Hollywood, 'Woefully Out of Touch', too few women involved & exposed!

AP Photo/Reed Saxon

Onscreen and off, minorities and women are drastically underrepresented — even at a cost to ratings and box office — according to a new report, which targets talent agencies, Oscars and Emmys, among others.

A UCLA study released Wednesday slammed the entertainment industry for its persistent and dramatic underrepresentation of minorities and women onscreen and behind the scenes, with the study’s chief author telling The Hollywood Reporter in an interview that “there are a lot of industries that do a better job than Hollywood” in forging workforces that reflect the nation’s diversity.

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China Pulverizes $10 Million Worth of Ivory in Fight Against Illegal Trade

Today China destroyed six tons of ivory from its official stockpile in an effort to discourage the ongoing trade the illicit substance. China is one of the world’s biggest markets for ivory from elephant tusks due to the material’s perceived value as a status symbol and the country’s growing middle class. Even though the Chinese government still has an undisclosed amount of ivory stored away, wildlife groups say the unprecedented move shows growing concern about the black market trade by authorities.

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First-Ever Case of Canadian Mining Company Going To Trial In Canada For Alleged Abuses Abroad

Published on 27 Oct 2013 | The trial of HudBay Minerals marks a first-time legal precedent of a Canadian company being held to account in Canadian courts for alleged shootings and gang rapes in Guatemala.

Radioactive Rainwater Overwhelms Fukishima Nuclear Plant

Published on 22 Oct 2013 | Heavy rains have overwhelmed containment tankers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant

Growing wealth gap are building in communist Cuba as well.

Not spring in Cuba yet -  Published on Feb 6, 2013 : Complaints about a growing wealth gap similar to those in many of the world's struggling economies are building in communist Cuba as well.This is in spite of reforms by the Raul Castro government, trying to tweak the one-party island's socialist model, to raise living standards.Economic growth last year was a nominal 3.1 percent, falling slightly short of the goal, which this year is 3.7 percent.

Castro has pried up the lid slightly on private initiative. The government still controls four-fifths of the economy, but it has given some 400,000 Cubans a small business licence; More restaurants are popping up around Havana, for instance. The government has promised to expand the range of activities people can try their hand at.

But it is not spring in Cuba yet.

It is hoped a new cornucopia measure to allow unused land to be cultivated will bear fruit, since the revolutionary island cannot grow enough to feed itself.Cuba still has to import 80 percent of what it eats, and that consumes 30 percent of its hard currency, valued at 1.3 billion euros per year.

In a country where the government has controlled wages and prices, and rationed commodities since 1959, some income gaps have narrowed.But even while recent social reforms have improved housing availability for instance, Odlanieris Cordero, a theatre wardrobe manager in the capital cannot get by on the monthly 20 euros she earns. Her husband working in Europe sends money home.

Cordero said: "I can't imagine what life would be without his help."

Cuba did distribute wealth more evenly, though old money and people in politics and the army enjoyed more of it. But there is a fear that the egalitarian ideal is dying.The editor of Temas magazine, Raphael Hernández, warned: "A growing income differential is a concern for everybody. It's a concern for the majority of Cubans. It's a concern for the government. But the question of different salaries, different incomes is part of what is accepted today in Cuba. This is not a classless society. This is not a uniform society anymore."

The most daring reform, some say, is liberalising property. If you owned a place, it used to be illegal to sell it. You could only trade it for another one. Not any more. But today it is almost impossible to buy unless a Cuban has some kind of income advantage over others. As market practices creep in and prices rise, those who can keep up are in a small minority.

Biblical Archaeology, the Limits of Science, and the Borders of Belief

Uploaded on Oct 11, 2010 : Nina Burleigh, author of Unholy Business - A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land

In this lecture, journalist and author Nina Burleigh examines what Israeli authorities have called "the fraud of the century" -- a scheme to modify archaeological objects or create entirely new ones to make them appear to verify biblical characters or stories. Burleigh will discuss these characters, the scheme to defraud high-end collectors, and the gullible religious public, and how the James Ossuary Case in a small courtroom in Jerusalem has put all of biblical archaeology on trial.

