Angelina Jolie's Aunt Dies of Breast Cancer

US Actress Angelina Jolie in London, April 11, 2013.

Angelina Jolie's aunt died of breast cancer Sunday, May 27, nearly two weeks after the Hollywood movie star wrote about electing to have a double mastectomy when she learned that she had inherited a high risk of breast cancer.

Debbie Martin, the younger sister of Jolie's mother, died at age 61 at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, near San Diego.

Her husband, Ron Martin, praised Jolie's decision to get a double mastectomy, saying it made his late wife very happy.

"It gave her some, it gave her a lot of gratitude that she could have, that Angelina had now saved her own life, you know, whereas... and since she couldn't go back and save herself, she was very happy to hear that,'' Martin said during an interview.

Jolie, 37, is raising a family with fellow actor and fiance Brad Pitt. She wrote that she went through with the operation in part to reassure her six children that she would not die young from cancer, as her own mother did.

Jolie's mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of breast cancer in 2007 at age 56.

"If there is a lot of women out there that have a high risk in their family they should get tested, and if they have that BRCA gene, then they have the opportunity to take pre-emptive action. And that is what Debbie would like to have happen,'' added Martin.

Jolie, who won an Oscar for best supporting actress in her 1999 role for the film Girl, Interrupted, said she opted for the surgery after her doctors had estimated she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, due to an inherited genetic mutation.  

 

Sources :

http://www.voanews.com/content/angelina-jolies-aunt-dies-of-breast-cancer/1669011.html

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Jolie Stunt Double Sues News Corp Over Phone Hacking

A stunt double for Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie has sued News Corp over allegations its British newspapers hacked her phone, the first lawsuit in the United States against the company since a hacking scandal broke out two years ago.

The lawsuit filed on June 13 by professional stunt double, Eunice Huthart, said reporters from News Corp's tabloids The Sun and the defunct News of the World, hacked her mobile phone while she was working for Jolie on location in Los Angeles.

A spokesman for News Corp declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Huthart's lawsuit said the hacking occurred in 2004 and 2005 while she was in the United States and Britain and resulted in lost voice messages that she never received.

The missing voice mails provided information later used in news reports, according to the court document in U.S. District Court in California. Huthart is seeking unspecified damages.

The allegations include stories that ran in the tabloids about Jolie's budding relationship with actor Brad Pitt - when only a tight circle of people had knowledge of it - while they were filming the movie “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”

In one instance, Huthart was instructed to meet Jolie, who was checked into a hotel under the pseudonym “Pocahontas.” Huthart said she never received the message with the code name even though Jolie's assistant said she left it for her on the phone.

The lawsuit said that the tabloids intercepted messages left by Jolie regarding her movie career. It citied a News of the World article with the headline “Pitt Stop for Jolie” that began “Hollywood babe Angelina Jolie has threatened to quit the movies for good,” according to the complaint.

Huthart of Liverpool, England, is godmother to one of Jolie's children.

The phone hacking scandal sent shockwaves through the British establishment, forced the closure of the Sunday tabloid News of the World, prompted a huge police inquiry and lead to the arrest of more than 60 people.

But until the Huthart lawsuit, the scandal has been contained in Britain.

News Corp is preparing to split its publishing assets, which includes its British newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and book publisher HarperCollins, from its cable networks and movie studio on June 28.

The case is Eunice Huthart v. News Corporation et al in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.  

Sources :

http://www.voanews.com/content/jolie-stunt-double-sues-news-corp-phone-hacking/1684136.html

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Played by Israeli actor, the film was banned on

Lebanese filmmaker Ziad Duiri said the state government has pulled circulation movie titled 'attack' just because he hired Israeli actor and one of the film was taken in view of the capital Tel Aviv.

Al Arabiya television reported on Sunday (28/4), Duiri also accused Interior Minister Marwan Charbel forcing many parties not to play his work. "The reason we put the film on the spot Zionist State. Government does not want to know even though most of the story had to be to Tel Aviv," he said.

Duiri also refused to apologize because cooperation with Israel. He was not sorry about anything.

Charbel told AFP he did not make the movie actually Duiri but he received a protest letter from the office of the Arab League boycott of Israel is driven Capital has offices in Cairo, Egypt. "We can not do anything about it. Kambi part of the Arab League," he said.

The film has won various awards, among others Colcoa Film festival in France. The show tells the story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and adapted from the true story of a doctor from Tel Aviv that his wife become suicide bombers.

Duiri mention on the film censorship is folly and injustice. Instead some of the accused party propaganda Bindtang Affairs David.
 
Sources:
http://www.merdeka.com/dunia/diperankan-aktor-israel-film-ini-dilarang-edar.html

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Flamenco Band Has Arabic, Islamic Influences

La Ruya is a California band with a unique flamenco style which incorporates Moorish and Arabic rhythms and instruments. (VOA/L. Shavelson)

In a nation of immigrants, with a 'melting pot' culture, it should not be surprising that American music is also an international blend.

