? Rome, Lazio, Italy
Friday, June 28, 2013
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Recent-Travel-Blogs-RSS/~3/FBHsQaJHKaU/tpod.html
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At the headquarters of Japan's ruling party, there's a new plan for victory ahead of next month's national election.
?
This is Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe like you've never seen him before.
He's the star of 'Abe Hop', a new free game for smartphones released by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) this week.
The game is to steer the Japanese premiere high into the sky, winning points to change his attire.
Skillful players can whisk Abe out of his grey business suit and into jeans or gym kit.
The ultimate prize is a bouncing Abe clad in a Superman costume.
Takuya Hirai is an LDP lawmaker and the brains behind the party's internet strategy.
[Takuya Hirai, LDP Lawmaker]:
"If you play over and over again you can win rosettes?they're like the ones candidates get when they win an election. The more you collect, the more costumes you can choose for Abe. We're also doing a version upgrade today to bring in rankings, so we're hoping the game will get people interested in politics in a way they never were before."
The party plans to have six apps in circulation before the country's July 21st upper house election, Japan's first to allow official campaigning online.
Abe has already made a name as a keen user of social media services, with more than 370-thousand Facebook followers.
As voting day approaches, Hirai says he now hopes 'Abe Hop' will help to draw in smartphone-savvy voters who might otherwise give the ballot box a miss.
Source: http://ntdtv.org/en/news/world/asia/2013-06-29/japan-prime-minister-in-new-smartphone-game.html
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STARTUPS:?Raising capital is dead easy ? you just convince some wealthy folk to believe in your idea and persuade them to part with some of their cash. Right? Obviously it?s nowhere near that simple, as many a travel company will testify. So what should you do? Read the full story on Forbes.
The simple fact of the market is that there are many, many more entrepreneurs seeking capital than there are investors seeking to fund them.
Indeed, the odds are 40:1 against getting money from angels and 400:1 against a company receiving an investment from a venture capital fund.
This means that it is a ?buyer?s market?, and it is infinitely more common for an investor to decline to make an investment offer than it is for a company to decline to accept an investment offer.
Read the full story on Forbes
NB: Roll of cash image via Shutterstock.
Related posts:
Source: http://www.tnooz.com/2013/06/28/news/how-to-start-or-close-a-funding-round-as-a-travel-business/
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All Critics (54) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (53) | Rotten (1)
Lindholm doesn't present the film as a procedural for hostage negotiations because he knows too well that there are too many movable parts, too many things that can go wrong.
Methodical and tense ... has the feel of something based on real-life events ... boils down to an arresting portrait of two men, with different backgrounds and abilities, doing everything they can not to break.
We're impatient for action, any kind of action - but preferably the sort that involves a team of Navy SEALs, maybe led by Dwayne Johnson. Instead, we get something like a merger meeting.
Hand-held camerawork, so often a confounded nuisance, here makes the conditions on board the Rozen feel nauseatingly urgent.
No mainstream American thriller could ever be made about this subject that resisted simple-minded narrative clich?s the way "A Hijacking" does, or that refused to depict its characters as either heroes or villains.
Lindholm turns tedium and frustration into agonizing suspense.
A smart movie derived out of the small moments that collectively comprise the hostage experience, rather than grandiose gestures.
Lindholm's you-are-there docudrama works as a tense thriller, but themes of negotiation and the ability to empathize provide a rich subtext.
...slow, mostly talk, but tense and realistic...
The level of suspense in this riveting Danish thriller doesn't build in sweeping melodramatic fashion, but rather at a low-key simmer that emphasizes authentic character dynamics.
A Hijacking accomplishes a tricky task, generating tension through talk rather than action.
This absorbing chronicle of a hijacking in the Indian Ocean has the strengths of the best procedural dramas -- it assumes a distanced and objective tone and packs an emotional wallop.
Moment by moment we find ourselves wondering what will happen next...
Auteur Tobias Lindholm does a striking job in grabbing your attention and running with it as he succinctly tells the story of "A Hijacking."
A Hijacking is an absorbing, highly moving film that's lingered heavily on the mind for a couple of days now.
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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_hijacking/
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June 27, 2013 ? Data from Voyager 1, now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, suggest the spacecraft is closer to becoming the first human-made object to reach interstellar space.
Research using Voyager 1 data and published in the journal Science today provides new detail on the last region the spacecraft will cross before it leaves the heliosphere, or the bubble around our sun, and enters interstellar space. Three papers describe how Voyager 1's entry into a region called the magnetic highway resulted in simultaneous observations of the highest rate so far of charged particles from outside heliosphere and the disappearance of charged particles from inside the heliosphere.
Scientists have seen two of the three signs of interstellar arrival they expected to see: charged particles disappearing as they zoom out along the solar magnetic field, and cosmic rays from far outside zooming in. Scientists have not yet seen the third sign, an abrupt change in the direction of the magnetic field, which would indicate the presence of the interstellar magnetic field.
"This strange, last region before interstellar space is coming into focus, thanks to Voyager 1, humankind's most distant scout," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "If you looked at the cosmic ray and energetic particle data in isolation, you might think Voyager had reached interstellar space, but the team feels Voyager 1 has not yet gotten there because we are still within the domain of the sun's magnetic field."
Scientists do not know exactly how far Voyager 1 has to go to reach interstellar space. They estimate it could take several more months, or even years, to get there. The heliosphere extends at least 8 billion miles (13 billion kilometers) beyond all the planets in our solar system. It is dominated by the sun's magnetic field and an ionized wind expanding outward from the sun. Outside the heliosphere, interstellar space is filled with matter from other stars and the magnetic field present in the nearby region of the Milky Way.
Voyager 1 and its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977. They toured Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before embarking on their interstellar mission in 1990. They now aim to leave the heliosphere. Measuring the size of the heliosphere is part of the Voyagers' mission.
The Science papers focus on observations made from May to September 2012 by Voyager 1's cosmic ray, low-energy charged particle and magnetometer instruments, with some additional charged particle data obtained through April of this year.
Voyager 2 is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) from the sun and still inside the heliosphere. Voyager 1 was about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun Aug. 25 when it reached the magnetic highway, also known as the depletion region, and a connection to interstellar space. This region allows charged particles to travel into and out of the heliosphere along a smooth magnetic field line, instead of bouncing around in all directions as if trapped on local roads. For the first time in this region, scientists could detect low-energy cosmic rays that originate from dying stars.
