Saturday, June 30, 2012

Joy Williams of The Civil Wars has baby boy




NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — It's a boy for Joy Williams of The Civil Wars.

Miles Alexander was born Saturday in the Music City. It's the first child for Williams and her husband Nate Yetton, the duo's manager. A statement says mama and son are happy and healthy.

Williams and her musical partner John Paul White officially went on maternity leave after a performance at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival earlier this month. The Grammy Award-winning duo plans to begin recording the follow-up to their surprise hit "Barton Hollow" during the hiatus.

Williams says she "never really knew the meaning of love at first sight until today."

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Online:

http://www.thecivilwars.com

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Follow www.twitter.com/AP_Country for the latest country music news. And follow Entertainment Writer Chris Talbott at www.twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.



Source & Image : Yahoo

McConaughey, 175 others asked to join film academy




LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Oscar-winning and nominated stars of "The Artist" and "The Help" have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The film academy announced its roster of potential new members Friday. It includes best actor winner Jean Dujardin and supporting actress Octavia Spencer, along with nominees Berenice Bejo and Jessica Chastain.

Oscar-nominated "Bridesmaids" star Melissa McCarthy, "Albert Nobbs" supporting actress Janet McTeer, "A Better Life" star Demian Bichir and best director winner Michel Hazanavicius are also among the 176 moviemaking professionals asked to become academy members.

Academy president Tom Sherak called the invitees "some of the most talented, most passionate contributors to our industry."

Other actors on the list include Matthew McConaughey, Bryan Cranston, Kerry Washington, Jonah Hill and Andy Serkis.

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Online:

www.oscars.org



Source & Image : Yahoo

Sheen's 'Anger' premiere gets warm ratings welcome




NEW YORK (AP) — Charlie Sheen can claim a winning reception back on weekly TV.

FX network says Thursday's debut of his sitcom, "Anger Management," was the most-watched series premiere in that network's history, drawing 5.5 million viewers. FX said Friday that the audience for the evening's second episode grew to more than 5.7 million viewers.

"Anger Management" marks Sheen's return to sitcoms after his tumultuous exit from his long-running CBS hit "Two and a Half Men" last season.



Source & Image : Yahoo

Endurance swimmer looks strong en route to Florida Keys










STORY HIGHLIGHTS



  • Penny Palfrey has swum about 70 miles

  • She is more than halfway across the expected distance to the Florida Keys

  • She started her swim in Cuba





(CNN) -- She has been scorched by the sun, stung by jellyfish and inspected by sharks. But Penny Palfrey keeps swimming.

Palfrey, 49, is vying to be the first person to swim 103 miles across the Florida straits without any assistance -- no shark cage, flippers, wet suit or snorkel.

And even though she has been in the water since Friday morning, the Australian-British dual citizen and grandmother of two shows no signs of quitting.

"Her mental and physical state are reported as strong," read a message on Palfrey's Facebook page Saturday afternoon.

"She reports no physical complaints," the crew reported. "She is still the boss in the water. She is all business."

As of 4 p.m. Saturday, Palfrey had swum 69.05 miles, breaking her record of 67 miles set in 2011 while swimming from Little Grand Cayman island to Big Grand Cayman island, the posting said.

Earlier Saturday, a meteorologist helping Palfrey's team told CNN he thought she would complete the swim between Cuba and the United States. "She is looking very strong and strong after 24 hours in the water is a good thing," meteorologist Bill Cottrill said.

"She has the best chance to make it," according to Cottrill. "I would say weatherwise there is no reason she shouldn't be able to."

Cottrill told CNN said the team expects Palfrey to complete the journey late Sunday afternoon. The Gulf Stream current added about 18 miles to her swim.

In 1997, 22-year-old swimmer Susie Malroney completed the feat, using a shark cage.

Last year, swimmer Diana Nyad twice tried to make the swim, also unassisted, but was turned back by health problems and stinging jellyfish.

A crew of 15, including medical personnel and staff updating Palfrey's social media pages, are following her in boats and kayaks.

She will stay nourished and hydrated by consuming a carbohydrate-rich drink every 30 minutes.

The crew also employs "shark shields," cables that hang from the boats and kayaks around Palfrey and emit a pulse designed to keep the predators at bay.

"We attach [the shields] to the kayaker and to the boat which emit an electric field through the water," Palfrey told reporters in Havana on Thursday. "When a shark comes within five meters it picks up the sensors on the snout. It doesn't harm them, but they don't like it and swim away."