That's especially true of Flamenco, brought to southern Spain by 18th-century Romanis-Gypsies from North India, and performed today by a California band that incorporates Arabic and other Islamic influences from Turkey, the Black Sea, Persia and North Africa. 

The unmistakable sound of flamenco - Spanish guitar and heels - is transformed by the members of the San Francisco band, La Ruya.

One of the band’s founding members is Sam Foster. He’s a rock and jazz drummer who became fascinated with Arabic and Turkish percussion, and from there to Flamenco. He brought in flamenco dancer and choreographer Melissa Cruz, and other musicians to create La Ruya’s unique sound.

“We are taking forms and in some cases actual songs from other parts of the world and flamencoizing them," Foster said, "so you have something new, a sound I haven’t heard before.”

The instruments used by the group include the oud, which is the middle eastern lute; the flute; the cajon, the box drum; and darbouka, the gourd drum, also known as dumbek.

And, they have the palmas.

“Palmas are flamenco hand claps," said Melissa Cruz. "And typically it is the flamenco singer and flamenco dancer who are doing the palmas.”

Wherever La Ruya performs, they find an appreciative audience.

“I feel the audience very intensely when I dance, and I love to even be playful with people in the audience," said Cruz. "It helps me move through what I’m trying to create in the moment, gesturing to them. It makes for a complete experience for both performers and the audience.”

Some say traditional Spanish flamenco should stay the way it’s been.

Others say La Ruya’s Arabic style takes the dance back to the roots of the Spanish peninsula, to Moorish Spain.

For Cruz, La Ruya’s flamenco style of Moorish and Arabic rhythms and instruments isn’t changing flamenco; it’s bringing the tradition back to its origins.  

Sources :

http://www.voanews.com/content/us-flamenco-band-has-arabic-islamic-influences/1661552.html

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Von Trier's Hotly-Awaited Film Gets December Launch

Director Lars Von Trier poses during an interview with Reuters in Mougins, France, May 21, 2011.

Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac,'' one of the most hotly anticipated movies of 2013 for its erotic content and all-star cast, will open in theatres on Christmas Day, the producers said on Thursday.

The provocative director, expelled from the Cannes film festival in 2011 for joking that he sympathized with Hitler, cast Charlotte Gainsbourg as the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac of the title, alongside rising Hollywood star Shia LaBeouf.

Uma Thurman and Willem Dafoe also appear in a movie which, if the pre-release buildup is to be believed, could match Von Trier's ultra-violent "Antichrist'' for shocking audiences.

The film will premiere in Copenhagen in early December with a red carpet gala, and reach cinemas on Dec. 25.

There had been intense speculation that the picture would be ready for this year's Cannes, where director Thierry Fremaux told Reuters Von Trier would be welcomed back in the future despite his exit two years ago.

It was the first such expulsion from the world's top film festival in 64 years, and an apology from the director, once a darling in Cannes and winner of the Palme d'Or award in 2000 for "Dancer in the Dark'', proved too late.

Sources :
http://www.voanews.com/content/von-triers-hotly-awaited-nymphomaniac-film-gets-december-launch/1662298.html

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Rock, Pop, Country Singers to Headline Boston Benefit Concert

Boston bands Aerosmith and New Kids on the Block, singer-songwriter James Taylor and country singer Jason Aldean will headline a concert to benefit the victims of last month's Boston Marathon bombing, organizers said on Friday.
   
The May 30 concert at the city's TD Garden arena is also aimed at showing support for the people of Boston after the bombing that killed three people and injured 264.
   
Other artists lined up for "Boston Strong: An Evening of Support and Celebration" include singers Jimmy Buffett and Carole King, the band Boston and the J. Geils Band, concert promoters Live Nation and TD Garden said.
   
"Like so many other proud Bostonians who have been extremely generous, we are honored to step up and do our part to help the victims and their families," said Donnie Wahlberg of former boy band New Kids on the Block.
   
"Hopefully this event will not only raise money, but spirits as well," Wahlberg said in a statement.
   
Boston-born Taylor said, "Everyone involved has responded from the heart in a spontaneous and simultaneous desire to be there and to do what we can for the city we love."
   
All proceeds from the concert will go to The One Fund, which was set up by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. Tickets priced from $35 to $285 go on sale on Monday.
   
The two bombs that exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 were the worst attack on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11 2001, attacks.
   
Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police four days later. The ethnic Chechen's younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was wounded in the April 19 shootout, is being held in a nearby prison facility. 