"We saw a dramatic and rapid disappearance of the solar-originating particles. They decreased in intensity by more than 1,000 times, as if there was a huge vacuum pump at the entrance ramp onto the magnetic highway," said Stamatios Krimigis, the low-energy charged particle instrument's principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "We have never witnessed such a decrease before, except when Voyager 1 exited the giant magnetosphere of Jupiter, some 34 years ago."
Other charged particle behavior observed by Voyager 1 also indicates the spacecraft still is in a region of transition to the interstellar medium. While crossing into the new region, the charged particles originating from the heliosphere that decreased most quickly were those shooting straightest along solar magnetic field lines. Particles moving perpendicular to the magnetic field did not decrease as quickly. However, cosmic rays moving along the field lines in the magnetic highway region were somewhat more populous than those moving perpendicular to the field. In interstellar space, the direction of the moving charged particles is not expected to matter.
In the span of about 24 hours, the magnetic field originating from the sun also began piling up, like cars backed up on a freeway exit ramp. But scientists were able to quantify that the magnetic field barely changed direction -- by no more than 2 degrees.
"A day made such a difference in this region with the magnetic field suddenly doubling and becoming extraordinarily smooth," said Leonard Burlaga, the lead author of one of the papers, and based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "But since there was no significant change in the magnetic field direction, we're still observing the field lines originating at the sun."
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., built and operates the Voyager spacecraft. California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For more information about the Voyager spacecraft mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov .
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/RSctGZatbW0/130627140803.htm
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After suffering a massive ischemic stroke in January 2012, Illinois senator Mark Kirk was unsure if he would ever return to full form. For days Kirk lingered in the intensive care unit, floating in and out of consciousness. At one point, Kirk recalls, he saw angels with New York accents talking to him, urging him to come with them like in all those near death, white light stories you hear.
But against the long odds, the freshman Republican senator has not only managed to recover enough to perform his busy day job, he's placed himself in the middle of the most heated Washington fights. Kirk slammed Eric Holder at a recent Appropriations Committee hearing, probing to see if the spy agency was listening in on Congress and livid about Holder's seemingly evasive answer. Kirk's threat not to support immigration reform unless border security was strengthened surprised many of his colleagues and endangered Republican support for the bill. He got in a fight with Rep. Bobby Rush, the Chicago congressman, who chided Kirk for his plan to "crush" Chicago's gangs saying it was an "upper-middle-class, elitist white boy's solution."
And he says he's already planning to run for a second term in 2016, despite the rigor it will take to defend a seat in one of the most Democratic states in the country.
Kirk's recovery has been remarkable by the standards of a stroke patient even as it's still left him without his pre-injury vigor or ability to hustle the way politicians must to keep their office in competitive seats which his surely is. He walks slowly. His voice is weakened. He's not all he was. But his comeback has been inspiring.
"If people knew how catastrophic this stroke was, they'd be blown away by his recovery," says Illinois Rep. John Shimkus who was the first member of the state's House delegation to visit Kirk in the hospital in 2012. Asked if he ever had any doubts that Kirk would want back in politics, he recalled the senator, even though he was in rehab, staying up late to watch the HBO film Game Change. "That was the signal to me that he was coming back."
Kirk's stroke largely spared his cognitive function but has left him disabled, dependent on the kind of four legged cane you usually see on the elderly, and a wheelchair for longer hikes. "The Senate is appropriately designed for older men," he jokes. He was just 52 when the stroke hit.
When he walked up the Capitol stairs in January to the bipartisan applause of his colleagues including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, his home state senator with whom he has a close relationship, it was an emotional moment that left many feeling that the stroke had in some ways made him a more important force--less an object of sympathy than an inspiring example of perseverance.
To understand Kirk, you have to know that he's a creature of the Chicago suburbs and a creature of Congress. He loves both. Raised outside Chicago, the son of a telephone company executive, he graduated from Cornell and worked for Rep. John Porter while he was at law school at Georgetown becoming the congressman's top aide. Porter represented Chicago's North Shore, the lakefront district that includes the leafy suburbs glorified in John Hughes movies and Kirk's hometown of Kenilworth. When Porter retired, Kirk won his seat and carried on Porter's moderate GOP politics as Illinois became more and more blue. When the U.S. Senate seat opened up in 2010, Kirk went for it and beat an Obama ally, the state treasurer, Alexi Giannoulias, a hoops buddy of the president, in the wave of discontent.
Kirk was no tea partier but he wasn't a bland moderate, either. He'd been a critic of the stimulus which other Republican moderates had backed and he loathed Obamacare. "I'm a fiscal conservative, a social moderate and a national security hawk," Kirk told me, using a mantra he repeats frequently.
Just a year into his term, in January 2012, Kirk, a slim, former intelligence officer in the Naval Reserves began to feel dizzy while back home. Aides rushed him to Lake Forest Hospital and then transferred him to the Northwestern University Medical Center when it became apparent that he'd had a massive ischemic stroke. The attack put his left carotid artery out of business and his life in danger. He had to undergo three operations, two of which were craniectomies to remove portions of his skull to allow the brain to expand. "There was a remarkable amount of swelling," notes Richard Fessler, a professor of neurosurgery who operated on Kirk. "The surgeries were life saving but he's doing great."
Kirk had the kind of emotional reckoning that comes with a near-death episode. He decided to spend more time with his sister, for instance. But he never doubted he wanted to return to the Senate. He told his speech therapists that he wanted his public speaking voice back. And he told those who worked on his physical therapy at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) that he wanted to be able to climb the Capitol steps when he returned. Mike Klonowski worked with Kirk--putting him in a harness so he could move on a treadmill, putting him through the paces of a research study that pushed Kirk to do more intense physical training than the typical patient.
"There was initial shock when I found out I was going to be working with him," Klonowski remembers about the prospect of putting a U.S. Senator through the paces." But he responded to very specific goals and wanted to make sure that we were focused on his return back to the Senate."
Now he's back and working on his recovery and working to help other patients are on his mind. This coming week he'll be in Chicago where he'll join Durbin and Emanuel to celebrate the $550 million expansion of the RIC. "My concern is what happens if you have a stroke and you're not in the U.S. Senate and you have no insurance and no income," Kirk told me. "That's the question I have been asking and the reality is that if you're on Illinois Medicaid are a stroke survivor, you will get just five visits to the rehab specialist." When I ask Kirk where the money might come from for more extensive benefits, he notes that he's working with Sen. Tim Johnson on a "stroke agenda." (Johnson himself suffered a stroke.)
