About these lists | Top conservatives 2007 | Top liberals 2007

Former presidential candidate, former vice-presidential nominee, former Senator and former trial lawyer

Few politicians have fallen so far, so fast as John Edwards, who has become a byword for sexual sleaziness even in a profession where it’s rife. Having admitted cheating on his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth, Edwards denied fathering his mistress’s love child but the timelines didn’t make sense and no one – not even the implausibly loyal Mrs Edwards, believed him.

The former trial lawyer campaigned against poverty while enjoying ostentatious wealth and charging hefty lecture fees. It was recently revealed he tried to simultaneously cut deals with both Obama and Hillary Clinton to make him their vice-presidential running mate in 2008 – even though it could have cost his party the White House once his infidelities were revealed. The aide he allegedly tried to pay off to keep his mistress quiet has a tell-all book out next month. Watch this space.

Took her chance at the White House Correspondents Dinner to accuse conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh of treason and said she hoped his kidneys failed – prompting laughter among many liberals and a grin from Obama. That performance catapulted her into getting her own show on Fox TV.

A Washington DC native who worked as a procurement officer for the National Security Agency for six years in her pre-Hollywood life, Sykes revels in her status as the first black lesbian talk show host. Announcing its purpose, she said: “The Obamas are all too placid to get up in people’s faces. That’s why I’m here”. Surely this was the first time an American television show has been created to defend a sitting president.

The godfather of Democratic pollsters and strategists, who coined the term “Reagan Democrats” to describe the blue collar drift to Republicanism. He was chief pollster for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and has also advised Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela, Gerhard Schroeder and Ehud Barak.

His polling during the 2008 campaign interpreted the electorate’s feelings with unerring accuracy. As the 2010 mid-terms approach, his dissections of independent voter opinion could prove invaluable – and highly alarming – to the Democratic Party.

Biggest compliment he has received came from Republican rival Frank Luntz: “Stan Greenberg scares the hell out of me. He doesn't just have a finger on the people's pulse; he's got an IV injected into it. He's the best."

When Jesse Jackson was filmed with tears streaming down his face at Obama’s inauguration, the cynics wondered whether he was weeping at least partly because the event rendered him irrelevant. Some argue that his 1984 and 1988 presidential runs paved the way for Obama. But relations between the two men have been strained, especially since Jackson was caught accusing the then candidate of “talking down to black people” and saying: “I want to cut his nuts out."

Seen by many on the Right as a race baiter and viewed with suspicion from some in the civil rights movement who believe he exaggerated his role on the day Martin Luther King died and cares only about self-promotion. Was criticised recently after taking aim against Congressman Artur Davis, another among the new breed of black politicians, when he insisted: “You can't vote against health care and call yourself a black man."

The weakness and failures of his 1977-1981 tenure remain a spectre that haunts the current White House, and provides Right-wing critics with ready material with which to bait the 44th president.

But even at the age of 85, Carter hasn’t succumbed to irrelevance or lost the knack of making headlines, as he demonstrated by becoming the first public figure to label Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst at President Obama as racist.

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, his supporters view him as the moral conscience of the Democratic Party. He has been a staunch backer of Obama, but that could change if the President’s diplomacy doesn’t tilt away from Israel in the Middle East, one of Carter’s abiding interests.

The 92-year-old Senator, who entered in the Senate in 1959 and has cast more than 18,500 votes, arrived for the historic healthcare vote in a wheelchair to cheers from his fellow Democrats. But his failing health has led him to miss 40 per cent of recent votes and he is clearly in his twilight years – more of a symbol than the force he once was.

He has surrendered his powerful position as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and was badly affected by the death of his friend Senator Ted Kennedy, to whom he delivered a poignant tribute on the Senate floor. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan who once said he would never serve alongside blacks in the US military, he helped Barack Obama find his feet in the Senate.

A former commander in Afghanistan, and now ambassador, during the surge debate Eikenberry did what diplomats are never meant to do by making the headlines. Two memos, very probably leaked by the White House, indicated his deep scepticism about sending large troop reinforcements – thereby aligning himself with Vice President Joe Biden. His relationship with Hamid Karzai, and his success in persuading the Afghan president to clean up his government, will be crucial to America’s success in south Asia.

The former long-time Indiana congressman is now one of the Wise Old Men of the Democratic foreign policy establishment and a favourite of Obama. A member of the Iraq Study Group and before that the 9/11 Commission, look for Hamilton if Obama needs a respected and trusted safe pair of hands to investigate a homeland security failure.

Something of a mentor to Obama – who had a lot to learn about foreign policy when he entered office and arguably still has – Hamilton is eager to impart his experience. Just before Obama’s inauguration, Hamilton convened a small group of scholars on South Asia and the Middle East and South Asia for a meeting with the president-elect that went on into the small hours.

The fast-talking front man of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews wears his heart on his sleeve but knows and loves his politics. More intellectually honest than MSNBC’s kneejerk Lefties, Matthews is prepared to give Republicans a chance on occasion – though he was much mocked for announcing his passion for Obama by stating he “felt this thrill going up my leg” when he heard him speak.

Matthews decided against running for the Senate in Pennsylvania. Former Capitol Hill aide to the “all politics is local” House Speaker Tip O’Neill and a presidential speechwriter for Jimmy Carter.

A reviewer of Moore’s 2007 movie Sicko, about the American health system, summed up his career as being “a multimedia attempt to undo Reagan's great achievement: persuading blue-collar factory workers and other members of the working class to embrace his heady brew of jingoism, anticommunism, contempt for government and admiration for the virtues of unfettered capitalism”.

By that standard, the university dropout from Flint, Michigan has failed miserably. But his Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) on the war on terror (the highest-grossing documentary of all time) and Bowling for Columbine (2002) about the gun lobby became the far Left’s contribution to key debates. But with liberalism now mainstream and in the White House (where Moore is unlikely to be a guest) the filmmaker’s influence seems to be on the wane.

The former congressman’s narrow defeat in the Tennessee Senate race of 2006 has led to a spell in the political wilderness. He’s clearly itching for a return and is reported to be mulling an audacious bid for Hillary Clinton’s old Senate seat in New York – currently occupied by the unimpressive Kirsten Gillibrand.

Ford’s centrist DLC is a marginal player in the Democratic party favour these days and he is regarded with intense suspicion by the Left, which could derail his Senate hopes. But he has broad electoral appeal and New York has favoured carpet backers before. He is married to blonde Manhattan fashion designer Emily Threlkeld.

Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union

Under Romero’s leadership the ACLU has seen membership, budget and staffing numbers all grow handsomely. The Bush administration’s war on terror policies gave the decades-old institution fertile ground for litigation and advocacy that it has never failed to utilise.

It has been also been a thorn in the side of the Obama administration, suing for the release of photographs documenting abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by United States military personnel and prompting a liberal president to backtrack on an earlier commitment.

The ACLU has never been afraid to remind the media, its members and the political classes that the current president often follows his predecessor on terror policy.

Trippi, 53, is one of the most sought-after political strategists and an ever-present on the presidential campaign circuit. Has worked for Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart and turned Howard Dean into an unlikely front runner in 2004.

A former Silicon Valley consultant, Trippi was the first political operative to appreciate and then realise the potential of the internet, and as such his work in 2004 laid the foundations for Obama’s victorious campaign four years later. A key strategist in John Edwards’s 2008 campaign, he survived the subsequent debacle over the former candidate’s love child and is likely to feature prominently as Democratic Senate candidates battle to keep the party’s majority.

Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers

Her role is to examine government projects and the general economic environment before recommending policy. Hired from Berkeley because of her expertise on the Great Depression, many of her prior views however contradicted with the president’s. For instance, she believed that the Federal Reserve had little impact on the economic outlook by fiscal devices such as lowering or raising interest rates. Has maintained a low-key profile but is an important voice in guiding the president through the economic crisis.

The 78-year-old Hungarian-born speculator who helped bring down communism in Poland and Czechoslovakia and the Bank of England – on Black Wednesday in 1992 - failed to do the same to George W Bush in 2004 after stating the previous year that this was the "central focus of my life".

In 2008, he was determined that Hillary Clinton would win back the White House for Democrats but had to settle for an Obama win instead. Thanks to his substantial donations to Democratic-supporting organisations, such as MoveOn.org and the Centre for American Progress, he remains a bogeyman for the Right, with bloggers deriding him as Obama’s puppetmaster. But he has criticised the Obama administration for falling short in its efforts to overhaul the financial system.

White House adviser on Middle East

Having managed the push for an Israeli-Palestinian deal during the Clinton administration, he is regarded as one of the sagest voices on foreign affairs in Washington. Palestinians and their supporters note that he is Jewish and view him as unwaveringly pro-Israel but grudgingly respect his negotiating skills.

The veteran statesman started life in the Obama administration as the State Department's Iran envoy before moving in June 2009 to the White House as a special assistant on the “Central region”, which includes the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia. Although low-profile, he is central to Obama’s foreign policy ambitions, which include – eventually – a Middle East peace settlement.

