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Brazilians fill streets with protests, violence

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ? More than a million Brazilians poured into the streets of at least 80 cities Thursday in this week's largest anti-government demonstrations yet, protests that saw violent clashes break out in several cities as people demanding improved public services and an end to corruption faced tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.

At least one protester was killed in Sao Paulo state after a car rammed into a crowd of demonstrators, the driver apparently angered about being unable to drive along a street.

In Rio de Janeiro, where an estimated 300,000 demonstrators swarmed into the seaside city's central area, running clashes played out between riot police and clusters of mostly young men, their T-shirts wrapped around their faces. But several peaceful protesters were up in the crackdown, too, as police fired tear gas canisters into their midst and at times indiscriminately used pepper spray.

Thundering booms echoed off stately colonial buildings as rubber bullets and the gas were fired at fleeing crowds.

At least 40 people were injured in Rio, including protesters like Michele Menezes, a wisp of a woman whose youthful face and braces belie her 26 years. Bleeding and with her hair singed from the explosion of a tear gas canister, she said that she and others took refuge from the violence in an open bar, only to have a police officer toss the canister inside.

It exploded on top of Menezes, tore through her jeans and dug out two quarter-sized holes on the back of her thighs while also perforating a rash of small holes in her upper arm.

"I was leaving a peaceful protest and it's not the thugs that attack me but the police themselves," said Menezes, removing her wire-rim glasses to wipe her bloodshot eyes.

She later took refuge in a hotel along with about two dozen youths, families and others said they had been repeatedly hit with pepper spray by motorcycle police as they too took refuge inside a bar.

Despite the crackdown, protesters said they would not back down.

"I saw some pretty scary things, but they're not going to shake me. There's another march on the 22nd and I'm going to be there," said 19-year-old university student Fernanda Szuster.

Asked whether her parents knew that she was taking part in the protests, Szuster said that "they know and they're proud. They also protested when they were young. So they think it's great."

She added, though, that she wouldn't tell her father the details of the police violence she was a victim of. "If he knew, he would never let me leave the house again."

By Thursday evening, the number of protesters had swelled to 1 million, according local police estimates from cities across Brazil.

In Brasilia, police struggled to keep hundreds of protesters from invading the Foreign Ministry, outside of which protesters lit a small fire. Other government buildings were attacked around the capital's central esplanade. There, too, police resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets in attempts to scatter the crowds.

Clashes were also reported in the Amazon jungle city of Belem, in Porto Alegre in the south, in the university town Campinas north of Sao Paulo and in the northeastern Brazilian city of Salvador.

"This was meant to be a peaceful demonstration and it is," said artist Wanderlei Costa, 33, in Brasilia. "It's a shame some people cause trouble when there is a much bigger message behind this movement. Brazil needs to change, not only on the government level, but also on the grass roots level. We have to learn to demonstrate without violence."

The protests took place one week after a violent police crackdown on a much smaller protests in Sao Paulo galvanized Brazilians to take to the streets.

The unrest is hitting the nation as it hosts the Confederations Cup football tournament with tens of thousands of foreign visitors in attendance. It also comes one month before Pope Francis is scheduled to visit the nation, and ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, raising concerns about how Brazilian officials will provide security.

Mass protests are rare in this 190 million-person country, with demonstrations generally attracting small numbers of politicized participants. The ongoing, growing marches have caught Brazilian governments by surprise, but have delighted many citizens.

"I think we desperately need this, that we've been needing this for a very, very long time," said Paulo Roberto Rodrigues da Cunha, a 63-year-old clothing store salesman in Rio.

In Salvador, police shot tear gas canisters and rubber bullets to disperse a small crowd of protesters trying to break through a police barrier blocking one of the city's streets. One woman was injured in her foot.

Elsewhere in Salvador some 5,000 protesters gathered in Campo Grand Square.

"We pay a lot of money in taxes, for electricity, for services, and we want to know where that money is," said Italo Santos, a 25-year old student as he walked with friends toward the square.

Despite the energy on the street, many protesters said they were unsure how the movement would win real political concessions. People in the protests have held up signs asking for everything from education reforms to free bus fare while denouncing the billions of public dollars spent on stadiums in advance of the World Cup and the Olympics.

"It's sort of a Catch-22," Rodrigues da Cunha said. "On the one hand we need some sort of leadership, on the other we don't want this to be compromised by being affiliated with any political party."

Earlier Thursday, the protests took on the feel of a party, especially in Sao Paulo and Rio.

People of all ages, many of them draped in flags, gathered in front of the majestic domed Candelaria church in downtown Rio, while groups elsewhere pounded out Carnival rhythms or chanted slogans targeting Rio state's governor.

At one point, a police helicopter flew over the crowd, which booed and pointed green lasers at the craft.