Since his return, Kirk has cut an interesting path, weaving left and right in ways that aren't predictable. When Iran elected its new president who many hailed as a moderate, Kirk denounced him as more of the same. He stuck with moderates on gun control, earning him an attaboy tweet from Obama's consiglieri David Axelrod. But he also took a hawkish line on immigration that surprised many before he relented and supported the bill. By contrast, Kirk was full of kind words for Rahm Emanuel when I saw him. "He's doing a very, very good job," says Kirk who served with Hizzoner when they were in the House. The two graduated in 1977 from New Trier High School in Winnetka but didn't know each other. (Donald Rumsfeld went there, too, 27 years earlier.)
With his military intelligence background, Kirk has emerged as a compelling voice on the NSA maess, leaning closer to the privacy advocates than the voices in both parties who say everything's fine with the way we collect intelligence. "It's bad intelligence work to be focusing on 121 million Americans who aren't doing anything particularly terrorist related," he says. Kirk notes that in the post-9/11 world with its efforts to limit stovepiping of intelligence, low level operatives in the field like Bradley Manning in Iraq or Edward Snowden in Honolulu have dangerous access. "We have a classified Internet on the backside of the intelligence community and if you're on that system then a Bradley Manning can download the presidential book of secrets like in the movie [National Treasure].
Kirk says he's interested in running again in 2016 and Republicans expect he will. In a state as Democratic as Illinois, he likely to have a serious race. He rejects the idea that Republican moderates are an endangered species but he sounds the refrain that his party has been myopic. "What often happens is that people or politicians get out of date and that's my worry about the Republican Party. It apparently doesn't understand how multicolored and how multicultural our country has become." Kirk was the second GOP senator, after Rob Portman and before Lisa Murkowski, to support same-sex marriage which puts him ahead of Illinois which has yet to grant it. Divorced, with a girlfriend and no kids, and unmarried until 41, Kirk gets modern families in a way that many Republicans don't. Whether that'll make him an outlier or a lodestar in the GOP remains to be seen.
For now, Kirk has bigger tasks. He regularly hauls himself up to Walter Reed Medical Center where he gets physical therapy in the Traumatic Brain Injury clinic, along with young vets, often missing limbs in addition to their head injuries.
"You're having a tough day and you look over at a soldier who might be missing a leg or two arms and he is doing great," Kirk said. "And you think to yourself, 'There is nothing challenging me like what is challenging him.' "
Recalling that, Kirk tells an aide that he wants the Walter Reed therapists to push him harder--just like the ones back in Chicago.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mark-kirk-survived-stroke-now-hes-picking-fights-060021154.html
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Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/21134540/vp/52318899#52318899
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Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaks in parliament in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. Supporters of Gillard's chief intra-party rival are again pushing for a vote to oust the Australian prime minister this week. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaks in parliament in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. Supporters of Gillard's chief intra-party rival are again pushing for a vote to oust the Australian prime minister this week. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd smiles as he sits in parliament during question time in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. Supporters of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's chief intra-party rival are again pushing for a vote to oust the Australian prime minister this week. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, top, stares at the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. Opposition leader Abbott challenged Gillard to bring forward the election to Aug. 3 because of the leadership wrangling. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd walks in the chambers in the parliament during question time in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. Supporters of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's chief intra-party rival are again pushing for a vote to oust the Australian prime minister this week. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaks in the parliament in Canberra, Australia, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. Supporters of Gillard's chief intra-party rival are again pushing for a vote to oust the Australian prime minister this week. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) ? Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard threw open her job to a leadership ballot Wednesday in response to reports that supporters of her intra-party rival Kevin Rudd were gearing up to challenge her.
Gillard said there will be a ballot of lawmakers in the ruling Labor Party at 7 p.m. Canberra time (9 a.m. GMT, 5 a.m. EDT).
Rudd has not yet said whether he will challenge Gillard, who ousted him as prime minister in 2010. He previously had ruled out such a challenge unless he was assured of the overwhelming support of his colleagues.
Opinion polls show that the party could face huge losses in elections set for September, but that Rudd would be a more popular leader than Gillard.
"I wouldn't be putting myself forward unless I had a degree of confidence about the support of my parliamentary colleagues," Gillard said.
While not mentioning Rudd by name, she said the loser of the ballot should quit Parliament at the election. She said it was not right to have a "person floating around as the potential alternative prime minister."
Gillard's announcement followed media reports that a petition was circulating among the 102 Labor Party lawmakers. A special party meeting to discuss a leadership ballot would have been called if at least 34 lawmakers ? 30 percent ? signed that petition, but her announcement eliminated that step.
Rudd's supporters are desperate to have a ballot before Parliament rises for the last time Thursday ahead of elections set for Sept. 14. Opinion polls suggest Labor could lose around half its 71 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, where parties form the government.
Rudd had been a popular prime minister who started sliding in the polls when Gillard, his then deputy, challenged him to a leadership ballot three years ago. He did not contest the ballot when he became aware of the level of Gillard's support and she became prime minister unopposed.
Weeks later, Gillard led Labor to a narrow election victory and formed an unpopular minority government with the support of independent lawmakers and a legislator from the minor Greens party.
In a 2012 ballot, Gillard easily defeated Rudd 71 votes to 31. In February, she threw open her job to a leadership ballot to end leadership speculation, but Rudd refused to challenge and she remained prime minister.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott challenged Gillard on Wednesday to bring forward the election to Aug. 3 because of the new wrangling over leadership.
"Given the paralysis now griping her government and irreconcilable differences in her party over its leadership, will she bring forward the election date to Aug. 3 and let the people decide who should run our country?" Abbott asked in Parliament.
Before announcing the leadership ballot, Gillard replied that she continued to govern effectively.
"I can assure him (Abbott) and I can assure the Australian people that as prime minister I am getting on with the job," she said.
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Publicly funded science in the UK will have to get by with another period of fixed spending.
Chancellor George Osborne says he intends to keep the country's R&D budget at its current level through to the next election.
This figure, which amounts to about ?4.6bn per year, has been held flat since 2011.
The Chancellor made the announcement as part of the government's Spending Review delivered to Parliament.
He did, however, promise to increase capital expenditure - the money going into the laboratory infrastructure. This will almost double from the current ?0.6bn.
"Scientific discovery is first and foremost an expression of the relentless human search to know more about our world, but it's also an enormous strength for a modern economy," Mr Osborne told MPs.
Continue reading the main story"From synthetic biology to graphene - Britain is very good at it and we're going to keep it that way.
"I am committing today to maintain the resource budget for science at ?4.6bn, to increase the capital budget to ?1.1bn and to maintain that real increase to the end of the decade.