Former Governor of New York

Few falls from grace have been as shocking, or have attracted as much schadenfreude, as Spitzer’s. But when the moralistic, workaholic self-appointed enforcer was revealed to be a regular client of a high-priced prostitution ring, it was perhaps not quite a lethal blow to his political hopes.

After more than a year out of the limelight, he has begun teaching a law and public policy class at City University of New York and writing a column for Slate website. Rumours abound that he may run for state comptroller or another state-wide office later in the year. It’s a far cry from being a rising figure on the national political stage and potential President, but we probably have not seen the last of a man who once told an opponent: “Listen, I'm a f---ing steamroller and I'll roll over you and anybody else."

Clever, personable and centrist former governor of a red state, Bayh was on Barack Obama’s vice presidential shortlist but lost out in part because of Joe Biden’s foreign policy experience. He also lost out in 2004 when John Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate.

Though Bayh has repeatedly been tipped for great things, since Obama took office, he has found himself at odds with the Democratic party’s senate leadership and the White House. Late in the health care debate he came off the fence and threatened to filibuster against any bill that contained a public option. Left-wing blogs pointed out that his wife had amassed a fortune in stock payments from Wellpoint, an insurance company in Indiana.

The son of former Senator Birch Bayh, he is set for a long career in the Senate but is considered by Democratic power brokers to have moved too far to the Right to have a realistic chance of the White House or even the veep slot

The first openly gay mayor of one of America’s top 10 biggest cities, polls found that the Democrat’s orientation mattered to only 18 per cent of voters, but it helped that she had been open about her sexuality throughout her public career, which began with election to the city council in 1997.

Formerly the city’s controller, she campaigned on her expertise and financial acumen, rarely mentioning the potential uniqueness of her bid. After her victory she joked that she was "very proud to have been elected the first ... graduate of Rice University to be mayor of Houston".

Aged 53, she has adopted three children with her longtime companion. She arguably has done more for the gay rights cause than a president who has infuriated the community by putting their preoccupations firmly on the back burner.

When he became the 60th vote for the Democrats on their healthcare bill in the Senate, Nelson was vilified by the Right and received precious little credit from the Left. A former Nebraska governor and one of the most successful Democratic politicians ever in a very conservative state, the signs are that the voters will punish him when he is up for re-election in 2012. His approval rating in his home state has plummeted to 40 per cent.

Nelson is that rare creature – a senior Democrat who is against abortion rights. The Right hoped that this would lead him to oppose the healthcare bill but a string of financial gifts for Nebraska (which became known as the "Cornhusker Kickback") helped sway him. Now, Nelson says he wants this deal to be extended to all other states. Could he change his mind again and vote against final passage of the bill?

Summary: Telegraph.co.uk's list of the liberals who most influence American politics.


08/08/2016 AT 03:00 PM EDT

Would you swipe right on

27-year-old, tells PEOPLE Now that, even virtually, he

"I'm on the apps," he shares, while snacking on some of his favorite treats: a protein bar, Jamba Juice smoothie, pound of turkey breast and an uncooked yam.

Particularly, Johnson says he uses

as well as Bumble – a mobile phone app that requires women to message men first.

"Nothing ever comes from it," he admits, "because they don't understand the world you're kind of like living in at this point."

some of the other men. He didn't last long on

during the season premiere after being verbally abuse to other cast members, the staff and crew.

Of the incident, Johnson tells PEOPLE Now, "I can't lie, I did all that stuff... the proof is in the petals, things happen."

And all that anger and aggression? Johnson seems to think it's warranted.

"You screw me over I'm gonna come get you," he says.

Harrison recently told reporters that Johnson "just wasn't ready"

– which is maybe why his reality TV stints and foray into dating apps didn't work out.

He could get a third shot, however. Said Harrison, "I welcome him back."

Summary: Chad Johnson, of Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise infamy, tells PEOPLE Now he's on Bumble and Tinder


The campuses of Northeastern University and Berklee College of Music are jammed together in the Fenway like roomies sharing a too-small dorm room.

It was in a Northeastern dorm in 1999 that freshman Shawn Fanning launched a digital file-sharing service called Napster, which could make any piece of recorded music instantly accessible, for free. Seventeen years later, Berklee students who were babies when Napster was born are trying to grapple with its impact on the business of making music.

The invention of Napster was like a meteor strike that ended the era of recorded music on physical objects like compact discsand vinyl records; it had begun with Thomas Edison’s phonograph in 1877. The dust from its impact is still settling, and at a late July “demo day,” groups of students participating in this summer’s Berklee’s Open Music Initiative showed off some ideas for what might come next.

Depending on when you grew up during music’s Edison era, you probably bought vinyl playing at 78, 45, or 33 revolutions per minute; reel-to-reel tapes; 8-track tapes; cassette tapes; or some combination of them all. If you grew up during the Napster era, music was delivered to an array of devices like a laptop, smartphone, or iPod. Sometimes it was free — either acquired illegally or interspersed with ads — and sometimes you paid for it. Emblematic of this new age is the latest release from hip-hop artist Kanye West, “The Life of Pablo,” which doesn’t exist at all on physical media. And West has made numerous tweaks to the album since its February debut.

From 1877 to 1999, Russ Gershon says, “it’s like there was a strange little moment where music was being encoded on pieces of plastic that people paid for. Now, it’s like a utility, like running water. There’s more music out there than you could listen to in a lifetime.” But, says Gershon, founder of the jazz group Either/Orchestra and of Accurate Records, an independent label, “it’s becoming even more difficult to get people to seek out your music and pay money for it.” He says that when he receives financial statements from streaming music services like Spotify, the revenue for each “spin” of a digital tune is measured in thousandths of a cent.

The bright side is that streaming music services have been growing rapidly and offering a legal alternative to unauthorized file-sharing and “torrent” sites. But according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry’s overall take is now half of what it was in 1999, when revenues hit $14.6 billion.

Exploring how artists and composers will make a living in this new world was part of the goal of the Open Music Initiative’s summer program, which brought 17 students together for three weeks to build rough prototypes of new tools, sites, and services.

“We are determined to make change happen, using the neutrality of academia as outsourced research and development for the industry,” said Panos Panay, a former tech entrepreneur who heads Berklee’s Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, and who oversaw the summer program. Why the emphasis on working on neutral terrain? Panay noted that sometimes record labels, musicians, and the developers of new digital services don’t exactly get along.

One group of students proposed a new recording system called Lucy (an homage to an old Beatles song about diamonds). Using a dome outfitted with high-definition cameras, it could capture audio and video as a band performed, and then allow the show to be played back on an “augmented reality” headset.

You’d be able to don a special pair of glasses, like Microsoft’s HoloLens (not yet on sale), and watch Beyoncé put on a show in your family room, in three dimensions. There’d be a fee for the experience — perhaps slightly higher if you wanted to join in on drums or backup vocals.

A project called Aura offered a new take on the set playlist of favorite songs. It would use software to “live mix” songs from your favorite artists with new music, segueing seamlessly from one song to another. The software would pay attention to weather, and what you’re doing. If you’re walking to work and it’s snowing, that’d be a different mix of music than if it’s nighttime and you’re trying to go to sleep.

INTRSTLR (pronounced like “interstellar”) would create a website to help lesser-known sidemen and backup musicians who work with big-name performers book house party gigs.

My favorite project of the bunch, Beam, was described by Berklee student Summer Whittaker as “like Pokemon Go plus Yik Yak plus geo-caching.” What does that mean, exactly? The Beam app would let users propose the perfect song for a given location in the city, and vote on the songs others had suggested, creating the ultimate set of songs for, say, sitting under a tree in the Public Garden or walking down Salem Street in the North End.

Bands might also “offer sneak previews at specific locations, so that fans could hear an album first, and connect with each other and talk about the music,” said Raul Feliz, another Berklee student. If you chose to buy the digital album, you’d be able to listen to it anywhere else.

After all of the lawsuits and hand-wringing that followed Napster’s launch, it was encouraging to hear all these clean-sheet-of-paper ideas for reinvigorating the art of making music and the business of selling it.

It’s a weird time for the music biz. Some things feel pre-Edisonian. Bands are focusing on live performances as a way to make money. They get patrons to fund tours or recordings or the creation of videos — regular folks instead of royalty — often using “crowdfunding” sites like Kickstarter. In 2012, Beck released an album of 20 new songs as sheet music, without recording them himself.

And dead formats are coming back to life: Gershon is considering pressing his first record in 30 years, and Ryan Walsh, the lead singer of Boston band Hallelujah the Hills, says his band sells five times as many vinyl records these days than CDs.

Everything feels like an experiment that could work once and then never again. “The dust might never settle,” Walsh says. “Everything might just keep changing and reacting. When people talk about, ‘Let’s go back to this moment or that moment in the music industry,’ they just mean, ‘Let’s get back to that anomaly that worked for me.’ ”

Summary: For three weeks, 17 students at Berklee College of Music’s Open Music Initiative dreamed up ideas  to help musicians make a living.


