iOS has filters and drawing apps up the wazoo, so it can be hard to see the point of new ones. But Isometric allows you to create and manipulate designs and optical illusions that are weirdly compelling. It’s something about starting from a blank screen and building such a dimensional pattern.
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“The Carrie Diaries” has added Samantha Jones to Season 2. Lindsey Gort will play Samantha Jones, the “Sex and the City” character made famous by Kim Catrall.
Gort will be a series regular. According to “Carrie Diaries” producers, Carrie Bradshaw (Annasophia Robb) will meet Samantha through a “surprising connection.” “The Carrie Diaries” describes the young Samantha Jones as “a ballsy, beautiful and sexy young woman from the panhandle of Florida who has made her way — and already a name for herself — in the rock ’n’ roll scene of 1980s NYC.”
Catrall played the character in six seasons of “Sex and the City” and the two films. She won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Samantha Jones and was nominated for five Emmys.
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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) reiterated on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning that a federal bailout was far from likely for Detroit.
The remarks come after the city of Detroit, shouldered with more than $18 billion in debt, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy Thursday, the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Though a judge deemed the filing unconstitutional, experts say it is likely to reach federal bankruptcy court.
Snyder said he’s not counting on help from the United States government, and he doesn’t plan to provide financial assistance on the state level.
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For one fan, getting close to Beyonce was just too much to handle. The young man was next to the stage at a recent stop on Beyonce’s Mrs. Carter Show World Tour, when the singer reached down to hold his hand while she sang. Watch his priceless reaction below.
The first “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” footage had its Hall H Comic-Con premiere on Saturday night and the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. What’s already apparent is that this ‘Cap will be heavy on S.H.I.E.L.D. and, as co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo explain, will bridge the two Avengers movies, creating a “very strong hand off.”
I met with the Russo brothers here in San Diego shortly before their Hall H panel to talk about their highly anticipated sequel and just how two directors who are best known for their work on “Community,” “Arrested Development” and the Owen Wilson movie “You, Me and Dupree” found themselves in the directors’ chairs for a big budget Captain America movie.
I have to admit, after watching “You, Me, and Dupree,” I didn’t think a future step would be a Captain America movie.
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Sad news: Elite Models’ John Casablancas died on Friday, Women’s Wear Daily confirmed yesterday afternoon. He died of cancer in Rio de Janeiro at age 70.
Not only the founder of the revolutionary model management agency in 1972, Casablancas was instrumental in launching the careers of several high-profile supermodels, including Cindy Crawford, Heidi Klum, Iman, Gisele Bündchen, Naomi Campbell and many more household names.
“Models were just models,” Casablancas told New York Magazine in 2005 of the period before he founded Elite. “We started creating the myth behind the looks.” And it certainly worked; now, many models (especially those listed above who fell under John’s tutelage) rival the fame of actresses and other celebrity figures.
American companies have been piling up more and more cash lately, which perversely has become a talking point for why the government should make public policy friendlier to large rich established companies. Sen. Tom Coburn yesterday lamented that Congress has not been “doing the things to create the confidence, to create the certainty in the business community that will allow the significant capital that’s sitting on the sidelines to be invested, which would create some of the growth that you’re hoping to do.”
Yesterday was the 44th anniversary
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By Maggie Fick and Noah Browning
CAIRO, July 21 (Reuters) – A panel of legal experts started work on Sunday to revise Egypt’s Islamist-tinged constitution, a vital first step on the road to fresh elections ordered by the army following its removal of Mohamed Mursi as president.
Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has accused the army of orchestrating a military coup and denounced plans to revise the constitution, staged fresh rallies on Sunday to maintain pressure on the new, interim government.
Setting a highly ambitious timeframe, the military wants new elections in around six months and has tasked a panel of 10 legal experts to present proposed changes to the constitution within 30 days for review before a broader-based body.
The original constitution was approved by a referendum last year, but critics said the text failed to protect human rights, minorities and social justice.
Ali Awad Saleh, a judge and the constitutional affairs adviser for the newly installed president, chaired Sunday’s panel, saying it would spend the next week receiving ideas from “citizens, political parties, and all sides”.
Khaled Dawoud, a spokesman for the opposition umbrella National Salvation Front, called the start of the committee’s work “a very positive development”.
The Muslim Brotherhood has shown no sign it is ready to engage with the new administration or the army, sticking firmly to its demand for the full restoration of Mursi, who has been held in an undisclosed location since his downfall on July 3.
A few thousand women, children and men marched from the site of a round-the-clock, pro-Mursi vigil in a Cairo suburb on Sunday, moving to within sight of the defence ministry, ringed by barbed wire and protected by well-armed security forces.
“Why, Sisi why, why did you kill our sisters?” the crowd chanted, referring to General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the defence minister who played a central role in forcing Mursi from office following mammoth street protests against the Islamist leader.
More than 100 people have died in violent clashes this month, including three women taking part in a pro-Mursi rally in the Nile Delta town of Mansoura on Friday.
CONSTITUTIONAL DOUBTS
Despite the continued domestic turmoil, the new government is trying to show the world that business is returning to normal in Cairo, with the foreign minister meeting Ahmad Jarba, the head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition.
Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy told reporters on Saturday that Egypt remained committed to seeing change in Syria, but said the government was reviewing a decision by Mursi to cut all diplomatic ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Trying to burnish their democratic credentials, the Egyptian military has said the new constitution should be put to a referendum before planned parliamentary elections.
However, some analysts have expressed doubts about rushing to revise the text given the lack of political consensus that has clouded Egypt’s faltering transition to democracy in the wake of the 2011 removal of veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
“The problem is not amending or drafting the constitution, the problem is deciding the direction the country is headed,” said Zaid Al-Ali of International IDEA, a Stockholm-based intergovernmental organisation.
“Unless political agreement is reached between all of the major political actors in the country, we are going to head from one crisis to another,” he said.
Many of Egypt’s Arab allies have welcomed Mursi’s demise and rushed to prop up the nation’s wobbling finances.
Egypt’s central bank said on Sunday it had received $2 billion in funds from Saudi Arabia, the latest instalment of a $12 billion aid package pledged by Gulf Arab states.
The Egyptian stock exchange rose to a seven-week high on Sunday, encouraged by a lack of violence at weekend “anti-coup” protests in Cairo, hoping it indicated tensions are calming.
However, violence continued in the Sinai peninsula, where three members of Egypt’s security forces were killed on Sunday by armed men. Islamist militants in the area have vowed to attack army and police targets there until Mursi is reinstated.
Egypt’s minister of supplies, Mohamed Abu Shadi, told Reuters the government had moved swiftly to boost supplies of wheat to prevent any destabilising bread shortages for the country’s 84-million-strong population.
Abu Shadi said Mursi’s government had made “incorrect calculations” regarding stocks, adding that these were “based on guesses, not on facts”.
Mursi was Egypt’s first freely elected leader, but during his one year in office he drew criticism for failing to revive the ailing economy, restore security or build institutions. The Muslim Brotherhood say they were repeatedly thwarted by remnants of Mubarak’s old government and forces hostile to them. (Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia; Writing by Maggie Fick and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
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