As the first month of 2015 nears its end, Toyota has slipped in a recall of its own, this one being over the same potential risk we’ve seen cited in other recent recalls: fires. In this case, some 2011 and 2012 model year Avalons located in the US will be recalled. The reason revolves around the subwoofer’s wires in particular, … Continue reading
It’s no secret Netflix plans to ramp up its original show offerings this year, and it won’t be limiting itself to just fictional series’ like the newly released Marco Polo. As we noted earlier this month, Netflix will be releasing an original documentary (“My Own Man”) on March 6, and on the same date the company has announced it’ll be … Continue reading
By Joseph J. Kolb
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Jan 30 (Reuters) – A pair of balloonists trying to fly to North America from Japan passed a major milestone on Friday that could soon be declared a world record for the length of time spent in the air by a gas-filled balloon, a spokeswoman said.
The feat came a day after the team of Troy Bradley, an American, and Leonid Tiukhtyaev, a Russian, logged what they also believe to be the distance record for such flights, flying more than 5,260 miles (8,465 km) by Thursday afternoon, according to a tracking website (http://www.pacificballoon.com/) set up for their journey.
The existing distance record, set in 1981, also came on a transpacific flight, of 5,209 miles (8,383 km). The existing record for time spent in the air is 137 hours, set in 1978 by a team crossing the Atlantic.
Bradley and Tiukhtyaev, who call their team and balloon Two Eagles, hope to land on the Baja Peninsula in Mexico on Saturday morning, spokeswoman Kim Vesely said. The pair took off for their trip on Jan. 24.
“The team is now fully focused on the final and most important task: landing the balloon safely after a successful crossing of the Pacific Ocean,” she said.
Vesely said she did not formally call the team’s feats a record because that designation will be decided by the U.S. National Aeronautic Association and the Fédèration Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the international air sports federation.
(Reporting by Joseph J. Kolb; Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Eric Beech)
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At the height of his struggle to survive in the lucrative but cutthroat heating oil industry during the most violent year in New York City history, Abel Morales exclaims: “I’ve spent my whole life trying not to become a gangster.”
Morales, the lead character in J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year,” is a Latino immigrant who makes the comment as his family life and business spiral out of control. Oscar Isaac, 35, (“Inside Llewyn Davis) portrays the righteous Morales, who faces the dark side of the American dream as his moral compass is set against his own ambition.
The Guatemalan-born, Miami-raised Isaac has been busy with a diverse array of roles, including X-wing pilot Poe Dameron in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” a young artificial intelligence programmer in Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina,” and a powerful villain in “X-Men: Apocalypse.” “A Most Violent Year” is the first to hit theaters, with a nationwide release on Friday.
Isaac spoke with The Huffington Post this week about the importance of portraying emotionally complex Latinos on the big screen and how he thinks Star Wars fans will react to J.J. Abrams’ upcoming installment of the franchise.
‘A Most Violent Year’ starts without much context on the characters or what’s going on. For most of the film, I couldn’t really figure out if Abel was as righteous as he pretended to be or not. What are your thoughts on Abel? Is he truly the same man he sets out to be in the beginning?
I kind of don’t want to spoil it for you. It’s the kind of movie where you bring a lot to it as an audience member. In a way, I don’t want to limit it by interpretation of it. I think, that’s exactly the right question. That means I think the movie succeeded for you because that’s exactly what the whole movie is about. It’s about how do you navigate this system, this capitalist system. We’re all told, ‘In this country you gotta hustle to make it.’ So there’s hustling, cutting corners, doing things the other guy, your competitor, won’t do. And what you’re trying to do is navigate this crazy train particularly in a troubled time in New York’s history — it was one of most violent years on record. So he does have this sickening ethical dilemma, where he wants to do things in certain way. He doesn’t want to be seen as a gangster, but I think that you’re right to question whether it’s really a moral thing or whether it’s actually just pragmatic.