This past year, Al Lovata, chief executive of Be Our Guest Inc., cut expenses for his party-equipment rental business by laying off staff and reducing workers' salaries. He credits an "outsourced" chief financial officer with helping him prepare for the worst of the economic downturn.

The Boston-based company had sales growth in the double digits for the past few years, when revenue fell flat last fall. Now, thanks to the...

Summary: Some small-business owners in need of accounting help are renting CFOs rather than hiring them.


CHICAGO—United Continental Holdings Inc. and its mechanics union on Friday said they agreed in principle on a tentative labor pact, subject to an agreement over final language and to the deal being put to a ratification vote.

The news came hours after a slim majority of United’s flight attendants approved a new...

Summary: After years of negotiations, a slight majority of flight attendants at United Continental Holdings approved a five-year labor contract. That news came as the airline later reached an agreement in principle with its mechanics.


A Melbourne man is recuperating in hospital after being abducted from his home at knifepoint.

The 54-year-old man returned to his Frankston home at 5.30pm on Saturday and found an unknown man inside armed with a knife.

The armed man bound his victim's arms and forced him into the passenger seat of his own car.

A short time later police tried to intercept the stolen car but did not give chase and car was found soon after - it had crashed into an embankment.

Police arrested a 47-year-old Frankston man at the scene and he is under police guard in hospital after suffering minor injuries in the crash.

Summary: A Melbourne has been abducted at knifepoint by a man he found inside his home who forced him into a car before crashing into an embankment.


British backpacker Mia Ayliffe-Chung. The 21-year-old was allegedly stabbed to death by a 29-year-old French man who yelled "Allahu Akbar" during the attack at Shelley's Backpackers in Home Hill, Queensland on Tuesday night. Source: AAP

The mother of hostel murder victim Mia Ayliffe-Chung says her daughter only saw the good in people and she hopes to be more like her.

Rosie Ayliffe has arrived in Australia from the UK to collect the ashes of her Mia, 21, who was killed during a frenzied knife attack at a hostel south of Townsville.

Also fatally wounded during the attack at Home Hill was fellow Brit Tom Jackson, 30, who was stabbed numerous times while trying to save Mia.

Ms Ayliffe was accompanied to Australia by Mia's half sister Nicola Hawkridge-Chung.

"She (Mia) could see the good in everything and everyone. She was a special girl," Ms Ayliffe told Network Ten.

"A lot of people are dealing with grief because they have had direct contact with Mia and they loved her very much.

"She is with me anyway and I want to be more like she was."

Ms Hawkridge-Chung spoke highly of Mr Jackson for putting his life on the line to help Mia.

He was on life support for almost a week before he died on Tuesday.

"Not many have that level of bravery, to put themselves in that situation. Put themselves in harm's way," she said.

Ms Hawkridge-Chung said parts of the Koran would be read out during a service for Mia.

"Including all those religions is part of that service."

Frenchman Smail Ayad, 29, has been charged with Mia's murder and will be formally charged with Mr Jackson's murder at his next court appearance in Townsville on October 28.

It's alleged Ayad shouted out "Allahu Akbar" as he attacked Mia but police have said they had found no evidence the crime was terror related.

In the last few days, Ms Ayliffe has also started writing a blog for UK news website The Independent.

She recounted how she first learned of her daughter's horrific death and how she tried to get her Facebook page closed down before photographs could be taken from it.

"I started - to absolutely no avail - trying to get her Facebook profile closed down, because I suspected it could be pillaged for photos," she wrote.

"Before she left the UK this wouldn't have been a problem as she was careful about what she put on Facebook, but the youth culture in a city is different to that in a small-town environment like ours, and Mia's Facebook was getting a lot racier than I'd have liked."

Ms Ayliffe said she learned of Mia's death when police arrived on her doorstep but did not find out how she died until later.

"They (the police) knew very little apart from the fact that Mia was dead, and it was only when I phoned the consulate that I found out she had been attacked and killed. I was in shock for a long time."

Summary: Mia Ayliffe-Chung's mother has revealed she was unable to get her daughter's Facebook page taken down after her death at a Queensland backpacker hostel.


With the release Friday of “The Magnificent Seven,” the idea of taking a well-known film and running it through the remake machine continues, even though it’s a practice that doesn’t usually pay off. For every hit remake (“Scarface,” “The Fly,” “Ocean’s Eleven”) there are manifold flops (“Ben-Hur,” “Point Break,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “Psycho,” “Sabrina,” “All the King’s Men”). Oddly, a genre that was once a Hollywood staple, the western, remains relatively untapped The only two in recent years that come to mind are “True Grit” (hit) and “3:10 to Yuma” (flop).

So it’s hard to predict if the moviegoing public is ready for a bigger, supposedly better version of John Sturges’s 1960 “The Magnificent Seven,” itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 “Seven Samurai.” All three films feature stories of a small town threatened by villains and how the inhabitants look for assistance from a septet of men who would never pass as good guys, but are willing to help out these folks.

Action director Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day,” “Southpaw”), a fan of westerns since he used to watch them as a kid with his grandmother, has long wanted to make one, but wasn’t sure what to do when first approached by executives at MGM.

“I was asked if I wanted to remake ‘The Magnificent Seven,’ ” he said by phone from Los Angeles. “I thought for a moment and said, ‘I don’t know. That’s a beloved film.’ But we met and talked, and they gave me the script. When I read it I was pleasantly surprised because the DNA of Kurosawa’s film was there, and the DNA of Sturges’s film was still there. I’d seen ‘Seven Samurai’ hundreds of times. But after I read this script I went back and really studied it, and then I started to look into the word ‘samurai,’ which translates as ‘to serve.’ I realized the whole reason to make a movie like this is to remind us that to be a truly evolved human being is to put everything on the line for someone else.”

The casting process began shortly after Fuqua agreed to do the film.

“I told the guys at MGM that this movie needs to be an event,” he said. “The Sturges ‘Magnificent Seven’ was an event, with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, and movie stars were needed to make this one an event. I said they needed Denzel Washington to be in the Yul Brynner role.”

Fuqua remembers that the room went quiet, then someone said, “Do you think you could get him?” Fuqua, who directed Washington in his Oscar-winning turn in “Training Day,” went to New York to ask. Washington listened intently when Fuqua said, “I can see you riding over the hill, with the sun behind you.” Washington started laughing when the director pulled out his phone and played the theme from “The Magnificent Seven.”

“Then,” recalled Fuqua, “Denzel said, ‘When do you want to start?’ I said, ‘Now. I need you to start riding horses now.’”

Washington re-read the script and a week later said yes. Fuqua soon started casting the rest of the film, eventually signing on Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, and, one of his first choices, Chris Pratt. He’d would play Faraday, a sort of combination of the Steve McQueen and James Coburn roles from the previous film, but with multiple layers of his own creation.

Sitting in a hotel room at the Toronto International Film Festival, Pratt (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Parks and Recreation”) said, “Faraday is a gambler, and a bit of a rowdy drinker, and a person you wouldn’t want to cross. But I think you can also say [of him] that just because you’ve done bad things doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy.”

Pratt, who’s currently back in the booth for voice work as the unintentionally heroic Emmet in the sequel to “The Lego Movie,” and has already finished a “Guardians” sequel, didn’t have to think too long about saying yes to the Faraday offer.

“I was moving into that territory in my career where I get to be a little more in control of the choices I make,” he said. “I knew that a western would be different for me, and something I really wanted to do.

“I didn’t mind that it was a remake,” he added. “I guess if it was a scene-by-scene remake of something, I wouldn’t necessarily be interested. I saw ‘The Magnificent Seven’ many years ago, and I remember that it had that iconic western title, and it had Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. And it had a very simple idea. But with this one, we got to take that simple idea and build upon it, make it contemporary, stylish, cool.”

Pratt also mentioned that it was cool working with Fuqua. But he didn’t know that the director, as he had already done with Washington, enjoyed using music to make a point.

“Antoine is always thinking, but he doesn’t want to overtalk it,” said Pratt of Fuqua’s on-set style. “He’s not one of these guys who sits down and has a long conversation about the characters. So I felt I was given the freedom to do what I wanted. There were moments where he would come up and say, ‘Just remember this or remember that,’ or he’d put some music in my ear and say, ‘You feel this vibe? This is it. Remember, you’re not a goofball, you’re dangerous.’ ”

Pretty much every major character in the film is dangerous, and as in most of Fuqua’s earlier work, there’s a great deal of violence.

“I think the violence in a movie like this, particularly because I was leaning more toward the Kurosawa film than the Sturges film, is sort of an homage to [Kurosawa’s] climactic battle scene,” he said. “That battle scene went on for a while and it was pretty over the top. I think you have to do that to have some fun in a western. I wanted to make the battle epic. Before that, you’re gathering the men, and that’s great character stuff, with some humor, where you get to know them. But the battle still has to be satisfying and worth the wait.”