When shirtless youths, many of them with T-shirts wrapped round their faces, pushed and jostled their way through the crowd, people spontaneously broke out into a chant of "Without violence!"

But as has been the pattern earlier this week, the clashes began once night fell.

Several city leaders have already accepted protester demands to revoke an increase in bus and subway fares in the hopes that anti-government anger cools. In Sao Paulo, where demonstrators blocked Paulista Avenue, organizers said they would turn their demonstration into a party celebrating the lower transit fares.

But many believe the protests are no longer just about bus fares and have become larger cries for systemic changes.

President Dilma Rousseff called an emergency meeting with top advisers for Friday morning. Rousseff has been largely absent since the demonstrations broke out, making just one public statement but offering no speeches or grand gestures in an attempt to calm the situation.

"This is the start of a structural change in Brazil," said Aline Campos, a 29 year old publicist in Brasilia. "People now want to make sure their money is well spent, that it's not wasted through corruption."

___

Associated Press writers Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Bradley Brooks and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo and Ricardo Zuniga in Salvador contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/1m-brazilians-fill-streets-protest-violence-015146446.html

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Paula Deen Causes Controversy With Use Of N-Word (VIDEO)

Paula Deen Causes Controversy With Use Of N-Word (VIDEO)

Paula Deen has addressed the controversy over her admission of using the N-word, caught on video during her court deposition in her lawsuit filed by a former employee. Deen’s team says she is not racist. She only used the N-word a long time ago because she’s from the South and raised during the time when ...

Paula Deen Causes Controversy With Use Of N-Word (VIDEO) Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/06/paula-deen-causes-controversy-with-use-of-n-word-video/

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Soft Target

Penguin published its first 10 paperbacks?including works by Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie?in 1935

In 2009, Penguin Group, one of the most successful publishers in the world, printed a charming history called The Book of Penguin, in the slim, orange paperback format that the company made famous in the mid-20^th century. It begins: ?This is a book about the most advanced form of entertainment ever. You can pause it at any time. Rewind and replay it if you miss a bit ? It?ll fit in your pocket. It?s interactive ? It?s pretty cheap. It?s completely free to share. And it lasts a lifetime. This is a book about books.?

If that micro-manifesto sounds slightly defensive, it might be because that highly advanced form of entertainment is starting to look a tad outmoded. E-books are ever more popular, eminently practical, and pleasantly cheap; hardcovers may always have a degree of shelf-worthy cachet. But where paperbacks fit into the evolving publishing landscape is less clear. It seems possible that paperbacks may lose their spot in the marketplace altogether. ??

If that sounds hyperbolic, look at the numbers. The 2012 BookStats survey (one of the more reliable metrics of book-format sales industry-wide) revealed that 2011?s e-book net sales were double those of 2010. In the all-important ?adult fiction? category, e-book revenue?for the first time ever?outpaced that of print. Amazon probably saw that coming: In 2011, they reported higher sales of e-books than paperbacks and hardcovers combined. And the trend seems destined to hold steady. The recently released 2013 BookStats report observes ?an even more widespread popularity of e-books than in past years,? noting that e-book sales have grown 45 percent since 2011 and ?now constitute 20% of the trade market.? Meanwhile, according to Publishers Weekly, between 2011 and 2012 the number of trade paperbacks sold fell by 8.6 percent, and total mass-market paperback sales fell by a whopping 20.5 percent.

Conventional wisdom holds that e-book sales eat into paperback sales but not those of hardcovers. So if e-book sales are growing exponentially, it seems fair to assume that paperback sales will plateau, dip, and eventually fail to justify the cost of printing them: So long, softcovers.

But there are many who believe reports of the paperback?s death have been greatly exaggerated?or just plain invented. Gerry Donaghy, book buyer at the largest indie bookseller in the U.S., Powell's in Portland, Ore., says that the major publishers have a compelling reason to perpetuate a paperbacks-are-dying narrative, for one simple reason: because paperbacks are the most common books to be bought secondhand. ?Publishers have a vested interest in keeping the e-book dominant?it allows them to control the ecosystem, because there are no used e-book sales,? Donaghy says. A paperback copy of, say, Eat Pray Love can be sold and resold ad infinitum, thanks to Amazon and your local used book store. But for multiple people to read that same book on a Kindle or Nook, each of them has to buy it for $10. And if last spring?s Capitol Records court victory?which found that MP3 files can?t be resold?is any precedent, eBooks will likely retain their value in a similar way.

Donaghy also cautions against any assumption that e-books are taking over publishing unilaterally. E-books are a juggernaut in genre fiction categories such as romance, mystery, and science fiction, but in many categories, they have yet to gain significant traction. For example, popular narrative nonfiction?the likes of Gretchen Rubin?s The Happiness Project and the pop-science books of Mary Roach?sell only modestly in digital formats, despite robust print sales. Also worth noting: Not every backlist title has been converted to an e-book.