I also spoke with J.C. Chandor, who directed and wrote the film, about Abel and his American dream. He mentioned that Abel made it a point to “sand away” his heritage to achieve his dream. He perfected his accent and changed his clothes, for example.
That’s an interesting thing. I remember J.C. told me that with Henry Ford’s workers, one of the things that they would do is they would come in their Sunday’s finest, which was their ethnic clothes. They would come into this little melting pot and they would come out with a suit. And it was a way of [saying], ‘And now you are an American.’ You wear a suit and you go after the American dream.
I think it’s a very good thing and it’s a modern thing that we try now to incorporate our culture. We try to make that just as much a part of America, as opposed to totally hiding it or denying it or turning your back on it.
On that note, I recently saw in your interview with Vogue UK that you changed your last name from Hernández to Isaac because you wanted to avoid being typecast in stereotypical roles?
That was my given name: Oscar Isaac Hernández. I felt that was little long for the marquee. [laughs] In Miami, that is an incredibly common name, Oscar Hernández. There are like 10 pages of Oscar Hernándezs in the phone book. And I was starting off in theater, there were actually a couple of other Oscars auditioning for parts as well. That was more of a differentiation from the people that were down there.
At the same time, in Miami starting out it is difficult. You do get cast if you’re a Latin man, because you look a certain way. Casting directors, often — it’s easy just to see people of a certain ethnicity as just one thing. For me it was important to be an actor, first and foremost. To me it was the most important thing, I wanted to be able to play anybody, and where I’m actually from to be secondary.
There’s actually been a lot of contention in recent weeks in terms of diversity in Hollywood, and it was triggered by the fact that no actors of color were nominated for an Oscar this year. What are your thoughts on the subject?
As far as awards distribution and why people get some and why they don’t — for me, it’s just not something that I’m interested in pontificating about. I don’t really know or how you rectify that, other than people that make movies should make more of them. That’s one of the things that I loved about what J.C. did with this film, which is he made his hero an American of Latin American descent who is completely idiosyncratic, who is not a cliche, whose identity although much made up of where he comes from is just as much made up of who he is emotionally and psychologically and spiritually. The fact that he presented a Latin man not as a gangster, not as a sidekick, not as a villain, but as a powerful, flawed individual — that’s a great thing. That helps audiences look at Latinos as more than just one thing.
And switching gears completely, congratulations are in order. You’re going to have a huge role in the upcoming “X-Men: Apocalypse” and you’ll be playing an X-wing pilot Poe Dameron in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
Thank you.
There is a lot of mystery surrounding the new Star Wars film. You’ve said you’ve “signed your organs away” and aren’t allowed to reveal any details.
[laughs] Yeah, I can’t.
So I won’t ask you details about the movie, but I will ask you one thing: The last three films weren’t received with as much fervor as the first three. So is ‘The Force Awakens’ a movie that fans of the original 1980s trilogy will be happy with?
Abso-frickin-lutely. Without question. I think particularly fans of the universe will just be in ecstasy. But I think that even people that haven’t — there are believe it or not still people that haven’t seen or are not fans. I think this will win a lot of new fans. I just think it’s been done with such love, such energy, that it’ll be really compelling for everybody.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
SAN FRANCISCO — Police released surveillance images of what they call a “person of interest’ linked to the grisly discovery of human remains stuffed in a suitcase abandoned on a downtown street Wednesday.
Earlier Friday, the medical examiner’s office confirmed that the body parts found in the luggage and other remains dropped in a garbage can nearby in the South of Market area came from one, light-skinned man.
Tests have not yet determined how the victim died, but San Francisco police said they’re looking to question a man in his 50s or 60s seen in images near the block on 11th Street where the remains were found.
Door-to-door canvassing by police in the SoMa neighborhood paid off with the discovery of footage from a Goodwill store showing a person pulling the suitcase, NBC Bay Area reported.
The person sought by police is a man wearing a baseball cap, a blue-and-orange jacket and light jeans in the footage, and is about 5-foot-7 or 5-foot-8. Police said he may be homeless.