Summary: Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt star in a remake of the 1960 western.


Anti-domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty says Pauline Hanson's comments on women making frivolous court claims and seemingly rationalising violence by frustrated fathers are ill-informed and disappointing.

"If Australia is being swamped by anything it's family violence," the former Australian of the Year told AAP.

The One Nation leader is facing criticism after using her first Senate speech to warn there'll be more murders unless men were treated with more respect in the Family Court system.

She also accused women of making flippant allegations against partners.

"Children are used as pawns in custody battles where women make frivolous claims and believe they have the sole right to the children," Senator Hanson said.

"Children have two parents and, until we treat mums and dads with the same courtesy and rights, we will continue to see murders due to sheer frustration and depression and mental illness caused by this unworkable system."

Ms Batty says Senator Hanson's comments were disappointing and an example of a lack of understanding of the real threat of domestic violence.

People were not murdering because of the family law system.

"That idea is just another example of our victim-blaming mentality," Ms Batty said.

"Turning family law issues into men versus women, or mums versus dads, does nothing but make complex situations more challenging for all involved."

Meanwhile, Women's Minister Michaelia Cash has defended warmly embracing Senator Hanson following her first speech to the upper house.

Images of the hug were then widely shared on social media.

Senator Cash says she was only showing the controversial Queenslander goodwill and that didn't mean she necessarily agreed with statements made by anyone in the chamber.

"I will never justify the murder of a female or a male - that is unacceptable and especially in situations of domestic violence," the minister told reporters in Canberra.

Senator Cash earlier this year was handed a petition by Ms Batty urging the government to address problems in the family law system which put children at risk of violence.

Summary: Pauline Hanson's comments on women in her maiden speech has been met with criticism.


A teenager is seriously injured after being stabbed at a party south of Newcastle.

The 15-year-old boy was stabbed in the stomach during a fight with another party-goer at Spoon Rocks, near Caves Beach just before 10pm on Saturday.

The attacker and several other party-goers fled while the teen was helped by his friends to a nearby home where emergency services were called, police say.

The boy was taken to John Hunter Hospital for emergency surgery and remains in a serious but stable condition.

Summary: A teenage boy has undergone emergency surgery and is in a serious but stable condition after he was stabbed in the stomach at a party south of Newcastle.


The study suggests riding roller coasters can help pass kidney stones. (Photo: AusParks.com.au)

Researchers may have discovered a novel way to treat kidney stones - the roller coaster.

A ride on the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster at Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast or the Storm Coaster at Sea World may facilitate the passage of small kidney stones, according to a report published in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association.

Researchers at Michigan State University conducted a study after a series of patients reported passing kidney stones after riding the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster at Walt Disney World in Orlando.

In one case, a patient said he passed one kidney stone after each of three consecutive rides on the roller coaster.

According to the study, 63 percent of patients passed a kidney stone when sitting in the back of a roller coaster, while 16 percent had success in passing a stone sitting in the front seats of the ride.

Called the 'roller coaster effect', Dr David D Wartinger says this is potentially a relatively low-cost, non-invasive treatment that could prevent suffering for hundreds of thousands of patients.

"Preliminary findings support the anecdotal evidence that a ride on a moderate-intensity roller coaster could benefit some patients with small kidney stones," Dr Wartinger said.


A Sydney man travelling on an eastern suburbs bus spotted an eight-year-old girl sitting on the fence outside her house, got off the bus, walked straight to her and molested her, a court has heard.

Gerardo Gaston Huertas, 39, has pleaded guilty to two child sex offences relating to June 27 last year when he approached a girl on a Randwick street and reached under her clothes.

The Sydney District Court heard on Thursday that Huertas pulled down the girl's tights and underpants with the intention of molesting her.

"This is effectively a child's nightmare of having the stranger danger come real," crown prosecutor Gina O'Rourke said during sentencing submissions.

A neighbour saw the assault and screamed at him to stop.

Huertas ran away and was arrested by police in a nearby park, where he made a full admission of what he had done.

That someone would get off a bus specifically to assault a child who was obviously alone made the case "disturbing and troubling", Ms O'Rourke said.

"He only let go because of the eye witness who saw him," she said.

Huertas has been in jail for more than a year, and his lawyer said he is approaching the end of what could be his non-parole period.

Siobhan Climo submitted her client's offending was on the lower end of seriousness because he was not known to the child, assaulted her for a very short period, made no threats and was not violent.

She told the court Huertas was vulnerable in jail because he was schizophrenic and was prone to being attacked by inmates.

He was taken to hospital earlier this year with a major injury to his groin, the court heard.

Before he went to jail, he was a heavy user of cannabis, the court heard.

He will be sentenced by Judge Kate Traill on December 8.

Summary: A man on a bus in Randwick spotted a young girl alone outside her house, got off and molested her, a Sydney court has heard.


Apple and Deloitte announced a partnership on Wednesday in which the consultant will open a new practice to help corporate clients work with Apple products, the tech firm’s latest attempt to boost enterprise sales as its key product, the iPhone, shows signs of maturation.

More than 5,000 Deloitte advisers will be included in the Apple initiative, the companies said. The consulting firm also launched EnterpriseNext, a program aimed at helping clients make better use of Apple products and services.

Apple has announced a steady stream of enterprise partnerships in recent years as it aims to draw more revenue from a market that some say it has traditionally overlooked.

A partnership struck with IBM ibm in 2014 signaled Apple’s intentions of getting more serious about corporate clients, or enterprise, and deals with Cisco csco and SAP have followed.

The deal with Deloitte will ensure that Apple is top of mind as companies think strategically about their practices, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview.

“What’s needed now is more of a focus on transforming the enterprise and helping businesses identify which areas have the highest either return on investment or highest impact on customer satisfaction,” Cook said. “Deloitte is well positioned for this.”

As part of the EnterpriseNext program, customers can meet with designers and engineers who specialize in Apple’s operating system.

“The intent there is to, in one location, bring the best engineers, the best products and the best thinkers to try and address clients’ problems,” Punit Renjen, CEO of Deloitte Global, said in an interview.

Apple faces mounting pressure to find new streams of revenue after sales of the iPhone, which drives more than half of its revenue, declined for the first time this year.

The tech giant appears to have concluded that the quickest way to progress in enterprise is to partner with companies rooted in the space, said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research.

For more about Apple, watch:

Cook said in 2015 that Apple’s enterprise business had reached $25 billion in annual revenue. He declined to provide a new figure on Wednesday but stressed the company is gaining ground.

“The momentum is significant, and we see this as a very important growth vector,” he said.

Summary: Just the latest in Apple's effort to expand into corporate technology sales.


Hundreds of contractors owed money after the collapse of Senator Bob Day's building group are likely to get nothing once the company is wound up, the building union says.

The Masters Builders Association also fears for contractors and says more companies will collapse, because of the connected nature of the industry.

The Home Australia Group has been placed in liquidation after a bid to sell a 75 per cent stake to overseas interests fell through.

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union says the collapse has left hundreds of contractors out of pocket and once they become creditors, "that generally means they get nothing".

"It's pretty devastating. He was one of the biggest home builders in the state," CFMEU state secretary Aaron Cartledge told AAP.

"For many of those contractors, we're talking about mum and dad businesses with maybe an apprentice.

"For them to be owed $20,000, it's a lot of money and it's devastating for their families."

The union said questions needed to be asked about Home Australia's extensive use of contractors which prevented them getting access to protected entitlements, including redundancy payments and superannuation.

At the same time many of those contractors worked exclusively for Senator Day's companies and were "quasi-employees", Mr Cartledge said.

He said Senator Day should also be asked to explain why he ran in the recent federal election at a time when problems with his company were brewing.

Masters Builders SA chief executive Ian Markos also believed Home Australia's contractors would "end up with virtually nothing" which would likely result in a number of small companies failing.

"It shows how connected the building industry is, but also how challenging it can be," Mr Markos said.

But he warned against using the collapse to change the laws related to security of payments as a knee-jerk reaction.

"The best outcomes must be thought out carefully and not raised off the cuff," he said.

Summary: The building union says hundreds of contractors working for Bob Day's companies are unlikely to get any money owed to them.


In his 23 years as a financial adviser, Greg Munroe has made it a rule not to talk politics with his clients.

Lately, however, that’s the main thing they’ve wanted to discuss.

“They’re saying, ‘Listen, this election has got me concerned. What do you think? How might this affect my investments? Should I make changes based on the election?’ ” said Munroe, president of Munroe Morrow Wealth Management in Boston.

“I’ve had a couple extreme cases where clients say they want to move all their money out of stocks, and I’ve talked them out of doing that,” he said. “And these are very smart, thoughtful people, but they’re very concerned. I’ve never had clients ask about this more.”

Should I liquidate all my equities? Should I move my money into cash or gold? Should I hold off on making any new investments until the fallout from the presidential race is known?

These are the types of nervous questions Munroe and countless other financial advisers have been fielding in recent months, and especially recent weeks, as the tumultuous presidential campaign wreaked psychological havoc on average investors, who worried its outcome could harm their finances.