Sources :

http://www.voanews.com/content/rock-pop-country-singers-to-headline-boston-benefit-concert/1654590.html

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Russia's New Mariinsky Theater Woos Doubters

Enlisting the drama of Prokofiev and the elegance of Tchaikovsky, St. Petersburg's new Mariinsky theater staged a gala opening on Thursday designed to silence critics of the starkly modernist building erected in the heart of Russia's imperial capital.

The $700-million glass and limestone building, which critics have dubbed the "Mariinsky mall," glowed in the night sky, its glass and metal walkways humming with excited voices as the select crowd of 2,000 found their seats.

Just opposite, across a canal, the 19th century original opera house, one of the great showcases of Russian culture which became home to the Kirov opera and ballet companies in Soviet times, stood silent for the evening.

"We need breath life into the theater. We want it to live, so that people are attracted and can feel the charm of modern technology. Then it will shine in all its glory," President Vladimir Putin told the guests, who included leading Russian businessmen.

Calling the Mariinsky by its affectionate short name Mariinka, Putin said the theater had always preserved the best traditions of the Russian arts, never losing "its shine."

"760 performances a year! And each one is world class. No artistic team in the world does that." Putin praised Valery Gergiev, director of the Mariinsky and regarded by many as the greatest living orchestral conductor, for pursuing a project that had been conceived just before Russia's financial crash of 1998.

"In 2003, Gergiev raised the issue again and a new project arose," Putin said, referring to a decision made after he became president in 2000.

The Mariinsky II is one of several grand projects sponsored by Putin intended to show what Russia can achieve, most notably the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

See Inside

Gergiev, whose 60th birthday coincided with the gala, had been criticized for commissioning a sleek, modern building which some say sits awkwardly among its pastel-colored 19th-century neighbors.

But in the end only two people protested outside. One of them, a woman, held a banner mocking Gergiev's recent "Hero of Labor" award received from Putin on Wednesday, suggesting the conductor should either pull down the building or hand back the medal.

The conductor, a loyal ally of Putin, had shrugged off the criticism, saying the Mariinsky needed a new stage and state-of-the-art technology to produce the kind of theater people expected to see today.

"People asked why do we need new architecture? Why does St. Petersburg need a new opera house? I think the best way to answer those questions is simply to let people come in,'' he told a news conference.

Many guests were impressed. Light bounced off wall panels made of Italian onyx that stretch several stories high and the sound was excellent.

"I like the theater and I liked the concert. It's a contemporary theater with great potential," said former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. "I love theaters and have been in many great theaters in different corners of the world. I think it is worthy of becoming one of them."

The simple light wood of the balconies and aisles was a world away from the original Mariinsky Theater, which was sumptuously decorated in gold and red. Only the VIP box in the Mariinsky II has a slight nod to extravagance - a modern chandelier to make prominent guests feel at home.

The gala opened with a dramatic excerpt from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" ballet and included the coronation scene from Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov, when the vast stage swarmed with peasants.

Ulyana Lopatkina and Viktor Baranov danced "Pavlova and Cecchetti" to Tchaikovsky and Placido Domingo sang a Wagner aria in front of an audience including Putin allies Alisher Usmanov, Russia's richest man, and railways chief Vladimir Yakunin. 

Sources :

http://www.voanews.com/content/russias-new-mariinsky-theater-opens/1653589.html  

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Retired Racehorse Finds Calling as Abstract Painter

The horse is an American icon. It races gracefully, performs heavy farm tasks, can do tricks and, if television is to be believed, may even talk. But only one is an accomplished painter.

Metro Meteor, a 10-year-old thoroughbred bay in rural Maryland, is enjoying singular success. Within just months of applying his first brush stroke to paper, he is juggling requests for public appearances, weighing endorsement offers and earning thousands of dollars for his work.

Slowed by bad knees, the racehorse was retired in 2009 and adopted by Ron and Wendy Krajewski. Unable to ride the crippled horse, Ron, a local artist, decided to teach the horse to paint in order to spend more time with him.

Elephants are known to paint with their trunks, he reasoned, and Metro did tend to bob his head a lot while in his stall.

The paintings caught on, and success ensued. Metro is now the best-selling artist at Gallery 30, a small shop in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which started selling his work four months ago.

Metro's paintings feature colorful, sweeping brushstrokes, complete with specks of sawdust — not surprising as the horse paints by swinging his head, a paintbrush clenched in his teeth.

"For his large paintings, there is a waiting list of 120," said Ron Krajewski in an interview this week.

The larger acrylics, 20 inches by 20 inches (51 x 51 cm), sell for $850 at the gallery, he said, and smaller cut-down versions, 5 inches by 7 inches (12.7 x 17.8 cm), are $80.

One of Metro's large paintings sold on eBay for more than $2,000, and bidding for another one on Friday was hovering at $800 with only a few hours to go.

In total, about 40 large and 150 small works have sold, adding up to more than $20,000, Krajewski said.