Homicide detectives are investigating, though police have said they need to determine if the unidentified man died from natural causes before someone mutilated his corpse.
Anyone with information should call the San Francisco police Homicide Unit at 415-553-1145, or email gary.watts@sfgov.org. Anonymous tips may be left at 415-575-4444, or text-a-tip at TIP411 with SFPD at the start of the message.
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No sooner did the global elites leave their annual talking shop high in the Alps at Davos last week than the people spoke in Greece. In a mutiny against an untenable status quo, those who are run over have revolted against those who run things. Now righteous populism must face economic, financial and political realities if other European states don’t bend Greece’s way.
To keep up with the drama as it evolves over the coming weeks, we’ve connected WorldPost readers directly to the daily blog of Yanis Varoufakis, the self-described “erratic Marxist” who is now Greece’s finance minister. Writing from Athens, HuffPost Greece Editorial Director Sophia Papaioannou says Alexis Tsipras’ electoral victory will give suffering Greeks “space and time” to address their predicament. Former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou argues that the path forward after the election is for a national referendum on a “Greek plan” for reform that will bind a now polarized nation. Rena Dourou, a deputy of the victorious Syriza party, notes that the vote was as much against the corruption of the formerly ruling political parties in Greece as it was against austerity.
Xenia Kounalaki, foreign editor of the Greek daily Kathimerini, wonders whether Spain, France and Italy will follow Greece’s revolt against austerity. Harris Ikonomopoulos views the Syriza victory as “Pyrrhic” unless its reform plans are supported by other EU states.
Writing from Tokyo, Japan’s former defense chief Yuriko Koike, says that Japan’s constitutional restrictions on using force have prevented it from taking action to free its hostages from ISIS, and argues that that must change. Writing from New Delhi, Pawan Khera examines whether President Obama’s visit to India revived the “Asian Arc of Democracy” strategy that would align India with other democracies in Asia against China.
As fierce battles flare anew in Ukraine, Alexander Motyl asks whether the war with Russia has passed a point of no return. Writing from Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spells out his worldview and says Russia will not be deterred by sanctions over Ukraine and will persist in doing “what we think is right and just.”
Writing from Rome, Sebastien Maillard explains in this month’s “Following Francis” why the Pope is so focused on Asia, where China may one day have the largest Christian population in the world. Writing from Managua, Father Ernesto Cardenal — the famous “liberation theologist” scolded by Pope John Paul II during the Nicaraguan revolution — calls Pope Francis “a real revolutionary.” In this week’s “Forgotten Fact,” we look at the unsolved terror attack in 1994 that has become the center of a current political storm in Argentina following the murder of the prosecutor in the case.
In an essay, Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji argues that “Islam is completely compatible with secularism.”
WorldPost Middle East Correspondent Sophia Jones reports that the victory over ISIS in Kobani came at such a grim cost that Syrians find it barely worth celebrating. She also profiles an escaped ISIS child soldier who is now speaking out. His message: “Don’t join the Islamic State.”
President Barack Obama outlines his plan for reviving the American middle class. Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz slams “the stupid politics” that are preventing demand stimulus policies that would revive the global economy. Scott Malcomson ponders whether “globalization causes war” because of the disruption, dislocation and political reaction it engenders. WorldPost China Correspondent Matt Sheehan reports that Greenpeace sees “resolve” in the Chinese government to fulfill its plans to cut coal production in the fight against climate change, but the “rustbelt” city of Tangshan is paying the price.
In our Singularity University series this week, we ask if “you are still you” if your mind is uploaded. In an exercise of perception, Fusion asks women to draw their own vaginas.
In an interview with Alain Elkaan, Tom Stoppard talks about his new play on consciousness, “The Hard Problem.”
Finally, Nicolas Berggruen and Arianna Huffington mark The WorldPost’s first anniversary and note the availability of our new app “WorldPost Voices” and our revamped navigation bar at the top of the page, which links you to HuffPost international editions.