RT correspondent injured in Syria: 'Firing was intense'

Published on 3 Jan 2013 : A group of international journalists - including members of RT's Arabic team - have been caught in crossfire in Syria while covering the army's operations outside the capital.

Washington busy with Generals' Sex?

David Petraeus Resigns from CIA Over Affair

Published on Nov 9, 2012 by ABCNews : Four-star general says he "showed extremely poor judgment" by having extramarital affair.

Senior US General linked to Petraeus scandal

Published on Nov 13, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish; The top US commander in Afghanistan is now caught up in the same scandal that ended the career of CIA Director David Petraeus. General John Allen is being being accused of an inappropriate relationship with Jill Kelley, the woman who tipped off the FBI that Petraeus was having an affair.Now the scandal is sending shock waves across Washington.

'People able to make difference end up dead'

Published on Nov 11, 2012 by RussiaToday : It's four more years in the White House for US president Barack Obama but the tight race and an expensive election has left some voters less than satisfied. RT's Lori Harfenist takes a political pulse check in the Big Apple.

Silencing the messenger / whistle blower!

Greece arrests editor for 'Lagarde list' leak | Published on Oct 28, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : Greek police arrested the editor of a weekly magazine for publishing a list of more than 2,000 names of wealthy Greeks who have placed money in Swiss bank accounts, police said.

The so-called "Lagarde List", which led to the arrest of editor Costas Vaxevanis on Sunday, was given to Greece by French authorities in 2010 with names to be probed for possible tax evasion - has been a topic of heated speculation in the Greek media. It is named after International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, who was French finance minister when the list was handed over.

Meet Romney’s Economic Hit Man

Mark the name of R. Glenn Hubbard, the man who will make your life miserable if Mitt Romney is elected president. Unless, that is, you happen to be one of the swindlers who has profited mightily from the nation’s economic pain. Then George W. Bush’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers R. Glenn Hubbard in 2001. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Hubbard is the ideological hit man instrumental in justifying the mortgage derivatives bubble that caused the Great Recession during the George W. Bush years. He now serves as Romney’s key economic adviser and is the front-runner to be the next Treasury secretary should the Republican win.

“Romney’s Go-To Economist” read the headline on a New York Timesprofile of the dean of Columbia University’s Business School, which notes that “During a stint as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Hubbard was known as the principal architect of the Bush tax cuts.” In that capacity, and after returning to Columbia, Hubbard was also the chief cheerleader for a runaway derivatives market that spiraled out of control and left the Great Recession in its wake.

While pocketing millions in fees from the financial industry that he was ostensibly studying as a neutral academic, Hubbard was an enthusiastic backer of the virtues of a burgeoning unregulated capital market that sold toxic derivatives to the world. In a landmark paper that he co-wrote in November 2004 with William C. Dudley, at the time the chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs, it was asserted, “The capital markets have helped facilitate a major transformation of the U.S. mortgage financing system over the past 25 years. … The result has been a dramatic decline in the cyclical volatility of housing activity.” 

Their study was published by the Global Markets Institute of Goldman Sachs at the very time that Goldman, a leader in the capital market, was packaging and selling some of the toxic mortgage-based derivatives that would come close to destroying the world’s economy.

Hubbard’s article celebrated this “revolution in housing finance (that) has led to a large increase in mortgage equity withdrawal.” It extolled the madcap equity lending as “one reason why consumer spending held up well during the 2001-2003 period, even as employment and investment spending faltered.” 

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Green Party Candidates Arrested, Shackled to Chairs For 8 Hours For Trying to Enter Debate.

Published on Oct 17, 2012 by democracynow : DemocracyNow.org - Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and vice presidential candidate Cheri Honkala were arrested Tuesday as they attempted to enter the grounds of the presidential debate site at Hofstra University. Like other third party candidates, Stein was blocked from participating in the debate by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is controlled by the Republican and Democratic parties. Stein and Honkala were held for eight hours, handcuffed to chair. As she was being arrested, Stein condemned what she called "this mock debate, this mockery of democracy." Just hours after being released, Stein joins Democracy now! in their studio.