According to the Facebook posting on Satuday, the devices may have come in handy after Palfrey spotted hammerhead sharks swimming beneath her.

The sharks, though, "quickly vanished," according to the posting.

Open-water swimming tips from the pros


Source & Image : CNN World

A Prince Siegfried Ready to Move On







When Angel Corella first joined American Ballet Theater in 1995, his charms were impossible to deny: He was as ebullient as a puppy. His smile could melt an iceberg. And Mr. Corella, born in Madrid, could dash off pirouettes as easily as others breathe.


On Thursday night he performed with Ballet Theater for the final time, in “Swan Lake,” opposite Paloma Herrera. Their partnership has meaning: While they went on to dance with others — and in many instances, more successfully — their earliest performance together in a full-length ballet was “Don Quixote” in 1996. It sent the audience into near-hysterics; the screams still reverberate in my ears.


But over the years Mr. Corella changed, and “Swan Lake” shows off a more meditative, introspective side of his personality and dancing. He portrays Prince Siegfried, an aristocrat whose mother is anxious to see him married off, as if he knew there were something else out there for him but isn’t sure how to find it. In a sense his suffering is universal, and Mr. Corella uses subtle means to indicate his internal pressure: a fading smile, a subtle sideways glance or a lonely stroll through happy, dancing couples.


The duality between Mr. Corella and Siegfried — for each there is the possibility of a new beginning but, with that, an ending to mourn — was palpable in this farewell performance, which nevertheless was weighed down by a production that has increasingly lost any semblance of freshness. (Alexei Ratmansky, isn’t it time for a redo?)


Ms. Herrera, while tough and teasing as Odile, the black swan, is too much of a dancer and not enough of a bird as Odette, the white swan. There’s an over-rehearsed quality to her performance that limits her ability to transform and be transformed.


Melanie Hamrick and Hee Seo, dancing with Gennadi Saveliev’s Benno in the peasant pas de trois, were well matched, bringing their own brand of lovely reserve to crisp piqué turns and hops on point. Devon Teuscher, who performed the part of a lead swan in the first act and appeared in the Spanish Dance in the second, constantly drew the eye for her elegant arms and épaulement, which lends her upper body such ease that nearly everyone else onstage looks constricted at the throat.


As the sorcerer von Rothbart, who escorts Odile to the prince’s birthday ball and seduces the eligible princesses one by one, Jared Matthews was out of his element. With the right dancer, it’s a diabolical scene; in this version von Rothbart requires a pirate’s swagger, yet Mr. Matthews was merely playing dress-up. Sarah Lane, as the Spanish Princess, did a better job of sweeping him off his feet than he did hers.


Consistent principal men are becoming an endangered species at Ballet Theater. Next Saturday Ethan Stiefel, dancing in “Le Corsaire,” will also retire from the company. For me, there are only three active and able male principals remaining: Marcelo Gomes, David Hallberg and Cory Stearns. The current roster of male soloists isn’t exactly overflowing with principal material.


As for Mr. Corella, the smile remains, but he has grown from a boy into a man. Now 36, he also directs the Barcelona Ballet, yet his youthful vivacity remains intact. During an emotional curtain call, in which dancers showered him with flowers, he dazzled the Met audience one last time with a flurry of multiple pirouettes. It was sweet, fitting and a touch of “Don Quixote” all over again. The crowd roared in appreciation. He laughed.



Source & Image : New York Times

Yitzhak Shamir, former Israeli PM, dies







As Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir presided over negotiations with Egypt on the post-treaty normalization process.

As Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir presided over negotiations with Egypt on the post-treaty normalization process.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS



  • Yitzhak Shamir was born in Poland

  • The 96-year-old politician was involved in key foreign policy initiatives

  • Netanyahu says he 'belonged to the generation of giants" that established the state





Jerusalem (CNN) -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir died Saturday, the country's prime minister's office said. He was 96.

Shamir twice served as Israeli premier: from 1983 to 1984, and from 1986 to 1992. He also was Israel's foreign minister from 1980 to 1986.

Born in Poland, Shamir moved to Palestine and fought for Israeli independence. He joined the Likud movement, serving as a member of Israel's parliament.

He succeeded Menachem Begin as prime minister in 1983.

"Yitzhak Shamir belonged to the generation of giants who established the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people on their land," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fellow Likud member.

Shamir was involved in key foreign policy initiatives.