"Investment in science is an investment in our future. So, yes, from the next generation of jet engines to cutting edge supercomputers, we say, 'keep inventing, keep delivering'. This country will back you all the way."
The capital expenditure announcement was warmly welcomed by the scientific community. Capital investment took a heavy hit after the last election but was then largely restored through a series of subsequent announcements.
Mr Osborne says he now wants to see the science capital budget grow in line with inflation each year to 2020-21. This would provide stability for long-term planning. The Spending Review document, released by the Treasury, talks about committing to funding "high-priority projects", including the Sabre air-breathing jet-cum-rocket engine and a new supercomputer for the Met Office.
Continue reading the main storyMr Osborne says he wants to invest in the next phase of the Sabre project.
This is a revolutionary design for an air-breathing jet-cum-rocket engine. It would be fitted to a space vehicle that could take off and land like a plane, substantially reducing the cost of getting into orbit.
Sabre's key heat-exchanger technology has just passed an important review audited by the European Space Agency. Mr Osborne's investment would go towards the building of a demonstration engine and final design plans.
Although Sabre's technology is linked to a space plane, it would likely have many other applications, such as in existing gas turbine jet engines and in desalination plants
The "flat cash" settlement on day-to-day research will frustrate many scientific leaders, but many expressed the recognition that in difficult times the outcome could have been far worse.
Prof Sir Peter Knight, president of the Institute of Physics, said: "The announcement that the current science budget will be maintained at ?4.6bn is a welcome recognition of the importance of science as an engine for future growth, but it needs to be noted that inflation has already substantially eroded the value of funding for science in the UK, by 2-3% per annum since 2010's flat cash settlement."
Public science spending in Britain currently runs at about 0.65% of GDP, compared with an average of 0.8% for the G8 nations.
China is aiming to spend 2.5% of its GDP on research by 2020, South Korea is targeting 5% by 2022 and Brazil 2.5% by the same year.
Compared to the OECD group of developed nations, Britain's science spend is 7th in absolute terms but only 25th in percentage terms.
The UK government's science budget is largely handled by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which will see its overall budget reduced by 6%.
Mr Osborne confirmed in his Commons speech that responsibility and funding lines for the Medical Research Council would not be moved to the Department of Health as had been mooted.
Sir Paul Nurse, the current president of the Royal Society, said: "Last year, the chancellor came to the Royal Society and gave a speech that put science and innovation at the heart of long term sustainable economic growth. He was asked to provide the money to back that up and today he has done that.
"There is a growing consensus across parliament and in the business community that spending on science is an investment in the future. The government has protected its contribution and we now need to find ways to encourage greater commitment from industry, which is still under investing in research.
"In recent years science has suffered, as maintaining investment means a real terms cut due to inflation, but in the context of cuts elsewhere, science has been relatively protected. Today's announcement should be seen as a foundation for a long term strategy of increased investment."
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23065763#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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By Ryan Vlastelica
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose solidly on Tuesday, partially recovering from recent steep declines as strong data pointed to improvements in the economy.
Equities were volatile for much of the session, as the data initially raised concerns about central bank stimulus, but analysts said a rebound was due coming off a large drop in Monday's session, which itself followed the worst week for the S&P 500 since April.
"Everyone panicked after the Fed, but the fear is starting to come out of the system now. Investors are realizing that the Fed is still a long way from raising rates," said Mark Foster, who helps manage $600 million at Kirr Marbach & Co in Columbus, Indiana.
The recent downturn in markets started after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last week said the Fed's stimulus program may be scaled back this year if the economy improves, placing traders in a paradoxical situation where good data could indicate less stimulus, which would in turn be a threat to growth.
Data on durable goods orders and new home sales in May, and consumer confidence in June, all topped analysts' expectations. The April Case/Shiller report on home prices also was above forecasts.
Housing stocks were among the strongest of the day, surging on the data as well as because Lennar Corp
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 95.22 points, or 0.65 percent, at 14,754.78. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 11.58 points, or 0.74 percent, at 1,584.67. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 16.45 points, or 0.50 percent, at 3,337.21.
While the S&P is up 11 percent in 2013, the recent trend has been negative, with the benchmark index dropping below both its 14-day and 50-day moving averages, seen as signs of near-term market direction. It is down about 2.6 percent in June.
"The market trend has turned to the downside. It is now easier to sell rallies than to buy dips," said Donald Selkin, who helps oversee $3 billion in assets as chief market strategist at National Securities in New York. "If we close lower today, that would be a big blow to the bulls."
The S&P on Monday closed at its lowest level since April 22 after China's central bank said the country's banks need to do a better job of managing their cash and due to continued worries about a reduction in stimulus from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
On Tuesday, the People's Bank of China said it would not press banks too hard in its efforts to curb easy credit and prevent a possible banking crisis.
Carnival Corp
On the downside, Walgreen Co
Netflix Inc
Barnes & Noble Inc
(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-futures-point-bounce-selloff-data-tap-112655949.html
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By Dinesh Nair and Matt Smith
DUBAI (Reuters) - Pakistan mobile operator Warid Telecom has been put up for sale by its Abu Dhabi owners and is likely to draw interest from China Mobile and Etisalat, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The Abu Dhabi Group, a conglomerate led by a ruling family member in the oil-rich emirate, is seeking to sell all 100-percent of shares in Warid Telecom, two of the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The third source, however, said the company would also be prepared to sell a smaller controlling stake.
Pakistan's mobile telecommunications sector has five operators and is ripe for consolidation after a period when a troubled economy, increasingly high levels of market penetration and stiff competition has forced companies' margins lower.
The sellers have mandated U.S. investment bank Lazard and British lender Standard Chartered as advisers for the process, the sources said. One estimated a sale could fetch about $1 billion.
Walid Irshaid, the chief executive of Pakistan Telecommunications (PTCL), a unit of United Arab Emirates-based Etisalat, said the company is weighing a potential bid.
"We are interested to see if it makes sense for us, but it's not only us. Warid is an existing operator that has been here for many years and so we're saying 'let's look at the prospects,'" he told Reuters.
"There are too many players in Pakistan. Margins have eroded for everybody and the market must consolidate - we're all operating under low margins and low ARPU (average revenue per user) and that isn't long-term sustainable."
Warid Telecom declined to comment. China Mobile, which has increased its subscriber base by nearly three-quarters since 2010-11 and operates under the Zong brand, was not immediately for comment.