Donaghy also puts stock in the classic argument for the indie bookstore: Consumers need a physical place and a knowledgeable staff to find their next great read. Paperbacks make that hand-selling scenario infinitely more palatable. ?People don?t buy $35 hardcovers on impulse,? Donaghy says, ?but a $13 trade paperback can engender that kind of purchase. There?s still a debate about whether you can really discover anything online, but I tend to think you can't.?

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/06/declining_sales_of_paperbacks_are_e_readers_killing_the_softcover.html

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Television wins new respect from movie elite at Cannes festival

By Belinda Goldsmith

CANNES (Reuters) - Actors and directors gathered for the world's leading movie showcase in Cannes this week said television was increasingly luring top talent and should no longer be seen as artistically inferior to the big screen.

TV series like "The Wire," "Homeland", "Mad Men," "The Sopranos" and "Game of Thrones", which have won critical and commercial success, were cited for breaking down the division between movies and TV, giving audiences innovative viewing.

At the 66th Cannes film festival, moviemakers said a new era of TV was presenting opportunities to take more creative risks.

Director Steven Soderbergh, known for Hollywood hits like "Ocean's Eleven" has announced plans to retire from filmmaking but expressed interest in working in television.

Soderbergh, 50, whose biopic on pianist Liberace, "Behind the Candelabra", is in the main competition at Cannes, said there had been a gradual migration of audiences towards television.

"There is a lot of great television being made in the States right now and I feel in terms of cultural real estate that TV is really taking control of the conversation that used to be the exclusive domain of movies," Soderbergh told reporters.

"I think it is the second golden age of television," said the director who was reported to have joined forces with actor Clive Owen for a TV drama called "The Knick" set in New York's Knickerbocker Hospital.

"Behind the Candelabra", with Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his gay lover, was made for TV, funded by Time Warner's HBO cable network after Hollywood studios rejected the gay storyline of the $25 million film as too risky.

MORE DEPTH IN TELEVISION

Directors have lamented the fact that the high cost of making and marketing a film is a deterrent to fund any project not deemed a safe bet, driving Hollywood studios towards action and spectacle rather than drama to win sales at the box office.

A second HBO project, a documentary called "Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight", about the boxer's court battle after he refused to go to the Vietnam War, is also on show at the 12-day Cannes festival on the French Riviera that ends on Sunday.

British director Stephen Frears said HBO's presence in the Cannes line-up showed a changed attitude towards television which he welcomed after spending most of his early career in television with Britain's state broadcaster, the BBC.

"I don't have the usual snobbish attitude towards television," Frears, who earned high acclaim for his 2006 film "The Queen", told Reuters.

"I just go where the good writing is and if it is TV, fine. Nowadays the best writing is in TV."

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose ultra-violent thriller "Only God Forgives" has sharply divided critics at Cannes, said he was a TV junkie.

"Television has become where people seek creativity in terms of challenge now," he said, adding that he was working on a TV version of the 1960s sci-fi film "Barbarella".

Winding Refn also highlighted the changes brought by online providers such as Netflix which this year released all 13 episodes of the big-budget "House of Cards" with Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright to its subscribers.

British actress Kristin Scott Thomas, who plays the evil mother in Refn's film, said television was a great medium for actors because it gave them a far larger audience.

"It is very satisfying when millions of people watch something you have made," she said.

(Additional reporting by Rollo Ross; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/television-wins-respect-movie-elite-cannes-festival-141956182.html

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Oh No They Didn't! - Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre give $70 million to ...

Entrepreneurs and music industry icons Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre (Andre Young), already known as forward-thinking visionaries in music and business, are giving $70 million to USC to create a unique undergraduate experience.

The duo?s gift will establish the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation, an environment for those rare undergraduate students whose interests span fields such as marketing, business entrepreneurship, computer science and engineering, audio and visual design, and the arts. The program will prepare them to become a new generation of inspired innovators.

The goal of the academy is to shape the future by nurturing the talents, passions, leadership and risk-taking of uniquely qualified students who challenge conventional views of art and industry. The academy will attract students who are motivated to explore and create new art forms, technologies and business models ? and who will benefit from a stimulating environment that fosters exploration and discovery beyond traditional educational and disciplinary boundaries.

?The vision and generosity of Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young will profoundly influence the way all of us perceive and experience artistic media,? said USC President C. L. Max Nikias. ?USC provides an extraordinarily rich academic, research and artistic environment. We are committed to encouraging our students to use their intellectual and creative resources to effect change in all segments of society. Our goal is to ensure that the academy is the most collaborative educational program in the world.?