“There’s a very high level of anxiety out there that certainly is translating to people’s attitudes about investing and their portfolios,” said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial Network, an independent broker/dealer in Waltham. Like Munroe, “I’ve had clients ask if they should get out of the market entirely,” he added.

For most investors, the perception was that a Donald Trump victory would be much worse for the markets than a win by Hillary Clinton, due to uncertainty over how he would govern and what his administration’s policies would be, according to numerous financial advisers.

But other investors felt a Clinton win would be viewed as “an illegitimate election, so the legitimacy of her presidency would be in question,” potentially having a negative market impact, McMillan said.

That means financial advisers have been doing a lot of hand-holding lately, reminding clients of market fundamentals and urging them not to do anything rash.

To ease client concerns, the Plymouth financial planning firm SHP Financial created a webinar that puts this year’s election in historic context. It found that 14 of the past 16 election years ended positively for the markets; the two that didn’t were 2008 (the recession) and 2000 (the dot-com crash).

“That being said, we’re still getting phone calls,” said SHP founding partner Matthew Peck. “One or two clients have said, ‘Look, I’d like to cash out for the time being,’ but that’s been a very, very small minority. A lot of people just need reassuring. It’s keep calm and carry on.”

Similarly, Robert Rice, a partner at Harvest Wealth Management in Needham, recently sent a group e-mail to his clients warning that some short-term volatility was to be expected, no matter who won. As a result, he cautioned, “the most damaging thing you can do to your portfolio is overreact.”

Rice and other advisers say even throughout this wildly unpredictable election, the usual investing rules have applied: Market timing is impossible, and if you have short-term income needs, those assets should be in safe investments such as cash or cash equivalents.

Clients should also have an investing strategy that doesn’t fluctuate with market uncertainty.

“To change your investment portfolio because of an election is a very foolish thing to do,” Munroe said.

“An election is a one-off event, and in the totality of a global economy to change your portfolio in the short run over a political event is something most advisers would never advise.”

Munroe’s advice to clients who wanted to liquidate their entire portfolios was a compromise: Shift 10 percent from stocks to bonds, because “history is littered with people trying to time the market based on political events or other events,” he said, “when at the end of the day what drives where the stock market goes is fundamentals.”

So far, several advisers say, most clients seem not to be acting on their anxieties.

A recent nationwide poll by Fidelity Investments found that three-quarters of those surveyed believed the stock market could be affected by which political party controls the government. Yet only 15 percent have made or plan to make changes to their portfolios because of the election.

The majority plan to stay the course, which is the standard recommendation of Fidelity and other financial firms. They note that elections historically have little lasting impact on market performance. More powerful drivers are interest rates, corporate earnings, and overall economic growth.

“If you’re worried about any one issue — the presidential election, Brexit, the China market downturn — that’s a great wake-up call for people to rebalance their portfolio,” said John Sweeney, Fidelity’s executive vice president of retirement and investing strategies. “But that has to be due to a better reason than short-term news headlines.”

If jittery investors do bail out of the market, advisers say, they should also have a strategy for when they plan to get back in.

“Getting out of the market is the easy part; getting back in is the tougher part,” McMillan said. “That has to be a two-part decision: How and why am I going to get out, and how and when am I going to get back in? And you shouldn’t make the first decision without having made the second.”

Summary: Financial advisors have been fielding nervous calls from clients as the tumultuous presidential campaign wreaked psychological havoc on investors.


A new study has found 292 serving and former defence personnel took their own lives between 2001 and 2014, with the rate for ex-servicemen 13 per cent higher than for men across the Australian community,

However, the suicide rate for male full-time and reserve force personnel was half the rate of the broader community.

Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan said this was the first accurate and robust data produced on the incidence of suicide among the serving, reserve and ex-service populations.

The study was commissioned by the government and conducted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare to assess the true extent of suicide among serving and former defence personnel.

Defence has good data on suicide by serving personnel.

But there's little reliable data on suicide by former defence personnel, though anecdotal reports suggest the rate is high.

One media report earlier this year said 41 serving personnel had taken their own lives so far in 2016, the same number as died in a decade in Afghanistan.

Mr Tehan said this study only included deaths officially recorded as suicide, which were then compared with defence personnel records.

Ex-service personnel were defined as anyone with one day or more of service.

"One suicide is one too many and the government is committed to addressing suicide in our community," he told parliament.

The AIHW found there were 84 suicides by full-time personnel, 60 by reservists and 142 among ex-service personnel. Of the 292 suicides, 20 were female.

Most - 58 per cent - were of people aged 18-34, with 42 per cent - 122 deaths - of those aged over 35.

AIHW said compared with all Australian men, the suicide rate was 53 per cent lower among men serving full-time and 46 per cent lower among men in the reserve population.

"The rate of suicide was 13 per cent higher among ex-serving men compared with all Australian men, after adjusting for age," it said.

Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James said the study was a great start as this was a serious problem which needed to be tackled.

"We still have the big problem that people who leave the ADF healthy and get sick later on and don't get taken on by DVA (Department of Veterans Affairs) still fall through the cracks and it's pretty hard to stop that happening," he told AAP.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Summary: A new study of suicide by defence personnel has found the incidence among those still in uniform is half the rate across the broader community


WEIRDLY enough, Japan is still a land where you can’t move to the rhythm legally in a nightclub after midnight. This is despite years of campaigning by Japan’s youth. Yet nothing they have done has succeeded in changing laws—from the time of Japan's postwar occupation by American forces—that ban late-night dancing. The aim then was to stop prostitution linked to so-called dance halls. Occasionally, people have cleverly flouted the rules. One establishment in Tokyo offered bags of udon-noodle dough for clients to “knead” with their feet. This qualified them as workers rather than groovers, they said.

Certainly no one expected that Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a social conservative from the traditionally-minded Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), would change things. Yet the government is about to allow late-night dancing with a new parliamentary bill, expected to pass this year. As long as light levels are kept high enough for police to see into the corners, revelers will be allowed to dance into the small hours.

Though the change will not have much effect on the economy, it is symbolic. The police in recent years had started to raid nightclubs more frequently. Ravers were mostly drug-takers, they claimed. The timing looked odd for Mr Abe, who is promoting the notion of “Cool Japan” in a celebration of youth culture. The rule change should also raise the festive mood for foreign visitors ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Another government scheme that may do more to boost the economy is to permit for the first time the building of big, luxurious casinos in large cities. Some Japanese, particularly women, fear they will spread addiction to gambling and impoverish households. Komeito, a Buddhist-supported party which is the LDP’s coalition partner, is against the change. Yet they choose to turn a blind eye to the fact that pachinko, a legal pinball-like gambling game, already earns over $150 billion each year from its customers.

The recent talk has been that the government will duck the issue by forbidding Japanese from entering the new casinos. The symbolism of such a restriction would be strong. If such a measure were passed, said Sheldon Adelson, an American casino magnate, there would be no point in betting his capital on the Japanese market. Still, it is likely that the suggestion of opening casinos to foreigners only is designed to ease passage of a first bill. Mr Abe’s recent moves on late-night dancing seems to signal that Japan is ready to loosen up a little.

Summary: New laws on clubs and casinos suggest the country is ready to loosen up a little


The late Indigenous land rights campaigner Eddie Mabo has been remembered on his birthday with a Google Doodle.

The image on Google’s Australian homepage shows Mabo as a young man and redirects to a search for “Eddie Mabo”.

Born Eddie Koiki Sambo, Mabo was born on the island of Mer in the Torres Strait in 1936. Wednesday would have been his 80th birthday.

He was a key plaintiff in a land rights case in the high court of Australia – seeking legal claim for ownership of lands on the island of Mer – that began in 1982.

The high court decided in his favour and upheld his native title claim 10 years later, after Mabo’s death from cancer at the age of 56 on 21 January 1992.

The landmark decision prompted Paul Keating’s Labor government to pass native title legislation in 1993, paving the way for further claims of traditional rights to land and compensation.

In 1996, the high court decided in the Wik case that pastoral leases did not necessarily extinguish native title rights, and the two could co-exist.

However, native title laws subsequently introduced by John Howard’s Coalition government in 1998 extinguished native title on pastoral leases.

Summary: The late Indigenous land rights campaigner’s fight for native title ownership of lands on the island of his birth, Mer, was won in the high court after his death


A man has died after swimming in water on NSW's Central Coast today, his death bringing the state's drowning death toll to seven in the last week.

Emergency services were called to swimming baths on Ocean Parade, The Entrance following reports a man was found unresponsive in the water just after 3pm.

Paramedics assisted the man, however, he died at the scene. He has not yet been formally identified.

Police earlier today issued a warning to the public after the body of a fourth man was found this morning following his disappearance while swimming with friends in the Nepean River in Sydney’s west yesterday.

The 25-year-old Punchbowl man was reported missing by friends after he entered the waterhole in the Bents Basin State Conservation Area in Greendale around 3.30pm.