WHO WE ARE
EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute on Governance and the long-time editor of NPQ and the Global Viewpoint Network of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost. Kathleen Miles is the Senior Editor of the WorldPost. Alex Gardels is the Associate Editor of The WorldPost. Katie Nelson is the National Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost’s editorial coverage. Eline Gordts is HuffPost’s Senior World Editor. Charlotte Alfred and Nick Robins-Early are Associate World Editors.
CORRESPONDENTS: Sophia Jones in Istanbul; Matt Sheehan in Beijing.
EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Arianna Huffington, Eric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look Media) Juan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa), Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) and Yoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun).
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy), Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) and Katherine Keating (One-On-One). Sergio Munoz Bata and Parag Khanna are Contributing Editors-At-Large.
The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital Times. Seung-yoon Lee is The WorldPost link in South Korea.
Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from MassiveChangeNetwork.com on the “whole mind” way of thinking. Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine.
ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute’s 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council — as well as regular contributors — to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder, Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo, Ahmed Zewail, and Zheng Bijian.
From the Europe group, these include: Marek Belka, Tony Blair, Jacques Delors, Niall Ferguson, Anthony Giddens, Otmar Issing, Mario Monti, Robert Mundell, Peter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt.
MISSION STATEMENT
The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.
We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out.
PHOENIX (AP) — Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said Friday it will be Richard Sherman’s decision whether to play in Sunday’s Super Bowl if his pregnant girlfriend goes into labor with the couple’s first child sooner than expected.
Carroll said during a joint news conference with New England coach Bill Belichick that family comes first and “if (Sherman) is faced with that decision, we’ll support him.” “He has an opportunity to face a big decision and whenever our players have a personal, family issue that comes up it’s always about family first and they can decide what is best for them and I support that,” Carroll said. “However he goes with that, if he’s faced with that decision we’ll support him and we’ll see how that goes.”
Carroll also added, “I can’t wait to see little Petey.”
Sherman said on Thursday that the baby — a boy — isn’t due for a couple of weeks and “he was going to do his father a favor,” and wait to be born until after the game. In an interview with KING-TV in Seattle, Sherman’s girlfriend, Ashley Moss, said, “I told him to play the game.”
Carroll’s comment regarding Sherman was the biggest news to come out of the final media availability with the coaches as both were extremely complementary of the other. Carroll was clearly the more talkative of the two, although Belichick added quips through the 34-minute availability.
“I think everyone knows how much respect I have for Seattle and Pete and the job that they do,” Belichick said. “I don’t think fun is the word that I’d use. It’s been a huge challenge. It’s a tough team to prepare for, but I certainly have all the respect in the world for them. I could see why they were champions last year and why they are here again this year. They do so many things well on so many levels.”
The pair also spoke glowingly of their owners — Paul Allen for the Seahawks and Robert Kraft for the Patriots — and the support they have provided to both franchises and their intertwined pasts. Carroll was the coach in New England before being fired by Kraft and replaced by Belichick.
“The passion that he brings, he’s there on a pretty regular basis with the team, with the players, with the coaches, with the staff,” Belichick said of Kraft. “He’s an integral part of everything that we do. We have a great relationship.”
Carroll said the preparations for the week had a very similar feel to last year in New York prior to the Seahawks’ victory over Denver.
“The process that we go through is very much the same. What changes is the team that you’re playing and the challenges they present, which are extraordinary,” Carroll said. “We really do have a process and a way we go through it and a mentality and feel like we’ve come through it now and we’re wrapping it up and it’s gone the way we like it to.”
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AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFL
LOS ANGELES (AP) — More measles cases have been found in California, health officials said Friday.
Figures released by the California Department of Public Health showed there are now 91 confirmed cases in the state, up from 79 on Wednesday. Of those, 58 infections have been linked to visits to Disneyland or contact with a sick person who went there.
