Unveiling the programming for this year's Rome Film Festival, artistic director Marco Mueller admitted that the eighth edition will be "contradictory, schizophrenic." That's because the festival still is struggling to find a balance between making a splash on the international scene, where it is overshadowed by the long-established Venice Film Festival, and serving as something of a celebratory cinema party for the citizens of Rome.
In 2012, former Warner Bros. Italia head Paolo Ferrari stepped into the post of president and Mueller came to Rome after highly successful stints with festivals in Rotterdam, Locarno and Venice. They arrived with guns blazing, boasting that the 2012 event would host 60 world premieres. Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained -- an homage to Italy-made spaghetti Westerns -- was rumored to be coming. But in the end, their efforts earned only lukewarm reviews: Django wasn't ready in time, and most of those world premieres, some of which were booed, failed to impress.
A contentious budget battle followed. Before stakeholders -- which include the city of Rome, the Lazio regional government and the Rome Chamber of Commerce -- approved this year's $15.2 million budget, the festival heads promised to spend less time chasing world premieres and focus more on Italian productions while also mounting an event that served the public in the hope of growing ticket revenue, which amounted to only $276,000 in 2012.
Even though they won guarantees of support, regional government head Nicola Zingaretti and Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino, who both pushed hard to force the event to return to its roots as a local cinema celebration, conspicuously skipped the festival's lineup announcement in mid-October.
Mueller and other officials now are careful to refer to the event as a "fest-festival," and Ferrari said the uncertainty hurt preparations for this year's event: "Until the beginning of summer, we did not know what [the new political figures] wanted from us," he says.
While fest organizers aren't trumpeting the exact number of world premieres set to unspool, the schedule does include the debut of MarcTurtletaub's Gods Behaving Badly, IsabelCoixet's Another Me and JonathanDemme's Fear of Falling.
The festival -- which hosted the world premiere of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2 in 2012 -- also has at least one blockbuster on tap. It has scheduled The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which will screen out of competition three days after its world premiere in London and eight days before its Nov. 22 bow in the U.S.
Will the adjustments the festival is making quiet its critics? Says veteran film journalist Paolo Mereghetti, "This year is an essential proving point for the festival in its evolution."
WASHINGTON (AP) — Obama administration officials defended U.S. efforts in Syria Thursday against blistering criticism from Republicans who claim Washington has goals, but no strategy to find a solution that would end the bloody conflict affecting nations throughout the Mideast.
Robert Ford, U.S. ambassador to Syria, testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States is proud of the humanitarian and other assistance it has provided to the Syrian opposition trying to topple President Bashar Assad's government. He acknowledged that the Syrian people were "deeply disappointed" when the U.S. did not take military action against the Syrian regime, but said the administration is working furiously to arrange a conference in Geneva next month to set up a transitional government and end the bloodshed.
Ford had tense exchanges with two of the committee's harshest GOP critics.
"You continue to call this a civil war, Ambassador Ford," said Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. "This isn't a civil war anymore; this is a regional conflict. It's spread to Iraq. We now have al-Qaida resurgence in Iraq. It's destabilizing Jordan. Iran is all in. Hezbollah has 5,000 troops there. For you to describe this as a quote, 'civil war,' of course, is a gross distortion of the facts, which again makes many of us question your fundamental strategy because you are — you don't describe the realities on the ground."
Ford said he does not think that Assad can win militarily and only has the advantage in a few places like around Aleppo in northern Syria. He said Assad has a disadvantage on the battleground in other places, including some in the east and south.
McCain was not satisfied, saying Assad's killing of civilians remained unchecked.
"Come on. ... The fact is that he was about to be toppled a year ago, or over a year ago. Then Hezbollah came in. Then the Russians stepped up their effort. Then the Iranian Revolutionary Guard intervened in what you call a, quote, 'civil war,' and he turned the tide. And he continues to maintain his position of power and slaughtering innocent Syrian civilians. And you are relying on a Geneva conference, right?"
The prospects for an international peace conference in Geneva to end the war are unclear.
Assad told the Arab League-U.N. envoy Wednesday that foreign support for the armed opposition must end if any political solution to the country's conflict is to succeed.
The United States, Russia and the United Nations have been trying for months to bring the Syrian government and the opposition together in Geneva to attempt to negotiate a political resolution to the conflict. After repeated delays, efforts renewed in earnest last month to organize the conference, but the Syrian opposition remains deeply divided over whether to attend, while the government refuses to sit down with the armed opposition.