The man’s body was located by police and SES crews around 8.25am today, not far from where he disappeared.

Sergeant Paul Farquharson from the Marine Area Command said people need to be aware of their surroundings and not to go in the water if they can’t swim or have consumed alcohol.

“We encourage people to look at their own actions and behave accordingly,” he said.

“These things, yes they’re fun, but they also have their inherent dangers as well so just be aware.”

Sgt Farquharson also reiterated the importance of life jackets for those who board water vehicles such as boats or jetskis, or go fishing.

The man is the fourth person to have died in NSW waterways on Boxing Day, following the deaths of three men who died within hours of each other in separate suspected drownings yesterday.

On the North Coast, a 60-year-old man is thought to have drowned after attempting to help his grandchildren struggling in the ocean at Wooli Beach on NSW's North Coast before 1.15pm.

CPR was performed on Geoffrey Blackadder, who was pulled from the water unconscious, but he died at the scene, police say.

His great-niece Jasmine Blackadder told the Daily Telegraph he spotted the four children being swept north of the flags and went to help when he got into trouble.

“He was waving to me, beckoning for me to come and help him,” Ms Blackadder told the newspaper.

“I looked back and I knew he was gone. He was always so beautiful with all the kids, he’d got to end of the earth for them.”

Mr Blackadder has been praised as “caring, loving guy who would jump in for anybody.”

Later, police were called to a picnic ground at Bendeela, in the Kangaroo Valley, after a 27-year-old waded into the river with a friend and ran into difficulties at 3.15pm.

Sgt Farquharson said the incidents over the Christmas period were “upsetting and frustrating” for police.

“I understand people want to go and swim in the water but they need to understand their limitations, if they can’t swim, don’t go in. It’s as simple as that.”

Read more: Man's body found after suspected drowning in Kangaroo Valley

Police divers found his body around 6.15pm, three hours after officers were called to the scene.

Around 10 minutes later, also in the Shoalhaven, emergency services were called to Merry Beach at Kioloa after a 56-year-old was located unconscious in the surf.

He could not be revived, police say.

Summary: A man who tried to help two girls having difficulties at a NSW beach has died in a suspected drowning.


AN FRANCISCO, Dec. 22 - Still reeling from the passage last month of constitutional bans on same-sex marriage in 11 states, gay rights advocates moved on Wednesday to undo California's prohibition, arguing in a court here that gays and lesbians have a "fundamental right" to marry.

Lawyers for the City and County of San Francisco and more than a dozen same-sex couples presented their cases in San Francisco Superior Court, the first step in a lengthy legal process that will determine the constitutionality of state laws that define marriage as being only between a man and a woman. The hearing continues on Thursday.

"The state should not be able to reach into our homes and choose our life partners," said one of the lawyers, Waukeen McCoy, who represents six same-sex couples who want to be married. "It is bad enough when our parents do that."

Defenders of the state ban, which is based on a law enacted by the Legislature in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by the voters in 2000, argued against expanding marriage to include same-sex couples. Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office was joined by lawyers for several Christian and conservative organizations that have been active in battles against same-sex marriage.

Though they differed in their reasons, the state and other lawyers argued there was nothing unconstitutional or discriminatory about a law that defines marriage in a manner consistent with tradition and the desire of most Californians.

"The word 'marriage' has a particular meaning to them, and they don't want that meaning to change," said Louis R. Mauro, a senior assistant attorney general.

Mr. Mauro added, "Complex social policies should not be determined in this courtroom" and "the public needs to be a part of the process."

In addressing the 30 or so lawyers from several consolidated cases, the judge, Richard A. Kramer, said the dispute was "not so much what marriage is about, but who gets to be married and participate in those benefits."

Judge Kramer could issue a ruling as early as next month, and he predicted it would be appealed, ultimately to the State Supreme Court. Some groups opposed to same-sex marriages have said they would seek a constitutional amendment banning such marriages should they lose in the courts.

The constitutional challenge here is starting much the same way as the one in Massachusetts that led to the legalization of same-sex marriages there. In Massachusetts, seven couples challenged the constitutionality of that state's ban in 2001. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of the couples last year, and in May the state became the only one in the country to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The rulings in the Massachusetts case were cited by several lawyers in court here and in the multitude of briefs submitted to the judge over the last few months.

The dispute in California stems from a series of lawsuits filed after Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco ordered city officials last February to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. More than 4,000 weddings were invalidated in August by the State Supreme Court, which determined that Mr. Newsom had exceeded his authority, but the court did not address the constitutionality of the state laws restricting marriage to a man and a woman.

The court hearing on Wednesday came 10 days before a new state law on domestic partnerships takes effect. Under the law, one of the most far-reaching in the country, couples who register with the state as domestic partners will be granted most of the rights and responsibilities of married couples. On Tuesday, a state appeals court denied a request by opponents of the law to block it.

R. Bradley Sears, executive director of the Charles R. Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the close timing of the court hearing in San Francisco and the new domestic partnership law illustrated "where the state is at" in the debate over rights for same-sex couples.

"There is majority support for recognition of same-sex couples through something that isn't called marriage, and majority opposition to something called marriage," Mr. Sears said.

Mr. Mauro, of the attorney general's office, argued to Judge Kramer that the new law was evidence that California had no intention of discriminating against same-sex couples, a main contention of the lawyers for the city and the same-sex couples. "California is a leader in affording rights," he said.

Shannon Minter, a lawyer for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which represents 12 same-sex couples who have sued the state, said the domestic partnership law was no substitute for marriage. He asked how many heterosexual couples would be willing to trade their marital status for a domestic partnership.

"It is one of the most basic civil rights," Mr. Minter said of marriage.

The conservative and Christian groups, some of which also oppose domestic partnerships, took a different approach than the state in arguing against same-sex marriages. Lawyers for two groups suggested that they had no place in California law because marriage was an institution based on procreation.

"This case is not about existing rights," said Glen Lavy, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian advocacy group in Arizona. "It is about creating new rights."

"The fundamental right to marriage has always been about procreation," Mr. Lavy said.

Judge Kramer did not allow television cameras in the courtroom, but that did not damper interest. Cameras were set up in another courtroom, where lawyers made statements and many of the same-sex couples answered questions. At one point, the opposing sides got into a tiff, when a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund asked the couples to move away from the cameras.

"This is a prop," the lawyer, Benjamin W. Bull said, pointing at the rows of couples.

"Excuse me," countered one of their lawyers, Gloria Allred. "They are human beings, not props."

After the Alliance Defense Fund lawyers left, Ms. Allred led the same-sex couples in singing "We Shall Overcome."

Summary: Gay rights advocates moved on Wednesday to undo the state's prohibition on same-sex marriage, arguing in a San Francisco court that gays have a "fundamental right" to marry.


Some days I suspect that the objects around me are aging faster than I am. I put on a jacket to do chores and realize that I bought it in 1987. Here is a fly rod I made in 1981. In the stairwell hangs a mounted deer head  a mule deer my dad shot a couple of years before I was born. The ears are coming apart at the edges, though the glass eyes are as bright as ever. They have been looking at me since I was an infant. How did these things get to be so old?

But nothing meters the passing of time like paperback books. I began buying them when I was in high school. I kept a small stack of them  Twain, Faulkner, way too much Aldous Huxley  beside the clock radio on my bedside table. Each one felt like another stone in the raising of a free-form house. I had grown up on public libraries, but cheap paperbacks made it possible to have a library of my own.

Now that paperback library is coming apart.

The pages have yellowed. The glue in the bindings has turned brittle. The edges are crumbling. I reread a Dorothy Sayers mystery a couple of weeks ago and found myself using a page from the middle of the book as a bookmark. Nearly all of my old Penguin classics  the ones with the black spines  are dis-binding themselves. St. Augustine fell into my lap not long ago. As for Defoe, he was one of the first to go to pieces. You would not believe how sallow Samuel Butler looks, how debilitated Flaubert has become. Even poor Kierkegaard, published by Princeton, snapped in two the other day.

The books themselves are not really worth restoring, of course. Their texts may be of permanent value, but the physical objects are not. There are only two solutions. One is to go on handling the paperbacks ever more carefully until the time, which doesn't really seem that far away, when all that remains is neatly organized piles of yellow dust on the bookshelves. The other solution is to honor the ephemeral nature of paperbacks and replace them, as if they were vinyl LP's waiting to be replaced by CD's.

My Penguin copy of Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" is identical to the thousands  if not tens of thousands  of other copies that were printed when that edition first appeared. But replacing it means abandoning all the marks I made in it when I read it in graduate school. The marks have almost everything to do with who I was as a reader in the late 1970's and almost nothing to do with Jane Austen. They are probably worth abandoning for that reason alone.

But to me, "Mansfield Park" is that one edition. Like many readers, I have a visual memory for books. It is easier to remember just where a passage appears, spatially, than exactly what it says. Replacing that old familiar edition means learning a new map of the text. That is the peculiar thing about living with so many books. I can often picture just where I need to look inside a book, though I can't remember for the life of me where the book is actually shelved. The thought of remapping my literary memory is simply too much to stand.