SHRINKAGE
Warid launched its cellular services in Pakistan in May 2005 and had 12.54 million subscribers at the end of March of this year, down from 17.39 million in 2010-11, making the company the country's smallest operator.
Pakistan's total subscriber base rose 12.2 percent to 122.1 million over the same period, meaning Warid's market share fell to 10.3 percent from 16 percent.
The other operators in Pakistan are Oslo-based Telenor and Orascom Telecom, which operates under the name Mobilink and is the sector leader. Neither was immediately available for comment.
PTCL's mobile business is under the Ufone brand, while it has a 95 percent share of the country's fixed line subscribers.
"The board (Warid Telecom) has been looking for a business partner to add value to Warid," a second source familiar with the matter said, adding China Mobile and Etisalat had both expressed interest in acquiring the company.
In 2007, Singapore Telcommunications bought a 30-percent stake in Warid for about $758 million. That stake purchase gave Warid Telecom an enterprise value of about $2.5 billion.
SingTel sold back that stake in January for $150 million and a right to receive 7.5 percent of the net proceeds from any future sale, public offering or merger of Warid.
The Abu Dhabi conglomerate also agreed to sell Warid Telecom's Uganda business to Bharti Airtel in April without revealing the financial details of the transaction.
Bharti recently agreed to buy the remaining 30 percent in Warid Telecom Bangladesh after taking a 70 pct stake in that business in 2010.
The Abu Dhabi Group, led by ruling family member Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak al-Nahayan, invests in emerging markets and also has large investments in Pakistan including Bank Alfalah Ltd, Al Razi Healthcare and Wateen Telecom.
(Additional reporting by Devidutta Tripathy in New Delhi and Lee Chyen Yee in Hong Kong; Editing by Patrick Graham)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-china-mobile-etisalat-weighing-bids-pakistan-telco-101710902.html
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MILAN (AP) ? Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's flamboyant former premier, was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from politics for life Monday for paying an underage prostitute for sex during infamous "bunga bunga" parties and forcing public officials to cover it up.
It was the most damaging setback yet for the 76-year-old Berlusconi, who has been tried numerous times for his business dealings but never before for his personal conduct.
Still, he vowed that his days as a political force are not over. He has two levels of appeal ? and his supporters quickly rallied around him.
The charges against the billionaire media mogul resulted from what became widely known in Italy as "bunga bunga" parties hosted in 2010 by Berlusconi, then the sitting premier, at his villa near Milan, where he wined and dined beautiful young women.
Berlusconi's defense described the dinner parties as elegant soirees; prosecutors said they were sex-fueled gatherings that women were paid to attend. The woman at the center of the scandal, Karima el-Mahroug, better known as Ruby, has described aspiring showgirls stripping provocatively for the then-Italian leader.
Both Berlusconi and el-Mahroug denied ever having sex, and el-Mahroug says she never worked as a prostitute.
After the verdict, Berlusconi said in a message posted on Facebook that he believed he would be acquitted "because in the facts there is really no possibility to convict me."
He called the sentence "incredible, of a violence never seen or heard before, to try to eliminate me from the political life of this country." He pledged to "resist this persecution, because I am absolutely innocent, and I don't want in any way to abandon my battle to make Italy a truly free and just country."
The Milan criminal court's ruling was unexpectedly stiff, going further than the original charges and openly questioning whether many of the young women who testified in Berlusconi's defense had lied on the stand to protect him.
The panel of three judges, all women, said Berlusconi went beyond using his influence to cover up his relationship with the then-17-year-old Moroccan, as originally charged. They said he stepped in to win her release from police custody when she was accused of theft.
As a result, they added one year to the six requested by prosecutors.
The court also said it was turning over to prosecutors files containing the testimony of more than 30 young women who attended the now-infamous "bunga bunga" parties to investigate if they had lied under oath when they denied a sexual character to the gatherings.
Justice Minister Angelino Alfano, who is also secretary of Berlusconi's People of Liberty Party, said he told his political mentor to "hang in there, and keep moving on" in a phone call after the verdict.
Berlusconi was not in court for the sentencing, but his lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, said he would appeal a decision he called both "largely expected" and "out of reality." The Berlusconi camp has long accused Milan magistrates of mounting a campaign to sideline him politically.
Berlusconi loyalist Daniela Santanche, who attended the sentencing, denounced it as "an outrage, and a political sentence that has nothing to do with justice." But she also said that it should have no impact on the government.
Some political opponents, however, said Berlusconi, who has shaped political discourse in Italy for two decades, should withdraw from politics immediately.
Alessandro Di Battista, a lawmaker in the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement, said Berlusconi "must go to jail. It is outrageous that he is a senator that can make laws. Until he goes to jail, the country is not free." And the left-leaning governor of Apulia, Nicchi Vendola, said Berlusconi should "abandon public life."
Berlusconi does not have any official role in government, but he is a senator in Parliament and retains influence in the uneasy grand coalition between his forces and the center-left Democratic Party that emerged after inconclusive February elections. The Democratic Party issued a statement acknowledging the sentence and in support of the autonomy of the courts.
Berlusconi's high-stakes judicial woes are far from over. He faces a final appeal in a tax fraud conviction for which he has been sentenced to four years in jail and a five-year ban from office.
Roberto D'Alimonte, a political analyst for il Sole 24 Ore daily and professor at Rome's LUISS University, said the tax fraud conviction poses the more immediate threat since Italy's highest court is likely to rule before the statute of limitations runs out.
The sex-for-hire case "weakens him politically, but not that much, because we have seen that his voter base seems to be insulated from the impact of these sentences. We saw in the last elections, everyone thought he was dead, but he came back to life," D'Alimonte said.
While the verdict drew intense international media coverage, with half a dozen satellite vans parked outside the Milan courthouse, there was only a smattering of public interest. A few anti-Berlusconi protesters gathered outside, and just a handful of citizens joined journalists crammed inside the small courtroom.
"For 20 years, he's been running Italy. He's done what he wanted," said Aurelio De Boni, a retired suit salesman from Milan who attended the trial.
Neither Berlusconi nor el-Mahroug testified in this trial. El-Mahroug was called by the defense but failed to show, delaying the trial, and Berlusconi's team eventually dropped her from the witness list.
El-Mahroug, however, did testify in the separate trial of three Berlusconi aides charged with procuring prostitutes for the parties. She told that court that Berlusconi's disco featured aspiring showgirls dressed as sexy nuns and nurses performing striptease acts, and that one woman even dressed up as President Barack Obama.