Meanwhile, fighting continued to rage in Syria. And the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights increased its estimate of the death toll of the war now in its third year. It said more than 120,000 people have been killed since the start of conflict, up from the previous estimate of 100,000. The new estimate said more than 61,000 of the dead were civilians.
"The problem itself is tragic ... and we want to help them," Ford said in one exchange with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the committee. "But ultimately, Senator, Syrians must fix this problem, and ultimately, Senator, it's going to require them to sit down at a table. The sooner they start, the better. But in the meantime, we will keep helping the opposition, Senator."
Corker, who has long been critical of the slow pace of aid to Syria, said he thinks the U.S. assistance to Syrian opposition has been an "embarrassment."
"I find it appalling that you would sit here and act as if we're doing the things we said we would do three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago," said Corker. "The London 11 (group of countries that support the opposition) has to look at us as one of the most feckless nations they've ever dealt with."
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., cautioned that the U.S. should approach the situation in Syria "with a lot of humility, given what we've learned after we intervened in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan; after what we've seen go on in Egypt."
"We should just have a little humility in the United States in terms of our ability to control events on the ground in these countries," he said.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the Foreign Relations panel's chairman, said in prepared remarks that progress toward destroying Syria's chemical weapons was "the only positive note" in the worsening crisis.
He referred to the announcement earlier Thursday by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that Syria had completed the destruction of equipment used to produce chemical weapons, meeting another deadline in an ambitious timeline to eliminate the country's entire stockpile by mid-2014.
But Menendez lamented the worsening humanitarian crisis caused by the war, noting it has created more than 2 million refugees, and he said lack of progress on a negotiated political settlement portends continued bloodshed and suffering.
___
Associated Press Writer Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.
This July 3, 2013 photo released by ABC shows Jimmy Kimmel on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." ABC is apologizing for a segment of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in which a child joked about killing Chinese to help erase the U.S. debt. The boy's unscripted comment came during a comedy bit in which youngsters commented on news events. ABC's apology came in response to a complaint from a group called 80-20, which identifies itself as a pan Asian-American political organization. (AP Photo/ABC, Randy Holmes, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — ABC is apologizing for a segment of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in which a child joked about killing Chinese people to help erase the U.S. debt.
The boy's unscripted comment came during a comedy bit in which youngsters commented on news events. The skit, aimed at poking fun at childish politicians, aired last week on Kimmel's late-night talk show.
ABC's apology came in response to a complaint from a group called 80-20 that identifies itself as a pan-Asian-American political organization.
In an Oct. 25 letter to the group, ABC said it would never purposefully do anything to upset the Chinese, Asian or other communities. The network says the skit will be edited out of the "Jimmy Kimmel Live" episode for future airings or any other distribution, including online.
Thawing permafrost: The speed of coastal erosion in Eastern Siberia has nearly doubled
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
29-Oct-2013
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Contact: Sina Loeschke medien@awi.de 49-471-483-12008 Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
Bremerhaven, October 29, 2013. The high cliffs of Eastern Siberia which mainly consist of permafrost continue to erode at an ever quickening pace. This is the conclusion which scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research have reached after their evaluation of data and aerial photographs of the coastal regions for the last 40 years. According to the researchers, the reasons for this increasing erosion are rising summer temperatures in the Russian permafrost regions as well the retreat of the Arctic sea ice. This coastal protection recedes more and more on an annual basis. As a result, waves undermine the shores. At the same time, the land surface begins to sink. The small island of Muostakh east of the Lena Delta is especially affected by these changes. Experts fear that it might even disappear altogether should the loss of land continue.
The interconnectedness is clear and unambiguous: The warmer the east Siberian permafrost regions become, the quicker the coast erodes. "If the average temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius in the summer, erosion accelerates by 1.2 meters annually," says AWI geographer Frank Gnther, who investigates the causes of the coastal breakdown in Eastern Siberia together with German and Russian colleagues, and who has published his findings in two scientific articles.
In these studies, he and his team evaluated high-resolution air and satellite photos from 1951 to 2012 as well as measurements of the past four years. In addition, the researchers surveyed four coastal sections along the Laptev Sea (see map) and on the island of Muostakh.