Mexico and at least six other U.S. states — Utah, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Nebraska and Arizona — also have recorded measles cases connected to Disneyland.
The outbreak, which originated at Disney theme parks last month, is spreading to the broader community.
Measles, which is spread through the air, is highly contagious. Symptoms include fever, runny nose and a blotchy rash.
Most young children are vaccinated against measles. But outbreaks still occur in the United States, usually when travelers pick up the virus abroad and then spread it among unvaccinated people here.
People at highest risk are those who are unvaccinated, pregnant women, infants under 6 months old and those with weakened immune systems.
Health officials have not found “patient zero” or the person who triggered the Disneyland-linked outbreak. But they think it’s someone who caught the virus outside the country and visited one of the Disney theme parks during the holidays.
Last year, the U.S. saw a record 644 measles infections in 27 states after virtually eliminating the disease in 2000.
California typically sees four to 60 cases a year.
Greece will neither seek an extension of its controversial bailout nor cooperate with the so-called “troika” of international creditors, the country’s new finance minister declared Friday, following up on a previous threat to “blow the whole thing up” in order to win concessions designed to boost the Greek economy.
The comments by Yanis Varoufakis, an economist and member of the leftist Syriza party, threaten to unravel carefully negotiated but deeply unpopular bailouts of Greece by the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Commission that led to harsh austerity and severe cuts in government spending. The Syriza party won Sunday’s national election.
Greece’s economy has shrunk by about 30 percent since 2008, according to data compiled by the World Bank. Its economy was smaller in 2013 than in 2005. About a quarter of its workers are unemployed, according to the Hellenic Statistical Service, or Elstat. Youth unemployment exceeds 50 percent.
“We are not going to cooperate with a rottenly constructed committee,” Varoufakis said, according to news reports. The troika has been monitoring Greece’s progress toward commitments made by previous administrations as part of its bailout, such as selling off state assets and trimming worker benefits and government payrolls.
Varoufakis added that the Greek government would not seek to delay the approaching Feb. 28 deadline to extend the terms of the country’s bailout. “This platform enabled us to win the confidence of the Greek people,” he reportedly said.
“The Greek state has a future, but what we won’t accept as a future is the self-perpetuating crisis of deflation and unsustainable debt,” Varoufakis said, according to news reports.
The comments come as Greece’s economy staggers to grow following a brutal, six-year recession that decimated household finances and appears to have been worsened by the very bailouts that were supposed to rescue it.
Just over 10 percent of the 240 billion euro bailout has been used to finance government operations, according to figures compiled by MacroPolis. The rest has gone to repaying creditors and bailing out banks.
It is against this backdrop that previous comments by Varoufakis, highlighted Friday by the radio program “Left Business Observer,” may prove instructive in trying to understand the Syriza party’s aims and the lengths to which Greece’s new ruling party will go in order to reduce the country’s debt burden.
In a November interview, Varoufakis told Doug Henwood that the world should expect a “potentially explosive negotiation” if the Syriza party should win Greece’s then-upcoming election.
“The only thing you can really do is negotiate with the rest of Europe,” Varoufakis said. “But to negotiate, to be taken seriously, you have to have a credible threat. You have to be prepared to blow the whole thing up, simply by being intransigent if you are not taken seriously.
“So, this is my recommendation: Prepare for a very tough, very painful, potentially explosive negotiation.”
In a 2010 interview with Henwood, Varoufakis recounted a conversation he claimed to have had with an official at the European Central Bank, who told him that the international creditors planned to push the country into a “permanent recession” in order to drive down wages as part of a plan to reform the Greek economy.
In a November 2014 interview, Varoufakis predicted that countries pushing Greeks to accept austerity — such as Germany — would be doomed to repeat the experience of the victors of World War I, who imposed such harsh conditions on Germany that many believe it led to the rise of Adolf Hitler.
“I think we’ll have a repeat performance of that,” Varoufakis said of Germany today.
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