El-Mahroug, now 20, said in the other trial that she attended about a half-dozen parties at Berlusconi's villa, and that after each, Berlusconi handed her an envelope with up to 3,000 euros ($3,900). She said she later received 30,000 euros cash from the then-premier, paid through an intermediary ? money that she told Berlusconi she wanted to use to open a beauty salon, despite having no formal training.
But she denied ever receiving millions from the billionaire, as she had claimed to acquaintances, saying they were "lies" meant to inflate her own importance.
She was 17 at the time of the alleged encounters but passed herself off as 24. She also claimed she was related to then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Berlusconi's lawyers argued that he believed el-Mahroug was indeed Mubarak's niece, and he called police after she was accused of theft in a bid to avoid a diplomatic incident.
Berlusconi, who has been tried numerous times relating to his business dealings, has been convicted in other cases at the trial level. But those convictions have always either been overturned on appeal or else the statute of limitations has run out before Italy's high court could have its say.
The sex-for-hire case is the first involving his personal conduct.
Later this week, Italy's highest court has scheduled a hearing on Berlusconi's appeal to a verdict ordering him to pay 560 million euros ($800 million) to a rival media group over corruption in the acquisition of the Mondadori publishing empire. And a preliminary hearing will begin in Naples to decide if Berlusconi should be tried for allegedly bribing a lawmaker to bolt a previous center-left government under Romano Prodi and join his party, a move that weakened Prodi's slim majority.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/berlusconi-convicted-sex-hire-trial-153214697.html
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Jay-Z is teaming up with Samsung to release his new album, unveiling a three-minute commercial during the NBA finals on Sunday and announcing a deal that will give the music to 1 million users of Galaxy mobile phones.
The new album, called "Magna Carta Holy Grail," will be free for the first 1 million android phone owners who download an app for the album. Those who do so will get the album on July 4, three days before its official release, according to a Sunday statement.
Samsung is a leader in the mobile phone market and has been steadily chipping away at Apple's share of the market with its Galaxy phones. The deal with Jay-Z is yet another example of how mobile companies are using music to lure new consumers.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jay-z-announces-album-samsung-deal-030621411.html
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Kate Middleton last solo public appearance before the birth of her royal baby was Thursday. Speculation about the baby's name and Kate's plans for delivery are running rampant.
Kate Middleton, formally known as Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, shares a joke with her husband, Prince William (r.), and his brother, Prince Harry, after the Trooping the Colour ceremony yesterday. William and Harry wore their military uniforms for the event while Kate wore an impeccably tailored coat over her baby bump. The royal baby is due next month.
Paul Hacket / Reuters
EnlargeSpeculation about baby names, hair color, and hypnosis swirled around Kate Middleton, Britain's Duchess of?Cambridge, during her last solo public appearance before she gives birth to a royal heir.
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British glossy magazine?Grazia?reported the duchess has considered using hypno-birth for a delivery expected next month. In hypno-birthing, women use a form of self-hypnosis to control pain by learning techniques to boost production of pain-relieving hormones.
Bookmakers said bets favored the duchess joining the growing band of women dubbed "too posh to push" by opting for a c-section rather than a natural birth.
The royal family has declined to give any details on plans for the first child of?Prince?William?and?Kate Middleton, 31, who have been officially known as the Duke and Duchess of?Cambridge?since their marriage in April 2011.
A royal spokeswoman said she was aware of rising speculation about the birth but declined to confirm or deny any details for the baby who will be the third in line to the British throne after?Prince?Charles and his oldest son?William.
"This is a happy occasion and there is lot of speculation about what the duchess might and might not do but this really is a private matter," the spokeswoman said.
Royal watchers expect the baby to be born at?St Mary's Hospital?in central?London?where Princess?Dianagave birth to?William, who turns 31 next week, and his brother?Prince?Harry.
The duchess was under scrutiny for any hints about the baby during her last solo public engagement on Thursday when she launched Princess Cruises' new 3,600-passenger vessel?Royal Princess?inSouthampton?on England's south coast.
BABY TALK
Wearing a black hat and Dalmatian print coat, the duchess was careful to give nothing away after a slip in March when she accepted a teddy saying: "Thank you, I'll take this for my d.."
Rupert Adams?from bookmaker?William?Hill?said this dropped "d" led to such wide speculation that the baby was a girl that it suspended all bets on gender just weeks later while rival bookmaker Paddy Power paid out on bets that it was girl.
Bets on names have continued to roll in with Alexandra the clear favorite followed by?Diana, after?PrinceWilliam's mother who died in a car crash in 1997, and then?Elizabeth.
Alexandra has a history in the royal family with Princess Alexandra, 76, a cousin of Queen?Elizabeth?and Queen Victoria's son?Edward VII?married to Alexandra of?Denmark?in 1863.
The favorite boy's name is George and the favored date for the birth is July 17.
"We are seeing lots of small bets from over 100 countries. The Aussies and Canadians particularly love this," said Adams.
Rory Scott from Paddy Power said people were also putting money on more obscure bets, such as the baby's future career, university, and hair color with brown favored over ginger.
"You combine the royal family with betting and you have two of the favorite pastimes in Britain," Scott said.
Both bookmakers found gamblers expected the duchess to opt for a caesarian instead of natural birth with one in four babies now delivered this way in the UK, up from 12 percent in 1990.
The focus on how the duchess gives birth has drawn her, unwittingly, into the complex web of childbirth politics where campaigners of different birthing methods battle for supremacy.
The Blissful Birth website which deals with hypno-birthing said a number of hypno-birthing practitioners have "spun" speculation about the duchess using hypno-birthing into suggestions that she was considering their particular approach.
But the website's founder?Heidi Woodgate, urged these practitioners to stop the race for recognition.
"Quite frankly, whether my customers are royalty, celebrities or normal everyday women, the focus should be on their birth story, not the particular hypno-birthing programme they used," Woodgate wrote in a blog on the website.
(Editing by Paul Casciato)
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DENVER (AP) ? The judge in the Colorado theater shootings says as many as 3,500 prospective jurors will be summoned when the case goes to trial.
Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. included the estimate in a ruling dated Friday. The ruling granted a defense request to have all prospective jurors fill out questionnaires before they are questioned by lawyers.
James Holmes is scheduled to go on trial in February on more than 160 counts of murder and attempted murder. He's accused of planning and executing an assault on a packed movie theater in a Denver suburb in July, killing 12 and injuring 70.