Pepper-sprayed UC Davis students awarded $1 mln

Pepper-sprayed UC Davis students awarded $1 mln

College students and alumni that were injured when a police officer at the University of California, Davis, discharged military-grade pepper-spray in their face during a peaceful protest last year will split a settlement of roughly $1,000,000.

Members of the UC Regents board agreed earlier this month on a settlement to be split among the 21 demonstrators targeted by a campus cop since removed from the force, but the final amount was not disclosed until now. The Sacramento Bee reports on Wednesday that the board had decided behind closed doors on a figure of roughly $1 million.

"We did an injustice to our students that day at Davis, and some amount of recompense is appropriate,” UC Davis student regent Jonathan Stein told the Los Angeles Times after their meeting earlier this month. “More importantly, it's time for us as an institution to publicly acknowledge that's not the way we should treat our students; we were wrong, and we are moving forward.”

The terms of the settlement were unsealed in federal court Wednesday morning and, assuming the appropriate papers are authorized by a federal judge, each of the 21 plaintiffs in the case are expected to receive $30,000, totaling $630,000 in all. Additional plaintiffs are invited to come forward and file claims in order to collect from a pool of $100,000 set aside for a class action suit, and $250,000 will be handed to the attorneys who handled the case.

Lt. John Pike, the officer who injured the protesters during a peaceful demonstration that was caught on tape and took the Internet by storm, was placed on paid administrative leave for several months after the November 18, 2011 sit-in on the Davis campus. Student and alumni had gathered at the school to protest rising tuition fees.

The internal affairs investigation alone into Lt. Pike’s actions cost the university $230,256.73, the Bee reports.

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'Free speech? Let Obama talk to Bradley Manning about it'

Published on Sep 25, 2012 by RussiaToday : Barack Obama stated US won't block anti-Islam film for reasons of free speech. RT discussed Obama's speech in UN with journalist and anti-war activist Don DeBar.

the findings of the Roundup/GM cancer trial

Experts discuss the findings of the Roundup/GM cancer trial

Published on Sep 19, 2012 by TheGrocerChannel : The world's best-selling weedkiller, and a genetically modified maize resistant to it, can cause tumours, multiple organ damage and lead to premature death, a new study has revealed. Its results are published in The Food & Chemical Toxicology Journal in New York. Here, experts discuss the significance of the findings.

UK housing collapse to leave 1.7 million families homeless

Published on Sep 16, 2012 by RussiaToday : Britain's suffering its worst housing crisis in modern history - with the number of new households increasing faster than the number of homes it can build. Over 1.7 million families are waiting for a place to live.

Egypt: End Sinai Nightmare for Migrants

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  A girl’s dress caught on the Sinai border fence separating Egypt and Israel.
  © 2008 Natan Dvir (www.natandvir.com)

RELATED MATERIALS: 

Sinai Perils

Egypt: End Traffickers’ Abuse of Migrants

Thousands of sub-Saharan asylum seekers and migrants attempting to cross the Sinai have fallen victim to abusive traffickers and other criminals.

Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division

Target Traffickers Who Detain, Torture, Sexually Assault Hundreds.

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

(New York) – Egypt should use its increased security force presence in the Sinai Peninsula to free hundreds of migrants held for ransom and abused by human traffickers and other criminals. The authorities should detain, investigate, and prosecute the traffickers.

Human Rights Watch has documented the trafficking of the mostly sub-Saharan migrants and asylum seekers in Sinai, who are tortured and sexually assaulted to press their relatives for ransom. Under Mubarak, law enforcement officials did not intervene to protect the victims, although Egypt has a strong anti-trafficking law. President Muhammad Morsy ordered security forces to “impose full control” over Sinai following the August 5, 2012, attack on a security post on the border with Israel that left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead.

“Thousands of sub-Saharan asylum seekers and migrants attempting to cross the Sinai have fallen victim to abusive traffickers and other criminals,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt’s new government should use its increased law enforcement operations to rescue victims of trafficking and end these abuses.”