One example of the changes documented in their research are the warming summers. While the temperatures during the period of investigation exceeded zero degrees Celsius on an average of 110 days per year, the scientists counted a total of 127 days in the years 2010 and 2011. The following year, 2012, the number of days with temperatures above freezing increased to 134.
This increase in temperature is not without consequences. Whereas a thick layer of sea ice used to protect the frozen soil almost all year round, it now recedes in this part of the Arctic for increasing periods of time during the summer months. The number of summer days on which the sea ice in the southern Laptev Sea vanishes completely grows steadily. "During the past two decades, there were, on average, fewer than 80 ice-free days in this region per year. During the past three years, however, we counted 96 ice-free days on average. Thus, the waves can nibble at the permafrost coasts for approximately two more weeks each year," explains AWI permafrost researcher Paul Overduin.
The waves dig deep recesses into the base of the high coasts. The result: The undermined slopes break off bit by bit. During the past 40 years, the coastal areas surveyed retreated on average 2.2 meters per year. "During the past four years, this value has increased at least 1.6 times, in certain instances up to 2.4 times to reach 5.3 meters per year," says Paul Overduin.
For the little island of Muostakh east of the harbour town of Tiksi, this may well mean extinction. "In fewer than one hundred years, the island will break up into several sections, and then it will disappear quickly," predicts Frank Gnther. On its northern tip, the island shows fluctuating annual erosion rates between 10 and 20 meters per year, and it has already lost 24 per cent of its area in the past 60 years. Because the subsurface here consists of more than 80 per cent of ice that has formed within the soil, and since the ice is gradually melting, the island's surface collapses as well. The scientists speak of a 34 per cent loss in volume. "If one bears in mind that it took tens of thousands of years for the island to form through sedimentary deposition, then its disintegration is proceeding at a very rapid pace," says Paul Overduin.
In addition, long-term studies conducted by AWI scientists show the impact of coastal erosion for the sea as well. Depending on the kind of erosion and the particular structure of the coast, between 88 and 800 tons of plant-, animal, and microorganism-based carbon are currently washed into the sea per year and kilometre of coastline these are materials that had been sealed in the permafrost thus far. With regard to the Laptev Sea, this translates into approximately one eighth of the organic carbon that is transported by the Lena River annually and the Lena is a river that encompasses a drainage basin the size of the Mediterranean. "We can, however, assume larger quantities if this accelerating coastal erosion we currently observe continues," the scientists write in their subject-specific paper for the Biogeosciences special volume: "Interactions between the land and sea in the Lena Delta Region." Once in the water, carbon may turn into carbon dioxide and, as a result, contribute to the acidification of the oceans: the composition of our oceans becomes less alkaline.
###
These studies were conducted as part of the PROGRESS project which is funded by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research. PROGRESS is the acronym for Potsdamer Forschungs- und Technologieverbund fr Naturgefahren, Klimawandel und Nachhaltigkeit (Potsdam Research Cluster for Georisk Analysis, Environmental Change and Sustainability). In addition to the Alfred Wegener Institute, sectors of the Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum (German Geo Research Center), the Potsdam-Institut fr Klimafolgenforschung (Potsdam Institute for the Study of Climate Change), as well as the Hasso-Plattner-Institut fr Softwaresystemtechnik (Hasso Plattner Institute for Software System Technology) are participating in this project. For more information on PROGRESS, please visit the project website http://www.earth-in-progress.de.
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Thawing permafrost: The speed of coastal erosion in Eastern Siberia has nearly doubled
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
29-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Sina Loeschke medien@awi.de 49-471-483-12008 Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
Bremerhaven, October 29, 2013. The high cliffs of Eastern Siberia which mainly consist of permafrost continue to erode at an ever quickening pace. This is the conclusion which scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research have reached after their evaluation of data and aerial photographs of the coastal regions for the last 40 years. According to the researchers, the reasons for this increasing erosion are rising summer temperatures in the Russian permafrost regions as well the retreat of the Arctic sea ice. This coastal protection recedes more and more on an annual basis. As a result, waves undermine the shores. At the same time, the land surface begins to sink. The small island of Muostakh east of the Lena Delta is especially affected by these changes. Experts fear that it might even disappear altogether should the loss of land continue.
The interconnectedness is clear and unambiguous: The warmer the east Siberian permafrost regions become, the quicker the coast erodes. "If the average temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius in the summer, erosion accelerates by 1.2 meters annually," says AWI geographer Frank Gnther, who investigates the causes of the coastal breakdown in Eastern Siberia together with German and Russian colleagues, and who has published his findings in two scientific articles.