He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and will undergo a mental evaluation at the state hospital before the trial.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/judge-says-3-500-could-summoned-holmes-jury-211252776.html
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Prime Minister Hun Sen's new law criminalizing denial of the Khmer Rouge genocide is a barely disguised political move, not a gesture of goodwill, say analysts.
Hundreds of former Khmer Rouge victims' bone and skulls are displayed in a memorial at Choeung Ek "Killing Field" in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Heng Sinith/AP
EnlargeCambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen today pushed through legislation that makes it illegal to deny the Khmer Rouge genocide, but his critics say it has little to do with promoting atonement for his country's tragic past.
Skip to next paragraph Elizabeth BarberIntern
Elizabeth Barber is an intern on The Christian Science Monitor?s Web desk. She holds a master?s degree from Columbia Journalism School and a bachelor?s degree in International Relations and English from SUNY Geneseo. Before coming to the Monitor, she was a freelance reporter at DNAinfo, a New York City breaking news site. She has also been an intern at The Cambodia Daily, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and at Washington D.C.?s The Middle East Journal.
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Passed unanimously in a special session of the country?s National Assembly, the new law mandates a jail term of up to two years and fines of $1,000 for anyone convicted of denying the 1975-1979 genocide, during which Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge slaughtered some 1.7 million people.
Though formally said to be a gesture of support for the ongoing trials of leading Khmer Rouge leaders, analysts say the law is far more about political advantage for Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge official who has been the unchallenged leader of Cambodia since 1998.
The new law comes quickly on the heels of controversial comments allegedly made by Kem Sokha, president of the main opposition party.?In May the government released an audio clip purportedly of the president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party saying that Vietnamese soldiers who reported the aftermath of an an infamous atrocity at a Khmer Rouge prison had imagined what they saw, according to The Phnom Pehn Post.?
Kem Sokha said?that the audio clip?was edited to take his words out of context, according to?The Phnom Penh Post. But the mere suggestion that Kem Sokha denied the atrocities could taint his image.?Nearly 20,000 people were tortured and murdered at the Khmer Rouge?s S-21 prison in Phnom Penh during a four-year long nightmare for Cambodia that has not faded from the national consciousness.?
Opposition party members note that they had for years been pressing for such a law, but also point out that the prime minister had only made moves toward such a law when politically convenient, according to a separate Post?article. The opposition objects to the fact that the law was passed with no debate, arguing that a law that has the potential to be abused should be thoughtfully drafted and subjected to careful scrutiny.
"It is a shame that the law should be passed in a rushed way in response to political comments," wrote Phuong Pham, a researcher at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, where she is studying the Cambodian public's attitude toward the Khmer Rouge trials, in an e-mail. "Kem Sokha, the opposition leader, is not a genocide denier, and any charges would be clearly politically motivated."
No opposition party members were present at the session that unanimously approved the bill on Friday morning. The prime minister's ruling party elected to remove all 27 members from their posts on Wednesday, amid election controversy. The ruling party was upset that?two different opposition parties had merged to challenge it in July's elections.
On Thursday, the opposition parties sent a letter to the National Assembly president asking that the vote on the law be postponed. The letter also proposed a tongue-in-cheek amendment to the law banning former leading members of the Khmer Rouge from holding public office. That would include the prime minister, Hun Sen, as well as several other leading members of his government. Hun Sen belonged to the Khmer Rouge before defecting to Vietnam and later rolling back into Cambodia, eventually claiming the post of prime minister.?
A member of the unofficial "10,000 Days in Office" dictator?s club, Hun Sen has profited enormously from the genocide more than three decades ago, cobbling together a dubious narrative in which he rescued the troubled country from Pol Pot?s agrarian "Year Zero" and crafted it into a emergent economic center in Southeast Asia. Last month, he told reporters that Cambodia would have been ?a coconut plantation? without his leadership, according to The Cambodia Daily.
Trials for 2 out of 4 Khmer Rouge leaders ? the first and only Khmer Rouge leaders to be tried for the genocide ? are currently ongoing in Cambodia, reported The Christian Science Monitor, racing against the failing health of the aging defendants. One defendant died in prison of heart failure in February. The only defendant to have been sentenced so far, Kaing Guek Eav, the former head of the S-21 prison, was transported to a prison in Cambodia?s Kandal Provincial Prison yesterday, where he will serve a life sentence, The Cambodia Daily reported.
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Burgans has been a member of the University?s staff since 2007 and was nominated by Associate Controller Lauri Dorrill. Since May 2011, Burgans has been assisting in Troy?s Purchasing and Asset Management and Foundation Accounting departments.
?She willingly stepped into Purchasing and Assets during a time of uncertainty in our reorganization of the department,? Dorrill said. ?Saying that she took the bull by the horns would be an understatement.? Not only did she willingly do what was asked of her but she often boldly made suggestions of how to correct or enhance an area. Within weeks, she had organized stacks of documents and tackled other projects that needed to be taken care of.?
The McKinley Award, which is presented quarterly, is the highest honor that Troy University gives to a non-faculty staff member who has demonstrated outstanding attitude, innovation and work ethic. Winners of this award receive an engraved clock and a $1,000 stipend.
Source: http://blog.al.com/montgomery/2013/06/troy_university_finance_secret.html
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June 10, 2013 ? The least massive galaxy in the known universe has been measured by UC Irvine scientists, clocking in at just 1,000 or so stars with a bit of dark matter holding them together.
The findings, made with the world's most powerful telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory and published today in The Astrophysical Journal, offer tantalizing clues about how iron, carbon and other elements key to human life originally formed. But the size and weight of Segue 2, as the star body is called, are its most extraordinary aspects.
"Finding a galaxy as tiny as Segue 2 is like discovering an elephant smaller than a mouse," said UC Irvine cosmologist James Bullock, co-author of the paper. Astronomers have been searching for years for this type of dwarf galaxy, long predicted to be swarming around the Milky Way. Their inability to find any, he said, "has been a major puzzle, suggesting that perhaps our theoretical understanding of structure formation in the universe was flawed in a serious way."
Segue 2's presence as a satellite of our home galaxy could be "a tip-of-the-iceberg observation, with perhaps thousands more very low-mass systems orbiting just beyond our ability to detect them," he added.
"It's definitely a galaxy, not a star cluster," said postdoctoral scholar and lead author Evan Kirby. He explained that the stars are held together by a globule called a dark matter halo. Without this acting as galactic glue, the star body wouldn't qualify as a galaxy.
Segue 2, discovered in 2009 as part of the massive Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is one of the faintest known galaxies, with light output just 900 times that of the sun. That's miniscule compared to the Milky Way, which shines 20 billion times brighter. But despite its tiny size, researchers using different tools originally thought Segue 2 was far denser.