Iovine and Dre?s gift is part of The Campaign for the University of Southern California, a multiyear effort to secure $6 billion or more in private philanthropy to advance USC?s academic priorities and expand its positive impact on the community and world.

To meet student interests and to meld inspiration with education, the academy?s specially designed courses will provide students with a solid background in the integration of technology with all aspects of creativity along with a thorough understanding of existing and potential business, marketing and distribution strategies.
Drawing on the expertise of top faculty from the USC Marshall School of Business, the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC Thornton School of Music, the academy will also host industry icons and innovators as visiting faculty and guest speakers. It will offer a highly select group of students an integrated, four year course of study that will provide in-depth learning in engineering and computer science, fine arts and graphic design, business, and leadership models. Team-taught interdisciplinary courses will be developed and adapted specifically for the program.

The Iovine and Young Academy will focus on four core curriculum areas: arts and entrepreneurship; technology, design and marketability; concept and business platforms; and creating a prototype.

The academic program will include one-on-one faculty mentoring, opportunities to interact with luminaries from the arts and entertainment industry serving as guest speakers and lecturers, and a broad array of internship opportunities for students.

During their fourth and final year, academy students will take up residence in an experiential setting called the ?Garage.? Grouped into self-directed teams, which may include nonacademy students from across the university, these students will determine a project that can be developed into a prototype over the course of the year.

Appropriate faculty members, other artists and business leaders will serve as mentors to each group, and venture capitalists and other real-world experts will be introduced to give students advice and direction. All of these elements will combine into one unique educational experience, where working together, students will challenge one another to take even greater risks in innovation.

?Flexibility is a hallmark of USC, and the academy?s curriculum is incredibly adaptive,? said USC Roski Dean Erica Muhl, who will serve as the academy?s inaugural director. ?The curriculum was created to take full advantage of a newly designed, revolutionary educational space that will offer students very powerful tools. Academy students will have the freedom to move easily from classroom to lab, from studio to workshop, individually or in groups, and blow past any academic or structural barriers to spontaneous creativity.

?The academy?s core education will create a common, multilingual literacy and fluency across essential disciplines,? she continued. ?This ?big picture? knowledge and skill will equip graduates with a leadership perspective that is unparalleled in an undergraduate degree, and that will be applicable to virtually any industry.?

USC?s strategic location in Los Angeles ? widely viewed as the creative and media capital of the world ? provides an opportunity for students to take advantage of a living laboratory where music, film and visual arts are deeply intertwined. In addition, the university?s proximity to the city?s burgeoning ?Silicon Beach? as well as Northern California?s Silicon Valley provides access to an array of technological advances from which students can draw inspiration.
The academy will enroll its first class of 25 students in fall 2014. Applicants will be accepted based on a rigorous review process encompassing demonstrated academic excellence as well as proven ability for original thought. Students who complete a course of study in the academy will graduate with a degree that recognizes each individual?s ability to engage and succeed in an educational experience that is constantly asking the question, ?Why not??

Iovine, chairman of Universal Music Group?s Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records, is one of the music industry?s most accomplished and respected leaders. Iovine began his four-decade career as a recording engineer, working with the likes of John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen. As record producer, he was instrumental in the career breakthroughs of artists such as Patti Smith, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, U2, Stevie Nicks, Dire Straits and The Pretenders.

Iovine co-founded Interscope Records in 1990, widely regarded as the home of music?s greatest artists, including Dr. Dre, Nine Inch Nails, Mary J. Blige, No Doubt and Lady Gaga, among others.

Born in Compton, Calif., hip-hop pioneer/producer Dre began his career as a member of the World Class Wreckin? Crew. In 1986, he co-founded N.W.A. and won critical and commercial acclaim with the group?s 1988 landmark rap album Straight Outta Compton. In 1992, Dre released his solo debut, the G-funk masterpiece The Chronic, which Rolling Stone hailed as one of the greatest albums ever made.

With the launch of his own record company, Aftermath Entertainment, in 1996, Dre went on to discover and nurture such next-generation hip-hop superstars as 50 Cent, The Game, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem.

In 2006, Iovine and Dre co-founded Beats Electronics, a high-performance headphone and sound transmission company intent on recapturing the fidelity of the studio. With its expansion into smartphones and car audio systems, Beats by Dr. Dre has captured 40-percent market share of the entire billion-dollar headphones industry.

SOURCE

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Nest Acquires MyEnergy To Boost Its Home Energy Management Tools

Nest proved that energy monitoring can be tantalizing. And it's about to get even better. The company just announced that it has acquired MyEnergy to further enhance its suite of monitoring tools. Terms of deal were not released.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/DfLEKdUFqic/

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