In the late 1970's, I worked as a curatorial assistant at the Pierpont Morgan Library, and on the shelves behind my desk stood books that were hundreds of years old  their paper crisp and white, the ink still precise. Jane Austen's autograph letters to her sister, Cassandra, were not quite as fresh as the day they were written, perhaps, but even they were fresh enough to last another few centuries. The point of publishing was more than simply to emit a book; it was to give a text a kind of permanence.

I suppose that for paperback prices, I should have expected a short shelf life. But I did not expect such a synchronized collapse. This may not be the burning of the library at Alexandria, but it is, in fact, a slow, steady combustion.

And as for you who will write in and say, "Aha! This only proves the value of digitizing books," let me simply say that it is not possible to digitize a book. You can digitize its contents, photograph its binding, record every last scrap of penciled annotation it contains. And yet the book cannot be digitized any more than one could digitize the vague, inarticulate sense I have that I know where that quotation is, if only I could find the book it's in.

Summary: Nothing meters the passing of time like paperback books.


MEXICO CITY, April 3  Verizon Communications announced Monday that it was selling its interests in phone companies in Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic for $3.7 billion, saying they no longer fit in with its business focus.

The growth of América Móvil, a cellphone provider controlled by Carlos Slim Helú, continues.

All three transactions involved América Móvil, a large cellular telephone service provider controlled by the Mexican multibillionaire Carlos Slim Helú that has grown steadily across Latin America as global telecommunications companies withdrew from some national markets.

Verizon's move fits in with a broader shift by phone companies in the United States, which are concentrating on their domestic wireless and Internet businesses. Companies including BellSouth, AT&T and the Vodafone Group have left Latin America in recent years, either because their business strategies there failed or because they were struggling at home.

Analysts say América Móvil, which reported revenue of $17 billion last year, has achieved much of its success through its ability to sell cellphones to Latin America's fast-growing working class.

More than 90 percent of wireless service users in the region use prepaid cards that give them a set number of minutes. But wireless companies must set up wide distribution channels to sell those cards, said Omar Salvador, an analyst at Pyramid Research in Cambridge, Mass. In Mexico City, for example, vendors in yellow jumpsuits sell cards for the América Móvil local unit Telcel at traffic lights.

Monday's deal gives América Móvil the dominant presence in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean's two largest markets and a toehold in Venezuela, the only large South American country where it had no business.

In the Dominican Republic, América Móvil said it would spend $2.06 billion for 100 percent of Verizon Dominicana, which provides landline, wireless and Internet service. In Puerto Rico, América Móvil will buy Verizon's 52 percent stake in Telecomunicaciones de Puerto Rico, the leading telecommunications holding company, for $939 million.

In Venezuela, América Móvil joined with Teléfonos de Mexico, Mr. Slim's fixed-line company, to pay $676 million for Verizon's 28.5 percent stake in the leading Venezuelan provider, Compañia Anónima Nacional Teléfonos de Venezuela. Cantv, as it is widely known there, has 5.1 million wireless subscribers and 3.1 million fixed-line users.

América Móvil was spun off from Teléfonos de Mexico in 2000. With the acquisitions from Verizon, América Móvil has a stake in companies serving about 120 million subscribers in 16 countries.

Doreen A. Toben, the chief financial officer of Verizon, said in an interview that the deal was part of a broader effort by the company to shed assets outside its core businesses. She said Verizon planned to use the proceeds to repurchase stock and reduce its debt, which was $39 billion at the end of 2005.

The timing of the sale of the Latin American assets raised eyebrows among some Wall Street analysts, who have wondered if Verizon was raising capital to try to buy out Vodafone's 45 percent share of Verizon Wireless.

Jeffrey Halpern, a telecommunications industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company in New York, said he believed that Verizon was raising money for that kind of acquisition.

But Ms. Toben said Verizon was not selling assets with such an acquisition in mind. "We continue to say we're interested in acquiring Verizon Wireless," she said. "But we really have to wait until it makes sense for Vodafone to do it."

Matt Richtel contributed reporting from San Francisco for this article.

Summary: In a strategic shift, American phone companies have been selling their foreign investments.


Saturday, May 20th 1995, 2:34AM

She's had 15 tries, but soap diva Susan Lucci just can't come home a winner.

Lucci, best known to daytime fans as Erica Kane on ABC's "All My Children," has been nominated for an Emmy award on 15 occasions, and has never won.

Instead, Erika Slezak who plays Victoria Lord Carpenter on ABC's "One Life to Live," won the Emmy for outstanding lead actress. It was her fourth Emmy.

The 22d annual Daytime Emmy Awards were presented last night during a black-tie gala at the Marriott Marquis Hotel.

Diedre Hall, Robert Kelker-Kelly and Leeza Gibbons were the hosts of the show, which aired live on NBC.

Justin Deas, who plays Buzz on CBS' "Guiding Light," won the outstanding actor trophy, his fifth, his first as outstanding actor.

"Guiding Light's" Jerry Ver Dorn won the best supporting actor award, while Rena Sofer from ABC's "General Hospital" picked up the supporting actress Emmy.

The Emmy for best drama series went to "General Hospital," which also took the best writing award. Directing honors went to "All My Children."

The outstanding younger actress award went to Sarah Michelle Gellar, who plays Kendall Hart on "All My Children."

Jonathan Jackson won the Emmy for outstanding younger actor for his portrayal of Lucky Spencer on "General Hospital."

Oprah Winfrey picked up her fifth straight best talk show host statuette.

Summary: She's had 15 tries, but soap diva Susan Lucci just can't come home a winner. Lucci, best known to daytime fans as Erica Kane on ABC's "All My Children,"has been nominated for an Emmy award on 15 occasions, and has never won. Instead, Erika Slezak who plays Victoria Lord Carpenter on ABC's "One Life to Live,"won the Emmy for outstanding lead actress. It was her fourth Emmy. The 22d annual


BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA MOLLOY WITH LOLA OGUNNAIKE AND KASIA ANDERSON

Friday, May 25th 2001, 2:21AM

You've heard them. You've spread them. We're talking about celebrity rumors repeated so many times they become folklore. Like the fictional story of how Keith Richards had his blood changed to kick heroin. Or the dirty request Johnny Carson supposedly made of Zsa Zsa Gabor on "The Tonight Show."

Or the tale of how MTV comic Tom Green allegedly goose-stepped into a bar mitzvah dressed as Adolf Hitler.

Richard Roeper unravels these and other yarns in the book "Hollywood's Urban Legends." Roeper, who wields his thumb with Roger Ebert on "At the Movies," delves into such myths as how:

Â Mel Gibson was said to be horribly disfigured by muggers. According to the legend, producers told Gibson to join the circus and bill himself as The Man Who Has No Face. The actor was supposedly suicidal until he encountered a priest, who hooked him up with a great plastic surgeon.

"The only morsel of similar experience to be found in Gibson's past is the tale that he was in a barroom brawl just before his audition for the Mad Max movies and sustained a few cuts and bruises," writes Roeper.

Â Jane Fonda betrayed POWs during her 1972 tour of Vietnam. When the prisoners tried to slip Fonda notes to take back to their families, "Hanoi Jane" is said to have turned the GIs into a warden. Three of the four POWs were allegedly beaten to death.

Untrue, says Col. Larry Carrigan, one of her alleged victims: "I never met Jane Fonda."

Roeper also debunks stories about how John Wayne dodged the draft, how Lucille Ball was a communist and how a chariot driver died in "Ben-Hur."

Are any of the legends true?

Remember "The Newlywed Game" episode where host Bob Eubanks was said to have asked a young bride, "Where will your husband say was the most unusual place you've ever made whoopee?"

Old footage proves that in hindsight her answer really did have to be bleeped.

Former supermodel Linda Evangelista and soccer star Fabien Barthez are back together - but better not try to take their picture.

Paparazzo Santiago Baez claims Barthez clocked him when he snapped the couple coming out of Balthazar this week. The lensman denies antagonizing the Manchester United goalie, but admits striking Barthez with his camera in self-defense. Baez says he sought treatment for a cut ear at a Brooklyn hospital but hasn't pressed charges.

Evangelista's rep, Didier Fernandez, who was with the couple, would say only that Baez' account was "a big lie."

As for Evangelista, she's apparently gotten used to the dismal weather in Manchester. Fernandez says the one-time runway goddess, who just turned 36, is simply "living" nowadays - which apparently is different from modeling.

Rob Schneider lobbed one back at Ben Affleck yesterday.

The comic will be competing soon at the box office against Affleck, who stars in the three-hour war epic "Pearl Harbor." Starting next Friday, Schneider will be kicking up his hooves in "The Animal," a comedy about a man who gets organ transplants from so many animals he begins to act "a little furry."