""The Keck telescopes are the only ones in the world powerful enough to have made this observation," Kirby said of the huge apparatus housed on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. He determined the upper weight range of 25 of the major stars in the galaxy and found that it weighs at least 10 times less than previously estimated.
Fellow authors are Michael Boylan-Kolchin and Manoj Kaplinghat of UC Irvine, Judith Cohen of the California Institute of Technology and Marla Geha of Yale University. Funding was provided by the Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution (a multicampus research program of the University of California) and by the National Science Foundation.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/FOzedUakllU/130610133535.htm
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NEW YORK (AP) ? On a feel-good night for Broadway, it was only natural that the Tony award go to its most feel-good musical, the joyous "Kinky Boots." But most everything about Sunday's Tony telecast was warmhearted, from inspiring speeches about the theatrical community to the inspired antics of Neil Patrick Harris, who should officially be awarded the host job on a permanent basis.
It was an especially happy night for female theater artists: In a rare feat, women took home both directing prizes, for a musical (Diane Paulus for the high-energy "Pippin" revival) and for a play (Pam MacKinnon for the searing revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?").
And Cyndi Lauper won best original score for "Kinky Boots," a result that had many in the audience whooping with delight. "Girl, you're gonna have fun tonight!" shouted presenter Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the "Modern Family" actor ? a reference, of course, to Lauper's iconic "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."
In winning best musical, "Kinky" scored something of an upset over the terrific but decidedly darker "Matilda the Musical." And underscoring the sunny nature of this year's ceremony, a comedy ? Christopher Durang's dysfunctional-family satire "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" ? won for best play over the more typical dramatic fare.
It wasn't a great night for movie stars. In a season where a number of Hollywood personalities were snubbed for Tony nominations ? Scarlett Johansson, Bette Midler and Jessica Chastain among them ? best-actor nominee Tom Hanks ("Lucky Guy") lost out to Tracy Letts, previously a Tony-winning playwright, for his wrenching performance in "Virginia Woolf."
As it was for women, it was a big night for African-American actors, with wins for best actor and actress in a musical, best actress in a play and featured actor in a play.
The ebullient Billy Porter won best actor in a musical for playing a drag queen with a heart of gold and a taste for, well, kinky boots, in "Kinky Boots." He graciously saluted his co-star and co-nominee, Stark Sands. "''You are my rock, my sword, my shield," he said, adding: "I share this award with you. I'm gonna keep it at my house ? but I share it with you."
And the effervescent Patina Miller won best actress in a musical for "Pippin," in a role ? the Leading Player ? that also won Ben Vereen a Tony in 1973. Like Vereen, Miller sings and dances expertly in the role, but unlike Vereen, she also soars on a trapeze and sings while hula-hooping.
Cicely Tyson, 88, had perhaps the evening's most emotional win ? and not one but two standing ovations ? for best actress in a play, in "The Trip to Bountiful." She told the audience that at her age, she had "this burning desire to do just one more ? one more great role. I didn't want to be greedy. I just wanted one more."
And Courtney B. Vance won best featured actor in "Lucky Guy," his first win in three nominations.
"It's a richer experience now," he said at the Tony after-party. "Being nominated is a whirlwind. Now I know how to pace myself." He was snapping photos of his wife, actress Angela Bassett, as fellow guests at the Tony after-party at the Plaza Hotel crowded around them. "Besides," he said, "we're the toast of Broadway now! That doesn't happen very often."
Wins or losses, the guests at the Tony gala seemed intent on having a wonderful time. One of them was Billy Magnussen, who plays a studly young boyfriend to Sigourney Weaver's character in "Vanya and Sonia." He had lost out to Vance but couldn't stop dancing (if you wanted to interview him, you had to twirl along.) "Who gets to dance at the Tonys?" he asked joyfully and rather rhetorically. "This guy!" He said it was "amazing to be honored for something that I would do for free anyway."
Shalita Grant, his colleague in "Vanya and Sonia," was boogying on the dance floor too. "Hey, it's a great night," she said. "Two months on Broadway and then a nomination? I can't complain."
The winner in Grant's category was Judith Light of "The Assembled Parties," her second Tony in the category in two years. The former star of TV's "Who's the Boss?" gave one of the most poignant and admired speeches of the night, along with Letts, who made similar remarks about the Tonys being not about competition, but about collaboration.
At the after-party, Light elaborated on her thoughts. "We are here to celebrate each other," she said in an interview. "That is the magic. We root for each other. If we didn't, our work would simply be too arduous."
"This is my family," Light added, pointing to a ballroom filled with theater folk. "I'm so happy to be at a party with my family."
Light's counterpart on the musical side was Andrea Martin, 66, who won best featured actress in a musical for "Pippin," in which she plays the title character's grandmother, Berthe, and stops the show every night by performing high-flying stunts that thrill the audience.
Her co-star, Matthew James Thomas, who plays Pippin, said at the party that he was backstage watching Martin's emotional speech, and found it so moving that he burst into tears. "She's usually so together, so it was amazing to see her like that," he said. "I'm so happy for her, and Diane, and the whole company."
Also accepting congratulations at the party was someone who never appeared onstage: the Tony-winning composer, actor, lyricist and rapper Lin-Manuel Miranda, who co-wrote with Tom Kitt the terrific opening number performed by host Harris. Miranda, who wrote and starred in "In the Heights," also wrote the rap number that Harris performed with Audra McDonald at the end of the show, with lyrics that referred to events that had happened only minutes earlier ? a trick used by Seth MacFarlane and Kristin Chenoweth in their musical closing of this year's Academy Awards.
But that may have been the only similarity to the Oscars. Harris showed no sign of wear on his fourth go as Tony host, earning as many laughs as ever with routines like a running reference to boxer Mike Tyson, or a number about theater actors (like him) who move on to glory and wealth on TV shows ? some of which then get canceled.
Harris opened the show as the Irish "Guy" in the musical "Once," holding a guitar in a pub and singing soulfully, but then quickly jumped into a flashy production number that showcased performers from almost a dozen musicals. Among other things, Harris jumped through a hoop, a la "Pippin," vanished from a box and somehow appeared at the back of the theater, and promised a "truly legendary show" before glitter guns went off.
Legendary or not, it certainly made its audience very happy; by the end of the number, the entire Radio City Music Hall crowd was on its feet.
___
AP Drama Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/feel-good-kinky-boots-wins-feel-good-tonys-083550536.html
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