He presided over negotiations with Egypt on the post-treaty normalization process, and started diplomatic relations with several African countries that had severed relations with Israel after the Yom Kippur War, according to a biography of Shamir on the prime minister's website.

Shamir ordered Operation Solomon, the airlift rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jews following a regime change in 1991. During the operation, which took less than 48 hours, 14,000 Jews boarded Israeli planes to emigrate to Israel, according to the Israeli government.

In September 1991, Shamir represented Israel at the International Peace Conference in Madrid.


Source & Image : CNN World

No Zombies, Just a Pint and an Aria




Inspector Morse Returns in ‘Endeavour,’ a Prequel




The dead walk the earth this Sunday night — and on PBS, no less.


It is a testament to the popularity of Inspector Morse, the British television character created 25 years ago by the novelist Colin Dexter, the producer Ted Childs and the actor John Thaw, that after he was killed off with great ceremony in 2000, it was thought necessary to bring him back. That exhumation has been accomplished with a prequel, “Endeavour,” which opens the new season of “Masterpiece Mystery!”


Sunday night’s episode, shown in Britain in January, was the pilot for a series that has been picked up by the ITV network for an additional four installments; presumably these will arrive on PBS in due course. Fans of the detective will already know that the title is Morse’s given name, which he kept secret and which was revealed near the end of the original series’s 33-episode run.


“Inspector Morse” was distinctive for three reasons: Mr. Thaw’s idiosyncratic, often unsympathetic performance; the testy relationship between his misanthropic, snobby, eternally disappointed Morse and Kevin Whately’s earnest, proletarian Sergeant Lewis; and the romantic Oxford locations where the two solved murders between bouts of bickering and heavy drinking.


“Endeavour” can trade on only the last of those, so there is an abundance of scenes featuring those same quadrangles and towers. Luckily for the producers, these landmarks look the same now as they would have in the 1960s, when “Endeavour” is set.


Shaun Evans (“The Take”) plays the young Endeavour Morse, a constable from a nearby town who is taken to Oxford to help with the case of a missing girl. True to form, he is already unhappy — we first see him laboriously typing a letter of resignation.


Mr. Evans is believable as the proto-Morse, highlighting the character’s distraction — his mind is always running ahead of events, sometimes down the wrong paths — and his self-righteous arrogance while projecting an energy that will eventually wither into the lassitude of the middle-aged inspector.


He wisely avoids the trap of trying to do a John Thaw imitation, but around him the show’s producers have laid on the “Inspector Morse” associations pretty thickly. There is the love of opera, of course — a key element in the plot — and a loving gaze at a red Jaguar. There is a hopeless infatuation with an unattainable woman. An early clue leads Endeavour to the Oxford suburb of Jericho, where the first Morse episode was set. Snippets of the composer Barrington Pheloung’s original Morse code theme music are heard.


Some of the time and attention lavished on nostalgia — perhaps wisely, from a ratings standpoint — could have been devoted to the pilot’s murder mystery plot, which starts off strong (with echoes of the roughly contemporary Profumo sex scandal) but comes to a rushed, melodramatic and fairly preposterous conclusion.


That ending mars what is otherwise a handsome and well-written effort, with good supporting performances by Jack Ashton, as a sergeant antagonized by the uppity new constable, and Roger Allam as the inspector who recognizes Endeavour’s talent and is set up to serve as his mentor in the future series.


Whether the “Endeavour” pilot, which drew an impressive 8.2 million viewers in Britain, will delight the die-hard “Inspector Morse” fan is questionable, though.


Beyond the easy pleasure of the Morse allusions, the tone and texture of the new work are substantially different: It’s blander, stiffer and more conventional, like many other well-made British period pieces. In hindsight, the original series may be overrated, but it had an acid tang that you remembered. At this point, “Endeavour” is more like ginger beer.


Masterpiece Mystery!


Endeavour


On PBS stations on Sunday night at 9 (check local listings).


Produced by Mammoth Screen Ltd. for ITV and Masterpiece. Directed by Colm McCarthy; written by Russell Lewis, based on characters created by Colin Dexter; Michele Buck and Damien Timmer, executive producers; Rebecca Eaton, executive producer for Masterpiece.


WITH: Shaun Evans (Detective Constable Endeavour Morse), Roger Allam (Detective Inspector Fred Thursday), Richard Lintern (Dr. Rowan Stromming), Charlie Creed-Miles (Teddy Samuels), Patrick Malahide (Richard Lovell), Jack Ashton (Detective Constable Ian McLeash) and James Bradshaw (Dr. Max Debryn).



