be seen from space. We had been told to arrive in good time because the screening would begin precisely at 7.30pm.

Critics, bloggers and people in suits gathered in a large antechamber, sipping wine and feeling skittish yet solemn, like cardinals who had been invited to inspect a newly discovered splinter of St Francis's femur.[/I]

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From The Guardian

Cannes film festival: day six premieres – in pictures

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From The Guardian

Tim Roth: who's the daddy?

When Clarice Starling is first assigned to interview Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, we are told, in Thomas Harris's novel, that "a brief silence follows the name, always, in any civilised gathering". Something similar happens when you say you're off to interview Tim Roth. A light gasp, a small step back. Roth – who was set to play the younger Lecter in 2002's Red Dragon, until Anthony Hopkins dyed his hair and reprised the role – has a reputation for being slippery. He just doesn't give, I'm told. Meet him in California, people caution, and he clams up. Get an audience in London and he is prickly, defensive.

So why is it that in Cannes, at least, he couldn't be sweeter? Roth is warm and friendly; he has the guttural chuckle of an ageing rocker. Cannes makes him happy. Here there are no particular national- or class-based expectations. He doesn't have to be the scrappy skinhead of Alan Clarke's Made in Britain (1982) or Stephen Frears's The Hit (1984) – although he will admit to hamming it up off-screen at the start of his career, in order to fit such parts. It doesn't matter that he is, in fact, the relatively affluent son of a journalist; his father changed the family name from Smith to Roth in 1944, an act of anti-Nazi solidarity ("I get invited to an awful lot of Jewish functions," Roth says).

[baksheesh]

From The Guardian

A developing world of debt

Years after debt campaigners succeeded in persuading the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and G8 to abolish debts worth billions of dollars owed by developing countries, figures show total external debts are once again on the increase.

Data in the World Bank's global development finance 2012 report (pdf) shows total external debt stocks owed by developing countries increased by $437bn over 12 months to stand at $4tn at the end of 2010, the latest period for which data is available.

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From The Guardian

The euro marriage can be saved

Like a marriage in its last throes, the euro appears to be falling apart before our eyes. But does it really have to happen? It's worth remembering that the eurozone as a whole is in trade balance – it's comfortably solvent, so that settling of accounts could resolve the problem without any financing from the IMF or China. But any solution to the eurozone crisis will need to involve rejecting narratives of resentment and betrayal that can lead parties to inflict terrible damage on each other.

At the moment, the architects of the euro project still find it hard to forgive being hostage to Greece, whose economy is no larger than the state of Hesse. But the damage of a Greek exit will be out of all proportion to its size, as other dominoes totter, damaging confidence and trade even if they don't fall. It's the mark of a truly dysfunctional relationship when resentment at being threatened with break-up is the main reason no one will compromise to stop it happening.