Credible sources in Cairo confirmed to Human Rights Watch a steady increase in the number of trafficking victims who have been tortured, raped, and otherwise sexually assaulted over the past two years.

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(Political?) Miscommunication cost lives...

Confusion about the new minimum wage law and tensions between workers and management lie behind the death of a Chinese mining boss in August.

The killing of Wu Shenzai on 4 August and the wounding of his two compatriots by Zambian mine workers demanding the implementation of the newly revised minimum wage were widely condemned throughout Zambia. Wu, a 50-year-old manager at Collum Coal Mine, died after mine workers crushed him with a trolley as he tried to flee underground to escape a wage riot in one of the most dramatic clashes yet between Chinese managers and their local employees. Mine workers had organised a protest at what they saw as delays by Collum in adopting a new revised minimum wage. In fact, the new law, which came into force on 4 July, applies only to domestic, shop and general workers. Union members are not affected as their pay is negotiated by collective bargaining with employers.

President Michael Sata's opponents lambasted his Patriotic Front government for the lack of a clear policy on labour relations with Chinese companies and the failure to deliver on the pre-election populist pledges that ushered the PF into power last September. The opposition is calling for the resignation of Labour and Social Security Minister Fackson Shamenda, whom they hold responsible for the mass confusion surrounding the revised minimum wage law.

Sata, also known as 'King Cobra', won last year's elections on a platform of holding foreign investors to account, improving the lives of workers and creating one million new jobs but is struggling to fulfil his manifesto. On 4 August, his public appearance at the Agriculture and Commercial Show, also graced by Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, was rapidly curtailed after young protestors heckled and booed Sata, pursuing him around the stands, demanding jobs and more money in their pockets.

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Obama should had revised the foreign policy & take all the soldiers home by now?

Why did it come to this? Afghan forces to be re-vetted

Published on Sep 2, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish Training operations for the Afghan Local Police, a security force separate from the Afghan National Police that operates in the more insecure and remote areas, has been suspended by the United States.

The suspension, affecting about 1,000 Afghans, comes in response to a recent rise in insider attacks in which coalition forces have been killed by Afghans in military or police uniforms.

There have been 34 friendly fire attacks this year - at least 15 in August alone - that have killed 45 international troops.

Poor In India Starve As Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion Of Food

Sanjit Das/Bloomberg

52-year-old Ram Kishen with his government provided ration card in Satnapur Village, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Ram Kishen, 52, half-blind and half- starved, holds in his gnarled hands the reason for his hunger: a tattered card entitling him to subsidized rations that now serves as a symbol of India’s biggest food heist.

Kishen has had nothing from the village shop for 15 months. Yet 20 minutes’ drive from Satnapur, past bone-dry fields and tiny hamlets where children with distended bellies play, a government storage facility five football fields long bulges with wheat and rice. By law, those 57,000 tons of food are meant for Kishen and the 105 other households in Satnapur with ration books. They’re meant for some of the 350 million families living below India’s poverty line of 50 cents a day.

Instead, as much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade in Kishen’s home state of Uttar Pradesh alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The theft blunted the country’s only weapon against widespread starvation -- a five-decade-oldpublic distribution system that has failed to deliver record harvests to the plates of India’s hungriest.

“This is the most mean-spirited, ruthlessly executed corruption because it hits the poorest and most vulnerable in society,” said Naresh Saxena, who, as a commissioner to the nation’sSupreme Court, monitors hunger-based programs across the country. “What I find even more shocking is the lack of willingness in trying to stop it.”

Unpunished

This scam, like many others involving politicians in India, remains unpunished. A state police force beholden to corrupt lawmakers, an underfunded federal anti-graft agency and a sluggish court system have resulted in five overlapping investigations over seven years -- and zero convictions.

India has run the world’s largest public food distribution system for the poor since the failure of two successive monsoons led to the creation of the Food Corporation of India in 1965. The government last year spent a record $13 billion buying and storing commodities such as wheat and rice, and expects that figure to grow this year.

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