Source & Image : New York Times

Custody, images at stage in Cruise-Holmes divorce




LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes first got together, he jumped on a couch, she gushed girlishly, and many of their fans said, "Huh?"

Their split could cause just as much drama.

Not only are the images of two Hollywood stars at stake, so is the future of 6-year-old Suri, with some speculating that Holmes' decision to file for divorce in New York might mean she's seeking sole custody of their daughter.

Ultimately, Cruise may have the most to lose.

"There's no question this divorce is going to hurt his public image," said Dorie Clark, author of the forthcoming "Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future."

"His brand was already tarnished significantly when he first got together with Holmes five years ago and was infamously jumping up and down on Oprah's couch, and shortly afterward the videos of him praising Scientology were leaked," she continued. "This divorce is another opportunity for questions to be raised about his personal life, his religious beliefs — which many consider outside the mainstream — and that's not what a box-office star really wants."

California divorce attorney Michael Kelly, who is not involved with the Cruise-Holmes case, called Holmes' East Coast filing "a tactical move" that signifies "there will be an attempt to gain an advantage."

New York's comparative-fault divorce laws could be advantageous for Holmes, he said. The couple lived in Los Angeles.

Cruise and Holmes married in 2006 after a whirlwind love affair. He proposed at the Eiffel Tower. Their wedding was held at a 15th century Italian castle.

She filed for divorce Thursday, ending her first marriage. This will be Cruise's third divorce. He was previously married to actresses Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman, with whom he has two children.

Cruise showed up alone at the recent Los Angeles and London premieres of his latest film, "Rock of Ages." Holmes also was absent earlier this month when Cruise received the Friars Club Entertainment Icon Award in New York. But he did bring Suri with him, allowing her to stay up late for the raunchy proceedings.

"Divorce will actually help Katie Holmes' brand," Clark said. "More people are going to be thinking about her and aware of her. This is generating a lot of sympathy and interest from people."

Holmes, 33, rose to fame on the teen soap "Dawson's Creek." She went on to appear in "Batman Begins," and earned raves for her roles in independent films such as 2003's "Pieces of April" and 2005's "Thank You for Smoking." She took a break after giving birth to Suri in April, 2006, and marrying Cruise in November.

She did just a handful of roles until stepping things up in 2011. Holmes played Jackie" Kennedy in the Emmy-winning miniseries "The Kennedys," appeared in Adam Sandler's "Jack and Jill" and just wrapped a film with William Hurt. She said she's set to start another project in July.

Meanwhile, Cruise, who turns 50 on Tuesday, has remained a megastar. His latest role, as an Axl Rose-style rock star in "Rock of Ages," has won him strong reviews (though not corresponding box-office results), and his most recent "Mission Impossible" installment, "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," has made more than $690 million worldwide.

"Tom Cruise's brand has always been the dynamic, likable hero — the 'Mission Impossible' star that you're rooting for — and it becomes harder for the public to get behind someone as a hero and want to go to the box office and cheer them on when there are serious questions about what kind of husband and father he is," Clark said.

Holmes' attorney, Jonathan Wolfe, said Friday that "Katie's primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter's best interest."

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AP Entertainment Writer Ryan Pearson contributed to this report.



Source & Image : Yahoo

Mohamed Morsi sworn in as Egypt's first popularly-elected president







Egyptians wave national flags during a rally in support of president-elect Mohamed Morsi in Cairo's Tahrir Square on June 29.

Egyptians wave national flags during a rally in support of president-elect Mohamed Morsi in Cairo's Tahrir Square on June 29.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS



  • NEW: Mohamed Morsi was sworn in before Egypt's constitutional court

  • A day earlier, Morsi told crowd at Tahrir Square that his authority comes from all Egyptians

  • He vows to help free political prisoners, including man convicted in 1993 World Trade Center blast





(CNN) -- Mohamed Morsi was sworn in Saturday as Egypt's first democratically-elected president, taking the helm of a deeply divided nation that is economically strapped and lacks a working government.

The historic ceremony took place amid tight security before the Supreme Constitutional Court and was overseen by Egypt's military rulers who have been in control of the country since Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year during a popular revolution.

"Today, the Egyptian people established a new life for complete freedom, for a true democracy," Morsi said after taking the oath.

"I swear by almighty God that I will uphold the republican system and respect the constitution of the law and look after the interests of the people," he said.

Morsi upstaged the ceremony Friday, taking to Cairo's Tahrir Square before thousands and declaring that the people are the source of his authority as president.