Schneider tells us: "A radio station played me a tape of Ben Affleck saying, 'Pearl Harbor' isn't like a Rob Schneider movie. Â Well, he's got that right. Mine is intentionally funny. His is unintentionally funny. And mine is half as long. I think people should go see mine and afterward sneak into his just for the bombing sequence."

Tim Jeffries may have found just the lass to help him get over his split with Claudia Schiffer. The art dealer was spotted at Naomi Campbell's birthday bash in St. Tropez last weekend with his arms around New York hotel heiress Paris Hilton. The 19-year-old party Olympian was coy Wednesday night when we asked whether she and Jeffries are an item.

"He's cool," she said of the 38-year-old Brit, whose past conquests include models Elle Macpherson and Ingrid Seynhaeve, Spanish actress Ines Sastre and Australian singer-actress Kylie Minogue. "I like him a lot. He's a sweet guy."

Hilton shot down reports that she's swiped actor Jared Leto from girlfriend Cameron Diaz.

"I've known Jared for a couple of years," said Paris at the Paramount Hotel's 10th anniversary party. "I'm not hooking up with him."

Reps for Diaz and Leto say they're still together and are friendly with Hilton.

WHAT DAUGHTER of a top Washington leader has been smoking some fragrant shrub behind the door of her Eastern college dorm room?

PLEASE DON'T send Michael J. Fox any more Bullwinkle dolls. Fans deluged the actor with moose toys after he mentioned that he collects them. His wife, Tracy Pollan, must have been up to her ears in antlers because she's asked him to give his moose away. "I have been giving them to the kids I meet," he tells Webster Hall curator Baird Jones. "I don't have a single one left." ...

SANDRA BERNHARD will again emcee the American Fashion Awards on June 14 at Avery Fisher Hall. Even the most hopeless fashion victims gaped last year when the comic changed from Jean Paul

Gaultier to Donna Karan to Carolina Herrera to Marc Bouwer. She already has designers submitting sketches for this year's wardrobe. Â

INSIDE WORD on the latest celebs who'll be lending their voices to AOL's "You've Got Mail" contest: Bet on Jay Leno (AOL clue: "a former writer for 'Good Times' ") and Michael Jordan ("he checks into hotels under the alias 'Leroy Smith' ").

NORA EPHRON celebrated her 60th birthday last weekend at the Belaggio in Vegas. Joining Nora, hubby Nick Pileggi and family were Tom Brokaw, Rob Reiner, Sony America chief Howard Stringer, journos Ben Bradley and Sally Quinn, and William Morris head Jim Wiatt. Tom Hanks couldn't make it, but wife Rita Wilson had a hot hand at the gaming tables. Also there was Nora's sister Amy, whose thriller "Julian" is the next project for Jim Gillespie ("I Know What You Did Last Summer"). Â

EVEN WHEN he's not lording over a telethon, Jerry Lewis packs them in. So many people have signed up for his Tuesday night course on "Life, Laughter and Healing" that the Learning Annex has had to twice find bigger venues. And, oui, many of those coming are French.

Summary: You've heard them. You've spread them. We're talking about celebrity rumors repeated so many times they become folklore. Like the fictional story of how Keith Richards had his blood changed to kick heroin. Or the dirty request Johnny Carson supposedly made of Zsa Zsa Gabor on "The Tonight Show."Or the tale of how MTV comic Tom Green allegedly goose-stepped into a bar mitzvah dressed as Adolf


Aug 18th 2011, 8:47 by J.L. | NAIROBI

HUMANITARIAN disasters tend to have a reductive effect on reporting: misery comes to the fore and day-to-day life blurs out of focus. And yet there are always multiple realities. Take this week in Ethiopia, for instance. The Dutch brewer, Heineken, has agreed to buy out two of Ethiopia's state-owned beer labels for $163m. Under the terms of the deal, Heineken will take ownership of the Bedele and Harar beers. Bedele, which was developed by Czech brewers in the early 1990s, has a strong following in western Ethiopia. Harar is based in eastern Ethiopia (Baobab can vouch for Harar, especially when drunk in the magical city where it is brewed, preferably on expenses).

Buying up the labels is the first step. The next is for Heineken to spruce up the brands for Ethiopia's youthful population, increasing sales in the cities and breaking into the Kenyan, South Sudanese and Ugandan markets. The company says it also wants to work with the Ethiopian government to improve crop quality and productivity. Both Heineken and the Ethiopian government want to substitute imported malt with locally produced stuff. Ethiopians drink around four litres of beer per person per year. Kenyans drink 12 litres. South Africans chug down over 50 litres. So the bigger message, out of focus among stories of the famine, is one of economic growth. Even freighted with hunger and destitution, the Ethiopian economy is set to grow at 6% or more a year and the consumption of beer is set to rise at over 10% a year.


Chelsea Settles 11 p.m., MTV

MTV pulls out another docu-series tonight, and this one sounds like it has the potential to be the anti-“Hills.’’ “Chelsea Settles’’ is about a 23-year-old from smalltown Ohio who moves to LA to become a model. The twist: She weighs 324 pounds. The show will follow her as she tries to lose weight and overcome her self-esteem issues. Let’s hope the goal isn’t to make her into another Heidi Montag, making the show less like the anti-“Hills’’ and more like a prequel to grotesque MTV celebrity.

Reed Between the Lines 10 p.m., BET

This is a new sitcom about an African-American family with a few familiar stars and an easy-going concept. Tracee Ellis Ross from “Girlfriends’’ is the psychologist mother, who is stretched thin balancing her career with her kids. Malcolm-Jamal Warner from “The Cosby Show’’ is her husband, an NYU professor who is home-schooling their three children.

Last Man Standing 8 p.m., Channel 5

Long story short: Girls are icky, but - awww - we need ’em.

That there Laura, she’s Dern good.

Jimmy Kimmel Live Midnight, Channel 5

Rickles, the Don of insults.

Summary: Matthew Gilbert’s survey of Tuesday night’s TV offerings, including MTV’s new docu-series “Chelsea Settles,’’ and BET’s new sitcom “Reed Between the Lines.’’


Jack Black joined Zoo Atlanta for a naming ceremony for a three-month-old giant panda cub, the only one of the endangered species born in a U.S. zoo last year.

The zoo Tuesday named the cub Po after the main character voiced by Black in his upcoming animated sequel "Kung Fu Panda 2."

Zoo officials say that in return for the name, studio Dreamworks donated money to the zoo to help with its panda conservation program.

The zoo declined to say how much. The zoo pays China a $500,000-per-year lease to display the pandas.

Black posed for pictures with the 10-pound cub, which made squawking noises and writhed in his keeper's hands.

Black is promoting the film, which is due out May 27 and also stars Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Jean-Claude van Damme and Jackie Chan.

Summary: Jack Black Names U.S.-Born Giant Panda After 'Kung Fu Panda' Character


By the Alpha we have the statement of Capt. HART, of the bark Meteor. He searched a day and a half for the unfortunate passengers by the ship Wm. Nelson, the wreck of which was scattered for miles over the water.

Saved passengers say that on Sunday, the 26th ult., the Captain of the hapless ship determined to fumigate her, and for this purpose ordered pitch to be taken into the lower hold and red hot irons to be thrown into it. The pitch ignited and boiled over, and set the ship on fire.

When it was found impossible to save the ship, the Captain and other officers, and the cabin passengers, left in the boats of the ship, which soon burned to the water's edge, carrying down over four hundred steerage passengers.

The scenes on board the ill-fated vessel are described as of the most heartrending character.

Capt. HART says that a ship, five or six miles off from his vessel, was seen by him, apparently engaged in searching for the wreck; and he thinks that she undoubtedly saved some of the passengers from the wreck, all of whom had been three days and nights in the water.

The male cabin passengers are rapidly recovering from the effects of their injuries, but the females are badly burned about the arms and legs, and are not progressing so well.

C.O. LEACH, Esq., United States Consul at St. Johns, N.F., en route for the States, furnishes the following as the statement of the most intelligent of the saved passengers of the ship William Nelson:

"On Monday, the 26th ult, the steerage passengers were all ordered above, and the ship was thoroughly washed and fumigated. The fire broke out about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. The Captain, with his family and the ship's crew, in two boats, left the ship about 8 P.M. Two other boats then attempted to leave, but these were injured and swamped. Many of the saved passengers are badly burned."

The ship seen by Capt. HART probably saved some of the passengers on board the wreck.

The following dispatch confirms the news received to-day by Mr. GEORGE MACKENZIE, given in our first edition:

LIVERPOOL, Wednesday, July 5 -- Evening.

The steamship Lafayette, from New-York, arrived early this morning at Brest having picked up from three boats forty-five passengers from the American ship William Nelson, from Antwerp for New-York, with 480 passengers. The fate of the remainder was not known.

We also learn that thirty others had reached St. Johns, N.F.

The Nelson had 480 passengers, so there must have been over 400 lost as the chances of rescue were very slight, indeed.

[We have no names of the saved from the William Nelson, who reached St JOHNS, N.F. They were thirty in number, nine females and twenty-one males.]