In these studies, he and his team evaluated high-resolution air and satellite photos from 1951 to 2012 as well as measurements of the past four years. In addition, the researchers surveyed four coastal sections along the Laptev Sea (see map) and on the island of Muostakh.
One example of the changes documented in their research are the warming summers. While the temperatures during the period of investigation exceeded zero degrees Celsius on an average of 110 days per year, the scientists counted a total of 127 days in the years 2010 and 2011. The following year, 2012, the number of days with temperatures above freezing increased to 134.
This increase in temperature is not without consequences. Whereas a thick layer of sea ice used to protect the frozen soil almost all year round, it now recedes in this part of the Arctic for increasing periods of time during the summer months. The number of summer days on which the sea ice in the southern Laptev Sea vanishes completely grows steadily. "During the past two decades, there were, on average, fewer than 80 ice-free days in this region per year. During the past three years, however, we counted 96 ice-free days on average. Thus, the waves can nibble at the permafrost coasts for approximately two more weeks each year," explains AWI permafrost researcher Paul Overduin.
The waves dig deep recesses into the base of the high coasts. The result: The undermined slopes break off bit by bit. During the past 40 years, the coastal areas surveyed retreated on average 2.2 meters per year. "During the past four years, this value has increased at least 1.6 times, in certain instances up to 2.4 times to reach 5.3 meters per year," says Paul Overduin.
For the little island of Muostakh east of the harbour town of Tiksi, this may well mean extinction. "In fewer than one hundred years, the island will break up into several sections, and then it will disappear quickly," predicts Frank Gnther. On its northern tip, the island shows fluctuating annual erosion rates between 10 and 20 meters per year, and it has already lost 24 per cent of its area in the past 60 years. Because the subsurface here consists of more than 80 per cent of ice that has formed within the soil, and since the ice is gradually melting, the island's surface collapses as well. The scientists speak of a 34 per cent loss in volume. "If one bears in mind that it took tens of thousands of years for the island to form through sedimentary deposition, then its disintegration is proceeding at a very rapid pace," says Paul Overduin.
In addition, long-term studies conducted by AWI scientists show the impact of coastal erosion for the sea as well. Depending on the kind of erosion and the particular structure of the coast, between 88 and 800 tons of plant-, animal, and microorganism-based carbon are currently washed into the sea per year and kilometre of coastline these are materials that had been sealed in the permafrost thus far. With regard to the Laptev Sea, this translates into approximately one eighth of the organic carbon that is transported by the Lena River annually and the Lena is a river that encompasses a drainage basin the size of the Mediterranean. "We can, however, assume larger quantities if this accelerating coastal erosion we currently observe continues," the scientists write in their subject-specific paper for the Biogeosciences special volume: "Interactions between the land and sea in the Lena Delta Region." Once in the water, carbon may turn into carbon dioxide and, as a result, contribute to the acidification of the oceans: the composition of our oceans becomes less alkaline.
###
These studies were conducted as part of the PROGRESS project which is funded by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research. PROGRESS is the acronym for Potsdamer Forschungs- und Technologieverbund fr Naturgefahren, Klimawandel und Nachhaltigkeit (Potsdam Research Cluster for Georisk Analysis, Environmental Change and Sustainability). In addition to the Alfred Wegener Institute, sectors of the Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum (German Geo Research Center), the Potsdam-Institut fr Klimafolgenforschung (Potsdam Institute for the Study of Climate Change), as well as the Hasso-Plattner-Institut fr Softwaresystemtechnik (Hasso Plattner Institute for Software System Technology) are participating in this project. For more information on PROGRESS, please visit the project website http://www.earth-in-progress.de.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is paying tribute to his new FBI director.
The president plans to speak at an installation ceremony later Monday for James Comey at FBI headquarters a few blocks from the White House.
Comey was a top Justice Department official in the Bush administration and took over last month for Robert Mueller (MUHL'-ur), who stepped down after 12 years of heading the agency.
Comey has taken over an agency that has shifted from primarily focusing on domestic crime to also fighting terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
NEW YORK (AP) — Team USA will now wear the Made in the USA label. Every article of clothing made by Ralph Lauren for the U.S. Winter Olympic athletes in Sochi, including their opening and closing ceremony uniforms and their Olympic Village gear, has been made by domestic craftsman and manufacturers.