"The whole nation is listening to me," he said in the televised address. "There is no authority above the authority of the people."

Morsi's speech appeared aimed at Egypt's ruling military council, whose recent actions have raised concerns about whether it would fully hand over control to an elected government.

Egypt's electoral commission declared Morsi the president-elect Sunday after a runoff with Ahmed Shafik, a former air force general who served as Mubarak's last prime minister.

Morsi had been the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, but he resigned from the party shortly after he was elected president.

Just days before the election, a high court ruled that Egypt's parliament was unconstitutional.

Morsi's supporters are pushing for a confrontation with the generals, who following the court ruling ordered the Islamist-dominated parliament dissolved and announced they would retain legislative power for an indefinite time.

Additionally, the military rulers named a defense council to oversee national security and foreign policies while also declaring it would maintain control of all military affairs.

World leaders, meanwhile, will likely be watching what Morsi does next.

During the speech Friday, he said he would work to free the blind Egyptian cleric serving a life sentence in the United States for a conspiracy conviction related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

He said he wanted to work to free political prisoners, which he said included Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.

"Their rights will be on my shoulders and I won't spare effort" to free them, he said.

Morsi is a study in contrasts: a strict Islamist educated in Southern California who vowed during his campaign to stand for women's rights yet argued for banning them from the presidency.

During the historic campaign, Morsi said he would support democracy, women's rights and peaceful relations with Israel if he won.

But he has also called Israeli leaders "vampires" and "killers."

Morsi focused his campaign on appealing to the broadest possible audience after a slogan associated with his campaign, "Islam is the solution," sparked concerns that he could introduce a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy.

During the campaign, he said he had no such plans. His party seeks "an executive branch that represents the people's true will and implements their public interests," Morsi told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

Asked whether he would maintain Egypt's 1979 accord with Israel, Morsi said, "Yes, of course I will. I will respect it provided the other side keep it up and respect it."


Source & Image : CNN World

Moldy matters: How wasted food is destroying the environment











Inspired by a study by the U.N. that found a third of all food is wasted worldwide, Austrian artist Klaus Pichler created a remarkable set of images using rotting food products from around the globe.<span/> <br/><span/><br /><br/><br />In each picture, Pichler provides figures (aquired with the assitance of Austrian NGO Global2000) for transport distance and carbon footprint, all in relation to his home city of Vienna.

























HIDE CAPTION



'One Third,' a food waste project

Coco pralines

Beetroots

Blackberries

Chicken

Ice cream

Jelly

Cham cham (Indian sweets)

Pineapple

Water melon

Instant whipped cream

Route map




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STORY HIGHLIGHTS



  • Austrian artist has created a series of images that challenge wasteful attitude to food

  • Project inspired by U.N. report that reveals one third of all food worldwide is wasted

  • Wasted food is a major cause of avoidable CO2 emissions

  • Anti-waste pressure group provide tips for cutting down on uneaten food





(CNN) -- At first glance, Austrian artist Klaus Pichler's spell-binding photographs could be mistaken for a set of stylish advertisements. It takes a moment to digest -- excuse the pun -- that you're staring at pictures of rotting food.

Among them, a pineapple hangs suspended in negative space above an antique gold dish -- its formerly yellow flesh having given way to luminous green mold; Deep purple beetroots sit snugly in an elegant porcelain vase with thin films of gray fur accumulating on their skin.

The idea is simple: "To expose the contradiction between the beauty of food products -- particularly as presented in the media -- and the ugly reality of overconsumption and waste," explained Pichler.

The title of his new series -- "One Third" -- derives from a 2011 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report. It revealed a chilling statistic: A third of all food products worldwide go uneaten.

Depending on the type of food in question, this figure ranges from between 25% and 75% and, altogether, it amounts to 1.3 billion tons of edible goods discarded each year.

In a world where approximately 925 million people suffer chronic hunger, the overarching moral implications are stark. But the less documented environmental consequences are almost as alarming.








Within the next year, Dutch firm Van Bergen Kolpa Architects hope to have a working prototype of a supermarket farm that could produce most of the food items found in any grocery store.





















The 'Park Supermarket'





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According to a Greenpeace report, the food industry is responsible for creating up to 30% of the world's total annual carbon emissions.

"The dominant food production system is based on fossil fuel at every level," said Dr Martin Caraher, Professor of Food and Health Policy at London's City University. "It needs oil to make the fertilizer, oil for the farm, oil for the food processing, oil for the packaging and oil to transport it to the shops."