As the owners say on Metro's website: "Art scholars are not going to have long lengthy discussions trying to decipher the hidden meaning to Metro's paintings. He is a horse."

"It is what it is," they said. "A painting you can hang on your wall and tell all your friends it was painted by a horse."

Typically, horse and owner paint for an hour or two, maybe four times a week, Ron Krajewski said, adding that Metro never seems to get bored with the task.

Metro lives at Motter's Station Stables, near Rocky Ridge, a small town in the rolling hills of northern Maryland. An indoor arena doubles as his studio.

One morning this week, the horse demonstrated his technique — interpreted by Wendy Krajewski — to a visitor.

"He'll roll ... he likes to roll," she said, and within minutes, the horse knelt, lay on his side and began to roll on his back.

Then he got to his feet, walked over to his easel and array of paints and wrapped his muzzle around a paintbrush. Friendly and laid-back, he scarcely fit the stereotype of a high-strung thoroughbred.

A former turf sprinter, considered among the fastest at Saratoga and Belmont Park, Metro won about $300,000 during his racing career, his owners said.

When his knees deteriorated, forcing him off the track, the Krajewskis, who owned a percentage of the horse, adopted Metro with plans to use him for casual trail riding. They also own a quarterhorse and another adopted thoroughbred.

The horse was able to take short trail rides, but eventually his weak knees left him unable to support the weight of a rider, they said.

The Krajewskis donate half of Metro's earnings to New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program, a charity that seeks homes and rehabilitation for retired racehorses. The owner of Gallery 30 donates a portion of Metro's profits to a local animal shelter.

"We use the rest to pay for his medical bills," Ron Krajewski said. "The special treatment for his knees is very expensive."

Metro suffers from arthritis, cartilitis — or frozen joints — and rapid bone growth, among other health issues.

At first, his prognosis was bleak. If he continued to deteriorate, his owners said, he could die within two or three years. But recent X-rays showed that an experimental bone remodeling treatment had improved one knee, and treatment on another knee will begin this month.

Metro's popularity has gone national. He has appeared on network television and has received endorsement offers, his owners said.

The volume of business offers prompted the Krajewskis to retain an intellectual property attorney.

Their horse, they noted, is oblivious to earnings and acclaim. As long as he has fresh water and hay, some treats and a pasture where he can nibble grass, run and roll in the dirt, Metro is happy, they said.  

Sources :

http://www.voanews.com/content/retired-racehorse-finds-calling-as-abstract-painter/1654341.html

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Nigerian Artists Plan Anti-Piracy Task Force

Music piracy is so prevalent in Nigeria that most people do not consider buying original copies of the albums they want.  Nigerian musical artists say the practice is killing what could be a booming industry and they are gearing up to fight back. 

The country has copyright laws, but by shopping in the markets, you would not know it.  Newly-released Hollywood movies sell for less than $3 and CDs cost about 95 cents.

Ranking Deezed is the president of Performing Musicians and Employers Association of Nigeria.   The organization has about 100,000 members.  He said the Nigerian music industry has the potential to become an economic success - like Nigeria's "Nollywood," the third-largest film industry in the world.

“Artists are increasing.  Talents are increasing.  In fact, studios are increasing," Deezed noted.  "We have producers that have studios in their homes.  But then the market is what’s the problem.”

What happens in the markets, he said, just about cuts out any chance the artists have of making a profit from their music.  Original CDs are released and sold for a little over $3.  But if the music is good, he says, the market is swiftly flooded with copies sold wholesale for less than 25 cents.

“We learned of some companies, or let me say pirates, in Lagos that duplicate almost like 10 million copies in almost like a week or so.  So that is really bad,” he said.

Dezeed said his organization is setting up a task force to catch music pirates and turn them in to authorities.

In northern Nigeria, Copyright Commission law enforcement director Amadu Augustin Aleo said his organization has caught 170 people copying CDs or stealing music and marketing it as their own in the past six months.

He said the punishment can be a more than $1,500 fine or prison time, but the commission needs more support to slow the growing piracy business.

And musicians say it is not just people copying CDs and selling them in the markets that is hurting their ability to profit from their work.  They say their music is also regularly shared illegally on the Internet or through mobile-phone ringtones.

Jerry Marshall has recorded seven albums and said he has been ripped off by pirates more times than he can count. H said the new task force could change all that.

“My advice to those marketers, those who sell music, those who pirate music.  They should be very careful because the law will soon come to them,” Marshall warned.

But he acknowledged that outside the arts community, most people in Nigeria - a country facing security crises, natural disasters and widespread abject poverty - do not care about music piracy.

And in this Abuja market, like markets all over the country, young men sell CDs and DVDs openly from stalls or piles in their hands.  Many offer money-back guarantees if the copy does not work.

A lot of Nigerians know they are buying pirated entertainment.  What is not commonly known, is that there is anyone at all who objects.

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