During the 2012 games in London, it was a flashpoint in the media and among Washington politicians that much of the U.S. apparel was made overseas, especially in China.
Ralph Lauren Corp., which has been making most of the athletes' clothes since 2008 when it took over from Canadian clothier Roots, got the message.
"We have worked incredibly hard as a company to go across America to find the best partners to help us produce the Olympic uniforms at the highest quality for the best athletes in the world," said David Lauren, the company's executive vice president of advertising, marketing and corporate communications.
They used more than 40 vendors, from ranchers in the rural West to yarn spinners in Pennsylvania to sewers in New York's Garment District for the closing ceremony outfits unveiled Tuesday. The ensemble includes a navy peacoat with a red stripe, a classic ski sweater with a reindeer motif and a hand-sewn American flag, and a tasseled chunky-knit hat.
(Individual clothes for competition are made by different, mostly athletic-gear brands, depending on the sport, technical aspects and sponsorship deals. Those outfits didn't seem part of the earlier overseas outcry, but some companies, such as The North Face, which is making the freeskiing uniforms, have committed to U.S. manufacturing, too.)
Figure skater Evan Lysacek, who won gold in Vancouver in 2010, said the ceremonial uniforms make the athletes stand a little prouder.
"As an athlete, the clothing means even more than you'd think. The training, the sacrifices, the lifestyle, which is not glamorous and can be grueling and trying at times, all seem to come together in the moment when you realize you are part of the Olympic team," he said. "The moment you put on those first pieces of the American team clothes, you feel like it's real."
Moving production to the U.S., though, was a lesson in the state of American manufacturing. It was hard to come by facilities that could create the quantity and quality needed for the Olympic uniforms and the versions that will be sold to the public, David Lauren said. As a result, there are fewer pieces in the collection for 2014.
During the London flap, he said, "what no one wanted to look at was the true complexity of making Olympic uniforms. We would have done it here if we could, but it was so much more complicated than people realized. Lots of places said they could help us make them, but when we called them, they couldn't. It was grandstanding by a lot of companies. But we have since found manufacturers, and there are many more out there and we will keep reaching out."
Jeanne Carver of rural Maupin, Ore., couldn't quite believe the call that came 18 months ago.
Imperial Stock Ranch, founded in 1871 and now run by Carver and her husband, Dan, was at a make-or-break time, especially for its sheep business. They kept hearing that apparel manufacturing was going offshore and they wouldn't ship U.S. wool overseas, Carver said. Then the phone rang in the summer of 2012.
"I thought the phone was the tinkling of sheep bells!" Carver said. But it was the product development director for the Ralph Lauren knitwear division. "I literally said to him, 'You are kidding me!'"
When Robert Cramer told her he was looking for yarn for Team USA sweaters and asked for a tour, "The two things that went through my head were, 'Oh my god, what will I wear? And what am I going to feed fashion people from New York?!'"
(She went with her "clean" cowboy boots and a menu that included lasagna made with ground beef from the ranch.)
The fact that these were for Olympic uniforms was "icing on the cake." She was just so appreciative that a big company was paying attention to domestic ranchers and farmers, wool dyers and sewers.
The athletes are happy to see more Americans represented, too, says Lysacek.
"What I hear from the athletes on this topic is that we go out in the Olympic Games and in every competition, we represent the United States of America. I might not know every citizen, but I represent them," he said. "The more people who are tied into the Olympic story, the closer to home each story hits."
___
Follow Samantha Critchell and AP Fashion fashion coverage on Twitter at @AP_Fashion or @Sam_Critchell
They’re one of the most adorable couples in Tinseltown, and Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis are about to turn their duo into a trio.
The “Incredible Burt Wonderstone” actress took to her Twitter account to respond to the outpouring of well wishes from her fans.
Olivia tweeted, “WOW. You guys are awesome. So kind. Thank you thank you thank you! PS. Babies eat mostly salsa right?”
After Sudeikis popped the question in January, Miss Wilde explained how she and Jason initially got together.
“I met Jason, and I thought he was so charming. He’s a great dancer, and I’m a sucker for great dancers. But he didn’t even get my number. Over the next six months we kept running into each other. [One night] my best guy friend walked up to him and said, ‘This is Olivia’s number. Use it.’ That was the beginning.”
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