Read related: Futuristic farm shop grows food in synthetic veg patch


With countless cookery shows and ever more seductive advertisements, food has become a major part of the culture industry
Klaus Pichler, artist


But wasted food doesn't just entail all the embedded carbon released during production and transportation. It generates more emissions once it's discarded on the trash heap.

"A significant percentage of the household food that is wasted ends up in landfill, where it produces CO2 and methane gas," explained Richard Swannell, director of waste prevention at the UK-based Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP). "Methane is 23 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas," he added.

As such, WRAP calculates that every ton of food and drink wasted roughly equates to 3.8 tons of greenhouse gas emissions that could otherwise have been avoided.

"Applying this factor to the quantity of food waste in the UK, leads to an estimated 17 million tons of CO2 in 2010 -- the equivalent to the emissions of 1 in 5 cars on our roads," said Swannell.

And yet a recent study revealed that up to 40% of food thrown away by consumers in Europe is still in its original packaging when it lands in the dustbin. This all begs the question: Why do we squander so much?

Pichler says that the high-end, fashion magazine finish of his images reflect what he sees as the "over-commoditization" of food as a lifestyle accessory.

"With countless cookery shows and ever more seductive advertisements, food has become a major part of the culture industry," he said. "This, along with the false economy of discount bulk buys, is part of why people are purchasing more than they can use.

"It's a peculiarly Western phenomenon," he added.

Dr Ulf Sonesson is senior scientist in environmental systems at the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology -- the body commissioned by the UNFAO to coordinate its food waste report.


When you get home with your shopping, transfer as much as you can straight into the freezer
Richard Swannell, director of waste prevention, WRAP


He agrees with Pichler that the problem is symptomatic of the West's culture of cheap disposable goods. His research found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that in Europe and North America, each consumer wastes between 95 and 115 kilograms of food a year, whilst only 6 to 11 kilograms of edible goods are discarded per person in Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia.

These numbers don't reveal the full extent of the disparity.

Sonesson notes that the majority of uneaten food in places like Sub-Saharan Africa is created at the point of production, largely as a consequence of things like spoiled crops or poor refrigeration.

In contrast, supply-side practices have become more efficient in wealthy industrialized nations, according to Sonesson, but consumers have become much less diligent: "We throw away more food than ever before," he said.

Sonesson contends that the problem boils down to basic economic logic. He says that, despite some recent commodity fluctuations, the price of food in industrialized nations continues to drop, so there's less incentive to think about what's in the fridge, or make an effort to avoid cooking more than we need.

"As a result, today we have less knowledge about cooking and food preparation ... My parents and grandparents knew how to make use of everything," he said.

What would it take to wind back the clock? Swannell thinks that it would only require a series of relatively small behavioral modifications:

"For instance, just taking five minutes to go through your store cupboard and fridge before making a shopping list can stop you wasting money buying ingredients you may already have.


Today we have less knowledge about cooking and food preparation. My parents and grandparents knew how to make use of everything
Dr Ulf Sonesson, senior scientist, SIK


"Or, when you get home with your shopping, transfer as much as you can straight into the freezer. If you have large packets of chicken pieces or fish, divide them up and freeze individual portions ... there's loads of simple, easy things like this that you can do."

But it's not just consumers who are at fault. Pichler says that supermarkets are guilty of discarding large quantities of food for seemingly frivolous reasons.

"There's a tendency for supermarkets to put pressure on food producers to supply them with 'perfect' products. This pressure is to blame for the common practice of goods being discarded and destroyed immediately after harvest because of minor imperfections," he said.

"Furthermore, it's not unusual for supermarket chains to purposely acquire a surplus of food, so shelves can remain fully stocked with perishable items -- pastries, meat, fruit and vegetables -- right until closing time," he said.

Farm in the city could be supermarket of the future

But the tides might be turning. Swannell points out that, although a long-time coming, people in some nations are finally waking up to the seriousness of the issue. He points out that in 2007, the UK wasted 8.3 million tons of food, but by 2010 that figure had dropped to 7.2 million.

Only time will tell if the rest of the industrialized world will follow suit.


Source & Image : CNN World

London, an Olympian Among Cities







WASHINGTON — The attention London receives this summer is sure to include the kind of glossy public relations usually associated with hosts of the Olympic Games. Surely the script is already written. Here is a modern metropolis with deep roots in the past, a city that eagerly embraces all the earth’s diversity, that operates with magical efficiency, that brings to bear the most advanced technologies, that celebrates with all its might the world’s elite athletic competitors.


But that Olympic veneer has little to do with why we should care about London in the first place, which is why we are lucky the Folger Shakespeare Library here has chosen to add its quiet, studied voice to the season’s festivities with its exhibition “Open City: London, 1500-1700.” We should care, the show suggests, because of a more profound role London has played in world culture by shaping ideas of what a great city can be.


At first glance the exhibition makes the claim seem mighty unlikely. Could those antique centuries really have so much to do with the three centuries that followed? Sure, in 1500 London was a modest city with nearly all its 50,000 residents living within its medieval walls, and in 1700 London had 10 times the population. But look closely at the show’s maps, histories, plays, proclamations, ledgers and letters, along with facsimiles of rare documents from the British Museum, and try to find a great city taking shape in the midst of the foolishness, brutality, dogma and trauma.


In the 1530s King Henry VIII dissolved the city’s monasteries, doling out their property to favorites, some of whom carted away relics to use in constructing their aristocratic manses.


Attitudes toward religious practice shifted so violently that they can be traced in the fate of Edmund Bonner, who was made bishop of London by Henry VIII when the English church was Roman Catholic. Henry’s son, Edward VI, imprisoned Bonner for not using the Protestant Book of Common Prayer; Edward’s Catholic sister, Mary, reinstated him as bishop; Mary’s sister, Elizabeth, imprisoned him yet again.


At the time, church worship was not only uniform (established by the monarchy), it was also mandatory, with an exemption offered to foreign diplomats.


And then there was the 17th-century civil war. A striking panoramic view of London here by Wenceslaus Hollar shows the city in triumphant expanse, but the map was published in 1647, when King Charles I was imprisoned and London was almost a parliamentary military garrison.


Meanwhile, London’s public market in Cheapside was so marked by fraud and vice of all kinds that an early-17th-century play by Thomas Middleton, shown here in an early edition, is about the impossible: “A Chast Mayd in Cheape-Side.” She is named Moll (prostitute) and is married off to a suitor named Whorehound.


By the 1640s the government had grown so wary of the liberties of the London stage that a parliamentary act suppressed “publique Plays and Play-houses, Dancing on the Ropes, and Bear-baitings.”


Amid these controversies and censorship, there was also disease. A 1625 proclamation from Charles I calls off London’s three-day Bartholomew Fair to ensure “universall safety” because of the plague. And from 1665 we see a listing of the causes of death for all Londoners that year; of the 97,306 burials, 68,596 were attributed to the plague.


The next year, though, came the real apocalypse. The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed much of the city: 273 acres were laid waste, 130,200 houses burned, 11 parish churches survived out of 89. A 1666 map here by Hollar is shocking, as if the entire center of a metropolis had been excised.


How, in the midst of all this, did a great city emerge? The exhibition’s curators, Kathleen Lynch, executive director of the Folger Institute, assisted by Elizabeth Walsh, head of reader services at the Folger, argue that during these two centuries, transformations took place in three major public arenas, “gathering places where people mixed for business, leisure and worship”: church, the theater and the market. And that those changes created an “open city.”


The case builds indirectly — almost too indirectly, as display cases narrowly focus on, say, the fate of St. Paul’s Cathedral or the development of Covent Garden. But gradually the argument takes shape and the transformations of religion, culture and commerce intertwine.


When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, for example, the unity of the church was challenged. The king was not seeking to stimulate debate; he was seeking a new form of conformity. But he demonstrated the possibility of altering the unalterable, thus leading to the back-and-forth extremes of the following century, calling into question ideas about the established church’s relationship to the state.



Source & Image : New York Times

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes divorcing




LOS ANGELES (AP) — It always seemed more than a little weird, didn't it? The whirlwind romance of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes with its very public, very emphatic proclamations of love. It all occurred too quickly and too loudly to seem real.

Now, after nearly six years of marriage, Holmes is divorcing Cruise. She filed the papers on Thursday, said Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields. The two share a daughter, 6-year-old Suri, who's been featured in celebrity media nearly as frequently as her parents.

But it's telling that even in addressing their split in the typically vague fashion of famous people, Cruise still refers to Holmes by the name he called her: Kate, as if to distance her from the adorable Katie audiences came to know and love from the teen soap "Dawson's Creek."

"Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children," Cruise's representative, Amanda Lundberg, told The Associated Press. "Please allow them their privacy to work this out."

Holmes' attorney, Jonathan Wolfe, made a similar plea Friday: "This is a personal and private matter for Katie and her family. Katie's primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter's best interest."

But we've never been able to leave them alone — and even if we tried, they probably wouldn't let us.

Theirs was a bond that never really made sense on paper, despite Cruise's famously euphoric couch-jumping on "The Oprah Winfrey" show and Holmes' starry-eyed confession that she'd had a crush on the "Top Gun" star when she was a girl. Cruise turns 50 on Tuesday, Holmes is 33.

They'd kiss passionately for the benefit of photographers on red carpets and were all-too happy to share the romantic details of their engagement: He popped the question at the Eiffel Tower in Paris early one morning in June 2005. The wedding itself in November 2006 was a fairy-tale, A-list extravaganza at a 15th century Italian castle before a Church of Scientology minister.

So why didn't we believe them? Maybe because it always felt like they were trying so hard to prove to the world they were in love.

"I can't be cool. I can't be laid-back," Cruise said during his notorious "Oprah" appearance. "Something happened and I want to celebrate it."

Cruise has two children with his previous wife, Nicole Kidman. The actor was also previously married to Mimi Rogers. This was Holmes' first marriage.

Cruise showed up alone at recent premieres of the musical film "Rock of Ages," in which he's earning strong reviews for his performance as an Axl Rose-style lead singer. Holmes also was absent earlier this month when Cruise received the fourth-ever Friars Club Entertainment Icon Award. He said at the time that Holmes was overseas and the family would reunite in Iceland for Father's Day.

Yet a year ago, in receiving an award from Women in Film, Holmes thanked Cruise in the audience, saying his "commitment to his work and family inspires me daily."

Before the relationship, Holmes had drawn acclaim for her work in films like "Wonder Boys" and "Pieces of April." And Cruise was ... well, he was Cruise, one of the biggest stars on the planet. But the marriage, and the general speculation about its legitimacy, seemed to hurt both their images.

It was around the time of the "Oprah" appearance that Sumner Redstone and Paramount broke ties with Cruise after their long relationship. Cruise's company, Cruise/Wagner Productions, then signed a deal with First & Goal LLC.

Redstone was recently quoted by The Hollywood Reporter as saying that he "actually fired Tom. His behavior was terrible ... He was jumping on the couch on the Oprah show. Women hated him. A lot of people said they would never come back and see Tom Cruise."

Kelly Lynch, editor of the pop-culture website Socialite Life, noted Friday the August 2005 W Magazine cover story on Holmes in which a woman described as Holmes' "Scientology chaperone" sat in on the interview and chimed in on her responses, even though Holmes herself was consistently ebullient about Cruise.

The chaperone also deflected particularly pointed or uncomfortable questions about rumors that this love might not be real.

"She wasn't Joey from 'Dawson's Creek' anymore," Lynch said. "It was almost like the life had been sucked out of her when she started dating him."

Her first film back, the 2008 heist comedy "Mad Money," was a critical and commercial failure. That same year, Cruise came out as the eyepatch-wearing star of the Nazi thriller "Valkyrie," which drew mixed reviews but still made $200 million worldwide.

Holmes' recent films include Adam Sandler's "Jack and Jill" and the Emmy-winning mini-series "The Kennedys," in which she played Jackie Kennedy. Cruise, meanwhile, starred in the fourth film in the "Mission: Impossible" series, "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol," which has made more than $690 million worldwide.

Lynch said she was surprised by the demise of the duo dubbed "TomKat" because she figured that, no matter what, Cruise and Holmes would always try to maintain the meticulously crafted image that they were the perfect couple.

"Despite some of my reservations about the relationship, I thought they were happy to kind of swim along as man and wife, despite reports in every sort of magazine that they weren't getting along, that Katie is trapped in the marriage," Lynch said. "But I never truly believed that they were truly in love. It felt very arranged."

How the divorce impacts either of their images or careers remains to be seen, said veteran celebrity publicist Howard Bragman.

"They're both going to be defined by their choices. Tom was never really defined by the marriage. Tom was defined by Tom. He's such a force of nature," he said. "A single Tom Cruise is an interesting phenomenon. I think we'll be hearing about him dating.

"Katie will be fine. I think this raises her to a new level. I think she'll get more active in her career," Bragman added. "She's got talent, beauty, a good family, a good support system, good Midwestern values — these things are all going to serve her. I think mostly she's a good mother. That's what I respect her most for."

___

AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report from New York.



Source & Image : Yahoo